You pull your gun, and you are seconds away from shooting someone- unless you think it takes a significantly long time to move your finger ONTO the trigger, or that a gun is a merely a pointing device
And my point is that he put himself into the position where he felt he needed to draw his weapon. He escalated the situation every place he went. Just listen to the video and the panic and screaming that starts every place he runs.
Well, you’ve put your finger on the question that the department is surely asking him this week. It’ll be interesting to see if they throw him under the bus, or not.
There’s no question that every action taken by the officer in the video is lawful, so it’s going to come down to “did he violate policy somehow”. And it’s always possible to show a policy violation, if that’s what the department wants to show, even if it’s nothing more than putting oneself in a poor tactical situation.
One thing we’re seeing with this incident, as with Ferguson, is the media viewing a small suburban department through the lens of big-city policing. A larger department would have probably deployed an airship to get a view of the situation before rolling the officers in all at once, along with a tactical plan to disperse the crowd before even making contact. Smaller departments have to make do with the resources available though.
I do find it fascinating that even on FR, there is so much uncritical acceptance of the MSM narrative.