Good question. If memory serves, the caller thought some people in the park might be frightened.
The caller said that the 'pistol' was probably a fake and that the person with the 'pistol' was probably a juvenile.
Why am I still harping on this? How dare we forget that a black child was killed by police for playing in the park. The police roared up in their patrol car, began yelling "Show me your hands" at a frightened child and then shot him dead as he tried to show them his hands which had been in his pockets, not brandishing a gun, toy or not. The car had not even come to a complete stop when Tamir Rice was shot. What even made these officers believe that they had pulled up on the correct 'suspect?"
Study after study have shown that black children in school and in society are perceived as being older than they are, stronger, more impervious to pain, more criminal. In school settings as well as in the criminal justice system, they are more likely to receive disciplinary actions and such actions are more harsh compared with discipline of their white classmates for the same behavior. I'm not even writing same offense because so much of what gets a black person shot dead is simply being black in the presence of an armed white person who is scared of black people or assumes that black people are stronger, more impervious to pain, more criminal, more violent than white people.
Most killers get apprehended alive, regardless of skin color. But that does not fit the racist narratives pushed by the Left.
Let's talk racism, then:
https://news.yale.edu/2020/10/27/racial-disparity-police-shootings-unchanged-over-5-years
It’s critical, said author Dowin Boatright, assistant professor of emergency medicine at Yale, that fatal police shootings of BIPOC are recognized and treated as a public health emergency.
In an analysis of 4,653 fatal shootings for which information about both race and age were available, the researchers found a small but statistically significant decline in white deaths (about 1%) but no significant change in deaths for BIPOC. There were 5,367 fatal police shootings during that five-year period, according to the Post’s database. In the case of armed victims, Native Americans were killed by police at a rate three times that of white people (77 total killed). Black people were killed at 2.6 times the rate of white people (1,265 total killed); and Hispanics were killed at nearly 1.3 times the rate of white people (889 total killed). Among unarmed victims, Black people were killed at three times the rate (218 total killed), and Hispanics at 1.45 times the rate of white people (146 total killed).
Source article cited in the Yale piece is behind a paywall but here's this from the abstract:
https://jech.bmj.com/content/75/4/394
Results This study shows that the rate of fatal police shootings for Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour (BIPOC) is constant from 2015 to 2020. Further, BIPOC have significantly higher death rates compared with Whites in the overall victim pool (Native American RR=3.06, Black RR=2.62, Hispanic RR=1.29) and among unarmed victims (Black RR=3.18, Hispanic RR=1.45). Native American (RR=3.95), Black (overall RR=3.29, unarmed RR=3.49) and Hispanic (RR=1.55, unarmed RR=1.55), victims had similarly high rates of YLL relative to Whites.
Conclusion Fatal police shootings are a public health emergency that contribute to poor health for BIPOC. Urgent attention from health professionals is needed to help drive policy efforts that reduce this unjust burden and move us towards achieving health equity in the US.
Why am I still talking about Tamir Rice?
Because things have not changed since he was killed.