Sweden: Disabled man with toy gun killed by police

this whole event was a disgrace

let's hope these police are prosecuted for manslaughter

Disgusting

Wow and that in Sweden? RIP young man :(

A friend to the family says that he could not speak or use regular sign language, since he had both autism och downs syndrome, and that it might have been his own signs that he used that could have seemed threatening to the police. But anyone should clearly have been able to see that he had downs syndrome, and how they had to shoot to kill is beyond me. And he was shot by several police officers, just not one.

Doubt that any kind of actual punishment will be dealt to the polices involved. Sweden aren't really better at that, then any other country.

Damn that just so sad :(

So fucking tragic.

For FUCK'S sake don't tell me that Swedish police is also becoming emboldened by paranoia now. Why in the world would they shoot to kill? Fucking furious right now.

So, this has really upset me and I don't know why.

Fucking horrible. The poor guy couldn't even speak, the only word in his vocabulary was 'mum'. Heartbreaking.
Those officers are murderers and should be treated as such.

It is really unfortunate that his parents gave him a toy gun. The reason we have had an increase in fatal shootings from the police is that there has been a lot of armed violence against the police.
They might have done the right thing, not easy to tell plastic from the real thing if it is dark and you are under stress. They most likely received a call from someone who felt threatened.

Really sad event, plenty of lives probably got destroyed in it

TyrantGuardian said:

For FUCK'S sake don't tell me that Swedish police is also becoming emboldened by paranoia now. Why in the world would they shoot to kill? Fucking furious right now.

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Devils advocate but if the gun looked realistic and he was pointing it at them or other people it can easily come down to a situation where an accident can happen.

It's really impossible to say without more info what happened. I have fairly high confidence that swedish police don't easily draw their guns let alone fire one. And considering this was multiple police doing the shooting it lessens the possibility of it being just some sole maniac.

Sad situation all round. I expect it won't be taken lightly due to the rarity of this type of thing in these parts.

HaNotsri said:

It is really unfortunate that his parents gave him a toy gun. The reason we have had an increase in fatal shootings from the police is that there has been a lot of armed violence against the police.
They might have done the right thing, not easy to tell plastic from the real thing if it is dark and you are under stress. They most likely received a call from someone who felt threatened.

Really sad event, plenty of lives probably got destroyed in it

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Fuck this shit. There is no justification for this whatsoever. As far as I'm concerned, unless a civilian is being threatened the police should NEVER shoot to kill and be prepared to give their lives over it here in Sweden. Call me extreme, but that's how I feel about it.

Napalm_Frank said:

Devils advocate but if the gun looked realistic and he was pointing it at them or other people it can easily come down to a situation where an accident can happen.

It's really impossible to say without more info what happened. I have fairly high confidence that swedish police don't easily draw their guns let alone fire one. And considering this was multiple police doing the shooting it lessens the possibility of it being just some sole maniac.

Sad situation all round. I expect it won't be taken lightly due to the rarity of this type of thing in these parts.

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It was a miniature toy rifle for kids completely made out of plastic...

"Accidents" shouldn't even be able to happen toward civilians in these types of situations. The police should be attempting to fire disabling shots AT WORST in 100% of situations unless other civilians are at risk of harm, which presumably wasn't the case here. The only way I can accept this as anything but a complete failure of our police force is if he was literally aiming at other people. Unlikely considering the time of day.

Edit: Cue fucking nazis saying "he had it coming" and trying to spread misinformation about him having an actual gun that he apparently imported from Afghanistan. I'm fucking done. If SD get a majority in this election I'm fucking permanently going out and protesting in the street and physically blocking any of them from accessing any public buildings.

TyrantGuardian said:

Fuck this shit. There is no justification for this whatsoever. As far as I'm concerned, unless a civilian is being threatened the police should NEVER shoot to kill and be prepared to give their lives over it here in Sweden. Call me extreme, but that's how I feel about it.

It was a miniature toy rifle completely made out of plastic...

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The information they got was that there was an armed man in an area where there have been previous incidents and reports of people with firearms.
What if the police get taken out and the assailant goes on to kill civilians?
It probably went really fast.

The fact that this wasn't the United States gives me pause. I can't crucify the Swedish police without more details, because I've seen some very realistic toy guns. Are body cameras a thing over there it do they not typically need them?

Yeah, I read about this last night, it's pretty damn disgusting.

HaNotsri said:

The information they got was that there was an armed man in an area where there have been previous incidents and reports of people with firearms.
What if the police get taken out and the assailant goes on to kill civilians?
It probably went really fast.

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Again, I'm extreme and don't expect anyone to agree with me here but I think that the police here in Sweden should be prepared to accept that scenario and still prioritize non-lethal fire. Also Vasastan isn't a fucking "area with previous incidents", it's literally downtown in a commercial district in one of the most peaceful capitols in the world.

Minarik said:

The fact that this wasn't the United States gives me pause. I can't crucify the Swedish police without more details, because I've seen some very realistic toy guns. Are body cameras a thing over there it do they not typically need them?

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It wasn't realistic according to his father. It was literally a toy rifle for 5 year olds.

Picture of the victim btw (linked from a public Aftonbladet article):


RIP. What a complete fucking shameful disgrace by our police.

I'm actually lost for words, I can't really understand how the fuck this could happen. The Swedish police isn't really the ones to shoot someone without reason, but in this case I'm stunned. I can't imagine what the hell happened.

Luckily there is a investigation on going, if the investigation finds any wrong doing I'm hoping they'll get locked up.

This is Eric, by the way. This was him. Absolutely horrendous that he was shot. I hope that unlike in the US, this will have severe consequences for any cop involved.

EDIT: "Police had been called after Eric reportedly showed the small toy gun to neighbours, who contacted authorities believing it was real."
If this toy gun really was looking as fake as people say (I sadly can't find an image), then I hope these people lose immense amounts of sleep over this. They should feel guilty as fuck and while they didn't commit a crime, I hope they are people with empathy. That'd be the punishment I want for them.

I hope the police is percecuted. But his handlers should be percecuted as well letting a person with the mental age of 3 wander the streets at 4 in the morning with a toy gun,

TyrantGuardian said:

Again, I'm extreme and don't expect anyone to agree with me here but I think that the police here in Sweden should be prepared to accept that scenario and still prioritize non-lethal fire. Also Vasastan isn't a fucking "area with previous incidents", it's literally downtown in a commercial district in one of the most peaceful capitols in the world.



It wasn't realistic according to his father. It was literally a toy rifle for 5 year olds.

Picture of the victim btw (linked from a public Aftonbladet article):

RIP. What a complete fucking shameful disgrace by our police.

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Fucking hell. This upsets me greatly. I agree with one of the other posters, the police should be prosecuted for manslaughter.
I mean, you can instantly spot that the guy was disabled and apparently it wasn't even a realistic firearm. I don't know anything about the area, but I can hardly imagine that it's a 'violent' one (which seems to be confirmed by others).

At worst the police could have shown some restraint by exercising non-lethal force but apparently multiple officers opened fire on the poor guy? I can't fathom this at all.

Fuck this shit, I need a break for a few hours. Literally fuming right now. As if disabled folks in Swedish society aren't getting further and further fucked by declining welfare benefits already, now this type of shit happens and you immediately have people desperately trying to rationalize and justify this for the sake of being rational and neutral. What the fuck is wrong with people? Next time someone questions my non-apologetic radical stance on human rights issues, look no further. Literally ashamed of the human race over shit like this.

Karasseram said:

I hope the police is percecuted. But his handlers should be percecuted as well letting a person with the mental age of 3 wander the streets at 4 in the morning with a toy gun,

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"Torell's family reported him missing after he ran away from home, something he had been known to do before."
He may have a mental age of 3, but he's obviously much more physically capable. Do you think they should have put a chain on him? This is not their fault.

TyrantGuardian said:

For FUCK'S sake don't tell me that Swedish police is also becoming emboldened by paranoia now. Why in the world would they shoot to kill? Fucking furious right now.

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It happened once. There is no reason to believe Sweden will turn into USA.

TyrantGuardian said:

attempting to fire disabling shots AT WORST in 100% of situations

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Police don't fire "disabling shots" for a few reasons.

First, guns are for killing. They kill people. If you are going to shoot a gun at someone, you should only do it with the understanding that a likely outcome is someone will die. There are non-lethal methods of stopping someone, and if you do not fear for your life, that is what you should use.

Second, people are not action movie stars who can shoot a gun out of someone's hand, or perfectly place a bullet in the part of the leg where somebody will be subdued but fully recover. People miss the center part of non-moving targets in low pressure target ranges. Reality is that if you shoot at something other than the biggest part of a moving target when you are already at peak stress levels, you will most likely miss, possibly hitting by-standers.

TyrantGuardian said:

Fuck this shit. There is no justification for this whatsoever. As far as I'm concerned, unless a civilian is being threatened the police should NEVER shoot to kill and be prepared to give their lives over it here in Sweden. Call me extreme, but that's how I feel about it.



It was a miniature toy rifle for kids completely made out of plastic...

"Accidents" shouldn't even be able to happen toward civilians in these types of situations. The police should be attempting to fire disabling shots AT WORST in 100% of situations unless other civilians are at risk of harm, which presumably wasn't the case here. The only way I can accept this as anything but a complete failure of our police force is if he was literally aiming at other people. Unlikely considering the time of day.

Edit: Cue fucking nazis saying "he had it coming" and trying to spread misinformation about him having an actual gun that he apparently imported from Afghanistan. I'm fucking done. If SD get a majority in this election I'm fucking permanently going out and protesting in the street and physically blocking any of them from accessing any public buildings.

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Indeed. That is how I feel about this type of thing as well. That is, bar extenuating circumstances (such as, as you brought up, civilians actively being threatened or some other such extremely active perceived danger), never open fire unless fired upon first. Focus should be on deescalation, always, always, always, until it becomes clear that that it is impossible/to dangerous to continue, and situations such as this are precisely why, because it's just too easy to be mistaken about these type of things. Don't fire unless fired upon first (again, barring extreme circumstances where it's very clear and apparent the situation is active, hostile and dangerous regardless) really should be the standard to avoid "accidents" such as this happening in the first place as much as possible.

Like you said, I don't care if that's considered "extreme" or whatever, that's just how I feel regardless because that should be the entire point of police to me: willing to put their lives on the line for the sake of others and being willing to put themselves in potentially dangerous and lethal situations to minimize the chance of civilian deaths as much as possible. When it's police themselves that are the ones killing civilians, something has failed and needs to be revised, because that just shouldn't be happening and kinda just defeats the point of having them if it's the police themselves that become the real threat. So yeah, that being the case, I don't care if that's considered extreme, that's how I feel, and barring some kind of extenuating circumstances where it's 100% crystal clear what's going on for sure, don't fire unless fired upon first should be the standard in these kinda situations.

A god damn travesty, it should be treated with utmost seriousness cause this shit shouldn't be acceptable here. It shouldn't have happened and it never should have been considered to have happened.

TyrantGuardian said:

Edit: Cue fucking nazis saying "he had it coming" and trying to spread misinformation about him having an actual gun that he apparently imported from Afghanistan. I'm fucking done. If SD get a majority in this election I'm fucking permanently going out and protesting in the street and physically blocking any of them from accessing any public buildings.

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Is this shit true? The fucking fuck? Any links?

TyrantGuardian said:

Again, I'm extreme and don't expect anyone to agree with me here but I think that the police here in Sweden should be prepared to accept that scenario and still prioritize non-lethal fire. Also Vasastan isn't a fucking "area with previous incidents", it's literally downtown in a commercial district in one of the most peaceful capitols in the world.

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What? There have been numerous incidents in Vasastan lately, brutal robbieries at gun point where the victims have been beat down with the gun. Armed robberies of stores. Bomb squad and special forces has been deployed as well (carbomb, hostage situation).
I've been living here for years and it's not a good situation right now. It's understandable that people panic.

It's pretty much the worst possible place to wave a toy gun around except for airport/city center.

As outrageous this sounds, I'm going to wait until I can see the toy gun. I truly believe that even with someone carrying a gun, the police should resort to violence only if others are at threat and even then as a last resort. That said in the UK all toy guns have to be colorful to show they are fake. It's been that way since the last 90s because police did shoot kids with what would turn out to be fake guns. On the other end there were criminals who disguised their guns to look like toys. If there is more context I'll change my mind, but I think its best in this case to wait for more.

This is so horrible. I hope the bastards that murdered him never sleep peacefully again.

KarneeKarnay said:

As outrageous this sounds, I'm going to wait until I can see the toy gun. I truly believe that even with someone carrying a gun, the police should resort to violence only if others are at threat and even then as a last resort. That said in the UK all toy guns have to be colorful to show they are fake. It's been that way since the last 90s because police did shoot kids with what would turn out to be fake guns. On the other end there were criminals who disguised their guns to look like toys. If there is more context I'll change my mind, but I think its best in this case to wait for more.

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I mean, feel free to wait, but looking at the victim and at the fact that he obviously could not have posed a threat, I feel like you're being too careful.

Horrible. RIP Eric.

Personally I feel like we need more info about the situation before I make too much judgement on the cops. We do have a fair amount of gun violence here nowadays, so it's understandable if they feared for their lives.

And I'm no gun expert, but isn't "shoot the leg" and "shoots to disable" really unrealistic in a (possible) life-or-death-situation with an armed perosn. Like that's not how things work, right?

And why do we even have toy guns that look even remotely realistic?

What a horrible story.

TyrantGuardian said:

As far as I'm concerned, unless a civilian is being threatened the police should NEVER shoot to kill and be prepared to give their lives over it here in Sweden. Call me extreme, but that's how I feel about it.

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I totally agree. And I'm not even Swedish ;P This is how it should be in any civilised country.

RIP Eric. Sadly I don't expect any of the cops to face any consequences over this. Fucking cops have each others' backs at all times. Especially in times like these.

Also, trust SD and the other fascist scum to spin this into something supporting their moronic view of the world. Absolute scum that actively make the world a worse place for simply being in it.

I'm sorry but if police is actually shoot at with the intent to kill them they should be allowed to fire back. In what world do you exist where its ok for one human to try to kill another human and that other human is not allowed to fire back in self defense? It ludicrous to say the least.

Westbahnhof said:

I mean, feel free to wait, but looking at the victim and at the fact that he obviously could not have posed a threat, I feel like you're being too careful.

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Unless I missed it in the article they don't say anything about the situation. The guys was obviously downs from the photo, but if he'd been wearing anything that obscured his face, you'd never could have guessed it. Even then so much of this depends on the situation. If you were asked to judge the fate of the officers involved and you weren't given any context beyond what was in the article, do you think you could make a decision based off of that info?

Karasseram said:

I'm sorry but if police is actually shoot at with the intent to kill them they should be allowed to fire back. In what world do you exist where its ok for one human to try to kill another human and that other human is not allowed to fire back in self defense? It ludicrous to say the least.

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You didn't read a single word of what happened?

Good that they're launching an investigation. The situation is incredibly sad, but I'd find it premature on my part to place any judgement at this point.

KarneeKarnay said:

Unless I missed it in the article they don't say anything about the situation. The guys was obviously downs from the photo, but if he'd been wearing anything that obscured his face, you'd never could have guessed it. Even then so much of this depends on the situation. If you were asked to judge the fate of the officers involved and you weren't given any context beyond what was in the article, do you think you could make a decision based off of that info?

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The guy with the mind of a little child ran away from home in the middle of summer, not sure why you'd assume his face was covered.

I was speaking generally. And I'm Norwegian so I've read all about it. And I'm pretty sure you both understood that.

Westbahnhof said:

The guy with the mind of a little child ran away from home in the middle of summer, not sure why you'd assume his face was covered.

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How can you say he wasn't? You're basing your whole opinion on really incomplete knowledge of the event. If you have more send it my way and I'll change my mind. I don't think it's unreasonable to want more info though, at the very least before passing judgement on people.

Karasseram said:

I was speaking generally. And I'm Norwegian so I've read all about it.

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Generally, sure.

But this is not why we are outraged.

This was a toy gun. This was a man with downs syndrome. This was the police being called by neighbours who overreacted to a downs syndrome person going around showing his toy gun. This was a man who didn't, or even couldn't possibly, attack the police violently with his "deadly weapon".

This is not America! In this country, our police shouldn't gun down a fucking person for holding a "gun-like" object, let the Americans shoot their population down for even holding their fingers in a pistol fashion or just a fucking potato or whatever, here our police should be GODDAMN certain before they even THINK about raising their arms against another. We should have some bloody standards!

gaugebozo said:

Police don't fire "disabling shots" for a few reasons.

First, guns are for killing. They kill people. If you are going to shoot a gun at someone, you should only do it with the understanding that a likely outcome is someone will die. There are non-lethal methods of stopping someone, and if you do not fear for your life, that is what you should use.

Second, people are not action movie stars who can shoot a gun out of someone's hand, or perfectly place a bullet in the part of the leg where somebody will be subdued but fully recover. People miss the center part of non-moving targets in low pressure target ranges. Reality is that if you shoot at something other than the biggest part of a moving target when you are already at peak stress levels, you will most likely miss, possibly hitting by-standers.

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False.

They do shoot to disable, not even a question. Only US cops are incompetent enough to claim it is not possible and spread the misinformation among their citizens.

Really if you want to go that way it is better to use the gun control argument.

Infinity Times Two said:

Last time I checked, toy guns don't actually constitute a danger. And the toy in question what dimensioned for a 5 year old.

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I was replying to people in this thread that literally said police should not be allowed to defend themselves unless a civilian was being fired upon.

KarneeKarnay said:

How can you say he wasn't? You're basing your whole opinion on really incomplete knowledge of the event. If you have more send it my way and I'll change my mind. I don't think it's unreasonable to want more info though, at the very least before passing judgement on people.

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It's not unreasonable, and I hope to see the gun myself. I just mean that while we can obviously keep an open mind, what we do know is that an innocent man died, and we don't need to wait for facts to say that something went wrong, and he should still be alive.
That's all I really meant.