Yes, this 1000+
When did he threaten them with a gun? When did they know that he was the suspect? When did they know it was a gun? Were they threatened to the point of initiating an immediate attack when he was just an unknown child with an unknown object in his waist?
What do you mean, by factually wrong? That there are known examples of 12 yo murderers? That doesn’t amount to a reasonnable fear of death. Factually, there are people who slip in the shower and kill themselves. Refusing to take a shower for this reason isn’t reasonnable.
First, you should probably calm down. Insulting me doesn’t particularly improve your arguments.
Second there are people who aren’t lunatics and argue against self defense. They’re called pacifists. But that’s not the topic.
Third your opinion isn’t an universal truth, and again, obviously, a number of people are in disagreement with you on the issue. And you don’t get to tell whether there should be a debate or not. Again, factually, there is one.
Fourth, we’re not talking about having the right to defend yourself against an individual threatening you with a gun, but about killing a 12 yo who reaches for his waist.
So, can you explain to me what I should find threatening in the video? I see a kid walking left and right wawing around something that looks like a gun, and then sitting all by himself.
Then a car screech to a halt, police officer open the doors and kill the kid within 2 seconds. That’s the only part I find threatening in the whole video.
It was totally unreasonable to kill a kid, who, again, wasn’t threatening anybody.
Especially, again, since the cops, contrarily to you when you watched the video, didn’t even know whether this kid was the guy who had been seen previously seen with a gun They came in, saw a kid, shouted something at him, killed him when he moved his hand. He could have been any kid who happened to be at this place at this moment. Or it could have been you, for that matter, if you had been unlucky enough to be there at the wrong moment, gun or not.
Plenty of people argue with the police. All the fucking time. That normally isn’t, and shouldn’t be, an issue.
When compliance means “react appropriately in less than 1.5 second when someone barks something at you or get killed”, personally, I have a problem. YMMV.
Oh? European criminals never threaten the police with guns? But on the other hand, 12 yo commonly kills police officers, I guess?
And wait… I said so only a dozen time : in this scenario nobody threatened a police officer.
OK, I guess we probably aren’t talking of the same case, here. You’ve seen a video of a Mexican cartel member shooting at the police or something? Because for my part, I was refering to the video of the 12 yo killed by the American police.
So, since you, contrarily to me, know what the word “attack” means, can you explain to me exactly how and when the kid attacked the police?
And when exactly did the police officer defended himself?
But all I’ve seen is a police officer taking a gun in his hand and using it to kill a kid who neither had harmed nor threatened him. Which for me is the definition of attack. So according to you preclude that he could have been defending himself.
Again, can you point to me, in the video, what the kid did to “attack” the cops?
I guess we’ll have to disagree, here. Unless, again, you can tell me how this kid attacked the cop.
Your insults still don’t do much to convince me, sorry.
You mispelled “why do you want to teach anyone not to kill a 12 yo who might or might not be someone who was seen with something that might or might not be a weapon when the 12 yo reaches for his waist?”
Seriously…you are accusing me of posting innacuracies?
Especially if you are just a 12 year old child playing with a toy, and a couple of armed men drive right up to you and wave guns in your face while yelling at you and shooting at you before you have a chance to even think about what they are saying, right?
Another reason the poor boy may have panicked is because Cleveland police have been known to go a little overboard with black suspects before, and stopping and obeying sometimes just doesn’t satisfy their needs.
What a lot of people are conveniently (but not surprisingly) overlooking is that the cops didn’t know jackshit about the situation when they rolled up on that kid. They were given a report that there was an adult brandishing a gun on that sidewalk. But the person they rolled up on was a kid without a visible gun. The only thing that made him “match the description” was his race.
They hadn’t verified that the alleged gun even existed. For all they knew, the gun was really a cell phone or a stick. Or, surprise surprise, a fake gun. Everyone keeps saying his gun looked real since it didn’t have an orange tip, but this is a moot point. They would have shot him even if the whole gun had been Day-Glo orange, since they were acting only on the report that he had a gun, not on their own observations.
The cops pulled up so fast that it’s possible the kid didn’t even know it was the police. I don’t understand how anyone can possibly defend the police here.
Fired? I’m willing to believe he did feel that he was in danger when he opened fire, rather than just feeling like shooting kids, but that’s a negligent homicide at best. He should have his ass dragged to jail.
I said exactly this up thread. What obligation do cops have to make sure they’re shooting even the right perp? Cops are supposed to actually use judgement and training to asses a situation.
What the jackasses in this thread have taught me is that if a neighbor wants me dead, all they have to do is put a call into 911. Anyone can say anything about any unsuspecting person, and the cops will carry out their bidding, no questions asked.
And they’ll get away with it too.
When I heard about the young boy being shot, I imagined a kid coming around the corner with one of those Nerf guns that my kids like, that shoot little foam darts all over the place.
Then I read the USA Today article that said he had an airsoft gun, with the orange tip removed.
That changes things. Substantially.
(Necessary qualifications: maybe the reporter made a mistake; maybe the cops lied; and so on. I’m taking this at face value for the moment)
My nephew has airsoft guns, and they are downright scary.
He has one that is an exact copy of a Colt 1911, like this one. When you fire it, the slide cycles, just like a real one. You load it and cock it just like a real one.
In fact, I was able to perform a standard M1911 field strip of the thing, to the point that I had the slide off and had finally reached parts of the gun that did not appear real. The first hint that it was fake was that the recoil spring was much less beefy than a real one.
The only feature of these guns that tells an observer that they are not real is the orange tip, and many people remove those.
I am absolutely confident that the vast majority of people (e.g. board members here) would not be able to tell that that M1911 is not real, even when holding it and fiddling with the slide and safety and hammer and so on. The weight is spot on, and only someone with more than casual familiarity with guns would know the difference.
They do make less realistic airsoft guns, but the airsoft culture is all about realism.
IMHO the reported facts of “airsoft gun” and “removed orange tip” changed the whole incident into a terrible tragedy—a tragedy that left a boy dead and an officer carrying an unimaginable burden for the rest of his life.
Cheaper then a hired hit, immediate response, no questions asked, “no fault” result. God, what craziness.
All that is irrelevant. The 911 caller thought it could be a toy. The police never saw the gun. The gun was tucked in his waistband. At best they saw a bit of black there. They argue he was reaching for it, but clearly he never had the chance.
It’s interesting to me how many people think that anyone with a concealed carry permit is fair game for the police to shoot on sight.
You’re walking around in a public place with a gun that is legal for you to possess. Someone catches a glimpse of it and calls the cops. They charge up to you, shouting for you to put your hands in the air. If you flinch during the first second of this surprise encounter they are justified in putting a bullet in your skull. The fact that you might be a responsible gun owner, perhaps even an off-duty cop, is immaterial. The mere fact that you’re walking around in public with a concealed weapon is sufficient for them to fear for their lives and put you down.
No, it doesn’t change anything, because the cop who opened fire didn’t see the gun, and couldn’t even know if the person he was shooting at was the person reported to have been seen with a gun. All he saw is someone who seemed to reach for something. Then he killed this person.
It could have been a completely different person reaching for a bag of candies, the result would have been the same.
Here’s what it is you’re still not getting.
When the cops tell you to put your hands up, DON’T reach for a very realistic replica of a real gun instead. See, the cops take that as a threat. They assume you’re reaching for the gun and that you might use it on them. They do what society allows them to do in these instances, that is, protect themselves. Does this help at all? The answer is really quite simple, if the cops tell you to put your hands up, put your god damn hands up. If they tell you to sit down and cool off, sit the fuck down and cool off. If they tell you to lay on the ground, lay your ass on the ground. Don’t ever reach for a gun, realistic replica included. Rocket science 101.
Don’t forget the part about you running around the public park brandishing the gun before that. That changes things.
My own opinion stands: in absence of more information it was a tragedy, like many other tragic events that happen daily. Like most tragedies there is a chain of events leading up, and many of those events could have happened differently.
What you’re not getting is that sometimes the “fight or flight” response in people’s brains, particularly those who are of an age where their brain is still developing, simply does not allow them to think rationally in a situation where they are scared. There was absolutely no time for Rice to even process what was happening to him.
They were looking for a black man running around brandishing a gun. Is that who they challenged? Was he a man? Did they see him running around? Was he brandishing a gun when they first saw him? Was he black?
Whoopsie!
I recall the police in this incident reporting that they saw Rice put the replica firearm in his waistband before approaching. If that’s true then they knew he had it and assumed it was real. It’s not like they randomly pulled up on a kid and he happened to be the kid the 911 call was about. From here:
If you take into account “the fog of war,” the answer to all those questions is “Yes.”