Tamir Rice

Tamir Rice: Police could have approached slowly. They could have parked down the block and called out over a loudspeaker. They could have tried to see if this kid was a threat. With a bit of patience and common sense only a few second worth, really they would have realized there was no danger at all. But instead of calming down, they ramped up. Instead of de-escalating, they escalated moving from zero to lethal force, with no intervening steps, according to Globe and Mail. The police on the scene could have chosen to act slowly and calmly. Before firing their weapons, they could have taken a moment to figure out if they were about to make a terrible mistake. They did no such thing. They arrived with their blood up and instantly spilled somebody else . An American grand jury declined to charge the officers, believing they acted reasonably and Last Saturday, Tamir Rice, age 12, was shot to death by police in Cleveland, Ohio. He was in a park, playing with a toy gun. A bystander was worried that the gun might be real, and called police. A few minutes later, two officers pulled up at high speed. Video from a nearby surveillance camera shows the car racing into the frame, coming to a stop inches from the boy and his body almost immediately falling to the ground. This past summer, also in Ohio, police were called to a Wal-Mart in suburban Dayton. The call was like the one in Cleveland. There was a man in the store, said a caller to 911, and he appeared to be carrying a gun. The man was 22-year-old John Crawford, and he was carrying a toy gun on sale in the store. Police burst in and within seconds fatally shot Mr. Crawford. At the time, he was on the phone with his family. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.