California officer shoots and kills boy, 15, holding gardening tool

juicy@lemmy.todaybanned from community to News@lemmy.world – 762 points –
California officer shoots and kills boy, 15, holding gardening tool
theguardian.com
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Let's list all items that do not look like a gun during a police encounter. I'll start:

Small puppy Couch Basketball Bucket full of fruit Ice

I can't think of anymore at the moment. There's bound to be one or two other items.

No one has claimed it looked like a gun. He was running towards the police with a gardening hoe with a clear intention to hit him. There's video of it in this thread. This is not an example of a police shooting an innocent person. They shot someone that was attacking them with a lethal weapon.

Billy club, taser, or just a good old Sparta kick to the chest. If lethal force is your first instinct when a child comes at you with a stick, you should in no way be allowed to carry a weapon.

Billy club, taser, or just a good old Sparta kick to the chest.

Wouldn't a gardening hoe have range/length/blockage on those other weapons, making them ineffective for defense?

Club yeah, taser should be able to reach out and touch him, pepper spray, or just run back and try to talk the kid down since you’re the grown adult, fuckin something from these shitbirds who get a tax break on an MRAP and then cosplay as soldiers with none of the rules. Lethal force should be the last resort, not a reflexive first move. Bad training that is essentially just thin blue line propaganda.

Club yeah, taser should be able to reach out and touch him, pepper spray, or just run back and try to talk the kid down since you’re the grown adult,

I was thinking the taser wires could get caught up in the hoe forks, as they would be in front of the person.

Pepper spray may work, though I've always read that there's some people who get used to it, so it doesn't stop them from doing their violence.

I'm thinking at the point where someone is running at you (per the OP picture) with a deadly instrument it's probably too late to talk them down.

Lethal force should be the last resort, not a reflexive first move. Bad training that is essentially just thin blue line propaganda.

Can definitely agree on this one. Considering we keep seeing this crap over and over again, I got to wonder what kind of training the police departments are giving their people, that this keeps coming up.

Not discarding proper training, but what we really need is something that only exists in fiction, Star Trek phasers, set on stun.

Did you watch the video? The cop literally was running away from the guy that was chasing after him.

The way you defend against a reach weapon is by closing in, not giving space. Unless you have murderous intent.

Unless you have murderous intent.

I think it's safe to think that would always be the case, if someone comes at you with a weapon.

*child *farm implement

And by you I meant the cop. But I agree we can assume they’ll always have murderous intent. That’s the only thing they’re trained to do. Mental illness? Murder. Acorn fell? Murder. Child having an episode? Murder. Suspect complains they can’t breathe? Murder.

No, tasers and clubs are used when someone is of no threat whatsoever to you (ego disincluded). Guns are for everything else. But also sometimes just for everything /s

Now lets put you there under an attack and give you 4 seconds to decide what to do. I wanna see that Sparta kick.

4 seconds to decide what to do.

Isn't that what training is for? To train the brain to react appropriately? Why do hair dressers require more training than cops?

The training, what little there is, is the problem in this case unfortunately. All the killology and us vs them horseshit they tell cops leads to precisely this type of situation. Proper training means that is indeed more than enough time to check down an ROE before using lethal force, but when you have a hammer and no one punishes you for hitting the wrong nail…every kid looks like a nail if they’re they wrong socioeconomic type or color and you’re constantly in “fear for your life.”

The point is that it's quite easy here to observe the video comfortably from your couch at home and with the power of hindsight ponder what they should've done instead. The officer being attacked here had no such luxury. This is in no way me saying that there's zero issues on how policing is done in the US. There's nuance to these things.

Well talk about nuance! you think pulling out a gun and putting some lead into a 15 yr old with a spade was the only option!

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Why is it important to let everyone know that you are at any given moment about 4 seconds away from killing a child?

The "child" in question is a 15 year old adult sized man.

No mother fucker. No. This was not a man. This WAS a child. Fuck off with your quotation marks.

"I swear your honor, this was no child...that 15 year old girl was stacked like a woman"

I was willing to give your argument consideration until this braindead-ass comment. You can fuck right off now. Goddamn boot lickers.

Describing a teenage boy as a child is just pushing a narrative to minimize the potential threath by him. Look at the pictures in the article. If someone his age and size charges at you while wielding a weapon then you should be scared for your life. That is not to say shooting is the optimal solution but you better do something and quick.

I looked at his picture and I see a child.

You looked at his picture and you saw his black skin, and that was all you needed to see...

I think it's safe to assume that of us two it's you whose more interested about the color of his skin

As an active duty member of the US Navy and specifically the submarine forces, people like you make me less and less hesitant to set condition 1SQ for nuclear launch when the time comes.

People like me? You care to elaborate what you mean by that?

People like you = cops. Murderous arms of the state. The people who the founding fathers warned us about when writing the 2nd ammendment. The people who treat civilians as if they're worse than Taliban. Who "protect and serve" rich white people while happily shooting at black 15yo "adults" or whatever excuse you want to be a murderer. You resign your humanity when you where a gun and badge, and most of all you relish in the permission to resign your humanity. You execute civilians then go online to argue with people who don't like murderers like you. I cannot wait till Americans finally get a grip, for the whole planets sake, and start treating cops the way they deserved since the MOVE bombing of 1985, since the Tulsa Massacre, since the Pinkertons invented you cops to protect white people from black people. You stand against everything America is supposed to represent, and stand against everything humanity, peace, love, wisdom, and compassion is supposed to represent. I bet you beat your wife too, because statistically ya'll are also domestic abusers who hit women, no wonder you're so afraid of prison because you'll be KOS and rightfully so. "20 a day" should be for cops, not our servicemen, but cops like you are PROUD of your tyranny.

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Maybe that's why they give all that cop training for? You speak as if cops are cornered deer.

I'm not speaking of police in general. I'm speaking of this specific event.

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Are you aware there are countries all over the world where police don't resort to shooting children when situations become tense and potentially violent?

Yes, I live in one of them. What does that have to do with what I said?

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I have been assaulted in a very similar fashion, shovel, around same age, and I was also a teenager. I did not need or want a gun to diffuse the situation. And this officer had grown man strength.

I agree. Using a firearm obviously was not the optimal solution here but not totally unjustified either.

I'm sure had he been unarmed he likely would have dealt with it by other means aswell. One of the big drawbacks of carrying a firearm is the ease of hasty and irreversible decisions.

You sure this was what set him off? You sure he didn't hear an acorn drop?

Either one can apparently trigger police officer Psycho Mode.

Yea, he could have reached for anything other than the gun tho.

I wonder why they don't shoot in less vital spots like legs or hands in cases like that. Distance seems to be small enough to precise shoot.

Are they undertrained or deliberately escalating?

We were told when I was in junior high about 30 years ago by one of our teachers that cops weren't allowed to attempt non-lethal shots with guns. It either had to do with being sued for intentional maiming or something, or that if a person isn't endangering you enough that lethal force isn't necessary, then shooting your gun at all is putting someone at risk of death when it isn't warranted. We were also told it was better to just run away because cops weren't allowed to shoot you in the back because you are no longer a threat.

I don't know if any of that was true then or if it is still true now, but it makes me really sad as an adult that a teacher felt it was important to teach kids about how to not get shot by police.

shoot you in the back because you are no longer a threat.

Some wisdom doesn't last the course of time

The thinking is that a gunshot is always lethal force. If you want to stop the threat most effectively you aim for center mass. So in this case someone is attacking you with a weapon capable of causing death or great bodily harm and legally you can defend yourself with deadly force.

The training deliberately is to aim for center mass, the police have made no secret to that.

Legs are suuuuuper lethal. Hit the thigh, good chance of obliterating the femoral artery, gives you well less than a minute to stop the bleed before the person loses consciousness and maaaayyyybe a couple of minutes before they are unalived.

And as others have pointed out, they are massively under trained in the US, and the training they receive is basically that every person you interact with has a gun and they want to kill you, so pull your gun ASAP and make your first shot a kill.

Doesn't a chest have more lethal zones in comparison to limbs?

I've wondered the same thing. That's what police often do where I live. Here's an example.

To my knowledge they're not exactly instructed to do so but probably choose to do that of their own will likely because killing someone is going to fuck you up wether it was justified or not.

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