...because media coverage is notoriously fair, right?
Eric rolled up on somebody brandishing what he reasonably believed was an AK pattern rifle and Eric fired in defense of his life. All the other coverage goes to great lengths to ignore the fundamental questions really at issue in a use of force. The media likes to pretend that young or mentally ill people are harmless, even when armed with lethal weapons and often rake police officers over the coals when they use force against these people. Some time ago in Atlanta there was an individual off his meds swinging a butcher knife at police officers only feet away and "the community" was upset because one of the officers shot the man. He was crazy, you see, and in their calculation didn't "deserve" to get shot.
UOF has beans to do with "deserve" and everything to do with whether or not the person pulling the trigger was in reasonable fear for his/her life when they pulled the trigger. Seeing the "pellet gun" that is at issue in this UOF, knowing the results of many active shooter situations out there including what happened
to one of our own at the hands of an active shooter wielding an AK it's not hard to argue that Eric's belief at the time he pulled the trigger was reasonable. Because it was reasonable, it was a justified use of force.
Full stop.
The complaining over the outcome is largely from a lot of people who have never had to look over the sights at a problem when life is on the line and have absolutely no qualifications nor the slightest hint of a clue what is involved in making life-or-death decisions in the fractions of a second where this sort of thing transpires. They look at the result and proclaim the actions leading to it to be unsatisfactory.
That is not how judgment of a UOF works, even though they try to make it so as they're doing here or did in the Zimmerman case.
What the dead teenager intended when he was brandishing that realistic looking weapon at a uniformed police officer is beyond our ability to discern...but his intentions are irrelevant. What matters is the situation he presented to the officers on that scene. When your actions give another objective cause to fear for their lives,
death is a realistic possible outcome.