Andy Lopez Shot 7 Times in 10 Seconds...

“No justice, no peace, f**k the police.”

Andy Lopez Cruz was shot seven times in 10 seconds by a Sonoma Co., Calif. sheriff’s deputy as he walked down the street with a plastic replica rifle.

According to Rutherford:

We have been silent about too many things for too long, not the least of which is the deadly tendency on the part of police to resort to lethal force. However, as Martin Luther King Jr. reminded us, "There comes a time when silence is betrayal."

For the sake of 13-year-old Andy Lopez, we can be silent no more. The Santa Rosa teen was shot dead after two sheriff's deputies saw him carrying a toy BB gun in public. Lopez was about 20 feet away from the deputies, his back turned to them, when the officers took cover behind their car and ordered him to drop the "weapon." When Lopez turned around, toy gun in his hand, one of the officers, a 24-year veteran of the force, shot him seven times. The time span between the deputies calling in a suspicious person sighting and shooting Lopez was a mere ten seconds. The young boy died at the scene. Clearly, no attempt was made to use less lethal force.

Rationalizing the shooting incident, Lt. Paul Henry of the Santa Rosa Police Department explained, "The deputy's mindset was that he was fearful that he was going to be shot." Yet as William Norman Grigg, a commentator for LewRockwell.com, points out, such a preoccupation with officer safety leads to unnecessary police shootings. A peace officer is paid to assume certain risks, including those necessary to de-escalate a confrontation with someone believed to be a heavily armed suspect in a residential neighborhood. A "veteran" deputy with the mindset of a peace officer would have taken more than a shaved fraction of a split-second to open fire on a small male individual readily identifiable as a junior high school student, who was carrying an object that is easily recognizable as a toy at least to people who don't see themselves as an army of occupation, and view the public as an undifferentiated mass of menace.

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Yet the fatality rate of on-duty patrol officers is reportedly far lower than many other professions, including construction, logging, fishing, truck driving, and even trash collection. 

In fact, police officers have the same rate of dying on the job as do taxi driversNevertheless, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, 400 to 500 innocent people are killed by police officers every year.

According to RT:

The same police officer who shot and killed a young teen after mistaking a toy gun for a real one pulled his weapon on a motorist during a routine traffic stop on the highway two months ago, the California man in question now says.

Sonoma County Sheriff’s Deputy Erick Gelhaus is currently on paid administrative leave after fatally shooting 13-year-old Andy Lopez, who was walking to a friend’s house with a replica AK-47. The tragedy has made international headlines and frustrated the local community, with vigils and protests against the police taking place over the past ten days. 

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Gelhaus’ attorney declined to comment on Westbrook’s accusations. The deputy is an Iraq War veteran who serves as a police field training officer and weapons instructor. A 24-year veteran of the force, he was training a new officer at the time of the shooting.

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Then, almost two months to the day after the roadside scare, Gelhaus shot Lopez seven times in under ten seconds. The deputy told investigators that he thought the gun the boy was carrying was real – but later found out it was an airsoft gun designed to shoot plastic pellets. 

In another article by RT:

Over 1,000 people showed up to protest the death of Andy Lopez hours before the funeral for the 13-year-old boy was scheduled to take place. California police fatally shot Lopez last week when they saw him carrying what turned out to be a toy rifle.

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Signs reading “We are all Andy Lopez, the whole damn system is guilty” and “Andy did not have to die” were on display alongside police officers in riot gear who were monitoring the crowd.

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Police advised demonstrators planning on attending the Tuesday rally to not bring any replica weapons, which were brought to previous vigils.

According to InfoWars:

Gun control activists in California are blaming toy guns and airsoft guns for the fatal police shooting of a 13-year-old on Oct. 23, shifting responsibility away from the police.

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“These guns don’t belong on the street,” Karen Caves, de León’s spokesperson, said to Time. “They endanger children and they endanger police … You can simply paint them some bright fluorescent colors that will give police an opportunity to easily identify them for what they really are and avoid this type of tragedy.”

Cruz’s family and friends, on the contrary, said that the deputy who killed Cruz simply overreacted to a situation which did not require the use of deadly force.

According to Police State USA:

The officer who shot Andy Lopez has been revealed to be 48-year-old Sonoma County Deputy Erick Gelhaus, according to the Santa Rosa Press Democrat.

Gelhaus is a 24-year veteran of the department, an Iraq combat veteran, a firearms instructor, and a prolific writer and commenter on the internet.  He served in theArmy National Guard from 2004 to 2010, and testified about dealing with insurgents in Iraq. He advocates an aggressive, combat-like view of law enforcement.

He participates as a moderator on The Firing Line, an online forum for gun enthusiasts hosted by S.W.A.T. Magazine. There Gelhaus uses his real name and gives his opinions about a wide variety of law enforcement topics, touting his experience in combat.