Thanks for pointing that out. Harsh way for a kid to learn a life lesson, from the business end of a gun.
You play with fire, you get burned. I teach. I've seen many teenagers about his age. He should know better than to take the orange safety tip off a gun. He should know better than to pull out that gun when having a gun pointed at him and being commanded to put your hands up.
Yes, being shot is definitely harsh. But if you walked into your home and there was a guy that you've never seen before, you draw on him and say put your hands up, they reach for a gun in their waist and pull it out, what would you do? Now turn that "guy" into a 14 year old. Do you see a small scrawny kid, or do you see a large bruiser of a kid with a death look in his eyes? I've seen both at that age. We've not seen a picture of this kid, we do not know why the cop rolled up in the first place. If all we have is the scenario of a) put your hands up, put your hands up, b) kid reaches for gun instead, c) kid starts pulling it out; what do we do in that scenario? We have all been trained to shoot in that scenario.
Not to argue with either of you, but just to clarify, my first post was not intended to say "Great job cop!" I addressed only one detail of the case - the orange safety tip that was (apparently) removed - but that was only because I was attempting to understand the legal implications of the shooting.
Everybody here who carries better understand what the legal threshold for firing our weapons is, but in case anyone has forgotten, it's a *reasonable belief* that you're facing a deadly threat. I was moved to reconsider my original reaction to the story by a very well-stated post by dstryr, but the more I thought about, the more I kept visualizing what I *reasonably believe* is a real gun in the hands of the person I'm confronting, and I also keep thinking that the law is
supposed to protect me from prosecution if the assertion of reasonable belief has
any validity when the various facts of the case are taken into consideration. 3 seconds is
way more time than is "required" for someone to reach a reasonable belief of a deadly threat. If I reach that threshold, I fire, and if there is a replica-quality "gun" lying on the ground right where I shot that threat, that damn well better enure to lending credibility to my claim of reasonably fearing for my life.
Everyone knows I'm no fan of cops, but I am a fan of following the law. I don't want cops prosecuted who simply did what I would've done in similar circumstances just because they're cops. The problem comes when cops get special treatment when there is
zero "reasonable belief" of a valid threat, like in the Kelly Thomas case, and cops get off scot-free.
I don't know all the details of this case. If it were to come out that the reporting on it has been inaccurate about facts that would tend to diminish a valid claim of reasonable belief, then I would expect and join everyone in demanding further investigation. But as it stands now, I have to stick with what I said in my first post,
"Taking the reporting at face-value, with no further mention of any controversy about what they have reported, I can't fault the cop-shop or DA for clearing the cop."
Blues
