log 28 theknockerblog.com

The Press needs to wake up:

I never met the police officer that woke up one morning and said “ I think I will go out and shoot some innocent kid today”.I saw the headline about a boy that was shot by a police officer in New York “Cop fatally shoots 12-year-old who carried fake gun”

That should read 12 year old forces a cop to shoot him. Now the officer will carry that the rest of his life.

Many times in my career I have been confronted with the; Shoot No Shoot; situation. Once I was even called out into the street in the middle of a busy intersection for an old fashion shootout at high noon.

It went down like this A little before noon on a bright fall day in the late 70s the call center got a call from a teenage male stating I was to meet him at the corner of 12th and sunset, a main intersection in that part of the town. I’ll call it River City. It was in the days before S W A T. The caller said he had a gun and he was going to start shooting as soon as I showed up. We surrounded the area and cut off traffic in all directions. I approached from the south and stopped out of range. Three other units did the same as me from the other three directions.

He was there all right. No gun was visible but when he saw the patrol car he put his hand inside his vest. He started calling out to me to come out from behind cover. Two other units covered him with rifles while I kept his attention on me. The fourth officer an ex-marine with battlefield experience in Korea was behind him. While I kept his attention this Brave Officer travelled over 50 yards with no cover and blindsided the nut with the best open field tackle I have ever seen. I don’t believe he was ever properly recognized for that act of heroism. Perhaps because, as we discovered later, the kid was not armed.

Good Job Bob. You saved me and the other guys from some tacky headline that would have proclaimed that we shot an unarmed school boy in the middle of the street. In reality he was a thug that just got tired of living and wanted to end it all.

Whether it is Ferguson Missouri, New York City, or River City: Cops are confronted with these situations daily. I just wish the Press would give a little more thought as to how the headline reads. These brave men and women get to live with the knowledge that they had a part in the death of a kid and it isn’t pretty. Thug or not!

Just my thoughts on the subject:

S. Henry Knocker
theknocherblog.com