“Hey kids, don’t play with toy guns or we’ll kill your sorry ass.” It has such a ring you fucking dirty cop.
Not only was it outlandish to shoot someone with a toy gun, Ohio is an open carry state. If he had a real gun he wouldn’t have been doing anything illegal.
Ya know, if the cops already practiced what they preach, we probably would not be here.
Nice show of community outreach, pal.
“Protecting Those Who Protect Others”
If associations like yours put more emphasis on “others” you wouldn’t need to do so much “protecting”.
I think they should use some of that money to move someplace where the local police union isn’t run by pigs.
The police union’s reliance on the City (and its people) to pay settlements like this means they cannot afford (politically) to indicate that they disagree with the outcome. All they have is victim blaming. Make the money dirty. Lever your clout within the community as authority figures so that if the family doesn’t do what you “recommend” they are selfish and irresponsible, and if they do they concede your underlying and farcical point. This is textbook stuff.
How about them instead funding a training program for police re (a) personnel selection, (b) de-escalation and © sensible safety practices – since the (poorly-vetted) officers rashly threw themselves into the very position of “risk” that they used to justify Tamir’s summary execution. All three were “fails” on the part of the police. Tamir’s only “fail” was losing or removing the yellow marker.
Or at least, how about the officers offering their profound apologies for Tamir’s untimely death, and humbly wishing the best to his family in their future?
As for his looking looking like a threat… I watched the video, and that kid looked like a kid, not a full grown and dangerous man. Nor was he doing anything that looked in the least like a threat, nor were there others nearby to be threatened. Sorry, this jerk’s speechifying cuts no ice with me.
Time to break out the choir.
Here’s something good that could come out of it. Try doing background checks on the cops you hire.
How about police officers having to undergo thorough background – and psychological fitness – checks. And how about also they be trained not to shoot someone without giving that person – adult or child – a chance to surrender?
We’ve seen the video. The police car rolls in and lurches to a halt right next to the kid. Two seconds later, Tamir Rice is on the ground. Even if an order had been given, who here could respond correctly after a shock like that?
An officer who never should’ve been wearing a badge or carrying a gun, based on his psychological unfitness for the job. A violation of engagement rules by failing to stop a sufficient distance away from the potential suspect. A further violation of their own procedures in failing to give the potential suspect anything like enough time to hear, process, and obey an order to surrender. And then the already callous disregard for human life by the officer(s) who’d instigated the unnecessary shooting by failing to administer first aid.
You forget one important detail: The 2nd Amendment does not apply to people whose skin color is other than white and it definitely doesn’t cover young African American males, as we’ve seen over and over again.
The missing orange barrel cap was just a technical violation, not really a crime. Cops could’ve simply talked to the kid and then confiscated the pellet gun. The gun itself wasn’t actually illegal.
But seriously, you think we’d even be hearing about this case if Tamir Rice was legally carrying a gun? A firearm in the hand of a black man or kid in America is basically a death sentence now.
“If he had a real gun he wouldn’t have been doing anything illegal.”
Pardon me, but he wasn’t doing anything illegal with his toy gun.
But I get your point.
A child with a toy gun is killed, the murder, and that’s what it was, is on tape, captured by a security camera. And the killer walks because he wore the right color uniform and the kids skin color was black.
21st century America. How much longer?
When we heard about the settlement and I was angry about the cop getting off, my husband said that Cleveland can little afford to pay out a settlement like this. Hopefully, that fact will result in more training of police, because some sure need to be reeducated.
Exactly. All this yammering about how he looked like an adult. If he looked like an adult his behavior might still have been acceptable to the police had he been white and had the gun been real.
$6 million is not enough to make Cleveland right, obviously, so I don’t even know what to hope for. May they get someplace where the rest of them are safe and his sister can get some counseling for what she went through.
Truly bizarre legal machinations when the GJ doesn’t indict the [unqualified, possibly mentally compromised, previously fired for substandard performance] cop who capped him 2 seconds after he arrived on scene…
But Cleveland pays $6M for “wrongful death”.
Or, you know, on what a dangerous freak Officer Friendly is.
“We can only hope the Rice family and their attorneys will use a portion
of this settlement to help educate the youth of Cleveland in the
dangers associated with the mishandling of both real and facsimile
firearms,” Loomis said in the statement.
Perhaps the Rice family could offer a small portion to educate the Cleveland Police in the use of real firearms and ask the department to put up a matching donation.