Justice for Tamir Rice! 12 year old shot and killed for a BB gun.

[branford]

179. Police officers need not --unreasonably-- risk their lives.

That's why police are trained and we have laws in place to deal with these situations.

If the accounts by the police officers are proven true, they had a more than sufficient fear for their lives and those of innocent bystanders to fire on the boy. The shooting can be both entirely justified and very tragic.

There is no jurisdiction in the USA where a police officer has to actually first be shot at as a condition precedent to firing on a suspect.

It's horrifying that some people appear to believe that the lives of police officers are little more than disposable.

There appear to be a number of poor choices that led to the unfortunate death of the boy, but again, if the officers' story is accurate, their decision to fire appears appropriate under the circumstances. The officers can only be judged on the information they knew at the time of the shooting, and a 12 year old with a gun is more than capable of causing severe carnage at a playground during the afternoon.

Rather than casually dismiss the lives of police officers, look to the manufacturers of "toys" indistinguishable from real guns, the individual who removed the orange plug denoting the gun as a "toy," the people who provided the "toy" to the boy, the parents or guardians for lack of appropriate supervision, and even the boy, who at 12, was more than capable to knowing not to wave an Airsoft around a playground, no less disobey or ignore orders from a police officer.