> Again, I agree that police forces in general
  > are over-militarized, but we need to represent
  > the facts accurately.

Some additional back story.

1) The event was witnessed in its entirety by friends of ours who live there. They describe the sequence differently than the official sequence of events.

2) A previous officer involved shooting, on my street, was also reported as a 'charged with weapon, officer defended themselves and shot the suspect.' which was also reported very differently by the people who were standing on the curb behind the guy that got shot (and nearly caught in the cross fire). This guy had a knife and was 15 yards away from the officer when they were killed.

The similarity between both events is that there had been a 911 call, and police responded 'ready to fight.'

I've got a number of concerns with respect to the training and rules of engagement our public safety officers are operating under. I'm a big fan of the classic 'old west' rule that first shot is offense, second shot is defense. Meaning that if you fire first you are the guy doing the shooting, if the person fires back at you they are defending.

Clearly I get to follow this one, its in my 'backyard' to use the vernacular. It is certainly going to be a hot topic of discussion at the BBQ we host for the folks running for City Council. (strangely the police report through the city manager which is another topic of discussion for the BBQ)

Then you need to explain how up front. right now I'm no wiser and your position is basically 'trust me, other evidence is wrong.' I agree with you about the more general point of police militarization being bad, but to do something about that you're also going to have to stand up for limitation on the 2nd amendment.

I have no opinion on whether or not the shooting was justified.

No doubt these folks will be part of the DA's process for investigating all officer involved shootings. And theirs and any other testimony will end up in the official record.

The shooting itself, the video of the shooting, and the reporting of the shooting left me with questions and concerns.

Those concerns are around how we're training our officers and what instructions we are giving them with regard to the use of deadly force.

I'm also concerned about their equipment. You dress people up and equip them like soldiers and they start thinking like soldiers. That is, in my opinion, a bad mindset for a Peace Officer.

I'm also interested in what process my city government has in place to make sure that if we do have a problem it will be addressed. And insuring that process is working.

I'm questioning your challenge of the available facts in this specific case, based on other information that you have chosen not to reveal.

When you write "this specific case" you are talking about a guy that got shot by the police.

And when I write "this specific case" I'm talking about how the Sunnyvale Police respond to a 911 calls about some guy who claims to have killed someone in his house.

Because we're talking about different things, the responses don't make any sense to the other person in the conversation.

I most certainly am talking about how the police responded, and saying that it makes rather more sense when you include the full context of the call.

You originally wrote Sunnyvale police drove their tank over to a house where someone had called in reporting a murder, they asked the person to come out and then immediately shot him dead. You left out the fact that the caller identified himself as the person who had committed the murder, and you've been trying to change the subject ever since.

I have no problem with the police driving an armored vehicle* to an address where the caller has identified himself as a murderer. In a situation like that there's a high probability of getting shot at and I don't expect the police to go in defenseless. This is totally different from an innocent third party calling in to report the discovery of a murder.

* This is a Sunnyvale PD armored personnel carrier: http://media.nbcbayarea.com/images/654*488/swat.raid.2.jpg This is a tank: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/22/M1_... They are nothing alike.

Google "Tueller drill." You'll be surprised by what you find. Now, 45' is a bit further than that 21' that is usually cited as the "this guy can run and stab you before you can stop him" distance, but I can see why a situation very similar to what you describe was assessed as a good shoot.

(Test it yourself and see. You'll be surprised.)

It certainly doesn't mean that you should shoot the guy right away or anything, but someone with a knife being shot from 20-30 feet away is not necessarily a bad shoot.

A knife is a deadly weapon. I think that's downplayed quite a bit when everyone is worried about guns. 15 yards may be a bit a a distance to start shooting, but there's a lot of information left out that to assume is negligible would be a mistake. For example:

Did the suspect advance from behind cover or were they in plain view for a period before advancing?

How far was the suspect from other bystanders? Were others in possible danger?

In this case, what does "charged" mean? Running full-tilt, or advancing at a quick pace?

Were the bystanders looking at the situation from the beginning, or talking among themselves until someone noted something was happening and they all redirected their attention?

These are all just some of the details that may or may not be noticed by individual bystanders, and may or may not have affected their view of the situation. Eye-witness testimony is notoriously unreliable for other reasons as well (discussion can make people believe they saw things they didn't).

That's not to say the police accounting is infallible, just to suggest that all testimony needs to be examined closely.

If I thought it was a simple problem I'd have a simple answer (that would be wrong [1]) I'm more interested in fixing the process, understanding what in the officer's training lead him to shoot at that moment in time, what other options were considered, and what changes should we put in place to avoid unnecessary bloodshed.

[1] "For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken

Why is that strange? In California, in the usual case (i.e., not in charter cities with a different arrangement), the city manager is the appointed operational head of the city of government, and the city council (including the Mayor, who is effectively just the presiding officer of the council) is a (part-time) legislative body.