One would think training for a position as potentially volatile as SWAT team officer would include some sort of lesson in restraint and temperance. Based on the 110 shots fired at a man accused of killing a sheriff’s deputy in Polk County, Florida, however, the 10 officers involved were either twitchy-fingered cowards or just out to lynch them a cop-killer.

Angilo Freeland, accused of gunning down Deputy Vernon Williams and Williams’s dog while fleeing the scene of a traffic check, was rendered good and dead when 68 of 110 shots fired hit his body in the culmination of a 24-hour, 500-officer manhunt.

“I suspect the only reason 110 rounds was all that was fired was that’s all the ammunition they had,” explained Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd. Freeland was hiding under thick brush about 100 yards from where Williams had been shot when the SWAT team found him. Conflicting versions say Freeland responded to orders to surrender by either refusing to show both hands or pointing a gun toward officers. The SWAT officers say they opened fire when they saw what they recognized as their slain comrade’s gun in Freeland’s possession.

» Scott Saxon