Killing of a child

Any police killing of a child – whatever the excuse – is a tragedy. But this racial discrepancy in terms of which kids are getting blown away by cops is worse than a tragedy, it is an obscenity.

Think about what we’ve witnessed. Black 12-year-old child Tamir Rice, in Cleveland, was gunned down in 2014 by a white Cleveland cop seconds after two officers pulled up in a squad car. On exiting the vehicle this cop immediately shot and killed Tamir. There was no time for a warning. The officer just got out of the passenger-side door and blasted the 12-year-old, who was holding, and not pointing, a toy air gun.

Think about 13-year-old Latino Adam Toledo, shot dead just weeks ago by a white Chicago cop while he had his empty hands raised in the air as demanded by the officer who had been chasing him.

And now think of Ma’Khia Bryant, a 16-year old foster child who reportedly was the one who called 911 for help only to be gunned down by a responding white cop killed her with four bullets before even finding out who was actually attacking whom in a neighborhood mele.

Policing has gone completely off the rails when this kind of totally unjustified slaughter of kids, and especially non-white kids, becomes routinized as it clearly has. Equally off the rails is the response of all too many white Americans and white media commentators, who justify or simply accept this outrageous situation.

Sure there are too many guns, including in the hands of kids, white, brown and black. And sure police need to be careful and protect themselves on the job. But when cops just turn to their guns as the first response to an incident instead of trying to defuse and de-escalate it – especially when it involves children – it means we’re hiring the wrong people to be cops and are training them the wrong way.

Just for example, why did the Cleveland officers pull their car up to within feet of Tamir Rice if they really thought he was carrying a dangerous real pistol? Why not 20-30 feet away, so they could talk to him from a save distance and tell him to put the gun down? Why did the cop chase Adam Toledo, and after Adam, well lit even in the dark, had raised his hands, why didn’t the officer take the time before pulling the trigger, to look at those hands to see if there was a gun, which there clearly was not. And why did Columbus officer Reardon not either come to the situation with his taser, instead of his pistol drawn?

Why did he shoot Bryant, if the alleged reason was to protect the woman she was running towards, if that woman was behind her and right in the line of fire?

Excerpted: ‘No More Police Killings of Children!’

Counterpunch.org