A RIGHTEOUS SHOOTING

By now most of you know that on Wednesday two Brownsville, Texas cops shot and killed 15-yer-old Jaime Gonzales inside a middle school after he pointed a .177-caliber pellet gun at them. Before they opened fire, the officers had shouted ‘numerous’ commands at the 8th-grader to drop the gun. The pellet gun looked very much like a Glock pistol, leading the officers to fear for their lives.

Police Chief Orlando Rodriguez confirmed to The Brownsville Herald that following the shooting, telephone calls were made overnight to the police department's dispatch center threatening the lives of police officers for the killing of Gonzales.

According to the Associated Press, the boy's father, Jaime Gonzalez Sr., called the shooting unjustified and said he had no idea where his son got the pellet gun. "Why was so much excess force used on a minor?" he asked. "Three shots. Why not one that would bring him down?"

"What happened was an injustice," Noralva Gonzalez, the boy’s mother, said angrily. "I know that my son wasn't perfect, but he was a great kid."

After she returned from viewing her boy’s body and taking cell phone pictures of his wounds, the mother sobbed, “I saw the wounds, in the chest, in the heart. I'm not crazy. He was hit in the head, from behind. He was a boy, like any boy. They didn't have the right to do that.”

Already convinced that the shooting was not necessary, the South Texas Civil Rights Project released a statement calling for Brownsville police to conduct an investigation in 30 days, hire an expert on the use of deadly force, institute “de-escalation policy and training” and involve parents from the Brownsville Independent School District in the investigation and new policies and training.

I am sure that in the days to come, many armchair detectives will sprout forth to criticize the 8th-grader’s shooting. The police do not have the luxury of sitting back and dissecting a situation bit by bit before making a life or death decision. In every police shooting there are the second and third guessers accusing the cops of using excessive force. But in most cases, and certainly in this one, whenever the police kill someone, it is a righteous shooting.

Whenever cops shoot at someone while they are in imminent fear of their lives, it is a natural reaction to fire a volley of rounds at that person, rather than only one or two shots. If someone looks like they’re about to shoot me, I’m going to keep popping caps at them until they’re down and out and until I’m dead certain the threat to my life is over and done with!

And the age of the person posing that threat is not relevant to a ‘shoot, don’t shoot’ decision. The perceived threat determines that decision. To the two Brownsville cops, 15-year-old Jaime Gonzales posed an imminent threat to their lives. This was a righteous shooting, no doubt about it!