Walter Scott

I hope he didn't die too quickly...just so he had at least a few minutes of fleeting consciousness to realize just how fucking stupid he was.  

Bingo.

And my dark take on it doesn't mean I think the guy should have been shot. That was textbook brutality right there. And the cop should be sent away for a long time.

The comment about letting the excuses begin was not directed at you but rather a prediction of how these things typically go. A horrific crime ending in death is committed which is then followed by all sorts of "reasoning" and "explanations". We don't need any "reasons" for his behavior; if he is scared by a guy running away from him he shouldn't be on the police force. 

What is the most disturbing about this is how calm and deliberate he and his partner were, immmediately, as they started their coverup of what happened (starting with him pretending to have chased him and breathing hard into the radio dispatch) then ordering a corpse to put its hands behind its back (which would have sounded great on audio to investigators, had there been no accompanying video) and culminating in remembering that he lied that the "perp" took his taser so he broke protocol procedures and went back to retrieve it and plant it near him. And no first aid administered to someone mortally wounded.  This is really unbelievable, their total lack of concern and urgency,  and can only suggest that they had been coached in advance on how to cover up such an incident. Who knows how many times this sort of thing has happened before except there was no video. 

I often get new jobs and then run from cops when I get pulled over.

How many times have you run from the cops during a traffic stop?

VTN, you keep talking about all this with the benefit of hindsight. If you believe someone reached for you, you are going to start reacting accordingly. If you believe said someone has also taken something dangerous from you, you are going to react accordingly. Up until that point, I am fine with how this played out, you're not. You somehow think the cop should have been in some kind of robot-mode that made him not be at all scared. Didn't know that was a requirement of the job; I thought having the ability to act in the face of such fear was. I was scared plenty in my career, even made some dumbass decisions when I looked back on it with the benefit of hindsight. Still, never had anyone question me as being unfit for the job, let alone my integrity or intentions. Like it or not, there's just certain instances about doing job X that you can never fathom or comprehend without having done it; has nothing to do with intelligence or race or sex, just a fact of life. Those that can, do. Those that can't, teach. Those who never have, apparently critique. I'm learning that now amidst my career change; there are plenty of subtleties to nursing/medicine that I have definitely criticized in my time as a layman patient. 

Anyway, once the cop realized the guy was bolting, tactically, given his location, his surroundings and the circumstances of the stop, he should've instead called for backup (if he hadn't already) and pursued. He didn't, so he fucked up. Additionally, he fucked up when he apparently re-arranged the evidence to fit his story, one he felt actually did play out until after he had the ability to reassess his environment once the perceived threat was gone. That's strike 2. AFAIK, not administering first aid to a person you shot is a bit of a grey area, but I'll go ahead and say that's strike 3. 

So, here we have a former LEO giving you a reasonable explanation of what may have happened, while agreeing that this was a bad shoot (and then some). But you don't want reasoning and explanations, for whatever reason. 

And what you perceive as callous disregard could very well be an overwhelming sense of dread, be it selfishly motivated as to potential consequences or the realization that you've just ended someone's life over a traffic stop. Again, lots of vagaries...

Don't mean to come off as pontificating, so apologies in advance. 

I saw the altercation on video. The guy clearly reached for the officer, most likely his belt. If he didn't reach with intent to grab, then he reached defensively, which in turn was naturally interpreted as being overtly confrontational. Again, I'm able to look at this from multiple angles, you aren't. I'm not going to try and make you see all sides of this, you're clearly hung up on the outcome, not what led up to it. That's fine, it's your prerogative. Not even being the slightest bit douchey.