The video shows Officer Ryan Westlake speaking to Tavion Koonce-Williams through his car window and seconds later firing his weapon toward the teen, whose arms were raised.
“Tavion is heard multiple times saying: ‘It’s a fake … I just wanted to be safe,’” Okolo said in a statement Monday, adding that “at no point was that toy gun pointed at anyone’s home, at any individual, and certainly not any member of the Akron Police Department.
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In the video, Westlake is seen at 7:11 p.m. in his patrol vehicle slowing down upon seeing Tavion walking on a block.
“Hey, where are you coming from, can I see your hands real quick?” Westlake asks through the open window as he begins to get out of the vehicle.
Westlake then reaches toward his department-issued weapon and points it at Tavion, and a shot is fired seconds later.
Look, you can look through my post history if you don’t believe me, I’m no simp for cops or authoritarians, but this is kind of a bullshitty line of reasoning. Maybe it’s because I was raised around guns and was taught gun safety, or I have a friend who was a deputy (he quit under Trump for ethical and moral reasons), but what you’re proposing isn’t all that simple. It’s like asking someone to discern if a dollar bill is a counterfeit by showing it to them from out of arm’s reach for five seconds without warning them first; sure, some dollar bills, like the one my kid made, will very clearly be fake, but even a half decent fake would pass the sniff test under those conditions. For some folks, a subset of monopoly money might pass under those conditions. There’s a much greater personal risk involved in assuming a gun is fake than assuming it’s real; after all, enough people have been shot by “fake”, “unloaded” guns purely by accident.
A personal story: I’m a paramedic. Once we got called to someone having altered mental status. When we get there, it’s an older guy who’s clearly acutely confused; he came out to the ambulance, pointed at a component on our door, and asked if it was a camera (it very clearly was not) and then went inside without waiting for an answer. He was agitated, talking nonsensically, confused, and not following commands. As I’m trying to calm him down enough to get him to come with us, he wanders into the kitchen, and I follow. He stands next to what is very clearly the grip of a pistol sticking out from under some paper; only the barrel and slide are hidden. I wedged myself in between him and the pistol and blocked his access to it. My partner later came back to check and found it was an airsoft pistol. Mind you, I’ve played airsoft, I’ve used airsoft pistols, but for all I could tell in the moment, it was a real gun. Now, do you think it would have been smarter for me to stop and closely examine the pistol first? Doesn’t it make more sense to assume the more dangerous possibility until it’s ruled out?
My point is that the cop (who shouldn’t even be on the force anyway with his history) didn’t do any investigation, didn’t see him brandishing, didn’t even talk to the kid before he assumed he was a threat.
If we have a right to carry guns in this country (which SCOTUS says we do, right or wrong), then shooting someone for suspected possession of a gun is using violence against a person who is exercising their rights. However, for some reason I just can’t put my finger on, conservatives rush to defend the police in cases like this.
I understand your point, and it’s well made, but I was saying something different in my post.
Hmmm… Alright. That’s not what I got out of it, sorry for the miscommunication. Yeah, cops harassing, arresting, and murdering people for exercising their constitutional rights is whack.
You do have a point. What would happen if someone with a real gun shot up a school, and during the investigation it showed the killer interacting with a security guard at the front of the building, who would later say, “they said it was fake so I let them through”
It’s good to be skeptical but I’ll never understand being skeptical in service of bootlicking. Why are you doing mental gymnastics to absolve this scumbag cop of any responsibility? You’re going out of your way to defend a piece of shit cop while simultaneously trying to find a reason to justify shooting this kid.
Maybe you need to ask yourself why you’re doing that.
I think what they’re trying to get at is that if you see a gun, you assume it’s real until proven otherwise.
Should police be shooting people just for having a gun in a country where we have a legal right to bear arms? No, of course not. But saying that the cop should have immediately known it was fake is a BS argument. They have no way to know that and when in doubt, it is always a real loaded firearm. Firearm safety 101 is literally to always assume every gun is loaded and live until proven otherwise.
If you’re going to argue at least use reasonable arguments that don’t make all of us in the ACAB crowd look dumb. Like the fact that this cop was known to have a drinking problem and a history of domestic violence which should have disqualified him from being a cop. Plus police shouldn’t be shooting people for meerly posessing a weapon in a country where that is a legally protected right. Plus the kid was nowhere near the gun when the cop shot him.
What unreasonable arguments are you referring to? I didn’t make any arguments, I just asserted that the cop is a scumbag (for reasons you highlight) and said that the other user should not be bending over backwards to defend the cop.
Like you say, he acted stupidly and was not justified in firing on the kid. Trying to put blame on the kid is an attempt to defend the cop. We would not be tolerant of the same user pointing to a woman’s outfit in a thread about rape.
Apologies for assuming you were a conservative, I’ve seen you around and you do seem to have mostly reasonable takes; but defending cops shooting a kid for having a toy is an objectively bad one.
Agreed that the only real solution is fewer guns though.
I’m not defending the cop. He could have parked down the street and got in the megaphone asking for the guy to empty his pockets and get on his knees. Dude totally fucked up by rolling up to him. Obviously if they thought he had a gun, getting close is a bad idea.
Clearly the cop needs a little more training. But come on, walking down the street brandishing a “gun” in 2024? Not a super smart move.
Kids don’t have the same risk evaluation skills as adults. You’re blaming the victim of a shooting because they don’t have the life experience that you do.
It’s like saying “walking downtown in a skirt that short? Not a super smart move.” It’s not explicitly blaming a sexual assault victim for their attack, but you’re implying that they’re at least a little responsible.
That fucking exculpatory passive voice again. I am sick and tired of the media’s pro-authoritarian editorializing!
How did anyone know he had a (fake) gun if he wasn’t walking around with it in his hand?
How did the cop think he had a real gun when he didn’t?
Look, you can look through my post history if you don’t believe me, I’m no simp for cops or authoritarians, but this is kind of a bullshitty line of reasoning. Maybe it’s because I was raised around guns and was taught gun safety, or I have a friend who was a deputy (he quit under Trump for ethical and moral reasons), but what you’re proposing isn’t all that simple. It’s like asking someone to discern if a dollar bill is a counterfeit by showing it to them from out of arm’s reach for five seconds without warning them first; sure, some dollar bills, like the one my kid made, will very clearly be fake, but even a half decent fake would pass the sniff test under those conditions. For some folks, a subset of monopoly money might pass under those conditions. There’s a much greater personal risk involved in assuming a gun is fake than assuming it’s real; after all, enough people have been shot by “fake”, “unloaded” guns purely by accident.
A personal story: I’m a paramedic. Once we got called to someone having altered mental status. When we get there, it’s an older guy who’s clearly acutely confused; he came out to the ambulance, pointed at a component on our door, and asked if it was a camera (it very clearly was not) and then went inside without waiting for an answer. He was agitated, talking nonsensically, confused, and not following commands. As I’m trying to calm him down enough to get him to come with us, he wanders into the kitchen, and I follow. He stands next to what is very clearly the grip of a pistol sticking out from under some paper; only the barrel and slide are hidden. I wedged myself in between him and the pistol and blocked his access to it. My partner later came back to check and found it was an airsoft pistol. Mind you, I’ve played airsoft, I’ve used airsoft pistols, but for all I could tell in the moment, it was a real gun. Now, do you think it would have been smarter for me to stop and closely examine the pistol first? Doesn’t it make more sense to assume the more dangerous possibility until it’s ruled out?
My point is that the cop (who shouldn’t even be on the force anyway with his history) didn’t do any investigation, didn’t see him brandishing, didn’t even talk to the kid before he assumed he was a threat.
If we have a right to carry guns in this country (which SCOTUS says we do, right or wrong), then shooting someone for suspected possession of a gun is using violence against a person who is exercising their rights. However, for some reason I just can’t put my finger on, conservatives rush to defend the police in cases like this.
I understand your point, and it’s well made, but I was saying something different in my post.
Hmmm… Alright. That’s not what I got out of it, sorry for the miscommunication. Yeah, cops harassing, arresting, and murdering people for exercising their constitutional rights is whack.
You do have a point. What would happen if someone with a real gun shot up a school, and during the investigation it showed the killer interacting with a security guard at the front of the building, who would later say, “they said it was fake so I let them through”
It’s good to be skeptical but I’ll never understand being skeptical in service of bootlicking. Why are you doing mental gymnastics to absolve this scumbag cop of any responsibility? You’re going out of your way to defend a piece of shit cop while simultaneously trying to find a reason to justify shooting this kid.
Maybe you need to ask yourself why you’re doing that.
I think what they’re trying to get at is that if you see a gun, you assume it’s real until proven otherwise.
Should police be shooting people just for having a gun in a country where we have a legal right to bear arms? No, of course not. But saying that the cop should have immediately known it was fake is a BS argument. They have no way to know that and when in doubt, it is always a real loaded firearm. Firearm safety 101 is literally to always assume every gun is loaded and live until proven otherwise.
If you’re going to argue at least use reasonable arguments that don’t make all of us in the ACAB crowd look dumb. Like the fact that this cop was known to have a drinking problem and a history of domestic violence which should have disqualified him from being a cop. Plus police shouldn’t be shooting people for meerly posessing a weapon in a country where that is a legally protected right. Plus the kid was nowhere near the gun when the cop shot him.
What unreasonable arguments are you referring to? I didn’t make any arguments, I just asserted that the cop is a scumbag (for reasons you highlight) and said that the other user should not be bending over backwards to defend the cop.
Like you say, he acted stupidly and was not justified in firing on the kid. Trying to put blame on the kid is an attempt to defend the cop. We would not be tolerant of the same user pointing to a woman’s outfit in a thread about rape.
The person you were responding to was responding to this comment.
I didn’t realize you weren’t the one who posted that comment so that’s my bad.
I’m not actually trying to defend the cop or the teenager. I’m certainly not “going out of my way.”
Cops shouldn’t have guns.
What school allows even fake guns in?
The lengths conservatives will go to to excuse police shooting a black kid who wasn’t breaking any law is astonishing.
Do we let cops just shoot anyone they suspect was brandishing?
Im not a conservative.
Cops shouldn’t even have guns. Guns shouldn’t even exist.
Sure, but they do have guns and guns do exist.
Apologies for assuming you were a conservative, I’ve seen you around and you do seem to have mostly reasonable takes; but defending cops shooting a kid for having a toy is an objectively bad one.
Agreed that the only real solution is fewer guns though.
I’m not defending the cop. He could have parked down the street and got in the megaphone asking for the guy to empty his pockets and get on his knees. Dude totally fucked up by rolling up to him. Obviously if they thought he had a gun, getting close is a bad idea.
Clearly the cop needs a little more training. But come on, walking down the street brandishing a “gun” in 2024? Not a super smart move.
Kids don’t have the same risk evaluation skills as adults. You’re blaming the victim of a shooting because they don’t have the life experience that you do.
It’s like saying “walking downtown in a skirt that short? Not a super smart move.” It’s not explicitly blaming a sexual assault victim for their attack, but you’re implying that they’re at least a little responsible.
Is your suggestion that the security guard immediately kill this person?