Quote:
Originally Posted by TheSquealer
If cops rolled up and he reached for the gun as they claim, that's all the law requires. I think you'd have a tough time proving in court that a 12 year old doesn't understand that.
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The problem I have with this particular situation is that the car rolls up, the cop opens his door and shoots. The report of the account has several issues. First, it looks like the cops heading to the scene were never told that this was a kid and that eyewitnesses thought the gun was fake. If they had known that they likely would have had a different approach. Second, they screamed to put up his hands, but literally only about 1.5-2 seconds passes between their screams and them shooting. He could have been startled and just not reacted fast enough or was trying to say it was a toy and show them.
I understand that the cops need to protect themselves, but here it seems there was a better way to handle this. They should have been given all the information on their way to the scene and to me they should have pulled up 10-15 feet away from him and used the car as cover instead of hopping the curb and pulling up right next to him so that the cop in the passenger side had nowhere to get cover and felt exposed.