You mentioned hindsight in one post, but in the same post you said that the kid didn't have a real gun and implied that meant the shooting wasn't justified. So the evidence seems mixed.
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Cleveland police officer shoots 12-year-old boy carrying BB gun
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You mentioned hindsight in one post, but in the same post you said that the kid didn't have a real gun and implied that meant the shooting wasn't justified. So the evidence seems mixed.
Crimsonclaw111
Member
BB guns really shouldn't be allowed to look like guns, even with the orange caps that people remove or replace.
It's fucking dumb, very unfortunate. I can't fault the officer after seeing that gun.
It's fucking dumb, very unfortunate. I can't fault the officer after seeing that gun.
Sad story all around. A kid lost his life, A family lost their child and a Rookie officer will have to live with the image of killing the kid for the rest of his life.
Toy Gun Manufacturers need to be held accountable. Until real action is taken to eliminate these realistic toys there will be unfortunate accidents. Especially when said owner is not mature enough to understand you don't go waving around guns and pointing them at people etc.
Toy Gun Manufacturers need to be held accountable. Until real action is taken to eliminate these realistic toys there will be unfortunate accidents. Especially when said owner is not mature enough to understand you don't go waving around guns and pointing them at people etc.
HighResTomato
Member
"On edge" is not an excuse, this happened at a playground. Kid was shot as he was pulling it out of his waste band. Did the police officers make it clear that they would shoot? Or did the rookie out of fear just pull the trigger on a 12 year old who may not have understood how severe the situation had become.
Or was it because this kid was black, heavy and looked older than the average 12 year old? I will never understand American society the way blacks are treated is insane, the difference in court judgements, prison sentences, police encounters is somehow justifiable with people. Of course this about more than just racism, in a country where a teenager can get 35 years for credit card fraud something is up and your justice system needs adjustment.
Rest in Peace kid.
Police don't have to make it clear they will shoot when a threat presents itself. An officer's safety is top priority and any escalation of force by an offender will be matched or surpassed by the officer immediately. An officer can in fact fire when they are "in fear" of their life that the threat can cause great bodily harm or injury.
Its easy for you to say because you aren't in that situation. Put yourself in the shoes of the cops. When someones about to pull a gun on you after you tell them to put their hands up, what would you do? You've already given the warning.
Making this a race issue is even more laughable.
Saintguine
Member
I can't really pin the cops down for this one, pulling a realistic looking gun on a cop who has saw you take a realistic looking weapon and thus under reasonable suspicion is a really stupid thing to do
And there was also a verbal warning too.
And there was also a verbal warning too.
hydrophilic attack
Member
I was not arguing that that was an excuse. My original post was not talking about whether that was an excuse or not.
Yeah, he reached for the gun and pulled it out. Its unfortunate, but they did the right thing on this one. Hope the kid pulls through.
edit - RIP
Massive Duck. C.M.
Banned
I'm not really sure why so many people feel the need to say "stupid kid" or "can't blame the cops"
RIP kid
RIP kid
Lord Morairty007
Member
Don't take the orange cap off the tip!
So sad RIP.
So sad RIP.
Wafflecakes
Member
...because cops get blamed every time, and the kid was stupid, and you really can't blame the cops?
No one is gloating over the kid dying.
Massive Duck. C.M.
Banned
Still doesn't seem necessary
Sol_Goodguy
Member
Why the hell are BB guns allowed to look so much like real guns? All it does it makes guns look like toys in the eyes of children which is just wrong. I can't really fault the cop here considering what it looks like. I also really don't think this is a race issue either.
Is it too much to ask that parents raise their kids with a 'guns are not toys' mentality? I feel like this entire thing wouldn't have happened if the kid wasn't under the impression that pointing them at others is 'fun', or that it's okay to pull one on a cop whose asking you to put your hands up.
Rest in Peace.
Is it too much to ask that parents raise their kids with a 'guns are not toys' mentality? I feel like this entire thing wouldn't have happened if the kid wasn't under the impression that pointing them at others is 'fun', or that it's okay to pull one on a cop whose asking you to put your hands up.
Rest in Peace.
Doctoglethorpe
Member
And yet no other actions were taken, they just shot the kid right off the bat.
Cops should use lethal force as a last resort, not a first one. They should have tried to reason with the kid, or at least use non-lethal force. I say save lethal force until lethal actions are being committed by the suspect. If the kid actually started shooting, then that option is on the table, but not before. Lethal action should never be preemptive. It assumes guilt, and were supposed to be innocent until proven guilty, but clearly those cops passed judgement on this kid the moment they saw him. They didn't try to disarm the kid, they didn't try to talk to him and figure out the situation, didn't ask "hey is that a real gun" or whatever. They just saw him, told him to put his hands up, and then shot him when he didn't. Thats pathetic police work that basically disregards the fact that they are supposed to be peace keepers and public arbiters instead of thuggish militia, and its no wonder people hate them. Their job is supposed to be much more then to just walk around with guns and shoot potential threats or slap people with speeding tickets, but a lot of cops do the latter. Thats wrong. This course of action was wrong.
And to everyone who keeps posting articles about school shootings and shit, give it a break. Because 1 in a million kids do bad shit doesn't mean you should be paranoid that theres some psychopathic child with a gun around every corner that needs to be dealt with via bullets to the face, so that every case where theres even potentiality for it to reoccure needs to be carpet bombed. Though I get the sentiment, since our media so horribly takes advantage of those events to drill into the public consciousness a powerful sense of fear and anxiety. We're all to blame for this being a more common occurrence these days. We've all become scared little bitches shooting at shadows and creaking floor boards.
Bullshit.
As far as the officer knew, lethal action was about to take place as soon as the kid reached towards his waist for the gun. Lethal force was justified in the situation based on the information he had at his disposal, no matter how messed up it looks in retroactive hindsight.
The officers were responding to a 911 call about a possible juvenile waving around a possibly fake, possibly real firearm which may or may not have been loaded.
You want officers to wait until they're fired on before they respond with lethal force? Hell. No. Not just because it places the officer at risk, but also because it places any innocent bystanders at risk as well.
As a first responder, the officer had only a one key piece of information:
1) Someone was waving a god-damned gun around, scaring the shit out of people in the vicinity. Maybe the gun was fake, but it looked real enough and the person in question holding it was threatening enough that the caller dialed 911 rather than confronting the kid himself.
This cop you're judging as so bad at his job arrived to find someone who "might" have been a juvenile according to the 911 call, who put the weapon in his pants when the officers arrived and reached for it rather than putting his hands up when ordered to do so by an officer giving a legal order with a firearm drawn.
At that point, the officer had a choice: Risk that this young male, who could be anywhere between twelve and sixteen, who may or may not have a real weapon, is willing to talk things out after he gets his weapon pointed at him or any innocent bystanders or that maybe he's in over his head, or do I ensure public safety to the best of my ability?
The officer walked into the situation with a hell of a lot of unknowns. Unknown age, unknown weapon, unknown intentions on the part of the kid who got shot... He knew nothing going in except someone was pointing a firearm at people in a threatening manner.
From there, it was the cold calculus of battlefield triage, something they teach in First Aid courses and which I'm sure is taught to police officers and other first responders: Your life is more important than a bystander's life. The unfortunate addendum to that, of course, is that a bystander's life is more important that a combatant's life, which the kid qualified for by having a potential weapon and reaching for it rather than surrendering.
That's why the situation is so crappy for everyone involved: Nobody thinks that kid deserved to die, no matter how stupid he was acting. He was a kid trying to act tough with a toy gun. That guy who called 911, the dispatcher who followed doctrine and didn't inform the officers that the guy who called 911 thought it was fake, the officer who wound up killing that kid, the officer who watched a rookie gutshot a child, the kid's friends and family, any bystanders... All of them are going to live with that moment for the rest of their lives.
Yes, it's shitty that the kid got shot. He didn't deserve that.
But he was doing something incredibly stupid, and it escalated in a way I'm sure he never foresaw happening, but was basically an inevitable response to his behavior before the 911 call. This didn't happen in a vacuum. The cops were called because this kid was shoving a realistic gun in people's faces in a threatening manner.
As far as the cops were concerned, he could have been one step away from pulling the trigger of a real gun, which is why they acted the way they did.
The only failure here is on the parents and/or guardians who failed to teach this kid how to behave in public, especially with something that looked exactly like a firearm, and whoever was stupid enough to give a twelve-year-old child carte blanche to run around with it in the first place.
The Faceless Master
Member
why does it seem like it is overwhelmingly colored kids (and adults) that get shot instead of talked to when they are armed or allegedly armed?
#yesallpigs
#yesallpigs
Doctoglethorpe
Member
Yes. If the threat is only unrealized potential, lethal force is not the response that should be given. Cops should not be judge jury and executioners.
And yes, it does put the cops at risk. THAT'S THEIR JOB.
Do you expect cops to be mind readers? Don't you know about child soldiers? Don't you know cops only have a split second to react?
idk either but it's sad as fuck and yeah, I still believe cops could have reacted better against a 12 year old child.
I'm not even touching that "colored" comment.
Does it happen to the black community more often? Undoubtedly.
Is it an internal or external factor? At this point, undoubtedly it's a case of both. Even if the police are willing to be racially unbiased, having a youth culture raised on Hip-Hop songs like "Fuck Tha Police" which espouse how untrustworthy the police are and how street life is what's "real" isn't going to help god-damned anyone.
We've got thirty years of Hip Hop artists claiming the police aren't trustworthy and praising the virtues of street life and Money Over Everything. Obviously it's not something that can be definitely proven or disproven on an internet forum, but pretending it's not a factor would be idiotic.
Their lives are at risk as soon as they roll up on the scene. They're responding to something so scary and/or violent that regular civilians couldn't handle it.
They don't owe their lives to the public. They owe doing their due diligence and not firing until it's absolutely necessary.
Hint: When a suspect who has what looks like a gun reaches for the gun rather than putting his hands in the air, it jumps to "absolutely necessary".
The threat was unrealized potential before the kid reached for the weapon. It takes two seconds for someone to point a gun at you and pull the trigger, hence the battlefield triage I mentioned: At that point, the officer's training told him one thing... That if the suspect got the gun clear and pointed it at him, he was as good as dead.
His life is more important that a suspect's. That's the simple math of it. As long as he can guarantee his own safety he'll do everything in his power to guarantee the suspect's as well, but when it gets tossed up in the air the way it was his life is more important. That's not just selfishness, either: If he dies to someone who was willing to pull the trigger, he's put his partner at risk, he's put any bystanders at risk, and he's put anyone the suspect was willing and planning to hurt at risk.
No suspect's life if worth several other lives.
Like I said way back on Page 3: It's easy to armchair quarterback when you know all the facts. This officer responded as best he could, based on what information he had.
Fuck Tha Police? Lmao, how can you expect somebody to take this post seriously when you're saying black youths are raised on hip-hop songs from the 80s? Also lol @ claiming those songs are the problem instead of those songs being outlets/expressions of the problems. Check yourself before you wreck yourself, fam.
Massive Duck. C.M.
Banned
Say whatever you want then, just don't be surprised at how it comes of in light of everything else
Foxy Fox 39
Banned
I'll address all those other crazy posts I read when I have the time, but for now:
Did you really just blame Hip Hop culture as to why black americans don't trust cops. (as if all black americans listen to hip hop or conform to that culture) Lmao and SMH. Like I said you shouldn't speak on this subject at all. You've already embarrassed yourself. Again this is why things like this continue to happen. Posters like the illuminated Zaku over here blame Hip Hop for black people's problems with the government. But yeah, lets ignore centuries of government indorsed subjugation and harassment. Let's ignore centuries of police brutality AND police sanctioned murders. Those crazy hip hoppers just randomly thought F the police would be a catchy song. No sir, it didn't have anything to do with them feeling targeted and victimized by an organization that has historically and statistically proven to target blacks time and time again.
Thank the lord rembrandt already addressed your moronic post.
Did you really just blame Hip Hop culture as to why black americans don't trust cops. (as if all black americans listen to hip hop or conform to that culture) Lmao and SMH. Like I said you shouldn't speak on this subject at all. You've already embarrassed yourself. Again this is why things like this continue to happen. Posters like the illuminated Zaku over here blame Hip Hop for black people's problems with the government. But yeah, lets ignore centuries of government indorsed subjugation and harassment. Let's ignore centuries of police brutality AND police sanctioned murders. Those crazy hip hoppers just randomly thought F the police would be a catchy song. No sir, it didn't have anything to do with them feeling targeted and victimized by an organization that has historically and statistically proven to target blacks time and time again.
Thank the lord rembrandt already addressed your moronic post.
Massive Duck. C.M.
Banned
Ask yourself why it was the rookie who shot and not the veteran
Ask yourself why the department itself is looking into it further when some people here have already closed the book as "stupid kid and blameless cop"
The Faceless Master
Member
you probably think you go blind from sitting too close to the TV too.
no. that music is the symptom, not the cause. the police mistrust and violence created the music, not the other way around. we have hundreds of years of that predating rap lyrics.
Theres a simple test you can do to see if this was the polices fault or not.
Switch their places and tell me if the result would be the same.
'The kid pointed his gun at the police officer playing in the playground and yelled "Put your hands up!!." Confused the police officers hands motioned towards the gun by his hip and thats when the kid shot him in the chest. "I thought he was gonna shoot me" the kid said when asked why he shot him.'
Switch their places and tell me if the result would be the same.
'The kid pointed his gun at the police officer playing in the playground and yelled "Put your hands up!!." Confused the police officers hands motioned towards the gun by his hip and thats when the kid shot him in the chest. "I thought he was gonna shoot me" the kid said when asked why he shot him.'
Shao Kahn on the Lawn
Member
Deadly force was used "right off the bat" because the officer perceived a deadly threat. If you tell someone to put their hands up and they respond by unholstering a gun, you have every reason to assume that it's a real firearm and it's about to be used against you.
There are a lot of instances where police are unreasonably aggressive. This does not appear to be one of those instances.
...because justified or not, it's a PR loser. It may go deeper than that but PR alone is a plausible explanation for what you're describing. Furthermore, I'm fairly sure an officer-involved shooting always results in an internal investigation.
Foxy Fox 39
Banned
What I hear is tantamount to saying slaves should have not been so hateful towards their masters because it makes them look bad. The only reason it looks bad is because no one recognizes it's as big a problem as it is. Otherwise you'd be agreeing with me.
PseudoKirby
Banned
Are guns that easy to be accurate with that the cops would have been in danger had it been a real gun?
why couldnt they wait until he aimed it at them?
why couldnt they wait until he aimed it at them?
Massive Duck. C.M.
Banned
When did you interview the parents
I never said they were the problem. I said they were contributing to a mutually destructive cycle which doesn't foster trust between the police and the community they serve.
I've addressed it up above, but I'll further clarify, since you seem unable to grasp it: It's a mutually destructive cycle which does not advance society. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. Yes, it's a reaction to earlier police brutality, but painting an entire peace-keeping organization for the vicious, illegal acts of some is just as damaging to society as going with the worst stereotypes for the African-American community is for the police.
Does police characterizing the black community as perpetually violent help things? Fuck no. Nor does prominent black celebrities proclaiming all police as untrustworthy help.
Unfortunately there's no easy answer. Likely there won't be for years, if not decades.
However pretending that all incidents of a cop shooting a black person falls into the same category as the above: Not helpful to the situation.
All it takes is a finger twitch for a real gun to kill. If a suspect has a weapon pointed in the direction of anything living and the officer isn't already shooting, he's blown standard tactical doctrine by that point.
Real life isn't the movies. Limb shots are accurate less than 1% of the time.
If someone was pointing a firearm at you, would you want the officer to take the 1% chance that he could non-lethally wing the targets hand to get them to drop the gun, pausing between shots, or would you want them to fire their rounds at center mass until the target dropped?
Foxy Fox 39
Banned
An unarmed 12 year old was killed by an officer and you're saying people are bitching about it enough. Unbelievable.
And people don't believe me when I say people have biases against blacks.
I suspected this might be the case that the responding officers may have not been informed that the gun was a possible fake. It's disappointing to see I was right about this. The denial of this information to the police was the difference between the boy living and dying.
The father may be asking "Why didn't you taser him?" but I'm still asking the question of "Why was he running around with a BB gun in a public place in the first place?"
Massive Duck. C.M.
Banned
Looking for the part in your interview where the father says "I never taught my son to listen to the police"
Maybe if you could post the original draft
Doctoglethorpe
Member
I just completely disagree on that, particularly when its a little kid doing it and said kid showed no other signs of threat. Are ya'll forgetting this was a 12 year old? A cop should be old enough to understand the stupidity going though the mind of somebody that age. In all likelihood, the kid was shot for being confused. That's not a cop's job well done.
out0v0rder
Member
Bb guns have been around for decades, why werent kids being shot for having them in the past? Are people more afraid nowadays?
If you'll listen to the 911 call, by the end of it the caller isn't even sure if it's fake or not. The dispatcher's job isn't to pass along hearsay about what might be happening, unfortunately. Nobody wants to be responsible for telling an officer a weapon is fake if it might not be, and outside of a 100% guarantee that the weapon is fake from the caller they wouldn't even mention it.
It was the officer's job to determine if it was fake or not, and the situation never afforded him the chance to do so.
The cop had no way of knowing if the gun was real or fake, or even knowing the age of the kid.
All he knew was that he had a gun and was reaching for it.
Fucked up, but there it is. Tactical doctrine is clear as glass.
I keep referring to tactical doctrine for a reason, by the way. It's the standard method of dealing with a situation, because it's aimed at doing the most good with the least amount of knowledge. Sometimes it gets someone killed, but in most cases where someone's been waving a gun around and goes for it rather than raising their hands when an officer tells them to raise them, shooting the suspect is a good idea rather than a bad one, for the safety of the officer and those around them.
You're too #FFFFFFF to talk about what's damaging to us because you obviously have no idea and if I were to tell you my true feelings, I would probably get banned because I'm kinda offended.
I don't get why it's so hard for people to address the situation at hand without acting like they know how to fix black communities when they probably have virtual little insight. What prominent black celebrities claimed all police are untrustworthy? If you do find any, it'll probably be all rappers, so why do you think all black people believe anything a rapper says? I'm definitely not going to deny hip-hop has an influence, but that's not me agreeing with you.
BB guns are not toys. Responsible parents usually teach this to their kids, and supervise their use of them to some degree. The idea that a child should be left alone, unsupervised, in a public place, with a BB Gun is baffling.
For people who don't own a BB gun I want to provide a little context because it seems some might not fully understand.
A BB gun is still a gun. A pellet gun is still a gun. Both are high powered. I have hunted with my pellet gun and killed with it. BB guns are high powered as well. You can't kill a human with either very easily, if at all. Both should be regulated as guns and not toys. Neither are toys and should never be considered as such.
A BB gun is still a gun. A pellet gun is still a gun. Both are high powered. I have hunted with my pellet gun and killed with it. BB guns are high powered as well. You can't kill a human with either very easily, if at all. Both should be regulated as guns and not toys. Neither are toys and should never be considered as such.
Razgriz-Specter
Member
Why, these aren't "toy guns"?
You have to be older than 18 to buy them in most states(even just buying the BBs at Walmart, Academy, etc require you to be over that age).
Kids shouldn't be playing with them anyway without adult supervision.
Massive Duck. C.M.
Banned
Tomorrow we'll have some "he was no angel" articles complete with pics of the kid jaywalking
And we don't even know his name
And we don't even know his name
You're rooting reallllllllly hard for this to be a thing, rooting for you guys.
Foxy Fox 39
Banned
Let's deal with a couple of things since you have a hard time grasping it. You tried to say hip hop culture was the cause. That's wrong. For two reasons: It was not the problem and the problem never went away. Stop acting like the police finally stopped effing with blacks and then when hip hop hit that all the sudden it popped off again. Police have always been brutalizing blacks. Secondly, hip hop is not synonymous with African Americans/. Hip hop is to blacks as country or rock is to whites. Not every black person listens to hip hop, or subscribes to hip hop culture. So again you're totally off base here. I don't listen to hip hop at all. You want to know why I don't trust police? Even though I've never been arrested, I don't have a record, I've never done any drugs --- my experiences with them (and relatives and friends) have generally been terrible.
So stop trying to blame hip hop. Hip hop is a relatively new thing in the long history (centuries mind you) of black oppression by the government and police departments. Hip hop (at least the genre of hip hop that you're talking about) was born in the late 80's. So you're telling me from slavery until the late 80's everything was fairly fine and if black people would have just held out a few more years and refrained from creating rap the cycle would have ended.
:/
Great post. These topics always irritate me because they're full of people with opinions like these that think they somehow found the root to this problem and unsurprisingly, it's usually us to blame anyways.
Massive Duck. C.M.
Banned
Oh look, it's that charming fellow
There is video evidence. In the very article you linked above it says they've pulled security footage to investigate the situation.
Foxy Fox 39
Banned
You can address the merits of what I said or bring up a completely unrelated thread. That's fine. But don't act like I'm crazy when a 12 year old was just killed for having what amounts to a toy in his hand and you're saying people are bitching.
If you want to bring that up we can. That's OT but sure lets do it. I was complaining because you flat out wanted to either dispel AA or make it primarily based on socioeconomic circumstances. You haven't really thought about how that would affect anyone but you. You even argued with me when I said race should be the primary consideration (and a special addendum to severely discourage discrimination towards asians) and that socioeconomic circumstances should be considered as well -- which makes the most sense and makes everyone happy. But hey lets ignore that poor whites outnumber poor blacks 3-1. So socioeconomic circumstances might work for you but blacks and hispanics are out of luck. But you got yours so whatever.
Coffee Dog
Banned
how is this justified again
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