Originally Posted by patentcad

Have you ever been on a Midtown Manhattan street in the middle of a business day? Northern Florida it's not. This was the NYPD's worst nightmare. A shooter on a crowded midtown street. No choice but to return fire (it is unclear whether the shooter fired upon police, but he did have his weapon drawn and he had just killed a man). Collateral damage was inevitable. Happily there were no serious injuries among the bystanders hit by friendly fire.

I'm not one to defend the police when they are trigger happy, but this wasn't the situation here. Bang-bang, they got the shooter, and nobody else was seriously injured, so all things considered, the NYPD didn't do so bad.