Why are we expecting more composure from a 13 year old boy than from a trained professional?
Cop in America doing a bad job, again
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You’re literally blaming the victim here.
It doesn’t matter whether he knew he’d throw away the gun. He told him to put his hands up and then immediately shot him without making any kind of assessment of the situation.
The only reason for shooting him at that moment was because he thought (feared) something could go a different way and that’s not acceptable, cops are trained to handle these situations and there’s no excuse for pulling the trigger having not seen a gun in the hand.
Would you like to reread that sentence and try again?
Of course he deserves some blame, he's a kid roaming the streets with a gun ffs. This isn't just an innocent bystander.
I've already said they should have done things differently, i'm not defending their actions. This is the problem with guns though, you don't get a second to think what the best option is.
If they have tasers on themselves though I don't understand why they didn't incapaciate him with that first if they were worried. It's just a shitshow all round.
Why? what don't you understand?
You're putting an onus on a 13 year old kid to figure out the best option in a high-stakes situation. It's kinda bad, mate.
Do you not see that you're suggesting it's hard to judge actions in hindsight.....and then offer hindsight actions in some bizarre take that a 13 year old can have perfect logical reasoning with a strobe light in the face and an adult running at you with a gun shouting commands?
I mean it's pretty obvious.
A lot of analysis of the 13 year olds actions and decisions and less about the adult, trained professionals actions and decisions.
Nothing to say the cop wouldn’t have shot him anyway if he saw the gun in his hand they do that a lot in America.
It's madness.
It’s insane.
but increasingly the norm. Arguing the 13 year old should've been the rational actor, acting like a 13 year old is a man. In other situations, remember police screaming that a 9 year old should "stop acting like a child" as she's maced in the back of a squad car?
any justification, any hindsight reasoning no matter how bizarre and illogical to justify actions.
No, I was talking the ideal situation. Obviously they shouldn't have shot so fast - i'm just seeing it from both sides.
They're chasing somebody they know has a firearm, he turns around and raises his hand, how long do you wait until they shoot you first? It must be so difficult.
Yeah I don’t quite understand it myself. But I’ve read it quite a few times on here. “But the video doesn’t show what happens before he gets shot”. “Why didn’t he just comply”. Blah blah.
Couldn’t agree with you more, it’s sad a young kid lost his live but his actions up until the shooting contributed to the situation without a doubt.
I know he's not everyone's cup of tea, but this is a really good Sam Harris podcast with a jujitsu professional with regards to police training in the US, and how woefully under trained they are.
They do less than an hour mandatory physical confrontation training a year. And the total required training to become a cop is a little over a third of what a hairdresser needs.
Anyway, I think its a good listen.
https://samharris.org/podcasts/246-police-training-police-misconduct/
They do less than an hour mandatory physical confrontation training a year. And the total required training to become a cop is a little over a third of what a hairdresser needs.
Anyway, I think its a good listen.
https://samharris.org/podcasts/246-police-training-police-misconduct/
The 13 year old is one of those situations that is very easy for people to judge outside of the situation. The thing is would people react the same way they are saying on here when facing down someone with a gun? Your life being at risk changes the perspective quite a lot.
It is actually pretty irrelevant that he is 13 because guns make it possible for anyone to kill. Strength is no longer a factor.
Also, how long do you give someone. It takes a second to raise a gun and shoot. By that time it could be too late for you. This isn't cowboy duels where you are the fastest gun in the west and can beat everyone to the draw; this is reality.
It is a horrible thing to happen. But why has a 13 year old got a gun in the first place?
It is actually pretty irrelevant that he is 13 because guns make it possible for anyone to kill. Strength is no longer a factor.
Also, how long do you give someone. It takes a second to raise a gun and shoot. By that time it could be too late for you. This isn't cowboy duels where you are the fastest gun in the west and can beat everyone to the draw; this is reality.
It is a horrible thing to happen. But why has a 13 year old got a gun in the first place?
is it confirmed the kid had a gun? I can't see anything in the video
A 13yr old has got a gun because there are more guns than people in the country, and inevitably, some of them are going in the hands of children.
That is not an excuse for the actions of the officer. And age is definitely an important factor - it can not be expected of a kid to comply without making mistakes in such a situation. The mimum an officer should be trained at, is to clearly identify when a firearm is being pointed at him and then use deadly force. He has the advantage in the situation, because he is already aiming at him. Just assuming he has gun and is going to point it towards him is something I can do while playing an FPS, not the expected action from a supposedly trained professional.
And if he was disoriented by the strobe, then it is again his mistake since he chose to use the strobe light.
This is the point though - it seems these officers simply aren't being trained well enough - if at all.
Also worth noting the outrageous media bias on our thinking here: there could have been a hundred thousand situations that went fine and we'd never hear about them.
On the age of the kid with the gun - I don't really understand how this has any bearing on the officer. It's certainly not his/her fault a child has access to a leathal weapon, and a 13 year old is less likely to act rationally than an adult. So if anything it's a more dangerous situation.
What media bias?? The cases where the officers kill unarmed people are far too many , there is no bias in the numbers.
It is absolutely the officers' fault that he is not taking into account the age of the suspect. Exactly because he may not act 'rationally' he should give him much clearer instructions . And how can you say it is a more dangerous situation? It's a 13 old boy, not a high speed operator that can turn aim and shoot before the cop could blink. He shot because he knew he would get away with it, and he probably will.
Disgraceful media only telling us about unarmed people being shot and not reporting all the routine traffic stops and speeding tickets issued where they manage to not kill anyone.
Also, cats taken down from trees in affluent areas.
As yourself and other astute posters noted - of course the media will focus on when things go wrong - far moreso today with available cameras, which is a good thing for transparency, obviously. But, if you polled people around the world right now about officer-related shootings of black Americans, you'd probably find that they overwhelmingly believe that we're at a peak number, and it's getting so much worse, and it's the major societal issue so and so forth.
But what if that's not true? Shouldn't we use actual stats and trends to dictate policy? Should policy be determined by public sentiment - itself simply a function of the media?
Again, I don't see how the officer is supposed to assume that a scared, 13-year old armed child is going to act rationally. It's obviously a horrible situation and we should never have gotten here.
But the fact that every poorly trained police officer in America HAS to be armed because every potential confrontee could be is the reason there are so many mistakes. And that's a policy no one seems to want to deal with, because it's much easier to talk about bias or how awful police are.
At what point did he know the kid's age?
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Without being certain about the exact age, surely anyone can see he is a child?
We have the benefit of hindsight to know he was 13. It’s dark at 230am and he’s wearing thick clothing and cap. He doesn’t look short in stature either. I doubt the initial dispatch call even mentioned young kids. It was probably “male suspects shooting at cars”. As an officer going into that scene you’re not treating it any less than the most heightened awareness and seriousness in possibly getting into a shooting to save your life.
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A 13 year old can kill just as surely as a 30 year old
TBF the cop didn't know she had dementia, as far as he was concerned she was just an old woman.
@Skizzo has been munching too many California raisins and lost his accent. He's no longer an ex-pat, he's now an assimilated immigrant.
The cops weren't drafted into the police force. So the shrug on making deadly mistakes will never track with anyone with human decency.
Insulting another member
Hey feck you
Interesting turn of events here.
I recall how many went a bit mental when Ashli Babbitt was thought briefly to have been a 16 year old girl when she was shot during the riots.
Not exactly the same thing here, but there are quite many similarities. And some key differences.
I recall how many went a bit mental when Ashli Babbitt was thought briefly to have been a 16 year old girl when she was shot during the riots.
Not exactly the same thing here, but there are quite many similarities. And some key differences.
You admitted that you'd prefer cops to kill 'criminals' without defining exactly what constitutes a 'criminal'. So either either your statement is blanket enough to conclude that you would also prefer a jaywalker to get killed, or you must define exactly what crimes are deserving of being killed.
Which one is it? This isn't splitting hairs, these are your words, i'm just trying to get a better understanding of it.
That's before you get into the fact that nobody is actually a criminal until they've been convicted of a crime, until that point they are merely a suspect.
Is that splitting hairs? Maybe for the sake of this debate, but in real life, no.
And, it's not up to the police to assume something about a person or their actions - this is where biases kick in, and you open yourself up for a million hypothetical situations.