Regardless ... for a welfare check, the officer should have made his presence known at the open front door instead of snooping around the house.
Poor judgement and poor training. The decision to treat a non-emergency 'welfare check' as a SWAT operation, set in motion the chain of events that resulted in Ms. Jefferson's homicide.
The defense will obviously use the victim legally arming herself as justification for the officer's decision to shoot.
If someone has a gun drawn on you, and they want to, you'd get out "Police Officer..." and be dead.
More information will come out. No need to rush to judgment here.
Yep. Cop should have taken cover, said “police” and asked if anybody was inside. Snooping through windows at 2:30 AM doesn’t strike me as good policing. It sounds like a recipe for disaster.