Yeah; there's really no legal difference between what a private citizen can do to protect the life of an innocent vs. what a police officer can do, at least as

Yeah; there's really no legal difference between what a private citizen can do to protect the life of an innocent vs. what a police officer can do, at least as far as deadly force goes. In situations other than immediate/unavoidable threat to the life of an innocent, police are allowed to overmatch force for compliance, vs. some situations where non-police are supposed to use similar force, but once you hit a situation which allows deadly force, it's basically the same. (This is common law, and was settled well before the US Constitution; the law on homicide is remarkably static. The only interesting change has been the fleeing felon stuff in the US.) The legal questions which are a lot more interesting around this kind of rescue operation are property damage, unintentional harms, incompetence, liability, etc. (like, if volunteers direct people to a shelter which is itself unsafe, or if people get harmed during rescues. Government agents have a lot of immunity there, relative to private citizens.)