Officer Wilson had no Taser with him.
When the thug attacked him in his car, his nightstick was at his back, and he'd have had to use the hand with which he was struggling with the thug to get at it. As well, in quarters that close, I'm not sure the nightstick would have been effective.
In any case, the thug had already reached for the weapon, evidence of which is when the officer fired the first shot at Brown, the thug actually got powder on his hands from the discharge. The grand jury report indicated that the thug's hands were no more than a few inches from the barrel of the gun.
Once outside, the thug insisted on coming at the officer, even after he was already shot. By this point, the thug had already bashed the officer upside the head a couple of times, had already tried to take his gun, was already known to be a dangerous aggressor, no longer deserving of any benefit of the doubt.
This isn't a case where a cop was so risk-averse that he wound up killing an innocent person who had perhaps made some sort of ambiguous movement, or possibly not even that.
This was a case of defending against someone who had already inflicted physical harm on the officer, and had shown the capacity to further harm, or even kill the officer, should they come to blows again.
The exclamation mark on all this is that the thug kept moving toward the officer even after being shot and wounded, refusing to surrender. The absolute last place the officer wanted to be - or was morally required to be - was within the reach of the thug for another physical altercation.
“But I am going to object to claims that Wilson had no choice, because they are objectively inaccurate.”
Certainly. He could have sacrificed his life for the thug's life. He could have had another fight with the thug, endangering his own life, long after it had been established that the thug was bent on killing him.
But the only reasonable choice was to keep shooting until the thug ceased advancing on him.
Cops shouldn't be so ready to shoot possibly-innocent folks in ambiguous circumstances. The "well, at least the cop got home safely" attitude is terrible. But cops aren't required to commit possible suicide against known perps who have already engaged them violently.
sitetest
I realize Wilson had no Taser.
That’s because he chose not to carry one because it was awkward and uncomfortable. Which I’m sure it was.