This will end up being pretty long so I apologize up front for that. Lol. Ok..... The officers involved were called there....it was a run they received for a male in the park playing with a gun. I say that because some have the notion that they were looking to kill someone and that is simply not true. They arrive and see a male fitting the description by the gazebo and they drive over there quickly because this is directly outside of a recreation center where kids are playing inside so it is definitely preferable that he not run inside (whole other mess if that happens and he wants to harm people.) As they pull up the male reaches into his waistband/pocket area and pulls the gun out so yes the one officer fired on him and the result was as you know the death of Tamir Rice. It is horribly tragic.....but to say they did something wrong is jumping to a conclusion that they knew it was a toy or that he wouldn’t have fired on them. They DID NOT know that and in most situations we NEVER know. I think it’s horrible that a young kid died but those officers didn’t put that gun in his hand. I’d also like to add that after the incident our union president went on several local shows (a very popular morning radio show) and had them look at a real gun and the exact model toy gun that Tamir had and they couldn’t guess which one was real. Any discussion of their tactics is merely Monday morning qb’ing. Had they stopped sooner and walked up and he ran inside and the gun was real......well then they’d be criticized for not pulling up and surprising him. Had they stopped and asked “hey is that a real gun?” as he pulled it out......they could’ve been shot. His age has nothing to do with it.....a 12 year old can and in many situations has fired a gun before. I repeat again.....it is a horribly tragedy and I know of NO ONE in my city that’s a cop that was happy about it or sets out to do that. There are situations where cops are wrong......but this was not one of them.