Bowsite.com

(CNN) -- A Cleveland police officer responding to a call about a person with a gun fatally wounded a 12-year-old boy brandishing what turned out to be an air gun that looked very much like a real firearm, police said early Sunday.

The shooting Saturday afternoon came as the nation nervously awaited a grand jury decision on whether to charge the police officer who killed African-American teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, in August.

The attorney for the family of the Cleveland youngster, who also was black, downplayed any possible racial connotations to the shooting.

"This is not a black and white issue. This is a right and wrong issue," attorney Tim Kucharski said.

Police were summoned to the scene outside a recreation center by a 911 caller who said someone -- possibly a juvenile -- was pointing a gun at people.

"There's a guy in there with a pistol, you know, it's probably fake, but he's like pointing it at everybody," the caller said, according to audio provided by CNN affiliate WEWS.

"He's sitting on a swing right now, but he's pulling it in and out of his pants and pointing it at people," the caller said. "He's probably a juvenile, you know?"

When the two officers arrived, the boy did not point the weapon at them or otherwise threaten them, Deputy Chief Ed Tomba of the Cleveland Division of Police told reporters early Sunday.

But he did reach for the weapon, Tomba said.

"The officers ordered him to stop and to show his hands and he went into his waistband and pulled out the weapon," he said.

Tomba showed reporters the weapon -- a large, black BB- or pellet-type replica gun resembling a semiautomatic pistol. An orange tip indicating the gun was an air gun had been removed, police said.

It wasn't clear if officers had been told the weapon was not a firearm, Officer Ali Pillow told CNN on Sunday.

Both officers have been placed on leave, police said.

The 12-year-old's name has not been released by police. He died early Sunday at MetroHealth Medical Center following surgery, according to the hospital and the family's attorney.

People who had gathered around the early-morning media scrum with Tomba hurled angry questions at him, accusing police of unnecessary violence.

"It's a toy gun and a 12-year-old," a woman in the crowd yelled as reporters tried to ask questions, according to video provided by WEWS.

While saying a thorough and open investigation was under way, Tomba defended the officers' actions in what he called a "very, very tragic situation."

"They were doing their job," he said.

Police shootings of African-Americans, particularly young men, have been under rising scrutiny in recent months following the shooting of Brown by a white officer following a brief confrontation in Ferguson.

A grand jury is expected to soon make a decision whether Officer Darren Wilson should face criminal charges in that incident, which resulted in widespread protests over police violence against African-Americans

This little episode should blow up nicely..... :-(

There were no accidents in spite of these kids shooting thousands of deer in the annual early youth gun hunt.

The three youngsters we took out hunting killed four deer. My 10 year old got his first deer. This is the 5th grandson I have been on stand with when they shot their first deer.

These kids know what guns can do, they are no longer curious about them, they know what they are for and how to handle them.

Can't imagine getting that call about one of my kids. If the officers handled it right, they still will carry this the rest of their lives.

By the way, my grandkids were doing the same in both the youth season in October and the firearm season last weekend in IL.

Yes, kids will do stupid things. It is called the Darwin effect. The reason kids are given TWO parents and a home life is so they can be trained to survive to adulthood. It is the way to mitigate the Darwin effect.

We cannot expect children who are never trained to have the same survival rates as those who are.

Prayers for everyone involved. I don't have a clue how something like this went so far.

You are doing it right.

When my son was a young kid I would not allow him to play in the neighborhood when the game was cops and robbers or cowboys and indians. I told him and others there was no way he was pointing any toy gun at anyone and pretending to shoot them.

other parents could not understand how I would make a 6-7 year old come inside when the games with toys started yet on weekends he was shooting with my supervision .22s and underloaded blackpowder charges.

i told them that was the point. a gun is real and it is treated as real with respect and we will remove any mystery or curiosity about it.

if he wants to use a gun us a real one and know what it can do and how to handle it and do it right or don't do it at all with any toys

An even dumber idea is not teaching your 12 year old pointing guns at people is probably not a good thing...

"but kids are stupid. We are all stupid at that age. it was just as much a gun culture back in the day as it is now. cops did not go shooting people wantonly. I would think the cops tried to have a discussion with this kid. I am also curious as to what training, if any, cops get to diffuse these types of situations. In these times, the cops need better training on situational management. The shot 1st, para military training they are getting is going to get a lot of people killed needlessly."

Im guessing you have never been in a life and death situation...

as far as the officers go, come on you really think they can decipher fake vs real gun and the subjects intensions in a split second? their job is public safety. when they feel threatened or the general public is in danger their duty is to react and stop that threat

nobody wants to see a 12 year old kid killed regardless of race, but this is a non-starter

michael

""It's a toy gun and a 12-year-old," a woman in the crowd yelled"

There had to be a way to get a better outcome, that all I', saying. We, as the people LE is sworn to protect and serve, need to demand that.

How about the person was in a playground with a real gun and killing kids, but the cops were waiting for an expert to determine whether or not the shooter was really mad, or just slightly angry?

"how to stop a perp by shooting at non fatal areas " Obvious inexperience speaking here. When did the kid is Ferguson stop going after the cop?

Whether in a LE incident or military conflict, on average how many rounds per hit anywhere on the intended target? Sheesh!

all you have are what ifs. What happened is real. The way it was handled did not result in everyone leaving alive and you put forth an inane what if the kid shot lots of people. In that case leathal force is warranted. In this case, it was not. Plain and simple, for most people that is.

This story however is completely different. This is a story that there should be huge protests over. Or how about the guy that went to the sporting good section at walmart, picked up a BB gun and then continued shopping...Someone calls the cops saying a man is walking around with a gun...cops show up and kill him...

There are plenty of murders commited by cops. The media picks Ferguson to single out though?

What about the homeless guy that the cops beat up, for like over an hour beating and tazing until he DIED?

Or the homeless woman the cop beat the shit out of?

I mean there are numerous stories of cops murdering and beating people and were focused on Ferguson which is nothing like these others.

I would argue 1 police procedure that they are taught in cop school. They are taught that if a person attacks them, they are to empty their clip and make sure they kill the person. Even if the person has surrendered and on their knees ,cops are trained to empty the clip and kill the person....The reason being if it goes to court then the other guy can't tell their side of the story and all we have is the cops word which for some reason is treated as "Straight from Gods lips"....This may well be what happened in Ferguson because all we have is the cops word. We will never know. Without video all we have is cops word.

Cops do not ever have the right to murder anyone and there is a difference between self defense and plain murder.

Having cameras on cops I believe will put an end to a lot of the abuse.

Heck I was that kid when I was growing up. All us kids used to run around our neighborhood with BB guns. That could have easily happened to any one of us.

Thank God we didn't have any dumb ass cops around.

The 911 operator did not mention the possibility of the "gun" being a toy to the police who were responding. Thus, the decision to shoot was based upon what the kid was pulling from his pants when they pulled up.

Tragic: yes.

However, in times where even young kids seek to enter the gangsta culture and widespread shootings by black thugs in the cities is a regular occurance; this seems to be an incident waiting to happen...and it will--again and again until the Black community recognizes that these sorts of incidents stem from their own communities. This shooting could well have happened in Detroit, Chicago, NYC, Philedelphia, etc.

Dog...I grew up in Detroit and did similar things. But (sadly)this is a different time and place.

They even teach this in CC...Never pull your gun unless your shooting to kill.

Unless you were there, you cannot say that. Monday morning quarterbacking of people who believed their life was on the line makes me sick.

I have read scientific analysis of the gunfighting myth of the guy who was so fast that he always let the other guy make the first move. It is impossible to make up the time. If the other guy moves first and is accurate, you will never get a shot off. Many LE offices have died because they hesitated. Many lives have been saved because LE did not fire in uncertain circumstances. Others have been lost. They need good training, but they also need to be able to defend their life when they believe it to be in danger.

Armed Thug Shot By Good Samaritan, Here’s His Family’s RIDICULOUS Response

When someone acts irrationally and commits a crime, they’re typically held accountable for those actions no matter who they are. But not Adric White. After he was shot while robbing a Dollar General, his family wasn’t mad at him for his criminal behavior. Instead, they were furious at the good Samaritan who shot him.

According to Fox 10:

The Good Samaritan, who we are not identifying, told FOX10 News he was shopping at the Family Dollar on Stanton road when he noticed a masked gunman leading one of the employees to the front of the store. “He had the gun to his head. He had him on his knees,” said the man. “I drew my gun on him and I said ‘Hey don’t move.’ At that point he swung around and before he had a chance to aim the gun at me, I fired. I didn’t want to shoot him.”

The concealed carry savior pumped out 5 rounds, and although it’s unclear how many shots actually hit White, he was rushed to a nearby hospital and treated for his wounds.

White’s family is standing by his side. Instead of the whole “actions have consequences” conversation that they should have been having, they’ve been doing their best to voice outrage that their boy had been shot “unnecessarily.” Here’s an idea, if you don’t commit gun crimes, then you won’t get shot “unnecessarily” by a concealed carry holder protecting the lives of the good people in their community.

According to an unidentified female member of White’s family:

“If his (the customer) life was not in danger, if no one had a gun up to him, if no one pointed a gun at him – what gives him the right to think that it’s okay to just shoot someone? You should have just left the store and went wherever you had to go in your car or whatever.”

Well, she was right about one thing. The shooting was unnecessary, but the fault doesn’t fall at the hands of the good Samaritan. What do you guys think about this – why do you think anyone would justify the cowardly acts of the thug knowing full well who was in the wrong here?

When one sees a pattern, it is obviously not an anomaly. The Obamunistic progressive mindset seems to have taken hold: it is always someone else's fault and there is a fear of accepting any responsibility for any action.

My only question is that having practiced and prepared, why the punk is still alive.

Come on there is a clear difference between what happened in Ferguson and this 12 year old...HUGE difference...They just got out of the car and started shooting just that quick...

I'm sorry that was murder.

That guy in walmart..murdered....

Murder is murder...I don't care if they wear a fancy uniform or not...

Stealing is stealing...I don't care if they call themselves the IRS...ITS STEALING!!!

Wouldn't you like to know you are safe when you are doing this? I would!

If somebody can call the cops on you anytime they want and say a crazy person is threatening people with a gun when your not doing anything wrong (and we know there are anti gun people who will) and we say its perfectly ok for cops to just show up and start shooting or harassing people that are exercising their rights...WTH?....Every good person will start being afraid to carry a gun!!!

So while I'm open carrying, not doing anything wrong I no longer have to be afraid of the local street gangs but NOW...I have to be worried about a government sponsored street gang who could show up anytime and harass or kill me, "shake me down"...

The whole point of me carrying a gun is for MY protection!

Had the driver stopped the car 30-50 feet away, parked it such that both officers could have exited the car, using it as a shield, they would have bought themselves enough time to evaluate the situation and have a different outcome.

The cop driving the car was an overzealous asshat.

Period.

What a dumbass.

Gang culture is rampant among black youth who are the product of baby-daddies, teenage welfare moms with carousel male companions who are career felons.

Unfortunately, incidents like this will happen more and more for the simple fact that far too many support that sort of life style:

Arms Up, Shoot Back, Radical Black Group Telling Blacks Across America To Shoot At Cops

Circulating across social media today is an image telling black Americans to take up arms against white police officers and “shoot back”

Unfortunately, we cannot expect perfection from our LEOs...they are human no matter how good the training. Should any cops come under fire or be killed because of the likes of above, you can be sure that there will be an increased number of hair trigger responses.

Why didn't any of the people who saw him pointing his modified-to-look-real airsoft gun tell him that his actions were wrong? Where were his parents who allowed him to play with this altered toy?

The police officers may have over reacted in error (especially since they were apparently NOT informed of the possibility of the gun being a toy), but there are a lot of other failures that certainly contributed to this senseless death.

I was at the mall with my wife today. Two young boys were bouncing balls around while their parents stood in line to make some purchases. Neither parent bothered to address this as the balls were constantly getting loose in the crowd. I quietly and politely told the boys that they were acting inappropriately and they went and sat down in line with their parents. Their behavior was a FAIL on the part of the parents.

In the case where a toy was converted to look real,

the police were put into the position of reacting as if it were truly real...

Next, we will see where some person is going to be killed with a real weapon disguised as a toy:

COPS POST PHOTO OF SHOTGUN DISGUISED AS HARMLESS WATER BLASTER

“This is a fully functional shotgun, disguised to look like a toy. I suspect that we’ll be seeing more and more of this. Be careful out there.”

From the link:

"...Many officers say it is getting increasingly difficult in today’s age of realistic-looking toy guns to differentiate fakes from real firearms, especially when put in potentially life-threatening situations that require split-second decisions.

Toys that are made to look like guns are one problem. As the Facebook posting makes clear, and police critics should understand, real guns can be disguised as toys too..."

IMHO, the anti-gun industry has created this environment where guns are to be feared and normal play by kids must be forced and regulated into that mindset. Certainly, a loose-loose environment--especially when violent crime is viewed that the perpetrators are the ultimate victim...and not removed from society permanently. All of my children grew up understanding what firearms were and their proper use. And I am willing to bet that most here who are parents have instilled the same views with their offspring.

I'm sorry this is unacceptable. This is completely opposite of the Ferguson incident. I want to know that when I go shopping that I don't run the risk of being shot by a street gang called police.

That my kids can go out side and shoot their BB guns in peace.

If you guys want to live in that world then by all means defend the cops and their actions. In that world walmart will be pressured into not selling guns anymore just like Kmart eventually. As long as anti gun people can make BS calls to police claiming there is a man with a gun threatening people and everyone(including gun owners) have no problem with cops showing up and harassing or killing people over it....You may as well wave good by to the 2nd amendment or whats left of it....Gun owners,right to carry...We don't stand a chance against that...

Sometimes I do wonder if its a race thing on here with some of you guys responses. I just can't believe you can defend this.

HA.."I grew up in a house with loaded guns always present, but never a toy gun. I did have a BB gun and was expected to use it the same as a .22, 12 gauge, or .300."

Same here. And every other kid in town was raised the same.

At thanksgiving dinner my cousin had a red rider BB gun and he shot my uncle in the ass....THANK GOD there was no cop around or my cousin would be dead...

I want to make clear that I don't believe this had anything to do with race or that the cops were wanting to murder anyone...BUT

Whatever they are teaching these cops in police academy, police procedure ...This must be changed....The dispatcher could have given a lil more info like it may be a toy gun....

Might not be murder but they killed some people and deserve some severe punishment for it.

Simply carrying a gun, exercising your rights...Cops have no right to harass people that are doing nothing wrong. Carrying a gun is not and or shouldn't be a crime anywhere!

Had I ever done anything like that, I would have been nearly dead, and it would not have been a cop that did it! My dad and uncle would have had to stand in line to deal with whatever was left of me when mom got finished.

Did you read the link and absorb the story completely? The kid did not listen to the police commands and reached for the gun and the gun also had the orange tip removed.

Some people amaze me. I mean gezzzz....I guess the cops should take a huge risk when they are in these situations and get themselves killed instead? I am not saying errors were not made by dispatch but the cops themselves cannot be expected to wait and see if a bullet comes out of that gun before they shoot.

Also...ANY person regardless of age that does not obey police commands and reaches for a gun regardless of whether it is a lookalike toy gun altered to look even more real or not forfeits their life to the decision making of the police. Parents should teach that to their kids. Mine did and I did!

"Sometimes I do wonder if its a race thing on here with some of you guys responses"

Amazing! Where?

I think what Dog, myself and others may believe is that power corrupts, so let's be careful about how we review those that have immense power over us.

I wonder myself sometimes if it is racism in how some folks are dealt with, but have concluded it is mostly about socio-economic status. I have documented here before how my wife was involved in a deer/vehicle collision on a major highway during rush hour. I had her call 911 but I arrived before they did.

We called dispatch back as we left to remove ourselves from danger. The officer via dispatch said we must return. I refused but told him we would meet him any where else. He said just go then.

Later that day he gave my wife 2 tickets. As I told him at the time the tickets would not stand, and I was right. It was obvious he did not like being told no. We are educated and have the means to fight this. If not, I am sure we would have had to pay huge fines and higher insurance rates.

Like the last time I am sure I will be blasted again. But, economically disadvantaged folks know this stuff happens to them and they have no recourse. I would be bitter as well. In fact, my wife and I will most likely never feel the same towards law enforcement again.

If everyone wants to continue ignoring the obvious, we should expect more of the same.

BTW, within a couple of years of the above incident, a man in our state was killed by another motorist trying to avoid the dead deer in the road that the guy killed had hit and was in the median waiting for help. Sometimes the judgment of cops should be questioned, JMO of course.

The cop that gave you a ticket was a tool!

Yes, I do believe an economically disadvantaged person of any race or ethnicity has a better chance of an outcome that would not be the same for those who have the means to enforce the letter and SPIRIT of the law. I agree he was a tool, but his CO told him to tell us that he could have arrested my wife if he wanted to. Seems like this tool had his support. We talked to his CO and the captain in a f2f meeting, never received an apology. That blue line needs a little adjusting IMO, and that's all this forum is, is opinions.

Bentstick,

I agree it does start at home. With so many African-American families not having fathers present, the kids are paying the price-sometimes with their own lives. I do blame this strictly on the deadbeat dads, yet it is hard for me to fault the kids. I had good role models and that is the only reason I know the difference between right and wrong. But for the grace of God....

I may not argue that part with you but in the case of the dead kid.....Would have happen the same regardless of race in the same location under the same set of circumstances IMO..

Black or white if you refuse to obey police commands and reach for a gun (toy or not) you will likely die and if I was behind the gun it would not matter what color you are. You reach for it you get shot. Better you than me is the way I see it.

The parents of all kids have a duty to protect their kids and part of that is to teach them how to act toward police and what to do when in a situation where a cop is giving a reasonable command in a potentially dangerous situation. Apparently this kid never learned that or refused to as he was told. I can tell you for sure my kid would have had her hands up. Well I would not have allowed her off the property with a BB gun to start with but in a situation with police she has been taught to comply to reasonable commands. Not reaching in your pocket or waistband or making sudden moves is a given to teach any kid. Any parent that doesn't is a fool.

Ha...When we were kids that would have happened to us too!...lol....Now as adults we know how powerful a red ryder BB gun is...It was funny at thanksgiving.

I have been shot with a BB gun more times then I can count and not 1 broke the skin. I've been bitten by snakes more times then I can count. The difference is I was taught what snake is poisoness and what snakes are not.

"ANY person regardless of age that does not obey police commands"

I didn't see them give him any time to do anything. They just pulled up got out of car and started shooting.

I think we are in agreement. I stated these 2 cases are not good examples of why a free society must remain vigilant over those who wield immense power over us. Yet since you agreed not to argue about the economically disadvantaged challenges, I will assume you see some merit in the point?

That is really, IMO, what the protests are about. And we will see changes, not because of these 2 cases, but because a discussion has been started, and because the standards for what is acceptable behavior by government continue to be, properly IMO, demanded to improve.

For many of the "economically disadvantaged" it is a life choice, nothing more.

CHEYENNE— Police in Cheyenne are not recommending any charges against a pharmacist who shot a man during a robbery attempt.

Cheyenne police on Monday identified the pharmacist as 42-year-old Jackson Quick of Cheyenne.

Police say Quick shot a 30-year-old Cheyenne man Saturday in the Medicap Pharmacy.

Police said the man entered the pharmacy and brandished a toy gun that appeared to be real. He was wearing a black mask and demanded narcotics.

After the man was shot, he was taken to the Cheyenne Regional Medical Center. Police say they plan to present information to prosecutors seeking to charge the man with aggravated robbery.

So...just how does one determine a toy gun is a toy gun and not a real one?

Watched two videos recently that give a clue as to why Ferguson, Garner, this thread and other related threads are related. Both were filled with profanity, so did not link.

First, two large black women get in the face of a security agent (also black)and get in his face...swearing at him. With the women are several children who also take up swearing at the man in the same manner...obviously learning anti-social behavior. One of the "ladies" ends up getting tazed and what appears to be a baby daddy also joins in.

Bottom line: thug behavior is being instilled in the offspring of these random matings making this behavior of disrespect for authority multigenerational.

The second has the sound bite of another black female shouting that "She has six babies by six fathers...and the government needs to take care of her and her brood"

Thus, we are seeing that there is a large segment of the population (initially black, but now spread through most of society regardless of race)that has been raised believing in dependence upon government largess, no personal responsibility and a complete disrespect for order.

Sorry, but that 12 year old boy was just practising the thug culture he saw on a daily basis. Remember, the original call was about him pointing his realistic firearm at people--just like he saw the older boys in their gangster ways. Learned behavior from a broken culture that has given us the likes of Ferguson.

That poor kid was not killed because of over reaction from the police, but the destruction of a value system that was destroyed by progressive social experimentation that has been proven a failure. When women have babies for profit and men impregnate them just to prove manhood, the concept of family and responsibility no longer exists and the results are 12 year old kids getting killed for playing gangster.

Child poverty is an ongoing national concern, but few are aware of its principal cause: the absence of married fathers in the home. According to the U.S. Census, the poverty rate for single parents with children in the United States in 2009 was 37.1 percent. The rate for married couples with children was 6.8 percent. Being raised in a married family reduced a child’s probability of living in poverty by about 82 percent.

I agree with you up to a point.

Yes. But those choices are the parents. The kids paying the price did not. The same practices will continue to be passed on as resentment will be learned if we continue just blaming. The solution is what needs to be discussed, not who is to blame.

Maybe no fault divorce ought to be questioned?

What you are saying and implying goes for all aspects of the disadvantaged and America as a whole too. It has been this way since the dawn of man. Bad parenting equals more dead kids.

Many kids are not taught right and it IS the fault of the parents and the parent inadvertently puts their kid at risk of early death. The kids through no fault of their own reap the rewards (pun intended) of bad parenting. In time we will either wake up to that or things will continue to degrade until we are a lost cause. We cannot change it by changing police use of force policy. Instead the change needs to start at home. Heck there are animals in the animal kingdom that teach their young respect and how to be safe better than many of us highly evolved humans can. Again it all starts at home and you and I cant change that at all in any way. A big decline or sudden catastrophic event will be the only way to change the trend we see. Events like that make people take stock in what is actually important in life

Make no mistake that IMO the blame is squarely on the parents and what our society encourages. Its not the cops trying to uphold the law or protect themselves in a dangerous world where a split second poor choice can cost a cop his life. Given the way society is.... imo better the wrong outcome from time to time than dead cops when it involves criminals or piss poorly developed kids that will no doubt turn out to be a real piece of work anyway most likely. That stat is clear on what many of these kids in these type environments become. At some point the choice and understanding becomes their own when they are of age but they continue the cycle anyway. IMO it is because things are not hard enough yet in America.

You're taking a call that says a person is brandishing a gun at a park. Not like you're bored and dozing off driving there, you have no idea if this is going to be a gunfight or what. You're heart would be going a mile a minute, nerves, anxiety.

You pull in, maybe do make a mistake getting in too fast, too close, yell for hands up and a "gun" comes out....

It's a tragedy. But I can sure see how it happened.

My guess, is that we have a kid acting stupidly but isn't in the mindset that he's really a threat or that he is in real danger from the cops. Then we have cops who are approaching the situation like they have an armed adult threatening people. The kid doesn't act like he would if he knew the cops mindset, and the cops don't act the way they would if they knew it was a 12 year old with a BB gun.

Obviously we know from the audio that the citizen that called in mentioned it could be a toy gun, that may not have made it to the officers and may not have changed the outcome if it did. Someone saying"There's a guy at the mall screaming about a bomb with what looks like a bomb taped to his chest, but might be flares", gets handled like its a bomb.

I doubt that knowingly pulling up so close is how they are trained. It makes no sense to be trying to exit a car with an armed suspect a few feet away unless the context of the situation dictates it, like maybe shielding bystanders or a bold move to stop a shooting in process. What led them to pulling up like that would be a piece of the puzzle.

Seen local news interview last night with Cleveland Police officer (sorry, don't remember his title) and was asked if the boy had pointed the gun at the officers and his reply was "no".... Hmmmm

Anyone happen to catch Cleveland Browns wide receiver, Andrew Hawkins full interview (off the cuff) after his overshirt "Justice" comments during pregame Sunday?

It is a tragedy. I hope that police and parents learn from this to help prevent it from happening again. A kid is dead, but a policeman's (or two) life is also changed forever.

Searching for the Next Michael Brown

What about open carry laws and a car comes right up on you like that and someone yells and startles you and your hand goes to your gun but you don't pull it. They would have shot you also.

I wouldn't charge the cops with murder but I think some charges are warranted.