Idaho police officers opened fire from behind a chain-link fence just seconds after exiting their patrol cars and critically wounded a teenage boy — described by his family as nonverbal, autistic and intellectually disabled — as he stepped toward them with a knife, video from a witness shows.

Seventeen-year-old Victor Perez, who also has cerebral palsy, remained hospitalized in critical condition Tuesday after having nine bullets removed from his body and having his leg amputated, Ana Vazquez, his aunt, told The Associated Press. Doctors were planning tests on his brain activity.

The shooting Saturday in Pocatello outraged the boy’s family and neighbors as well as viewers online who questioned why the officers opened fire within about 12 seconds of exiting their patrol cars while making no apparent effort to de-escalate the situation or use less lethal weapons. Dozens of protesters gathered outside the police department Sunday, eastidahonews.com reported.

  • MunkysUnkEnz0@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    105
    ·
    7 days ago

    Murder, plain and simple. They immediately showed up and opened fire within less than 30 seconds.

    They simply weren’t in danger. There was a fence between them and The victim.

    Remember if you’ve got a problem and call the police, now you have two problems.

    The poor 12 year old boy that called the police, I bet he won’t make that mistake again. He will be traumatized for life and scared of the police.

  • AA5B@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    38
    ·
    7 days ago

    There’s an effing fence. There was no person and no cop at any risk. How the ef would any reasonable person shoot?

    Even if it were an actual aggressive person, actively threatening them, how would any person think deadly force was ok, on the other side of the effing fence?

    And the dispatcher had said the kid was so impaired he couldn’t walk and may have stabbed himself? How is that a threat? Behind a fence?

    Even if they’re a trigger happy moron looking for an excuse to murder “one of them”, how did they get to that point?

  • ssillyssadass@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    41
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    7 days ago

    What kind of justification is there for emptying a whole magazine into a child? Even if the kid is running straight at you, legitimately threatening your life with a knife in a situation that I’m honestly struggling to justify here, a single bullet would do the trick.

    • Wahots@pawb.social
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      15
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      6 days ago

      Here’s your answer:

      My friends and I categorically refuse to visit states in red. During the pandemic, their refusal to use masks and vaccines resulted in their hospital capacity reaching critical conditions, and they had to export a ton of their sick and dying to Washington and Montana, among other states. This deferred care for resident cancer patients in those states.

      Guess how they thanked the states that bailed their asses out come November 5th? If you guessed “crushing tariffs”, you guessed right.

      There are a few good souls there, but they have a disproportionately high number of extremely evil people.

    • Stern@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      10
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      6 days ago

      In a situation where you’re using lethal force (e.g. a gun.) you aren’t doing the minimum or doing disabling shots or sharpshooting the knife out of their hand, you are stopping the threat. This means center mass (torso) shots to minimize the chance that you miss and hit someone behind or near them (Like the two people were near the kid.), and you shoot until they stop being a threat. Adrenaline is a hell of a drug (and whatever other potential drugs folks can be on.) and can let folks shrug off a bullet if it isn’t instantly killing them, hence the training on lethal force is shoot until they stop being a threat.

      That said: Given that he hadn’t even cleared the fence they had time to back up. IMO this was a preventable shooting and they likely could have had one officer pepper spray or tase him (Both have about 15 foot range.) while the others kept guns on him.

    • gamer@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      9
      ·
      7 days ago

      The station gives out an Arby’s coupon every week to whoever scores the most kills.

      • barneypiccolo@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        7 days ago

        Sitting in Arby’s eating lunch. Who do I have to kill to get a coupon for a free lunch? I got some ideas.

    • x00z@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      7 days ago

      From what I can see, many American police officers seem to believe you have no reason to be alive if you don’t submit to law.

  • melsaskca@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    29
    ·
    7 days ago

    There should be some kind of a fear test for cops. Most of these shootings happen because of the great fear the cop has. The rest of the cops just want to shoot you dead. So I guess there should be some kind of “I like to shoot people dead” test as well.

    • SmilingSolaris@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      44
      ·
      7 days ago

      Hi. Former officer of the Texas department of criminal Justice. They train fear into you. This is the intended response. This is the optimal outcome. This is exactly what he was trained to do. Half of the training is watching videos of police officers not reacting quickly or violently enough and dying and being told “always act first and monopolize the violence in the situation”. Once again, I am a former officer of the Texas department of criminal justice. This is my personal experience.

      ACAB. Fuck the police. It bastardizes everyone. Including me.

    • Soup@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      29
      ·
      7 days ago

      It’s worse than that as a lot of their “training” is designed to make them feel like they’re warriors in constant danger. They are too stupid to ignore it and it’s all they get since training and the funding for it is so awful and unregulated.

      Cops in the US are just running around constantly pissing themselves and it barely takes anything to put them over the edge.

      • thedirtyknapkin@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        8
        ·
        7 days ago

        yeah, many departments still get trained on “stockholm syndrome” despite it being thoroughly debunked and only ever part of pop-psych. in fact, the only “experts” that ever pushed it WERE police training “experts”. the whole situation in stockholm was competely misrepresented. the women didn’t love the bank robber, they just feared that the actions the police were taking would cost them their lives and thus begged them to do things differently. the police are the ones that locked them in a bank vault with the attacker. this, among a few other misreports by said police, resulted in a media circus about these women falling in love and not wanting to be saved. the idea that the police could be dangerous to these women was inconceivable to the public at the time.

        it was a classic case of the police bungling a rescue and nearly costing multiple innocent lives to try to protect capitol, then ending up causing more damage than the thief was going to steal anyway. the women involved were barely studied after, but it was quickly concluded that the police were wrong about the women and that this syndrome they named was bunk. it was never in the dsm. it was never accepted science. too bad copeganda doesn’t care about facts. as i said, this shit is so sold to American police officers to this day.

        there’s a great radiolab podcast from around December that talks to the survivors about it. you can go and listen to their side of the story if you want. they were terrified of the attacker the entire time and the police just kept making things worse for them.

        • Soup@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          5 days ago

          Surprise: Zero. Good lord that is absolutely fucked. Swear to god, I feel like even the most ardent ACAB people do actually understand that police as a community service are still valuable but I’m right with them on the ACAB train because of how universally shitty cops and police departments are about things.

      • barneypiccolo@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        7
        ·
        7 days ago

        Lists of the most dangerous jobs put Police Officers somewhere in the high teens. Some lists don’t even have them in the top 20. People who think that a cop’s job is so dangerous, forget that they carry a gun, taser, and asp at all times, and have an addition arsenal in the trunk. Cops are safer than kids in public school.

        Ive had 2 jobs in the top 5, way more dangerous than any cop, and I’ve never gone around demanding respect because my job was so dangerous.

      • barneypiccolo@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        5
        ·
        7 days ago

        Cosmetology school takes a year, and then they have to get a license. Even Clown College takes 13 weeks.

      • HellsBelle@sh.itjust.worksOP
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        7 days ago

        Cops in Canada have far longer training and they still kill people indiscriminately.

        It’s not just the training … it’s also doing in-depth psych evals multiple times during training and banning ALL of the 3rd-party training bullshit.

  • barneypiccolo@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    23
    ·
    7 days ago

    Fucking cops are so incompetent that they plugged him nine times, and still didnt kill him. I’m picturing them crouching and cowering behind their cars, and just lifting up their gun over the hood and mag-dumping in the general direction with their eyes closed.

    Dickheads can’t even be incompetent correctly.

  • whoisearth@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    17
    ·
    edit-2
    7 days ago

    As the father of a 12 year old autistic boy this world scares me. I’m not going to be damning of the police, many of you have already done this. I will be damning of our society pushing these kids to the fringe at the benefit of no one. More often than not programs for autistic children involve other autistic children which is not what we need. We need neurotypical children having more sustained interactions with autistic children and neurotypical adults with more sustained interactions with autistic adults.

    I will argue (probably successfully) that 99% of neurotypical people that engage with autistic people is because they’re related to them or they’re paid to interact with them. That is a problem.

    We are not solving the problem.

    • Modern_medicine_isnt@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      7 days ago

      Mine is 11. He goes to school with the neurotypical kids. I suppose it helps in that for the most part he “knows” how he is supposed to act. But he doesn’t really apply any forward thinking to his actions. So it hasn’t shaped his behaviour much at all. We just hope that in 2 or 3 years, when some maturity hits, maybe he will have some base to work from. But we don’t know if he will ever develope that filter on his actions that everyone needs.

      • HellsBelle@sh.itjust.worksOP
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        7 days ago

        If neurotypical people would take a few minutes each day to think about those other than themselves, neurodiverse people might not have the problems we do in living in this world.

        • Modern_medicine_isnt@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          7 days ago

          I dunno. I don’t think it is that easy for them. The only frame of reference they have is themselves. They can’t comprehend the drastic difference between the typical and atipical minds. And at the same time, they are inundated with various forms of media telling them what they are supposed to value in a personality. Essentially they are indoctrinated against neurodiverse people like us. Those doing the indoctrinating are really really good at it. Most people just don’t stand a chance against that.

      • whoisearth@lemmy.ca
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        6 days ago

        So here in Ontario we have a thing called “community class” which my son is a part of. It’s basically a class where all the disabled kids are thrown. The thing is my son does not know “how to act” nor can he learn it My oldest is your traditional Aspergers which I think is what you are referring to. That is very much a fake it until you make it in that they will learn.

        Point being. Many autistic kids are very me “the other” and no amount of school will teach them. Those kids are fucked. They will never integrate. Neurotypicals will never get them.

        • Modern_medicine_isnt@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          6 days ago

          Yeah, mine is lvl 1 which used to be aspergers. He doesn’t fit with most of the autistic molds. He is extremely aware of other people’s emotions. But the part of his brain that would shape his behaviour based on what he is aware of is just busted most of the time. Kinda like it is overridden by even the slightest idea in his head. Anyway, for the others… all we can hope for is some medical advancement that can help them some day.

  • Modern_medicine_isnt@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    7
    ·
    7 days ago

    I do find it interesting that 911 was told the person looked drunk. And had it been tgat, the actions still would have fit. And they still would have shot him. And it still would have been wrong. Mandatory police training. Nationwide.

  • leadore@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    6
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    edit-2
    7 days ago

    When thinking of calling the police on someone, you have to first ask yourself, "is this a situation where the significant chance of death to the person versus the amount of danger they pose to others is really a risk worth taking? Because there are definitely cases where the answer is clearly Yes. We don’t want to let a victim get killed or raped or beaten by ignoring a threat, but we also don’t want to get someone killed when what they’re doing requires restraint, but not the death penalty.

    But oftentimes the best course isn’t clear. In a healthy society, we could call properly trained authorities worthy of being trusted to handle those situations, who would be trained on things like how to de-escalate, how to use only the amount of force actually necessary while ensuring people’s safety, and who have been psychologically evaluated to weed out those with personality traits that would make them unsuitable for such a role.

    But our police forces are not that–they are basically the exact opposite of that.

  • HellsBelle@sh.itjust.worksOP
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    147
    arrow-down
    3
    ·
    7 days ago

    “We understand the concern and emotion surrounding the officer-involved shooting that occurred,” he said, adding, “We are also aware of the video circulating online, which shows only one angle. The full picture requires careful review of all facts and evidence.”

    Yeah, whatever.

    As always, ACAB.

    • thedruid@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      31
      ·
      7 days ago

      There’s only one angle. These cowards shot a disabled child through a chain link fence

      Eos.

    • Prandom_returns@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      7 days ago

      They will 100% review ALL the facts and evidence (existent or otherwise) and commence an internal investigation.

    • abbadon420@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      45
      ·
      7 days ago

      “Itt shows only one angle” is such an asshole thing to say. Investigation is a good thing, but they ruin it by saying stupid shit.

      • chatokun@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        26
        ·
        7 days ago

        Also getting sick of seeing that obfuscating language: “office involved shooting” as if there was a shootout that involved officers and not officers being the only ones with guns and the only reason shooting ever happened.