Thanks for this. It’s easy to get tunnel vision when a particular situation is so dramatic and terrible, but we should all remember that this is a national - and really a global - problem.
It would be wonderful if Ferguson were an anomaly, but in most ways that matter, it’s business as usual.
Their names were
- Eric Garner
- John Crawford
- Ezell Ford
Pfft. Just one bad apple. Three times. Well, three times this month.
So far.
Yeesh. I don’t think I would put John Crawford, Beavercreek, Ohio on that list. According to the article, he appeared to armed and didn’t comply. What do you expect?
[quote]According the Beavercreek police department, 22-year-old John Crawford disregarded officers’ orders to disarm before being fatally shot in the chest.
{emphasis added}[/quote]
The security camera footage was turned over to the police, but has not been released to the public, or to Mr. Crawford’s family.
So, the only side of the story we get to hear is that of the police.
Until/unless the police see fit to release the security video, John’s side of the story died with him.
Fair enough, there may be more to the story. Thus I wouldn’t include him for that reason either.
I’ve seen many youtube videos where police use questionable force and some include shooting. I’d pick more cut and dry examples to push home my point.
Would this be cut and dried enough for you?
To be fair, this kid wasn’t black, and it happened clear back in February, but he certainly was not armed.
Better, assuming it was a standard Wii controller, not one of those that look like a gun and he was shot with no warning.
But in this case the guy was given orders to drop a weapon and he didn’t comply. And while I don’t know exactly what the gun looked like, this is a .177 BB gun that Walmart sells. So yeah, anyone waving around that at Walmart and a cop tells you to drop it and you don’t, I would expect force would be escalated.
As @davide405 pointed out, we can’t know how long police gave the kid to comply. Can you not imagine that the kid might’ve been pretty confused that police show up to confront him while he’s holding an item the store sells, but doesn’t keep in locked cases? Until or unless that video is released, I’m just going to assume the police gave him at most 2 seconds to comply before they fatally shot him. Come on, Beavercreek, OH, prove me wrong. I’d like to be.
Yeah, we are missing details, which is one reason why I wouldn’t have put the guy in the article. It could have been justified, or it could have not been. The other reason was he appeared to be armed. Another site reported it was this model of BB gun. Shooting a guy with nothing in his hands I think is a whole other league than shooting a guy who appears to be holding a rifle. The other people in the article were not armed, and while resisting arrest, appear to be victims of excessive force.
So did Andy Lopez, at least according to the officer who shot him seven times.
Young men with brown skin should know by now that for them to hold a BB gun puts them in imminent danger of death by cop.
Also this:
I don’t know about Ohio, but in every state where I’ve been in a store that sells guns, even BB or paintball guns, they’re locked up behind the counter. I’m surprised they even handed him the thing instead of having a procedure where it’s picked up at checkout.
At Meijer, a Michigan (where I live, about 40 miles from Toledo) company which also has stores in Ohio, the BB guns are just sitting out in the aisle. Real guns are locked up. Heck, at all the local sporting goods stores, the BB guns are just sitting out, real guns are locked up.
Are they in packaging? I thought it was odd that it was just out and not in a box or plastic clam shell. Guess I will double check next time I am there.
And yes. Kids getting killed because of toy guns have been happening for years. I remember when I got my original Lazer Tag gun I heard about a hid who was killed with one.
In general, don’t mess with guns or things that look like guns in public. If you encounter cops, put it the fuck down. I used to play some renegade paintball, and we all knew that if we got cops called on us, to put the guns down, hands up and comply.
There’s usually at least one sitting out of the box. It’s not like they pay the workers enough to give a shit about it.
Thinking about this a bit more, I recall that Cabellas doesn’t even have all the real guns locked up, just the hand guns. They’ve got an entire room full of rifles that are just sittin’ there.
Many gun shops have rifles out in the open too. Though usually in both cases they zip tie the actions open/shut. Though speaking in generalities, people shopping at Cabelas or a gun shop are going to be less jittery about someone holding a rifle and call the cops.
Perhaps, but it makes me jittery because they’re not just holding the rifles, they’re fondling them. 
We prefer the term “polishing”.
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