I'm not sure of it. I conceded that the video is low quality and it's difficult to tell. You watch it again and if you and others can definitively tell from it that he points the weapon at the officers when they arrive then I will take that back. From what I saw, it just didn't seem like he did that but it's very hard to tell for sure because of the quality of the video and distance from the incident. Skip to 50 seconds in and you'll see him pointing the weapon outside the frame. He could have been pointing it at a person or he could've been pointing it at a tree. I have no clue. But when they arrive, he seems to be walking towards them with it by his side.
I just went to screencap the comments, but apparently the girl deleted them all. Steve Championship and myself made fun of her for being a fucking moron so she must have been embarrassed. She also blocked me on Facebook :( This is another example. They uploaded a picture of new bikes for the bike cops or whatever, then this guy (a notorious crybaby) complains about other shit. Or there will be a post about a drug bust or something. Then in the comments people will start crying because they "can't believe the PD let drugs get so out of control to begin with! SMH!" Pretty much I just hate most people, I think.
I don't think anyone is solely blaming the shooter. He was put in a terrible situation. Most of the blame lies with dispatch and the driver, imo. Both of them fall under law enforcement, though.
According to a quick Google search, Ohio is an Open Carry state. So, as far as I understand that law (which, again, is admittedly not at an expert level), it could have been a real gun and assuming he was 18 or older he would've been within the law to be carrying an actual gun. Pointing it around at people/things wouldn't be legally permissible but it doesn't even seem like the police saw that happen anyway.
Yes it is. Why can't opinions change once we know more facts? I know Brown was a complete asshole and the cop in that case was completely justified. Why would I now argue otherwise?
I was just asking. A threat is a threat. You can't expect the cops or the employees of an establishment to discern in that situation.
Cool, then we agree the cops created the situation that led to the need to shoot a kid playing with a fake gun in mostly empty park. Thank God my local cops never di the same when I was a kid bc lord knows I ran around with fake guns all the time.
I stand corrected about the "pulled something out" stance. I'm going off memory of the video and I guess I should have reviewed it first before commenting(see everyone? That wasn't difficult) Still, walking towards the cops with a possible weapon in hand? The big hangup here, is whether or not he did or did not point it at them. Without that info, a lot of this was a waste of time.
What was he supposed to do when a police cruiser flies up out of nowhere? Take off running? Stop, drop, and roll? I don't think any of us have a natural reaction to that, much less an 11 year old.
When they point it at you, but we can't even really say for sure if that happened or not in this particular situation.
From the DOJ's report on that police department in general: "Officers use excessive force against individuals who are in mental health crisis or who may be unable to understand or comply with officers’ commands, including when the individual is not suspected of having committed any crime at all" That hits it right on the head. It's not just this police department that that's true about either. It is one of the issues I've mentioned in this thread as being an inherent flaw to the way American police are trained to handle dangerous situations. Especially those involving non-firearm weapons. The officers claimed to have shouted three times for Rice to raise his hands before shooting him. Try saying "Raise your hands!" three times in two seconds. Even if you are an amateur auctioneer and did somehow accomplish that, it sure as hell didn't come out clearly enough that you could drive up on someone and yell and expect them to understand and comply. Although several calls for paramedics were made, no first-aid was applied to Tamir Rice until an FBI agent (who just happened to be a few blocks away) arrived to the scene. If the individual shot and injured were a fellow law enforcement officer, you know damn well they would have done whatever they could to apply first aid until the paramedics/firefighters got there. But because it was a suspect involved in a shooting, they have far less interest in ensuring that individual lives. It has been briefly mentioned in this thread but it should not only be noted that the officer had been "allowed to resign" from his previous law enforcement position but that he was asked to do so because he showed a "dangerous loss of composure" during a firearms training exercise. That the Cleveland PD didn't know that (assuming they didn't as they have claimed) is pathetic. That should be the biggest scarlet letter/red flag in all of law enforcement hiring. The type of thing that knocks you out of law enforcement forever or at the very least prohibits you from carrying a firearm for years and years until you've demonstrated you're fully capable of doing so in a safe manner (for EVERYONE...not just yourself and fellow officers).
I think you're overestimating how long it takes someone to speak nine syllables. I can do it in a calm state. I imagine an officer who's keyed up cause he thinks he's rolling up on someone with a gun can manage to spit it out even faster.
Sure. But is it clear enough that someone not expecting you to be yelling at them will be able to hear, comprehend, and respond appropriately to within two seconds? Because if they don't, they're going to be "justifiably" shot and killed. Seems like a really unfair expectation to hold anyone to. God forbid the person has a hearing problem or doesn't understand the language being shouted at them. They would pretty much have no chance in that situation. Tamir Rice barely had one if he had one at all.
*Let me preface this by saying I'm ashamed I'm even posting in this thread* 1) I generally agree that tactically, the first arriving cop didn't make the best decision 2) The victim you're speaking of is 11, which I get. He's a kid. Could have been handled differently. 3) You can't possibly compare when you grew up to the current climate regarding guns and police. People get robbed with fake guns every day. They're being sold everywhere, looking as real as any gun you or I own, and kids (14, 15, 16) are taking any kind of red/orange safety indicator off in an attempt to make them seem legit. We pull bb or airsoft guns out of cars all the time that are tucked under seats or in glove boxes just like any real gun would be, hidden, so that police don't find them. Fake AR's, shotguns, pistols, Tech 9's, you name it. We see fake ones used all the time to rob and terrorize people. 4) A New Orleans cop was executed while sitting in his cop car working an off duty construction site detail a few days ago. A separate K9 cop out in a Mississippi somewhere was sitting behind a broken down car on the highway on Tuesday. 2 guys come out of the woods and distract him. A 3rd guy comes up and attacks him. The 3 guys take his gun and start dragging him into the woods telling him they're about to slit his throat. The only thing that saved his life was that he was able to hit his door release on his belt and his dog got to him and attacked the would be killers. 8 cops have been killed by gunfire this month, nationally. Just in May. If you can't grasp why any of them aren't going to take a chance with a perceived threat, be it fake or not, then it is what it is and there isn't any changing it unless you go apply to ride the line. I don't mean to associate the 11 year old kid being shot with the examples I gave. Simply saying cops aren't in a position to give the benefit of the doubt in the current climate in America. Cliffs: It's a U thing, you wouldn't understand.
Those are good points, but the bolded seems to try and absolve the cops themselves from any responsibility in helping create (or potentially change) that climate.
Here's my thing. Policing isn't big enough to change that climate. It's a part of it, absolutely. But if you want to change that climate? You're looking at minimum 30 years, starting at the ground floor of safe sex, job placement, education, drug testing for government aid, statutory changes, and policing changes. In my experience, policing is reactive. Cops don't write or pass laws, nor do they make choices for people who break them. Cops are tasked with cleaning up the dirty ugly mess that those previous two things create when they collide. Realistically, it's a massive massive problem and I honestly couldn't begin to tell you where it needs to start, but yes, policing is certainly part of the solution.
The good that can come from Ferguson and Baltimore is that on a national level we're starting to have a discussion about what we want from the police in our community and the realization that we can change the nature of that relationship if we're committed to making the effort. Now if we can just stop Fox News from convincing conservatives/republicans that cops are never wrong and MSNBC from convincing liberals/democrats they're never right, we might actually get something done.
FactsRule there are so so many agencies, programs, and systems failing the communities and populations they're designed to help, and it just gets ignored and then when failure after failure eventually boils over the end result is a run in with the law, and suddenly police are front and center to blame. Child Protective Services, Medicaid, the entire god awful mental health system, section 8 housing, the list goes on for miles. How are cops supposed to make up for billions of dollars of mistakes? They just get the shitty mess at the end, and 90% of the blame.
I'm sure the topic will come up eventually, but I think when this thread inevitably talks about prisons and prison guards, y'all should start a new thread. No pol-lice wants to be associated with them, and mixing the topics does unnecessary conflation of the quite-disparate jobs and such
Police are in the spotlight because when they make mistakes it often winds up in an innocent person being killed. That's a much easier issue to point a finger at and the fact that police departments tend to defend and cover up such mistakes just compounds the issue and makes the public far less trusting of an organization that should actually be the most trustworthy.
Again, I'm not arguing that cops don't make mistakes. They're humans like everyone else. FactsRule was speaking to the climate around policing in America right now, and I'm giving my opinion on how and why that climate has been established. It's bigger than just cops.
You use words like "often" and "tend" pretty freely without any substance to back up those assertions. Employees of child protective services "often" falsify reports because they're so understaffed. The child they were supposed to check on "tends" to wind up dead.
I understand. Just trying to explain why it's easier for people to focus on police mistakes than the larger issues you're saying should be addressed. For example, not everyone can understand the intricacies of the problems with the mental health system in its current state but nearly anyone (that is willing to be objective) can see issues with citizens being abused or killed by police in the incidents in which that occurs and it's captured on video. I agree that "it's bigger than cops" but the fact of the matter is that cops are some of the least willing to acknowledge their own mistakes and some of the first to cover up the mistakes of others within their line of duty. That creates a major distrust between the officers and the people they're tasked with protecting and until that aspect of police culture is fixed I just don't see how the rest can be addressed.
You're right. Poor choice of words. Please don't Ark me with semantics. When I refer to police making mistakes, I mean specifically with regard to use of lethal force. Not smaller, more forgiving mistakes. And I don't mean "often" in that it happens a majority of the time or anything. Merely that it seems to be a lot more prevalent than it should be and higher than the standard most police agencies would typically be held to. Especially ones outside of our country. As for police tendencies to cover up issues, that seems to be an openly admitted and acknowledged thing. In other threads before, the veteran LEOs of TMB like NNB and WC and a couple more have all admitted that there's a messed up system of covering the ass of another officer or else facing potential blacklisting within (and sometimes even outside) a department. That culture goes to further the distrust between the police and those they're tasked with protecting and serving.
I don't disagree that there are a lot of problems, but we can't fall into the trap "oh we can't start trying to fix this one thing because nobody's fixed that other thing yet" thinking.
I think you're being a little hyperbolic with the whole people can't trust cops. I don't know what you do for a living or what your life experiences are, but I feel safe assuming you aren't in law enforcement. For example, I don't generally trust anyone, but I've seen the shit that goes on in poor black communities so I get the big picture. Unless you've seen 4 year olds sleeping on piss stained mattresses in hallways while cockroaches crawl the walls, how can you get it? Especially when the only reason you saw that 4 year old was because his 23 year old mom called 911 because her other baby daddy's new girl was texting her death threats on the iPhone 6 she bought with her tax return, instead of buying him a bed to sleep in. Oh, and that tax return? She got it because she has kids, not because she has a job. What child has a chance growing up in that? If you've never spent time in that environment, then nothing I say is going to get past the "cops shoot people because they're liars who know they can get away with it in a backwards system" block that is in your head. I have been told, in person, that a 16 year old girl couldn't talk to me about busting out her mom's car window because she needed to go shopping with her tax return she just got back from her pregnancy. I have been told by a 50+ year old sober female that she hoped I was the next cop that got shot, simply because I was giving the teenagers she rented her closet sized spare room out to, 10 minutes to move their stuff after she evicted them for not paying the $400 rent. I've been told by a grown man that he was going to kill me the next time he saw me because I arrested him for a fraudulent oxy prescription that he was using to sell to the high schoolers on his block. I've been in a vehicle and then foot chase with a 17 year old kid who became a 4 time felon in January for stealing cars and is staring at significant jail time. Where does he go to find a life when he gets out? Bad cops are part of the problem. I've admitted it several times in several threads. But if you can't see that there's a tremendous cultural issue that's underneath the visible tip of the iceberg then I've got nothing else to say about it.
Oh you're right. I agree and I've talked about it with cops and civilians alike. But where do we start? Family Life class in schools? Drug testing for government assistance? Decriminalization of drugs? I don't know the answer.
it's absolutely bigger than just cops. Cops operate within the limits society establishes for them. People don't generally like to think about crime and bad things happening and so as long as they aren't becoming victims themselves, people aren't generally inclined to think very much at all about cops, what they do, and what they should be doing. That's all on non-cop people. I think some simple openness would be beneficial. Require tracking and reporting of shootings by and/or of officers at the state and federal level. It would also be nice if there was way to track proven shitbirds that have been booted from one police force and prevent them getting jobs in other ones. We don't have to solve poverty to take those steps.
I have never had any serious interactions with police to make me distrust them and I generally don't. I'd have no hesitation calling the police if I were in a situation that I felt warranted it. But I'm a stable adult that generally handles stressful situations appropriately. As I mentioned earlier in this thread, if I were dealing with a mentally unstable individual and needed help getting them under control, I'd definitely have some real hesitation about getting police involved. But all of what we are discussing is anecdotal anyhow. I have just noticed a growing distrust among the general public. I think the following supports that view. A series of polls done by Reuters earlier this year. http://polling.reuters.com/#!respon...llest/dates/20141229-20150126/collapsed/false Do you believe police officers to be fair and just? 49% Yes. 28% No. 22% Unsure. I tend to be wary around police officers. 51% Disagree. 36% Agree. 12% Unsure. Police officers routinely lie to serve their own interests. 41% Disagree. 31% Agree. 27% Unsure. It is understandable that some teenage boys and young men are weary of police officers. 65% Agree. 20% Disagree. 14% Unsure. While not all of those are majorities distrusting, those are pretty staggering figures to me. If even 20% of American citizens distrust the police then there's a major problem with how they're viewed in our country. A problem that is not beneficial to the police or the citizens. A large part of that problem may lie in the respective cultural backgrounds of the the people(s) but it is also very much steeped in the way police portray themselves to their fellow civilians. Again, the us vs. them mentality. There are major issues that need to be address across the board but to act like the police side of things can't be changed until the civilian cultural side changes is foolish and discourteous towards the general public they're tasked with serving.
In NC any police involved shooting is automatically investigated by the SBI, so I'd imagine at least at a state level they are tracked and reported. As for not hiring previously fired shitbird cops, I know with my application I had to list any previous law enforcement employment and presumably that would be followed up on and a bad reputation would prevent a hiring. At the same time, and I'll readily admit this, the hiring pool for policing isn't exactly the top of the barrel. The hours, the pay, and the stress don't lend themselves to the best of the best always being hired. I'm not saying you're wrong at all, merely providing points from my own experiences.
I'm just going off of what has been reported in this thread about the Cleveland cop being an idiot at a prior job. I also remember reading a lot of articles saying that police departments weren't required to report those stats nationally and I think not all states required it when the Ferguson stuff was front page news. If that's wrong, my bad.
I agree with the "us vs them" part. It's tough to verbalize. I've never considered myself to be a normal cop in a stereotypical sense. I'm pretty rational and generally can step back and see arguments from other POV's. The us vs them thing is tough tho. Cops don't deal with 80% of the public, outside of the occasional traffic stop or accidental house alarm going off. We deal with the same 20% most of the time, over and over and over, so I think that probably contributes to your point. To me, it isn't necessarily a cops vs civilians mentality, but rather a cops vs that 20% who break the law habitually. 20% may be high I guess, but you get the idea. It becomes a game. Hide and seek if you will, and it's easy to lose sight of the humanity that is supposed to be part of the job. Cynicism sets in, everyone you deal with even outside of the job becomes an asshole, and it's tough to want to socialize outside of police circles because reality is not many get the tole that policing takes. I think you're generally right though. Something has to change, especially given those numbers.
I've got no idea what other states do with their policies, or how it's handled nationally, unfortunately. My department (Raleigh) tends to be a little more progressive than most in terms of policy and civilian encounters so maybe I'm biased.
But when compared to the number of construction and farm worker deaths, this number really isn't that impressive.
Happens all the time. A lot of times baby mama will see shitbag former bf riding around with his new chick and call it in as a suspicious vehicle with drugs/guns in it knowing we will respond differently