Well I’m actually a member of the force and I know that there aren’t any policies or “policies” anywhere that advocate anything other than well aimed shots. To do so would be to invite lawsuits up the yinyang as well as possible prison time.
Police officers generally are poor shots and tactically illiterate, it has nothing to do with policy.
So you need it in writing for it to be a policy, huh? Not me. Not when I read the reports on how many shots fired - at least by LAPD, which is what I’m familiar with from my older brother. Specifically here’s some recent LAPD stats. http://www.lapdonline.org/assets/pdf/2009YearEndReportFinal.pdf
Between 2005 and 2008 LAPD on average managed to miss completely or unintentionally discharge 24 of 70 times there was a shooting (34%) which goes to my point about marksmanship.
With respect to my point about not caring what’s downrange by virtue of shooting way too many rounds try the following...
In 2009 there were 42 officer involved shootings, and over 85 officers discharged their weapons in these shootings (LAPD discounts unintentional discharges and animal shootings, me not so much, but I don’t have all their numbers). So odds are if you’re getting shot at, it’s by 2 officers. I calculated the number of rounds fired. The average was approximately 9 per engagement (4.4 per officer), and the average range at engagement was 16-20 feet. That is way too many at that distance. Making a reasonable assumption, given weapons used (mostly pistols ranging in caliber from 9mm to 45ACP) at typical distances it should at worst case take 3 rounds to down a perp on average even allowing for the the obvious difficulties of armed combat.
Since my brother has been shot twice in the line of duty I do have some sympathy for what police officers go through. Then again, no one is forcing them to take the job.