Editorial: Cops who kill suffer their own ordeal

How do you shoot someone if you have to? This is the question that probably occurs to everybody when they read that a police officer has killed in the line of duty.

It is not a question asked accusingly. Quite the reverse. It is asked by those who believe the officer did the only thing they could do in the circumstances. It is asked in the most heartfelt sympathy for those we have to put in this position.

The anonymous officer in our Review feature today provides an insight to what it is like to have to shoot another human being. He remembers the man turning towards him with a shotgun raised. He remembers his total focus on him. "I could only see him ... It's like someone had dropped two big black curtains and ... it was just me and him."

Me or him. That is what it comes down to.

When the officer fired he expected it to be loud. But he remembers hearing almost nothing, not even the sirens of the police cars that were soon on the scene. He was taken away while fellow officers administered CPR to the young man he had shot who did not die instantly.

The phone call telling him the man had died was harrowing for him. And every moment remains etched in his memory. He justifies himself to himself often in our interview. He probably has to do so every time the memory returns.

That is the agony we seldom hear when a police shooting occurs. It is not the same agony felt by the family of the dead man, and that adds to the policeman's ordeal. "I feel for his family," he told us. "Someone's lost a son ... I just wish he was still alive."

Police shootings are blessedly rare in this country, despite police arming themselves if they can every time they are called to a situation involving a firearm. They go to the scene knowing they might have to make a terrible decision in a split second.

It is a decision they would have to explain innumerable times to the investigation that must be held, and to a coroner's court.

They may read and hear righteous criticism of their actions by people with no idea what they are going through and their public anonymity probably feels thin. Their colleagues, family and close friends know.

We should always spare a thought for the shooter.