Cleveland police who shot 12 year old boy provided him no first aid. That was administered almost 4 minutes later by an FBI agent.

Courtesy of WEWS-TV:  

Cleveland officials said Thursday officers waited close to four minutes to administer first aid after Tamir Rice, 12, was shot. 

Deputy Chief Ed Tomba said a detective and FBI agent who were in the area responded to the call for help and began giving medical help to Rice three minutes and 49 seconds after he was shot by rookie Cleveland patrol officer Timothy Loehmann. 

NewsChannel 5 Investigators asked Cleveland officials why the two officers involved in the shooting did not immediately administer first aid. Dan Williams, a spokesman for Mayor Frank Jackson, said all of the officers' actions are under investigation. 

We also asked why officials did not show reporters the video of how the officers reacted after the shooting. Williams said the officers only released the video because the family requested the footage be made public. 

I actually did not know this detail yesterday when I first posted this story.

The debate yesterday was fairly lively, with some people taking the officer's side and others feeling that the speed with which the police shot this young man left them no chance to evaluate whether he actually presented a danger or not.

Whatever your position I have to wonder if realizing that the officers did nothing to save this young man for four minutes has any effect on your point of view?

Attorney says newly released video of man shot in Ohio Wal-Mart while holding pellet gun, shows police "shot on sight."

Courtesy of Raw Story:

Police claim Crawford ignored their commands to drop the weapon, and the former Marine who called in the report and witnessed the shooting said Crawford “looked like he was going to go violently.” 

But attorney Michael Wright said surveillance video from the incident, which Ohio’s attorney general allowed him to watch with Crawford’s family, contradicted those accounts. 

“John was doing nothing wrong in Walmart, nothing more, nothing less than shopping,” Wright said. 

The attorney said surveillance video showed Crawford facing away from officers, talking on the phone, and leaning on the pellet gun like a cane when he was “shot on sight” in a “militaristic” response by police.

When I first covered this story last Friday, a lot of you blamed the victim and accepted the police version that he was being defiant was seen loading the weapon.

Now it turns out that he was doing none of those things: 


Wright said the family objected to the piecemeal release of evidence, such as dispatch audio and video on the day of the shooting, was biased toward the police. 

“Everything released is one-sided,” Wright said. “There is nothing favorable to John Crawford. You can’t show different pieces, show it all, don’t trickle pieces to gain favor of the public.” 

He said the video suggests Crawford probably did not see or hear officers as they arrived. 

Crawford was speaking by cell phone to his girlfriend, who was with his parents, when he was shot. 

“He said he was at the video games playing videos, and he went over there by the toy section where the toy guns were,” said LeeCee Johnson, the mother of his two children. “The next thing I know, he said, ‘It’s not real,’ and the police start shooting, and they said ‘Get on the ground,’ but he was already on the ground because they had shot him.” 

Johnson put the phone on speaker mode, and she and Crawford’s parents heard him die. 

“I could hear him just crying and screaming,” Johnson said. “I feel like they shot him down like he was not even human.”

I think that we are getting to the point now that when we hear of a black man being shot by the police, we should almost automatically take their report of the incident with a grain of salt.

I have long been somebody who usually took the police at their word, even though I am aware that there are bad cops in the world, but now I am far less likely to give them the benefit of the doubt.

P.S. I almost forgot, but Ohio is an open carry state.

Which means that it is quite likely that if this were a white man, in the exact same circumstance, the entire incident would have played out differently, and there would have been NO loss of life.

Ohio man shot dead by police in Wal-Mart while holding toy rifle.

Courtesy of WSOCTV:  

An Ohio man is dead after police are called into a Walmart for reports of a man walking through the store with a rifle. It turns out, a law enforcement source for WHIO said, that it wasn't a real gun but a toy, either a BB or pellet gun, that he had opened at the store Tuesday night. 

WHIO reported a couple were in the hardware department when they saw John Crawford walking past them with a rifle pointed toward the sky. They followed Crawford through the store as they called 911 and warned other shoppers to stay away. 

One witness, Ronald Ritchie said Crawford "was just waving it at children and people. Items.... I couldn't hear anything that he was saying. I'm thinking that he is either going to rob the place or he's there to shoot somebody else." The man looked kind of serious, Ronald Ritchie said. "He didn't really want to be looked at and when people did look at him, he was pointing the gun at them. He was pointing at people, children walking by." 

Ritchie said he wasn't pointing it as if he was going to shoot, but waving it in their direction. 

The couple didn't know police had arrived until they saw four or five officers appear in the pet section, where Crawford was standing. 

"I heard, 'put it down, put it down,' " April Ritchie said. "I heard two shots after I saw him turn. He still had the weapon in his hand." 

The Ritchies said the man fell backward when he was hit by the gunfire, but got back up and went toward the officer who shot him. That officer then tackled the man. Officers then handcuffed him and turned him on his back, Ronald Ritchie said. 

So here's the thing.

John Crawford

John Crawford, who happens to be black, gets gunned down while carrying a toy gun through Wal-Mart, but white Ammosexual assholes can walk around carrying totally real, loaded AR-15's and nobody unloads a clip into them?

Here is more from Raw Story:

The mother of Crawford’s children said she was speaking to him by cell phone when he was confronted by police in the store. 

“He said he was at the video games playing videos, and he went over there by the toy section where the toy guns were,” said LeeCee Johnson. “The next thing I know, he said, ‘It’s not real,’ and the police start shooting, and they said ‘Get on the ground,’ but he was already on the ground because they had shot him.” 

“I could hear him just crying and screaming,” Johnson said. “I feel like they shot him down like he was not even human.” 

Ohio’s attorney general, who was asked by Beavercreek police to investigate the case, confirmed Crawford was holding a MK-177 (.177 caliber) BB/Pellet Rifle when he was shot to death.

So it appears that Crawford was killed for carrying an item through the store that he found while shopping IN the store.  There is something truly fucked up about that.

Now eyewitness reports suggest that Crawford appeared to be attempting to load the weapon, and did not comply with the police when they asked him to drop it, however I still cannot get over the feeling that if his skin had been lighter he would have walked away from this incident unscathed.

13 year old boy shot to death by California police while carrying a toy pellet gun that resembled an AK-47.

Courtesy of the Christian Science Monitor:  

On Tuesday afternoon, Andy Lopez was walking home from his friend’s house, toy gun in hand, when a sheriff’s deputy spotted him – and the AK-47 look-alike – from behind. 

From there, everything unfolded in a matter of seconds. 

The deputy and his partner, who were out on regular patrol duty, pulled over their car and took cover behind the vehicle’s doors, according to the Sonoma County Sheriff's Office. 

The patrol car’s overhead light and siren were activated, and law enforcement twice ordered Andy, who was about 20 to 30 feet away, to drop the gun, one witness said, according to an Associated Press report. 

Andy began to turn around in the direction of the deputies, barrel of the rifle rising up, one officer said. 

Seven bullets struck the young teenager. Sixteen seconds later, the officers called for medial attention, according to Reuters. 

Andy died at the scene, and what was thought to be an assault weapon turned out to be a plastic replica, officers discovered. 

The trademark orange tip that federal law requires toy-gun manufacturers to place on the ends of fake guns was missing from the pellet gun, law enforcement reported. Also, a toy handgun was found in Andy’s waistband, but it had the orange tip.

Police officers have to make snap decisions about a potentially dangerous situation, and this is certainly NOT the first toy gun toting child who has been shot to death by law enforcement, and sadly it will probably not be the last.

I really feel for these police officers who must be torn up over such a terrible incident, and while I also feel badly for his parents I am equally angry that they allowed him to take these realistic looking guns out into the streets.

In my home the children were NEVER allowed to play with guns that resembled real guns in any way. I would allow brightly painted squirt guns, and Nerf guns, but that was the extent of it, and it was for this very reason.

Part me almost wishes that the victim of this shooting were somebody more deserving.

Because you have to believe that the number of these assholes roaming the streets in order to bait the cops, and then post the video of the confrontation up on YouTube to impress their 2nd Amendment buddies, has put many in the law enforcement community on edge.