Boys And Their Toys

I live not far from Cleveland, and have friends there, and have spent time there. I am lucky to live in a town that hasn't yet had problems with police killing children, or unarmed adults. I am trying to wrap my head around why a 12-year-old would be killed in a park by police, even if he was "big for his age," even if he was playing with a toy gun. Hell, even if he was an adult with a real gun, since Ohio is an open-carry state.

Is it appropriate behavior, is it in the police manual, to roll up on somebody and shoot them before you get out of the car? Might it not be safer for everyone, including the cop, to come to a stop near the edge of the park and assess the situation? I get that in some cases you need to react quickly. But if the person- child, actually- is by himself, not threatening anyone, might it make sense to figure out what's going on first? Or is it reasonable to rush, and put yourself in a situation where you might have to kill or be killed? For the last 10 or 20 years, toy guns in the US have been marked with orange, and are supposed to be shaped differently than real gun types. This one looked more realistic; that is, it looked like the ones I used to play with.

I get that police sometimes have to make snap judgements. But when they rush into a situation, and shoot a boy, and then people are falling over themselves to blame the boy? When the cop who shot him has a history of problems? When time after time police in this country shoot black people who are doing nothing wrong, while arresting white people who actually threaten violence, or even kill people? We have a problem. And some insist there is no problem. I worry about my family. I was a kid playing with toy guns once. Does that mean it's okay to shoot me?

Regardless of the race of anybody involved, people should be outraged when something like this happens. That so many are blaming the boy says a lot about how much race still does matter in this country. #BlackLivesMatter was created because of situations just like this. People are people; but not really, not to some people. Some people do not care about anyone who is not like themselves. They look for any kind of excuse to say "he deserved what he got." A white lady with a gun aiming it at police gets arrested. A black kid playing with a gun in a park gets killed. If your 12-year-old son got shot by police in a park, if they drove up without stopping, you'd be okay with it?

Reports from Cleveland, including from people I know who have been in the courtroom with him, indicate that the prosecutor in this case was known to be a scumbag long before this. He did not want to prosecute this case, and so he did not; he acted like a defense attorney for the cops.

What's to stop me from being shot? What's to stop my daughter from being shot? Maybe she's playing in the park with a stick that someone thinks looks like a gun. What's to stop the people who are supposed to protect us from bending the law to protect themselves?