Homicide - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Homicide is the act of a human killing another human.[1]
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I don't think anybody is claiming it's not homicide, the problem is was it a criminal act or not, was there criminal intent?
In hindsight no it's not justified, but that's not the question before the grand jury, was it justified in the cop's mind in the 1.5 seconds he had to make the decision as the kid pulls a very real looking gun out of his pants.
Cops are trained to watch hands so I doubt the cop even looked at the kids' face long enough to realize it was just a kid.
I think the blame rests in several places:
The Cleveland PD for not checking deeply enough into the cop's background before hiring him, from the sounds of things he should never be a cop in the first place.
The dispatcher who didn't pass along the information from the 911 caller who thought that the gun may be a fake.
But I think a huge amount of the responsibility for this tragedy rests with the cop who was driving the car and thought it was a good idea to pull up 6 feet from a possibly armed suspect giving the shooter cop no time to make an evaluation of the situation.
I think both cops and the dispatcher should be fired at the very least but I'm afraid I don't subscribe to the narrative that it was A Racist White Cop Out To Kill A Black Man that seems to be all the rage these days.
When this tragedy occurred there was initially no mention of the cop's race in the media, but now they are pressing the race button really hard, when the grand jury declines to indict the cop for a criminal act (which they will since by the rules no law was broken, just very bad judgement) we can expect to see more anger which once again will shut down discussion as both side of this will be screaming at the other instead of talking and listening to each other.
