The autistic man whom a North Miami SWAT cop tried to snipe while he was playing with a toy truck has now had to be institutionalized over the terrifying incident and now understandably hates police.

Great job, North Miami Police.

An autistic man who saw his caretaker get shot by an officer has been left traumatized, distressed and has stopped eating, his family has said.

Arnaldo Rios was the intended target of the shooting, which occurred Monday after four North Miami police officers responded to a 911 call about a suicidal man with a gun.

Rios sat cross-legged. He yelled. He didn’t obey commands to lie down with his hands up and he fidgeted with a metal object.

Meanwhile his therapist Charles Kinsey tried to surrender by lying down on the ground and keeping his hands up.

One of the officers thought Rios was about to shoot Kinsey and fired three shots at Rios – but missed and hit Kinsey instead, the police union has said.

Rios wandered back to the site of the shooting a day later, threw himself on the ground and shouted: ‘I hate the police, I hate the police,’ The Miami Herald reported.

This was a “bad shoot” from a tactical perspective, and has been greeted with a combination of frustration and disgust by a cross-section of well-trained tactical shooters, including other SWAT officers.

As I asked rhetorically yesterday:

…why did this SWAT officer take a position that would put Kinsley in the line of fire? Why did this officer fire a shot with his weapon with the Kinsley’s patient in line with Kinsley, when SWAT officers should know that both handgun and rifle bullets can and will overpenetrate and put Mr. Kinsley’s life at a high degree of risk, even if he made the shot? Moving just 15-20 yards to the left or right (if allowed by terrain and obstacles) would give him a much safer shot.

Why did the officer fire from a position so unstable that he couldn’t hit his target even once in three shots? He clearly exceeded his level of competence, which is especially terrifying when you consider that SWAT officers, even more than that patrol officers, need to know their competencies with their weapon systems due to the high-risk nature of their work.

Put bluntly, this story looked bad this morning when it sounded like it was a negligent discharge shooting.

Now that the police are telling us that this was an incompetently executed intentional shooting, it’s utterly terrifying.

Both the SWAT officer and a supervisor who lied about what transpired at the scene have been placed on administrative leave.

I completely understand that with the recent violence against police orchestrated by Black Lives Matter agitators and the mainstream media that officers in agencies around the nation are on edge.

That in no way justifies taking shots that place known innocent bystanders in the direct line of fire, nor of taking positions so distant that they are unable to even communicate with those they desire to take into custody, nor taking shots from beyond an officer’s level of competence.

We need a higher minimum level of firearms competence from law enforcement in the United States. This is just one of many incidents demonstrating that point.