An officer in upstate New York shot and killed a teen fleeing while pointing a replica gun, police said Saturday.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/17056255

An officer in upstate New York shot and killed a teen fleeing while pointing a replica gun, police said Saturday.

  • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3468·
    4 months ago

    I said this when Tamir Rice was killed. I said it in the 90s when the California kid was killed. And I’ll say it here too.

    There’s no one single person at fault, but the person at fault the most is the parents for not teaching their kid how not to be a dumbass.

    “Hey, what’cha doin’ Jimmy?”

    “Just taking my toy gun out to play”

    “Whoa there! That’s a bad idea. If this gets mistaken for a real gun, somebody will call the cops on you, and they’ll KILL you for real! Nope! You’re not going out with this gun. Even if it is plastic, a bb gun, a pellet gun, or anything else that could easily be mistaken as the real thing.”

    And I’ve heard it before: “But cops are the ones KILLING the kid!”

    Yes, and I do agree that a LOT of what the cops do is corrupt, this is the ONE CASE where you expect them to shoot to kill. When they are under the impression that you have an active shooter, you WANT them to shoot to kill.

    “But it’s NOT an active shooter! It’s a toy gun!”

    And how do the cops know that? They get a call that theres a kid with a gun. Have you SEEN how many kids get real guns and shoot up schools the last 20 years??? They have to treat these situations as real.

    “But he’s just a kid!”

    And a kid with a gun is just as deadly as an adult with a gun.

    The way to not have cops shoot you on the spot is to not appear like a deadly threat to society. Now we can sit around all day debating on how we got to this point, but the reality is we live in a world where kids shoot people with guns. If you have what looks to be a gun, you’re gonna get shot. And the kid may not even know what he did wrong…and thats the parents fault.

    Because if cops wait around, and figure things out first, you have Uvalde all over again. People were pissed, as they should be, that police showed up, and DIDN’T shoot a kid.

    I have no love for police in their current state. I’m even subscribed to a community on Lemmy called “the police problem”.

    However, this is like the ONE THING they’re good for, is stopping active shooters. Don’t want to get shot by police? Don’t make yourself appear as an active shooter.

    • southsamurai@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      421·
      4 months ago

      Ehhh, you’re dealing with an idiot kid (and all kids are idiots to some degree) and a supposedly trained professional.

      I would place the weight of fault on the officer and/or whoever trained them.

      Yeah, you should always teach your kids about firearm safety and drill into them to never, ever carry one at all until they’re adults. And that includes anything that can propel a projectile that isn’t obviously and visibly a toy.

      But the truth is that a 13 year old was target that got shot. By an adult in body armor, with training. No shot had been fired because you can’t mistake a bb gun sound for even a 22 going off. So there was no active shooter here.

      It’s another bad shooting that’s going to get swept under the rug.

      • yeather@lemmy.caEnglish
        618·
        4 months ago

        On that note, 13 is more than enough to understand these things. I had bb guns when I was around 13 and always knew never to take take the orange tip off, bring it around in public, and never show it to people that didn’t understand. At the end of the day, the cop and the parents are at fault.

    • octopus_ink@lemmy.mlOPEnglish
      291·
      4 months ago

      Because if cops wait around, and figure things out first, you have Uvalde all over again. People were pissed, as they should be, that police showed up, and DIDN’T shoot a kid.

      I don’t claim this is intentional on your part, but I believe you’ve created a false dichotomy. There is a spectrum of outcomes between what happened here and what happened in Uvalde.

      (and again, I’ll believe he was pointing it at them when I can see a video proving he did so)

      • norimee@lemmy.worldEnglish
        4·
        4 months ago

        It’s like accepting of the fact that your police is incompetent. They either shoot everyone or let someone else shoot everyone. That’s not doing their job as police.

        • octopus_ink@lemmy.mlOPEnglish
          3·
          4 months ago

          It’s a common way people try to justify their actions. As if police are a force of nature. You wouldn’t stand in the path of a tornado, why would you expect police to act on more than the most superficial analysis of the situation and with less than the most violence they can justify.

    • lurch (he/him)@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      151·
      4 months ago

      someone having a gun is no reason to shoot them btw… especially not if it’s a kid. that the gun wasn’t real isn’t even relevant.

      if you can’t carry a gun in public, you effectively don’t have the right to bear arms, but AFAIK NY law grants citizens that right.

      however, even if guns were illegal in NY, police should still not shoot people just for having one or waving it around. they should carefully capture the person. if police isn’t brave enough to do that, maybe you have the wrong persons for the job.

      • w2tpmf@lemmy.worldEnglish
        6·
        4 months ago

        if you can’t carry a gun in public, you effectively don’t have the right to bear arms, but AFAIK NY law grants citizens that right.

        Nope. NY’s laws prohibit having a gun anywhere outside of your home.

        To make it even more ridiculous… this includes the pellet gun this kid had. In NY having a air gun is a felony weapons charge. (sections 265.01, 265.20, 265.01-a)

      • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.worldEnglish
        412·
        4 months ago

        When you point a gun at a cop, even a fake gun, I understand why the cop shoots you dead.

        • RachelRodent@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          81·
          4 months ago

          because they’re pussies? are the most notorious killers of america afraid of a little kid with a gun? Shouldn’t have they received training about such a situation and if they did why are their first instict is to kill?

        • Malfeasant@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          4 months ago

          You don’t question whether the kid actually pointed the gun at them, cop says he did so he must have. Not like a cop would lie to cover his ass, right?

          • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            4 months ago

            Cops are all wearing body cams these days. With a case like this, he’ll either submit the body cam footage, or he won’t.

            And if he doesn’t then it’ll be real suspicious as to why.

    • maryjayjay@lemmy.worldEnglish
      7·
      4 months ago

      Strange. Doesn’t the second amendment guarantee our right to keep and bear arms? But apparently the cops are allowed to murder us for it.

      I wonder when it will be okay for them to kill us for exercising free speech.

      🤔🤔

      • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.worldEnglish
        41·
        4 months ago

        You can keep and bare arms…but you can’t point them at people. Cops or otherwise. First rule of owning a gun is you do not point the gun at anything unless you intend for it to die.

        And also, with how many nut jobs are in this country, I’m thinking maybe we should revise the second amendment, or remove it completely.

        You know how many public shootings Ireland had last time I looked? 13. In a year. And that included cops using their weapons. 13 total. Drunkest country on earth, but they got their shit together on guns.

    • RachelRodent@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      81·
      4 months ago

      so is it okay to have people run around and have the authırity to kill you if they see you with a weapon? (or if they lie about it)

    • DrSteveBrule@mander.xyzEnglish
      61·
      4 months ago

      How can you mention Uvalde and say that the ONE thing cops are good for is stopping active shooters?

    • Empricorn@feddit.nlEnglish
      41·
      4 months ago

      If this gets mistaken for a real gun, somebody will call the cops on you, and they’ll KILL you for real!

      That’s absolutely insane, that us Americans have to think this way. Getting murdered by law enforcement shouldn’t ever be a near-certainty.

      Active shooter

      You keep using that term, but I don’t think you understand it. Unless someone has started shooting people, there’s literally no active shooter. No one would call that in, and police officers arriving on scene would also determine there’s no active shooter, if they’re actually doing their job. People might call the cops on a child with a toy gun (don’t do that), but the police officer is responsible for discerning the true situation before using lethal force.

      And a kid with a gun is just as deadly as an adult with a gun.

      I’m no gun nut, but just having a gun doesn’t make someone a threat any more than having a knife, a vehicle, a frying pan, etc. It certainly doesn’t make them an imminent threat that has to be killed immediately. The US has way too many guns, but still: just the existence of a gun doesn’t make someone a danger worthy of killing.

      #But.

      With all that said, in this actual interaction, the police stopped the boys and one of them pointed what appeared to be a handgun at the officers. I’ve long since stopped giving cops the benefit of the doubt, but if it happened exactly like they said, legal force was absolutely justified in this case. It was later discovered that it was a replica GLOCK 17 Gen 5 handgun with a detachable magazine.

      • remer@lemmy.worldEnglish
        32·
        4 months ago

        And tasers have an alarming failure rate. If someone was pointing a gun at you what would you do?

        • GeneralVincent@lemmy.worldEnglish
          21·
          4 months ago

          If a 13 year old was pointing what I thought was a gun at me? I would use the taser and try to get out of the way of where they were pointing.

          I will say, I read the article and if what the cops say is true, there were a number of compounding unfortunate circumstances. It was late at night, the kids ran when they were approached, and the kid died from a single shot. The cops didn’t pull up and unload their guns on the two kids.

          ACAB, but I’m not saying they were malicious or grossly incompetent in this case. But I still think they’re too quick to shoot first and ask questions later. I personally think they shouldn’t shoot unless shot at, that would eliminate these cases that keep happening. Teaching kids to not play with toy guns would be great too, unfortunately guns are just so deeply engrained in every aspect of American culture

    • Todd Bonzalez@lemm.eeEnglish
      1·
      4 months ago

      I was going to resist saying that you were racist, but it seems like you say the same racist thing every time a black child with a toy gets killed, so it’s pretty obvious that you are a racist person.

      It’s pretty easy to just not shoot children, especially when they haven’t even shot at you. An adult with a gun is potentially just exercising their constitutional rights, so we can’t just kill gun owners on sight. A child with a gun is vulnerable, we can’t apply a stricter code to children than we do to adults!

      I don’t care how realistic the gun looked, they certainly had no reason to think that they were being fired upon. They fired the first shot, because the gun the child has isn’t even capable of firing a round or even simulating the sound of a real gun.

      If you support the “shoot first ask questions later” strategy for policing, you’re a fucking fascist. If you are indifferent to children being slaughtered for playing with toys, you’re a fucking monster.

      • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        4 months ago

        Well, that just shows how little you actually pay attention to what I say. I’ve only talked about 3 different kids, in 3 different decades who’ve been shot by police. One was white, one was black, and one was asian.

        So, explain this “it seems like you say the same racist thing every time a black child with a toy gets killed”.

        Every time? Every one time? Tamir Rice did stupid things. Ultimately I place the blame on a poor communication between the dispatcher and the police, and his mother. But also a bit with him, since 13 is old enough to know NOT to play with toy guns in public. I was taught that lesson when I was 4, because my PARENTS saw me doing that in the front yard. They called me in, and explained how doing that in public is a bad idea. They explained that someone could mistake it for a real gun, and it would scare people. This was before the threat of being shot by police for having a toy came into the picture. This was the 80s. My parents were making sure I didn’t scare the neighbors, because they were thinking of others thoughts. The idea that I would be shot didn’t cross their mind.

        Now, the boy in California from the 90s, his parents didn’t teach him that lesson. That’s why he’s dead. Tamir Rice’s mother didn’t teach HIM that lesson. There are other factors at play in his case, so it’s not strictly on her. However she could have prevented the situation from even happening. It’s the same reason I don’t skydive. Sure, it’s the instructors job to make sure I’m safe in knowing how to operate the parachute…but I’d still have to trust the parachute to work. I’d have to trust the pilot to safely operate the plane. I’d have to trust the plane to not malfunction. I’d have to trust the birds not to fly into the planes engines, or into my parachute. I’d have to trust the other skydivers to know what they’re doing, and not collide with my parachute mid-air.

        Sure, you can blame all the things individually that go wrong…or you can prevent the whole situation, and not skydive.

        Don’t want the police to have a misunderstanding of toy gun vs real gun? Don’t wave anything resembling a gun around. You can either live in the world you wish were real…or you could understand the world you DO live in, and work around it’s limitations.

    • Spiralvortexisalie@lemmy.worldEnglish
      43·
      4 months ago

      Lulz only on lemmy can the most rational and sane take be downvoted and most negatively commented on. To me you make absolute sense!