Once lethal force is authorized, how that force is applied is a matter of judgment and efficacy, said Steve Ijames, who recently retired as assistant chief of police in Springfield, Missouri, and is a nationally recognized expert in SWAT tactics.

“This guy has been actively shooting at them, and they would have had long rifles deployed with authorization to use deadly force,” he said. “It’s certainly not inappropriate to extend that to some other tactic.”…

Last year, Ijames said, his department used an explosive charge on a robot to breach a closet where a suspect was hiding — a man who had killed his children. But the man had killed himself before the robot did its work, he said…

However, he said, “we don’t very often end up with basically `kill on sight’ scenarios. To actually send something in to find this guy and kill him is very, very statistically rare.”