Some of this might come down to rote learning of police academy classes where an instructor might repeatedly drill the students that you tell a knife holder to drop the knife three times and 'then you shoot them'. Police Academy 101 taken too literally. Fact, under stress people revert to lower levels of understanding and loose the nuances in their training. Was Birk under inordinate stress?
Drawing and aiming a loaded weapon is a stress factor in itself. The
this is for REAL factor.
Heck, even at the range using actual live ammo can be stressful. I haven't ever pointed a weapon on a human, but I remember vividly reverting to the
lowest level of training the first time in the Army I did the quick draw (point-shoot) drills on close range with live ammo. There was very little room for fine grained mental processing...
Although the dangerous knife man existed nowhere else but in the officer(s) mind, the stresses of confrontation were very much real. Which means there is little or no ability to process an alternative interpretation of events.
If I ever find myself in a situation where I am not able to thing beyond:
This man is close enough to slash my guts, and he's GOING TO DO IT then I'd probably shoot him, too. One thing I fear if I ever find myself in a violent confrontation is that I shall loose the ability to "think out of the box" and find alternate solutions.
But I leave it to better and more well informed heads than me to discuss the causes leading up to this incident, how it could and should have been prevented and the correct reaction for the officer.
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