A kid shoots at Philadelphia Police Officers, in a crime-ridden neighborhood, and winds up dead. Naturally the #woke^[1]From Wikipedia: Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from … Continue reading at The Philadelphia Inquirer want to make it police brutality!

Mystery deepens on whether 12-year-old boy was armed when police shot him in the back

The family of Thomas “TJ” Siderio prepares to bury the 12-year-old boy as investigators examine whether he tossed the gun before his was fatally shot by police.

by Barbara Laker, David Gambacorta, Craig R. McCoy, and Ryan W. Briggs | Friday, March 4, 2022

While the family of Thomas “TJ” Siderio prepares to bury the 12-year-old boy shot and killed by Philadelphia police, investigators are examining whether he had tossed a gun moments before a fatal bullet struck him in the back.

Notice that both the headline and the first sentence state that the dead delinquent was 12 years old, something the police officers almost certainly did not know during the incident — it was at night — and that he was shot in the back. You have to read further to learn that young Mr Siderio was armed and fleeing the police.

Two plainclothes officers chased TJ on Tuesday night after they heard gunfire and a rear window shattered in their unmarked car near 18th and Barbara Streets in South Philadelphia.

They fired toward TJ, who they said was holding a handgun and fled east on Barbara Street.

New details reveal that the officers fired four shots in total, according to police sources.

During the first two blasts, TJ was holding a gun. But the last two shots — one of which was fatal — are “concerning,” the sources said, because TJ may have tossed his weapon before he was hit.

In any normal story, the subject is referred to by his last name in second and subsequent mentions; but here the Inquirer writers refer to him by his nickname, a not-so-subtle attempt at making him a sympathetic character. The boy shot at the police!

“(B)ecause TJ may have tossed his weapon before he was hit,” huh? Note that the first sentence says “moments before a fatal bullet struck him in the back,” emphasis mine. It would seem that if he tossed his firearm, it was almost immediately prior to being struck, too quick for officers to have noticed it and taken it into account.

Four officers were sitting in an unmarked car when the episode began around 7:20 p.m. They were Edsaul Mendoza, Kwaku Sarpong, Robert Cucinelli, and Alexander Camacho, according to police records obtained by The Inquirer. They were staking out the area because a 17-year-old boy and 20-year-old man had been seen on social media brandishing weapons, police sources said.

The officers approached TJ and a 17-year-old, who were on bicycles, police said, because they believed one of them had a handgun. They turned on their flashing lights, then heard gunfire. Camacho was injured in both eyes by shards of glass, police records show.

Apparently the officers were right: young Mr Siderio did have a handgun. They illuminated, and then a bullet was fired at them, with Officer Camacho injured by a shattered window in the vehicle. Two of the officers then exited the vehicle and took off chasing Mr Siderio. A loaded 9mm semi-automatic handgun was recovered at the scene, as were five shell casings.

According to Police Department policy, an officer would not be justified in using deadly force solely if a suspect resisted arrest or attempted to escape. Other factors are supposed to be taken into consideration, such as whether a suspect was armed, or posed an immediate threat to an officer. Officers should not shoot at a fleeing suspect “who presents no immediate threat of death or serious bodily injury,” the policy states.

Mr Siderio was armed, and his willingness to fire at police officers shows that he was an immediate threat of death or serious bodily injury. To me, shooting at an armed suspect, who had fired first at police officers, fits well within the ‘other factors’ to be taken into consideration.

Naturally, the 17-year-old at the scene claimed that the police did not turn on their lights or identify themselves before shots were fired, but even if that were the case, Mr Siderio shot first. As for believing a 17-year-old delinquent over the police, nope, not going to do that.

In the last six months, there were 652 crimes reported in the South Philly area where TJ was shot and killed, according to city police statistics. The area — bounded by Snyder Avenue south to I-76, and Broad Street west to 25th Street — saw two homicides, 36 robberies, and 23 aggravated assaults in that time period.

So, the police were there because it’s a bad neighborhood.

You might be asking, “How did a 12-year-old have a semi-automatic 9MM handgun? Where were his parents?” Well, his father, Thomas J Siderio Sr., inmate number NS5455, is behind bars at the State Correctional Institute Coal Township, three years into a sentence with at least two more years to serve on gun charges stemming from a murder in 2017. He has prior convictions for resisting arrest, assault, and the attempted theft of a motorcycle.

How far from the tree did the apple fall?

KYW Channel 3, the CBS owned-and-operated station in Philadelphia spoke with the mother of the 17-year-old who was with Mr Siderio when the incident happened:

“He had no chance in life and now, he’s gone before he could even get a chance in life,” the mother of the 17-year-old boy said.

Actually, he did have a chance at life, and he used that chance at life to try to take the life of someone else, a police officer. Naturally, there’s plenty of sympathy for young Mr Siderio, but he had his chance at life, and squandered it.

I’m enough of an [insert slang term for the rectum here] here to ask the obvious question: what if, rather than shooting at the fleeing delinquent, officers had let him get away? Then there’d be another 12-year-old carrying a gun on the streets of the City of Brotherly Love. Had the officers not fired at Mr Siderio, we’d have been reading about him soon enough in the future, perhaps the next time when he killed an innocent victim.