When "Police Brutality" Is Putting It Kindly: Chris Penley's Fatal Bullies

On January 13, a 15-year-old boy called Chris Penley, an eighth-grader at an Orlando area middle school, took out what looked like a gun in class, threatened classmates, then ran through the school, threatening a teacher along the way. He ended up in a bathroom, isolated from the rest but within earshot of a negotiator and scoping distance of a sheriff’s sniper. Within an hour, the boy would be fatally shot. He died hours later. The gun was a fake. Penley’s father reportedly attempted to get into the school during the ordeal, and had told authorities that the gun couldn’t be real, but was kept outside. Reports in January described the incident as a rapid-fire sort of thing: a chase that ended with the boy in the bathroom, and a sheriff’s deputy going in and being faced with Penley pointing a gun at him. The split-second decision was to fire. In fact, events didn’t unfold that way. Read the full story...