Jayland Walker, a black man who was killed by police in Ohio last week, was shot at least 60 times, according to authorities.
The number of bullets that were fired by as many as eight officers involved in the shooting has renewed questions about excessive use of force by police.
The officers' response to the shooting is reflected in the body cam footage, according to law enforcement and experts who have seen it.
Lance LoRusso, a lawyer who specializes in use of force cases, said that officers are trained to shoot until the threat they perceive is over.
The U.S. lags behind other countries when it comes to training police to use force.
At Sunday's news conference, Stephen Mylett, the police chief of the city of Akron, was asked if there were police protocols in place for situations in which multiple officers are shooting at a suspect.
The investigation into the shooting is still going on, but Mylett said that officers thought of the threat.
When a shot appeared to have been fired from Walker's vehicle during the pursuit, it turned into a public safety issue. Although authorities said that Walker left his gun behind when he fled on foot, they feared he was going to shoot when they fired their weapons.
He didn't know how many shots were fired, but he expected the number to be high.
The number of shots does not matter in such cases. "If officers are justified in firing at a suspect in order to end a severe threat to public safety, they need not stop shooting until the threat has ended." The courts can decide if the assessment of the threat was reasonable.
Edward Obayashi, the deputy sheriff of Plumas County, Calif., said that a high number of bullets and the deadly outcomes that result from use-of-force scenarios boil down to marksmanship.
"Despite what Hollywood portrays, like Lethal Weapon, Dirty Harry and all these other movies and television shows, there is no cop out there that even comes close to that type of shooting skill."
Adding to that a moving target, poorly lit environments and rapidly evolving circumstances make aiming at the largest target the safest way to avoid hitting targets.
The lawyer says there is no difference between shooting a suspect in the chest and in the thigh.
"The shooting of a person, in any body part, is the same level of force, deadly force, and must be justified under state law," he said.
Many officers are armed with semiautomatic weapons that are able to discharge an entire magazine within seconds, said Obayashi, who also works as a use-of-force consultant.
By the time an officer knows it's time to stop firing, an unwarranted number of bullets will be fired.
It will take another period of time for you to see that the threat is over. I'm not going to fire anymore.
Maria "Maki" Haberfeld is a professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
She said that it can't be explained in terms of what's right and what's wrong.
The inability to see is one of the effects of stress.
She said that peripheral vision can be impaired up to 70%. They're not sure if they hit the target.
The number of bullets discharged increases when there is more than one officer.
Police training in the U.S. is behind some other countries when it comes to using force.
She said that proper use of force can be taught to officers in 17 weeks, but that they aren't getting it.
She spent a lot of time studying European police forces. The psychological and emotional aspects of use of force are included in the three to four years of training offered by the models of Norway and Finland.
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