Just wanted to add one thing here.

8 shots in the head is not necessarily exaggerated. It all depends on the number of officers in place. If one cop shot 8 times it would raise a few eyebrows, but if there were more cops there, I don't think they would stop for a round of rock-paper-scissors to decide who gets to shoot. They all shoot without too much hesitation. In that moment, it was either that guy or a train full of people.

Stuff like this happens quite often in Israel. An army unit clears a house in order to arrest a couple known terrorists. During the operation, a suspicious-looking man comes running out the neighboring house wearing a fat jacket. It's summer. Bang bang bang. He's dead. Turns out he was just scared and trying to run across the street. What would you do if you were a soldier in a similar situation, not even sure if you would live to tell the story?

It's usually over things like this that the media throws a fit of "Oh my god! Look what those butchers are doing! Killing innocent Palestinians!"

So before you judge the London police... No, don't judge.

And now, the moral of the story:
Don't wear padded jackets in freaking summer.

the police overreacted though.

Everybody just forget about "shooting him in the leg" or shooting him in the arm or picking any particular part of the body. That's not how it works.

Yes, in the movies the hero shoots the gun out of somebody's hand to disarm him without hurting him. Guess what? That doesn't happen in real life. A handgun is hard enough to use, a moving target makes it trickier still, and in a tense and potentially violent situation in real life you just shoot the guy--aim for the torso and hope you hit him somewhere. Go to a gun club and do some pistol shooting before you go spouting off about where exactly a cop is supposed to shoot a moving target. It just does not happen like it does in the movies.

I know of one real instance of a cop shooting a gun out of somebody's hand. It was videotaped, and this was the situation: The guy had a pistol and was sitting in a chair in the middle of a road threatening to kill himself. The cops didn't want to kill him because he was mostly a danger to himself, but he was also a potential danger to others. A police sniper with many years experience (not just any cop) was hidden with a scoped rifle (not a pistol) some distance away. The guy was sitting in a chair and would ocassionally get up and sit down again. The sniper studied the guy's movements for about ten minutes to try to anticipate how he would move, then at last, very carefully, took his shot and took the gun right out of his hand. When they took him into custody, the guy said to the sniper, "That was a hell of a shot."

That is how it happens in real life. If it's a furious chase, a running target who is probably dangerous, and scared cops with pistols trying to protect the civilian population, they just shoot and pray to God they hit the S.O.B. because if they don't, he might really be in his way to blow up a train.