Are American police officers trained to kill and if so, how?
No, we were not/are not trained to kill and we hope and pray that we will never need to use our weapon.The vast majority of US local law enforcement officers never fire their weapon in the line of duty nor are they fired upon. I never fired mine and was only fired at, once. I had my butt kicked a few times, and had a few close calls where I was close to applying deadly force, but fortunately the threat of force was sufficient to stop their actions. I arrested hundreds of people during my career and rarely had to do more than use verbal commands to effect the arrest. There was the odd instance when someone would resist, usually due to their being under the influence of something, but this was the very rare exception. Our basic academy was 6 months of classroom instruction. Firearms training during basic was limited to our duty weapon. (Shotgun training was done separately after one was off probation). The single largest block of training for us dealt with legal topics. Firearms and survival techniques in total were approx half of the total time we spent in legal. We spent more time learning advanced first aid (we graduated as licensed EMTs) than we did on firearms.The application of force is a scale where we were taught to use the least force necessary to diffuse or control the situation. This starts with verbal and works its way up to deadly force, the use of firearms. While firearms training changed modestly throughout my career (we changed weapons twice during my career), we were always taught to shoot for center mass - why, because it was a bigger target and most likely to stop the threat the quickest.Immediately after the threat was stopped, we were trained and required to administer first aid. While every state and every department has their own guidelines and training requirements, I don't believe any department teaches their officers to kill. Remember - we are called 'peace officers' and our primary goal is to serve and protect.