An officer in upstate New York shot and killed a teen fleeing while pointing a replica gun, police said Saturday.
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.
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.
Nobody will hear a statement from the other side of the story because the other side is a dead 13 year old.
Do we as a society really need reminding don’t point weapons at police? Don’t do it folks.
Do we need a reminder that kids aren’t mini-adults, and they do stupid things sometimes? In any case, I’ll believe he pointed it at them when I see a video of it.
Certain stupid activities have immediately fatal consequences, that’s life bro. The gun was a replica of a Glock 17, made specifically to look like the genuine article. If someone pointed one at me they’d be well on their way to room temp, and I likely wouldn’t even be charged, because yeah, I would have had every reason to assume I was in imminent danger.
Teach your kids to not be this stupid. A 13 year old in the city shouldn’t have unrestricted access to pellet gun, or any other weapon.
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.
Yeah I can see that. I guess where I have an issue is that the old white guy who shot up a Planned Parenthood a few years back was taken alive (and he’s far from the only example) and it’s like, why is it that they can negotiate and talk guys like that down but don’t bother to even attempt to de-escalate with brown kids? Or brown adults, really.
“I’d rather kill 100 innocent kids than retreat from one dangerous criminal.” /s
Fleeing, and pointing a pellet gun? Not sure I buy the story, based on that alone.
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.
And unless you’re some sort of trick shot marksman, you won’t be any danger to the cops.
This isn’t entirely accurate.
First, just because they’re only slightly less accurate than most cops… doesn’t mean they’re not able to get lucky.
Secondly, I’m reminded of an incident I saw security recordings of, from a guy running across a light rail platform (warehouse district in Minneapolis,) dude was spraying behind him. While running.
Missed all of the people he was aiming at, killed 4 people all the same.
ACAB, so I’m not saying the cops didn’t fuck up. (Or even plant the damn pellet gun…) but yeah. There’s a reason that’s the narrative.
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?
Laws aren’t, by themselves, an effective way to keep dangerous guns out of the hands of criminals, because it is really easy to (illegally) import guns from a place with lax gun laws into a place with strict gun laws. There’s also a problem with existing gun laws encountering enforcement problems from law enforcement agencies who refuse to enforce them or who don’t care enough about it.
On top of that, there is a cultural problem where guns are associated with masculinity and being “cool”. That leads to way more people acquiring them than there really should be, and many of those people really shouldn’t be having them. That’s not something the law can fix.
