If the Ohio shooting of the teenage girl is not justified, then no shooting is justified...

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41. if this case is the best justification for shooting, then yeah, no shooting is justified.

even if the knife-wielder was the rottenest person on earth, the protocol of police walking up and going from quick visual to lethal shooting in two or three seconds is a horrible protocol guaranteed to result in unnecessary deaths even if they got the right person this time.

the reality is that the cop decided unilaterally to take action that was maybe 90+% likely to result in the death of someone. not sure why *4* shots were called for in this situation. i know police are trained to shoot multiple times, and i know there are situations where maybe that's appropriate. but i'm not sure this was one of them. was it really out of the question to fire a warning shot? or to fire a single shot and reassess?

more fundamentally, the cop couldn't possible know the whole story, but nevertheless decided to end the one person. the cop couldn't possible know if the apparent target of the knife-wielder might actually have been the instigator. maybe the person holding the knife at the moment the cops arrived was actually the original victim and had just wrestled the knife from the original assailant's hands.

or maybe the whole thing was an indie film project and the knife was just a prop.

maybe the knife-wielder had been bullied for years and finally tried to get revenge. not in the right way, but does that really warrant instant death?


so even if the cops did get it right *this time*, there was at best a certain amount of luck in the way the got it right. next time it won't work out as well.

also keep in mind that knife attacks aren't always lethal. i'm not sure it's appropriate for the police to kill someone to prevent an injury that's rather less likely to result in anyone dying.

finally, one of the big problems is that police have few tools, but they all have an nearly instantly lethal one. is there no choice?

taser? net? riot shield? nightstick? one of those longer stick weapons? the problem is that the police aren't trained in and don't have ready access to a good variety of offensive and defensive weapons to choose from, but they do have super fast access to quick killing devices.