[DavidI]

For those of you condemning the police's action, I say shame on you. When dealing with an armed person, I am going to do whatever it takes to stay alive. I don't care if my best friend, most trusted cop partner, or the boy's father tells me the gun is fake. Until I see it and inspect it myself, it is real. Shootings take place in fractions of seconds with very little time to think. I have a wife and children who I am responsible for. What if everyone was wrong and the gun turned out to be real? Now you would have a dead cop who was just doing his job.

Just this week, one of the cops in my department got into a shooting. He was sent to a call of a person armed with an assault rifle. When he arrived, he found the guy. The bad guy was armed with a Tec9 automatic style gun. The bad guy charged at the cop while pointing the gun at him. The bad guy was shot several times. After all was said and done, it turns out that the gun was a replica that the bad guy had painted to make it look real. The cop was pissed that the bad guy had done this and forced him to shoot him.

In the case of this boy, although I feel sorry for his family, he modified the gun to look real and took on the cops. It sucks for everyone involved, but the cop did nothing wrong.