Of course there are exist such situations, and those situations have been used in recent years to to justify unlimited license to shoot living beings, human or otherwise while on duty. It is pervasive enough that the normal reaction to a police shooting, from many such as I who used to defend police until a cop was proved criminal or psycho as a defendant or a patient, is now to assume that the shooting was egregious until proven otherwise. Police department attitudes seem purposefully to be saying screw the citizens, we are supreme. That attitude helps to limit my range of reaction possibilities in the matter of police shootings. The police chiefs and unions are strongly implying that they have unlimited rights to shoot and may not be second-guessed. That attitude alone will assure that there is an ever increasing number of arbitrary killings by police.
But let's focus on *this* case,the case of an animal (not a human) having been shot.I,maybe or maybe not unlike you,place far less value and worth on animals than on humans.As I said earlier the standards for "engagement" for an animal should be far less stringent than for a human.Look at the video.That shepherd looked to be agitated to me.And remember,it's not a coincidence that the SS used German Shepperd's in their work.We see the dog go off camera to the left (at or near the front door) and then we see it reappear.We can't be completely certain what did,or did not,happen for that split second that the dog was off camera.But we can see that he was moving aggressively,at a good clip,just before he disappeared.There's not enough evidence in that video for me to be certain what happened but what I saw just before the shot says to me that the cop very possibly had good reason to fear injury.To me "injury" is the standard to be used for animals,"death" is the standard to be used for humans.At least some here,as I said,will strongly disagree with that position.