Officer gains fame after gun lecture goes viral

An encounter that could have turned terribly tragic became a teachable moment for a Columbus police officer and two South Linden boys.

Officer Pete Casuccio, a four-year veteran, was dispatched Saturday to a report of two youths brandishing what looked like a gun.

Casuccio responded and said he drew his firearm, as he was trained to do, because it wasn’t obvious which of the boys had the gun or whether it was real. When Casuccio started asking about where the gun was, one of the boys began to lift his shirt and tug at his waistband.

“He started grabbing at it and flung it out of his right hand,” Casuccio said in phone interview Wednesday. “When it hit the sidewalk, it broke into three pieces and that’s when I saw the CO2 cartridge and the plastic handle.”

The action prompted Casuccio to give the boys, ages 11 and 13, a life lesson.

“That thing looked real, bro,” Casuccio tells the kids on the interaction captured on his body camera.

Casuccio told the boys he did not want to shoot them and tried to provide them with context, explaining how officers don’t know a gun that looks real is only a BB gun when they’re faced with seconds to make a decision.

“I didn’t know it was a BB gun until it hit the sidewalk,” Casuccio told the mother of the boy carrying the gun after taking the child home.

The mother turned to her son and said, “He could have shot you for that.”

“The last thing I ever want to do is shoot an 11-year-old, man,” Casuccio can be heard saying on the video. “Everything you want to do in this life could have been over.”

Since the body camera video was released by Columbus police Monday, the video has captured national attention. Casuccio was interviewed by CBS News, and the story has made its way to CNN and other outlets.

Casuccio said he is surprised by the attention.

“Everybody’s treating me like a hidden gem, but the overwhelming majority of (police officers) think and act the same way I do,” he said. “I get that it’s great for the occupation, but this is literally happening every day, all over the place.”

Casuccio has taken other steps to help the youth in the Linden area he patrols have a better impression of police. Earlier this year, he helped organize free haircuts and gave school supplies to students preparing to go back to school.

He said the Linden neighborhood, where he has spent nearly every shift of his fouryear career, is home to him.

“You feel like you’re making an impact when you come to work,” Casuccio said. “In a perfect world, an 11 and 13 year old shouldn’t be worried about getting a firearm drawn on them by a police officer. But at the same time, it’s a scary world out there.”