[TonyB06]

There is a middle ground here. Nobody can put themselves in the officers' mind and feel his level of "threat" in the immediacy of that situation. That being said, officers train rigorously in assessing/handling threat. He didn't immediately draw his weapon on the girl. Why? He'd made an initial calculation that such a step wasn't necessary.

From that, you'd think there was a successful control/take down maneuver that likely would have subdued a 17-year-old girl, something short of a closed fist to the face.

I study martial arts (taekwondo). Training involves using self-defense techniques sufficient to the threat faced. An attacking stranger on a dark street at midnight is likely to get a far more forceful technique response than, say, a friend's uncle who has had too much to drink at the family picnic, where a more controlling technique (i.e. a joint lock) might suffice to stop the behavior.

Again, videotaped replay makes it easy to second-guess the cops' action in the heat of the situation, but it seems like something short of what happened, perhaps should have occured.

Sad situation.