Would you shoot a suicidal person?
One of the scenarios my team and I use with church personnel during the decision making drills training program is a person who suddenly pulls a weapon and holds it to their head. It happens very quickly, and will give you an adrenaline rush! You can see an example here https://youtu.be/NxnU4Sr4LhE
Shooting a person who is holding a gun to their head is not highly encouraged, and we train people to do what police are trained to do: Draw your weapon, seek cover and verbally engage the suicidal subject... And the vast majority of times the situation will end peacefully and be successfully de-escalated. The suicidal person then gets the help they need and were seeking in the first place.
The vast majority of people who go through that scenario with my team do it properly and mindfully, and are open to the little tweaks and corrections we give. BUT My team and I recently finally had one person on a church security team who immediately "took the shot" on my instructor/role player. I emphasized to the young man that my instructors and I with our decades of experience would have handled it differently, and why. He listened to us, and then he explained why he did what he did, and why he would do it again. He then calmly and confidently stated that if anyone pulls a gun in church, "I'm taking the shot".
I shrugged because after all, HE will be the one to have to convince a judge and jury why he shot a suicidal person. And then I later discovered this young man is a rookie cop who had just been hired by a police agency.
I recently found this article of a cop who apparently also thought he knew better than the other cops who were already on scene talking to a suicidal subject, and who decided to take the shot. Unfortunately, his justification to the judge and jury did not convince them that he was in the right and so now he is a convicted murderer facing decades in prison.
Fools think their own way is right, but the wise listen to others... Proverbs 12:15
https://www.yahoo.com/news/officer-convicted-murder-still-gets-125014756.html