Cleveland police officer shoots 12-year-old boy carrying BB gun

Cleveland.com ^ | 11/22/2014 | Cory Shaffer | Northeast Ohio Media Group

[Forgotten Amendments]

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.

[2ndDivisionVet]

Again, WTF does that even mean?

[married21]

Do BB guns look like airsoft guns? My son has airsoft guns, but they all have a bright orange colored tip, so it’s supposed to be obvious that it isn’t a real gun.

My son is 13, but he would not be wearing a gun in his belt or waistband, and not without the helmet and all his doodads and accessories. But then, he is a boy, not a thug in training.

[sagar]

12 year old. Check
Black. Check
Cop. Check

Recepie for a nice riot.

[dfwgator]

A 12-year-old can shoot you just as dead as any grownup.

[VideoDoctor]

Wonder if this will suddenly overshadow Ferguson, MO?

[Vendome]

Take it off or paint it.

When your lif3 is on the line, you can’t really be expected to be a gun expert in less than 1 second

Present what really is a gun and bang! Expect to be shot.

Riots over the holiday. ..

[familyop]

"It’s unfortunate the kid got shot. But it’s also world class stupid to pull anything looking like a gun on a cop."

I don't believe in fortune. From the article, according to the "Deputy Chief of Field Operations," "Tomba said the child did not threaten the officer verbally or physically." ...and "When an officer gives a command, we expect it to be followed,"

Don't you see anything wrong with that?

From a real recruiting test during the 1990s, paraphrased accurately enough:
There are a couple of men sitting on a front porch. In the yard, a twelve-year-old girl is holding a molotov cocktail. What do you do?

The correct answer according to the test was to shoot the little girl. Wrong (military operations on urban terrain). The jurisdiction of that test turned out to be filthy, by the way.

Some current policies and training are flawed and have gone into the garbage since the early 1970s. So has the moral character of too much of our nation. Maybe we need a larger Public Integrity Section and less federal pork.

[familyop]

"Again, WTF does that even mean?"

If you don't know, then you haven't been in many dangerous situations.

[familyop]

"What the hell does that part of your post even mean? Can you explain it to us?"

It's not right for pillar$ of the community to favor deadly force against residents who aren't threatening with deadly force.

[2ndDivisionVet]

The Korean DMZ, guarding presidents & vice presidents, security at an Air Guard base, bouncing, bodyguard, guarding apartments in a ghetto, guarding factories & warehouses in high crime areas, driver & bodyguard for several general officers including Al Haig, handling rioters and peacecreeps....

[ifinnegan]

Just how stoned are you?

[familyop]

"So you’ve never been in anything like that situation, huh?"

I've spared the lives of a few grown men who were using deadly force and the bones of many who were using less than deadly force (duties, legal jobs).

A little exercise would do many young men of duty a lot of good. Say, a requirement of prior enlisted initial combat specialty service and ten hours or so maintenance per week each and ongoing for the duration of careers. More range work including fire and maneuver wouldn't hurt either (practice using cover for real instead of standing tall behind short barriers).

There was a time, when at least some police avoided shooting even grown men who did nothing more than having a revolver in their hand without pointing it. And those police were only beginning to carry double action revolvers.

If our country is getting more dangerous, it's time that we acknowledged the reason for it (moral bankruptcy, divorce/cohabitation, fatherlessness, etc.). There won't be any real solutions until then.

[familyop]

"Just how stoned are you?"

I don't drink. I don't do drugs. I don't get mouthy and disrespectful in public speech. So I don't fit in with the counter-culture that calls itself conservatism today.

[Celtic Conservative]

As I learned in academy: watch their hands. they’re not gonna kill you with their faces, they’ll kill you with their hands. No mention of age, race or gender. Anyone can be a threat at any time. I can,’t tell you the number of times women call 911 cause their man beat up on them. And when you try to take the guy away the woman flips out and starts interfering because they’re taking her man away. Then she goes to jail for assaulting the officer. Now I don’t know the particulars of this case, but it sounds like an aspiring gangsta trying to impress or intimidate people. then he pulls a bb gun on cop responding to a “man with gun” call. Not the recipe for a long life. This will probably be called a clean shoot, unkess there’s something we’ve not heard about yet.

CC

[Mark17]

Let me guess- white cop, black boy. Kinda hope I’m wrong.

That was my first question too.

[Smokin' Joe]

It can be difficult to judge age, etc. Really, what matters is the perception of a lethal weapon. Apparently, whoever called in the situation asking for police response thought so.

There are airsoft (plastic BB) guns out there that are convincing replicas of real firearms, and a little doctoring to remove the orange ends renders them a convincing facsimile of the real thing--especially at a distance, especially pumped with adrenalin from getting a call of 'man with a gun'.

I would have to see the item in question before I could make a call of a foul shoot, and it would have to be obviously NOT a weapon. (and that's not going into people who might paint the tips of their weapons orange to make them look like toys).

[familyop]

"The Korean DMZ, guarding presidents & vice presidents, security at an Air Guard base, bouncing, bodyguard, guarding apartments in a ghetto, guarding factories & warehouses in high crime areas, driver & bodyguard for several general officers including Al Haig, handling rioters and peacecreeps...."

Wow. Classy! Must have been nice. Try being the only white boy in a large, inner city neighborhood for a few years, security in country dance hall type places in hillbilly areas for a few years or making hundreds of arrests without backup during overnight patrols in a summer before finding out about the influence of local untouchables.

Our country needs to be cleaned up. There's too much corruption from bottom to top.

[Vendome]

He’s stoned as a gravel road and about as coherent as a non-functional autistic, with turrets.

Just let him be.

He’ll come down off his sugar high

[2ndDivisionVet]

“Nice?” The DMZ nice? That wouldn’t be my description.

[Vendome]

I shoot at the range 1-4 times a month and use ever gun out there, as we all share our awesome weapons and our weird ones.

Having seen just about everything and who knows if I’ve seen even 10% oit there, I cannot say that in that split second I can make out the difference between real and sumpin that’ll just put my eye out, which seems like on the one hand it’d sting for a while and on the other I’d come to yearn for it.

I’m pretty narrow minded but, not so much I can see through a key hole at 100 yrds.

But hey, if your comfortable living that way, more power to you.