Nice, never saw this thread. I'm late to the party. This should be fun.
The latest story looks interesting.... woman escalates simple situation, becomes violent, officers have to respond with force in accordance with law. Use of force continuum to be evaluated to determine if appropriate legal force was used or exceeded.
Once every few months, one of the 900,000 officers in the US makes a questionable judgement call, based on reacting to a suspect's actions. Statistically raising huge abuse concerns for this 0.0001% rate of questionable activity.
Well, that's the very reason why cops train with pop up targets, in which some are innocents and some are the bad guys. But not all cops get such training. A lot of police departments only require firearm training to be one box of 50 shells at a range PER YEAR.
And upwards of 95% of cops will never fire a shot at a human over their 25yr career.
But to go on, most of your information is incorrect. Very few police train with pop-up targets. That's a rarity, and usually only seen in a few federal LE depts, and Special Forces military.
The basic requirement is not one box of 50 "shells", it's a two part course consisting of 60 rounds fired under timed exercises between 3-25 yds, which incorporates reload and malfunction drills. And that's just for pistol. Required annually, most departments run it every 6 months.
Then add in qualification courses for rifle and shotgun. Patrol Rifle course is 40 rds, prone and kneeling at 75 & 50 yds, standing and kneeling at 50 & 25 yds, then standing 25yds and closer, with sone movement drills.
Shotgun is a total of 15 shells, 50yds and in, with 5 slug, 10 buck.
Now, the above is just the basic minimum require to certify. Most depts run additional drills as time/budget allow. In our case, we work 10hr shifts, and a range day is usually about 6-8 guys with two instructors. We get thru the basic qualification courses within two hours, and spend the rest of the day running drills. We've done everything from cover to cover leapfrog drills, active school shooter drills, shooting from/at vehicle, moving targets, etc....
And for CV reference... I'm a USN Vet '90-'94, and current police officer in PA since 2002. Current K/D ratio is 0/0