I know it's super easy to judge a situation when you're not the one who was threatened. But, reading this article made me think a little.

The foremost question in my mind is why do we spend so much on officer training if they use a gun at every opportunity? One would think that during some of the 1,300 hours of required training, that less-than-lethal enforcement techniques might be mentioned. At least in passing. Let's examine a couple of citizens with guns against trained police officers...

(GED-wielding slack-jawed yokels) + (guns and ammo) + (unexpected threat) = (dead threat)

and now the police

(highly trained police officers with thousands of hours of training and experience) + (guns and ammo) + (unexpected threat) = (dead threat)

The only difference here being the taxpayers spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to train and outfit the officers.

I'd like to think in a perfect world, that the encounter would have went something like this:

(highly trained police officers with thousands of hours of training and experience) + (guns and ammo) + (unexpected threat) = (neutralized threat that goes on to get the mental help she needs and released back into society where she can become a normalized taxpayer like everyone else)

But alas, it didn't happen that way.

OK. Just some thoughts. Again, I wasn't there and I didn't make the decision those officers did. I'd hope that if I was in a similar situation that I'd try to keep it together a little better.