Posted on 11/23/2014 6:39:33 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
A Cleveland police officer responding to a call about a person with a gun fatally wounded a 12-year-old boy brandishing what turned out to be an air gun that looked very much like a real firearm, police said early Sunday.
The shooting Saturday afternoon came as the nation nervously awaited a grand jury decision on whether to charge the police officer who killed African-American teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, in August.
The attorney for the family of the Cleveland youngster, who also was black, downplayed any possible racial connotations to the shooting.
"This is not a black and white issue. This is a right and wrong issue," attorney Tim Kucharski said.
Police were summoned to the scene outside a recreation center by a 911 caller who said someone -- possibly a juvenile -- was pointing a gun at people.
"There's a guy in there with a pistol, you know, it's probably fake, but he's like pointing it at everybody," the caller said, according to audio provided by CNN affiliate WEWS....
(Excerpt) Read more at wibw.com ...
A Cleveland news station is reporting that there IS a video of this shooting being reviewed now.
911 calls do not necessarily go to the responding officers, right?
“Sounds like poor parental edumacation of offspring.”
1. My son knew by far younger than 12 years old not to wave airsoft type guns around in public.
2. Someone removed the orange tip. That’s asking for a kid to get shot. Maybe it was the kid. Maybe someone else.
3. This doesn’t sound like a problem policeman. It got called in and the citizen claimed the kid was pointing it at everyone. That lends credibility to the police account.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2f-MZ2HRHQ
911 calls do tend to hype the responding officers into overreacting.
What is interesting about this 911 call is that the caller appeared to present a considered assessment: suspect "probably a juvenile" and "gun probably a fake", both of which proved to be true.
These officers will not be able to blame the 911 caller, not that that is ever an excuse.
911 caller is qualified to say the kid was pointing the gun at people. Not sure their assessment of “fake” has much meaning unless it was an all orange toy gun or it had an orange tip.
It is way past time to change the color to Neon Blue... Nobody will ever figure that out.
Cop Body video cams are a good thing.
That could go either way. Orange could mean fake. Or it could mean real masquerading as fake.
Point is, the responding officers should have taken their time to evaluate what they were seeing. That being basically the 911 caller's recommendation.
Well that's fine but you should never be a police officer, nor should anyone else that has your mindset. An officer does not have the authority to shoot first and then determine if there was a threat. An officer MUST be 100 percent certain that innocent life is in peril before he ever discharges his weapon. Even if he has to hold off until he is fired upon. The safety of the public comes first and officer safety second. This is the risk you accept when you put on a badge.
That's an opinion subject to conflicting opinions which are just as valid.
Please feel free to limit exercising that opinion only when your life is on the line, and no one else's.
It means that his judgment is as immature as his spelling...
Poor kid. This is terrible.
Most 12yo boys aren’t much different from 10-year-olds. They move around a lot and don’t think like adults yet. If this boy did reach into his waistband, he probably just wanted to show the officer that the “gun” was fake.
Well said.
That’s not the picture of him I saw earlier. It looked like a mug shot. Nobody here knows what they would do if they had to make a split second decisions that might cost them their lives. If the kid refused the cops’ order and pulled what certainly looked like a gun out of his pants, then he was killed by his own stupidity.
What I do not understand, and perhaps our trigger happy cops could tell us — do cops now blast everyone with a fake gun and shoot dogs when they engage with the public as standard operating procedure? You've got some really brave cops out there, America. If this is the new normal, then the potential victims should have the right to blast you first, since you've got murder on your mind?
I too would be dead pulling out a GUN on an officer.
Holding a gun is not a crime.
Pointing it at others is. Pulling a gun out of your pants when the officer has told you to put your hands up, is also a crime.
In my childhood days (the 1940s) cap guns were ubiquitous. They were “brandished” freely. No red tips either. I can’t recall any kid shot because he was seen with one. Of course those were very different times and citizens would not call police if they saw a kid (invariably a boy) “brandishing” a cap gun.
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