The cops should have found another option, but the kid should have known better, that's my two cents on the subject.
Police shoot an "armed" middle school student
- Thread starter Kenbo Slice
- Start date
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"Police shot and killed an eighth-grader in the hallway of his middle school Wednesday after the boy brandished what looked like a handgun and pointed it at officers"
Any sympathy I might have had for the kid vanished at the end of that sentence.
I think there wa a news report just recently how cops killed-by-gunshot figures are at an all time high right now. Dont point a gun at a police officer. Simple really.
Any sympathy I might have had for the kid vanished at the end of that sentence.
I think there wa a news report just recently how cops killed-by-gunshot figures are at an all time high right now. Dont point a gun at a police officer. Simple really.
My point still stands though. In the case of a taser vs a gun as you bring up, cops can decide well before which they're going to use. For example, someone with a knife in a domestic assault will warrant a taser, although the cop's PARTNER will still have their gun drawn on the subject.Abandon4093 said:
If you're complaining about the lethal levels of force of live ammo over the LTL capabilities of rubber bullets, you contradicted yourself by stating that "they aren't used by western governments anymore because people die from them". I'd rather cops kill someone they meant to kill than they accidentally kill someone they didn't mean to.
Finally, you still haven't answered my question about your thought on rubber rounds being used in the military. With all the public complaints about the deaths of "innocent civilians" overseas, should the militaries of the world being using rubber rounds or tasers in ambiguous situations like you're suggested our police forces do?
Honestly I don't see how this could have played out any other way than it did. Even if those cops had been carrying less than lethal weapons, when they saw what they believed to be a gun they were right to go for theirs over anything else.
Glad to see some defense of the police for once. Seems these days that anything remotely negative about a situation involving cops is used as license to trash the whole institution.Kenbo Slice said:
Anyway, OT: "Just" a pellet gun is something very easy to say after the fact, when hindsight gives us 20/20. The fact is, even on the best days, police are poorly trained to handle the potentially-life-threatening situations they may be presented with. In this case, though, the kid was holding a "gun" of some description. I once had a snap gun, that if you took the roll of snap paper out, looked very much like a real, if tiny, pistol. So, unless the cop was right on top of the kid, he likely couldn't have known the difference. And according to the cops, the child was told repeatedly to drop it, and didn't comply.
I empathize with the parents' loss, but this was, at bare minimum, acceptable in the line of duty.
Police may have tried to talk the kid into putting down the gun. Thing is they dont have long, if their is a threat to life, do they wait and let some one get shot and then react? If you carry a gun and the police arise then the common sense thing is to drop the gun. The kid didnt and got shot. End of the day a bullet fired by a kid does the same damage as one fired by an adult.
Sure, blame the cops. My two cents, is someone like you would blame the cops no matter what they did or no matter what the outcome was. Lets just say the gun was real, and the kid with the gun shot someone. You'd be all like "cops could have found another option" "cops should have done more" "cops should have reacted faster". And don't insult me, or anyone else intelligence by denying this. Cops can do no right in your eyes unless they "end it peacefully" no matter if a cop or two get injured or killed in the process. Nothing is ever good enough.CrazyGirl17 said:
Cold hard facts. The gun was questionable whether it was real or not. Kid ignored repeated orders to drop the gun. Every second that kid was not on the ground or disarmed was another chance someone else, including the cops, could have gotten hurt. You give up your right to not get gunned down by the cops when you start unjustifiably brandishing a weapon. And every second they didn't, and ordered the kid to drop his weapon, was a courtesy.
This fad of blaming the cops and siding with the offender needs to stop. I've got the recipe for success here people. I've never been in trouble with the cops, had a few run ins, but nothing more. Wana know what it is? Don't do illegal shit. Obey a cops orders. Win.
Dude, I tried reasoning with people from North America on this. Don't waste your time. They genuinely believe shooting this kid with the aim of killing him was the best way to resolve the situation.nackertash said:
Regards from Wales.
I believe the trouble there is that you end up with everyday people being better armed than the police. You'd have trained, qualified police officers being limited to rubber rounds that can easily be blocked with a flak jacket, whereas everday members of the public can legally carry around armour-piercing rounds. American gun laws are seriously messed up already, they don't need to be any worse.Abandon4093 said:
The only thing that has really insulted me about this whole argument i've been having is the additude from the American posters, they're trying to make me look like an asshole for wanting to NOT KILL CHILDREN.davros3000 said:
The shots were perfectly justified, it's what the officers were trained to do in the situation, blame their training. In hindsight it may have been better to fire a warning shot, scare him into dropping the pellet gun.
While this is a sad thing to happen the kid brought it upon himself, which judging from the article is what he was trying to do. He brought something that looked exactly like a real gun and he threatened police officer's with it. They did not have any sort of less-lethal option so they used the only option they had, the lethal one. Certainly sounds like suicide by cop to me.
What type of ammunition does one fire for a warning shot?Shifty Tortoise said:
One of the cardinal rules of firearm safety is KNOW YOUR TARGET AND WHAT LIES BEYOND. So what would be the 'target' of this warning shot? The hard concrete floor were the bullet could easily ricochet? The soft ceiling that may potentially have people above? A wall where the bullet might penetrate and do the same?
Bottom line: Not only do you not fire 'warning' shots, you REALLY do not fire warning shots in a building full of innocent people. The barrel of a gun pointed at your face is warning enough, not to mention repeated commands to 'drop your weapon'.
He had plenty of opportunities to rethink his actions, not least of which was to not bring an object closely resembling a firearm to a school. The police did everything right to resolve what (so far as the information they had indicated) was a potentially deadly situation, and as a comedian once said: you can't fix stupid.
I feel sorry for the cops. Regardless of what some may think, no cop wants to shoot someone, especially a kid. That officer's going to have to live with that for the rest of his life.
It's very easy (and stupid) for someone to criticize decisions in hindsight after they have all the information well in hand.
It's very easy (and stupid) for someone to criticize decisions in hindsight after they have all the information well in hand.
