Originally Posted by afc wimbledon

I will also say this, I think that the cop was frightened for his life and following his training, in N America we train the police to shoot people with knives if they don't drop the knife, we teach cops someone with a knife who wont drop it is a deadly threat and also that the appropriate response if they wont drop the knife is to shoot them.

What we unfortunately don't teach them is its ok to back off and wait, that if you have the time and space to shout drop the knife in most circumstances you also have the time and space to wait for help, back off if you need to etc.
We pay lip service to de-escalation while not expecting policemen to wait the 5 or 10 minutes it normally takes to deescalate