Seattle Times – October 15, 2007:
A Seattle police officer shot a 13-year-old twice in the leg early Sunday, and police said he had mistaken the boy’s cellphone for a weapon.
The boy was in satisfactory condition at Harborview Medical Center on Sunday evening, hospital spokeswoman Susan Gregg-Hanson said.
According to police, the 13-year-old took off a large jacket and threw it on the ground, then lifted up his T-shirt, reached into a pocket and pulled out a black object. The boy was moving toward the officer, Seattle spokeswoman Deanna Nollette said. The officer, who had his gun drawn, believed the object was a weapon and shot twice, police said.
The 13-year-old’s parents are “understandably angry” about the situation, Diaz said, and the Police Department has offered the families victim support.
Don’t shoot me bro!
god I need to hit myself again
The article called the cop “a three-year veteran .” Wow. Only three years under his belt and he’s already a veteran. Cops must have extremely low standards.
“the Police Department has offered the families victim support.”
All I can think of are threats that they will make a living hell out of them if the family presses charges against them.
His superiors must have scolded him that the next time he should shoot the kid in the chest and kill him so they can plant incriminating evidence on the boy.
That’s what happens when the cop doesn’t get his liter of cola.
If a cop has a gun pointed at you and has told you not to move, it’s not a good idea to walk toward him and start pulling things out of your pocket.
As far as I’m concerned, the kid almost won a Darwin Award.
From the article
“The officer was on routine patrol near the 2500 block of East Yesler Way around 3 a.m. when he saw two people acting suspiciously, Seattle police said.
The two people ran when they spotted the officer, and he chased them in his car south to South Washington Street and 26th Avenue South.
There, the officer shined a spotlight on them and ordered them to put their hands up, police said.
One suspect, a 14-year-old, complied. But the other acted “very agitated” and didn’t listen to the officer, who repeated his orders several times, said John Diaz, deputy chief of operations for the Seattle police.
According to police, the 13-year-old took off a large jacket and threw it on the ground, then lifted up his T-shirt, reached into a pocket and pulled out a black object. The boy was moving toward the officer, Seattle spokeswoman Deanna Nollette said. The officer, who had his gun drawn, believed the object was a weapon and shot twice, police said.”
sounds justified to me
#6 – dm
Agreed. The kid had it coming. I don’t say that he deserve, but I fully understand the police officer. And shooting him in the leg shows that the police officer just intended to stop him.
And of course the police never lie or mislead. The boy’s father and the other boy apparently say the 13 yr old was obeying the cop when the cop just shot the kid.
Police often ask community groups not to rush to judgment in these situations, Bible said; at the same time they tend to portray those who are shot as being at fault.
http://tinyurl.com/2ehvxh
But of course none of that matters when it is so easy to just blame the kid.
[Please use TinyUrl.com for overly long URLs. – ed.]
the parents are angry at the cops because they’re too ashamed to admit their kid had no business being on the streets at 3 AM to begin with. A lot easier to turn feelings outward toward others than examine your own faults.
I think there should be a law that would deport cops who make “mistakes” such as this. If he or she re-enters the country after the deportation, that ex-cop should be tar-and-feathered.
11, Major Jizz…
HOW about this, YOU are the next replacement for the NEXT fired cop..
You get to stop the next car thats speeding in a school zone…AND NOT know, if the person has JUST had a BAD day/is CRANKED out/Drunk and pissed at his wife/just found out his Wife is Gay/got fired from a $200k job/and so forth…
And you get to deal with this person, as IF’ nothing has happened, and you are ABOUT to make their day WORSE…
Iv heard of Cops QUITTING, after finding out, HOW fast a person at 20′ could kill them with a KNIFE, even if you had a drawn GUN.
The police can always say, “I thought he had a gun.” Cops can do no wrong. I’m not saying in this case the cop did wrong, but just because the cop says, “i thought it was a gun,” doesn’t make it so.
Cops are taught to never shoot for the legs. The cop probably missed.
This family should be glad the cop is so bad he missed his real target.
Jäg & dm – I’m with ya. 13 is more than old enough to know you do not defy an armed policeman’s directions.
And Fusion? Again you demostrate knee-jerk liberalism at it’s finest – “the boy’s father said” – oh, get real. How the fuck does he know? I can tell you right now. It’s the standard line, straight out of the standard script; “My boy wouldn’t lie to me!” Like fuck he wouldn’t. And of course the other kid is going to claim the same. It diverts attention away from whatever it was he and his buddy were up to.
We all know how bad things are getting, and what assholes and worse that some cops can be. But it takes a bigot to automatically stereotype the cop as the bad guy, when most of the time, even these days, he’s there to do what’s right. The entire scenario sounds quite typical and highly likely, and I would’ve done exactly as the cop did. If that was a, f’rinstance, Houston cop, the kid would probably be having his very own autopsy right about now. Of course, here more 13-year-olds carry 9mms than in the civilized world…
3 AM and the kid is wandering the streets.
Isn’t there some crime we can charge the parents with? Isn’t this just plain parental neglect leading to a tragic conclusion?
If you are out at 3AM, unless you are obviously doing something with a purpose, in my mind you are suspect.
The cop did the right thing. It’s dark… it’s 3AM… he has just finished a pursuit of suspicious people… the cops gun is drawn, orders are issued, yet one of the people moves towards him while pulling an object from his pocket…
As I said in the beginning… why is this kid out at 3AM?
Maybe if we start holding parents responsible for the conduct of their kids we can start resolving a lot of juvenile delinquency problems. If there is a consequence for the neglect, amybe tehy will be a little more parental in their behavior.
As far as I am concerned the little dipshit had it coming. It just sad that the cop was such a bad shot that he couldn’t hit the “Center of Mass.” If he was SHOOTING just to wound, he should be fired. You should only shoot if you feel your life is in immediate danger then you better be shooting to kill the SOB.
There are other things to use if you only want to disable your target, like mace or tazers.
The parents should be charged with neglect for letting their offspring wander the streets at 3 am.
Unfortunately, they will hire a lawyer and the cities insurance will settle out of court for a million or 2.
This country is really starting to suck sometimes.
Don
As I said in the beginning… why is this kid out at 3AM?
Because he is thirteen, and thirteen year olds do stupid things…. what has the world come to when we suddenly start freaking out because kids are acting childish! Didn’t you ever do anything stupid at 13 years of age?
Ben – plain and simple, when we were 13, 13-y-os didn’t commonly carry guns. They do today.
And Don? Fuck you. Why? Because you gotta have a serious problem when you suggest that a human life be taken when it isn’t necessary. This, despite the metaphor in use, is not a fucking war. A citizen, a minor at that, is not to be killed simply because he can be. Cops with that attitude – go ahead & kill him, because you can – are a blight on civilization.
Cops tell each other, if you don’t kill him, he’ll wind up suing you and taking your badge – so blow his brains out, to protect your fucking job. There’s a formula for a fine, humanitarian society.
BTW, you can thank fucking lawyers for making that scenario possible. For every one shooting ‘victim’ like this kid, whose lawyers manage to extort huge sums of money and ruin cops’ careers, there’s probably 10 citizens gunned down by cops terrified that they’ll be bankrupted and ruined. But that doesn’t make this cop a fool for risking his career to avoid taking a life unnecessarily.
Just to make my last comment there clear – there isn’t always time to bring out the taser or club – or maybe the person you’re protecting yourself from is too far for anything but a bullet. A crack shot, like most cops think they are, should be able to bring someone down without killing them, in many common scenarios.
Being a stupid fucking kid and making a dangerous mistake does not justify being sentenced to death on the street.
Why didn’t they taser the kid? Or do they just reserve the taser for pregnant women at traffic stops?
22 Named – The kid did not use the code phrase “Don’t tase me bro”.
That’s why he was shot instead.
Maybe if we start holding parents responsible for the conduct of their kids we can start resolving a lot of juvenile delinquency problems.
You either don’t have kids or they’re very young.
Get back to us when you have a 13 year old son.
Bad cop, NO DONUT!
19. Lauren the Ghoti plain and simple, when we were 13, 13-y-os didn’t commonly carry guns. They do today.
I suppose that depends on where and when you grew up. They sure did when I was 13, and recently I was talking to a friend of mine, who is 70 odd years old now, who was telling me about her brother at somewhere around the age of the 13 going around town with a shot gun shooting windows of barns and the like… the only thing is he ran out of barns to shoot and started shooting houses. He got collared, police gave him a good bollocking, so did a judge (his mother didn’t say much and he never knew his Dad), and he that was that, he never really did anything similar again.
The funny thing that my friend was saying was that back then, it was almost assumed that kids do stupid things, if he was to of done that these days it’d be front page of papers, everyone talking about tear-away kids and no disciplined at home, the poor child would end up with years of therapy, all because he was kid doing something stupid, which is what kids do.
Punishing kids for doing stupid things just makes sense, going in hysterics (or allowing trigger happy police to shoot them) and believing the world is coming to end because teenagers are being naughty is something that only happens after a couple of generations spend almost all their time at work and almost none with their kids…
24. Ubiquitous Talking Head You either don’t have kids or they’re very young.
Get back to us when you have a 13 year old son.
I second that notion! And my teenagers are surprisingly well behaved (considering what their mother and father were like at that age)
#9 Wrote: “And of course the police never lie or mislead. The boy’s father and the other boy apparently say the 13 yr old was obeying the cop when the cop just shot the kid.”
The boy’s father, who wasn’t there and is the parent of a 13 year old out at 3 am on a school night. Yeah, I’m going to put a lot of stock in his comment.
And the other kid who was out with his friend at 3am. Again, an excellent witness.
Would it be in really bad taste to point out that at least for once it was not a New York cop shooting an unarmed civilian?
#19 – Ben – plain and simple, when we were 13, 13-y-os didn’t commonly carry guns. They do today.
Only under very specific definitions of “commonly”.
13 year olds carrying guns ISNT real common outside of Major cities, and drug areas.
If your 13 year old is carrying a hand gun…SHOOT him, PLEASE.
Hand guns only have few uses. And a 13 year old would NEVER need one.
#28,
well at LEASt not in NY..
The cops wouldn’t pull this kind of shit if everyone carried a gun. Which everyone should, I believe.
For those who have posted that cop was, either, a ‘poor shot’ or ‘evil’ for wounding the the kid for hitting his leg… As a son of a long time cop as well as having many cops in my general family, cops are trained to deal with each situation accordingly. Look at the conditions: First, two early teens out at 3 a.m. Secondly, the cop gave chase since the kids decided to run. Third, he commanded them to freeze. One kid complied, the other did not. Now the cop has gun drawn and dealing with combative perp. He has no time to go to taser or pepper spray. The kid lost that option we he decided to keep goiing through his clothing as the cop told him repeatedly to freeze. The cop has no back up, so he has a choice to make. Under the tension of this condition, the cop mad the right move: Disarm the assailent. The cop could have shot the chest of the kid and dropped him. But he didn’t. He realized this is just a kid. A dangerous one that is not complying with his commands, but still a kid. The option was to to shot him in the leg to disarm him. Wounding, but not killing him. The cop made the right choice for the circumstances based on the facts the article states. Not all cops are bad or criminal with badges. In fact, you have a better chance of finidng a good cop versus a good lawyer. The parents are unltimately blame for this kid getting shot.