as a young officer I was involved in a burglary call where the officer got shot twice. During my initial statement I told the investigators the length of time between the two shots was "3 or 4 seconds". Days later during the follow up questioning the investigator again asked me how long it was between shots, and again I said about 3 or 4 seconds. So he got a stop watch, hit the table...waited 3 seconds and hit it again and asked me if that was about right. It wasn't so he did it at 2 seconds, then 1 second. Turns out the actual time between shots was about 1 second. I wasn't lying about my first answer. However if you were reading about it in the news you would say I was..
he repeated the "30 feet" answer during the grand jury, and again on the news. The PD repeatedly gave the same # in the press. The actual measurement is 153 feet, but they had what was, IMO, a concerted and organized effort to minimized the perceived distance from the initial conflict, so that they could attach the two.
If he said "I got out and ran 150 feet and confronted him without calling it in, even though he was like godzilla and I was a little kid", it makes people wonder why he ran that far without calling in backup, and how helpless he really felt.
Same way the PD kept leaking "fractured orbital bone". Concerted PR effort, and the cop was a part of that too. The punk deserved to die, but the cop fudging numbers on public record intentionally, months afterward, in concert with the police dept - shady as fck.