No. Unfortunately, you can't.

This is tragic but ultimately avoidable. That gun didn't have any of the fluorescent bumpers on it or anything to indicate it wasn't an assault rifle. A cop isn't going to wait for you to shoot at him first if you brandish a gun at him. Cops do a lot of fucked up things these days but I'm hard pressed to fault them here.

With AR 15s don't get shot because cops use judgement for white folks

The nimrods walking around open carrying aren't brandishing the weapons at police. They're just being douches. If they pointed the weapons at the cops they'd be dead right quick.

There appears to be a reason.

You earned it

I can't say I disapprove.

If what this person is saying is true then I will no longer hold my original position. I'm not a bagger, I'm able to shift my view based on evidence and circumstance.

Well enough?

And its the 2nd eye witness to corroborate those facts

Witness came forward - Boy never had a chance to turn - 5 shots in the back

Fuck

Whatever happened to the bright orange tips for replicas?

This is a real problem out here in Wine Country where there are 'bad' sides in every town. This kid was already in trouble and had been taken out of school and placed in an alternate (read "full of little punks&quot facility.

There really isn't much info there to go on. There are so many questions it would be hard to know where to start. About all we really "know" from the story is that a kid had a pellet gun and the cops shot him dead. Everything else is either second hand descriptions or derivations of some sort.

and stupid mistakes can cost you your life. I'm sure a lot of parents are having a conversation with their kids about what to do if the police order them to do something, especially when their guns are drawn.

Going to prison with the people you put there is ...

If they're lying here, I hope we find out about it. The people who knew the kid said he was smart, so I don't know what to believe right now. But smart people also do stupid things.

He was walking down the street and the police officers pulled their cars up BEHIND him with their sirens off. Both officers got out, guns drawn, and screamed at him twice in rapid succession to drop the "gun". When he started to turn around, they immediately opened fire.

Now tell me, if you're walking down the street with a toy gun in your hand that fires plastic pellets, and someone behind you starts yelling "drop the gun", are you just going to drop it....or are you going to turn around and see who is doing the shouting first?

The kid never had a chance. He had NO WAY of knowing they were police officers, or even that the shouting was directed at him.

we live in... A state of being created by libertarians and gun-nutters, we're all just one turn of the body away from a very stupid mistake that could justifiably end our lives.

When can justify and trivialize killing our children

13 year old points a real AK-47 at you, acting like he is about to shoot.

A. Let him shoot you?

B. Shoot him and keep on living.

Oops, it wasn't a real gun, just a completely realistic looking toy. But you don't get to find tht out until it is over.

As you are deciding, remember that there are 13 year olds who do commit murder.

http://bostonherald.com/news_opinion/local_coverage/2013/10/official_14_year_old_went_to_movies_after_killing_teacher

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/10/12/fifth-grade-murder-plot/2973605/ That one is an 11 year who who attempted murder. What would you do if he pointed a gun at you?

Didn't have a chance

5 shots in the back

in jeopardy, waited to confirm the boy was a threat. Not go off all half-cocked and kill the kid.

By the way, your citations do not involve this incident, and are hence irrelevant.

The point is that even kids can be dangerous.

The citations are examples of dangerous kids. They prove that even young ones can be dangerous.

When did the victim "point" his gun at the sheriff's deputies?

And your citations remain irrelevant, btw.

And the cop who just murdered a kid is attempting to justify his murder rather than just accepting spending a significant chunk of his life in jail? My world no longer makes sense to me.

It probably will, but they get no BOD from me when it comes to minority deaths....

I find it hard to blame the cops for what they did.

I'm going to hold off on cop cheerleading until I hear the audio that should exist from the cops equipment. It will be interesting and important to see the time gap from a screamed order to freeze and drop it and the shot. It seems that the other shot by cop incidents have shown a very small time frame between the two. I have in mind a kid with a toy hesitating to form the words
'it's an airsoft not real" as a 9mm is heading his way.

also who is to say the orange tip didn't get broken off
and buried somewhere. sorry I am going to wait
to pass judgement.

One can get into some serious trouble in that state just for having a semi-auto AK-47 with a detachable high capacity magazine.

This is a horrible tragedy, but as currently reported, the police acted correctly based on what they KNEW at the time of the shooting: a person with what looked like a real AK-47 type rifle disobeyed repeated police orders to drop the gun and instead began raising the gun toward them.

You assume the cop is telling the truth

You assume he didn't look like a scared startled 13 year old child

You assume it wasn't common knowledge that children with airsoft guns don't go into that field to play all the time

Too much assuming here

It could have went many other ways other then the Cops playing Rambo and ratcheting up their responce to a Leathal Shooting of a 13yr old

Poor judgement sneaking up behind and startleing a 13yr old

It's changed a bit over the last few years.

It is mostly low-income Hispanic. Not Oakland or East LA, but stressful, all the same.

This is a tragic event for all concerned, but that kid was a fool (and his parents are idiots, if they knew he was parading around the 'hood with that "gun&quot . We can only hope that lessons are learned from this.

If I had seen him on my property (I am minutes away from SR), I would have shot him on the spot.

I've lived in "Brown Neighborhoods" before and this 1 in particular

You are lying

and you just told the whole DU community what you are really all about

You are also making assumptions.

I will await further details.

And draw less of a responce

Your point is ...

You really hate the police, so you already have come to a conclusion to confirm your bias.

All I know at this point are the preliminary details as reported in the Sacramento Bee this morning. Anything else on my part would be pure conjecture.

I will await further details as to whether this shooting was justified or not. Either way, it is definitely a tragedy.

Isn't that what this is really all about

Like I said in my response AS REPORTED by the news, it was a justifiable shooting.

The burden is on you to provide proof of wrong doing on their part if you are going to accuse them of being wrong to shoot.

No cop in the world is going to wait for anybody, even a child, to shoot them first before firing back.

They used an excuse

All them Brown Skinned Boys are Gang Bangers and need to be put down

Change the system from within, presuming you can meet the standards.

And when a 13 year old with a REAL gun puts two rifle rounds in your chest and you're staring up at the sky as you bleed out, maybe you realize things are quite as clear cut as you make it out to be.

has ever said "I'll let him pop off a few rounds at me to see if he really means it"

You are letting your racial bias affect your perception.

If I had a PENNY for every time someone typed that shit during the Trayvon Martin case...

I'm not making a definitive statement this early on whether the cops were right or wrong, but that phrase just brings up a lot of ugly memories for me...

We pay these people to use proper judgement

In a field fequented by children with Airsoft guns

Bad enough the Sherrifs Dept. Is trying to justify it calling it a pellet gun

And sadly, we see kids shoot those up as well. Sorry, but that reasoning doesn't work.

The whole neighborhood knew it

But the again its a Hispanic Neighborhood

Sorry but your rationalation wreaks

regardless of where you live. Sorry, but YOUR rationale wreaks.

Is an unnecessary escalation of violence

he was a kid.

Now envision the situation.

Kid hears someone shout at him. Maybe he understands what the person is saying, but maybe not, since a shouted command sometimes is not easy to understand at first--raising the voice volume can distort sounds, and as a severely hearing-impaired person who wears hearing aids, I can tell you that there's a limit to how loud the amplification can be before the distortion causes the words to become nearly or completely incomprehensible.

So the kid hears a shouted command. Maybe he immediately understands the words, maybe not. But unless they yelled,"Police!" first--AND unless he understood what they yelled if they did--he probably didn't know who was behind him, so he could have thought it was another kid, since kids play with airguns in that field all the time.

But whether he understood the words or not, whether or not they identified themselves as cops, whether or not he believed them if they did, he did exactly what ANY normal person would do if someone suddenly came up behind them and started shouting loudly: he STARTLED a bit and started to turn around.

As soon as he started to turn, stll holding the toy gun, the cops (who famously shoot without a second's delay, because they are always on a hair-trigger edge about maybe being killed on duty--not entirely without reason, but still, not a good thing if it makes them shoot too quickly without taking even a second to be clear about what the situation is) see the person turning toward them, gun still in hand, since he was startled by the sudden shouting behind him.

Since cops are always afraid that someone with a gun is about to shoot them, and always afraid that the next person they approach for ANY reason MIGHT have a gun and try to shoot them, they *immediately* reacted to the sight of the boy turning, gun still in hand, assuming that (1) that he deliberately REFUSED to drop the weapon" despite being ordered to, and (2) that the only reason he is turning toward them with the gun still in his hand is that he *intends* to start shooting (and since EVERYONE now has the right to automatic weapons, if he does start shooting, he can get off a gazillion shots in a second if they wait even that long to be sure of the situation). So the cops shoot first, IMMEDIATELY, the very second he turns toward them with the gun still in his hand.

I am sure he did NOT "aim" the gun at them, but that he merely turned toward them when they startled him by suddenly shouting at him from behind. But to the cops, that movement *with the gun still in his hand* SEEMED to be a deliberate act of "pointing" the gun at them to shoot them

I think that cop training is truly lousy, and that what training they do get overemphasizes what the military calls "force protection" while seriously neglecting the sort of situations in which overly aggressive cop behavior can unnecessarily create violence in a nonviolent situatuon or drastically escalate violence in a barely "violent" situatuon--as, for example, when someone is shouting but not actually attacking anyone yet.

Better training, plus a less hair-trigger shoot response on the part of cops in general, would probably have prevented this tragedy.

I think psychological screening of candidates for police jobs would help, too, if they would try to screen out authoritarian bully types. But unfortunately, that's the type of person that police departments actually seem to prefer.

5 shots in the back

Check KTVU - they posted the witnesses statement

Bullet holes usually don't lie.

Apparently it's legal in California for the person who purchased an airsoft gun to remove the orange tip though. As far as i can find, Michigan is the only state that actually prohibits removing the orange tip.

Why?????

One was a cap gun that looked a lot like a .38. I also had a BB gun, but it was noticeably smaller than a real rifle. Of course, that was 35-40 years ago, when there weren't all these mass shootings. But a lot of the guns kids play with today look very realistic, especially the pellet guns. Parents don't have a lot of choices if they want to get their kid a toy gun to play with.

I grew up in Santa Rosa not far from where this happened

Do kids frequent the field with airsoft guns is like asking is the Pope Catholic

so I wouldn't harm anybody's property. It's very common for kids to do that.

there were a few high-profile incidents of kids being shot by cops in poor visibility/at distance, etc...After that my parents stopped buying them for me...

(Absolutely LOVED the smell of a popped cap back in the day)

for playing with toy guns. WE never had cops harass us or try and murder us when we played 'soldier' or cowboys and indians.

Must be a sign of our times.

during hunting and bird season.

why must you people use profanities?

Maybe check your own verbage at the door first before getting all self-righteous!?

5 shots in the back

If so this is unwarranted

We use to play cops and robbers/cowboys and indians as kids...I guess we would all be slaughtered in todays police state. Back in the 80s, we saw plenty of cops and game wardens that didn't even give us a second glance! With or without friends around...it was just good common sense to know kids played with toy guns!

Cops today behave like jackbooted thugs and end up murdering kids with toy guns. I makes me want to puke!

Why not wait for the autopsy report before going on a cop hate rant?
Also, eyewitness accounts are not very reliable in a high stress situation.

"But one neighbor said he saw something different.
Ethan Oliver says he lives across the street and came outside after he heard two gun shots.
He says by that time Lopez was already on the ground.
"Then the cops went at it again and unloaded like 6 to 7 shots,” said Oliver.
When asked if he meant that the deputy shot Lopez while he was on the ground, Oliver said, "Yeah. Exactly what I saw."

http://www.ktvu.com/news/news/national/dozens-march-remember-boy-killed-deputies/nbXW9/

Really the piss poor excuse for law enforcement is the reason the child is dead. I would sack the entire group that murdered the poor boy. The cops used poor judgement and killed an unarmed child. End of story.

When was the autopsy report released proving this? Or are you going on eyewitness statements which could very well be incorrect?

1 the kid who was walking with him - the 2nd neighbor across the street

being untouchable. Even after murdering a kid in cold blood.

also, eyewitness reports have been known to be incorrect, and after seeing a picture of the airsoft rifle he was carrying, I would have thought it was real also and taken appropriate steps to protect myself also.

All shots on the right side, cops approached from behind.

This was murder.

Last edited Fri Oct 25, 2013, 12:33 PM - Edit history (1)

It could be a tragic outcome of reasonable choices by the boy and the officer.

LEOs you have never met or never will meet! How sad for you. They murdered the kid in cold blood, I know you don't care at all. Thanks for playing CYA for a bunch of thugs with guns.

you know, things like the autopsy report, forensic and physical evidence before I pronounce any guilt or innocence.
And for the record, you haven't met them or will probably never meet them.

Or anyone responding with a high 5 to the cops for murdering a child with a toy gun. Common sense seems to be lacking as a general quality in a lot of people around here. The cops failed to use common sense and murdered a child. Sorry if that bothers you so much.

I'm not, as you put it, high 5ing anyone, I'm doing what most level headed people do, waiting for the official report to come out before I make up my mind.
If the evidence shows they committed murder, I'll condemn them, if it shows it was justifiable, then I'll say they did the right thing given the circumstances.
It's a tragedy that a 13 yo child lost his life, but the investigation of the circumstances have just begun.

The only reality that matters to them is one they create in their minds.

I guess I'm just kind of weird in that I like to wait for the actual facts of the case to come out before passing judgement, things like the autopsy report, which will tell us if the kid was actually shot in the back 5-6 times as the OP is claiming, other things like forensic and physical evidence.
It's been my experience that eyewitness accounts are sometimes unreliable, and the evidence later disputes it.

I'll continue my wait an see vigil before passing judgement.

I live in Santa Rosa and I don't believe the SPD's version of events. What special insight do you have?

They lacked enough common sense to keep the young boy alive and should all lose their jobs imo.

Last edited Fri Oct 25, 2013, 09:41 AM - Edit history (1)