I have no doubt the police is trained. I have no doubt they did not draw because they wanted to have a party. They most likely thought they were in serious danger.
Let's do the Devils advocate. You are the cop standing there. You are almost certain he will pull a gun on you or your colleague. What would you do?
I don't think it will be solved by having an actor join their class. It's statistics and interpretation of it mostly.
-Fair question. IMHO there will be situations where the police are justified in firing on suspects. I just think that bar is currently (apparently) way too low - and that much can be done BEFORE a situation goes as far as the one in the parent story.
I would expect that SOP at 911 dispatch when receiving a call like the one triggering this death would be to seek more information as the team dispatched; why didn't they call the neighbours? Why didn't they call the house the call supposedly originated from? Why didn't they floodlight the entrance to the house as they ordered the victim to come out? He wouldn't see a thing with a couple of lights in his face, and it wouldn't matter one iota whether he had a gun or not.
My point isn't that police never are justified in exerting violence on us; my point is that they could do a lot more to avoid ending up in situations where deadly force is the only apparent solution in the first place.
I hope I didn't dodge your question.
-The problem, at least in some cases, is that you may get confusing, if not direct contradictory orders.
Say, if one officer yells 'Put your hands up' whereas another yells 'Get down, get down' - sure, keeping your wits about you, you could get your hands up, then kneel and get down - however, you are probably stressed as hell (being at gunpoint hopefully not being an everyday occurrence), and stressed people make mistakes.
Being frightened is NOT a condition which carries the death penalty. Police officers are the professional party in encounters like this. They should act like it - and receive training in how Joe Q. Public is likely to react when having a gun pointed at him.
(Heck, it might even be justified to have a masked instructor crash a class at the police academy and holding them at gunpoint for a few seconds (better make it a class where the cadets are not armed!) - with any luck, the brighter ones will remember how scared they were and cut civilians they encounter later a little slack for being scared s--tless.