After almost 30 years in the newspaper business, there are stories you cover where you can predict the outcome long before it arrives.

A wild animal - a large black bear, not a cub - wandering a city is one of them.

Shortly after 7 a.m. Tuesday, when a bear was spotted crossing Oxford St. West near Sanitorium Rd., I instinctively knew two things: This is a very unusual story, the kind journalists yearn to cover; and, this situation was going to end badly for the bear and the police when members of the public - genuinely enthralled and delighted such a beautiful wild animal had arrived in their city - expressed their outage at the killing, losing any sense of fairness, decency or rational thought and ignoring the facts to offer their wildly uninformed if not naive opinions about how police handled the situation.

But when I asked Const. Greg Pearson to kneel beside the black bear, shot an hour earlier by another officer, I didn't think about the consequences, the outcome of that request in the face of the public outrage. He has been vilified, accused of gloating over the kill. To Const. Pearson, I apologize.

As is the job of the journalist, we needed an image of the animal for publication, which would contribute to the historical record of the bear's visit and the outcome. As well, I thought we needed a person in the photo to provide some perspective of the size of the animal.

Const. Pearson graciously agreed. And, yes, the photo that was published does show Pearson with a slight smile. That was because of the teasing and dark humour the media and police often express after an emotionally charged and unusual event. I can assure readers that police acted with the professionalism one would expect, determined to make the kill as clean and humane as possible, following the advice of a colleague with hunting experience.

There was no gloating over the killing. They were doing the job they were hired to do and they did it successfully.

But I find the continued public outcry disturbing and, at times, vicious, even threatening. On The Free Press website the police were criticized for killing the bear, many suggesting they should have waited for a team from the Ministry of Natural Resources armed with a tranquilizer gun and transportation to move the bear out of the city.

How do you contain a distressed bear until trained experts arrive to sedate and move it? Even in Northern Ontario cities, where bear conflicts are frequent and trained experts are close by, police shoot bears.

Some suggested police should have left the bear in its "natural" environment.

In its natural environment, a bear poses very little threat to people. It will flee at the first sound or smell of a human, finding cover in its natural habitat - heavily wooded areas and dense bush - its presence often going unnoticed.

A river with treed banks surrounded by homes, schools, roads, bridges, cars and trucks, cyclists, pedestrians, joggers and, yes, anglers does not make a bear habitat.

To even suggest that a bear in the city doesn't pose a serious risk to the public is simply naive. It's a large, wild animal with razor-sharp claws and large canine teeth; it has jaws and limbs packed with power. Its behaviour is unpredictable, according to every credible Internet website on bears, especially if cornered or surprised, or with cubs.

This bear (which may have been habituated to humans and their food sources since it visited several bird feeders on its travels in the area) got caught in the glare of an awakening city, with all its sights, sounds and smells. It was running, panicking, trying to find a way to escape. It charged an officer armed with a rifle.

Attacks on humans do occur, but are rarely fatal. About a year ago, a woman near Sudbury took her dog outside in the early morning, surprising a bear in her driveway. The bear either bit or swiped at the woman with its claws, injuring her before it was chased off by the dog.

What do people think would happen if a child, man or woman crossed paths with a bear in distress that is startled?

What do you think happens when a car hits a bear? What about the driver?

I don't want to find out. It's not worth the risk. If the police didn't shoot, I'd have asked to borrow their gun.

E-mail joe.belanger@sunmedia.ca, or follow joebatlfpress on Twitter.