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Notes -
I am once again reminded that I do not need to pick a good guy in any given engagement. I can think of quite a few off-ramps and alternatives that the police could have selected at any point, such as turning off the stove themselves rather than commanding the resident to do so. I can think of approaches after that mistake that likely would have worked. I can suggest that screaming that you'll shoot someone in the face is probably not a great approach regardless of the situation you're encountering. None of that actually moves me to be all that sympathetic to the victim, if I'm being honest. I look around that house, look at the interaction, and just feel some gross combination of pity and contempt for the deceased. I wish the police would do better and I generally don't like them very much, but that's pretty easy for me to say when I don't have to deal with this bullshit a dozen times a day.
There should be a lot of distance between "this is a bad shoot, the cop should be prosecuted" (maybe? but a pot of boiling water definitely counts as a threat of "great bodily harm"...) versus the hopefully less controversial "this is a bad shoot, the cop should never hold a gun again after being fired and his replacement should be trained much better". Screaming that you'll "shoot you right in your fucking face" is not how you deescalate the muttering person, screaming "drop the fucking pot" is not the order you give when you think that flying boiling water is a danger, and walking closer to the threat is not the way you keep everybody safe when you have a long range weapon and the threat is a heavy object held in the hands of a non-professional-shotputter.
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