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.

[familyop]

According to the article, the “Deputy Chief of Field Operations” “said the child did not threaten the officer verbally or physically.” If the quote is correct, it doesn’t look good.

Did the boy lift the BB pistol to point it at anyone else? Did something else happen? Were other people in the area only standing around or looking nervous or getting away? Who knows? But it doesn’t look good.

[Gene Eric]

>> Probably ought to send up a few prayers that the little guy recovers, and hope the Cleveland Police Department has good liability insurance.

BTTT

[Vendome]

[Vendome]

Doesn’t look real to me.

Just some black gun, beaver tail safety, rail to add light or laser.

Yeah, in a split second this thing looks totally fake....to me at least....

[roadcat]

Surely parents or other adults would be able to see the difference...or not.. which is maybe why they called the cops.

Too many incidents of cops shooting first, to kill, without trying to defuse a situation. I remember reading of an incident in the news some years back, neighbors called the cops reporting a neighbor in his front yard with a gun. Cops sneaked up to the picket fence of the yard and shot the man. The man died. He was watering his yard with a garden hose having a pistol grip, at the time the water not being sprayed. Too many panicky citizens calling cops about guns, and panicky cops shooting to kill.

[familyop]

"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."

That's a good and true point. I'm guessing that you wouldn't fire without someone showing some intent to point anything that appears to be a weapon at you. Have a look at the quote in my comment #41.

I don't do any dangerous duty now and haven't done so for a long time. Here are a couple of tenuously related exercises that might be interesting.

Have a friend or relative clap his hands in front of him. Try to put your hand in between his hands, before his hands clap together. Try it a few times while watching only his hands.

Then try it a few times while watching his eyes instead. If it doesn't work, keep trying. You'll notice that you can still see his hands with peripheral vision. If you do the exercise enough, you'll see the indication in advance, that he's going to move. You'll see it in his face, his eyes or at the worst, a slight dip in one of his shoulders.

The same exercise can be done in many other ways. Good fighters rely on it. Looking beside an object instead of straight at it, by the way, sometimes better helps us to see an object in the dark (old infantry training). And remember that many tend to fire low while firing close and fast with sights in the dark. [Practice point firing at close range in the dark.]

Another one. Sometimes, try to see what another person is going to do next, while they're facing away from you. Only when other people are in front of that person, though. See it in the eyes or other actions of the bystanders in front of the person with his back to you.

Those exercises could be useful in rare circumstances.

Even though equipment and other tactics may be improved, being a good judge of character is very important. No one is perfectly safe.

And yeah, I like to live this way. There's no violence, no consequent sadness and no duty to be confronted with it.

[familyop]

Granted, that Korea is a hardship tour for soldiers in the field—a tour that I didn’t have to do. That’s a long, time in the field with details under light and noise discipline. But it is a severe hardship that’s a little beside the point of the discussion.

[familyop]

That pistol would look about as real as necessary under any sudden circumstance. But did the boy act threatening with it in any way, when patrolmen arrived? It appears that the supervisor stated otherwise, but maybe something else will come up.

I see the story below now. Doesn’t look good at all. How many evil dispatchers to date? Millions?

9-1-1 caller says gun held by Cleveland 12-year-old shot by police was ‘probably fake’
http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2014/11/9-1-1_caller_says_gun_held_by.html#incart_hbx

[familyop]

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

Honesty and good temperament are requirements for good judgment, and sometimes, for survival. Pride is not an asset.

[Vendome]

Tbose are good excercises and we used to play it with my Dad, growing up.

Seriously though.

Someone putting their hands on what would look like a cordless, long distance, hole punch doesn’t give one much time for assessment, even if it were real.

You know the addage about footage of feet and safety zone.

I’d like to think I could draw, acquire target and properly place a round or rounds to put the danger down but, that 12-20 foot zone is pretty deadly and a man has great ability to close that distance and put a nasty paper cut on his opponent.

Not saying that’s the conditions here and neither are you in your example.

It’s a crap situation and particularly with a kid involved.

However, just based on what I read it seems like the officer was dealt what could have been a pretty serious hand and unfortunately the kid made a very poor choice in his actions.

I don’t think one is trigger happy when guns are in play.

It’s a deadly serious game for everyone and usually there is only one winner.

Story has some similarities with a story 2 years ago in Sonoma, CA.

Kid was playing with an AK toy he had altered to make it look real enough.

Same sad deal.

Kid was ordered to put it down and he swung around.

Cop shot him dead

Seriously a sad a fk’d up situation but, what were the choices...if it were real?

[Vendome]

True dat...

And I’m just messing with you.

Yer an old timer around here....

[Captain Rhino]

Yeah, it could be that.

Over on another website, I read an article about a 12 year old girl gone missing from school. Among the various details about her, she is described as being 5’4’ and weighing 161 lbs. Okay, probably a statistical outlier for 12 year olds, but they definitely can be adult sized. And even if more normal sized, criminal culture is trying to recruit significantly underaged members because our justice system is only now slowly changing its views against harshly punishing child criminals. As I’m sure you know, a 12 year old murderer faces a much shorter sentence under much better conditions than an adult.

As for the “it’s just a toy gun” comments being made in other posts, a visit to any Wal-Mart sporting goods department will reveal BB and AirSoft pistols and rifles with moulded plastic frames that look exactly like Berettas and tricked out M-16s EXCEPT they have a red plastic tip at the end of the muzzle. That tip can easily be painted and/or removed to make the “toy” look exactly like a weapon.

[grania]

FWIW, Cleveland is on edge. On the other side of town, four people were found murdered Saturday night. The far west side is pretty safe, but that area is real diverse, kind of poor, with hispanics and blacks moving in, mostly regarding it as a move away from violence. The schools endure some bussed students from the east side, some for safer schooling, some spreading the chaos. Housing is very dense. I can't imagine what a child was doing with a bb gun around tere, unless to create some mischief.

And how was the policeman supposed to know the child was only 12? Was he with a large group of rowdy kids? my feeling would be this wouldn't cause anger unless there's outside agitation.

[USCG SimTech]

The modern pellet and BB handguns fire a projectile at about 600fps. It’s almost a .22 short. My pellet rifle fires at 1200fps which is about the same as a .22LR.

There is no orange warning tip on them because THEY ARE A REAL AND DANGEROUS WEAPON.

[raybbr]

“”Cleveland Police Patrolmen’s Association president Jeff Follmer said the fact that the caller said the gun was probably fake was never relayed to the responding officers.

“Besides we have to assume every gun is real,” he said. “When we don’t, that’s the day we don’t go home.”””

There you have it.

[raybbr]

Next, they’ll do a no knock raid, shoot the family dog, flash bang the boy’s baby brother, beat up the grandfather and taze the mother. All for the public’s safety.

[Feckless]

handful of community activists

Translation: Racist mob of sub-human scum with no respect for authority (or themselves).

[DoodleDawg]

Ohio Police seem to love shooting people with BB guns.

[Pollster1]

The toy looks totally different from the Colt 1911 Black Rail 45 - look at that trigger. Why couldn't the rookie cop see the trigger and the difference between a .177 caliber opening and a .45 caliber opening on a moving object when "responding to reports of a male with a gun . . . saw a black gun sitting on the table, and he saw the boy pick up the gun and put it in his waistband . . . told the boy to put his hands up. The boy reached into his waistband, pulled out the gun . . ."

What kind of rookie can't tell the difference between a toy and a gun when a kid makes an unexpected movement to grab the concealed toy in that situation? He has been told there is a gun. He has seen what he thinks is a gun. He has seen that kid act like a potential danger to others twice - concealing the presumed gun and then drawing it when told to put his hands up. He should have been thinking "that's probably a toy", shouldn't he? [I'd work in some "shoot the dog" sarcasm too, but it just doesn't fit this story. Sorry.]

If the parents and black "leaders" wanted the boy to live, they should have taught him not to disobey police and not to carry guns or look-alikes in his waistband. I don't blame the cop for seeing what he expected to see when the kid made that interpretation so easy.

[cyclotic]

The orange caps can be removed or taped over. That’s airsoft. Actual BB guns don’t usually have the cap. My son has a Colt 1911 BB gun. It’s realistic down to the weight.