12 Year old shot and killed by "rookie" cop of two years.

Happened November 22nd, but has not been (at least to my knowledge) reported on intensively. Though that's probably due to Ferguson being the main focal point in "Black Kid shot and killed by Trigger-Happy Cop" news at the moment.
However, the biggest thing is how blatantly the cops lied, probably not knowing there was a camera nearby.

Someone called 911 and reported someone in a park pulling a gun out and aiming it at people. The audio of the 911 call supposedly says the "suspect" appears young, but it's kind of hard to hear. I couldn't hear that part exactly. However, the caller mentions more than once that he can't tell if the gun is fake or not. When asked to describe the suspect, the caller describes the clothes before being asked "is he black or white?" three times.

During the actual dispatch call, the dispatcher never mentions that the gun may be fake, just that the suspect is aiming a gun at pedestrians, nor does she mention any age for the suspect.

Cops show up, there is an alleged confrontation and the suspect is dead. The cops call it in, saying that he appears to be in his 20s.
Turns out, that the suspect who is now bleeding out for almost four minutes, is 12 year old Tamir Rice. The gun he was waving around was an unloaded pellet gun.
In the testimony, it is stated that Tamir Rice -may he rest in peace- was sitting at a table with a few people before he placed the gun in his waistband. Cops showed up and asked him to put his hands up three times, but he refused. When he reached for the gun in his waistband and brandished it, he was shot by Officer Tim Loehmann who is a rookie.
Tamir only received medical help when a nearby FBI agent who was responding to the call, along with a detective, arrived, but Tamir died from his injuries.

Fortunately, there is footage, unlike in Ferguson. A nearby security camera caught it all.
The footage starts at 2:10
on.msnbc.com/1B7wA7k
a) Tamir was not sitting with a group of people.
b) this may be the quality of the footage itself, but he is not seen to be reaching for the gun at all.
c) The cops did shot him within seconds of pulling up. Did they have time to ask him to raise his hands three times? They were barely out of the car.
d) Tamir did not brandish, nor did he reach for, the pellet gun.
e) Officer Tim Loehmann (whose father claims had no choice but to shoot) has been on the force for two years.

It has been reported that Tamir's father has a history of violence against women and his mother has had her own share of legal trouble because, you know, that's relevant to him being gunned down without reason.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/...coverup-of-a-senseless-murder?detail=facebook

 

This is only my opinion, and while I do agree there's racism about in law enforcement, especially in the south, I think it's drastic to instantly involve racism in all police shootings involving a white officer and a black victim or a black officer and a white victim.

There was a kid going around pointing a (toy) gun at people, though no one knew that because the little orange tip that confirms a gun is a toy was removed by the kid because he thought it'd be funny to act like he had a real gun. One person called 9-1-1 and said that some kid was pointing a gun at people and they thought it might be a toy gun, but they weren't sure. The dispatcher forgot to mention this to the police, though, and when the police got there, the boy had his hands in his pockets and failed to comply with the police officers' repeated orders to take them out of his pockets.

While I definitely agree that shooting him was too much and they could have used other, non-lethal methods , I can't say I blame them. What if the gun had been real?

 

That comics is all sorts of awesome, yet too disturbing for me to "like" your post for it.

The definition of racism isn' t necessarily hate for race x, double standards can do. By that definition one could argue everyone is racist to some degree.
What if the gun had been real ? Well, what if the cop had fired a warning shot at the ground to show he' s not ****ing around ? Hell, how is he even a danger to anyone with his hands stuck in his pockets, wouldn' t you want him to keep doing that while you go pick the gun ?
What about those NRA morons waving their very real AK47s in everyone' s face ? How come they never get shot first and asked questions later ?

Who cares if your inner wimp can relate, they' ve been trained to know better. If you' re not gonna blame them for disregarding the law I' m not sure what you would blame them for.

 

Did you watch the video? Tamir Rice had NO TIME to comply. They pulled up directly in front of him on the grass without warning and shot him without even fully getting out of the car. There was no assessment of the situation, there was no call put in, nothing. It's like the Ferguson case. The officers are trained and in either case, there was no taser used, no night stick, no physical training (and in Brown's case, he was 150 feet away -HALF A FOOTBALL FIELD- when he was perceived as an immediate threat that had to be shot first).
The racism is an ongoing trend that needs to be addressed.
12 year old black male shot over an unloaded pellet gun.
Brown, black, shot without warning.
Trayvon Martin, 17, was shot and killed after an overzealous neighborhood watchman followed him, despite being told not to by actual authorities, on the basis that he looked suspicious.
In a state where it's legal to open carry, a 22 year old black father is shot while on the phone because he was holding a toy gun.
A 23 year old black male was leaving his bachelor party with two friends when undercover cops (cops NOT in uniform) drew their guns on them. Bell was shot in the chaos.
A 19 year old black male was shot and killed by cops after a 911 caller lied about the 19 year old being armed.
A 24 year old black former football player suffered a fatal car crash and during the misunderstanding while he was trying to get help, was shot ten times by officers.
A 22 year old black male, also a father, was shot at a transit station by a transit officer who claimed he grabbed his revolver by accident, but was reaching for his taser. One of the officers called him a "b*tch-a*s n*gger" before the shooting
13 year old black male was accused of stealing from a white neighbor (he didn't) and shot in the chest by said neighbor and then more in the back. When the cops showed up, they arrested the victim's older brother for TRUANCY TICKETS and detained his mother in a squad car for two hours. They searched the home again (they had already investigated the family when the neighbor reported the burglary and found them innocent; they have been living there barely a month). The family of the shooter, however, was able to re-enter their home and remove "items" (their home was considered a crime scene at the time).
The worst that any of the shooters have suffered, to my knowledge, is the loss of their jobs (in most cases, it was voluntary). Not to mention the countless book deals and TV appearances (**** you, Fox) and are made out to be saints while the victims have their characters assassinated (In Rice's case, the characters of his parents) and have been called thugs, criminals, and worse.

Now we have cases of
A group of very white government-haters armed with a lot of very dangerous weapons, defending a ranch that is breaking the law against federal agents. They were reported several times as wanting shots to be fired, even wanting to use women and children as human shields and threatening the agents
An intoxicated, elderly, white male brandishing a rifle and threatening the reporting officers. Eventually, he handed over his gun, but it was returned the next day and no charges filed, even though it is illegal to brandish a weapon in the state.
An 18 year old white male was openly carrying a shotgun in the street in Aurora, Colorado (where the theatre shooting happened). He refused to show any ID, even though he claimed he was coming from buying cigarettes, and refused to place the gun down. According to the male, he's been stopped several times. He received a citation for not showing ID.

Or the cases of an black actress being arrested under suspicion of being a prostitute for kissing her husband in public, a human rights lawyer arrested for standing outside of a restaurant while waiting for her family and told by an officer, that "in America, wives take the names of the husband" when asked her husband's name, or the TV producer arrested for fitting the profile of "tall, black, and bald" of a robber while attempting to refill a parking meter. Manhandled and detained for 6 hours, even though there was footage easily accessible that would clearly show he wasn't the robber (if you read just one of these, read this one).

I get that you don't want to call the officers racist for being in these situations; it really sucks to be lumped into a group because you fit a profile.

 

Very informative post.

In regards to that bit in particular, exactly. When it comes to any crime, I think it's important to not involve discrimination right away and first investigate whether it was a hate crime or just a crime.

Let's say a heterosexual guy murdered some guy who happened to be homosexual. We can't automatically assume the murder was because of the guy's sexuality. The guy who was murdered, for all we know, could have done something that really pissed off the heterosexual and he was murdered out of revenge. But we should first investigate the reasons behind the murder and what led up to it.

 

I'm not saying that any of these victims were wrongfully killed simply because of their race (though I'm not saying they weren't either). I'm saying that the cops showed up (or in one case, the neighbor) and because the victim was black, automatically assumed he was wrong based on nothing but was visible (in this case, skin color) and went into the with a biased mindset.

 

Aaaaand one more. As someone pointed out in the comment section on second thought Obama might want to keep his costly cameras, it seems proofs are useless for now.

 

I have sympathy towards the cops in this one, in a way... A lot of cops do sadly shoot first and ask questions later when it comes to kids waving toy guns around. It is such a big deal everywhere that I have seen tons of shouting matches over if people should carry guns to movie theaters just in case someone has a gun. (The Dark Knight Rises where an unfortunate movie theater shooting happened and a lot of people were on the bandwagon of carrying guns into the theater. Yeah, there was many arguments about that, not just over a kid waving a toy gun in a dark movie theater.)

What bugs me is that he had a psychiatric evaluation a few months/years ago, (I didn't see all of the news.) And the police force at that time said he was too unstable to be a cop. He didn't have the temperament or mental stability to be one. The report went on to say there was no chance in heaven or hell that he would ever be stable to be a cop. And yes, cops have to be mentally stable to be a cop. A guy I used to know was a schizo, I would never want him or several other people I know to be a cop. If they were, I would admittedly be worried if I ever ran into them in uniform, especially with a gun. Shortly after this report was given, he quit from the force and moved to the town/city where he got his job back. No questions asked, hell... I don't think they even looked at his previous report before taking him in.

This would've all been prevented if someone asked a few damned questions about this guys history. Or did another evaluation on him. It's insane.

 

Nah it' s just you actually.

 

Update: Cleveland police has been cited for a pattern of abuse by the justice department.