This Is Not a Gun: So, Officers, Stop Shooting Unarmed Black Men

[noiretextatique]

A timely reminder.


Too many black men have lost their lives because of encounters with police officers whose racially charged presumptions about what the men were holding in their hands informed their decision-making minutes before the men were gunned down.

In fact, it’s what Jennifer L. Eberhardt, a Stanford psychologist and one of this year’s recipients of the MacArthur “genius” grant, works on day in and day out: the ideology that black men are associated with criminality. Her studies indicate that if you show people an image of a black man and then immediately show them a blurred image, they will most likely make out a gun, a knife or some sort of object associated with crime, simply because they were shown a photo of a black man seconds prior. That kind of unconscious prejudice toward black men is ingrained in some collective psyches, and it’s time we address it.

To bring attention to those racially charged instincts, here is a list of some of the innocuous objects that unarmed black men were carrying, or going for, right before they were shot by law enforcement.

See link for objects...
http://www.theroot.com/articles/culture/2014/10/objects_that_were_mistaken_as_weapons_by_officers_who_shot_unarmed_black.html

[safeinOhio]

1. Time to send in Michael Moore to train police

[noiretextatique]

2. hilarious, and sad

thanks for sharing there is another video out there about this; i will see if i can find it.

[tblue37]

18. Unfortunately, the part near the end where Moore says

the only way a black person can be safe from being shot by police is by keeping both hands in view at all times is not even accurate, because as the Michael Brown shooting has proven, even with their hands raised in the air, black men are not safe from trigger happy cops.

[noiretextatique]

28. that is correct

there is no safety in breathing while black.

[RedCappedBandit]

39. the easy to read chart.. hahaha

[noiretextatique]

3. no comments

from cop apologists? i didn't think so.

[smokey nj]

5. They're busy in another thread justifying the shooting of Tamir Rice. I'm sure they'll be by

soon, though.

[heaven05]

6. one has shown up

they are ubiquitous........ which on this board seem exceedingly hypocritical. But why should I expect any difference from the normal amerikkkan hypocrisy?

[noiretextatique]

23. yep...and his comment is only about the toy gun

crickets so far about the keys, cell phone, wallet, id...and hands, as expected.

[noiretextatique]

7. thanks...they are on to their next project

of trying and convicting a 12yo.

[Spirochete]

9. They slept in late

they were up late last night listening to Ted Nugent CD's and celebrating the Ferguson GJ decision. They'll be here.

[noiretextatique]

16. i eagerly await them and their idiotic excuses

bring it!!!!

[hughee99]

4. Or this

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014950520

[noiretextatique]

8. i've seen that over a zillion times

one poster seems to take a bizarre pleasure in posting it over and over and over and over.

[hughee99]

11. I can't believe a poorly trained, trigger-happy cop mistook this for a real gun.

The person on the 911 call even TOLD the dispatcher in advance that this was probably fake.

[noiretextatique]

12. and the kid was 12 year old!

never too early to start demonizing, i guess.

[hughee99]

13. If he was any younger, they might have claimed they shot him for his OWN protection

before he accidentally shot himself.

[noiretextatique]

15. i know, it is just so sad

i feel for his family...they must be devastated. especially by the vile "blame the victim" campaign that has already started. it is just sickening.

[NickB79]

17. Are you serious?

Of all the things I can fault the police for, mistaking an airsoft gun for a real gun is not one of them. I've handled some of these, and the higher-end ones are so realistically constructed that it takes a few seconds when the gun is IN YOUR HAND to realize it's not a real gun. All-metal construction, drop-free magazine, functioning action when fired, the whole deal.

Watch this and tell me how you can't believe a cop would mistake one of these for the real thing:

The fact the dispatcher was told the gun might be an airsoft gun means nothing to the police until they can ensure for themselves that it isn't a real gun. The fact that someone felt concerned enough that it might be a real gun that they called the police instead of walking out there themselves and telling the boy to get lost shows that at least someone other than the police was also unsure about the authenticity of what the boy held. Police are not trained to go into a potentially life-threatening situation solely on the word of a stranger on a 911 call, and shouldn't be.

[tblue37]

19. I think that toys should not be allowed to be made to look like real guns.

guns. I don't understand why that is permitted at all. Oh, sure, they are supposed to have that silly orange tip, but it is so easy to remove that it is ridiculous.

These fake guns should be required to be made of brightly colored materials--neon orange, candy cane striped red and white, fuschia pink, bright robin's egg blue, shiny purple with silver glitter--that sort of thing.

Of course, the appeal of these real-looking fake guns is specifically that they look real, but if having them made of brightly colored and/or glittery materials makes them unappealing to the kids who are attracted to the apparent authenticity of the real-looking guns, then I don't have a problem with that, because I think we'd all be better off if kids were not sucked early into the whole romance with deadly killing tools.

The video of the boy parading up and down the sidewalk playing with the gun before he was shot reminds me of when I was a 6-year-old with a toy six-shooter in a holster on my hip (and a silver star badge pinned to my shirt). I strutted around outside, whipping out my gun and pointing it at imaginary bad guys, then reholstering it for a couple of minutes, only to pull it out again when another imaginary bad guy suddenly appeared.

That kid was so obviously playing with that fake gun--especially when he started twirling it around in his hand, exactly the way I twirled my little six-shooter sometimes before reholstering it.

Those realistic looking fake guns simply should not be allowed to be manufactured. A fake gun should be so obviously fake that even the most willfully aggressive and racist cop could never mistake it for a real gun at any distance.

[NickB79]

37. Agreed. I hate those fake guns.

I own several guns, love hunting and target shooting, but personally think Airsoft and BB/pellet guns shouldn't be sold to anyone under 18 yr old. Probably no need for a background check, but at the very least you should be an adult to purchase one.

[hughee99]

20. Perhaps you're right, maybe the way to handle this is to attempt to find out

BEFORE you shoot. According to the video here, it's less than 5 seconds between the time the police car appears on camera and the time the officers are out of the car with the child shot dead on the ground. If this is how they're planning to handle such situations (shoot first), they should just call in the snipers and have him shot from a few hundred feet away so no police officers are at risk. Honestly, given the amount of time between the officers arriving on the scene and the time they shot the child, I'd be surprised if they got a good look at the gun at all before the child was laying on the ground, shot to death.

http://www.wkyc.com/story/news/local/cleveland/2014/11/26/tamir-rice-shooting-video-released/19530745/

[nomorenomore08]

24. Their reaction was way, way too fast. Less than 5 seconds??? n/t

[noiretextatique]

25. almost like it was the plan

[NickB79]

36. You left out one crucial point

The officers were told by dispatch that there may be a kid with a gun on the playground. Then, the kid REACHED INTO HIS PANTS when told to put up his hands. And not into a pocket like he's going for a phone or wallet, but the front of his pants where he has no reasonable excuse to reach.

This entire situation boils down to that one movement. It's horrific, but like I said I can't fault the cops for reacting the way they did with the information they had at their disposal. I'm white, and while my encounters with police have been few in my 35 years, there have been enough bad ones that I never make any sudden movements around them anymore.

If someone hadn't given this poor child a "toy" that looked like a lethal weapon, maybe he would have lived long enough to learn this valuable lesson

[noiretextatique]

48. here's a crucial point: Ohio is an open-carry state

please reconcile THAT with the bullshit you've been peddling about how real the gun looked...PLEASE.

[noiretextatique]

21. i find it very hard to believe

Last edited Wed Nov 26, 2014, 09:49 PM - Edit history (1)

the police just walk into situations without some information about why they are being called.

[noiretextatique]

22. i see you are focusing on the toy gun ONLY.

do you have any comments about the "mistakes" with wallets, cell phones, keys, ids...and hands? i eagerly await your response, and i hope it is SERIOUS.

[NickB79]

35. I'm focused on the toy gun because it was brought up in this thread

As for other items that minorities are frequently shot over, I have far less leeway in my opinion of the police. While I am white, my wife and mother-in-law are minorities, and have been hassled by police in the past. My MIL especially has been stopped many times by cops just looking for excuses to arrest her because she has a large Afro when she doesn't take the time to comb down her hair. And I've seen the way they're treated differently by police: the first time I was stopped by a cop with my wife in the car (forgot to turn on my headlights), I reached for my wallet before he even came to the car, he was smiling and polite, just reminded me of my lights and sent me on my way. My wife and MIL told me if they were driving, there's no way they'd so much as take their hands off the wheels until the cop told them too, or the cops would become aggressive. I didn't believe it until I was in the backseat once and my MIL got pulled over for "running a stop sign." She had stopped completely, but the fucking cops used it to try to search her truck until they saw me, a white guy, in the back. Then they immediately became polite again.

Like I said, I can fault the police for a lot of things. Mistaking a cell phone or wallet for a firearm is inexcuseable, IMO.

My only issue in this thread was when someone suggested they could tell an Airsoft pistol from a real one, with the orange tip removed, at a distance, while the kid was reaching for it in his waistband. That was all.

[tblue37]

38. About that waistband reach--if the cops were screaming at him to

"Drop the gun!," as they pulled up, the kid might have actually been trying to obey their forcefully shouted orders. It was all so sudden that attempting to obey might have been automatic.

Think of that young man shot when he reached in his car for his wallet when the cop ordered him to show ID. I bet that young man knows perfectly well how dangerous it is for a black man to make any sudden reaching moves in the presence of a cop, especially since, as witnesses all say, the idiot cop already had his gun out and pointed at the guy for a freaking seatbelt violation (!). But when the cop demanded ID while approaching aggressively with his gun at the ready, the man made a quick, apparently reflexive, move to comply, which the cop interpreted as reaching for a gun.

The cop even said the man reached into the car "aggressively." When cops are so sure that *every* black man is a crazed murder machine, they shoot at any movement. Since the kid was just a kid, and since cops were zooming up at him and probably screaming at him to drop the gun, he might have just been trying to do as he was being told to do.

I read about a study which indicated that when shown images of black children--especially boys--cops greatly overestimated the kids' ages, whereas they were quite good at guessing the age of white children. Civilians have also been shown to overestimate the age of black children's. The 911 caller wasn't sure the child was a child, though he did say he *might* be a "juvenile." But even calling him a juvenile suggests he thought he was a teenager, and black teens are as scary--maybe even scarier--to jumpy white people (especially cops) as black men are. Whites see a black teen and assume "gangbanger."

[noiretextatique]

41. they didn't even give him time to comply

he was shot SECONDS after they arrived. it was nothing more than an execution.

[NickB79]

43. That's a good point. 12-yr olds don't always think the same as adults

In his mind he may have thought that pulling out the gun to drop on the ground was the correct course of action, to show it was just a toy. Unfortunately, that's also the same behavior that will likely get you shot if you do it as an adult in front of the police.

This whole thing was a tragedy from start to finish.

[noiretextatique]

40. he was 12 year old...they shot him in 5 seconds

after they arrived. i consider that an execution, nothing more, nothing less. i don't give a damn how scared they were.

[NickB79]

42. And 12-yr olds with guns have murdered people before

Again, the action that precipitated the shooting was the child reaching for the airsoft gun in his waistband.

I have to wonder, if it turned out he had a real firearm instead of a toy, how the reactions here would be different.

[noiretextatique]

44. but this 12yo did not

id he deserve to die because of what some other 12yo did. there is something SERIOUSLY wrong with this country when two armed, grown men in uniforms summarily execute a child playing with a toy gun. I think any RATIONAL person would agree that law enforcement COULD have, and SHOULD have found a solution other than deadly force. Even if it was a real gun...is execution the ONLY method allowed these days. he was 12 years old!

[NickB79]

45. No, he didn't deserve to die

He made a very poor choice in taking a realistic toy gun to a playground, and a tragic mistake in reaching down towards it when the police arrived. I've never implied anywhere here that he deserved to die over such things; he was still a child. What I have said is that I don't think the police can be faulted much in their reaction, given the reality that, in America, it's not unusual for teens and even younger children to have easy access to real guns and use them to kill, both by accident and intentionally.

I think any RATIONAL person would agree that law enforcement COULD have, and SHOULD have found a solution other than deadly force.

If you have good solutions, I'm all ears. I'd never expect a police officer to respond to reports of someone with a gun by using a Taser or baton, since that would put his/her life and the lives of bystanders at risk if it turned out the gun were real and shots were fired.

Like I've said before, this was a tragedy with very few good solutions.

[noiretextatique]

46. stop BLAMING the VICTIM: he was 12 years old!

how about staying in the fucking car and using their loud speakers? was he an immediate threat...to anyone? how about the grown, armed men in uniform seeing a 12 year old boy, instead of black male with a gun?

[Live and Learn]

47. +1 nt

[BlancheSplanchnik]

50. well, one solution would be to address the class war

So that people can survive on their own work.

One factor to address, I mean.
Another angle that needs work is re-humanizing people in a society. Seek ways--all kinds of ways in all social systems--to encourage dialogue among different people, from different walks of life.

Dialogue, engagement, communication, understanding and respect/appreciation/enjoyment/understanding among different cultures...promoting these values at every opportunity is the way to RE-humanise ourselves.

Start with oneself. Always, change starts within the individual. Respect and value other lives. Practice it.

[BlindTiresias]

56. Oh ok

He didn't deserve to die but let me explain away his death and blame it on him instead of the officers. Yeah, guy, you aren't fooling anyone here.

[virtualobserver]

51. I do fault them for killing him 2 seconds after roaring up in their car. n/t

[BlindTiresias]

58. Lol

Here is question before you write another word. Have you seen the video of the shooting?

[jmowreader]

26. You're being facetious, right?

Several of DU's veterans have claimed that gun looks pretty damn real to them.

[noiretextatique]

27. do YOU have any comment of the other items?

e.g, the cell phone, the keys, the wallet...or the hands? do those items look like real guns too?

[jmowreader]

31. Those definitely do not look like guns

Go back and look at the Airsoft gun. From the distance that photo was taken at, it looks like a lethal firearm.

[noiretextatique]

32. OH FOR FUCK'S SAKE

why even bother to respond, since you are a one-tick pony? those 10 other things don't look like guns, but this ONE does.

[jmowreader]

33. This one does because it really does

This is the Airsoft gun in question:



This is a real 9mm Beretta:



From ten feet away, just about anyone would say, "yes, they are both guns."

Read this: http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/tg-icep.pdf. People "armed" with toy guns getting shot by the cops is not a new phenomenon.

[noiretextatique]

34. thank you for proving my point

some people, like you, prefer to focus on the ONE item that actually looks like a gun, instead of the TEN that do not. you give a cursory nod to the TEN, while you continue to OBSESS over the ONE. do you work for Fox? because this is the same tactic they use.

[noiretextatique]

49. hmmm...i found out that Ohio is an open-carry state

i am sure it is not legal for 12 yos to carry, but...

[doc03]

52. Exactly, about three months ago I saw a couple walking through the mall both with

what appeared to be Glocks in open carry side holsters. Nobody was shot and as far as I know nobody called
911 and no cops confronted them and no cops shot them. This was in Ohio where open carry is leagal and also
they were white. I would almost bet if they were black someone would have called 911 and who knows what would have happened.

[noiretextatique]

53. they might have been killed in les than 5 seconds

like that 12yo boy.

[doc03]

55. Hey I am white and I have no doubt that at the very least

someone would have called 911. You have some nitwit call 911 and tell them ther are 2 suspiceous looking blacks
walking around carrying guns in the mall. Chances are they would end up dead like the guy in the Walmart in
Cincinatti, which is also in the state of Ohio where open carry is leagal.

[doc03]

54. I saw the video, the boy was walking around and nobody else was even near him. Why wouldn't

they have stopped at a safe distance and ordered him to drop the gun, instead they come speeding up and both jump out
of the car like they have some kind of drug kingpin cornered. It is scary we have cops that f----g stupid running aroud
armed with deadly weapons. Those guys should be unarmed mall cops.

[noiretextatique]

57. that video is horrifying

it was an execution. they didn't even try to talk to him. so horribly sad.

[hughee99]

60. How did they know he was twelve?

There couldn't have been much q&a before they shot him.

[hughee99]

59. What I was actually suggesting was,

Given the various things mistaken for guns, it doesn't seem to really matter if something looks like a gun or not. In the case of the boy in Cleveland, the "defense" (that I've seen so far, anyway) is that he REACHED for his waistband. It's not that they saw a gun, just that he REACHED for his waistband. In this case it's not relevant whether this looks like a gun or not since the police shot him dead before they even got a good look at it.

[NoJusticeNoPeace]

61. Let's assume they couldnt tell, if it was a 12 year old white boy, would they have instantly shot

and killed him or would they have used the techniques they are trained to use like create a perimeter, tell the suspect to get to the ground etc

Why were these cops so fearful of this 12 year old kid?

This is a question some of us know the answer to.

[hughee99]

63. I don't think it had anything to do with

The gun looking like a real gun. In this case it did, but in many others it did not. I'd be surprised if the police even got a good enough look at the toy BEFORE they shot him to be able to tell. I think in this instance the police decided beforehand they were going to roll up and shoot at the slights opportunity. I don't know why they did, but I have my suspicions that race was a big factor.

[NoJusticeNoPeace]

64. And the decision to shoot so quickly was in large part due to the skin color of the suspect

This is inescapable, unavoidable and a reality that we will either discuss and deal or we wont, at our peril

[jmowreader]

65. Based on experience, I think they would have

On July 8 of this year, one Jeanetta Riley of Sandpoint, Idaho, a white woman, was ten feet away from three police officers and was holding a fillet knife. They told her to drop it, she refused and began moving toward the cops...two of the cops shot her to death.

Cops read newspapers too. (You need something to read while sucking down those donuts, right?) They know today's impressionable youth has no problem with killing people. It's not the video games, RWers: kids have always wanted to kill other kids, blow up their schools etc., but in the dark days before you assholes thought you needed to own enough guns to arm an infantry company just in case the Democrats decide to take them away, they had no way to carry out their idle threats and now they do.

I truly believe, based on the hard evidence the cops figure as long as they're going to end up using maximum force anyway they may as well start there, that if this kid was white the cops would have blown his shit away the second he reached for his popgun and they wouldn't have a second's remorse.

[kelliekat44]

10. Reaching for your wallet, reaching for your license, and raising your hands are all acts of violence

if you are black...male or female when confronted by white police. They are not there to protect you or the public. If so, the black on black crime would be a fraction of what it is.

[noiretextatique]

14. YES

yes,,,all those things make white police officer "fear for their lives." sometimes they do actually protect and serve, but they do seem to have a problem seeing regular objects as guns whenin black hands.

[noiretextatique]

29. i've asked the two DUers who posted about how real the toy gun looks

to comment on the other items cops have "mistaken" for guns.

cell phone
keys
wallet
toy sword
hands
ID

crickets, so far.

[NoJusticeNoPeace]

62. And a rational person assumes in most cases, like the guy in the parking lot going for his wallet

that the cops dont want to shoot someone for no reason, most cops dont anyway.

So why are SO MANY of them seemingly so quick to shoot an unarmed African American?

The answer to this is clear to some of us, but there are VERY few places this can be discussed.

Very few safe places you can safely discuss the fact that white folks have privilege and this extends to policing and every aspect of life.

[noiretextatique]

30. update to add new items

asthma inhalers
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025877356
nintendo controllers
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=5877457
still eagerly awaiting responses...