The police officer who fatally shot 13-year-old Adam Toledo was listed as a victim on an incident re [View all]

[rpannier]

The police officer who fatally shot 13-year-old Adam Toledo was listed as a victim on an incident report. One law-enforcement expert said it's 'an old cop trick meant to muddy the murky waters.'

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The report identifies the officer as Eric Stillman, 34, listing him as a victim in an aggravated assault of a law-enforcement officer. According to a tactical-response report that COPA released, Toledo was armed with a semi-automatic pistol, which was "displayed, not used" during the incident.

Tom Nolan, a law-enforcement expert who previously worked with the Boston Police Department, told Insider that listing the officer as the victim in the incident is "a long-used and hackneyed police trope" to recast the "focus of culpability and blame onto the actual victim of the police deadly-force incident, i.e., the person who the police killed."

"Thus the victim, in this case, the unarmed dead child who is shot and killed by police becomes the 'perpetrator,' and the police officer shooter, the killer, assumes the posture and pose of 'victim,'" he said. "It's an old cop trick meant to muddy the murky waters and is often used in the aftermath of what we cops call a 'bad shoot.'"

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"It is done in a time where law enforcement wants to try to be cleared of a controversial issue or they want to try to gain more of the sympathy or, you know, more of a view that they are the victim themselves and not the state or not that the guy just had the gun in his hand," Titus told Insider.

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