Ted Rall for October 12, 2015

Even if it had been a real gun, is it police procedure to jump out of the car firing?

Does anyone believe that the cop would have come out shooting if the kid had been white?

I wonder what this cop would do in states that have open carry laws?

The main problem I see is that cops in this country are trained to shoot to kill. No warning shots, no shots to disable an offender, always to kill. Again they could learn a lot from European police forces.

Many questions can be answered by rudimentary search; for example, the toy gun was given to him by another kid who had taken off the orange tip. Tamir was not allowed to have toy guns, so he had even less gun safety training than the cop who killed him. How many times did that cop misuse his gun? ALL use of force is supposed to be documented, but his department did not even see documents that showed he was not to be trusted with a gun. Most lethal misconduct is preceded by non-lethal misconductbut much of that is undocumented, hidden, or “disappeared.”

How many times did that campus cop in Hamiltucky pull his gun out to threaten people before he murdered Sam DuBose? I bet no one knows.

Same with the cop who shot himself when he pulled a gun on Carlos Riley (and other cops shot by themselves or each other, or who shoot bystanders, like that toddler in the park here.).

MOST BAD SHOOTS CAN BE PREVENTED. For every 100 cops that jerk out their weapon 100 times in 100 cities, that’s a MILLION “accidents” waiting to happen. multiply that by one tenth of one percent “oops” (like a cop on video pushing his way through a crowd with his gun drawn, finger on the trigger), and that’s 1000 bad shoots, but there’s more than 100 cities, and more than 1,000 bad shoots each year. Professional cops call “Quick-Draw” cops who jerk out their guns “all the time” "jerk-offs.

Jerk-off practice Quick-Draw, but don’t practice restraint. [RESTRAINT TRAINING: HINT, HINT]

EVERY use of force (including pulling your weapon) is supposed to be documented and followed up (after action reporting and review), but departments with bad management fail to document, hide, or falsify or obfuscate police misbehaviors.

Our Chief was fired after this report came out (and it was shown that other reports were with-held from city council, or deliberately inaccurate): http://wncn.com/2015/08/09/police-use-of-force-records-inconsistent-across-jurisdictions/

@ChevJames007I agree. Plus, the officer driving the car pulled up right next to Tamir. Officer Loehmann had 2 seconds to make a decision based upon bad data. I don’t believe this tragedy was Loehmann’s fault, but there were definitely others at fault. Tamir should not have died.

Why don’t they teach cops how to disable a presumed culprit ,rather than kill them. A shot in the legs, for example would have incapacitated him, but no, let’s be bloodthirsty and kill everyone, the hell with taking them to court.

Lot of never-been-there brilliance at work here.