[dragnet2]

The neighbor should be chewing crap at least as much as the officers,

Better send the neighbor back to the police academy....

My point is, they supposedly spend *lots* of money on LEO training, so events like this can be avoided..

From what I know of this, this was just a really bad shoot.

[Smokin' Joe]

I'm not disagreeing it was a really bad shoot. But the neighbor (and I've known the type) 'saw' one thing--and doubtlessly called in a 'guy with a gun'. Picture the neighbor for a moment, ignorant, freaked out busybody? Some jerk using the police to jerk the guy's chain? Someone who doesn't know a six shooter from a hose nozzle, but was specific enough to impart the appearance of knowing...

The police get the call, 'man with a gun', and the responding officers are expecting to see just that. They're adrenalined up, primed for a fight, got that OK corral twitch, and they 'see' what they expect to see--briefly as the guy points it at them. The rest is survival instinct.

I know they should have recognized it for what it was, but tweak the lighting angle a little and that button of brass in the end looks (in shadow) like the Holland Tunnel, and bore on, it's hard to say what he had in his hand, but it's pointing at YOU.

Yeah, when the dust settles, it was a bad shoot, a very bad one. But the BS the neighbor primed the situation with came out to be a load of crap on the officers, and worse on the guy the neighbor alleged to be a perp.