What exactly does "raised the gun in the deputies direction" mean exactly? Because later on, they say "The teen was about 20 or 30 feet away from the deputies with his back toward them when he began turning around with what one deputy described as the barrel of the rifle rising up and turning in his direction." It sounds more like the boy heard someone yelling at him, so he turned around and in so doing, allowed the pellet gun to raise from whatever position it had previously been in. This doesn't sound as though he assumed any sort of assault stance---weapon raised, aiming at officers, with feet locked in position. It's just the natural movement you'll make when carrying something long and swiveling.

I think there's some serious questions regarding the police officers' response. After briefly checking California firearm laws, it does not appear that owning an assault weapon is illegal. Open carry is partially allowed, but that seems to apply more to rural areas. Even so, does the act of illegal open carry of what is potentially a legally owned firearm justify assuming crouched positions behind open car doors with guns drawn? Would they have behaved similarly if the weapon in question was a handgun? This situation seems to have been escalated before the officers even knew what was really going on.

Second, how relevant is whether or not they told him to drop the gun? This is California and the boy would seem to be of Latino descent. Is it difficult to believe that English might not be his first language, or even one he knows at all? I'm reminded of the deaf man shot by a police officer when he didn't notice calls to drop his whittling knife. Barking out orders at people unaware of your presence won't always illicit immediate response even if they do share a common tongue.

More generally, I'm not sure there should really be many scenarios in which a police officer is the first to shoot. There are far too many unknowns for me to be comfortable with officers who shoot first and ask questions later. It shouldn't be difficult to run through some quick mental probability calculations. How likely is it that someone walking down the street openly carrying an object shaped like an assault rifle is intent on committing a crime? Is it more likely that they might simply be transporting it? Given its size, it seems openly transporting a rifle would be more likely than openly transporting a pistol, for instance. What's the chance that it's not a gun at all? How often do you see 13-year-olds handling rifles versus toy guns? This shouldn't be a situation in which police immediately assume hostile intent and respond in kind.

Let's see... who the hell walks around with an assault rifle replica and raises it when the police tells him to put it down? There's not enough info about what the exact circumstances were, but walking around with what looks like a real weapon is never a good idea in the first place. It's sad that a young kid gets killed, but it was a stupid act to say the least, and what were the police supposed to do whens someone raises an assault rifle at them? Just stand there and hope deep inside that the threatening kid is wielding a fake weapon?

Bullets don't work like they do in movies. Being shot in the shoulder or legs can be just as fatal as a shot to the chest or head. Neither will it necessarily prevent an assailant from continuing to return fire. That's why police officers are trained to aim for center mass. It's the biggest target with the greatest chance of stopping the target. Generally speaking, if a police officer is firing their weapon, the target surviving is a happy accident, not a goal.

There's also the question of just how accurate police actually are: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/09/weekinreview/09baker.html?pagewanted=all If they're going to be firing a gun I'd rather they aim for the part they'll most likely hit rather than trying to pull of a trick shot and sending a bullet through somebody's wall.

Which is why the most important question IMO is how much time he was given to put the gun down. He was apparently told twice, but that's meaningless without the context of time. In any case, the kid wasn't the sharpest crayon in the box, but if he wasn't given enough time to make it apparent he was being submissive, then the cops still share some of the blame for being too hasty.

Indeed. You shoot, you are using lethal force and anything less than a situation where it is warranted, it's not good. Not to mention handguns aren't the most accurate thing in the hands of most people, even people trained. There's just too much that can happen and asking someone to hit a precise point like the shoulder or leg is a tall task to ask for.

This is a popular misconception, and it is just that, a misconception. The Hollywood portrayal of someone being shot in the leg and dropping is a myth. The only way to instantaneously disable someone is to shoot them in the central nervous system - brain or spine. Since headshots are a risky propositiong, cops are trained to shoot center mass.

I still think the language barrier is something police officers need to consider. Whether the boy in question could only speak Spanish, was fluent only in English, or something in between is immaterial; the police officers couldn't know whether their directives were even being understood. Given that there are nearly 40 million Spanish speakers in the United States, and many will be located in the southwest, I really don't think we can just gloss over this reality.

Likelihood, too, also needs to be factored into one's response. How often are thirteen-year-olds gunning down police officers and how many are playing with toy guns? An orange tip or not shouldn't be the deciding factor here. My friends and I had toy guns when we were kids and those had orange tips. You know what we did? We cut them off. Why? Because it looked cooler without it. It wasn't about smart or dumb, it was about us wanting to play with the coolest toy guns we could get our hands on. Potentially being stopped by the police was never even a consideration. So it comes back to what's more likely, that these officers stumbled upon the one thirteen year old out of a hundred planning to shoot something up, or one of the ninety nine with decidedly less insidious intentions?

If you are holding what looks like a gun, and two police officers are shouting at you whilst pointing guns at you then you know to put it down, whether they're speaking a different language or not.

Or: you are holding a toy, someone you can't see or understand starts shouting at you from behind, you turn around to see what's happening, he shoots you.

That is just... ridiculous. I don't know what source feeds you that insanity (though I can probably guess)

Police in the U.S. have their moments and their bad seeds, sure, but to be afraid to come to the US based on the presumption that all our police are psychopaths and terrifying... come on.

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As for the article, I think it was justified, a shame but justified. The gun looked real, people always say "well they should have considered this or that" but I feel that most people who say that have never had a gun pointed at them which, for all they know, could end their life at any moment. I am sure there is not a whole lot of deep considerate thinking going on within those moments.

I have never been a police officer so I don't pretend to know enough about what they go through day in and day out, then to have a teenager point what they believe to be a real gun in their direction and refusing to drop it... so I don't feel I have the experience to form much of an opinion on what they should have done.

Hindsight is always 20/20. I am sure a lot of people in that situation, in that moment would have shot him too. No matter what they claim they would have done if it were them.

This is what they are paid and trained to do. If they aren't able to handle that, no problem, they just shouldn't be police officers. Soldiers aren't even supposed to engage potential enemy combatants unless they know they are enemy combatants. So even if a couple guys are doing something suspicious on the side of a road, you don't assume their rigging up an IED. You observe and investigate. But somehow it's okay for police officers to respond far more aggressively to a child in far more ambiguous circumstances?
And I'd like to just point this one out considering how many people are calling out a thirteen year old boy for being an "idiot" (not that you've said this Djinn, just generally in this thread). I think it's completely backwards that people are expecting perfect comprehension and immediate compliance from a child while handwaving away anything done by the police, saying, "Well, how could they know the gun wasn't real?" I mean, beyond that being their job, how could the boy know he'd be shot for carrying a toy? The double standard is ridiculous.

That is not how it is meant to be. They are law enforcers, not judge, jury and executioner. The Target is to subdue the suspect, never to kill. If they kill the suspect then they have failed their job.

It's "to serve and protect" not "slay the innocent". and by innocent i don't just mean it was a boy with a pellet gun, EVERY ONE is innocent until a judge makes their verdict after they have been proven guilty in the court of law.

The legal term is manslaughter, and there are times in which police officers are charged with it in similar circumstances as this one.

if you aren't shooting to kill, you shouldn't be shooting at all, and unfortunately, the teen presented himself as a dangerous subject so the police had to react in such a manner

Really, you don't think a soldier is going to fire at someone that is pointing a firearm at them and posing a threat. These are police officers, not soldiers, this situation happened in everyday life, not war, the so called enemy combatants that police officers deal with everyday come in all sizes, forms and ages. Soldiers have a general idea what the enemy looks like, police don't always have that luxury. It's real simple, the teenager had a firearm that they thought was real and he was told to drop it, he didn't, he is dead. It is very tragic, I know, but life can be that way sometimes. The fact that the kid was only 13 means absolutely nothing, who said a 13 year old can't kill someone?... it happens all the time.

Why is it not at all the kids fault to you, he had a gun that I am sure he knew looked real and he pointed it at COPS and refused to drop it, WTF is that?

Speaking of soldiers, do you understand a lot of soldiers die due to hesitation and failure to engage first. I don't even understand how you can compare this to soldiers in war anyways, totally different climates here.

This was a tragic and unfortunate accident. Pretend for one second that the 13 year old had a real gun, what would your opinion be then? I am sure it would be different, right?... Well, it shouldn't be any different because as far as the cops knew he did have a real gun.

You want to talk about a double standard, well lets talk about that.

Cops kill an armed teenager, "oh well, cant blame the cops, that kid should not have been armed with a gun anyways, yada yada yada".... Now, same cops kill what they think is an armed teenager, "dirty cops, terrible for killing a kid... they should have to pay, yada yada yada". Your opinion changes, but why? To those two cops, the moment, the situation, exactly the same, think about it. It is only the aftermath that has changed.

GRRR, this drives me nuts.

It doesn't matter HOW much time they gave him, he raised the rifle(that looked like an actual assault rifle) UPWARDS, as though aiming towards the cops. There is absolutely zilch in that action that represents being submissive. Their only choice was to fire, as they had no way of knowing it wasn't a real assault rifle. If I was cop, the moment that barrel started swinging upwards would be the moment I shot, which is apparently the same way the cops thought. I normally don't support police in many actions, but in this one, I can't see the situation resolving itself in any other way.


There is nothing ambiguous about someone raising a rifle towards you. There is only split second reaction time to look to see if you can tell immediately if it's a fake or not, and if it's not fake, or you can't tell, and it's still coming upwards towards your body, you shoot, end of discussion. If you hesitate in that situation, and it's a real weapon, you're dead. They may get paid to be in tough situations, but money isn't worth it if you end up dead.

Both the cops and the boy were in the wrong in this situation.

1stly, the boy shouldn't have raised the weapon at all.

2ndly, the cops should've injured the boy, not killed him. A bullet in the knee or shoulder would've been fine... Not shot 7 times til dead thing.

I am with you on this one, Colonel. The police get blamed way too much for other people's stupidity. The ones who cry the loudest usually have never had their life on the line in any kind of situation. When a wrong guess can have you never waking up again, the situation changes.

That is how things are. Cops are armed with guns. Guns are weapons that are meant to kill. And when cops shoot those things, they shoot to kill. This is standard policy. They aim to take the perps in alive with as little fuss as possible, but not everyone comes in quietly, and others sometimes just can't feasibly brought down without lethal force at all.

Get out of the fantasy land that Hollywood has dunked you in. There are no safe spots on the body to shoot. The human body is chock full of blood vessels (especially in the limbs) and rupturing just one of them with a bullet can be lethal. Furthermore, stray bullets are a danger to everyone in the area, making it all the more important that cops don't mess around with foolish trick shots that are more likely to miss. Lethal force is meant to be a final option for police...but it's still an option that they are trained to use.

You're right, but you have to bear in mind that police are willingly putting themselves in potentially dangerous situations and in the heat of the moment have to make snap second decisions. That isn't to say this case isn't tragic, but they said couldn't see his face until after it all transpired. But if you put yourself in the moment and you tell someone to drop the weapon and they ignore it or it looks like they're about to aim at you it's either don't shoot and let a shootout occur or shoot and take down the suspect. Does this justify wanton violence? No, but it does however show this kid put himself in the situation. The fact he was just walking around with that AK replica and a handgun in his waistband (Both pellet guns, but they obviously passed at glance as the real thing) shows he was probably trying to look like some hardcoe thug and he tragically paid the price for it.

@Whoever said the thing about how often do you see kids with guns- I guess you haven't been paying attention to the news. A lot of school shootings/murders in the past 2 years.

This incident happened in Santa Rosa, CA about 30 miles up north from SF where I live. My two cents here and in Facebook: The parents are guilty of the teen's death not the cops.

I can't believe I'm deviating from my normal liberal "be wary of the cops" attitude, and siding with the cops on this one. Must be something in the water, I better switch to bottled.

If he was using a gun normally considered a toy, like an airsoft gun, which usually come with orange tips, I'd be less forgiving of the cops, but seeing as he raised a pellet gun (which don't come with orange tips), and one specifically intended to look like a replica firearm, all he could have expected was to get shot. A police officer's primary goal, whether it be officially stated or otherwise, is to protect himself. This applies to all public servants. As an EMT, I wouldn't be expected to try and assist an injured person who was also in a position as to where there would be a very high chance of personal injury were I to near them. It's not reasonable to expect someone to have their life on the line and continue on with normal protocol.

Similarly, the cops aren't going to try and aim for "disabling shots" (something they're not trained to do in any circumstance) for a kid with a gun, because anyone pointing a gun at a police officer is no longer a "kid with a gun" or a "woman with a gun", they're simply an immediate threat to their life.

TL;DR it's almost completely the kid's fault.

Edit: It's also something to mention that you can still kill someone with a pellet gun, so even if it wasn't an actual firearm, it's still something the cops would consider a threat.

As has been said earlier, much harder than Hollywood makes it out to be. I've used firearms a great deal considering my age, and even then shooting accurately with even a .22 pistol is a challenge. Aiming for, and hitting, a small target such as a knee or shoulder is very difficult, especially in life threatening situations.

Yeah, most shots from what I recall are to hit bigger targets like torso shots right? (I don't have much if any gun experience, so I could be wrong)

the way I see it is.

the kid shouldn't have put the cops in a situation to have to use lethal force. in this I don't see the police as the enemy.