People don't fall dead after single bullet like in movies. In real scenarios 40 bullets are quite usual.
[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waffengebrauch_der_Polizei_in_...
Germany's shot rate isn't lower simply because individual German police are stingier with their bullets.
On average, per use of deadly force, the german police fires about 1/20th - 1/40th in terms of number of bullets. One reason for that is that the german police is trained to use deadly force as last resort and rather retreat than fire.
Shooting 40 bullets at a person in a park instead of trying to clear the area is unlikely to happen here. (or anywhere in europe, for that matter)
So to me, 1 bullet, 20 bullets, 40 bullets, who cares? Dead is dead. If you don't want police shooting people by mistake, disarm the police.
My attitude towards this might be different from a lot of other nerds. In my experience, nerds tend to be firearms enthusiasts. I hate guns.
This amount of gunfire always suggests an emotional component to me, hatred or something.
That's only very generally speaking, of course. I can imagine situations where dozens of shots are rational.
[1] the kid on the playground in cleveland, the guy in the supermarket aisle, ...
NO NO NO NO NO!
In the US in civilian life, and this includes police although they don't really count as that any more, the goal is to stop them. Deliberate killing is reserved for the judicial system after due process.
Now, if you're not lucky enough to either have a target who stops after the first hit (this is very common) or gets a Central Nervous System hit, you're going to have to keep shooting until they lose enough blood or are otherwise physically disabled, and there's a good chance that'll result in death. Especially since it's not unheard of for that to require a magazine dump, and if multiple police are engaging the target, you'll get this sort of "40 bullets!" outcome.
Again, to be clear: I think the police should largely be disarmd. I do not think patrol officers should routinely be armed with handguns.
I think it is monstrously silly to suggest that the solution to police shooting problems could somehow involve police being more judicious with the number of shots they take. The problem is the guns, not the way that they're used.
I don't know everything that happened, and haven't developed an opinion overall, but it isn't as simple as rounds fired / number of officers.
Officers are (correctly) trained that if they are in a situation which warrants them shooting, they should use all of the bullets currently loaded into their gun.
The issue is that in the US, officers seem to come to the conclusion that killing the person is warranted way too quickly.
This source [1] [2], a police detective with 26 years of experience, contradicts it directly:
"Officers are told to shoot until the threat is neutralized, down, and no longer a threat to themselves or the public. They are not trained to empty the magazine into a target."
[1] http://www.hlntv.com/video/2014/08/19/police-protocol-your-q...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Brooks_%28journalist%29
For 2012 the stats for the german police are: 36 bullets fired at humans, 20 injured, 8 dead. 54 bullets fired as warning shots. So it's possible to incapacitate. Stats for other european countries are similar.
Firing 40 bullets at a single human, some of them after the suspect has been hit multiple times and is on the ground (and still missing the majority of shots) seems excessive.