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this post was submitted on 11 Apr 2024
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This is my take as an Akron resident:
We have a new community controlled local police oversight board.
The officer was called with the pretext that someone had been brandishing a firearm / pointing a gun at houses.
You can't see very well what the officer could see because the view is obstructed. It's entirely possible that the kid complied but accidentally pointed the gun towards the officer.
The officer shot exactly 1 time and shot in a non-lethal manner (the hand was shot). This was not a murder attempt, this was in a way the extra mile, the kid will hopefully make a full recovery.
The fake gun is not an orange tipped fake, it's very similar to a real looking gun. The kid also was not with friends "playing pretend" or anything like that.
As soon as the kid started yelling the officer immediately deescalated the situation and moved towards first aid.
The officer does have a messy history, particularly when alcohol is involved and when off duty, but was entirely sober at the time of the shooting and has never been known to be drunk while on duty.
We have had issues in the past few years locally particularly with teen violence. They've been trying to solve it, but some kids are carrying guns and robbing people, some kids have been carrying guns to protect themselves from the other kids, and evidently some kids are carrying fake guns too.
I'm glad this kid got to walk away with their life. I hope their hand isn't too messed up and I hope they don't have too much mental distress. They never should've walked around in public with a toy gun and "showed it off", and I hope they never do this again.
If the officer really did something wrong, I'm sure we'll get to the bottom of it, but as it stands, I think the officer reacted reasonably.
Not trying to discredit or anything but in #4 1 shot is surely good compared to emptying his clip, but shooting or aiming a gun at somebody, the intent can't be "non-lethal".
If you can be shot and killed for possession of a gun then we don't have the second amendment right to a gun.
We need to address this. Because our second amendment rights are being violated especially if you are black.
The far right keep telling us we have this right any time we try pass any type of guy law. Yet cops kill people with guns and even with toy guns or no.
When do we get the right to defend ourselves from these thugs?
The 2nd amendment is a farce and the US would be a much better place if it were abolished.
While there is much to debate about the 2nd amendment, so long as we continue to claim we have one, possession of a gun alone makes no sense as justification to shoot somebody.
Either we have a second amendment or we don't. We don't have one if every person with a gun is immediately fair game for execution by police.
Possessing a gun, and brandishing a gun are very different.
I’m not here to defend the cop or 2A (neither should exist in there current form), but the kid was brandishing, which is super dangerous with both real and real looking guns.
I think everyone here would agree with you however whether the second amendment should be abolished or not is not the subject of conversation.
This person does have a second amendment right to carry a firearm.
You should not be able to shoot someone for exercising their right to carry a firearm.
Also, there's houses all around them. Any shot could easily injure or kill someone else. This wasn't a "good shoot". It could easily have resulted in tragedy.
Yeah the first thing you learn about firearms whether you're hunting or in the military is do not flag someone unless you are prepared to kill them. Even if you don't intend to.
I agree though it is good to hear the cop managed to only shoot one round.
Yep. 2 very simple rules for dealing with guns
I agree with you and want to strengthen your argument in the future when talking to gun folks, so I want to correct you so that gun nerds don't roll their eyes and dismiss you out of hand in the future.
It's not called a clip, it's called a magazine.
To gun folks it's an important distinction.
I'm honestly confused by what you mean here. Cops in my country will intentionally shoot people in the leg as per policy in certain situations, such as when someone threatens them with a knife from certain distances. So it seems to me you can indeed point a gun at someone with non-lethal intent.
Look at the other responses. The golden rule in firearms training (police, military, or for personal use) if you aim at someone with a gun it's with intent to kill.
Aiming for the leg can hit an artery. Aiming for the leg can cause a misfire and hit somebody else or ricochet. Any number of things can happen and if you get shot there is a decent chance of dying. Also, it's common practice if your shooting someone to aim for their chest. It's the easiest place to hit and less likely to hit somebody else because your less likely to miss.
I disagree that there's no such thing as a "non-lethal" intent when it comes to shooting. You should never point a gun at anything you don't want to kill is the advice to prevent tragedy -- it's not some "law" about what happens.
No shooting is ever a good thing, especially in an urban area. Nobody is happy this happened (and I'd preemptively wager the officer is second only to the kid and his family). If you watch the video that officer didn't come off as "angry" looking to start a fight or for someone to "make his day." This wasn't like the videos where a cop walks up to someone sitting on a motorcycle gun drawn or shoots someone sitting in their truck.
The reality is that he had a real reason to believe that kid was a threat to his life, had very little time to react, and he wouldn't be the first police officer we've lost if he did nothing and it turned out to be a real gun (which again, he had every reason to believe it was one). In a lot of department's training that kid would've been shot in the chest -- not the riskier shot of the hand (I'm not entirely sure this guy didn't "break policy" specifically in an attempt to make sure this kid lived).
The right answer here is ultimately to get the guns out of the hands of these kids; that's a problem that goes far beyond this particular police officer though and has a lot of complex issues.
The new mayor is a big community policing advocate ... maybe if this officer had known this kid the reaction would've been better. But ultimately, the underlying problem is this kid had something indistinguishable from a firearm (under the mistaken assumption that, that would make him somehow safer -- he says in the video he's carrying the fake gun to feel safe) and that's what started this whole chain of events.
The whole thing is a tragedy, through and through.