Cops killing children dealing with mental help episodes and get rewarded with more funding is something that makes me sick. Body Cam footage shouldn’t depend on if cops feel like releasing it should be sent to an independent party automatically. RIP Ryan.
Thugs with badges.
There are great questions as to whether it was appropriate to use deadly force against a 15-year-old autistic kid who was having an episode,
To the cops? Yes.
Mental illness is always a license for them to kill, it happens ridiculously often even by statistical count.
Something about unexpected responses and unpredictable reactions to shouting and gun waving that give the pigs an excuse to shoot.
Remember that deaf guy that was killed because of his whittling knife? I don’t think the cop suffered any consequences except a paid vacation and an innocent and confused life was lost and the world turns on.
Just crossing the street and clueless the cop was even calling out and bam bam bam shot from behind and he died bleeding out in confusion and fear.
And 1/3 of the country applauded the cop for his community centered focus on reducing the number of undesirables.
Ooh, I can answer this one:
No
I’ll write that down as a “maybe”.
Yep, right up there with that Florida cop freaking out over falling acorns or something.
ACAB
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.
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.
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?
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.
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
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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Is that a garden hoe? Looks like an adze to me, which, if that’s what the kid was wielding… I could see an argument for use of force. An adze is basically a curved hoe with a bevel that can be as sharp as an axe’s, just perpendicular to the handle.
A garden hoe, which is what it looked like in the video, is a flat piece of metal on the end of a handle that would definitely hurt, but not like an adze, and likely wouldn’t be sharpened.
They used to call them shin splitters or something because carpenters back in the day would stand on top of logs and swing the adze down towards their feet to mill that face of the log flat. If you missed, well… Yeah, goodbye toes/shin/etc.
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It is to a weed.
Do you kill people who run at you?
people who run at you
One sec, analyzing.
Only if they’re carrying a skateboard.
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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Cops in America also firebombed and dropped C4 on civilians so ya’ll might actually be in competition with not just Sierre Leonean justice but like Islamic terrorists too. In fact, cops have killed more civilians than Islamic terrorists could ever hope for. Cops are the real terrorists of America.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1985_MOVE_bombing ya’ll bombed Philadelphia.
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UK manages.
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?
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.
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.
Did you watch the video? The cop literally was running away from the guy that was chasing after him.
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.
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!
I do not hold that belief
The British have figured this out, why can’t Americans:
London Bridge attack: Darryn Frost on using a narwhal tusk to stop knifeman
Why dont you just admit that you cum in your pants when you see kids murdered? We all know it.
If you can’t handle a teenager with a gardening tool what the fuck can you handle?
Keep in mind: these are supposed to be trained professionals with convenient access to lethal weapons and yet every. god. damn. fucking. time their response is to escalate to the point of killing.
Cops can go fuck themselves. As a profession they’ve proven themselves as capable as a toddler and as dumb, angry, and confused as… I don’t know. I didn’t even think it was possible to be as dumb, angry, and confused as they are.
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.
Holy shit you absolutely jack off to snuff films of black kids.
He’s a cop he doesn’t need the films.
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.
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.
I’ll do you one better, I’ve been attacked with actual weapons dozens of times and harmed someone beyond scraped knees and elbows defusing that situation zero times. I work in mental health, we’re not allowed to hurt the people that need our help. Workers that do face legal action and internal investigation immediately, and every one of those actions stays on your record for years.
Cops are cowards, and you’re another.
Why are you attacking me instead of what I’m saying?
Probably because you are carrying water for pigs.
Because as a cop you dehumanize yourself and other people, therefore are undeserving of humanity. Ya’ll have been killing black kids long before that time ya’ll dropped C4 explosives on their homes in 1985. Cops are irredeemable fascist pigs, gun-wielding arms of the state, whom the 2nd ammendment was written to permit shooting.
Why is it always people from lemm.ee that go to such lengths to praise and justify cops?
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
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.
This piece of shit couldn’t fight a 15 year old with a hoe? What a coward. One gut punch and the kid would have folded like a lawn chair.
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kids a buck fifty soaking wet, looks all of 5’5 from the pictures, and the family wasn’t helping. Did you kill all of those “15 year old thugs”? seems like we might have heard about you if you were as much of a coward as this cop
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Fascist pig, I hope your murder victims haunt your dreams you tiny dick coward, you’re worse than a criminal.
Wow, racism mixed with sexism and slutshaming. you can be really proud of yourself man. go get therapy.
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racism is racism, and sexism is also sexism. both are well defined, and both are in your comment. i don’t care what color you have, because you already showed your fucked up thought processes. go crawl back into your swastika-decorated hole.
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If I encounter a professional boxer in a bad mood, I would shit my pants. If another professional boxer encounters a professional boxer in a bad mood, they would shrug it off and deal with whatever happens.
Cops get trained. Being prepared for dangerous situations is essentially the core of their fucking job. Apparently, that preparation seems to be often simply “if shit gets ugly, shoot the shit out of whatever frightens you”. Cops should be better at dealing with this than random citizens with a gun.
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Sounds like you got kicked out another comedy club and are butthurt about it. Places of fun and laughter are no place for a fascist pig like you, you’re not welcome anywhere.
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And your safe space is pointing a gun at someones face.
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wow, guys. Stop everything ! Apparently we live on planet Earth, and as you all know, that means we can’t improve things or point out abuse. Everyone go home ! nothing to see here. After all it’s planet earth
fucking dimwit
“by a wide variety of men”
I imagine your ability to definitely determine parentage, i’m assuming through observation and research, got you moved to somewhere your observational talents could be better employed ?
No point in wasting that kind of talent on the streets fighting the statistically high percentage of 15 year old bodybuilding thugs and their mothers.
I didn’t even have to open the article to see the boy’s skin color. And I’m not remotely shocked.
Officer was backing away from the kid, and turned to run away from him. The officer was actively retreating from the attack at the time the shots were fired.
Two officers were present. It is not clear from the video who fired the shots. It is very clear, however, that the kid was actively attacking the officer.
Sensationalist bullshit title from the guardian. Typical now. You can’t just get unbiased news in many places. They all have to push an agenda.
Too bad there aren’t things cops could do other than murder when this sort of thing happens.
If only a cop had literally any other option to stop someone with a garden implement other than a gun.
Too bad guns are the only option to stop people…
Police in other countries are constantly able to non-lethally subdue people wielding knives. Do not normalize this reaction.
15 yo with a hoe, vs. 2 “trained”, “fit” men with weapons specifically designed to kill instantly with a twitch of a finger.
Everywhere else in the world the kid would get a slap on the wrist, parents penalised, settled and sorted.
Slap on the wrist?
He spent the day trying to kill everyone around him, and you think he deserves a slap on the wrist?
Parents penalized? Theit kid tries to kill them, and you’re going to penalize them? The victims?
Your value system is completely out of whack. Kid is a threat to himself and others, and should have been locked up. Whether as a patient in a psychological institution or an inmate in a correctional facility is an open question, but separation from society and professional supervision is not.
Yes, lock him up, that’ll fix him! Fucking put him in a solitary, that does wonders to mental stability, scientifically proven!
Of course you need to be institutionalises, but I bet to fuck that this didn’t just happened out of thin air and parents were neglecting symptoms. I bet they didn’t want to / couldn’t deal with it because of the insane (no pun) costs associated with it.
Either way, shooting down an underage with a sharp stick is barbaric and medieval.
Yea sadly the kid was an aggressor here
But the cops should be using tazers or something non-lethal to deal with this kinda altercation
To safely employ a tazer in this situation, the cop would have needed body armor completely covering his head, neck, torso, arms, groin, and legs. Wearing anything less than full riot gear, that attack posed an imminent threat of death or grievous bodily harm. Striking the officer’s head or neck with a bladed weapon could destroy an eye, sever the carotid artery, or cause a wide variety of maiming or permanently disfiguring injuries.
Employment of a pain compliance method is only feasible once that threat has been stopped, delayed, or mitigated.
Neither of the officers present appeared to have had any opportunity to use a tazer or less-lethal device to stop the attack.
He was 15. You’re saying that two trained and experienced police officers couldn’t deal with a 15 year old boy. Don’t make me laugh. “Bladed weapon”? Was the kid a samurai?
They deal with hardened criminals and meth labs in San Bernardino. But a confused 15 year old was their arch nemesis? No one is going to believe that and they better not try to convince a jury with that story. Like the acorn guy, these cops are going to be laughed off the force.
Got it. You didn’t watch the footage.
You sound like all the cowardly cops. If you can’t handle a non lethal situation like this with your tazer: find another job.
I see. And what training, instruction, or other expertise do you have to support your assertion that this was a “non lethal situation”?
I believe that I could cause a permanently disfiguring, debilitating, or lethal injury with any of the long-handled tools in my shed. I believe if a racist teenager swung one of these tools at a black man, you, too, would consider it to have been a use of lethal force.
I think a reasonable person facing a 15-year-old attempting to strike them with any of my gardening equipment would reasonably fear a threat of death or grievous bodily harm.
I reject your characterization of this as a “non lethal situation”.
I don’t know about him but I was an Infantryman who invaded Iraq. And no. You’re wrong. You don’t just shoot kids clearly having a mental health episode. Especially with multiple cops present. You only need one designated shooter while everyone else works the problem.
Also, pain compliance is to neutralize threats. If there is no threat then you’re just torturing them. Where I’m from that’s called a war crime.
Surely we’re holding our police to a higher standard than a 19 year old scared shitless in a warzone? Right?
You don’t just shoot kids clearly having a mental health episode.
Kid tried to jam a shovel in someone’s neck. That’s not a “mental health episode”. That’s an imminent deadly threat.
There is no ROE that prohibits anyone from using lethal force in that situation. Never has been. Never will be.
Tazers fail. A lot. You have one shot and if one of the two barbs don’t both go in for a good connection it doesn’t work. It’s not something anyone would want to count on in a situation where you or someone else is being attacked.
If you have multiple cops at the scene though, you can easily have one go through the tool kit using tazer, pepper spray, etc, while the other one covers them with a gun.
But that takes like actual thinking and training.
That’s not as simple as it sounds. Even if they somehow knew exactly what has happening and had pre-arranged a plan of action, by the time they knew the taser has failed, the partner is as likely to shoot the other officer as the assailant.
Tasers simply aren’t effective in these situations.
Pre-arranged plans… Hmmm like Standard Operating Procedures? Or Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures?
They didn’t need a football pre game huddle. It’s as simple as one guy saying “cover me” while they choose a less lethal option. This is literally why they train. Why we give them so much money.
And just because you deploy a Taser does not mean you stop creating space. Likewise, there is no rule that the partner needs to take a shot from 10 meters away. Standard infantry practice for an engaged buddy is to get right up in there and shoot where you can be sure of it. Just make sure you call the shot so your buddy knows to turn away. Which is all also training.
These guys ran straight into an unknown situation and someone died because of it.
In the video, what was the time frame from first seeing the kid to the kid attacking him with the weapon?
You didn’t watch the video. You are commenting based on an article written by someone with less knowledge and experience than you.
while the other one covers them with a gun.
Yes, exactly. They work through every less-lethal option they have, with an officer ready to escalate to lethal if the subject ever puts someone at imminent risk of death or grievous bodily harm.
If, for example, an atttacker is ever close enough and aggressive enough to attempt to stick a shovel in someone’s head and neck, a covering officer can immediately stop the attack with lethal force.
So, officers could start with a less-lethal option, like a baton, or tazer, or bare hands, and only escalate to lethal force if the situation actually calls for it.
Still trying to ignore everything else about the situation I see.
FYI, tazers aren’t “non-lethal.”
Less lethal than a gun shot
Why not use tranquilizers? Field biologists use them to check up on wild animals, why can’t they use them on “criminals”?
Tranquilizers aren’t instant like they show on TV, most take 20-30 minutes to kick in.
Hoes are.
Wasn’t there a case some year back where a police officer was attacked and they mistakenly grabbed their gun instead of their razer due to panic? The details are murky.
But the cops should be using tazers or something non-lethal to deal with this kinda altercation
Something non-lethal… Like the “bare hands” they attempted to use on their arrival?
Title is highly misleading, but that’s to be expected of The Guardian.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZgNAa2sXSc
The bodycam footage has been released and the shooting was clearly justified.
The kid was autistic. It was not justified.
Lick that pig hoof son, I’m sure it’ll make them your friends.
‘clearly justified’ for shooting and killing a child point blank for threatening violence with a garden hoe? That officer reacted as if he was being hunted by a monster. You people need to learn some fucking empathy and common sense.
Yeah. It sucks, but what did the family expect? They couldn’t control him and as soon as the police arrived he charged them with a weapon. Shit situation, but an entirely justified shooting.
As if a grown ass officer couldn’t take down a teen wielding some gardening equipment without a lethal weapon.
In some cases they can, but here the officer was charged and the attacker was able to get very close, another second and the officer could have been hit and then who knows what would happen. The footage shows a very clear threat.
So what you are saying is when his parents called the cops, they should have expected their child to be killed in front of them?
So for context my local PD dealt with a fine gentleman who attacked a security guard in his car dual wielding a hatchet and metal pipe. They spent several hours trying to talk him down before charging him with a shield and arresting him without much further ado. If you guessed he was white you guessed correctly.
Whatever happened to tasers? I guess it’s not that convenient for the police to have someone capable of suing back, makes one wonder how many cases aren’t able to get the attention this kid is.
For some reason this is unpopular, but I don’t think a police officer should be allowed to remove their firearm from its holster until actual assault has occurred, unless non-police citizens are in danger.
A cop merely being scared should never be a reason somebody dies.
If you can’t handle the pressure, don’t be a fucking cop.
You know that black women have a higher murder rate than white men in every age group. So, when you hear the 50% per capita murder rate for the black population meaning that about 4 other population groups have to make up the remaining 50%.
Police interfering with the blacks territorial show of dominance is culturally inappropriate. Shame on the police for involving themselves in culture shaming and probably worse.
The Blacks should just be allowed to roam free and do what they want as nature directs them.
Here a lady was going through a 90% black school and neighborhood disobeying the pride of the community.
The show of dominance was of course possibly fatal for the submissive “white” girl.
But, it is natural that when a new group enters your neighborhood that an order has to be established first.
Kid ran towards the officer with an axe, don’t run towards someone with an axe if they have a gun.
It was a hoe. Capital punishment for an episode in the garden is probably a bad take
It’s not a punishment. The cop was defending his own life from a legitimate threat. He could have done things better but this isn’t the unjustifiable killing that people here are trying to make it be.
Lol what? A child having a mental health crisis holding anything short of a gun isn’t a reason to shot. It’s argue unless the child has fired that gun at someone still isn’t a good reason to shoot.
You seem to be making an assumption that the cop was not in any significant danger here. I don’t understand how you can read the article, watch the video and still reach that conclusion. Look at the pictures. The dude was an absolute stud.
I watched the body cam. The cop was retreating, wasn’t cornered, and had size and age on the victim. I work in child care (as a camp counselor) and if I shot a kid every time one became violent (yes even with a “weapon” ) I would be shooting a kid every month. Time and time again it’s been shown that police misjudge the age of minority children by over 5 years. Meaning, I saw a child having a mental health crisis, while this police officer saw a grown man attacking them. That doesn’t mean the kid deserves to die and the police are exonerated. Are you saying every kid that swings a weapon at someone deserves to die? Because that’s were we are headed.
You saw everyone else getting downvoted to hell for this bad take, and decided you wanted some too huh? Much obliged.
