A madman running toward you with a knife out would be frightening and it is understandable in this instance as to why he has lost his life, but I wouldn't want to see the police become a threat to citizens as they are elsewhere. A young man shot dead in Canada this last week who was not threatening anyone, just holding break pads in his hands, which someone reported to the police as being a gun. Shoot first and ask questions later is not the Australian way, but it certainly seems to be happening in North America and probably elsewhere.
The last thing we want to see are headlines like the following from Utah:
"Over a five-year period, data show that fatal shootings by police officers in Utah ranked second only to homicides of intimate partners.
In the past five years, more Utahns have been killed by police than by gang members.
Or drug dealers. Or from child abuse.
And so far this year, deadly force by police has claimed more lives — 13,
including a Saturday shooting in South Jordan — than has violence between spouses and dating partners.
As the tally of fatal police shootings rises, law enforcement watchdogs say it is time to treat deadly force as a potentially serious public safety problem."
The population of Utah is 2.9 million, whilst Queensland's is 4.7 million, so Utah is still winning hands down, but in the past we never heard of people being shot dead by our police. Maybe today we have a problem with people de-sensitised to violence via TV shows and endless wars, an epidemic of amphetamine use in the form of the drug called Ice and a psychiatric system that leaves people in need of supervised care in an asylum, out on the streets or imprisoned in a gaol until they are later thrown back out into a society that fails to give them sufficient support to prevent a re-occurrence and then returned to prison or worse.
Perhaps this country is starting to reap the results of a failing social contract. Just wait till it falls over altogether, then our police will really have something to fear, along with the rest of the cowering masses.
http://www.sltrib.com/news/1842489-155/killings-by-utah-police-outpacing-gang?fullpage=1