So the current story is 911 call reports kid with probably fake gun, police say that they are not told it's probably fake, then proceed to drive up within a few meters of the suspect and kill the kid?

5 stars.

The kicker is that in it Ohio open carry of a gun is legal.

Unless you're white and it's an AR-15 and you have a sign that says something about the blood of tyrants.

Open carry doesnt mean you can break that shit out and wave it in peoples faces broseph, also I believe theres an age restriction not sure

You're right, better shoot him dead just to be on the safe side.

Real easy to say from the safety of your computer desk. Do you think the officer was thinking "hell yeah a kid with a realistic gun, I can finally kill a black person, which as a racist is my life's dream", or is he thinking "I AM ABOUT TO GET SHOT TO DEATH AAAAA". 12 year olds can and do murder people all the time, and are probably more likely to since they're so fucking stupid.

"Do you think the officer was thinking "hell yeah a kid with a realistic gun, I can finally kill a black person" Yes I can almost guarantee that.

Always best to let the suspect shoot you first. That way you can be sure it was a real gun and that they intended to do you harm, and weren't just pointing it at people friendly-like. And if the suspect kills you, you'll avoid the inevitable shitstorm of recrimination that would have occurred had you fired first, and your family will get awesome death benefits. As many of the people on this site will tell you, the only good cop is a dead cop- you'll have proved them right!
It's like we used to say in Iraq, regarding the Rules of Engagement, "wait until you feel the bullets striking your body; that way you may ascertain that they are not merely tradition Iraqi greeting-shots. If your assailant then grants you clear verbal permission, you may return fire."

"Strange maneuver driving right up to a guy with a gun and getting out of the car"

The alternative would be to park a distance away and then approach on foot with no cover.

Here's an idea. If you see someone brandishing what you think is a gun illegally, how about approaching from a distance with cover and ordering them to put the gun down?

I'm not a cop, have never fired a gun, and played Police Quest for a few minutes before I got bored and even a Luddite like me knows that you assess the situation from a distance first before moving in like that.

(oh. what bort and kamlem said)

How much good will does the police have to spend before this default assumption of good faith finally goes by the wayside?

"How much good will does the police have to spend before this default assumption of good faith finally goes by the wayside?"

Well, the alternatives are to assume that these police were completely indifferent to the life of this child -- and what killing him would mean to their careers -- or (as I've seen suggested on some Web sites) they were actively looking to kill a black kid. Does either of those sound plausible? I find it much more likely that this was a mishandled situation.

Why does it have to be racism *or* incompetence, and not both?

Because it's probably neither. When you're responding to a report of a kid with a gun, and you get there and a kid seems to be reaching for his gun, shooting first is a much smarter opton than shooting second.

While I refuse to call this "incompetence", I can't deny that this could have been handled better. The fact that there is a needlessly dead kid attests to that. The officers say they told him to raise his hands three times, but perhaps they would have been better off staying at a distance and instructing him to lie on the ground. Or waiting for backup. Or third option. In any event, I do know that it's far easier to make that call after the fact than it would have been beforehand.

They didn't just "get there", as in merely arriving on the scene, they pulled up right next to him in their ridiculous batmobile and came out blasting. There was no attempt to make contact or observe the situation or anything. Why do you -refuse- to call that incompetence?

Durr some kid in the park has a gun and is pointing it at people, its probably fake because only white kids do mass shootings. Who is racist in this situation?

It was fake! The gun was literally fake. The guy who called the police said he thought it was fake.

I'm not sure if some people are just trolling here, but if the police thought it was a 20 year old man waving around a real gun in a park, which part of police training tells them to drive up and park right alongside the perp as step #1. Did these clowns go to the Iranian women's police academy?

"There was no attempt to make contact or observe the situation or anything."

According to reports, they told the kid to put his hands up three times; I assume that was done over loudspeaker. (Yes, I am being just enough of a sheeple to think that, once in a while, the police tell the truth and aren't in it just to shoot random citizens.)

"they pulled up right next to him in their ridiculous batmobile"

Do you really think it makes more sense to park a good 50 feet away and walk up with no cover?

"and came out blasting"

Did you notice the part where Tamir seemed to be reaching for his waist? I guess I have to ask how many times a suspect should be allowed to shoot at the police before they are allowed to shoot back.

I won't deny that this could and should have been handled better, but even the parts you're faulting the police for are not the missteps you want them to be.

What should the police have done? With 20/20 hindsight, here's what I've got:

1) The police dispatcher didn't communicate what the 911 caller said, that there was a kid with probably a toy gun. The police dispatcher simply said "gun". That didn't help.

2) Perhaps the responding officers could have called for other people in the park (were there others? if there were, not that many) to leave. Not sure how well that works, though. But if it does, then you can possibly wait for backup.

3) Tell the kid to lie down on the ground.

Hens love roosters, geese love ganders,
Everyone else loves theeeeeSnake!

::studio applause::

"So the current story is 911 call reports kid with probably fake gun, police say that they are not told it's probably fake"

True enough. Listen for yourself:

http://www.wkyc.com/story/news/local/cleveland/2014/11/26/tami r-rice-cleveland-police-radio/19547085/

(Man, does that ring a bell, with 90% of the tech support issues I've ever filed. I give the tech crucial details on how to duplicate the problem or I cite a specific example, and they log it simply as "customer has intermittent connectivity issues". Which leads all subsequent techs to tell me to check my Ethernet cable, rather than them tracking down the actual problem which I spelled out for them on the very first call, and have to repeat over and over until I resolve to host my own server instead of dealing with these idiots ever again. The point is: when people call you and they give you details, COMMUNICATE THE GOD DAMN DETAILS.)

OP - that's actually precisely what they should be doing. Cops have a very different ROE from the military: while they don't necessarily have to be shot to *death* before they can respond with deadly force, even being absolutely certain that the suspect in question is capable of using deadly force is not, or at least used to not be, enough to warrant escalation. Cops need to have this sort of severely restricted ROE, because they are *not* in a war zone; they are in our own backyards.

I worked with the MP school over at FLW for a time, and one of the strangest things I learned there was that the brass actually didn't want civilian cops to join the military, or at least didn't want civilian cops going 31B - they'd rather cops become engineers, or laundry technicians. And the reverse was also true: civilian police organizations generally didn't like to hire former MPs (something which recruiters didn't like to spread around, so forget I said anything). We actually had a rather sticky situation around the MP school taking in a forty-five year old decorated former Texas state trooper; his age wasn't the problem, it was his years spent honorably as a civvie cop, and the concern that his civilian cop training (and, presumably, civilian cop mindset) would be a detriment to the sort of judgement calls he'd have to make down range.

But evidently, that distinction has now gone out the window,and it's one of the most worrying things about police militarization. Just to be clear, this was a cop who rolled up on an unarmed twelve year old kid - a tweenager, not even in highschool - and shot the kid to death with barely so much as a "hello". Twelve years old.

Anyway, HAPPY THANKSGIVING EVERYONE! WOOOOOOOOOO TURKEY DAAAAYYY!!!!!!!!!!!

I worked 911 dispatch for a while for the local pd. They absolutely love to hire exmilitary and will shave off four of the required number of qualifying years for the pension plan if you have four years or more of military service. They also conduct routine boot camp like training. This is for a backwater redneck casino town with an unreal poverty level and about 45k residents. They also are somehow able to refuse to hire anyone over 35. The pd are of course the best paid positions in the city and yes, the overwhelming majority of them are white men. Woo! Deep South!

Yeah, I should specify that cops aren't non-grata for the military (they may also qualify for years served credit towards their military pension, as copping is a government job), it's just that if they do get recruited, we prefer to stick cops in non-law enforcement positions (or used to, at any rate). Police departments do hire ex-military, but generally shy away from people with military law enforcement background, on the basis that former MPs will be harder to "re-educate" as to the needs and priorities of life as a civilian police officer... although anecdotally, I've heard that even this unwritten rule is fast becoming obsolete.

Does anyone here remember, way back in the day, when the big controversy was people getting *tased*? The big social debate was over whether the cops were getting too trigger happy with their *fucking tasers*? That was only like six, seven years ago. At this rate, by the time Rand Paul's presidency is over, I won't be surprised if we're arguing about whether cops should be machine-gunning entire neighborhoods in alleyways, or in nice open fields with pre-dug graves.

(for the record, I think there should be a maximum cap of three machine-gunnings, per neighborhood, per day. That may sound insufficient, but I believe our boys in blue should be giving the non-machine-gunned perps time to consider the consequences of their defiance, and a chance to repent of their wicked ways.)

Bort you have a stunning tactical sense if you think rapidly pulling up right next to an armed man and getting out of your car is safer than doing literally anything else.

A while ago, I asked "Do you really think it makes more sense to park a good 50 feet away and walk up with no cover?" You have made no effort to answer the question, but since you just said that literally anything is safer than that, I guess I'll put you down for Team Approach On Foot With Zero Cover For An Extended Distance.

I love how you argue by making a bunch of fake options; how about park really really far away, hide behind the cruiser then call for back up?

It takes a real poverty of imagination to think your only options in a stand-off are to directly walk up to an armed criminal.

According to the police radio, other police were tied up elsewhere, so backup was not likely to be available any time soon.

One way or another, though, the police were going to have to get within arm's reach of the kid at some point. Racing up to the kid almost resolved the situation peacefully too, except that the kid reached for his gun at the last second. I don't see how walking up at a leisurely pace (still an option you apparently prefer, Mr. Literally Anything Else), or staying at a distance, would have kept him from reaching for his gun.

That said, staying at a distance might have afforded them more time to talk to the kid, but that might have also given him the opportunity to shoot someone else (remember, the police didn't know it was a toy), and then people would be bitching about that. There's an awful lot of 20/20 hindsight here.

so, Bort, your main argument is that police should kill anyone that might theoretically be a threat to bystanders in the future, even if they haven't shown to be a threat before?

by that logic, shouldn't police just get RPGs and blow what they think are drunk drivers the fuck away before even making a stop? Drunk drivers kill a lot more people than guns as the NRA like to point out, so we better start shooting anyone that swerves a little.

Everything you do is going to be a case of 20/20 hindsight if you escalate a situation so aggressively that there's no time to think rationally. And that's by design. The beauty of self-sabotage is that one fails in a particular way so that absolution is concomitant with the failure.

And this goes back to my original statement that we've reached a point where we need to reevaluate our lazy and naive assumptions of good faith on the part of every officer implicated in a wrongful death.

"escalate a situation so aggressively"

So driving up fast means that the normal, natural reaction is for a kid to reach for his gun. Got it.

"so, Bort, your main argument is that police should kill anyone that might theoretically be a threat to bystanders in the future, even if they haven't shown to be a threat before?"

You can't possibly be that dumb. When the police are approaching you and you respond by reaching for a gun, you leave the police little choice but to shoot first. That is what went wrong here.

No, you said the police MUST charge in at full speed, instead of carefully approaching and attempting to diffuse the situation, because the clearly murderous negroid was about to start killing white people at any moment.

What's ironic is that they would say using a taser might be bad in case the suspect had a heart condition or something. Because, duh, getting shot by a gun is so much safer on the heart.

When someone has been menacing people with gun what you really want to do is get right up close to them so you can taze them and see if its real/loaded/get the serial number

Kill everyone that looks like they might possibly be dangerous (black), just to be safe.

the fun part of your reasoning is that it requires an assumption that the people we pay to uphold the law arent actually humans but some kind of irrational animal or natural disaster that can't be trusted.

Let me know when one of those white open-carry guys bringing loaded AR-15's into convenience stores get shot and I'll say you've got a point.

Once again, open carry isn't a license to point your gun at people walking down the sidewalk as this kid did. Can you see the difference or are you a retard? I swear I feel less liberal every time this happens. I can't vote R but I may not vote anymore if my side abandons logic.

Also yes, humans are animals, and if you mean they behave irrationally in the face of threats to their existence then they do. If this kid ran up on you with that fake gun and stuck it in your face you would shit your pants.

So do you see this playing out identically if the kid were white?

http://wreg.com/2014/11/25/salt-lake-cop-cleared-in-shooting-of-un armed-white-man/

Maybe, maybe not. Best not test law enforcement's patience with your dumbass bullshit.

theSnake's last comment is a perfect encapsulation of the kind of paranoid bullies cops have turned into. "Don't test their patience." Fuck you, these people are supposed to be here to protect me, not to find an excuse to shoot me because I said something they didn't like or because my skin isn't their favorite color.

"So do you see this playing out identically if the kid were white?"

I do, at the point where it sure looked like the kid was reaching for his gun. White privilege may be a real thing, but it doesn't include "shoot first" privileges.

Yes it does.

Remember the white cop that started shooting at a black man at a gas station because he went to get his ID, and kept shooting at him after he raised his hands?

In my experience, it's usually because the surveillance system is cheap and shitty. I think this was some kind of store camera or parking lot camera and god forbid they spend the extra money on something that could be 2 or 3 times as useful. Also, it's probably being filmed off the closed circuit monitor since a lot of these systems don't have any realistically useful way of getting the footage off of them.

Up until literally about 2 years ago the store where I work had a system that could only export video in tiny chunks on 3.5" floppy discs in a format that I don't even know what the hell it is. The photos we got off of it were about the same quality as a Game Boy camera.

Yeah really. It also cuts out an indeterminate amount of time between Rice at the Gazebo and the cop car magically appearing. Then again it's 2014. Maybe cop cars used the money on teleportation devices and the police department still uses Final Cut Pro '99.

Here is better footage:

http://www.wkyc.com/story/news/local/cleveland/2014/11/26/tami r-rice-shooting-video-released/19530745/

A predator shows up at about 0:50; police are trying to identify him or her so they can ask some questions.

As fate would have it, right across the street there were some actual gun-oriented shenanigans a few days later:

http://www.wkyc.com/story/news/local/cleveland/2014/11/26/gunp oint-robbery/19565907/

Probably because it's all stored digitally now and decent quality 24/7 video would take up a FUCKTON of space.

If you listen to the call in to 911, the person says that it's probably a toy, but he's pointing it at people and could someone check it out. The responding officers were simply told that there was someone in the park with a "gun". That much we can blame on the Chinese ... the Chinese whispers.

And I'm pretty sure that even a white kid, if he were apparently reaching for a gun, would have gotten shot too. Open carry is just that: you may carry, but you can't just wave it around.

The first thing the pd will do is blame it on dispatch. In the vast majority of police forces, dispatchers are civilians and can be fired at will and often are if something goes wrong on a call whether it was their fault or not. The point is that dispatch is always the convenient red herring/fall guy for some macho cop bullshit.

Listen for yourself:

http://www.wkyc.com/story/news/local/cleveland/2014/11/26/tami r-rice-cleveland-police-radio/19547085/

It's possible this has been edited to place the blame on the dispatcher, but I'm also guessing that, if it has, that will come out at some point.

Even if the dispatcher failed to mention that the gun was probably fake, we've got guarantees of due process in this country. Carrying a gun, even a real gun, is not illegal in Ohio. The cops *did not* witness any crime being committed, let alone a crime so violent that it authorized them to use deadly force. *Even if* the gun were real, which it wasn't, how can anyone (except maybe for SolRo) argue that the cops have a right to just gun down someone, particularly a little kid, on nothing more than pure hearsay relayed to them by a neighborhood informant?

I mean, consider this: if I was to call 911 and say to the operator, "hey, I think my asshole neighbor who won't turn his country music down is waving a gun around", does that give the cops the right to drive up and shoot him dead on sight? Are the police not still obliged to respect due process and ere on the side of restraint? Are they not therefore liable to be charged as murderers, and me to be charged as an accessory to murder?

"how can anyone (except maybe for SolRo) argue that the cops have a right to just gun down someone, particularly a little kid, on nothing more than pure hearsay relayed to them by a neighborhood informant?"

Again -- and this is the point that you people are being deliberately, insufferably obtuse about -- the cops saw Tamir apparently reaching for his gun, and that's why they opened fire. Not because of a phone call, not because of his skin color, but because things had reached that one juncture where cops are out of options. No matter what events preceded that moment -- no matter whether cops had followed best practices or not -- at the moment that the suspect seems to be reaching for a gun, the cops' choices reduce to shooting or being shot.

In retrospect, I think the cops should have told him to lie down on the ground, because that would have forestalled things reaching the point of lethality.

It clearly wasn't handled flawlessly; we've got a dead 12-year-old to show for it.

That said, at the point at which you are apparently reaching for a gun, whatever choices (good or bad) led up to that moment cease to be an issue, because the outcome is always the same: the cops will shoot rather than get shot. When an adult reaches for a gun and gets shot, we call it "suicide by cop", because adults tend to understand the dynamic. This poor kid probably didn't, but that doesn't change much from the police end.

The orange tip wouldn't even have made a difference here, because the orange tip was hidden from view anyway.

Cops should shoot to kill all open carrying white tea bagger douchebags too...before they have a chance to hurt someone, because you KNOW they will.

Better ban fake guns!

I figure it was just a poor kid who didn't understand that, to the police, guns are a deadly serious matter. I feel bad for the kid, his family, and also for the cops who probably wish more than anything they had handled it differently.

Fuck you for making me laugh at a gunned down 12 year old.