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‘They’re the Victims!’ Bystanders Beg Cops Not to Kill Teens They Mistook for Criminals

 
When your only tool is a hammer, everything, even innocent teenage kids who were the victims of a crime, begin to look like nails.

Unfortunately in the ostensible land of the free, most police departments have only hammers and as TFTP reports on a regular basis, they cannot wait to use them.

A group of teens learned this the hard way this week.

Tammi Collins, the mother of one of the teens in the video below explained that her son and his friends were attacked by a homeless man.

She says multiple calls to 911 back up her claims, but when police showed up, they held the innocent teens at gunpoint, apparently mistaking them for criminals.

"I wanted to share what happened to my son yesterday in SCV when he was with a couple of friends sitting at a bus stop headed home. He was attacked by a gentleman who approached them and first asked them if they had any crack then tried to take their things. The guy became so aggressive that he took his shirt off pulled out a knife and whip them tried to stab them. His friends only had their skateboards to cover them from the knife and whip so they held it out to keep the distance from this guy. Several bystanders including the restaurant manager of Buffalo Wild wings called the police to get help for the boys but"One" caller called the police and reported two black guys are attacking a homeless guy.

This is something my son and his friends will never forget.

I'm still wondering how will I ever help my son recover from this traumatic experience.

As the video shows, multiple bystanders are begging the cops to stop pointing guns at the victims, clearly explaining to police that the aggressor was the man.

"Look at this. This is crazy. It was the other guy," one bystander says.

"Get away from me!" one of the sheriffs says, pointing at the person and keeping his other hand on the gun.

"They're the victims," another bystander says as person after a person tells the cops they have the wrong people.

"Just keep your hands up. It'll be over soon," said someone in the crowd to the boys.

As the second teen is handcuffed, one witness says, "This is sad" and, "They're supposed to be protecting us."

"They don't care because black," one of the witnesses says as the boy is taken into the officer's vehicle.

Luckily, all the children survived the interaction with police and were then released after the cops actually found out what was going on.

The officers' "Pull guns first and hold everyone at gunpoint" mentality was overkill and only served to endanger the lives of innocent children.

Though the officers didn't know what they were walking into, they should have known enough that the teens were not resisting in any way and presented no threat as they were unarmed.

Holding them at the barrel of an AR-15 was not only overkill but dangerous.

According to Collins, the reason police responded in such a manner is because they relied on a single 911 call, out of all the others, that was incorrect, and based their actions off of that one.

Collins told TMZ that several 911 calls were placed and all but one claimed the boys were the victims.

One caller she says, told the dispatcher "Two black guys were attacking a homeless man."

On Monday, TMZ received a statement from the Los Angeles County Sheriffs department explaining that "The 911 call came in as an assault with a deadly weapon specifically, 2 adult males hitting another man with a skateboard. The kids were detained and after deputies spoke with them and witnesses, they were released and no arrests were made. The Dept. doesn't know what happened to the homeless man."


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