It's hard to say from the angle of the video, but it looked like he was going to walk away, then a cop called out something and he moved back towards the officers. At that moment someone opens fire. You only hear like one or two shots and then suddenly all the police are firing.

Just based on this video, I would guess that the shooting was ruled as justified because he walked towards the officers (although it's unclear if that was because the officers ordered him to do so). My guess is everyone is tense, and when the first shot is fired everyone kind of just piles on and opens fire too.

It's a tough situation. It really looked to me like the cops were trying to de-escalate before things got out of hand. They called the dog back and some of them lowered their weapons and moved out of a firing stance. I think it was the fact that the guy moved erratically (suddenly stepping back two or three steps like he was going to leave and then suddenly moving back towards the cops a couple of steps) that caused them to open fire.

Dunno, this doesn't look like an open and shut abuse case to me. He had a knife, he wasn't acting in a rational manner, and he moved towards the cops. Legally, they were within their rights to shoot (if I'm perceiving the situation correctly).

Now, should they all have just backed off? I dunno. If they back up too far he could make a run for it and possibly reach an innocent bystander before they could catch up.

Should they use a taser? Again, I dunno. The range on those things isn't great, meaning someone would have had to get close to the knife-wielding dude. And if you don't get a precise hit, then knife-wielding dude is not only in range to counter-attack, but is probably royally pissed as well.

Tough situation. I feel for the family. It's unfortunate it went down like it did. I don't see how the cops could have won here. Sending the dog in to take him down seems inhumane to both him and the dog. Trying to down him with rubber bullets or beanbag shotgun rounds could have severely injured and killed him and probably weren't available to the officers anyway.

Damn shame.

(Also, amazed this video hasn't sparked a snuff debate in discussions yet. This isn't a news video of the event, it's the raw footage of a man being gunned down. I'll leave it to others to decide if that's against Sift guidelines or not).

I'm not excited. I think YOU need to read your stuff again if you think you aren't taking sides.
You've taken the position that his action was instigated by others not de-escalating the situation (even though many people tried to do exactly that)...absolving him of responsibility for his own violent actions.
If being filmed is 'egging him on', then he's ALWAYS being egged on towards violence. There's ALWAYS a camera on you if you're in public. Being filmed is NEVER an excuse for violence, reasonable people see it as a reason to avoid escalating to violence and a way to de-escalate a situation (because a non-insane person doesn't want to be caught on camera acting insanely).
You seem to say the opposite, that filming him drove him to violence, seeming to absolve him of responsibility for his own actions and blaming the bystander that was violently attacked repeatedly. What?!? To me, that's insane.
No, it's not simply jumping to conclusions to say he started things here, it's analyzing the situation and seeing clearly that he would not have multiple people filming him, and the rest of them watching him, if he was not ALREADY being outrageous and causing a scene on his own.

EDIT: And I guess the guy in the hat was also not de-escalating things enough, so it was reasonable for the asshole to throw off his jacket in preparation for a fight and angrily approach hat man? Hat man wasn't filming. In fact, I'm wondering how you KNOW that the elderly victim was filming, and not just using his cell phone. Just because drunk asshole assumed that he was doesn't make it true. There's only one person we KNOW was filming this, and they weren't attacked at all. It seems you've jumped to some conclusions.

Fake or not all I know is that bystander who ran to open the doors is a hero and deserves a medal.

I would say he is the "bro of the year"

-from reddit comments

Grabbing at the officers gun would be immediate grounds for immediate use of deadly force, but once the suspect retreats and is no longer within reach of the officer those grounds have evaporated. The officer should afterwards be wary, but not act as if they are still in danger when the danger ended long before and now they are simply being disobeyed. That's not a legitimate reason for deadly force.
These 'witnesses' that corroborate the officers story are phantoms at best. No one has publicly come forward that corroborates his story that was actually there, all the known witnesses actually contradict the officers account and state that he was retreating, being shot at, flinched, turned, stumbled forward while raising his arms/grasping his sides and was shot another 5-6 times as he fell, including (according to the autopsy) once in the top of the head that exited through his eye...it's hard to see how he could both be a threat and in a position where he could be shot that way. I think if this was a citizen shooting, they would call that 'execution style'.
Attaching the statement of a single person or small group to an entire race is not only racist, it's simply wrong. No group is homogenous, they don't all see this the same way, even if their skin is similar in melanin content.
So, you seem to be saying a taser should only be attempted when the officer is backed up and the suspect is alone with no bystanders. I'll just say I disagree, it should always be the first choice when more than physical hands-on force is needed.
I'm guessing you've never been tazed. The complete incapacitation may stop when you stop the charge, but the residual pain, and the memory of that pain and knowledge that more can come instantly usually does stop even the angriest wanna-be supermen.

Grabbing at a gun is immediate grounds for deadly force in every case, law, home, etc. I only say this because the suspect obviously upped the ante to that zone with no regard for human life. Second, "witnesses" were there to see it all...that's not a good thing and ups the ante far, far more... witnesses are either friends or someone the cop has no idea who they are. That means they are potentially dangerous, especially in a city where blacks (by their own heartfelt admissions) HATE white police officers with a huge passion. I am not saying the racists are not justified, as they clearly have been profiled and such, but this is clearly the case. No confusion should ever arise in dispute of the fact that bystanders are different than potential dangers. If the officer does taze and someone gets involved, he is a dead mother fucker because now he is occupied with a screaming, shitting-self man who is 100% willing to murder him, as already displayed, and someone else. Lastly, the tazer does not always work. And when the tazer does work, immediately afterwards you are 100% capable of using your body to 100% again. Most people think that then tazer magically incapacitates someone for a long time. No--when you release that trigger the tazer's effects are over.
In my opinion deadly force is not the last option. It is the option right before you die.

Now the responses are, for certain, based on stupid choices. The chief trying to minimize was what we all do but pretty dumb. You ever comfort a kid that he might not be hurt so he doesn't feel pain or freak out? Happens, even if the kid is really really hurt and the ambulance is on the way. Stupid choice...and the releasing of the video is iffy at best. What pisses me off most is that it was not meant to calm down the violence, but to appease the nation's view of Ferguson's white people...

As for the audio of the shots fired, I fear it actually supports the cop's story, as heinous as it still is.

It appears there were a series of quick shots, a pause, then four more shots at a measured rate.

Michael was shot six times from the front.

The cops have stated that the police officer fired several shots at Michael and his friend as they ran away. None struck either of them -- no bullets entered from the back. (And luckily no bystanders were shot. Bullets travel far!!!)

Which means that Michael stopped, turned and was shot. There was a pause, at which time Michael could have "charged", hence the more measured firing.

Was the cop in danger? Were there other things he could have done? Could he have shot at his leg and dropped him? No. Yes. Yes.

But see my post above.

Fucking Stand Your Ground fucking paranoid irresponsible fear mongering bullshit that is used to exonerate racist and/or stupid actions.

Pisses me off. Can you tell?

The problem is you're talking out of both sides of your mouth.

On the one hand you're saying you know how dangerous a guy with a knife is. That being the case, you know that as close as he was to one of the officers, he could have murdered the officer if the officer attempted anything other than to completely stop him (by killing him).

And on the other hand you're saying the officer should consider the guy's mental well-being. Okay, and do what about it, try to talk him into seeking counseling?

There is no such thing as "containing the situation" when "the situation" is a guy standing a very close distance to you with a knife and approaching. There's no talking to him, no tasing him, no tossing a net over him... there's nothing that will guarantee he won't stab you except shooting him.

Still on a third hand you're staying it's part of an officer's job to risk his life to deal with the threat instead of neutralizing it, but that you feel officers shouldn't gamble with their lives. Those two concepts are completely contradictory.

It's quite a thing to realize he's dead within 20 seconds of the police arriving, but everything about that has zero bearing on his killing. When a guy is approaching an officer with a knife within seconds of their arrival, he's not going to call out to the guy and bystanders to ask them if the guy was showing aggression to anyone else because why in the fuck would that matter. He's directly showing aggressive intent towards the officers themselves for goodness' sake! Nothing that happened before that matters.

If as a cop your life is in imminent danger, the guy's mental state, what he did before you arrived, what alternatives to a gun *might* stop him or "contain" him... NONE of that matters because THERE IS A GUY COMING TOWARDS YOU WITH A KNIFE. That's all the cops were thinking and that's all they needed to be thinking when they decided they had to to shoot him to have as close to a 100% chance of survival as possible.

To summarize: Guy approaches you menacingly with a knife, you. must. shoot. him, if you want to attempt to guarantee you're not going to die.

BUT

we can agree to disagree.

For every 'hero' with a gun, there are 100 dipshits who would accidentally kill innocent bystanders, have their weapon used by a child or robber, or go psycho and try to kill people.

It's a FACT that reducing firearm ownership reduces death by firearms.

Big surprise that the existence of a "state" is causing problems...

The Middle East, Ukraine, wherever you have war, you have a fight over which state institution gets to rule over everyone else in a particular geographic region. Or it's a (violent) fight over what institution (and those who control it) will have a legal monopoly of aggression and ultimate decision-making over that geographical area. Just like other forms of organized crime, the capos will periodically engage in these struggles (regardless of the cost to the innocent bystanders) over its perceived territory/jurisdiction.

"The people" participate in these struggles because they expect rewards from a kind of universal "spoils system," hoping to become beneficiaries/cronies once their chosen warlords win/take over.

Or even if they don't hope to win much of the spoils, they fear being on the losing end of it. And who can blame them, given the pervasiveness of such a delusion? (Well, their victims I suppose could "blame them," but little good it would do, I suspect...)

@ChaosEngine

I hope I don't have to be the one to point out the multitude of studies which have shown where crowds, group think or subjugation of one's opinion's to someone's authority results in terrible consensual decisions being made:

Stanford Prison Experiment
Milgram Experiment
Asch Conformity Experiment
Bystander Effect

In a situation like this, it's likely no one in the crowd has ever dealt with a serious fire. They may not recognise the risks of unexpected suffocation. They may not recognise how fast fire can travel or the risks of being trapped.

Earthquakes are somewhat different (and living in Oz I have no experience with them), but I would imagine that they can go from mild to serious very unexpectedly. California sits on multiple major fault lines. A serious earthquake is very plausible, it is in fact 'expected and long overdue' to happen:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/16/us-japan-quake-california-idUSTRE72F5KG20110316

Yeah, has everything. Hind-brained punks attacking bystanders, news-bobbles promoting sensational human indignities towards other humans, and your own apparent thrill-ride of approval as well as an assumption that others wanna watch this kinna shit.

Suggestion: Kill your television and use the internet to better yourself.

I hate pranks that make innocent bystanders feel physically threatened.

*downvote

Aha! I thought Vincent Clortho sounded familiar. It's from one of my all time favorite movies - Ghostbusters. Louis, played by Rick Moranis, was possessed by the Keymaster Vinz Clortho. Here's a bit of the script from IMDB.

Louis: [Louis, as the possessed Keymaster Vinz Clortho, runs out of Central Park, scaring a married couple] I am the Keymaster! The Destructor is coming. Gozer the Traveler, the Destroyer.
[Louis pants and sniffs, then notices a horse carriage; horse neighs]
Louis: Gatekeeper.
[Walk over towards the horse]
Louis: I am Vinz, Vinz Clortho, Keymaster of Gozer. Volguus Zildrohar, Lord of the Sebouillia. Are you the Gatekeeper?
Coachman: Hey, he pulls the wagon, I made the deals. You want a ride?
[the possessed Louis growls at the coachman with his red-glowing eyes]
Louis: [to the horse] Wait for the sign. Then our prisoners will be released.
[Runs amok, scaring bystanders; yelling]
Louis: You will perish in flame, you and all your kind! Gatekeeper!
Coachman: What an asshole.

ALL police are FELONS. Period.
Their 'doing their job' that deserves applause for you is your delusional addiction to force as an option-The fat fuck has his full weight on that woman's back, they're cocksuckers by choice, plain and simple. Thugs. Cunts. Unrighteous livelihood. They deserve 10X the force they used upon her for whatever reason they justify their actions to the bystanders. The could have fucking tazed her and it would have done less damage...

ALL COPS ARE FELONS. PERIOD.

You will often hear cries of outrage and pleads to stop from bystanders in some of these videos, but never when it's just one guy and his video camera. I think if you do anything more than anonymous shouts from an angry mob, you're asking for anything from incarceration to instant death penalty from the cops themselves.