This is terribly naive and misguided towards the realities of violence.
> 55 of those were against unarmed people, and a further 29 were against people with toy weapons. So 84 of those were undeniably wrong.
What makes you believe that these were all undeniably wrong? Are you operating under some sort of Wild West moral code where you can't shoot an unarmed person? Reality is not a movie. If somebody twice your size is choking you to death, would you pray for a gun to stop them with, or say "he doesn't have a weapon so I'm not allowed to shoot him because reasons, guess I'll just die then"? I'm baffled that people continue to repeat this nonsensical thinking constantly.
People who have toy weapons and are shot by police are frequently shot because they did a very convincing job of making the toy look like a functional firearm and handling it as if it is real and they intend to shoot the officer with it. Could be suicide-by-cop or being stupid and assuming the cops will back off if they act scary enough, hard to say. Many imitation firearms are difficult to tell apart from the real thing even up close and calm in good lighting. If somebody is acting like they want to kill you and pulling what looks like a gun, you would be foolish to second-guess whether it is real, and you will be too slow and will likely be shot if it is real if you take the time to wonder.
Some of the people who are completely unarmed are also shot for similar reasons. Someone may not actually have a gun, but if, on a traffic stop, they stop suddenly in an unexpected place, dash out of the car while staying low and moving towards cover while trying to pull something out of your pants, you would be foolish to assume they don't have a gun.
Many situations similar to these can be and are de-escalated by skilled officers. Sadly, some situations are just hopeless, and some officers are not as skilled or patient as they could be.
Note also the reverse: If shooting someone who is unarmed is always wrong, no matter what they were doing at the time, is shooting someone who is armed always right? The police do encounter many armed individuals, and often manage to resolve the situation without shooting them. The situation and what the suspect is doing is what matters for justification, not what they are armed with.
> 334 shootings were against people fleeing the scene of a crime (by foot, car or other). I can't see any way that shooting someone fleeing the scene of a crime is not a wrong shooting. Perhaps legally, it is allowed, but I find that hard to morally justify.
Usually the legal standard is something like the police can only fire a gun at a "fleeing felon" if they can justify that his continuing to be at-large is a serious danger to the community. Sounds all right to me. I haven't reviewed all of those cases, but I'd bet that most of them are a lot more justified than you are imagining.
> 200 of those shootings were people with mental illness, and I would question whether the police approach of shouting commands and waving guns exacerbated the situation. I will concede, though, that being mentally ill doesn't automatically make it a wrong shooting.
Yup. I'm not a mental illness expert. Maybe some more cases could be successfully talked down by somebody with more skill. A lot of cases already are though, but they don't make it into these numbers. It would be nice if we could help everybody with mental illnesses in a better way, but unfortunately, some of them are just completely off the deep end, doing terrible things, and can only be stopped with lethal force.
> 173 of those shootings were against people with knives. I would frankly expect police to have better solutions than shooting someone with a knife. Again, I can't say how many they could have resolved peacefully because I'm not going to read all the reports, but that seems high.
You would expect wrong. I think you better watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Upxfo_jBrDE There's a bunch more that show the same idea.
It's been tested a great many times that an attacker with a knife can close roughly 21' of distance and still stab a defender with a holstered handgun before the defender can draw and fire at the attacker. Note that the linked video considers the defense a "success" if the defender is able to get a round off at the attacker before getting hit with the knife, but guns are not death rays, and an attacker who has been shot, even multiple times, can still stab you to death before they have to stop or slow down.
> This is all to say, I think 100 rightful shootings per wrong shooting is high. Even if we only count unarmed or toy weapons as unjustified shootings, it's far closer to 10 rightful shootings per wrong shooting.
100 or higher is likely to be closer to reality for any reasonable definition of justified. Unless you do silly things like make blanket assumptions that any shooting of an unarmed person is unjustified.