As the NZ Herald says, "It started with a bag snatching and ended with an innocent teenage father dead." That's what you could call escalation.
You'd expect the AOS to get it right. If they can't use their monopoly on violence properly, what would arming every cop look like? It might look a bit like the States, home of all those reality cop shows and where one percent of the population is behind bars. Do you really want more Suicide By Cop volunteers here?
Look how we've come from the idea of it being better to let ten guilty men walk free than see one innocent man condemned. I hope the police lay off on pushing for more weaponry for a while. And the dead man's Mum should really meet her son's killer, but buggered if that should reach primetime viewing.