In Brooklyn late Thursday night, a police officer shot and killed an unarmed man. New York City officials are saying it was an accident.
Within hours of the shooting late Thursday night, the Police Department had conceded a grave error. The mayor and William J. Bratton, the police commissioner, visited the family home on Friday to apologize.
We then move to Cleveland, for another tragedy.
The 12-year-old boy wielding what turned out to be a BB gun when he was shot by police outside a Cleveland recreation center died early Sunday morning, a police union official confirmed.
The boy [since identified as Tamir Rice]…was shot in the stomach at Cudell Recreation Center, at Detroit Avenue and West Boulevard, about 3:30 p.m. Saturday, police said . . .
The shooting came after a man at the park adjacent to the rec center called police when he saw “a guy with a gun pointing it at people.”
The caller twice said the gun was “probably fake” and told dispatchers the person pulling the gun from his waistband was “probably a juvenile,” according to audio released by police officials late Saturday.
The caller’s doubt was never relayed to the responding officers – one in his first year on the force, and the other with at least a decade of experience, Follmer said.
The rookie officer saw the boy at a park bench pick up what looked like a gun and placed it in his waistband, Follmer said.
The officer ordered the boy to put his hands in the air. Instead, police said, the boy reached for his gun. Deputy Chief Edward Tomba said the boy made no verbal threatsto the officer and there was no physical confrontation.
In the past five years, more Utahns have been killed by police than by gang members.
Or drug dealers. Or from child abuse.
And so far this year, deadly force by police has claimed more lives — 13, including a Saturday shooting in South Jordan — than has violence between spouses and dating partners.
As the tally of fatal police shootings rises, law enforcement watchdogs say it is time to treat deadly force as a potentially serious public safety problem.
Through October, 45 people had been killed by law enforcement officers in Utah since 2010, accounting for 15 percent of all homicides during that period.
A Salt Lake Tribune review of nearly 300 homicides, using media reports, state crime statistics, medical-examiner records and court records, shows that use of force by police is the second-most common circumstance under which Utahns kill each other, surpassed only by intimate partner violence.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2014/11/24/from-new-york-to-cleveland-to-utah-a-terrible-weekend-for-police-shootings/