This is basically my point here. If he'd done what he was told he would be breathing, but somehow he felt that doing what he wanted was more important than what the screaming policemen were saying. I'm a little confused about where you get your feelings about the police from. They are humans, they make mistakes, they get scared and they are not here to do your parenting for you. In the U.K. according to law you are culpable at the age of 10 so by that reasoning the law states that he should have known better. But what I think needs to change still is that people need to remember to respect the police. All this nonsense about '**** the police' etc is just causing problems. I know my friends at school really started to disrespect them around the age they wanted to start drinking underage and smoke pot, but that mentality needs to change.
If (Big if) the version of events is 100% the truth then: - A 12yo obtained a fairly realistic (From anything other than close up) hand gun. - Said 12yo was deliberately scaring strangers with the gun. - An armed police officer announced themselves and gave clear instructions to the person he saw as being armed - 12yo didn't act submissively to police instructions. - 12yo removed the gun from his waistband and was shot. So this is "What we know". But what don't we know? - Is this the whole truth? - Was this 12yo educated on the dangers, and truly aware of the danger he was in by brandishing a replica gun like he was? - How did this 12yo look on the day? I know 12yo lads taller than some grown men. What was he wearing? Was it cold and was he bundled up? - How was the 12yo acting? A lone youth with a gun acting recklessly with a 'gun' is different to a young boy playing cowboys and indians with his buddies. - How far away was the officer when he announced himself? - How many civilians were near the 12yo when he was shot? Who did the officer believe he was protecting? Lessons learned - Children should not have access to 'imitation guns' - All police officers should have body cameras to allow the facts to be obtained immediately. - In a society where literally anyone could have access to a gun, and most police officers carry firearms, and it's 'okay' to kill someone to prevent others being put at risk, you'll end up with situations where people get shot unnecessarily. It's worth remembering that fatal shootings like this are rare compared to the non fatal civilian shootings at the hands of the police. Or the charges of misconduct at the hands of the police.. or the cases of misconduct that are never charged... Tip of the iceberg people. If you are Young + Male + Coloured + In the USA then you will be perceived by many to be a greater risk to others than were you in a different demographic. I promise you, if this story was about a little 12yo blonde girl in a school uniform brandishing a 'could be a replica' gun it would have a different ending. I believe dispatch would have passed on the 'gun, but not known to be real' info, and the officer would have gone into the situation with the assumption that something was 'wrong' or 'unknown', not that they were facing down an armed and dangerous assailant. Sorry for the TLDR
I'm really sorry, and perhaps it's just the phrasing here, but I find this paragraph pretty horrific. You're basically blaming the victim here and attributing all sorts of "attitude" to a kid who, for all you know, might have panicked himself when confronted by the police and was merely trying to show the officers that his toy gun was indeed a toy. If you want to give the officers who shot him a pass on the grounds that they are human beings who get scared and may act rashly, then you have to give a twelve year old the same amount of leeway, if not more. As others have said, we don't have all of the facts here, and probably won't ever. This is a tragic set of circumstances that have lead to someone's death. That being the case, why do we have to start attributing blame? That goes for both those blaming the police and those blaming the victim. The difference is that the officer(s) who fired the fatal shots have to live with the consequences, but the kid is dead.
"When the two officers arrived, the boy did not point the weapon at them or otherwise threaten them, but he did reach for the weapon. The officers ordered him to stop and to show his hands and he went into his waistband and pulled out the weapon" - Deputy Chief Ed Tomba The cops were too trigger happy. They shot too quickly. They were in no immediate danger, impending perhaps, but no immediate danger. Yes, there was a possibility that this 12 year old did have a real gun but there was an equal, if not greater, chance that this was just a 12 yr old with a toy gun who just realised that it was actually him that the cops were shouting at and, in his panic, tried to distance himself from the gun to prove he was no threat. You say that he should have just done what he was told because the law says that children are culpable at 10, but the law also states that they have diminished responsibility for their actions. Pre-adolescents are not only inexperienced, but cognitively undeveloped. I fail to see how the responsibility for de-escalating the situation should fall on an inexperienced, cognitively disadvantaged kid, rather than an adult who swore to serve and protect. The call for empathy with police, because they're just humans who make mistakes, makes zero sense under critical analysis. Consider this - Why do we have dangerous driving laws? The answer is obviously to dissuade drivers from driving dangerously; If they know they can injure or kill someone with absolute impunity they would become reckless and prone to more mistakes...after all, no one got up that morning wanting to kill a 12 year old boy. The "**** the police" mentality comes, not because they are an impediment to breaking the law, but because police don't seem to be held to the same level of accountability as citizens and behave predictably recklessly.
Airsoft guns in the states are supposed to be orange tipped. It's not uncommon to find the cheaper ones (Which that looks like) with the tip painted over. It looks like the whole thing has been sprayed to me, but hey. If it was in his waistband, the obvious screw holes holding the thing together in the slide wouldn't be seen until the kid was in a position to shoot the police, so you can hardly say "I could spot that was a fake!!!11oneone", even less so in a high stress situation where you might get shot and killed. If I pulled one of these on you, I wouldn't be surprised if you thought it was real too. The officers reacted as they should have, as they no doubt would have in any other situation. Of course someone's going to shout 'RACISM!' at this, because the kid happened to be black. He didn't do what the officers said, he potentially had a gun, and if I were in the same situation, you better believe I'd have shot first too. It's unfortunate that the kid didn't do as he was told by the police. Maybe he wasn't raised that way, maybe he wasn't told the police are (generally) the good guys. His parents are likely to say he was, because they're trying to protect their son. I would in their position. It's a shitty situation, and I bet my socks the officer that took the shot doesn't feel good about killing a child. UKARA is the name you're looking for! Or it was last time I registered.
Firstly, there's no way they can fully judge the age of a child. I was watching Louis Theroux in Miami mega jail last night and one of the prisoners was a 14 year old tried as an adult for aggravated armed robbery. Not every young kid is your happy go lucky innocent person, it completely depends on the background and culture they grew up in. It takes literally seconds from the kid going to grab the gun to shooting the police officers, you cannot and would not take that risk. You cannot go in with the mindset he has a gun, but he probably won't shoot me, as you're more likely to get shot in that situation.
You're misrepresenting my argument. I'm not saying that someone should approach a situation with "he has a gun, but he probably won't shoot me", I'm saying that shooting anyone, child or not, should be an absolute last resort for police officers. It would actually take less than a second to draw a gun, but a split-second of caution could have meant the difference between life and death - Instead, they shot him before he even motioned towards pointing the gun at them or anyone else. Cops, acting with impunity, are trigger-happy. In Utah, for example, you're more likely to be killed by a cop than by a gang member or drug dealer - Think about that; You're more likely to be killed by cops than by criminals -Does that fact suggest proportionate policing or reasonable force to you?
As well they should. By the time the gun's been pointed it can be fired. You can't expect officers to risk letting someone point a gun at someone else in the hope that is not real or they won't pull the trigger.
Granted there was an avoidable tragedy here. But, that statement comes from a very UK statist/submissive standpoint. We had a revolution that instilled in our national psyche a distinct lack of faith and trust in established power. "Emergency situations" is one step closer to "Pick up that can, citizen."
I think you're massively underestimating the time it takes to react. How long do you think it would take for someone to go from beginning to point a gun to having it pointed and the trigger pulled? Do you think an officer could guarantee they'd have a shot off in time to prevent it?
I think it would take more time to unholster, point and accurately fire a weapon that it would to fire an already-trained weapon.
Nice attempt at framing the argument, but until the gun is actually aimed at someone no one's life is in danger...but if that's how you want to frame it.... Yes, it takes less time to pull a trigger a centimetre than it does to move a weapon a foot or two to aim. Don't forget that my partners gun is trained on him too. Lethal force should be a last resort down to the hundredth of a second, because you never know who you're dealing with
Um. Kid didn't have a holster. "Tucked in his waist band" I think was the phrase used. Tell you what, you're in the situation where you might die and not dying depends on firing first. Do you wait for someone to pull a weapon before firing? Also, come to think of it, if he'd pointed it at the police there's no guarantee that it'd be obvious it was fake, either. Since the end wasn't orange, there's every possibility that it was modified specifically to not look fake. If he was deliberately scaring people in a public park, well. He probably did, or somebody did, modify it to look as real as possible.
Just to clarify: Holstered gun (in a dedicated holster or waistband): Hold fire Process of unholstering: Hold fire* Gun pointed 15-20 degrees from downwards: Fire Gun pointed at anyone: Fire *indicates where police's decision to fire was made
I disagree. The gun doesn't need to be aimed or pointed at anyone for there to be a danger to life. The risk exists even if the gun is holstered or in a waistband. No, it shouldn't. Lethal force is a considered action. It isn't and never should be something that can only be used at the very last second. That just puts officers and any bystanders at an unacceptable level of risk.
Your funeral with that thinking, man. What if they're faster than you? There's no way of knowing that looking at the person. http://tinyurl.com/n3d7or5 Does he look like the 18 world record holder for fast draw/shootings? I'd ask if you thought you could outdraw him, but he always has his name written on him, and well, he's easily googled. It's established that if someone goes for a gun when ordered to raise their hands by the police, they get shot. For good reason. If the police had just shot him and made no demands, then sure, we have good cause to question. They did their job, and it unfortunately ended very, very, badly for the kid.
