July4: The job of the police is to protect and serve the public. They did that.
I think July 4 has the key point. The police are not supposed to be private, on-call psychiatric help. If a person has called the police, she has turned over judgment as to appropriate actions to take. On the whole, I think this is how it has to be. The family members of a dangerous person - and the police have to assume he's dangerous, since they were called, in addition to the weapons and threats - can't be in control of the situation.
How many times do we read of deaths, sometimes multiple deaths, because a parent or spouse refused to press charges against a dangerous family member? They aren't objective.
It's a sad event, no doubt. Perhaps the author's step-in-law should have called him, instead of the police. On the other hand, that could have resulted in Jake's killing his wife and child.
Look, he put the baby on the front porch as directed. I'd have no prob with shooting him in the legs. The marksmanship, at least, was not directed toward "protecting the community" if the man had, at that point, done something appropriate to protect his child,and had his back to the cop.
A hypothetical.
Let’s assume his mom had called the cops in to deal with Adam Lanza.
He gets shot and killed, much as Jake did.
The cops are excoriated for killing a harmless bit-talking teenager off his meds.
But Lanza never shows up at Sandy Hook School. Dozens of children and adults survice, never knowing the bullet that missed them.