After a conversation with someone, which featured a brief discussion of the Tamir Rice case, I thought I should brush up more on what happened
A couple of things are pretty much accepted at this point:
- A call was made for the police to check on the situation, because someone felt he was acting in a threatening manner.
- He was in a public park (if a similar call was made in the park near my house, I would expect the officers to approach it quickly, and fairly aggressively...when I was a kid, a report like this would have been viewed differently, but that was before 24 hour news coverage swamped us with images of events like Columbine and Sandy Hook).
- The officers were not told the gun might be an airsoft.
- Rice didn't DESERVE to die...
...but if I was reporting the case, I would be looking for answers to these questions:
Did Karmback enter Cudell Com Park from W. 99th Street? If so, why did he choose that route? Did he stop where he did because it was planned or did he stop there because that was where he saw Rice?
Did he mean to put Loehmann so close to Rice?
Would this type of approach be standard procedure for officers in a similar situation?
Were the sirens going on the car?
Did Rice hear the police car approaching?
A look at the video looks like he is truly surprised by the police car right in front of him.
If the police car entered the park from W. 99th...there should have been a fair amount of sound from a car traveling quickly through mud or snow...and likely some clanking sounds as it transitioned from pavement at the end cul-de-sac to the park surface...If he heard the car, and if he looked in that direction, wouldn't that sound have given him a moment, just the split second that might have change everything, to contemplate that reaching for the airsoft gun would be a bad idea?
Was Tamir Rice wearing headphones?
Rice was wearing a hoodie (perfectly understandable, it was cold and snowy...and he was playing in the park, I would wear a hoodie to park when it is cold too.)
If he was wearing headphones, and playing his music loud enough (again, no judgement on that one...if I have headphones on, I am trying to make my ears bleed even now...and again, If I am doing sprints in the park, or working on my jumper, and I am alone, the music is going, and it is loud) wouldn't that explain part of his reaction?
Was Rice waiting for someone with whom to have an airsoft war?
I remember, quite well, being a 12 year old...if I had a new airsoft gun, I would have been dying to use it...and while many are pushing the meme that the action of raising his arm into a shooting position repeatedly was in and of itself unusually aggressive, it is exactly the same move that just about every 12 year old would do with a new airsoft...or a thumb and forefinger. ( always find it slightly amusing when a hear a new Mom saying that her young man will never do any type of gun play...unless you are willing to amputate digits, they will...even then, they might just use a tree branch, broomstick, sister's Barbie, etch_ The removal of the orange safety marker is something that just about every kid would do as well, unless someone had made it very clear that removing it would put you in an unusual amount of danger if an officer approached. *
Rice was in the park for quite a while...and it would interesting to know if he was planning to meet up with someone to try out the new toys...If so (yes, I know, lots of "IFS"), and if he had the music playing...if he caught the movement of the car at the last second, his reach for the gun makes more sense...if you were preparing for an airsoft war, mentally, you would be mentally rehearsing a quick draw...
At this point, a side note is needed...I saw an article about Rice's neighborhood, and the violence in it...I think that is a non-starter...because it is either intentionally or accidentally suggesting that all of this was due to some conditioned response on Rice's part...if you live in a neighborhood where drive-bys happen, you don't automatically reach for a airsoft... if ACTUAL danger is approaching...that would just get you dead in a hurry.
Without question, no one should have been killed that day, and if there are ways to prevent things like this happening again, those lessons need to be learned and shared...but I think the rush to judgement about the entire situation is clouding the issue too much.
*Background information:
When my sister and I got our first BB gun...
We didn't have anything like an orange safety marker on our BB guns.
My Dad made it clear to us that we were never, EVER, to point that at a person. We were told that if we had it in our hands and a officer was within sight, the gun was to be dropped and we were to walk away from it...and if we didn't follow his direction, and the officer did not kill us, he might.
To be fair, by the point I had that bb gun, I had already fired thousands of rounds of real ammo at targets, and had been given pretty extensive safety training, and seen demonstrations of what bullets did when they hit something...so Dad's instructions made perfect sense to me.
It was much later in my life (Spring 1995, at the home of one of my former students) where I intentionally pointed a gun (paintball...not a normal gun) at another person...I was horrible at it, because my brain still struggled with aiming at a person....the lessons Dad had taught over the years were still very much operational:
- Never point a gun at someone unless you have a very good reason to kill them
- The ONLY good reason to kill someone is because they are a real threat to you or your loved ones.
- If you are going to point a weapon at someone, you better be willing to shoot, and if you are willing to shoot them...kill them...if you can't do that, run (make sure the safety is on, and take the gun with you).
- If you shoot someone, and you don't kill them...it is likely they will be angry, and if they get the gun, you now become their threat.
