Ohio police release body camera video of officer shooting 15-year-old boy who had toy gun seconds after initial encounter
Ohio police release body camera video of officer shooting 15-year-old boy who had toy gun seconds after initial encounter
The video shows Officer Ryan Westlake speaking to Tavion Koonce-Williams through his car window and seconds later firing his weapon toward the teen, whose arms were raised.
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.
-
Tamir Rice! The police will claim everything and will never admit they were wrong. 10 years and they have learned nothing but black kid = bad guy.
Fuck all cops. If a Kid scares you that much ,then fucking quit. Once again, FUCK ALL COPS!
When I was little it was completely normal for kids to fuck around the neighborhood with toy guns. Cap guns, water guns, whatever. And we "shot" each other and random people with them. This was even before they started putting bright orange barrels on everything.
And you know what happened? Nothing. Nobody freaked out. Nobody called the police. Nobody died. Kids being kids. Times sure have changed.
A fucking CAB.