Maple,
I'd understood that he was shoved to the ground and was on the floor (terrified, "like a scared rabbit") when shot, and not running away and thereby making himself a target. Don't get me wrong. If they thought he had a bomb I entirely commend the decision to shoot him, but if so, I'm scared crapless that they thought it a good plan to fire five rounds into his bulky coat/bomb belt rather than his head, if the latter option was available, as it seemed to be.
Random thought
Do the police have good enough training for this? The police firearms people seem to have a bit of a habit of shooting harmless nutters with replica guns or table legs in Tesco bags, and of being less than 'surgical' when killing in a way that the SAS do not. With this in mind, would it not be better to be aiming to use the professionals for these kind of ops rather than the SO19 wannabes? They do a difficult job fairly well, but this is serious, and no matter how short they crop their hair, and no matter how far they get away from the pointy hat traditional constable's uniform, and no matter that they wear black overalls with military style boots they are policemen and not the SAS, and given the choice I'd have more confidence in the armed forces than I do in the police.
Hmmm.
Marker and Canary Boys,
So it's OK to jump in and validate the police's actions, and to judge the force appropriate before all the facts are known, and to issue willy nilly congratulations for taking out another bad guy (he must have been bad, he had a brown face) but it's not OK to question those actions, or whether there has been excessive force? Surely we should all wait for the facts before judging the actions of the police, even if, like me, you can't help but smile to yourself while being pretty sure that this was a 'result', however messily it might have been achieved?
To paraphrase:
"V disappointing that the 'Enoch had it right'/'Tony Martin's a hero'/'send 'em home' loonies are already speculating about the ROE - intimating that the 5 rounds fired were an entirely proportionate response. Why can't they resist the right wing nutter urge and wait until any salient facts are released?"
Well done to whoever it was that did what was required. Even if it was shooting a shoplifter, fare-dodger or illegal immigrant........