Holy Toledo?

Perhaps the best and worst feature of photography is its ability to suspend time. To forever freeze a moment. A personal favorite is the exuberant sailor who spontaneously grabbed a nurse in Manhattan on V-J Day and kissed her deeply.

The unbridled joy of war ending never had a better expression.

Not so joyous is the image of a young man, caught in the glare of police lights and suddenly appearing as a vulnerable child just moments before he was shot to death.

In the face of a hysterically over-reactive population, this tiny moment, just milliseconds long, will act as permanent condemnation of the Chicago Police Department and the officer who shot him.

Some background: Chicago police, reacting to gunfire in the city's Little Village neighborhood, came upon Adam Toledo and twenty-one year-old Ruben Roman, fresh from firing their gun at cars.

As gang-bangers are wont to do, Adam had custody of the gun since he is—in the eyes of the law—a child. A foot chase ensued. As one officer closed in on Adam, he was told to drop the gun and put his hands up.

It's critical to note the officer was over his left shoulder.

At a gap in a high wooden fence, Adam, holding the gun in his right hand, made a barely discernible underhand toss of the gun on the side of the fence not visible to the officer. Even in slow motion the action is hardly visible—never mind at a full-tilt sprint down a shadowy alleyway at two-thirty in the morning.

Having relieved himself of the gun, Adam begins to turn towards the officer, simultaneously raising his hands.

It was while doing this that he was shot.

If you're a member of the portion of society that acknowledges reality, it's completely likely that given the angles at hand, the pursuing officer never saw Adam dispose of the gun. With his last bit of visual data being that Adam had a gun, his turning toward the officer could only be construed one way.

If it is true with us, it is doubly true of officers in the pressure-cooker of a pursuit that we are rarely afforded the luxury of a slow motion replay before we make critical decisions. The officer didn't wantonly assassinate Adam Toledo. He was reacting to a lethal and immediate threat.

With canonization seeming set for this week, popular opinion sides overwhelmingly with Adam and his aged-based innocence. Mentions of his age far outweigh recitations of the fact that just minutes earlier he was randomly shooting at cars and was in possession of the gun.

Also lost is the fact that Adam decided to run, thereby initiating the chase and had disposed of the gun in as secretive a manner as he could manage.

Ask yourself: how would this story be different had Adam tossed the gun on the side of the fence visible to the police officer? It was a light-colored fence and the airborne gun would have been clearly-visible against it.

But Adam didn't. He was thinking like a gang-banger and sought to hide the evidence.

Also keep in mind this sequence played out in real time, not slow motion. Over a period of—perhaps—two seconds. It was a perfect storm of circumstance.

But before we re-name everything in Toledo's memory and declare March 29^th a national day of remembrance, I hope we give a few seconds to the realization that Toledo and Toledo alone set these events in motion when he decided to hang with Ruben Roman.

Once and for all it was a pitiable decision by a boy who had no business making it. But he's hardly the first person to die as a result of a bad decision. And he won't be the last.

Heartless? Maybe.

But I reserve my deepest, most gut-twisting sorrow for murder victims who are innocent. Which sadly, cannot be said of Adam Toledo.