makes me so mad...why are our officers so inept?

Understandable.

God f?!kin damn it. >_<

This is where you and I disagree. Far too many times have I seen idiots waving guns around at 911 calls. Don't you understand... Police don't want to die either... They see a possible life threat and they eliminate it, that is what they were trained to do. Be it 12 or 21, it doesn't take much to fire a pistol and kill someone, everyone at every age as to be taken as a threat. They didn't know the gun was fake, they had reports of someone waving a gun around... They asked him to show his hands too.

They kind of forgotten important details

Kid was running around point gun at people faking robbery
Person called it in saying what was going on also said gun was probably fake
The fake gun part never got replayed to officers
As they pulled up kid reached for waistband

And nothing of value was lost

when did they ask him to show his hands? The cop hopped of the car and shot him. why not hop out and taser him? any 12 year old is going to fall to the ground in tears.

Or hey, heres a better idea, stay a few hundred feet away, put a sniper sight on his head and talk to him

Or another one, throw a hornets nest grenade (yes they're real, or a bean bag gun)
...basically anything but what they did would have been a better solution.

I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with anybody here but not all police academies have access to such features.

I personally got to go on a police ride along. There are some aspects I'm not supposed to talk about, but even for a relatively poor state like Maine, the technology available to law enforcement is UNBELIEVABLE. Seriously, you will have no idea what they are capable of until you do a ride along or get some other first hand experience. Compared to stuff I saw on ONE ride along, a bean bag gun is nothing.