I don’t think they fired first either.
I do think they fired on people with lawful weapons carried for self defense who were seeking cover and not shooting at anyone.
After the fact somebody realized that the whole “shoot ‘em all and let God sort it out” thing wasn’t going to go down well with the public. Thus they arrested everyone with a smartphone.
Cameras from businesses are more problematic. Well run businesses have off site monitoring so that thieves can’t steal the security footage.
Quite possible. However, if person A and person B are exchanging gunfire, how do you know which person is the perp and which a person legally defending himself? This is often difficult to thrash out in a court of law.
Quite possibly the cops chose to just shoot everybody. But I am really interested in an answer to this question. People just seem to assume it's immediately obvious. Maybe sometimes it is. But I suspect often not.
BTW, in many if not all states you can have both sides guilty of assault with a deadly weapon and attempted murder. There isn't always a "victim" on hand. Sometimes they're all perps.
Not to say that was necessarily the case here.