Witnesses said the dog was charging. I don't think your assessment is totally accurate.
Ever owned or worked with a dog? If that dog was actually going to attack him, there'd be very little time for him to pull his gun out and switch off the safety to shoot it. The distance of a city lawn, even a big one, is nothing. And who are these witnesses... that are being
reported by the police but not mentioned by the owner? Police lie. What details did they leave out? Labs are not the kind of dog that act aggressively by default.
Take a look at a comment on the article:
"The police dept needs to train their officers on how to handle their fear and also what is a threat and what is not.
I was an animal control officer (now retired) If I had a gun and shot every dog that ever barked, I would have literally shot hundreds of thousands of dogs.
I often defused a charging barking dog by saying firmly SIT, or Hi you want a cookie.
More to the facts, This dog has every right to bark in his own yard, Its a different story if the dog is out on public property barking... But even then, It shouldn't be shot.
Now for a word to the animal owner. PLEASE KEEP YOUR DOG BEHIND THE SAFETY OF A FENCE. Not saying you are doing anything wrong, Its more protection for your dog against this kind of things."
I've had dogs do this aggressively to me before, and usually a big yell stops them dead in their tracks. Then you tell them to sit or stay. I haven't had a dog attack me since I was about 10 years old on a bicycle, as a result... and I gave that one a kicking even though he broke the skin on my hand... it was old and demented, attacked their neighbour a day later and they put it down.
The problems are: people believe what the cops say, but it's not illegal to lie and so they do... all the time. Second problem is that more and more often you are hearing in the news about cops shooting dogs, even dogs that are being restrained or otherwise kept from attacking or defending against the police. It's a worrying trend.