Did they ever explain why the cops rolled up so close to this kid (and if that was proper procedure), especially if they were so concerned that he had a real gun?
Just seems like you're unnecessarily putting yourself in a position to make a split second life or death decision.
It was a screw up.
There's no chance in hell the prosecutor could have gotten a conviction here, and as he's said subsequently, it would have been unethical to charge any of the officers involved.
The biggest problem with the criminal charge is that you have to prove some level of intent on the part of the
individual who shot the kid, and it was a succession of errors by
multiple people that created that situation. You can't prosecute an individual cop unless his individual actions rose to the level of a criminal offense, and that just wasn't the case here.
I think the most significant and the most inexcusable error was by the dispatcher(s) who did not pass on to the responding officers that the report stated that it was a boy with a gun that was "probably fake". Had the cops been told that, everything may well have turned out differently. But they weren't, so instead they reasonably believed they were responding to someone threatening other people with a real gun -- a very dangerous situation. But that error by the dispatchers isn't a
crime, and you could not prosecute
them for the subsequent shooting.
The second error was when the officer driving the vehicle pulled up too closely. That's just an error -- it doesn't even make sense to do that because you could be putting yourself at greater risk. Unless, of course, the driver was really worried that something bad might happen if they didn't get in there quickly. In any case, a bad decision, but again, you can't charge a cop with murder or manslaughter just because he pulled up too closely.
The cop who actually took the shot wasn't responsible for either of those mistakes. It wasn't his fault that he wasn't told it was probably a kid with a fake gun, nor was it his fault that his partner put him in the bad position of being too close. So when he hopped out, observed someone who was 5'7" and 195 lbs at a close range pulling a gun out of his waistband despite being told to freeze, that's a reasonable shot for a cop to take.
Just because none of the individual cops could not be prosecuted criminally doesn't mean that what happened was okay, or that the department "got away" with killing the kid. They paid millions of dollars in a settlement, got about the worst publicity possible, and have every incentive in the world too try to make sure something like this doesn't happen again.
And just to be clear, the fact that the department erred collectively doesn't mean there weren't other mistakes as well that were not the responsibility of the cops. It is too bad that some of the folks protesting the police action aren't also talking about what civilians can do on their
end to minimize the risks of such mistakes happening again.