1st, that sounds like a perfectly good shoot to me.
2nd - 17 rounds, that's kind of embarrassing. In the LE community there are a lot of opportunities to do live-fire training under stress, so that you learn to accommodate the adrenaline, fear and surprise to be able to respond effectively with 2-3 rounds. This minimizes possible 'mushroom' casualties.
3rd, Not sure what caliber the officer was using but if it was a nine mm and the 'teen' was a large man on drugs I could see it taking a lot more than 2-3 rounds to get him down without a head shot. I used to carry a 4 1/2 inch .357 S&W Model 19 with 110 grain hollow points...we had options back in the day and I figured that was good enough to take a man down efficiently but not go through too many walls.
BTW, my beat included Lacledetown, aka Pruitt-Igoe, back in the mid-eighties. About as ghetto St. Louis as it gets and I always was able to talk to people, even the bad guys. It's a different world today, too much fear and bs in certain demographics where there's no middle ground anymore...it's just straight up instant hostility. Glad I don't serve now.
Handling Officer-Involved Shootings
By Drew J. Tracy, Assistant Chief, Investigative Services Bureau, Montgomery County, Maryland, Police Department
Multiple Shots
The FBI study In the Line of Fire: Violence against Law Enforcement—A Study of Felonious Assaults on Law Enforcement Officers shows that 41 percent of officers who fired in the study hit their intended targets, and the average distance to the target was 21 feet.4 Although this is a limited study, these averages are fairly consistent with the multiple shooting data available.
During court proceedings concerning an officer-involved shooting, the number of rounds fired by the officer or officers involved will be released to provide full disclosure. Grand juries often question why numerous rounds were fired. It is important, especially in handgun shootings, to show that (1) immediate incapacitation of the target with handgun rounds is not a reliable factor, even if there is a direct central nervous system shot; and (2) direct shots that cause lethal blood loss are also not immediate. There is sufficient oxygen within the brain to support full, voluntary action for 10 seconds to 15 seconds after the heart has been destroyed.5 A determined individual who has received a fatal shot may continue to function because of adrenalin, sheer emotion, or stimulants in their system. Law enforcement personnel are taught to shoot at center mass and to continue until the threat is removed. Under stress, it is difficult to fire accurate shots that strike vital organs, and, in the average shooting, less than half of the shots fired hit the intended target. As the distance increases, more shots may be fired by officers to compensate for decreased accuracy.
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I'll bet the officer was armed with a Glock 17, and why did he shoot the "teen" 17 times? He shot him 17 times because that's all the cartridges a Glock 17 will hold.