Looking [1], it does appear that Renee attempted to run the car right into the ICE officer, the wheels were still pointing slightly left, and the officer was still in front of the car. Also in [2] you can see that she was looking directly at the officer during this initial acceleration attempt. The only thing that saved the officer in that initial attempt was the loss of traction due to the icy road.
After that, indeed the wheels were pointing away from the officer and arguably there was no more danger to him, but after the clear attempt to hit him, you cannot realistically expect the officer, in a split second, to re-evaluate if her intentions to hurt anybody changed or not. At this point his life was already threatened. He doesn’t know what she is doing and waiting to find out could mean that he is dead.
1) Make the PO a regular human without a gun and you can imagine, that any normal person would have made just a quick sidestep to avoid collision, like most of us have experienced in person too. Use of force was totally unjustified, esp. when you combine it with:
2) Change the intetion of the driver to really want to harm the person ~2m in front of the car. Cop get trained, that you should not use your gun on close encounters with knives, bc the short distance <5m will give you not enogh time to stop a knive attacker reliably. If you stand that close infront of a car, a short but strong tab of the pedal would have been enough to get you, no matter how fast you draw your gun or how good your aim is. To me, it is clear that she never ment to hit anybody, the acceleration does not indicate it.
It is _very_ obvious. 2/3 shots hit the side of the car and the front wheel _never_ pointed at the PO.
My whole point is that this isn’t true. Look at the first video I linked, in the first couple of seconds, the cop is in front of the bumper, the cars wheels are still pointing slightly to the left, on their way to center, as she guns the engine. The loss of traction on the icy road is the only reason the PO had a chance to jump out of the way (but apparently by the NYT analysis, he might have been still hit). And at this point he is correct to think the driver is dangerous and might harm somebody.