Shooting a Homeless Man

I am referring to a recent incident that happened in Los Angeles. It was reported and a video uploaded to FaceBook that a homeless man was shot by a police officer who was responding to a robbery call.

Apparently,  a struggle broke out between the police officers and the suspect.Soon after, gun shots were heard and the homeless man was down. The video was captured by a bystander and you can clearly hear from him that what the police officers did was ethically wrong. However, the police officer claimed that the suspect had reached out for his holstered pistol and he reacted accordingly.

The incident caused a major uproar questioning the use of lethal force by police officers. It was also reported that the homeless man had recently been discharged from a mental hospital and had been living on the streets for 6 months.

I personally feel that the police officers are trained to handle sticky situations such as this. It is their call of duty and they are trained to handle the situation the best they can at that particular moment. It is easy to comment in retrospect that he could have done this, he could have done that but the ones who comment are not in his shoes there and then. If he felt that his life, and possibly the lives of his counterparts could potentially be in danger, he has to do what he has to do.

I am thinking the public uproar is more profound because the public felt for the suspect who was homeless and mentally ill. They are exercising their emotional train of thoughts sitting in the comfort of their homes reading the news or watching the television. At the spur of the moment, the police officer had no time to engage his emotional brain, moreover, the suspect did not wear a tag to indicate he is mentally challenged and is homeless. The police officer had to react based on his instant instinct. Even if he was aware of the suspect's status; should he react differently or should he just serve and protect regardless?

More on this story: http://www.buzzfeed.com/claudiakoerner/video-shows-los-angeles-police-shooting-homeless-man#.gw8RqOqZ6

Do be warned that this video has huge amount of profanities.