Hudspeth engaged in lethally stupid behavior and his shooting does not bother me in itself. What does bother me is that the videos illustrate a training failure, and I wonder how Officer Right ranks in the trust of his fellow officers now.
Even with the best training and the best operational planning, everything turns to ka-ka in the first few seconds of combat.
Speaking from personal experience, when an officer is under extreme stress to make the right decision in a potentially dangerous situation, the brain is running full speed trying to comprehend everything that is going on and classify it as either threatening or non threatening. Under this stress, you will see things completely different from what they actually are as your brain takes shortcuts and hangs labels on objects that it thinks it recognizes.
One night I was confronted by a drunk who had been busting the windows and windshields out of cars and trucks. The first report was that he was shooting out the windows and windshields. When I found him, he had what I thought was a length of 3/4" galvanized pipe with a 90 degree elbow in his hand. That is what my mind saw. When he was finally arrested, the galvanized pipe and elbow on the end turned out to be a trucker's tire thumper, chrome plated, with a rounded ball end.
Another night I came home to catch a burglar cleaning out my motor home. He came right up to double arms reach with something held low at his side in his hand. I recognized it as my screwdriver handle, the kind with the changeable tips, but there was no tip in it. With a tip it would have been deadly. Without a tip it was something else. Had I not recognized it for what it was, I might have shot him.
Things happen fast in these situations. I suggest before you nitpick the officers to death, you go with your first impression on the first viewing of the film clip, and not after you have watched it 10-20 times, freezing the frames and carefully analyzing what you see.
As for a training failure in this instance, your city fathers or county supervisors would never come up with the money for the training necessary to make every police - suspect encounter run picture perfect.