One must take all police shooting reports from all sides with a very large grain of salt. Getting to the truth of the matter is very very difficult, and neither the police (and their unions) nor those who get shot (and their relatives) seem to have any incentive to tell the 100% straight story.
Also, the cops now all have these automatic pistols with as many as 14-15-round magazines in order to stay even with more heavily armed perps. But this also means that in the heat of the action sometimes literally hundreds of rounds can be fired by just a few cops. Usually, not good results.
In ye olden days, when the cops were using DA revolvers with deliberately heavy trigger pulls, and only 6 shots available before reload, there was not as much lead in the air.
In this Ferguson shoot, we'll just have to wait for more evidence as to who did what to whom, and when.
In general, both sides embellish, and the real truth lies somewhere in between. I hate the militarization of our police. I hate that so much lead flies, and I hate it when people die.
I hate just as much looters trying to use this as an excuse to do what they wanted to do anyway. I also hate the organizers behind the so called spontaneous riots.
We saw this in the 60s often enough. Black Panthers and Commuinist agitators were hoping to start a race war. Our institutions and churches were too strong then. Remains to be seen if we can survive such stuff again.