13 year old killed by chicago police

[kray]

8 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

I'm sorry but this kid was running with a handgun.

The media is going hogwild with these stories and framing them in a skewed way.

This kid had a gun in his hands in the middle of the night 1 second before he was shot. After shots were fired in the neighborhood.

He wasn't shot for no reason.

@Leo Gura I think you are missing the context. Adam Toledo was previously with another, older boy, who had given him the gun to hide. He was running away because he simply did not want to get caught with the gun. If you watched the whole video, you will see that at the end, he throws away the gun, and puts his hands up. He SURRENDERED, but still gets shots. That is the problem. 

 

By NO means should he have been killed. If the cops were "scared" for his life, he should have found another job 

Edited April 16, 2021 by kray
Adding a detail

[Raphael]

When are people going to stop focusing on small details and try to fix the root?

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2020/06/05/policekillings/

[Corpus]

3 hours ago, Forestluv said:

. When police make assumptions, (abuse/kill) and then afterwards try to find evidence to justify the (abuse/killing). 

 

Substitute the bracketed bits ( brackets added by me) and insert the notions of "acting" or "enacting the law" and you have policing as we know it. It is an assumption-heavy process enacted through an inherently fear-driven and judgemental prism.

[Forestluv]

12 minutes ago, Corpus said:

Substitute the bracketed bits ( brackets added by me) and insert the notions of "acting" or "enacting the law" and you have policing as we know it. It is an assumption-heavy process enacted through an inherently fear-driven and judgemental prism.

I agree that the policing system has an inherent fear that can distort risk into threat. For example, if a man is large and intoxicated risk is increased - yet bein a large intoxicated man isn't itself a threat. Many large intoxicated men could be crying about their girlfriend or passed out. Opioids are depressants that would actually reduce the risk of threat. As well, there is a difference between an officer getting a 911 call for domestic violence vs an officer pulling over a driver that seems to be half conscious on heroine. . . Yet an officer might see a large black male that appears intoxicated and assume he is under threat. 

These types of assumptions lead to escalation. I was leading a discussion in a self-help group and one of the women went into a delirious rant. Another woman interpreted that as threatening, stepped outside and called the police. The officer arrived and with the mentality was going to restrain a psychotic, threatening woman. Yet she wasn't threatening at all. She had a mental illness and wanted to talk about her sexual escapades with James Dean (which were delusional and off topic). Yet the cop escalating things and she freaked out. I was able to intervene and talk her down. The cop wasn't trained about how to deal with mental illness. 

[Loba]

I had a premonition about this and then it happened the next day, same with the Boulder shootings and also the singing rooftop thing that happened in italy during covid, the robin hood wallstreet thing, and even covid itself - and a few other things, can't remember off the top of my head.

Something collectively needs to be done about the spirit of discord.  

All I can do for now is work on it in myself. ?

"As above, so below."

Edited April 16, 2021 by Loba

[DocWatts]

It's also worth pointing out that how dangerous it is to be a cop in America (compared to other professions) tends to be overstated.

Police officers aren't even in the top ten of workplace fatalities in America, sitting right between being a mechanic and a construction worker.

And yeah I get that being a police officer is a psychologically demanding and stressful job, but so is being a teacher in a low income neighborhood. Or a Social Worker. Or an Emergency Dispatcher...

[snowyowl]

Is a 13 yo child allowed to be out alone in the US? They aren't in my country. If we're looking at the broader context, where were his parents/carers? There's huge risks already with unaccompanied kids, even before there's a handgun added to the problem. We need good parenting as well as good policing. 

Edited April 16, 2021 by snowyowl

[Leo Gura]

6 hours ago, SS10 said:

Why was a 13 year old kid running around with a handgun? Do you not see the deeper problem. 

Why not tazer him? Why not confirm that he had a gun on him at the point of engagement?

Hahaha

You ever been in a gun fight?

[kray]

3 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Hahaha

You ever been in a gun fight?

But here's the thing....the thirteen year old didn't shoot at the cops. There was no gun fight. These points skew away from the actual problem.

[NorthRise]

7 hours ago, SS10 said:

Why was a 13 year old kid running around with a handgun? Do you not see the deeper problem. 

Why not tazer him? Why not confirm that he had a gun on him at the point of engagement?

Americans are so stupid and ideological about guns it is laughable. This happens nowhere else in the world.

Of course there is a deeper problem... Lack of education, family structure, oppodtunies, etc. in these communities.  

 

Tasers aren't an end all be all. Plus this kid had a gun in his possession. If the cop tazes him the kid could easily get a shot off. This kid was seen with someone shooting at cars right before this chase so he was clearly capable of using the gun. 

The officer had no other choice. It's easily to hyperanalize events like this after the fact. I would like to see you in this situation with your life on the line with a split second to decide what to do and see the decision you make.

Edited April 16, 2021 by NorthRise
Update info

[NorthRise]

1 hour ago, kray said:

But here's the thing....the thirteen year old didn't shoot at the cops. There was no gun fight. These points skew away from the actual problem.

Toledo was with a 21 year old who had just shot at a car moments for the police altercation.

[Ryan R]

9 hours ago, Harikrishnan said:

Yes he was shot for a reason, kid could have went and killed many accidently.  but he put hands up, i can agree maybe the police couldnt understand what kid was doing and maybe his reflex pulled the trigger, but how about shooting on the leg? like here police is told to shoot on legs only. 

Most US police train extensively to shoot (typically a double tap +) for center mass (basically the chest) in order to "stop". The average cop is not trained to specifically kill, maim, or cripple, but to reliability hit and incapacitate ASAP to eliminate the threat of return fire.

The legs of a perpetrator can be shot to pieces even, and while that is happening and until they bleed out, they can remain a very serious threat to officers and nearby civilians. It would be considered negligence on multiple levels on the part of police to shoot to cripple people. 

This incident is of course a tragedy as most shootings are, but please understand the cop had to make a very high stakes split second decision in an adrenalized state with far more limited information than we have in looking at it all in hindsight, with multiple angles of video, and after an investigation.

I'm sure the officer didn't know he was engaging a 13 year old. If you examine the video it appears the cop and the kid are approximately the same height. If that is a 6 foot tall fence, which is likely from context and as a norm, then this 13 year old was around 5'9"ish. As is often the case the media, usually in conjunction with the family and the PR firm and attorneys they have hired, is likely showing an "old" photo of him as a sweet innocent looking little kid in order to generate greater outrage. 

I'm not a cop, but I've worked with many and I assure you there are very few police officers that would knowing shoot to death a 13 year old in the line of duty whether relatively right or wrong and whether they were armed or not. If this was a "good" cop (and yes, they do exist) that saw himself as a protector of the weak, a servant of the community, and a true blue good-guy, then this will destroy him from the inside out even if he faces few legal or professional consequences.

[Leo Gura]

2 hours ago, kray said:

But here's the thing....the thirteen year old didn't shoot at the cops. There was no gun fight. These points skew away from the actual problem.

Again, the cop doesn't know there won't be a gun fight.

In America we had 45 mass shootings in the last month. Think about that. Then think about the position cops are in.

[SS10]

@Leo Gura No I haven't. I am not a police officer and do not have the need to train for 'gunfights'. They should have the training to clearly evaluate situations. I am not saying police should be perfect but Americas gun, violence and police problem is ridiculous. 

[SS10]

2 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

 

In America we had 45 mass shootings in the last month. Think about that. Then think about the position cops are in.

Exactly. Everyone has guns. so everyone is crazy, including you. What you said is such a fear-based opinion. The problem of police violence and mass shootings is more deeply nested in the gun culture of america that you yanks are yet to reflect on. You literally think its some God given right to own a gun. Stage Blue Thinking.

You literally just shrugged of America having 45 mass shootings like its a normal thing that happens in the world.

[Forestluv]

8 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Again, the cop doesn't know there won't be a gun fight.

In America we had 45 mass shootings in the last month. Think about that. Then think about the position cops are in.

In the surveillance video, it looks like Adam stopped, reached into his pocket, pulled something out and thew it. The officer repeatedly yelled for Adam to stop, yet never yelled “drop it”. 

If Adam had been running with the gun in his pocket and the officer never saw it, would you still consider the shooting justified?

[Leo Gura]

21 minutes ago, SS10 said:

Exactly. Everyone has guns. so everyone is crazy, including you. What you said is such a fear-based opinion.

What I said has nothing to do with fear. It's just common sense that when 45 mass shootings happen per month, and you hear someone firing a gun on the streets, you gotta be very proactive about it. You don't know his age, you don't know if he threw the gun away. You gotta assume he could be a mass shooter. Many of these mass shooters are like 19 years old.

[mmKay]

25 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Again, the cop doesn't know there won't be a gun fight.

In America we had 45 mass shootings in the last month. Think about that. Then think about the position cops are in.

Oh wow never thought about the added danger of being a cop in the US vs in the EU. 

[Eren Eeager]

Guns are the root of all evil ??

We will see how many more mass shootings and how many people killed by police for Republicans actually to start thinking about banning weapons, jeez, so unwise.

[AtheisticNonduality]

Discuss the police coming straight from the overgound.