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Police in New York shoot and kill 13-year-old holding a pellet gun, authorities say (www.pbs.org)

submitted 2 months ago by octopus_ink@lemmy.ml to c/thepoliceproblem@lemmy.world

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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/17056255

An officer in upstate New York shot and killed a teen fleeing while pointing a replica gun, police said Saturday.

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[-] Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago

Well, that just shows how little you actually pay attention to what I say. I've only talked about 3 different kids, in 3 different decades who've been shot by police. One was white, one was black, and one was asian.

So, explain this "it seems like you say the same racist thing every time a black child with a toy gets killed".

Every time? Every one time? Tamir Rice did stupid things. Ultimately I place the blame on a poor communication between the dispatcher and the police, and his mother. But also a bit with him, since 13 is old enough to know NOT to play with toy guns in public. I was taught that lesson when I was 4, because my PARENTS saw me doing that in the front yard. They called me in, and explained how doing that in public is a bad idea. They explained that someone could mistake it for a real gun, and it would scare people. This was before the threat of being shot by police for having a toy came into the picture. This was the 80s. My parents were making sure I didn't scare the neighbors, because they were thinking of others thoughts. The idea that I would be shot didn't cross their mind.

Now, the boy in California from the 90s, his parents didn't teach him that lesson. That's why he's dead. Tamir Rice's mother didn't teach HIM that lesson. There are other factors at play in his case, so it's not strictly on her. However she could have prevented the situation from even happening. It's the same reason I don't skydive. Sure, it's the instructors job to make sure I'm safe in knowing how to operate the parachute.....but I'd still have to trust the parachute to work. I'd have to trust the pilot to safely operate the plane. I'd have to trust the plane to not malfunction. I'd have to trust the birds not to fly into the planes engines, or into my parachute. I'd have to trust the other skydivers to know what they're doing, and not collide with my parachute mid-air.

Sure, you can blame all the things individually that go wrong......or you can prevent the whole situation, and not skydive.

Don't want the police to have a misunderstanding of toy gun vs real gun? Don't wave anything resembling a gun around. You can either live in the world you wish were real....or you could understand the world you DO live in, and work around it's limitations.

this post was submitted on 29 Jun 2024

168 points (97.7% liked)

THE POLICE PROBLEM

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The police problem is that police are policed by the police. Cops are accountable only to other cops, which is no accountability at all.

99.9999% of police brutality, corruption, and misconduct is never investigated, never punished, never makes the news, so it's not on this page.

When cops are caught breaking the law, they're investigated by other cops. Details are kept quiet, the officers' names are withheld from public knowledge, and what info is eventually released is only what police choose to release — often nothing at all.

When police are fired — which is all too rare — they leave with 'law enforcement experience' and can easily find work in another police department nearby. It's called "Wandering Cops."

When police testify under oath, they lie so frequently that cops themselves have a joking term for it: "testilying." Yet it's almost unheard of for police to be punished or prosecuted for perjury.

Cops can and do get away with lawlessness, because cops protect other cops. If they don't, they aren't cops for long.

The legal doctrine of "qualified immunity" renders police officers invulnerable to lawsuits for almost anything they do. In practice, getting past 'qualified immunity' is so unlikely, it makes headlines when it happens.

All this is a path to a police state.

In a free society, police must always be under serious and skeptical public oversight, with non-cops and non-cronies in charge, issuing genuine punishment when warranted.

Police who break the law must be prosecuted like anyone else, promptly fired if guilty, and barred from ever working in law-enforcement again.

That's the solution.

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