Every time you post, you make me think less of the police.
Cops aren't supposes to be deciding innocence or guilt? How comforting. NOT. I would say that you must mean that they aren't supposed to be handing out the final sentence, but then you say:
much less shooting or not shooting people based on their assessment of same.
Sentences don't get more final than that.
When it becomes common practice for the police to shoot innocent people because a certain formula allowed it, then we need to get rid of the police. Hell, anyone can go around shooting innocent people, why do we need to pay people to do it?
As police are citizens like everyone else, I think its always prudent to ask what the reaction to an incident would be if it were carried out by a non-badged citizen. The merit of an action should not be judged by who did it, but rather what they did. Let's look at a few recent incidents in that light:
1. Four physically fit men confront a woman who's been acting crazy. She's found naked, pumped full of bullets from three of the four. They say that she surprised them by acting irrationally, approaching them with a knife.
2. A man has a brief inconsequential issue of right of way with an ambulance. Screaming profanities and refusing to talk to the supervisor of the ambulance about the incident, he physically attacks the supervisor.
3. A man comes out of a restaurant and sees a group of teenagers playing loud music. He thinks one of them is holding a rifle and pointing it at another group of kids. He pulls his gun and yells at the kid with the "gun". Despite the obvious loud music and no one acknowledging him, he fires from across the parking lot. He hits the kid in the arm. Post incident it is determined to be a pellet gun and that he was pointing at a sign.
4. A man shoots an unarmed teenager in the face. The man says the teenager was running right at him and wouldn't stop.
Its hard to imagine the above incidents not resulting in at least an arrest isn't it? I assume that you would be defending the decision to make arrests.
The ability of the police to effectively investigate their own shootings is certainly questionable, so the more openness the better.
Self-defense shooting is based on threat assessment, not assessment of innocence or guilt. That is a straw man argument.
You simply confuse and conflate multiple issues because you want to hate cops and blame them for everything. You are biased and blinkered and not using logic to think through the logic of use of force.
It has an established logic, until you understand it, you really have no business criticizing and debating about it. You are more interested in insult than information.