“...Police were not being threatened by deadly force when they shot him...why isn’t there a means for police to arrest a resistant criminal short of shooting him 7x in the back?...” [JesusIsLord, post 4]
Knives are most certainly deadly force.
Your chances of dying in a knife attack are higher than your chances of dying if you are hit by a handgun bullet.
If you are with 21 ft of an individual holding a knife, you are too close. The knife-wheeler is capable of closing the distance and inflicting mortal injury before you can react. You will lose the fight - even if you are equipped with a handgun that you have drawn and are aiming at the individual.
These facts might sound wrong to the uninformed, but they are derived from crime reports, physiological studies of human performance factors, and close-combat training developed by the armed forces.
Jacob Blake was a serious threat to the law enforcement officers in Kenosha: he had not yet been handcuffed, was still resisting, and a knife was within his reach, and they were within arms’ reach. At that moment, the officers were about out of options. They tried less-lethal means to subdue him, to no result; they had only a fraction of a second left, and they chose the course they did. Second-guessing them now will not improve things.
I agree. However, the reports of this incident does not say the man was weilding a knife. They said a knife was found in his car. The man was shot 7x in the back - no knife in hand.