I was just curious, because your criticism, while valid in a classroom theory (we could all sit back and advise this man and others as to how to do it better) your condemnation of this man shows little understanding of the reality of how real human beings react under stress. Especially citizens who have just been robbed and shot in the head, probably for the first time in their lives.
"...your condemnation of this man shows little understanding of the reality of how real human beings react under stress...."
I don't care how human beings react under stress.
That statment is not the result of hardheartedness. Rather it reflects the world I grew up in. "A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do". That world is of course dead. But before it died a man couldn't "lose it" and still BE a man.
Society instilled this attitude in a man because of the dangerousness of the result of not being "tough". You can kill someones child, you can kill someones mother you can kill your partner. Or the job won't get done and the perp will go on to kill someones child....etc.
Those guys who train our soldiers do nothing BUT look for ways around 'the way human beings react under stress'. And they find them too. They ALWAYS have.
I know for a fact that I would not have fired like this poor guy did. I would have been close enough to be assure that the perps body stopped the rounds or I would have just kept up the chase.
I "know" this because although today I would have the "understanding" of someone such as yourself (and you are the rule today rather than the exception) I would have to face myself as I am formed. And I was formed in a world that expected me to rise to responsibility, and when I looked into a mirror I would know, by THAT standard, that I was not a man.