Adam Toledo Shooting: Watch It For Yourself
Bodycam footage moments before the shooting of Adam Toledo
Released body cam footage of the fatal shooting of 13-year-old Adam Toledo by police has once again brought viral attention to yet another officer involved shooting.
In the shooting in Chicago, which took place in the early-morning hours of March 29, officials have said that two officers were responding to reports of gunfire when they saw two people in an alley and started to chase them. Prosecutors have said that Adam was holding a gun when he ran down the alley as an officer called for him to stop and drop the weapon.
Adeena Weiss Ortiz, a lawyer for the family of Adam Toledo, said at a news conference on Thursday that Adam was trying to comply with the police officer’s orders to raise his hands when he was fatally shot.
“By now, all of you have seen the videos of Adam Toledo. They are especially moving, saddening, distressful, to see a 13-year-old boy shot at the hands of an officer. For those of you with children, you can relate to some of the pain that the Toledos are feeling today. Those videos speak for themselves. Adam, during his last second of life, did not have a gun in his hand. The officer screamed at him, ‘Show me your hands.’ Adam complied, turned around, his hands were empty when he was shot in the chest at the hands of the officer. If he had a gun, he tossed it. The officer said, ‘Show me your hands.’ He complied. He turned around. There’s a still photo going around on the internet with his hands up and he’s shot in the middle of his chest.” Reporter: ”Do you know yet if the officer had enough time to process that?” “I don’t know if the officer had enough time or not. All I know is that the officer is trained to not shoot an unarmed individual, not shoot an unarmed child. There are topics in the consent decree with regard to foot pursuits, training, et cetera. This needs to be addressed in this investigation. If he asked him to toss it and show his hands and the kid complies, then he shouldn’t be shot. The family was brought some solace and comfort to see the video of their son. They want justice for Adam and whatever that may entail. Obviously, Cook County state’s attorney is going to investigate this, and they will handle any repercussions in that regard, with regard to the officer who killed Adam.”
Adeena Weiss Ortiz, a lawyer for the family of Adam Toledo, said at a news conference on Thursday that Adam was trying to comply with the police officer’s orders to raise his hands when he was fatally shot.CreditCredit…Kamil Krzaczynski/Getty Images
“He tossed the gun,” she said. “If he had a gun, he tossed it. The officer said, ‘Show me your hands.’ He complied. He turned around.”
The key events took place in a matter of one second. In an analysis, The New York Times slowed down the police video, as well as another of the 21 videos released by the authorities.
As the officer, identified in police reports as Eric E. Stillman, 34, fires the single shot, Adam is raising his arms and appears to be empty-handed. In the moment before the shooting, The Times’s analysis shows, Adam can be seen holding what appears to be a gun behind his back, which he drops behind a wooden fence just before he raises his hands.
After firing the shot, Officer Stillman called for an ambulance, searched for the wound and began CPR with the help of another officer. “Stay with me,” he said to Adam more than once.
The Civilian Office of Police Accountability, an independent agency that investigates police shootings in Chicago, released the videos on Thursday after initial resistance to making them public, citing Adam’s age.
The Chicago Police Department had no comment on the video aside from redistributing its news release about the shooting from April 1, which called the loss of life “tragic” and said the department would cooperate with COPA, which is investigating the use of force.
A lawyer for Officer Stillman, who is white, said that the shooting, while tragic, was justified given the nature of the threat. “The police officer was put in this split-second situation where he has to make a decision,” said Timothy Grace, a lawyer at the firm of Grace & Thompson retained by the Fraternal Order of Police in Chicago.
Officer Stillman has been placed on administrative duties for 30 days; he joined the Chicago police in August 2015 after serving in the military overseas, his lawyer said.
As images of the shooting spread on social media, community activists and others expressed anger. Some said the officer had no reason to fire at the boy.
Watch the video for yourself along with reporting from ABC7 Chicago here:
WARNING GRAPHIC CONTENT
This is a tough one. Cops got called in because of gunfire. After the chase, Kid had a gun, he tossed it, then he got shot. Time between video showing him with the gun and him getting shot is 0.8 of a second.
All that is from CNN.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/15/us/adam-toledo-police-shooting-body-camera/index.htmlReport
Doesn’t matter, the cop said let me see your hands. He HAS to give the kid time to stop, show his hands, and the cop needs time to process what he is seeing.
That said, even if the kid still had a gun in his hand, he was following orders and showing his hands and not pointing a gun at anyone.
This is just more of the “gotta go home at the end of the shift, no matter what” mentality. Police training has to find a way past that.Report
Exactly – what could the kid have done right then that the officer would not have shot him? He stopped. He dropped the gun. He put up his hands.
Of course the cops want to go home at the end of the shift, and it is hard for me to fault that instinct for self protection, but what was the point of the commands if he was not going to give the kid the opportunity to show compliance?Report
Two words – Tamir Rice. 1.8 seconds contact to killing. These cops have no intention of allowing time to process, much less change their actions. They are trained to escalate and eliminate. Period.
This is not tragic. Its structural.Report
Andre Maurice Hill. Shot to death while leaving a friend’s garage within ten seconds of the officer rolling up, screaming, with a blinding light in his eyes. He had no gun and was doing nothing wrong, but a neighbor called about a suspicious Black man in his car (he was having car problems).Report
That’s a good example. Not for what happened at the shooting (which was awful), but for how predictable it was.
The cop was a good example of someone who shouldn’t be a cop.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Andre_Hill#People_involved
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Andre_HillReport
That’s a good example. Not for what happened at the shooting (which was awful), but for how predictable it was.
The cop was a good example of someone who shouldn’t be a cop.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Andre_Hill#People_involvedReport
Not run away?Report
He’s 13 and stupid (because every 13 year old is stupid).Report
Plus. bluntly, “running away” is the opposite of threatening.
What’s the old South Park joke? “He’s coming right at us”? Literally the opposite of their joking full-proof “self-defense” claim.Report
Running around shooting at stuff at 2:30am on a Chicago street is stupid even by 13 year old standards.Report
But common enough by Chicago standards.Report
The stupid crap I did at 0230 when I was a teenager…
Granted, I lived out in the middle of nowhere, so even if I was shooting a gun, no one would have called the cops about it.Report
When I did stupid stuff at 15-16, and not 13, it in no way involved a gun. Hell, I had firearm safety training at 13. There was no way I’d be running around town at 2:30 am with a gun.Report
Good for you!
But this is Chicago, a place that apparently buys into abstinence only education regarding firearms, so obviously teenage stupidity will involve firearms.Report
This is true, and should’t be excused by white people’s memories of growing up in rural America!Report
He’s 13 and stupid (because every 13 year old is stupid).
Is this really true? I’ve watched 13 nieces and nephews grow up and as 13 year olds only two of them were “stupid” in the sense I think you mean. 11 of them were strait laced, nose-to-the-grindstone types.Report
Apparently he decided that wasn’t going to happen.
I find it hard to believe he’ll be convicted on this one. Not even sure he’ll be fired.Report
In 0.8 seconds? He decided nothing, he had his finger on the trigger like an idiot and he pulled on reflex.
ETA: This being Chicago, he probably won’t be in any trouble, even if rioters burn down the Mag Mile.Report
The 0.8 seconds is the time between the camera showing the gun and him pulling the trigger.
I assume the “show me your [] hands” part was earlier.Report
Again, if you give an order to “Show me your hands”, you MUST allow time for compliance and visual processing. You honestly have no idea if the officer saw the gun you can see in the video. It’s dark, there’s what appears to be a strobe going off (I don’t think that’s a frame rate artifact), and you have no idea where the officers attention actually is. but the fact he saw it at time t does not eliminate the need for him to confirm it is in the kids hands at time +t, when the kid is very obviously putting his hands up and complying with the order.
If a cop is unable or unwilling to do that, he should not be a cop.
And frankly, this is the kind of thing that cops should be training for in VR or real world simulations.
Maybe if PDs & cities weren’t so eager to let cops work as much overtime as possible, they’d have more money in the budget for comprehensive training.
Or they need to stop letting police sidearms have real bullets.Report
Oscar, I believe you’ve been out for a while now but did the military utilize any VR training? Or real world sims?
I’m now reminded of the scene in the initial Men in Black movie where the candidates are presented with a bunch of cardboard monster cutouts and a little girl and Will Smith’s character is the only one who actually stops to evaluate the situation before just firing away.
As ridiculous as that scene was, it now occurs to me that might have represented MORE training than the typical cop gets.Report
They use VR these days.
They also use simunitions, which are essentially paintballs for real guns. Very effective as a training aid, but also expensive per round.Report
It seems as if there are multiple layers of training yet no training given on how to filter through them:
If the person runs, chase them.
If the person seems armed, command them to lay down their weapons and put hands up.
If you feel threatened, fire.
His mouth was doing one thing and his hand was doing another and there seemed to be no connection between the two.
Now, maybe that is somewhat intentional and that third “training” takes absolute precedence. Or maybe the training is developed by folks with no understanding of how humans work, of how chasing someone who is running impacts one’s mental and emotional state, of how running impacts the clarity of verbal commands, of how much time it takes for ALL involved parties to process information.
We often hear cops did it “by the book.” Maybe we need training that isn’t designed in a book but based on real world knowledge of human behavior.Report
A lot of cops have been trained to be hyperviolent by a guy named David Grossman who calls his concept killology. Google it. He is one of the lesser known but most pernicious figures leading to our cop problem.Report
Ditto the Daunte Wright cop.Report
A strobe flashlight? Anyone smarter than me care to explain that?Report
They are meant to stun/confuse the person you point them at. Gives the person with the light a measure of protection from someone shooting them. Of course if you confuse a person you are chasing then you need to add that to your shoot/don’t shoot calc.Report
But a strobe light is also going to disorient the holder. People are saying Toledo dropped the gun one second before the officer shot, and I can easily imagine a strobe affecting mental processing time that much. I don’t see how it could be a good idea.Report
I don’t know if they are a good idea in practice. They will confuse the person it’s pointed at a lot more.Report
After some googling bright flashing strobe lights are very much a thing to disorient people used by cops. Makes the cops panic fire even worse if possible.Report
Was it a strobe, or an artifact of the camera frame rate and the flashlight operating frequency?Report
I read a couple places it was a strobe, but it would be good to have that confirmed.Report
“A police officer being charged with killing an unarmed citizen hinges on whether the light was strobing, or not. Details at 11.”Report
Did I say that?
Second question: if we’re concerned about police procedures, why should the flashlight not be part of the conversation?Report
“Confirmed: Whether a police officer is charged with killing an unarmed citizen hinges on whether the light was strobing, or not. Additional details at 11.”
“Initial reports indicate that the officer believed that during the dark time between brighter flashes, when the officer’s vision of the suspect was impaired, the suspect reached for and wielded an object that looked, in the oficer’s estimation, like a gun, resulting in the officer involved discharge of a weapon leading to the suspects subsequent death.”Report
Oh, can I play too? Um, Stillwater believes that…fish have laser eyes!Report
the game you’re good at is apologetics Pinky. Stick to that.Report
More fish–laser propaganda!Report
Guys like this should not be cops.
At best, he needs to be fired.
At worst, he needs to be charged with something on the spectrum between negligent homicide and 2nd degree murder.
Replace him with a different cop.
And, if this happens elsewhere, replace those cops too.
It should be easier to fire cops (it should be easier to charge them).Report
Here I notice one of those weird things in political discourse: people who read your comment will be inclined to agree, wholeheartedly, but ….
It’s the “but” that trips us up.
“I’d agree the cop should be fired, but I can’t agree with your view about breaking up the union.”
“I’d agree the cop should be fired, but I can’t help but think the strobe light negatively effects the officers judgment.”
“I’d agree the cop should be fired, but the kid had a gun in his hand only seconds priori to being shot.”
We’re always looking for way to exonerate what is, at first pass, obviously bad behavior.Report
“Look, right in front of your nose! Obviously bad behavior!”
“I hear that, but I’m not sure I can trust my own lying eyes…”Report
I’m a longtime critic of police generally and a Chicago resident who has been especially troubled by the history of serious misconduct and abuse of citizens by CPD, having witnessed misconduct myself. I expected that when I watched the Adam Toledo video, I would once again be appalled by the behavior of the police. But that didn’t happen.
I’ve watched the video of the shooting repeatedly. It looked to me like Adam ran to that gap in the alley fence to ditch the gun behind it, hoping the cop wouldn’t know that he had the gun. Of course, the cop knew he had it, but Adam probably believed he could escape a gun charge if he tossed it out of sight. So, when Adam ditched the gun, his back was to the cop, concealing disposal of the weapon.
In a split second, he tossed the gun out of sight of the cop and wheeled around while raising his arms, effectively giving the cop no time to observe that Adam had dropped the gun. IMO, the speed of the sequence, from concealing that he was dropping the weapon to wheeling around while raising his arms, placed the cop in an impossible position.
What was Adam’s alternative upon being ordered to show his hands?
He could have stopped running, visibly dropped the gun at his side, and, back still to the cop, raised his hands over his head without spinning around. At that point, the cop could have further instructed Adam to take him into custody safely.
I’ve studied enough perception and decision making to be convinced that no amount of training would have enabled that cop to safely perceive that Adam had dropped the gun. At that point, Adam’s own split-second decisions probably doomed him.
There are terrible problems with policing and police culture in Chicago and elsewhere, but I don’t see this tragedy as a manifestation of those problems. IMO, it’s a manifestation of ills that plague that youngster’s local community, Little Village. A few months ago, a patient’s brother was shot in that neighborhood. Gun violence, mostly gang-related, is always a serious concern there, especially at night.Report
I get where you are coming from, but part of having the badge and the gun (and the body armor) means you need to take that extra second to confirm. Why? Because citizens are not, and never should be, trained how to act around police (beyond be polite).
Look at this statement:
This implies that a 13 year old boy should know the exact best way to act when faced with a tuned up cop? Seriously?
Sorry, no, the cops need to stop and assess, and they need to take the time to make a reasonable effort at it. They get the training, and the badge, and the gun, that means they accept the risk that getting it right might be fatal.
It’s not that hard to accept that risk, infantry soldiers do it every day.Report
There is a disconnect between “random innocent child can’t be expected to know what to do around the police” and “this 13 year old tuned up the cop by engaging in gun violence at 2:30 am on the streets of Chicago and then got too clever in the aftermath”.
There is an element of “play stupid games, win stupid prizes” here.
I’d be fine with firing him (assuming some experts in violence co-sign his actions as incompetent). I even think with his record we should be taking a hard look at whether this was avoidable (I have no clue what’s a reasonable number of use-of-force and/or complaints for a 6 year vet with his job).
However I don’t think we have a hope of this being “criminal” so prison is off the table.Report
There is an element of “play stupid games, win stupid prizes” here.
You went from criticizing Oscar for suggesting a 13 year old was just doing stupid teenage stuff while shooting a gun in the city, which is entirely justified, to criticizing Oscar for thinking a 13 year old doesn’t know how to respond to the cops to keep himself safe (when we all know that there isn’t a way to do that) which isn’t justified at all. A 13 year old is a kid. And even adults have been shot for doing precisely what the cops say.
At some point in this the cops themselves have to enter the picture as human beings, agents of their own decision-making. You’re skipping right past that point, and exonerating murderous behavior while doing so.
Add: honestly speaking here, the single most infuriating component of discourse around the cops and policing in general is the insistence on the part of conservatives that cops cannot do any wrong, regardless of how egregious they’re behavior. It’s sickening.Report
As a someone else said, highly trained adult police officers are given permission to panic and act on impulse, while untrained children are expected to behave with cool rational composure with a gun in their face.Report
Let’s ask some big picture questions:
1) Did the cop need to be there at all?
Unless Chicago is willing to legalize random people shooting random things at 2am, yes. This specific child was engaged in seriously illegal behaviour.
2) Did the cop escalate things? Abuse his authority?
No evidence of this so the answer is “no” at the moment.
3) Did the cop have a reason to think he was armed?
Yes.
Oscar’s strongest argument is we want the police to wait that extra second, even if it puts their lives in danger.
The weakest argument on this page has been ignoring that this kid is a dangerous criminal, and we as a society insist the police deal with members of his criminal class.
If you’re going to insist on having armed confrontations with the police at 2:30am because thug life is cool; Then yes, you’re stupid; And also yes, it’s a really good idea to how to handle armed confrontations with the police at 2:30am.
That is a different issue than “should this cop even be a cop given his record”. That is also a different issue than “do we as a society want the police to wait that extra second”.Report
Ok fine, you win, lets just gun down everyone engaging in seriously illegal behavior in every major city. Of course, to make Jaybird happy, we’d have to create an airtight definition of “seriously illegal” so I’ll start – lets make sure the cops gun down everyone who bilked the COVID relief packages more then $100K.
Because while shooting a firearm off inside city limits does create a greater then average risk of hurting someone, so far are you or I know the grifters just mentioned did more actual damage to their communities then Adam Toledo.Report
Hey, so long as we agree that the argument is that we need the Death Penalty without all of the chokepoints, I’d be down.
Bring back the gallows in front of city hall!Report
Straw man much?
This is Chicago so it’s Chicago laws. My expectation is that the 13 year old didn’t legally own a gun, so the gun was probably also illegally transported and so on. Pull on that thread and we’re deep into what? Gang activities? Thug life?
If we’re going to compare one individual to an entire class of people then Ted Bundy might have done less damage.
Compare entire-classes and we’re at: “do grifters do more damage than Chicago’s thugs, gang members, and whoever does the carnage that is black-on-black violence”?
The laws and law enforcement in Chicago were created to deal with a social sub-class that has scary levels of violence and economic destruction. It is expected that those laws and law enforcement will occasionally kill members of that social sub-class.
It is difficult to picture getting away from that underlying reality.Report
No its not. People picture it all the time when it comes to things like ending the war in drugs, and reinvigorating inner city job training – you know dealing with the root causes of gang growth and violence. But sure, lets just keep spending money on cops who shoot up black kids who are complying with orders, instead of actually funding the things that, what, 4 or 5 decades of data tell us work better to address the root causes.Report
when it comes to things like ending the war in drugs
Hey, speaking of which, maybe we could do that?
Even merely legalizing pot would take away a couple of major tools/crutches from law enforcement.Report
If memory serves, the gov has scores of job training programs which we’re pretty sure don’t work.
Links?
Serious question, does that actually work?
We had, and are still fighting, a war on poverty. Our poor are richer than most countries’ middle class.Report
the gun was probably also illegally transported and so on. Pull on that thread and we’re deep into what? Gang activities? Thug life?
Notice the difference in how people react to a black kid with a gun to say, Kyle Rittenhouse.
Notice the preconceptions, the expectations, the anticipation.Report
There are very violent white sub-cultures. If we found out that Kyle was a skin head or neo-naxi then we’d have expectations.
Adam is in an area where gangs and thug life is a serious problem. The situation he painted himself into is consistent with that being the underlying issue.
Simplifying that to skin color obscures more than it reveals.Report
Without Googling, do you happen to know where Kyle Rittenhouse was from, and what sort of crime rate and gang culture it has?
I doubt it.
You are leaping to conclusions based on nothing more than physical appearance pre-judgement of what you imagine his life to be.Report
With Kyle we don’t need to care about that because he’s got a wiki entry. However, if memory serves, Kyle was accused of white supremacy at the time (because that matched the world view of the people making the claim) and we eventually found not.
At the time I made no judgement about Kyle because I had no information. If I’d found out his gun was stolen, I’d have adjusted my conclusions appropriately.
Oh by all means, please explain how the 13 year old legally has access to a gun given Chicago’s gun laws. Then explain how he’s legally using it on the streets of Chicago, and how there’s a perfectly good reason for him to be legally having it and using it at 2:30am. For that matter, if he legally has and is using a firearm on the streets of Chicago, how is it that no one has mentioned this?
Facts are stubborn things, and him being 13, in Chicago, and firing a handgun are the facts on the table. BTW we know “firing” because the cops did that gunpowder residue test on his hands (one of the things I looked up before making any conclusions, he might have just been holding it for the 21 year old).
So what is the explanation which best fits what we know? For that matter, what are the possibilities?Report
On a side note, Adam wasn’t black.Report
The big picture questions are (i) did the kid, no matter how dumb his conduct, get his day in court, and (ii) was the shooting necessary for self-defense or defense of a third party? Seems to me the answers to both are no.Report
His experience would have been different if he’d been law abiding for longer than a quarter of a second.
We sit at our computers with perfect knowledge, and with that perfect knowledge the answer is clearly “no”.
Change that question to “did the shooting appear to be necessary for self-defence a half second before the trigger was pulled” and the answer gets a lot less clear.Report
If the question of civil liberties rests on the probability any given suspect/accused is convicted of or will plea to a crime then we might as well dispense with innocent until proven guilty, and probably the bill of rights altogether.
It does not get less clear. That was 2nd degree murder. IMO anyone minimally competent in self-defense and with a firearm knows that. You don’t get to blow away someone surrendering.Report
Playing stupid games gun in hand with the police runs the risk of convincing them that you’re about to shoot them. After that your “civil liberties” are lower than normal.
After we see the gun in his hand, he uses his body to obscure it, hides it, and then spins to surrender. All of this happened in about 0.8 seconds. That’s a big devil hiding in those details.
This is not my field. I don’t know “what a reasonable cop” is expected to do in this situation. It’s possible we’ll see experts in violence and police procedure say he clearly should have waited… but it’s also possible we’ll find out procedure is to pull the trigger.Report
See my comment to DrX down thread. I find the current “reasonable cop” to be an unacceptably low standard, given how police have extra training and resources and equipment, etc. (and often claim just how totes bada$$ they are with firearms).
Criminals are not John Wick, cops should stop pretending they are.Report
‘Lower than normal’? Does that actually mean something quantifiable or is it just a post hoc rationalization of the outcome? You don’t have to be a bleeding heart to understand killing the suspect is a frustration of our system.
The police procedure stuff is an appeal to authority, not a real answer. The procedure needs to be to get it right, not justify whatever the hell the outcome happens to be. We’re poorly served when public servants operate any other way.Report
It means “civil liberties” don’t protect you if you’re shooting at the police, nor do we insist that the police be fired upon before they shoot.
The real question is “how reasonable was it for that cop to think this kid was about to open fire”? The kid using his body to obscure the gun and the rapid movements make a lot more sense for “Ramboing it out” rather than “peacefully surrendering”.
If we ignore current perfect knowledge and look at what was known at the time; This seems a marginal call, but not an obviously outrageous one.
What does “get it right” mean in the context of someone who is both surrendering and also obscuring the gun and making rapid movements?
If we want to always give suspect every chance to survive, we need to tell the cops to shoulder more risk. Here the perfect procedure would be something like “cops can’t fire to save themselves until they’re fired upon”. We haven’t done that, what we’ve done instead is insist that the cops not have much risk.
However “risk” and “who has it” is the key here. Normally when the cops are in this situation they’re not dealing with a stupid 13 year old who is being too clever.Report
No one here was actually shooting at the police and it’s a false equivalence.
Starting from that hypothetical is what gets us to the rule you’re standing up for, to the extent it’s really a rule and not just a rationalization. It’s the same approach that justifies shooting people with cell phones in their hands or laying down a beating over ‘furtive movements’ and phantom resistance. Instead of setting standards you end up justifying a complete lack of them.
Getting it right means making arrests and letting the courts sort out the appropriate sanction. If the police don’t want risk then public service isn’t for them, though again, any objective analysis does not place law enforcement as a particularly risky profession. This motte and bailey thing where we take the most extreme situation (i.e. suspect has a death wish and is actually shooting at police) and apply it to everything else is absurd. The result of its application has nothing to do with reasonableness. It’s the police have no agency and can’t be responsible for anything.Report
Equivalence? It’s the situation the cop thought he was in. The suspect was armed and his movements were consistent with bringing a gun to bear. Does the cop wait for the bullet of perfect knowledge or can he shoot at that point?
That would be Stephon Clark, and yes it is. Clark was high, summoned the cops by breaking random car windows, was chased around by the police, and then tried sneaking up on them in the dark while pointing a cell phone at them like it was a gun.
That was another situation where perfect knowledge was very different than what was believed at the time.
The people involved in both of those situations thought they were dealing with an extreme situation. It doesn’t have to be “death wish” either but whatever.
This brings us back to, do you want the police to wait to be fired upon before they fire?
Because if the answer is “no”, then they’re going to be occasionally firing with imperfect information.Report
Dark, the problem is that what they think they’re dealing with turns out to be wrong often enough that they should not be operating in consequence-free environment. The fact that they know, and have fought to attain, the ability to do their jobs in a consequence free environment is the core problem.
Instead of talking about excuses and what they did or didn’t reasonably fear we should be talking about standards. And once law enforcement shows it can actually live up to some then maybe we can revisit when they should get the benefit of the doubt.Report
Agreed.
I assume a lot of this is simply lies. They know what to say to avoid problems, they say it. That’s why we are insisting on bodycams.
OK, let’s talk about standards.
1) Looking at this cop’s record, it’s possible he should have been kicked off the force a while ago.
Looking into why that has not happened and how to enable it would be very useful and imho would take us into “no unions” and “citizen review boards” and the like. Alternatively maybe every cop in Chicago has that many use of force records and complaints against them and it’s normal.
2) Standards can not include assumption of perfect knowledge nor can they insist all suspects are brought in alive.
3) Adam getting killed was a never event, but never events happen far more often to pharmacists and surgeons.
4) If to make the case that this shooting was bad, you need to point to problems in general, then you’re not able to make your case. If we’re talking about what should happen to this specific cop because of this specific shooting, then there is the possibility that the answer is “nothing” because even in a better system this is going to happen.Report
“This implies that a 13-year-old boy should know the exact best way to act when faced with a tuned up cop? Seriously?
Oscar, I didn’t intend that implication, though I can see why you think I did. When I described the alternate way that Adam could have complied with the cop’s order, I was responding to suggestions that it was literally impossible to comply with the cop’s order without doing so in the manner that Adam did–by concealing that he was ditching the gun and while wheeling around and simultaneously raising his hands.
In the Caron Nazario case, the cop ordered the lieutenant to keep his hands outside the window and exit the car. Nazario literally could not do both, so compliance was physically impossible. Why does this distinction matter to me? If a cop shoots someone after instructing them to do the impossible, I believe that far more liability accrues to the cop.
I understand that Adam was 13-years-old, and I wouldn’t expect a 13-year-old to show the best judgment, but I doubt the cop knew that he was dealing with a minor, never mind a 13-year-old. Additionally, minors with guns can shoot at police officers, which I’d also consider evidence of their poor judgment. Poor judgment doesn’t change the risk to a police officer. If anything, it elevates the risk. But again, I don’t think the cop knew that he was dealing with a minor. I would judge the cop’s actions based on what he could see and what he knew at the time of the shooting, so in that sense, Adam’s age is irrelevant to judging the cop’s level of culpability. Adam’s age is only relevant if you demand 20/20 hindsight before the fact.
These considerations lead me to see this as a terrible tragedy rather than an example of policing I regard as misconduct or criminally wrong.
I’m not sure we even disagree on the facts in this case. Perhaps we have a difference in values regarding the level of risk that police officers must assume, as well as a difference of opinion regarding the vague notion of reasonableness that the courts have suggested to determine whether the use of force has been excessive. We can agree that cops should be and are expected to assume a greater level of risk than you or I are expected to assume. I also suspect that we agree there is some level of danger that allows for the use of deadly force. Where we apparently disagree is the subjective point of risk in a given situation that justifies the use of deadly force versus restraint.Report
Too many police officers – in too many places including Chicago – are trained to start with deadly force and never bother to try something else, especially if their “contact” is a black man.Report
@DrX
Let me just say that I have found the use of the phrase “I was in fear for my life” (or some variation thereof) by the police to be the blue line version of the boy who cried wolf. Thus, when a police officer uses deadly force, I am highly skeptical, simply because culturally, the police have used that excuse beyond reason.
I will agree that this case is marginal. The kid was being stupid (although I bet he figured he was being clever trying to ditch the gun so the cop wouldn’t see where it went), and the rapid movements… yes, I can understand why a person would pull the trigger.
But the video tells me that the cop had his finger on the trigger instead of indexed (firearm safety violation*), so at the very least, he should lose his badge permanently and have to find a new career.
I expect police to take that extra second, both because they have training, and because uniformed officers have (TTBOMK) body armor. Criminals are not John Wick, the chance of them being able to spin around and pull off a fatal shot while shooting from the hip is close to nil, even at close range (bullets are very small). In most cases, you actually have time to wait for the threat to truly manifest. Soldiers manage to operate under such ROEs, so cops should be able to as well.
*Honestly, I see police in videos demonstrating horrible firearm safety so often that it’s clear to me that culturally, they don’t take it seriously, and don’t focus on it in training. I wonder how many people have been shot by the police because they were careless with their firearms.Report
Let me add one more thing. I’m a big proponent of the idea that police do not, and should not, have special rights that put them above citizens[1], therefore, if you can imagine a similar scenario, but instead of a cop, the shooter was another citizen, do you truly think the CPD would review that footage and not recommend prosecution? Do you truly think the Chicago city attorney would not seek an indictment?
If you can look at all that, and truly answer yes to both, then I’ll accept that.
[1] Because cops are citizens, they aren’t in the military, we should not tolerate them calling other citizens ‘civilians’.Report
Normal civilians aren’t expected to chase down armed criminals.Report
That fact merely impacts the frequency of which badged civilians might be required to employ deadly force in self defense, it says nothing with regards to whether or not the application of force in any given instance was appropriate.
And, as I have argued, the fact that a badged civilians have training, legal authority, and equipment normal civilians might not means that edge cases should probably fall against the officer. Great power, great responsibility and all that. You accept the badge, you accept that you are held to a higher standard.
This is one of the problems we have with the police, we grant them power, but refuse to hold them to the higher standard, and constantly make excuses for them when they fail, because protecting their career is more important.Report
I am very good with firing him. He made a marginal to bad call and someone died. For that matter I’m unsure if he should be a cop at all just because of his record (again, no clue if that record is bad or average).
Legally I don’t see any chance to hold him criminally liable, and I’d like to not hold him civilly liable. That last quarter second is a problem but the previous 3 hours (and very much the previous 2 seconds) are on that kid and his family.Report
On marginal calls, I’m fine with it being a career ending event (as long as it’s an actual career ender, not just an opportunity to switch departments).Report
You’ve never lived in the deep south or rural areas with minimal police presence have you? Every single person I have encountered in Mississippi who either open or concealed carries does so because they believe (generally erroneously) that they MUST be armed because the state (i.e. the police) won’t arrive in time to protect them or their family or their property. Its a ludicrous theory – on par with injecting bleach – but its a position held by a good many of my neighbors.Report
I’m not sure what to do with this. My understanding of the law in Chicago/Illinois is that a private citizen has a duty to retreat if possible. A police officer is typically expected to pursue a suspect into dangerous situations that can and do lead to making these difficult, split-second judgments about the use of force.
If I try to imagine a comparable situation from a citizen’s perspective, it might be represented by a home invasion. Chicago ain’t Florida. You can’t just shoot someone who has entered your home. I don’t know precisely the point at which shooting an intruder is legally justified, but I’m pretty sure that if the intruder has a gun, and deliberately conceals the fact that he dropped it, and immediately whirls around to face you in your own home, no judge or jury in Chicago would convict you of murder for shooting that intruder. I don’t believe any prosecutor would even bring charges against a resident in that situation.Report
As long as a private citizen is not held to a greater standard, I can accept that. I may personally prefer that police are held to a higher standard (again, training, authority, etc.), But I can not accept that they enjoy a lower threshold for justified use of deadly force.
Now, given this is Chicago, I think you are very generous with regard to whether or not the DA would seek an indictment, but I don’t live there, so I defer to you.Report
I, too, am a resident of Chicago, and I’m at a loss as to how anyone could view that video and not see it as anything but an extra-judicial killing. Sure, Little Village is a crime plagued community, one where violence is often met with violence, but sending in cops with itchy trigger fingers doesn’t do anyone any good.
Lightfoot has lost control, if indeed she ever had any, of that department. Right now CPD answers to no one but itself.Report
Highly critical generalizations about American policing and CPD–generalizations with which I agree– must be addressed but they are not determinative of particular situations. If anything, they’re prejudicial or, in my line of work, we’d say they dispose us toward confirmation bias.
As far how it is that I can see this shooting as I see it, you’d need to read all my comments. On its face, that is how I see it. Of course, you can disagree with me on the facts or interpretation of the facts.
Regarding Lori Lightfoot, I have no opinion on her generally. Generally, I think being mayor of Chicago is an almost impossible job whether the mayor is competent or incompetent or somewhere in between. As to the particulars in Lightfoot’s case, I don’t know enough to argue one way or the other.Report
I have a friend who views being mayor of Chicago as you do. The thing is, Lightfoot ran for the job, so obviously she wanted it. Her progressive platform, which is why I voted for her, got dumped as soon as the going got a little tough.Report
Remember when Harold Washington was elected mayor? How optimistic we all were?Report
Apart from all this, are you in favor of Lightfoot resigning? She’d be replaced by Tom Tunney until alderman elect someone else to replace her. I liked Ann Sathers, but that’s not a ringing political endorsement. And who on the city council would be a better mayor in your estimation?Report
I think Lightfoot ought to serve out her term. Who knows, the 2nd half might be a turnaround. Lord knows, between the pandemic and the riots of last summer, it hasn’t been easy for her.
I’d love to see Waguespack take another shot at the mayoralty. He has 13 years on the Council, and he doesn’t seem to be in thrall to anyone.Report
OK, some weirdness here. Stillwater replied to my “stupid games” comment with a quote and his post is gone.
My reply to his reply is also gone.Report
Can confirm that weirdness is going on.Report
I freed it. If I had to guess, it’d be the part that said “the single most infuriating component of discourse around the cops and policing in general is the insistence on the part of conservatives that cops cannot do any wrong, regardless of how egregious they’re behavior. It’s sickening.”
Given my arguments on the board, I’ve encountered multiple non-conservatives argue that things should be different, but fight tooth and nail against any specific policy change. Get rid of X? “It’s not a magic bullet to get rid of X.” We need to curtail Y? “The problems have nothing to do with Y.” Maybe we should Z? “Z wouldn’t help.”
And then, suddenly, we’re in a place where getting rid of the police entirely is the only thing on the table.Report
There’s a big difference between “yes, I agree X is wrong but disagree that Y will fix it” and “I disagree that X is wrong.”
Also, who locked it? 🙂Report
Eh, “I disagree that Y will fix it!” “What will fix it?” “More money.”
It seems strange to be arguing about “morality” at that point.
Anyway, I am 100% familiar with the argument that Police Departments ought to have Never Events in the same way that Hospitals do (that is to say, there are mistakes that are *SO* egregious that they should *NEVER* happen).
And there are a lot of events that are bad (even mistakes!) that do not qualify as “Never Events” despite the fact that they are bad (even mistakes!).
The point behind Qualified Immunity is the whole issue of how cops need to have room to make mistakes. I agree with that, I guess. My problem with Qualified Immunity ain’t the idea behind it, it’s that it gets applied when cops steal stuff from the people they’re investigating.
And so the ideas that this is bad but we, seriously, can’t change it is indistinguishable in practice from “I disagree that X is wrong”.
I mean, the alternative is the CHAZ/CHOP.Report
The problem with QI is not QI, it’s with how the courts interpreted it to mean that it only applied if the exact case had been previously adjudicated as not falling under QI, rather than simply looking at reasonable case law, or taking the opposite approach and only applying it when the facts fit a previous case that was found to fall under QI.Report
Right. QI is fine in principle—it’s just that right now the I is jacked up to 10 and the Q is dialed down to 1.Report