Unarmed teen fatally shot by Austin officers in suspected ‘suicide by police’<\/a><\/p>\nMichael Sierra-Ar\u00e9valo, a policing researcher and associate professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin, said the information officers had before arriving on scene is an important part of understanding the encounter.<\/p>\n
\u201cI believe the evidence is that this is the person that placed the 911 call, and they seem to have correctly understood that to call officers and tell them someone has a gun and then to motion for their waistband, is likely to lead to officers deploying deadly force.\u201d<\/p>\n
Police later determined the 911 call came from the teen\u2019s own phone and said investigators believe he was the caller. Chief Lisa Davis said those findings led investigators to believe the shooting was \u201cpotentially a suicide by police.\u201d<\/p>\n
Investigators also determined the object in the teen\u2019s waistband was a water bottle, not a firearm.<\/p>\n
Davis said officers were forced to make decisions in a rapidly changing situation.<\/p>\n
\u201cOfficers are often required to make life or death decisions in seconds. This was a rapidly evolving incident.\u201d<\/p>\n
During an interview with CBS Austin, Sierra-Ar\u00e9valo was asked whether officers receive training to recognize situations where someone may be attempting \u201csuicide by police.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said officers do receive some instruction on recognizing mental health issues, but said the extent of that training can vary.<\/p>\n
\u201cOfficers, depending on the level of training that they get and depending on the academy, will receive some training in mental health awareness,\u201d he said. \u201cI think it remains to be seen what sort of training these officers had.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added that officers generally receive more training focused on responding to perceived deadly threats.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey receive far more training on actually just assuming that individuals that they encounter pose a potentially lethal threat.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sierra-Ar\u00e9valo said investigators reviewing the shooting will likely examine more than just the moment officers fired.<\/p>\n
\u201cI noted, the officers fired well over a dozen rounds between them in the first salvo, there was a pause, and then more rounds were shot,\u201d he said. \u201cI think what\u2019s going to end up happening here is a question as to whether all of those shots were reasonable.\u201d<\/p>\n
Austin police said Officers Jake Pitcher, Alexis Cruz, and Avery Zucchi remain on paid administrative leave, as required by department policy following an officer-involved shooting.<\/p>\n
The department said it is conducting both a criminal investigation through its Special Investigations Unit, alongside the Travis County District Attorney\u2019s Office, and an administrative investigation through Internal Affairs with oversight from Austin Police Oversight.<\/p>\n
Police have not released the teen\u2019s name as they await positive identification from the Travis County Medical Examiner\u2019s Office.<\/p>\n
If you or someone you know is struggling with thoughts of suicide, help is available by calling or texting the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"AUSTIN, Texas \u2014 Austin police officers believed they were responding to an armed teenager early Friday morning. Minutes…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":385002,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133],"class_list":["post-386049","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386049","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=386049"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386049\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/385002"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=386049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=386049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=386049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}