http://news.yahoo.com/cleveland-release-video-boy-shot-officer-110012912.html

There wasn’t even enough time to say hello. He was 12 years old. I’m a nice white girl from a suburb in Illinois who was raised to respect cops and think rationally. I don’t hate cops. I don’t cry racism every time a black person commits a crime and is caught.

But if, as a cop, you are so terrified of the occupational hazards of working in an inner city neighborhood that you are going to SHOOT DEAD every person who points a gun at you, then wear a bullet proof vest wherever you go or work in a gated community or be a florist. This is truly one of the saddest things I’ve ever seen. And for those who might see this young black boy as a potential thug because, well, because he’s black?

Let me tell you what I see as the mother of three sons.

I see a little boy playing out what he witnesses in his backyard more often than should be the case in the life of any little boy.

I see a little boy who was born in an environment that I can’t imagine living in and raised how he is being raised, without his permission or control.

I see a little boy, for heaven’s sake, twirling the gun on his finger like a cowboy in an old western.

If you want to conjecture that he’s practicing for life as a drug dealing thug, that’s your prerogative.   Maybe that was his path.  Maybe he would have met a positive role model.  The point is, we will never know if that would have been his path and it wasn’t the cop’s right to make that prediction.

If little boys in the country can be given real guns to play with, why is it suddenly a crime-in-progress for a little black boy to be playing with a fake one?  Why is it that we didn’t used to have to put orange tips on toy guns to protect our little boys from scared or trigger happy cops?

The events of the past few months  have resulted  in not just crowds of black mothers who are weeping, it now includes crowds of weeping white mothers.  Now maybe something will be done?