From [HERE] The U.S. Court of Appeals has denied qualified immunity to a white Oklahoma City police officer who shot a Black 14-year-old in 2019, allowing the family to proceed with a lawsuit.

The court affirmed a lower court's denial of qualified immunity — which protects government officials from accountability for their actions, including police officers, when they are sued — for Officer Kyle Holcomb.

According to court documents, someone (probably a racist suspect) called 911, saying four men were breaking into a home and that they saw a gun. Police later discovered they were all teens playing with BB guns in the backyard.

Upon arrival the officer states “I think its a cap gun.” Police officers know what guns sound like. He approached the wooden fence that rings the house’s yard, moving toward one of the many holes in it, the video shows. He waited for a moment, his gun pointed through the gap in the fence. Someone materialized from the house.

“Show me your hands! Drop it!” Holcomb said, firing four shots in rapid succession. According to the video footage, no more than six hundredths of a second had passed since he had finished the command.

“Drop the gun!” he then said, before radioing in the incident. “Shots fired, shots fired. Black male with a gray hoodie had the gun."

Holcomb claimed Lorenzo Clerkley Jr. was holding what he thought was a black handgun. When he ordered him to drop it, he said Clerkley pointed it at Holcomb, who then shot him.

Lorenzo told the police, however, that his hands were empty and that he was holding them up when he was shot. The then-14-year-old was shot in the hip and leg.

Lorenzo told The Washington Post that he and some friends had planned to play basketball that day, but rain meant they had to find an indoor activity. They went to an abandoned house and brought with them some airsoft guns, which resemble firearms and shoot small projectiles, typically made from plastic. His lawyer says some of the four or five guns the kids had were BB guns, which are similar. Both are different from cap guns, toys that don’t shoot projectiles but make firing sounds and emit smoke.

Lorenzo said he had climbed out a window because the house’s back door was locked while his friend was showing him around. Holcomb was standing at the fence outside, according to the video.

“I jumped, and he just started firing his gun,” he said, referring to Holcomb.

Lorenzo had been shot twice, once in the leg and once near his hip, he and Smolen said, and he had entry and exit wounds. Smolen is in the process of doing an investigation to determine where the bullets entered and exited.

Lorenzo shows the entry and exit wounds where one bullet struck him Sunday at his home in Del City, Okla. (Nick Oxford for The Washington Post)

A police officer dragged Lorenzo over broken glass from the front of the house to the side, he and Smolen said.

The district court found low resolution and obstructing vegetation made it difficult to see much detail and said the footage and the still-framed photographs do not show that Clerkley was holding something black in his hand.

The Court of Appeals concluded, "Considering the totality of the facts and circumstances credited by the district court, Holcomb's use of deadly force against an unarmed, nonthreatening person violated clearly established Fourth Amendment law."

Police released a photo of the gun they said Lorenzo had carried in his hand, saying it was a BB gun that mimicked a real handgun. Capt. Robert Mathews, the department’s spokesman, said the gun was found in the backyard, where he said Lorenzo had dropped it. In an interview with The Post, Lorenzo said he did not have a gun on or near him at the time of the shooting.

Maki Haberfeld, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and an expert in police use of force said she thought the officer did not give Lorenzo any time to comply. “Watching this, I don’t see how the officer could have arrived at the conclusion that his life or someone else’s life was in danger,” she said. “He asks the teenager to drop his hands and show the gun. And then immediately he shoots. There’s no time lapse between ‘Show me the gun; drop your hands,’ and then he fires. . . . He’s already pushing the trigger.”

She also said she found it disturbing that Lorenzo was handcuffed as officers awaited emergency medical personnel to arrive. The video, which ends about 10½ minutes after the shooting, does not show any medical personnel arriving on the scene.

White liberal prosecutor David W. Prater failed to charge Holcomb with any crime for this shooting, and he is still employed by the Oklahoma City Police Department.