[Blue Steel]

+1 to Mas Ayoob's rules.

Also some more info about police shootings. I think if it's good for police, it's probably good for the armed citizen involved in a legitimate self defense shooting.

Force Science #42: How to assure fair, neutral, and fact finding investigations of officer-involved shootings.

Jeff Chudwin, chief of Olympia Fields (IL) PD and a former prosecutor, says an involved officer should communicate these essentials: the status and location of the offender(s), if known; evidence that needs to be protected; witnesses who need to be isolated and questioned; and any injuries requiring immediate medical intervention. “Everyone at the scene should be carefully checked to see if they need medical care,” Artwohl cautions. “In their heightened state of arousal they may not notice personal injuries.”

In the absence of other reliable eye witnesses who can explain what happened, the involved officer should privately give his supervisor a “very brief, barebones description” of the event–the least amount of information needed to convey the nature of what happened, Lewinski says.

According to John Hoag, a National Advisory Board member of the Force Science Research Center who has responded to more than 40 shootings as a police union attorney, this information can be as sparse as: “He pulled a gun while I was patting him down, I thought he was going to kill me, so I shot him to defend myself.”

It’s important also, Hoag says, that the involved officer(s) delineate the scope of the scene. If a chase preceded the shooting, for example, the “scene” might technically extend over a considerable distance.

“All this information should be given orally and should not be detailed-just enough to get the investigation pointed in the right direction,” Lewinski says. “Officers who may have been peripherally present at the shooting or arrived soon after can provide what they know in more detail, assuming they are not so emotionally affected that their memories may be impaired.”

However, the shooter(s) should not discuss details of the shooting with you or anyone else until they’ve had an opportunity to discuss it with their association attorney and/or their personal defense attorney. “In many agencies it has now become routine for officers to have their own personal defense attorney to represent their interests after any deadly force encounter,” Artwohl says.