Originally Posted by kane

While I think what happened here is a tragedy, one thing you need to understand is that most of the time the dispatch calls to the police are pretty vague. The call can simply say domestic dispute. My cop buddy has responded to that generic call many times and found everything from a guy holding his wife at gunpoint to a woman who was pissed at her teenage daughter for not cleaning her room and she wanted the police to make her clean her room.

So they show up at the scene most of the time with no idea who is involved and exactly what is going on. They are also lied to every day. Most domestics involve a woman and a man so it is fair for them to assume that it is he and the woman involved in this and that he might not be telling them the truth.

This doesn't mean that they have the right to kill him, but the police are in a situation where they often don't know what they are getting into when they roll up onto the scene so they have to expect the worst. If this guy resisted them they don't know if he is going to pull out a knife or a gun or if he just pissed off that they don't believe him.