Tamir Rice Might Be Alive Today If A 911 Dispatcher Had Shared A Crucial Detail With Police

[sheshe2]

Tamir Rice, a 12 year-old boy killed by police after officers mistook a toy gun he was carrying for a real weapon, might still be alive today if a 911 dispatcher hadn’t left out a key detail when she sent police to Rice’s location — the 911 caller who contacted the police about Rice said that Rice’s gun was “probably fake.”

snip

On the day that officers drove up to Rice, shot him dead, and refused to administer medical assistance, an unidentified caller alerted a dispatcher about a kid wielding a gun. However, the caller also noted that the weapon could have been a toy. “It’s probably a fake. But you know what? It’s scaring the shit out of me,” the person said.

When dispatcher Beth Mandl reported the call to officers, she omitted the comment about the gun possibly being fake. “[The caller] says he’s pulling a gun out of his pants,” she said after describing what Rice was wearing that day, according to a report by the Courier-Post. The report also notes that it is not yet clear whether this error was Mandl’s or whether “the person who took the original 911 call” failed to convey this detail to the dispatcher.


Although the detail may not have changed Rice’s fate, it does raise questions about why Mandl excluded the information. Northeast Ohio Media Group found that Mandl was fired from another dispatch position in 2008, after violating a concealed carry law. Additionally, the Department of Justice concluded that the city’s police officers “too often use unnecessary and unreasonable force in violation of the Constitution.”

Video here http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2015/01/15/3612156/911-dispatcher-left-out-caller-statement-that-tamir-rices-gun-could-be-fake/

[braddy]

1. The cop killed the kid, not a dispatcher telling him what kind of gun he might find at the call,

he should never have been on the force.

[randys1]

2. Yes, but the person who made the call is a little to blame as well, like the ass who got the guy in

Target killed.

White people seem to be very afraid of stuff

[braddy]

3. Your remark seems pretty racist itself, the caller called because of the inherent failings of

his race??

[randys1]

4. The caller didnt need to call in a kid playing with a toy gun

And it is IMPOSSIBLE to make a racist statement about white people...i.e. only white people can be racist in America, and I am white


And yes, if it had been a white kid, 99% chance the call never gets made

both in this case and Target

[braddy]

6. The cop was the problem, not the caller, bad policing killed the boy. The cop had already been

rejected by one police force.

[randys1]

8. So he shoots and kills a 12 yr old white kid in one and half seconds too, you ACTUALLY believe that?

[braddy]

12. Look into this cops history and why he was fired from another department, it was

related to his panic involving guns, even his own, he cried when trying to qualify.

The cop, and bad policing killed the kid, not the dispatcher, or the caller.

"Two years ago, when he was working for a police department in a Cleveland suburb, Tim Loehmann participated in firearms qualification training.

Loehmann struggled with the exercise, according to a memo penned Nov. 29, 2012, by Jim Polak, deputy chief of the Independence Police Department and obtained Wednesday by Northeast Ohio Media Group. He was “distracted” and “weepy,” Polak wrote, and did not seem “mentally prepared” for the task.

“He could not follow simple directions, could not communicate clear thoughts nor recollections, and his handgun performance was dismal,” Polak wrote.

The letter recommended that the department split with Loehmann, who later resigned and went on to graduate from the city of Cleveland’s police academy. A Cleveland police spokesman told the media group that officers didn’t look at the file before hiring Loehmann."

[Baitball Blogger]

5. It's a learned behavior.

It's surprising to see how responsive local government decisions and local police actions are based on the fears and concerns expressed by "the right" people.

[randys1]

7. The "right"people, kinda rhymes with "white people" LOL

Who are we kidding, if the kid had been white the call doesnt get made and if it does, the kid is alive today.

P E R I O D

[Baitball Blogger]

21. When you're right, you're right.

Can't disagree with your assessment.

[Politicalboi]

9. No, it was an incompetent cop

They should have done what they claim they did, give the kid a warning.

[Egnever]

10. How would that change anything?

You aren't seriously suggesting that cops should make life and death decisions based on what a caller thinks might or might not be a real weapon.

Hindsight is awesome but not reality.

[Bandit]

13. Yes I do indeed think cops should listen to people that report things such as this.

And yes if they did listen to the caller the kid would be alive today. So a life or death situation was bungled and a child is dead. Police need to be able to use common sense and rational thought. They can not just react without thought. Death is often the result of thoughtless behavior.

[Egnever]

14. Well you are certainly entitled to think that

So in a different situation if a caller says he knows a person is carying a loaded weapon and threatening people with it then when the cop shoots the kid with the be gun it would be justified because the caller said it was a loaded weapon.

You will have to excuse me if I consider that crazy.

[Bandit]

15. If a cop does not say one word to the person as happened in this case then it would be wrong

I doesn't matter if the gun is real or a play gun. the cops have to use some common sense and at least try and make a determination if the person is dangerous. That did not happen in this case. It may have if the cops knew the gun probably was a toy but who knows.

[Egnever]

16. So it has nothing whatsoever to do with what kind of weapon the caller thinks it is

Obviously the police should access the situation when they get on site no matter what is called in.

Any suggestions otherwise are ridiculous.

This cop is entirely to blame for his actions no matter what a caller did or did not say.

[Igel]

19. I'll butt in.

No, they shouldn't make life or death decisions based on such things.

I think that they do. They're primed with information about what to expect. Any information that meets their expectations is more readily processed, more easily accepted, and more likely to be judged truth without hard, slow thinking.

If you're told that a man (or a kid) has a gun, you're going to interpret that thing in his hand as a gun more quickly than the part of your brain that has to stop and think, "What is that thing? Oh, it's a cell phone."

Both sets of evaluations run at the same time. Both mental processes happen. But one is quick and gives a fast answer, allowing (or motivating) the person to act before the second one is even finished.

Slowing down thinking is a good thing. Except in truly life-and-death situations, in which it gets the cops killed. Nobody's motivated to take a job that's likely to orphan their kids, and if they did they'd still disprefer death in life-and-death situations if there's a way to survive. So what's easy, what's quick, what comes naturally matches larger motivations. And we're surprised?

[Retrograde]

11. Let's not try to absolve the police by pushing the blame on the dispatcher

or even on the caller. The police presumably are of at least normal intelligence and should be able to use it to assess a situation: they shouldn't assume it's the same as it was when they got the dispatch, or that the original call was 100% accurate. Instead, what we saw was a police car pull up to a park and shoot a person who was at the moment just sitting there.

[truedelphi]

17. Right on! n/t

[sheshe2]

18. If you have ever read a word I have posted here on the subject,

then you would know that I am not trying to absolve the cops.

[Retrograde]

23. I don't think you're trying to absolve them, but I have seen people do so on other sites

And I think the article you cite is leaning that way. There are dyed-in-the-wool cop apologists who think that Tamir's death is all his own fault: I left one site when people started posting that the boy would still be alive if he didn't look so big for his age, or if he hadn't "looked like an adult". Which is irrelevant: the person with the real gun, the cop, has the ultimate responsibility for what happened. The dispatcher may well have been incompetent at the job, but that doesn't absolve the people on the scene. I may be paranoid, but I sort of suspect a defense attorney trying to sew uncertainty and doubt.

[Igel]

20. Blame happens after understanding.

Understanding is always a good thing. It's not the same as absolution. It can contribute towards understanding mitigating circumstances and even towards empathy.

Human cognition is something we have a reasonable handle on. Most people have no idea how humans think--whether other humans or themselves. Most people are convinced that they're quite correct in how other people think.

The mismatch between perception and reality? That's a problem that few have any desire to notice and are usually invested in overlooking.

[uppityperson]

22. I doubt that. The cop who drove up right next to him imperiling the other who shot before they

even stopped, then ALL those who stood around and watched, even if they'd been told it might be fake, I doubt they'd have agreed different. Even AFTER they found out it was fake they just ignored him as he lay gut shot on the ground