What would you do?

We caught a bit of a TV show on ABC called, "What Would You Do?" the other night.  The premise was pretty straight forward: put some actors and hidden cameras in a strange situation (racist coffee shop workers, obnoxious American tourists in Paris, etc.) and see what real people will do.  When someone says or does something interesting the camera people and host come running out of some hidden corner to find out why they did (or said) what the did.  The tv show is not really the point of this post though.

There was a shooting at a BART station (one station south of us) at 3-4am on New Years Eve.  A brief summary of what went down is that some partygoers returning from New Years celebration in the city were in a fight in one of cars.  As the car approached the next station BART HQ was notified and dispatched officers to the station to meet the train.  The train was held at the station while the situation was diffused.  The officers had most of the involved parties lined up on the ground on a wall.  For some reason they wanted one of the people to lay down and while he was on his stomach (and not in cuffs) they have said he looked like he was reaching for a weapon.  One of the officers shot him in the back.  The bullet ricocheted off the ground and reentered his chest (he died later).  As if the situation wasn't bad enough in today's digital age everyone on the train had a cell phone, digital camera, etc. and sure enough a few days later videos began to surface of the incident.  I want to address the digital camera in another post. 

After the tv show and this incident I'm left wondering what would I do?  If I was in the situation as the suspect or a bystander.  The obvious answer is do everything that the officer says and lay on the ground, but that looks like what he did.  It is harder as a bystander, because the police are who should be able to go when a situation is that volatile.  The police should be able to calm a situation down and gain control.  I wonder if officers would benefit from some sort of non violent conflict resolution classes or even indirect non violent theory/teachings. 

There is a lot more that I want to say about this, but I can't come up with it quite yet.