An officer in upstate New York shot and killed a teen fleeing while pointing a replica gun, police said Saturday.
Fleeing, and pointing a pellet gun? Not sure I buy the story, based on that alone.
“I’d rather kill 100 innocent kids than retreat from one dangerous criminal.” /s
Yeah, like what are the stats on 13 year olds actually shooting cops vs. just having toy guns? Like at some point you gotta realize it’s probably not actually a threat and proceed more cautiously.
You misspelled “then”.
The bystander video is shown here: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1188314849017274
Video shows three cops chasing a suspect. The first cop tackles the kid and proceeds to punch him. The second cop run up with gun drawn and shots the kid in less than a second while the first cop is still busy wrestling.
IMHO, the 2nd cop’s shooting was incredibly unsafe since he was shooting a suspect wrestling another cop from less than 1 foot away. As far as I can tell, the cop basically ran up to the kid, put his gun to his head, and pulled the trigger. You can not tell from THIS video if there was a gun in the kids hand, but I can’t believe the first cop would not have tackled him if there was! There is no way this is a good shooting.
Shame he didn’t have a school to hide in
It would be funny if it weren’t so sad.
Yeah it stung me too lol
One of them fled and pointed what appeared to be a handgun at the officers, according to a statement by the Utica Police Department.
If the footage confirms this, it makes sense that the officer shot him. Don’t point guns or gun replicas at people.
But they were fleeing and pointed a gun at him? Either the reporting is shitty or it did not happen like the police say it happened.
You can run and point a gun backwards/shoot in their general direction.
And unless you’re some sort of trick shot marksman, you won’t be any danger to the cops.
I mean shooting randomly is always dangerous to someone. People get hit by stray bullets literally every day in america.
If the police were also armed with pellet guns, this never would have happened.
I should point out that pellet guns do not have a ‘Day-Glo Safety Orange/Red’ tip.
As they do eject actually harmful projectiles; they look much like other guns until you get close to them. Reasonable parenting would have included making sure the child understood that under no circumstances do you point that at people.
That doesn’t make this less of a tragedy, but it does provide some context to the situation. Cops are, sadly, trained out of necessity not to try to discern when on the receiving end of any gun barrel. While it’s difficult to expect a child to know not to point weapons at police; doing so is in fact dangerous.
You can’t really trust the orange tip anyway, since criminals have been known to paint that on real guns to trick cops, with mixed success.
Regardless, from a police officer’s perspective, you only have half a second to tell whether an object that someone is getting out of their pocket is a gun or something less harmful, like a cell phone. So it’s understandable why they chose to shoot in this situation.
Of course, if it were harder for the general public to get guns, then police wouldn’t be put in these situations where they have to make life-and-death decisions in under a second, but we have to live with the consequences of which rights we chose to value.
Right with ya, until…
if it were harder for the general public to get guns
Is there anywhere harder to get a gun? Even pellet guns are illegal in NYC. You can be legal in one state, passing through to another state where you’re legal, and NY can take your ass to jail for a gun in the trunk.
So. More laws might help?
[response to comment posted incorrectly]
Outcome is unfortunate but pointing a gun, replica or not, at an officer has always been a very bad idea. Nothing is different now vs 30 years ago.
Do we as a society really need reminding don’t point weapons at police? Don’t do it folks.
Your flaw is that you’re taking the police at their word. Why the fuck would a 13 year old point a pellet gun at the cops?
If I see footage that corroborates their story I’ll believe it. Until then, I’m assuming the murderer is also a liar. ACAB
I haven’t heard a statement from the other side of the story, but it seems you have. So please, inform us all. Otherwise, your speculation based in distrust and hate is moot.
We only have one source of facts at the moment, with a promise for a more detailed followup so, yeah, it carries weight.
I don’t know why a 13yo would do such a thing, or why they even had a replica gun. I’m not them. I feel sorry for them, but according to the facts I know right now, it was a bad choice. I am especially interested if the red tip were removed designating a toy. As the article references a replica, not a toy, I wonder if that had some influence in the outcome.
I am fully prepared to change my view if new evidence persuades me.
The other side is dead. And there’s a video in this thread that shows one cop already in control of the kid and another just shooting him, this isn’t cool no matter what happened before that.
If you’d read the article, the police admitted that they are lying about it:
The department said it is also aware of a video circulating on social media of the incident but warned that it does not portray the incident in its entirety.
When the police say ‘believe us not the evidence’, that means they’re lying.
WOW do you like your own narrative.
That’s not an admission to lying whatsoever.
That is literally what it says it is: that the video circulating online does not portray the entire incident.
Any armchair editor knows how to add start/stop points to a clip. It could be to emphasize a point, exclude content, or simply meet time constraints.
People these days… so easily radicalized. Take a breather and wait for more info.
When the police kill an unarmed child and then try to justify their actions, they’re going to have to lie because there’s no justifiable reason to kill an unarmed child. Hence claiming that the dead child both fled and menanced them and pre-discrediting the evidence against them.
There’s an ocean of examples of police lying to cover up their killings. They lie so often that they got the courts to confirm they have no duty to tell the truth.
Your radical denial of where all the evidence points is not as moderate as you seem to believe.
Unarmed?
Literally armed with a pellet gun. It’s in the title!
Yes, unarmed. As in not bearing a weapon. A toy is not a weapon and poses no threat at all.
I’m just curious, does it ever get tiring? I imagine doing anything 24/7 must be, but licking that many boots just sounds exhausting.
Do you realize there’s a reason you’re being consistently downvoted? Do you care to understand why your opinions are so frowned upon? Or do you simply conclude, in your tiny obedient mind, that the “radicals” dislike the police because we’re all thugs?
This is a trend decades (if not centuries or millennia) in the making, of people in power abusing said power and lying about it. You defending them is a pathetic waste of your time.
Nobody will hear a statement from the other side of the story because the other side is a dead 13 year old.
According to the article there were 2 youths.
There is another side.
There also should be body-cam video that should portray a reasonable unbiased view of the situation.
Police are allowed to point weapons at you and not expect return fire. It’s not considered self defense if you return fire even if the police burst into your home in the middle of the night and don’t announce themselves. 2nd amendment rights are simply an advertisement for the gun industry to sell more weapons and ammunition and has nothing to do with self defense especially from the state.
Actually Breonna Taylor’s boyfriend was acquitted for firing at them as self-defense. In very specific situations and with suitably embarrassing incidents for the police you might be able to avoid having the entire weight of the justice system come down on you. Assuming you survive the encounter in the first place.
He was not acquitted.
The charges were dropped once the massive pile of police incompetence met the shitstorm of public scrutiny.
First the charges were dismissed without prejudice so the prosecutor could dig and see if he could find some way to make it Walker’s fault that cops killed his girlfriend. Then, when he couldn’t (because of the aforementioned appalling incompetence), and public scrutiny didn’t decrease to a point where he could quietly pressure Walker into a cell anyway, they were dismissed with prejudice.
It is important to not make shit up about this. If the public scrutiny hadn’t been as intense, it is entirely possible that they would have dragged him to trial and pressured him into a plea bargain. He was lucky that the public managed to continue giving a shit for more than their usual 30-second attention span.
