A Chicago Police officer responding to a ShotSpotter alert fired shots at a child who was playing with fireworks—that’s the conclusion from the Civilian Office of Police Accountability in a statement released today.
“COPA can confirm that a firearm was not used against the officers,” said COPA First Deputy Chief Administrator, Ephraim Eaddy.
CPD initially identified the child as a man, claiming he had opened fire first.
They also reported seeing “flashes of light.”
“When officers arrived in the area, they observed an individual, who has now been identified as a juvenile, standing near a residence. As one officer exited the vehicle, they heard a loud bang, which was later determined to be fireworks. The officer who exited the vehicle discharged their firearm in the direction of the juvenile, who was not struck by gunfire,” investigators state in the press release about the incident.
Body-worn camera footage from the three officers responding to the ShotSpotter alert appears to show one officer immediately fire his gun after hearing a loud bang.
He then yells, “Shots fired! Shots fired!” as another officer radios in a “10-1,” indicating officers are in need of urgent assistance.
Why are cops allowed to discharge firearms without at least a target? Dude fired 3 rounds wildly after the firework sound. Then they went around shouting "hands up" at some bushes.
These people are a fucking menace.
Doesn't help that being a cop unironically requires less training then the vast majority of other jobs. You would think giving someone a gun to point at people, who they're largely supposed to "protect" would require at least a few years of training.
Notably, a cosmetologist requires 2-3 times more training than police officers in the US. The only two countries with lower training requirements are Iraq and Afghanistan. Stories like this post, the acorn incident, and shooting into that ladies house, start to make a lot more sense with that context, eh?
I have a take on the cosmetologist thing! Sounds silly for a hair cutting job, doesn't it?
Dated a woman who trained cosmetologists at the local college. Gods she was educated.
Thinking out loud one night I said, "Ugh. What's it called when a chemical reaction... uh... opposite of exothermic?"
"Endothermic."
"How the hell you know that?!"
Turns out when you fuck with people's bodies, you have to know some shit. Forgot the topic, but I had asked her how she knew another odd thing.
"Because old people may have nails (whatever, I forgot), and you have to recognize that as a sign of (whatever, I forgot). You cannot use $chemical on them."
Anyway, off topic, but there are reasons cosmetologists are trained and certified. They're certainly more educated than most cops.
Tamir Rice
You won't find me defending cops in my comment history, but the acorn thing was a wild outlier. Which is why it made news and we're laughing at memes about it. Holy shit. Never saw anything like that in life.
It's only an outlier of you only consider cases of cops being spooked by acorns specifically. I mean this is literally a thread about a cop being spooked into opening up because of fireworks. Cops getting scared who then just start blasting is a pretty common occurrence it would seem, at least compared to how often it should be happening, which is very rarely to never.
A cop pointed a gun at Aaron Bushnell as he collapsed while burning to death. The cops have a trigger happiness problem. They don’t know how to handle themselves around guns. The acorn thing wasn’t an outlier at all. It was just the most fucking absurd example of an ongoing problem. First sign of trouble means they’re ready to shoot someone—and because they’re told they need to avoid lawsuits for injuring people, that means they’re ready to fucking kill at the first sign of trouble.
To elaborate further, it requires less, as in police forces have won lawsuits to specifically hire under-qualified applicants. It's not just a quirk of a unstructured administration - it is their goal.
They're there to protect the system, not the people.
I had the idea (source: fictional TV) that ALL cops had to be trained at a police academy before becoming cops. That’s not the case?
I mean yeah, they do, but police academies in real life are hardly the solemn and rigorous institutes of higher learning they're portrayed as in the Police Academy movies.
Training is where they learn to shoot first ask questions later
Yeah I am getting real tired of centrists acting like the training is the solution not the problem.
The “training” is an indoctrination into an ideological system designed to uphold racial and socio-economic disparities through the use of violent force and to act otherwise is to blatantly ignore the history of policing in the United States.
The cop fired at the acorn because he was an idiot and probably wasn’t well trained, but more importantly the cop fired on the acorn because inside his rotten little mind are vivid images of dangerous black men threatening him at every corner and he was sure like a child walking through the dark that the monster was justttt about to jump out at him. This kind of ideology is fundamental to police culture in the US, it cannot be corrected with retraining because it is a basic worldview and causes an incredible amount of violence towards innocent people.
ACAB
There are 18,000 police departments in the US. We can't talk about them as a monolithic entity.
There might be 2 local dudes, there might be 10,000, training varies wildly by city and state, let alone for federal officers.
I'd be down for some sort of federal minimum requirements, but now we're into sticky state's rights arguments. (And yes, like it or not, our states have wide latitude for self-governance. It's a big dammed country.)
That is the case. For full time police officers typically it'll be something like half a year in an academy followed by another half a year on the job with a field training officer.
Hell I’m just some dumbass trainer and I’ve had to go through continuing training myself for almost 4 years now and all I do is talk to people all day and teach them how to use tools like a ticketing system.
LiberalGunNut™ here! You do NOT fire a weapon, yes, say weapon with me kids, unless you have a clear target and are clearly in danger. Neither criteria was met here.
I've heard some funky shit in my kitchen and in the woods. LOL, threw down on the neighbor's wolf-hybrid who wandered in one night. That fucker is silent. 🐺 "BRO! You do NOT go into people's homes at 1AM! Go home! GIT!" First night at my camp I heard what I thought were coyotes, took a single-shot .410 and went to run them off. Nah. Barred owls trying to hook up. (Cut me some slack, their call and response is creepy.)
We can make up edge cases all night. If someone goes through the trouble of crawling in our dog door and trying to enter our locked bedroom at 3AM... Know what? Nah. I'd be scared shitless and have a .45 in the center of that door frame, but I'm probably not shooting blind. Depends on the kind of noises that mammal is making. Snuffling and such? Bear or wolf or dumb dog. Again. 🙄 Cussing or whispering? Yeah, that's a human who went to great lengths to invade our home. And it ain't going to be a friend or neighbor pranking me. They know better.
I'm not ex-military, but I understand that discharging your weapon is a big fucking deal and must be explained in excruciating detail, on paper, reviewed ad nauseum, with your ass on the line? Like court martial on-the-line? Too much to ask of civilian cops? If they don't want to call themselves civilians and want to play military, same rules?
tl;dr: We're not all nuts, but ACAB.
Yeah, cops really should be held to similar expectations as civilians. The main thing holding us back from getting rid of bad cops is qualified immunity.
They really should be putting cops through some realistic scenarios in the academy, like fireworks, nuts falling on cars, and backfiring cars. A good cop should be able to tell when there's an actual emergency vs a loud noise. It's absolutely ridiculous.
Good on you for being a responsible gun owner. We need more like that in our police force, and we need to prevent the trigger-happy nutjobs from getting anywhere near police work.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/15/us/politics/qualified-immunity-supreme-court.html
Qualified Immunity is illegal according to section 1983 of US Federal Code, as was passed by Congress, and written into The Congressional Record
Awesome!
Well, kudos to Trump for picking a good (at least in this case) judge, and Judge Willett for caring enough to dig into the law.
I'll need to look more into this, but hopefully this gets set in precedent so those who have wrongly been harmed can seek redress.
I'm surprised this has taken so long, I wonder what other omissions could exist...
~~That has nothing to do with Trump's cases, it's a separate case~~
The main thing holding us back from getting rid of bad cops is refusing to recognize that the institutions of law enforcement in the US are rotten to their core and we’re designed explicitly in the wake of civil rights and labor movements to enforce socio-economic and racial disparities through violence.
Which isn’t to say that you aren’t making a great point about how qualified immunity is a really important part of the problem though.
Yeah, eliminating qualified immunity won't fix the problem on its own, but it at least gives victims a better shot at holding police responsible and thus weeding out a lot of the bad actors.
I would also like to see a significant portion of police be unarmed, with an increase in salary (and expectations) for those who are armed. That might get that mentality shift needed.
I agree with pretty much everything you said. I do feel the need to add that your owl story reminds me of Joe Pesci firing off rounds in My Cousin Vinny the first time he hears an owl. Thanks for that!
By owning guns you contribute to the supply of them. The more supply the more likely kids are going to be on the receiving end. It's that simple.
Lmfao yer right. Every gun purchase is directly killing a child
Imagine if I said that. Oh wait you already pretended like I did.
It's true. My 9 occasionally escapes from the locked safe, reunites with its ammo, and guns down a few kids. It's just statistics, though.
Thank goodness then. Those kids need their own guns to practice with to hone their marksmanship skills.