Some people would argue that not having guns drawn in this type of case would result in more police deaths. I agree but don't view this as a deal breaker. How many civilians will die with guns drawn vs how many police officers die without? Should we count civilian and police lives the same in this situation? Police officers are compensated for the risks they take and have protective gear like body armour to reduce this risk. In the linked video I don't see the police using any head covering other than ball caps. If they thought there was a risk why didn't they put on helmets? I'm sure the Tallahassee police have access to that kind of PPE. The fact that they chose not to wear full PPE suggests to me that they didn't believe there was a substantial threat in the home.
Every building search is considered high risk. It's not an extreme risk, which is why they didn't execute it as a no-knock with SWAT, but there is still risk. The actions taken appear to consistent with that level of risk.
Here's what a quick google search turned up.
This link [0] shows that US police kill over three times as many people, per capita, than Canadian police. However, I think there are other issues, like easy access to guns, that affect this stat so this isn't really a very useful stat for our discussion.
This group [1] has been collecting info on arrest related deaths but a quick look only showed me links to how they collect data and not the actual data. It also looks like they stopped their surveys in 2012.
This paper [2] has some of the most relevant stats I've found for our discussion and covers use of lethal force by police between 2009-2012. From their numbers, 83% of victims were armed or believed to be armed (this includes toy guns, etc) and over 93% of the deaths were from firearms. If we assume that the 7% of deaths were the police didn't shoot all apply to unarmed victims then 10% of the people killed by police were unarmed and shot. Their stats also show LEOs being killed in less than 2% of these incidents. Their numbers do show 9% of these cases resulting in an injury to LEOs but we don't have numbers on non-fatal police caused injuries so I don't want to compare apples to oranges.
[0] https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2020/06/05/policekillings/ [1] https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=tp&tid=82 [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6080222/
Unarmed in the context of this paper would only be as it applies to deadly weapons. The suspect could still pose a threat with an alternative weapon (such as a pipe) or even pose a threat with bare hands too. The percent of people killed without posing an immediate threat would be more appropriate, and was 5% (would like to see the details of those with prosecution metrics). I would guess that 5% that mostly fits in the 7% you mentioned (which includes cars, suffocation, falls, etc), but unfortunately the paper doesn't seem to get granular enough for that. So I don't think we can draw a good conclusion from this paper that there were more civilians unjustly shot by police than the police being shot by civilians (the paper leaves out non-fatal incidents too). On that note too, the 2% officer fatality rate you show would not be fully encompassing. Meaning, it would be missing encounters in which the suspect killed the officer without also being killed.
There is no reason to draw your weapon in this context. Danger should be determined from context clues, not defaulted to the highest priority.
There is no reason in hell you can ever justify pointing a weapon at a child. Period. That goes beyond bad policing and into disrespecting guns and plain stupidity. This is someone’s home not a war zone.
It would be great if we had good video of how the gun was pointed and where the people were. It was likely only pointed up the stairs in a "low-ready" manner and not aimed. But we will never know.
How about defiantly refusing to open the door and a past conviction for assaulting an officer as context clues?
At least three pistols were drawn by officers entering the home. The first officer doesn't draw his weapon until after interacting with the suspect, being told her husband and children are home, and then entering the home. If she has a previous conviction for assaulting an officer that wouldn't matter since she was already removed from the situation at this point. The first and third pistols I saw were pointed at the floor the whole time. The second officer has his pistol aimed at the top of the stairs as he is walking towards the bottom of the stairway.
And like my comment said, we don't see any people at the top of the stairs, so we don't know if it was aimed at anyone or not. Even if there are people up there, we can't tell if the gun is aimed at anyone or pointed "low" (into the top few stairs) or at a higher angle to aim at a person as it's only a 10 degree or so difference in angle and we don't see the full scene. All we can do is make assumptions, which isn't helpful.
He may have been following his SOPs perfectly. I don't think this is an appropriate SOP for LEOs to use in this situation. I don't think this case called for having weapons drawn at all. My view is that this SOP is likely to contribute to unnecessary civilian injuries and deaths.
Why wouldn't this be appropriate when clearing a building with unknown threats when dealing with an uncooperative person? The only way it leads to unnecessary injuries is if the officers don't make a proper identification of a threat/non-threat, which can happen with the gun in other positions too.
This type of search wouldn't have been necessary anyways if she had complied immediately. They would have normally asked everyone to exit before doing their search, but once the suspect has been uncooperative and they gain entry they need to be proactive about the search to avoid evidence destruction or suspect fortifications given the suspect's actions. Now had she opened the door quickly, I would agree that the actions would not have been appropriate because you're supposed to clear the building by voluntary means first. In this case, the suspect's family declined that voluntary option by not complying.
Being a police officer isn't close to one of the most dangerous jobs in America, but being in contact with an adversarial police officer is one of the most dangerous situations to be in. I'd be more afraid of the police, like many people.
"Being a police officer isn't close to one of the most dangerous jobs in America, but being in contact with an adversarial police officer is one of the most dangerous situations to be in."
This is a logical fallacy. It can be dangerous to be at the hands of an hostile officer, but then an equal comparison would be to say that being a police officer I'm the presence of an armed violent criminal is dangerous.
But like you said, being an officer is not the most dangerous profession. Just like being in the presence of a police officer is not that dangerous.