News
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
view the rest of the comments
This is my take as an Akron resident:
We have a new community controlled local police oversight board.
The officer was called with the pretext that someone had been brandishing a firearm / pointing a gun at houses.
You can't see very well what the officer could see because the view is obstructed. It's entirely possible that the kid complied but accidentally pointed the gun towards the officer.
The officer shot exactly 1 time and shot in a non-lethal manner (the hand was shot). This was not a murder attempt, this was in a way the extra mile, the kid will hopefully make a full recovery.
The fake gun is not an orange tipped fake, it's very similar to a real looking gun. The kid also was not with friends "playing pretend" or anything like that.
As soon as the kid started yelling the officer immediately deescalated the situation and moved towards first aid.
The officer does have a messy history, particularly when alcohol is involved and when off duty, but was entirely sober at the time of the shooting and has never been known to be drunk while on duty.
We have had issues in the past few years locally particularly with teen violence. They've been trying to solve it, but some kids are carrying guns and robbing people, some kids have been carrying guns to protect themselves from the other kids, and evidently some kids are carrying fake guns too.
I'm glad this kid got to walk away with their life. I hope their hand isn't too messed up and I hope they don't have too much mental distress. They never should've walked around in public with a toy gun and "showed it off", and I hope they never do this again.
If the officer really did something wrong, I'm sure we'll get to the bottom of it, but as it stands, I think the officer reacted reasonably.
Very rational take.
It doesn't surprise me you get a good deal of downvotes.
I'm not surprised either but I thought folks would appreciate the local context.
This is an issue our community is truly trying to address (it was something the new mayor was quite passionate about in his campaign and the community police oversight board was something he pushed for/got done when he was a city council member).
I (personally) have found that while Akron has made national news for police related shootings, the shootings often are far more nuanced than say, those out of Columbus, OH or what happened with George Floyd.
You and people like you are the reason cops have no accountablily in this country and this state, speaking as another Ohio resident.
Person 1: tries to rationally explain all the events that happened to give context to the story.
Person 2: YOU'RE THE REASON WHY COPS KILL EVERYONE!!!!
Yeah, there was an attempt to rationally explain the events, and the person's conclusion was that "the officer reacted reasonably". i.e. They think shooting a totally compliant unarmed child was a reasonable action.
The thing is, most of us here disagree with that assessment. There are a myriad of other ways that the police officer could use which don't involve using a lethal weapon on a child. These type of incidents cannot be treated as just bad luck. They are systematic, problematic, and unacceptable. To conclude that 'the officer reacted reasonably' is unsatisfactory. That kind of conclusion is what supports police to act with no accountability.
Eh, read the article and read all their comments and tell me they're being reasonable. There's a certain kind of white person--and yes, race matters because black people have first hand experience of how awful the police are--who grew up being told that cops, firefighters and soldiers deserve our respect, admiration and honor. And no matter how much evidence to the contrary they are confronted with, they find a way to maintain that belief that cops are essentially good, honorable people. Yes, there is an occasional "bad apple;" yes, sometimes mistakes are made; yes, some cities have systematic problems in their police departments; but the police in their town are good honorable folks. Not perfect--nobody is, but they are doing their best to serve and protect in a dangerous world, and we should be grateful to have them out their protecting our families. When something happens, they always give the benefit of the doubt to the cops, never the citizen. They're like the willfully ignorant wife of an abusive step-father.
"People like you" are the reason why I have to block people and get disgusted with social media.
There's nuance in everything, which is something you clearly don't understand, and I have no interest in discussing anything with you further.
Nuance doesn't automatically support your argument, just because things can be more detailed than originally assumed, doesn't mean that those details support your argument.
The fact that the police officer in question has already been fired for dangerous behavior and has been suspended since his union got his job back is a piece of nuance you have consistently downplayed or ignored.
Every rebuttal people have supplied for your claims adds to the nuance of an opinion, as it has been extrapolated upon. You're just utilizing nuance like it's a magical spell whenever you paint yourself into a stupid corner.
You don't care about nuance, you don't care about polite discourse, you just want to lick boot.