Maybe that needs to change.

But how?

An error that leads to the death of an innocent citizen, should always end in termination of the officer's contract.

At a minimum, the taking of an innocent life should be a firing offense.

A weapons expert that couldn't tell a toy gun from a real one.

it sounds like the deputy had trained himself to react instinctively -- without really thinking.

He reacted exactly the way he was trained for combat purposes. Except this wasn't a war zone (yet).

used by the enemy. This officer confused his military and police training, probably went on auto-pilot using the rules of engagement from iraq.

The militarization of our police is often dismissed as a fringe complaint but it's a real phenomena.

instead of overreacting and then covering up their crimes.

There are now moves to require manufacturers to make toy guns obviously toy guns, either through color or making them transparent.

This is not the first time that the police shot a child carrying a toy gun that looked real. It is the reason I don't buy any toy guns for my children. (Not even water pistols.)

There are places in this country where people openly carry REAL firearms. Should the police execute them?

but what if they are just holding it? Because it seems that is what happened here, the kid was just holding it.

I wish they wouldn't even make these toys, but our culture currently is saturated with guns. When my son was younger, he of course was into these as well, and I made him get the transparent plastic one. I'm so glad that he is over that phase of his youth. I remember telling him over and over to only play with it in the backyard and never in front of the house. He thought I was over reacting. Eventually the gun broke and he stopped playing with it.

That no one is aking where he got the replica. Its poor parenting...

cannot tell the difference between a normal size 13-year old and an adult.

Killed the teacher with a box cutter? Teenagers do kill from time to time.

I had read that the 'gun' belonged to his friend and he had borrowed it. I don't know if that information has changed or not at this point. I have not seen it mentioned in more recent articles. His parents may not have even known he had access to this replica.

The version he carried is illegal in CA, too

aren't they required to have a bright color ring on the barrel to indicate that it is a toy? Is that the case here, then we have a trigger happy cop.

It looked EXACTLY like a real AK-47 with a shortened barrel.

Its one of those things that happen once in a while when you come across a shotgun etc hidden as a supersoaker or other toy.

required to have smog reduction equipment that is no longer attached, and this is just a piece of orange plastic, easily knocked off in play. Even if there it may have been obscured, covered with mud, painted. The picture I saw of the department holding up the gun next to a real one does not show it.

be defended by others.

Normal size 13-year olds don't look like adults.

As far as your claim that a story was made up by me, that exists only in your imagination. You are wrong because there was no story conveyed by me, "made up" as you say or otherwise.

That's kinda what happened, ain't it?

something more substantial as evidence? Otherwise it comes off like a teabagger dissin' crap they don't know jack about.

If people really wanted to solve the problem, and not just whine about it they would stop the mfrs of toy guns, just like they stopped the mfrs of toy cigarettes.

It's so much easier to go after a single cop who, when faced with a potentially life-threatening situation made a decision. I'm no cop lover, but neither do I want to join in with a crowd of loud-mouth, ignorant, pitchfork carrying crazies who don't have the backbone to solve the real problem.

The fact that he had a toy gun is unfortunate.

The fact that the cop killed him over it is tragic.

We may have a problem with toy guns in this country, but we also have a problem with trigger-happy police. This incident, where a kid holding a toy gun ends up getting shot and killed by a frightened cop, is a prime example of that. Of course, there are many others, with and without toy guns.

Sure, maybe we need to do something about toy guns, but we also desperately need a national commission on law enforcement standards and practices.

And you can put you invective back where it belongs.

clearly saw it as an opportunity to kill. I bet they toasted beers at the local bar that night. The police force has become a place for psychopaths.

Seven shots?

into a wasted war in Afghanistan, then brought him back here and asked him to protect us in a uniform and marked car in which people, total strangers that he doesn't even know, would walk up and put a bullet in his head in a New York minute if they were in the right mood. He, and others doing that job take real guns off of people they search every week, some no older than this kid, some younger.

Then one day he is driving down the street and sees a figure with a gun. He tells him to drop it, and the person turns toward him with the assault weapon, the kind he had faced more than once, I expect, by people who were trying to kill him, in his hand. Apparently to...what? And if you are wrong someone else is dead.

Damn right 7 shots - that's barely 2 or 3 seconds, and you want to put them down. Now. And you fire until they go down. So he probably had two or three rounds left, depending on the magazine he had. Because the alternative is that an innocent bystander dies, your partner dies, or you die. That is their training. If you shoot, you shoot to stop them, you don't shoot a bullet and then wait to see if they can still kill people before you shoot another. It's not 1 Adam 12, it's real.

How the his parents ever let Andy walk out of the house with that thing uncovered is hard to fathom. People are killed for their shoes, for a few bucks, for a perceived slight every day. And walking around with a real-looking rifle is just another way to get shot - think someone wouldn't have shot his ass just to get his gun? Heck, there are shooters out there that would have done it KNOWING it was a toy, just because they wanted it.

Is it a tragedy? Damn right. A 13 year old kid with, what the cop didn't know, that we now know, was a toy gun, is dead. Was it avoidable? Sure - stop making toy guns in a country which already has nearly a gun for EVERY citizen, nearly twice as many guns as the next two places on the list, Serbia and Yemen, for cryin'' out loud. But the answer is not to listen to a bunch of self-righteous people who like to hear themselves talk, with complaints and no solutions, who completely ignore the fact that they have the luxury of time and information that he didn't have, who think they are better than him while they sit on their asses and make comments in the safety of their computer hole.

Anyone who says they can make a better judgment call in that situation is a disingenuous phony and a liar. Along with anyone who says they know what was in that cops head.

Too damn many cops are bullies these days, too damn many cops pull out a gun when they should be relying on less lethal means. Period. But when we allow gun manufacturers to create toys that look just like deadly weapons (the pics were made public, next to a real assault weapon. Damn little difference, and nothing to distinguish it as a toy), and we haven't got the guts to go up against the real power, the corporations, (whether they are the banker/donors to the Democratic party or the mfrs of these killer toys) then the spineless, gutless, and greedy society that allows it has no business calling for someone else to make impossible judgment calls which they themselves couldn't even hope to do.

He wanted that uniform and patrol car and HE asked to protect...oops, i mean "supervise/control/dominate" us.

Cops should be held accountable.

I'm saying that your comment has got to be the nuttiest comment so far on this thread.

recognize as a weapon, it isn't an execution. With less than three seconds to decide to shoot or wait, this guy decided to shoot.

As I said, this is the reason my children are not allowed to even have toy guns.

What then?

that officers ability to determine where the gun is pointed. This is not the first child shot by the police because they thought a toy gun was real. As long as the gun culture survives in America, it won't be the last.

This kid wasn't shot multiple times because several officers shot once or twice. A single LEO unloaded his gun.


eta: any doubt about that is erased by reading the officer's own views on his job. This LEO shouldn't have been on the streets.

They guy should, at minimum, be fired. I would like to see him tried, but I don't expect it to h appen. I suspect he saw what he expected to see rather than the reality of the situation. He fixated on the gun.

but he probably doesn't treat the streets as a war zone like our hero here.

but this guy holds himself out as an expert -- if he has a conscience he is at least privately doubting the stance he had before he emptied his gun on a 13 year old.

So all your "Theories" don't apply

And read the Eye Witness Testimony before you go accusing me of making shit up

At least several threads on DU in the past year about assholes open-carrying assault rifles in public (since the Conn. school shooting), have either openly stated or implied that a few of them should be shot to send a message to the gun-nut community.

Right after crucifying this officer for shooting a kid with a gun that looked just like a real gun, who didn't respond when ordered twice to put down the weapon and instead turned toward the officer with the barrel pointing at the officer with every legitimate reason to believe he or his partner were about to be shot they'll go into a thread about Iraq or Afghanistan veterans and bemoan their PTSD and how tragic it is and rail at the government for not taking proper care of our veterans, etc.

And if anyone dares to post an OP about something "extraordinary" a cop does that in reality happens every day all over the country that it rarely reaches the news since cops doing "extraordinary" things as part of their job so it isn't news though some may acknowledge the "extraordinary" thing that cop did they won't fail to remind everyone that this is just one cop out of a handful of all the millions of cops in the country that isn't a bloodthirsty scumball running around shooting at everything that moves.

And if anyone bothers to post an OP about an officer that was killed in the line of duty they don't dare post anything in the thread at all lest it spend more than a few moments on the front page of GD and remind anyone that cops go to work every day knowing that any time they do there is a risk of never going home again.

Because according to them, dammit, if any police officer every fires a weapon there is NEVER EVER EVER a legitimate reason for it. Perfect example is the dozens of threads berating the police in CA for setting fire to that cabin that the whackjob ex-officer broke into and holed up in blasting away at anyone in range (which were all cops) after writing a manifesto that clearly spelled out he was going on a rampage to kill cops because of his being fired from the force which he did killing several officers that were trying to catch him as break into a couple's condo and tie them up and steal there car and even went so far as to blame the police for setting fire to the cabin for killing him when they knew full well that the crazy spree killer went down into the basement and shot his own self in the head. Yes, for a couple of weeks there were endless threads and posts from them in support of a crazy spree killer with some even going so far as to try to claim somehow that the freak was innocent just so they could get their cop hate on. Somehow it never dawns on them how foaming at the mouth lunatic that is and far more so than I've ever seen from any Repub no matter how fucked in the head.

Hell, recently they piled-on on a K-9 officer DOG that wasn't doing a thing other than being present (yeah, that's right, they think even a DOG that is an officer is fair game for their lunatic hate even when the DOG wasn't even doing a damn thing other than just being there.

The one I will never forget is the story of that woman that went batshit crazy in the airport for missing her flight who of course was arrested yet the cop hater brigade was here on schedule berating the officers for arresting her and - get this - claiming that instead of arresting her the officers should have GIVEN HER A HUG. I shit you not.

Now if the Admins can only explain why these people are still here when the TOS says that bigotry is not allowed here and repeated offenders will be banned though they'll ban a person with a single foaming at the mouth bigoted rant against any other group of people in a heartbeat while all of DU including the cop hater brigade will gasp at the utter evil of such thinking never mind that they actually posted it, and thank GOD they got banned. And this shit has been going on on a daily basis on DU since I got here in 2003. Make sense out of that shit.

You'll never see any threads here about the officer that took several rounds to the chest and one to the wrist after he purposely crashed his patrol car into the truck of a freak with a gun that was shooting at anyone in his path of escape who was about to kill his partner (see article below video). Or the cop that was involved in a shootout with freaks that just shot and killed a police officer that took a round to the chest and then chased after one of them that was trying to escape while his life was bleeding out of the hole and while being rescued by a good samaritan was able to kill a suspect that fired at both him and the good samaritan. Or the officer involved in a shootout with a freak that had just shot and killed him mother-in-law and his 14 month old daughter and setting the house on fire that was shot in the neck yet still ran out to pull one of his fellow officers to a position of safety that had been shot and was helpless on the ground while holding on to his blood pumping neck, etc.
http://abcnews.go.com/US/police-officer-years-heroics-caught-dashcam/story?id=20661731
(auto play through them all)

And I agree on all points.
But that said, he's a weapons expert. That couldn't tell a fake when he saw one.

I guess weapons expert means he know how to use them in an expert fashion, as opposed to being able to tell real weapons from fake one.

the "gun" is the key issue.

Our police are corrupt as hell. No doubt about it. Seems this particular cop was damaged goods to start with, taking the job on for an adrenaline rush.

But the size of a person holding a gun is fairly irrelevant.

2) The size of the child does matter. If, for example, a 3-year old was holding a toy, you wouldn't think that a cop would have the right to blow him away. The same is true of a 4-year old. And a 5-year old.

Then the question is a matter of degree. At what age and size would people with normal intelligence recognize a child as being a child?

A kid who is 13-years old should not be blown away by a trigger-happy or overly cowardly cop.

A kid who is 13-years old should not be blown away by a trigger-happy or overly cowardly cop.

Agree. And this police officer should never have been allowed on the street, should never again be allowed to serve as a law officer.

The boy did not have a gun, instead he was holding something that any reasonable person would have thought was a gun. And while Justin Bieber and my sister in law both still look 13 to me, there are plenty of early teens that could pass as older teens. I could pass as 18 when I was 12, where my college roommate is still asked for ID, as he is short and slender. None of which has any relevance to their potential to use a gun. Nor does your obfuscation, trying to somehow equate 13 year olds to 3 year olds.

Let me repeat. This officer came to this situation with the wrong attitude and make the wrong choice and murdered this boy.
The boys age or size relative to an adult has nothing to do with anything. Even if he had been 33 and 6'4, the cop still came to it with the wrong attitude and made the wrong choice.

who was not trigger happy was

Sorry for the wrong interpretation.

I would love to see a quote from the FBI saying that it was clearly not a real gun, that it was easily identifiable as a fake. Or from the other deputy. He was still in the car. Doesn't mean he wouldn't have been shooting if he had been out. Cops seem to be kinda quick on the trigger. In fact the article you quote seems to counter your claim itself. "Deputy Gelhaus was able to engage more quickly because he didn't have to drive the vehicle"

http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/Friends-question-killing-of-boy-who-had-fake-rifle-4920174.php#photo-5358018
I look at the pictures, and I dont see how someone from a reasonable distance could immediately identify the fake. With a little examination, the differences become clear, but on split second glance, I wouldn't know. Would you?

But even if you can provide those quotes, and could easily identify the gun as a fake from 20 feet, around a corner, it doesn't change anything. Even if the kid was carrying a bright pink hello kitty tennis racket instead of a toy gun, it makes no difference.

The cop killed him. The cop shouldn't have done that. There was no need. But the size of a 13 year old boy is irrelevant to that. If he was a 3'3 midget, the cop still shouldn't have shot him dead. And if he was the same size as Andre the giant, the cop still shouldn't have shot him dead.

An innocent kid was killed. That by itself is reason for an FBI investigation. In my opinion.

An Innocent kid was killed. That by itself is reason for people in the community to protest the shooting.

For any of that reasoning to apply

Orange tip, there is no way to tell the difference until you heft it if the orange is gone, there are also guns sold that look like toys, its one of those situations where you never can be sure if a gun is real or not.

Theres plenty of stories out there with teenagers etc killing people with real guns. Hell the gangs and cartels like them young. So to assume its not a real gun in the hands of someone smaller is a heck of a dangerous proposition.

I am simply saying there have been enough instances of thirteen year olds in gangs and cartels and just on their own who have used real guns to kill that it is not outside of probability that a thirteen year old may have a real gun. I dont know what happened here, as i was not there, neither was anyone else on DU.

Year olds. But i am done so carry on.

Sarcasm.

But that probably echoes the thought process in the cop's mind.

I hope he sleeps well knowing he protected the community -- and his family -- by reacting to the clear and present danger of a young boy with a b-b gun.

Yes, the law enforcement mindset of the street officer needs an adjustment. Save the commando stuff for SWAT only.

Last edited Mon Oct 28, 2013, 03:54 PM - Edit history (1)

too late. And no amount of people will change that fact. TOOOOO LATE!

He has a difficult time dealing with this because if not, it means to him that it was a justified shooting and he'll remain trigger happy. Nothing will bring back this little boy, not even jail time for this guy (which is a pipe dream anyway) but if has to live in his own personal hell for the rest of his life, that will have to be enough justice Though I believe people like this guy think of other people in two categories - the people he cares about and everyone else. And everyone else has a target on them.

No one who feels police work is "a contact sport" should have a badge. Makes it sound like they're hunting people down.

recognize this cop as a trigger happy nut who was not psychologically fit? "Contact Sport" says very clearly that this cop regards all American citizens as adversaries / enemies / threats, whether real or imagined.

These stories are becoming more & more common. "Protect & serve" has gone by the wayside. We the People are no longer civilians, we are the enemy.

I thought there was a law or something. WHY would this be allowed? Having toys that resemble the real thing close enough that no one can tell the difference seems like an obvious issue to me. Why would parents want their kids running around with something that could get them shot?

Scratch that: ALL kids know better than their parents!

This gun didn't belong to the kid that had it, he had gotten it from a friend. So even if his parents forbade him from having one, he still managed to get one from a friend.

Antique cap guns, some fron the 19th Century.

You'd think the people who would want to collect toy guns that look so real would also want cops not to shoot them for carrying them to and from games they might be used in. Self-preservation, you know.

Trouble is, an Airsoft AK-clone in a sack looks an awful lot like ... an AK-47 in a sack. Still might look suspicious even if you tried to carry it "concealed".

keep it in a case until I reach the range. Simply seems prudent.

Such a tragic story on so many counts.

It sounds like he was not the appropriate candidate for the sheriffs office. He should have a psych eval. It could very well be that he copes with PTSD and compensates by being hyper-vigilant. Which can be dangerous in a civilian environment. It distorts your perspective and affects how one reacts to stress.

About how law enforcement jurisdictions have been recruiting the wrong type of person into law enforcement. The "aggressive stance" view comes with the recruit and that weaves its way into training and outcomes, not the other way around. That view also comes with a huge racial bias as well. Start recruiting people that want to serve rather than dominate. Big difference, especially when it comes to outcomes.

The blame is squarely on the parents for allowing their child to have something that looks like an assault rifle in the hands of that child. There is no way for a police officer to know what the intentions of the person with the imitation assault rifle is going to do and no way for him to tell if the assault weapon imitation is real or not.

it's not a secret anybody except for maybe the posters here.

I think their is plenty of blame to go around. Yes, the parents do deserve a significant amount of the blame- that kid should never be walking on a public street with a realistic looking toy gun; you are just asking for trouble. The officers should have probably not have been as quick on the trigger as they were- if the kid wasnt pointing the gun on them IIRC.

patrol. They are an occupying force. Why do they need "jump" uniforms? Why all the military braid and paraphernalia?

a kid (60s), me and every friend of mine had a closet full of toy guns. We used to walk around with them everywhere and the idea that we could be killed by a cop was unfathomable to us and our parents. Why are toy guns such a problem now?

the leading M6 guys don't shoot until they are shot at...

Strike Back is on HBO...fantastic series...lots of guns...and killings.

Rojas and Marquez say they heard the deputies yell in english "drop the gun."

She says almost immediately, both deputies then opened their doors and shots were fired.

Rojas and Marquez say deputies only yelled once before opening fire.

She says they fired immediately and didn't give him a chance to do anything.

http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/local/north_bay&id=9302840

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014633153

That doesn't matter because he didn't have an orange tip

Sarcasim of course

The kid had to have been laying on the ground as many times as this deputy shot him. I also understand that only 3 bullets were recovered from his body. This tells me that he had entrance and exit wounds. He mutilated this kid.

"calling" "contact sport" 24 years on the force, and a weapons expert hopefully he will retire soon.

It seems these cops had no reason to stop the child in the first place. Assumption does not equal good police work, don't believe me? Ask the cop that didn't shoot, or doesn't his opinion count because he wasn't a weapons expert?

I wonder how many of the people that want toy guns banned feel the same way about the guns they are meant to imitate?

Many on this board said they would do the same thing regardless if they were causing a problem.

Last edited Mon Oct 28, 2013, 11:39 PM - Edit history (1)

any police officer who kills an innocent unarmed civilian should be fired...period...even if it "justifiable"...even if there are no criminal charges...

They should be fired...shooting any citizen that has committed no real crime should be a firing offense...

No exceptions.

While I'm not necessarily condoning the officers' actions in this specific case you cannot hold cops, let alone anyone, to such a standard. Mistakes happen- tragic mistakes happen- and sometimes the person who makes the mistake has done everything right. Not to mention all the unintended consequences such a policy would have.

is when you add 2 and 2 and get 5.
When you gun down an innocent person....I believe you should get to look for a new job...
Law Enforcement should not condone mistakes, even "Tragic Mistakes", when an innocent person is shot and killed.

Really! You can get fired from Fucking McDonald's for much less...is life so cheap where you live that an officer's so called career is more important than a human life?

I call bullshit

the issue is how does the officer know the individual is innocent at the time? There is no way. Officers are forced to make split second decisions without the benefit of hindsight. I'm not condoning the officers' action in this case specifically, all i'm saying is you can't have a broad policy like that. Think about it- it would be like revoking the drivers license of any person who hit a pedestrian- regardless of the circumstances.

it is not the same thing at all...and the fact that you think it is lets me know that it is a waste of my precious time to try to make you see otherwise.
An LEO carries a gun and has the authority over all our lives. When one guns down an innocent individual...that authority needs to be taken away, not simply as a punishment, but as a means to curb unnecessary violence by all police officers. We are not disposable and there must be repercussions when a citizen is gunned down by "accident".

It's rare, but there is a phenomenon known as suicide by cop. Officers who have been put in that situation may end up resigning anyway because of the psychological trauma involved in such an event, but when it's a clear-cut case of intentional SBC I would not think an officer should lose their job.

A cop car stopped on Noe-Bixby and two cops got out. Walked across the road and talked to us - they thought they were real guns. They didn't yell at us to drop them, didn't yell at all. Calmly walked over. We told them we had been at the creek shooting cans.

The drove us home (which was about 1/4 mile) and said we weren't in trouble but you can't shoot bb guns in city limits, but if we were going just do it in our yard.

Mom told me to just hide it next time I went to the creek with it Lots of kids back then carried em down there to shoot them because there is no one around, no cars, windows, etc. We took trash bags with us to collect the cans on the road side to have something to shoot at. Set them up, shoot them, take em home and recycle them. Buy more bb's, repeat.

England does NOT arm their front line police officers. US prison does the same for those guards that interact with prisoners. The reason is simple, the #1 source of weapons that kill police officers are their own guns. Think about the typical situation. An officer approaches a suspect. They start to talk. A fight breaks out as the Officer tries to arrest the suspect. In the fight the suspect somehow gets hold the the officer's gun and shoots him or her. Remember a typical police gun fight is two shoots are less then two feet. Sorry in such situations a billy club is more effective.

Now, I do NOT support a total ban on firearms for police officers. I like the idea of a two man team, One unarmed who approaches the suspect, the other behind the patrol car (or if on foot some other protection) providing covering the first officer. The team should be trained that the first officer if he or she suspect something wrong to fall on the ground so that the officer providing cover has a clear field of fire. This is what they do in prisons. The guards among the prisoners are trained to take care of themselves using their brains, but also trained that if something goes wrong to fall down and leave the gun guards have a clear field of fire.

Now, the above cuts out the ability to send one officer instead of two (or if you send one, he is unarmed unless he asks for backup, with modern cell phones and radios not a big problem). The main thrust of having the officers unarmed is it gets them to think of ways to resolve a situation other then in the use of a firearm. Remember the old saying, "If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail". The same with officers with firearms, they tend to see problems as things that can be resolved with firearms for they have a firearm. After five to ten years of going without a firearm and seeing how to resolve problems without them, then and only then permit them to be the back up officer.

Sorry, the more I read about such incidents the more I go back to my own military training when setting up protective areas. We NEVER counted on the gate guards to do anything then to check out the vehicles coming in and telling us it was OK. If anything was wrong, it was the Machine Gun backing him up that was we depended on to stop any hostile from coming in (and the guard was trained to stay out of the field of fire of the Machine Gun for obvious reasons).

Police are going into hostile areas. No one needs an officer in peaceful areas. Since the officer are going into hostile areas, they have to be prepared for problems. At the same time, the officers have to understand that most of the people they are meeting and dealing with are NOT hostile themselves (Unlike in Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam and Korea, where the majority of people supported the other side and thus hostile). Going into such areas unarmed, but with someone covering them provides the officer the security that cover provides AND the knowledge that the Officer has to deal with these people on equal terms, i.e. both are unarmed or unwilling to use arms.

I am sorry, had this officer NOT been armed he would have had to face a 13 year old with what looked like an AK-47 and how to deal with such a person. I have seen police deal with armed suspects and never pulled their weapons.

In this case I suspect the 13 year old was carrying the weapon in a port arm position (the most common position to carry a rifle, for it provides the maximum amount of control over that weapon). The 13 year old when yelled at by the officers turned around leftward, turning the barrel leftward to the officers and the officer who shot took that as an aggressive move and opened fire. I am sorry, such a move should be expected in such situations in a peace time area and thus the officer is at fault.

An alternative situation is the 13 year old was carrying the weapon in his right hand held by just the right hand. When the officer yelled at him, the 13 year old turned around leftward and again the officer saw the weapon pointing at him and took that as an aggressive action. Again I would blame the officer, for turning around should be expected when you yell at someone and that the weapon would then be in your direction fully expected. I a war zone with a hostile population, I could justify what the officer did, but in a peaceful American City (even if in a high crime areas, noted for crimes of violence) I can not for the simple reason the officer had other options, including calling for backup AND just sitting behind his patrol call till the AK was on the ground (or if the AK was a true AK and used by the person carrying it, opening fire from behind the cover of his patrol car).

Now, I suspect the officer will be cleared of any criminal charge for he had no "intent" to kill an unarmed 13 year old, the officer was "justified" in opening fire do to his belief that the toy was a real AK. On the other hand I suspect he will be sued and his employer have to pay off the family of the victim, for his actions were uncalled for under all of the circumstances of the case. His previous writing will be excluded from any criminal prosecution, but admitted into the record in the subsequent civil litigation. This will increase whatever punitive damages is awarded in this case.

EXCEPT the guy who actually pulled the trigger.

It was the kid's fault for having a toy gun.

It was the manufacturer's fault for making and selling a toy gun.

It was God's fault for breaking the orange tip fall off.

It was the parents' fault for letting the kid have the toy gun.

It is society's fault for the "gun culture".

And of course the most egregious excuse, that other teenager killed a teacher with box cutters, so well that means this teen was probably going to do that too.

Every excuse possible to shift blame off the cop.