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.

  • melsaskca@lemmy.ca
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    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
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      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
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      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
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        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
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          6 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
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        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
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        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
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        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.