Posted on 11/23/2014 3:10:20 PM PST by Impala64ssa
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A rookie Cleveland police officer shot a 12-year-old boy outside a city recreation center late Saturday afternoon after the boy pulled a BB gun from his waistband, police said.
Police were responding to reports of a male with a gun outside Cudell Recreation Center at Detroit Avenue and West Boulevard about 3:30 p.m., Deputy Chief of Field Operations Ed Tomba said.
A rookie officer and a 10-15 year veteran pulled into the parking lot and saw a few people sitting underneath a pavilion next to the center. The rookie officer saw a black gun sitting on the table, and he saw the boy pick up the gun and put it in his waistband, Cleveland Police Patrolmen's Association President Jeffrey Follmer said.
The officer got out of the car and told the boy to put his hands up. The boy reached into his waistband, pulled out the gun and the rookie officer fired two shots, Tomba said.
Tomba said the child did not threaten the officer verbally or physically.
At least one of the shots hit the child in the stomach. He was rushed to MetroHealth Medical Center in serious condition. His current condition was not immediately known.
As a handful of community activists shouted obscenities from behind a group of reporters, Tomba said the incident was "very, very tragic."
"We don't come to work everyday and want to use force on anybody," Tomba said. "That's not what our job is. We're part of this community."
The department's use of deadly force investigation team, made up of officers from the homicide and internal affairs units, members of the city's Office of Professional Standards and the city and Cuyahoga County prosecutors office, will determine if the officer was justified in shooting the boy.
Tomba promised the investigation would be open.
"When an officer gives a command, we expect it to be followed," Tomba said. "The way it looks like right now, it wasn't followed, but we're going to continue our investigation."
The shooting comes as the U.S. Department of Justice is investigating the department to determine if it regularly uses excessive force against its citizens.
Northeast Ohio Media Group will continue to update this story.
From all reports, the boy did not aim at the cops or otherwise threaten them. However, he did pull it from his waistband after a verbal command to put his hands up.
What planet do you live on??? Uranus? Geez - do you even know a police officer personally?
I have a couple BB guns that don't have orange tips, made in the 1990s. Lots of older BB guns still remain in circulation.
Is that really a picture of the BB gun involved? Yikes!
This is what happens when parents don’t parent. Children flashing a bb gun in the streets instead of being supervised in the home playing with it.
Why the parents aren’t being investigated is a shame.
It's a strange world you live in. Since you decided to cite your warped view as "fact", care to provide any to support your inane comments?
One of my neighbors is a former Detroit cop and said he only pulled his gun once in something like 12 years. The 1 time he pulled his gun he didn’t fire. He said the perp was waving his gun around and pointing it toward he and his partner but they were behind cover and the situation defused itself. He says he could tell the guy was thinking and weighing his odds and made the right choice.
I think the bottom line is,the kid did something incredibly foolish and got himself shot.
...........my policy has always been, in many situations in 5 decades to just don’t F with the cops EVER! They have the gun and the force of LAW, as flawed as it is.
As I told my kids growing up, “just shut up”.
Still ticked off about that traffic ticket from 10 years ago?
I do know a former cop personally, and the uniform makes cops a target. They never know when someone has the intention of doing them harm and frequently have to make split second decisions that could mean the end of their lives or that of a citizen.
Here’s a challenge for those who second guess the cops. Have someone face away from you holding one thing that represents a gun and another that represents a harmless item. Have that person turn quickly around and you decide to “shoot” or not in that amount of time. See how often you guess wrong and either “shoot” the innocent or get shot by the gun. Think about how much more difficult this would be in a real life-or-death situation with adrenaline flowing.
There is no reason that boy would've had a non-lethal gun, unless it was to impress or scare people. Perhaps to shoot out windows or cause other mayham. On a Cleveland news site, someone posted in a discussion that several members of a very tough gang in that area, some as young as 13, had been arrested this summer.
Yesterday was a very dark, rainy and cloudy day, I'd think obstructing vision. The neighborhoods are on edge about the balance between keeping the neighborhoods safe and not being too aggressive. No parent in their right mind would let a child out of the house with a somewhat real looking gun, with no logical place to practice shooting it, under these conditions.
perhaps the kid or one of his associates...altered it.
BAN ASSAULT TOYS NOW!
The race baiters will not show up if it really is an innocent boy who was killed.
They love coming out to defend violent thugs, because they know that white America will begin stating that the thugs deserved what they got. Thus they create the division that they seek.
And yet the person who called the police told the dispatcher twice that he believed the gun was probably fake. And in not a single report did anyone say that the kid pointed the gun at the police. So a civilian could tell what two trained cops could not. And without any evidence that either he or anyone else was at risk the officer guns down a 12 year old boy. So in this day and age apparently police can shoot anyone for any excuse and people will cheer them on.
“The boy reached into his waistband, pulled out the gun and...”
Police don’t use the same ROI the soldiers in Afghanistan use. hey don’t need to be shot at before they return fire.
This child was not unarmed.
This kid’s “community” and “family” probably taught him that cops are the enemy, and to reach for a weapon at any provocation. Young thug in the making will now be described as angelic and an honor student (went to school sometimes).
Model 1911’s that look like the one in the picture aren’t that common. It looks phony to me from the get go.I would have asked the kid what was going on with that pistol. He probably would have replied and be alive. The cops aren’t kings they shouldn’t expect to be instantly obeyed especially by 12 year kids. They get paid to take risk that’s part of the meaning of “To Protect and Serve “. If someone can’t handle that they shouldn’t become police officers.
It is.
Look for there to be a huge display of outrage from the usual suspects re SKEERY LOOKING Toy “Weapons”
DISARM We Much!!
Back in the old days (when I was a kid) most adults could tell the difference between a BB gun and a real gun, and wouldn't call the cops on a kid with a toy.
i would suspect that any weapon drawn from a “waistband”..would on the heat of the moment look alarmingly real.
Ever hear of the classroom demonstration example of someone drawing a banana...and the “witnesses” later swearing it looked like a gun.
theres at least a fifty percent chance that the cop in question is not at all “happy” about what happened.
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