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.

  • thedirtyknapkin@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    8
    ·
    6 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
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      5 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.