Damn right I am defending him. He went home alive today, and not in a body bag. If he had not pulled his gun there is a good chance those two thugs would have hurt or killed him. Maybe he overreacted, but at least he survived. Nobody has the right to rush at a police officer like that. What the hell do you think they were up to? Do you think they wanted to give him a pat on the back? Would it have made you happy if those two men had hurt or killed that officer. Do you think they were running towards him for a good reason. I grow tired of all this defending of bad behavior. The place to fight the police is in the courts not on the street. If you run at a cop and he shoots you, then tough s#it.
What you’re missing is that this officer was running out of control even before he encountered anyone at the scene. When he first arrived at the location, he ran onto the scene with a movie-style “tumble” of some kind (watch the video, hard to describe how comical it was), and then started running at people. Before anything else.
And yes, he got home safely. But so did every other officer at the scene, without resorting to the same idiocy.