John from the office u are really detached from reality my friend the young man was 100 % wrong for having weed and for running from the cops but the truth of the matter is they had no justifiable reason to pull out their guns in his home and then kill him in his home u have the young man cornered in his bathroom use your batons tasers mase and all the other weapons at ur disposal to detain for resisting arrest but to say you have no sympathy and that he was a criminal is just insensitive and disrespectful to all the people that knew and loved this young man think of the everlasting impact this will have on his 6 year old brother...But I mean according to u he would have learned a very valuable lesson having a bag of weed is grounds for getting shot and killed in your home by the same people who are supposed to be protecting your community His "Bad" parents don't need to teach him that lesson now huh?

Looks like we're reaping the results of all those testosterone addled boys who joined the force post 9-11 - all hyped up to get them some bad-guys.

The first mistake that cop made was running after anyone into a possible ambush...this cop should be fired for that alone...being a bad tactical cop.

This is an outrage. Does anyone on this board really think that an unarmed white kid smoking some dope and running into his house to escape being arrested would be followed into the home by cops who would shoot him dead in front of his grandmother? Bloomberg and Kelly need to remove this officer from the force. He just murdered an innocent teenager. (And he just cost innocent taxpayers another multi-million dollar payout in a rightful civil suit.)

Sounds like A Racist Matter At HAND

Read the facts, he was a drug dealer, not some kid on his way to school, getting high. I do blame the parents, raising criminals.

Blame the parents? So, if your child tries pot, you deserve to lose that child to death because you were so horrible?

The response from the police needs to be proportional. If someone is speeding, they deserve to get a ticket. The cop does not have the right to rip them out of the car, force them to the ground and cuff them the way they would someone who committed a violent crime.

This kid smoked pot! He was not a threat to anyone, and he was shot by the police. Not one person is safer as a result. If anything, I am far more scared! Is this what we allow in our society? Have we become a police state where you follow the rules or we shoot you?

How about parenting you children where they are not running wild in the street, getting into trouble. The problem is not the police, it is the parents of these "children" who don't do their jobs. Now the city will be sued by the sad parents for their own failure to raise a good citizen, instead of a criminal defendant. Sorry, no sympathy.

I know, I know, blame the system, the police, the white man, Etc....

Bobo,
I do not understand your logic. The shoplifter in your story did not do anything violent until you tackled him. He was running away. There was no reason to think any harm would have come to you had you not stopped him.

The same applies here. The kid was running away. There was no threat to the cop or the community. He was not a violent criminal and there was no reason to think that letting him go would result in any violence.

There needs to be some kind of proportional response. It is not ok for a store clerk to bash a guy's head against the sidewalk for shoplifting and it is not ok for a cop to shoot a kid for having pot. If a weapon-or even the suspicion of a weapon-were involved, that would be different. The 2 in these stories were running away. No one was going to get hurt.

I used to think that police were really agressive -- until I worked as a store clerk and confronted a shoplifter. Before I did so I locked the front door -- which had a full pane of glass in the door. The shoplifter was in the back of the store and I decided to walk towards him approaching him from the aisle next to where he pocketing merchandise. I told him, "You have a choice take the items out of your pockets and leave or I'll call the police." He responded by declaring, "I'm not going back to jail!" He then took off running down the aisle with me in pursuit. He reached the front door and discovering it was locked backed up almost knocking me down then proceeded to run towards the door. As I began to wonder what he thought he was going to accomplish the shoplifter crashed through the full pane of glass (which was 1/4 in thick) and proceeded to run down the street. I ran after him and tackled him by wrapping my arms around his legs. He kicked himself free and began to get up. At this point a clerk from the store next to the store where I worked came to my aid. He pushed the shoplifter down and firmly stated, "stay down!" The shoplifter began to get up so the clerk pushed him down and bounced the shoplifter's head on the pavement several times -- like a basketball! Still the shoplifter attempted to get up so the clerk bounced his head on the pavement again. Finally, the shoplifter decided he was going to comply.

Now, someone might read this and think, "What's all the fuss about - let the shoplifter take what he, or she, wants." With that kind of attitude the store shelves would literally be empty.

More to the point: the police literally do not know what a person is capable of -- or what they may or may not have on their person. So, when a police officer says, "Stop" and a person runs the police have every right to use force.

Should he have been smoking pot? No. Should he have run? No.

Should the punishment for either of these be death? Of course not! This was not a dangerous person who may have hurt or killed someone if not stopped! This was a scared kid who had some weed. He was not a danger to anyone.

Do we want to live in a country where cops shoot first and ask questions later? Where reasonable force for a non violent criminal involves shooing them in the chest?

Unless new details come out that it did not play out as described here-the cop should be tried for murder.

@Jewels

They do have alternative means of subduing suspects. They're called pepper spray and tasers. Even the officer's night stick would have likely done the job.

Wow..that's really sad I wish they had other way's of taken these bad people down reater than to use deadly force. The police also have to protect themself's. But why run from the police??? That just make's it worse.

Legalize it already. Either that, or have these hyper-aggressive cops run like that into the Soho bathrooms and such where all the Wall St. professionals snort their cocaine.

We are assaulting ourselves, sorry no sympathy here.

This assault on young people, youth of color, young men of color, in poor neighborhoods has got to stop.

Another example of the great benefit to black and latino youths of pot smoking. Let hope for more "empowerment"! and lets work really hard to make the job of the police harder, god forebid we dont get all the benefits.

wow he died for some weed literally......