13 year old boy tragically shot by California Police

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A sickening tragedy!

Prayers out to family and officers involved.

I think the #7 post by 44Amp sums things up fairly well.

There was a time that an officer could most likely complete his/her LE career and never clear leather under stress one time.

There was also a time that it was very seldom heard of that a juvenile committed a serious violent crime as well. Let alone be involved in a shooting.

Sadly, in both instances, those days are gone.

Just look today at the juvenile's that are taking guns/knives to school killing students and staff. Just this week here in Ohio we had a juvenile kill a teacher.

A 'google' search of juveniles from ages 10-17yrs old committing murder especially at schools will turn up so many hits that it seems to have become an epidemic.

LE are the ones responding to these situation many times observing the aftermath and seeing firsthand that a child can kill ya just as fast as an adult.
Did LE react in this situation to quickly? Don't know I wasn't there.

But I bet we can all know for sure that the cop/cops that pulled the trigger surely did not look forward to doing it and will be haunted the rest of his life.

I've got family in LE that deserve to go home to their families each night.

I've got many g-kids and nephews very close to the age of this boy that deserve to reach adulthood.

You bet this Papa/Uncle will be showing these youngsters this article doing his best to educate them. It's my responsibility.

Again, prayers to the family and officers involved.
 
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Just another piece of the puzzle - evidence that our world is collapsing piece by piece and inch by inch. This was unjustified murder.

When cops would shoot a kid in a civilian neighborhood - lack of criminal or hostile intent, that's pretty bad. Not long ago, cops were out to serve and protect. Now, the overwhelming attitude is, "I'm coming home tonight no matter what." That is a dangerous attitude.

Heck, I am intimately familiar with the rules of engagement in war, and the way that kids behavior was described that's not even hostile intend. Soldiers in Iraq would have been prosecuted for murder doing what these cops did.

And I'm sure the cops have stricter ROE than Soldiers in war.

Anyone paying attention sees the totalitarian direction our nation is marching toward: the war on drugs, no-knock raids that get innocent people (and pets) killed, unlawful arrests and detentions, etc.

It's getting very scary.
 
Real gun, or not, legally a gun or not, that only comes into play after the fact.

As I have said before, perception is important, and creates its own reality. Recent cases where police have "mistakenly" shot people are creating an impression, and that is, that the response of officers to their perception of a weapon is "DROPIT!DROPIT!BANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANG" in the amount of time it takes you to read this, and less time than it took me to type it.

ANY weapon.

It seems that the police are shooting, before commands can be understood, let alone complied with. In this most recent shooting, I believe the age of the child did play a part. 13year olds are not noted for being the most diligent about safe gun handling. And, on top of that, the boy knew he wasn't holding a real gun. The officers, of course, did not.

The report said his back was to the police. Kid hears a shout behind him, maybe he hears the blip of the siren, maybe he sees the reflection of the lights, he turns, and the rifle looking "toy" or "pellet gun" (immaterial which, at this point, it looks like a gun), turns with him. Police see someone turning to them with a gun, likely perceiving it as being pointed at them, and fire.

In another case, fairly recent, a officer sees a man on the street with a knife. He approaches the man, from behind, shouts for him to drop the knife, and as the man turns, shoots, and kills him. Only two rounds, that time, one in the back and one in the side (so later reports said). The guy was known to the locals, a middle aged street person who made and sold woodcarvings, who was also partially deaf. The officer, apparently knew none of these things.

There are others, and we can analyze them at length for their faults, but one thing seems to have become a familiar common element, and that is the officers involved are shooting without being actually threatened.

The say they were threatened (and who wouldn't?), I'm sure they believed they were threatened at the time. I'm not faulting anyone for shooting when they believe their life is in danger. What scares me is the level of training, experience, confidence, street savy, or whatever combination of things it is that allows an officer to correctly assess a situation in the brief time they have seems to be lacking all too often.

For a drastic comparison, back in the early 1970s (and I am going entirely from personal memory here, so if I make small errors, please bear with me), in northern NY a killer murdered three teenage campers. Tied two of them to a tree and stabbed them repeateded (57 times for the boy, as I recall) third body found a couple weeks later down an old mine shaft.

The cops, and a lot of the rest of us went after the guy. The manhunt went on for weeks during that summer in the Adirondacks. He was armed, with a .30-30 and a shotgun. He was seen by the police several (3 at least) times. The police could not catch him in the woods. And they could not shoot him.

Because, at the time the police were forbidden to shoot, unless shot at. And each time they spotted the guy (and he spotted them too) he never shot at, or even pointed his gun at the police, and managed to escape on foot.

He was eventually spotted and taken down by a CO (Conservation Officer aka Game Warden) who hit him with some of several shots of buckshot. CO's at the time were NOT under any departmental restriction about having to be shot at before shooting. The killer survived, and went through his trial in a wheelchair, paralyzed from the waist down. He wound up being sent to a min security place, downstate.

I bring this up to illustrate the huge difference in SOP between then and now. I am currently of the opinion that the best SOP for the police should be somewhere between these two extremes.

Oh, and the killer? seems he wasn't as paralyzed as he made out. One night he went over the wall. He was found a few days later, in a patch of woods. According to what we heard at the time (don't know the real truth), the autopsy said he had been shot. 37 times. With at least 5 different calibers. No officers were involved, and as far as I know, no one was ever arrested for killing the killer.

back on point,
I don't know if a different kind of training would help, no one, wants to put our officers at extra risk, and even having a detailed set of rules of engagement might mean risk from indecision and hesitation on the part of an officer in a dangerous situation.

These incidents of officers making bad snap judgments seem to be happening more often. Maybe its the Internet effect, I don't know. What I do know is it makes the cops look bad, and that only makes their jobs more difficult and dangerous.
 
44 AMP said:
It seems that the police are shooting, before commands can be understood, let alone complied with. In this most recent shooting, I believe the age of the child did play a part. 13year olds are not noted for being the most diligent about safe gun handling. And, on top of that, the boy knew he wasn't holding a real gun. The officers, of course, did not.
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I agree. And I believe it is institutionalized. I know it is in my state -- at the academy, they teach cadets to demand and to expect instant compliance with their orders. They are not taught to "discuss," they are taught to order. If the subject does not "comply," they are taught to escalate the order in a louder, firmer tone of "command voice." And once they enter "command voice" mode ... it's all over. ANYTHING the "subject" does after that, if it's not instant and total compliance with the order -- even if the order is illogical and illegal -- is deemed to be at the least obstructing justice and more probably threatening.

44 AMP said:
The report said his back was to the police. Kid hears a shout behind him, maybe he hears the blip of the siren, maybe he sees the reflection of the lights, he turns, and the rifle looking "toy" or "pellet gun" (immaterial which, at this point, it looks like a gun), turns with him. Police see someone turning to them with a gun, likely perceiving it as being pointed at them, and fire.
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That's the way I figured it. The kid probably heard a voice saying "Drop the gun," and turned to see who they were shouting at. Couldn't have been him, 'cause he wasn't carrying a gun. (At least, not in his mind.)
 
@Jerrys.

You can't go killing people unless you are threatened.

If YOU, Joe civilian shot this kid, you'd be going straight to court and prison.

If YOU, Joe civilian can't shoot, then sure as heck a squad of cops who are PAID to take extra risks and disarm suspect and not shoot on the spot have a GREATER responsibility. Training, tactics, tools (Taser, anyone?).

I wasn't there, but lets assume for the moment that the 13 year old REALLY did have a loaded AK47. Even assuming that's the case, it's still a stretch that he's an imminent threat that you must shoot to kill, and that not giving him a moment to comply isn't just a better plan... this is a civilian neighborhood in California - it's not Afghanistan.

I would further assume that the cops have taken some tactical cover (car engine block, trees, etc.) for instance (actually I just watched the video, and the cops did not take any cover, just concealment). Anyone that honestly appraises the situation must have understood that this kid is probably not going to be very proficient with an AK47... hence he's almost zero 'real' threat given the circumstances. Give the kid a moment to comply or heck even if he opens fire you've got 2 guns trained on him. And a 13 year old isn't going to hit you behind your cover. And that also does one of two things:
1. Saves his life - no shooting, OR
2. Makes it justifiable for the cops to shoot him.

Now this hypothetical ignores some REALLY important points.
A. Perhaps, since AKs are illegal and very rare in CA, this 13 year old might have a toy gun. Where is the sane person in the police force that says, "Hold on a second, my kid has a toy gun just like that?" Heck growing up every kid (and cop) knows of stories of kids with toy guns getting shot. It should have crossed SOME of the cops minds that this might just be a toy.
B. Didn't it occur to any of them that when the kid's back was to them, when they yelled, the kid would naturally turn with the gun toward them. Seems they were abit trigger happy when they called to get his attention and when 'it worked' and he turned, they blasted him!

I noted several tactical mistakes from the video and article.
a. They pulled the car up so only the doors offered cover. That is a mistake. Should have pulled up perpendicular so they could get behind the wheels.
b. The 'toy' is obviously a toy to anyone that has handled an AK47. The size, shape and colors and barrel length are wrong.
c. Not giving the boy a chance to comply. Obvious mistake.
d. They shot the boy numerous times. The missed numerous times. Less validity in their argument they were 'protecting the community' from gunfire when they are dumping 8 rounds into the neighborhood rather than waiting to see what the boy does.

It's clear this will be investigated. I don't know the facts. But this does NOT look good on the surface.
 
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The tragedy of this is undeniable, and of course the event should be closely scrutinized.

However, in my experience the internet firearm community can be quite quick to scorn the police, perhaps a side effect of our small government, strongly individual rights oriented community. In this matter some context may be illustrative - namely, that in California 13-year-olds involved in gun violence are not at all a rare thing. In a book that I read for a class in my Pre-Law Criminology undergrad - Monster, an autobiography by Sanyika Shakur, a former L.A. Crip - socialization into gang activity throughout California (though obviously concentrated in L.A.) was common for children much younger than that.

In the end, this thing will get armchair quarterbacked to death like every OIS, but never forget the context of the state's criminal history, and most importantly never forget that it happened in heartbeats. This will not be an excuse in all cases - sometimes the police gravely overreact, and they should be penalized accordingly in such situations. Sometimes, though, sad things just happen, events set in motion by other events that come to a head that, perhaps, could not have been avoided. Tweak a fact here or there and it could be a story about how an AK-47 armed teenager fatally shot a cop who hesitated thinking the firearm was a toy.

And on it goes.
 
leadcounsel wrote:
If YOU, Joe civilian shot this kid, you'd be going straight to court and prison.

If YOU, Joe civilian can't shoot, then sure as heck a squad of cops who are PAID to take extra risks and disarm suspect and not shoot on the spot have a GREATER responsibility. Training, tactics, tools (Taser, anyone?).
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Agreed, and thus the problem. LE should be held to a higher, or at the least, an equal standard to the "civilian" CWP holder. Sadly, it seems the bar is much lower for LE, as are the penalties for a "bad shoot"

LockedBreech wrote:
sometimes the police gravely overreact, and they should be penalized accordingly in such situations.
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That is the other part of the problem, this incident may be "armchair quarterbacked" by any and everyone, but it will be investigated by the peers of the LEOs involved. There appears to be no citizens review board in place in Santa Rosa, despite public outcry for one. The "penalties" if there are any, will be "administrative" at the worst.

If LE had to face the same criminal charges as you or I would in such an incident, I suspect it might temper the way it unfolded.
 
If I were walking down the street, carrying a concealed firearm and shot the kid who was holding an airsoft gun, how do you think I would be treated?

Based on the facts presented in the article, would I be justified in pulling my firearms out of concealment? Pointing my gun at the child? Shooting the child with who was carrying a toy AK?

The answer is clearly NO. The reason the answer is "NO" is because the boy carrying the toy gun was not pursuing or threatening anyone. My life would not be in danger. It would not be a justified shooting, EVEN IN A STAND-YOUR-GROUND state. Therefore, I feel the officer who shot the kid has no more legal basis to claim his life was in imminent danger and therefore justified in using deadly force.
 
It's going to be "armchair quarterbacked" by the FBI
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As well as right here on TFL. :rolleyes:...

..and I'm sure when the FBI start their armchair quarterbacking, they(FBI) will be privy to a lot more facts then we will ever know.

But alas, a few have already held court here on TFL and quickly convicted LE of murder with nothing more then their own assumptions of what happened based on what they've seen in the media. `

Understanding that this IS a true tragedy that needs to be investigated very closely by those that have experience in these types of investigations and will use actual facts of the incident to do so rather then 'media' facts, wouldn't it be fair to say at this point that saying LE is guilty or not of wrongdoing is a bit premature?

Jumping to conclusions and leaving out pertinent facts(facts usually left out by the media) in shootings is the same tactics the anti-gun crowds use to try and disarm the general public.
 
This is a tragedy, but one that can be learned from. A child is dead, there is a public outcry for the heads of those responsible, and no one knows what exactly happened. Sure, we can have a general outline, but that is nowhere near enough to say that the officers fired without justification. I am not a LEO, and don't have any family members that are. However, I do have some good friends that are. Many of them have made comments to the extent that far too many LEOs shout a command that can hardly be understood and then react with more force than necessary when the suspect doesn't comply. Stress can make you (and others) think that you are being completely clear and giving ample time for another person to respond when you are doing neither.

Hopefully LE agencies take the time to review this and understand just what went wrong (if anything). And no, it isn't guaranteed that the officers did something wrong as so many people are quick to assume. But, the way the articles are written it sure seems like that is the just of it.
 
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