Best, Complete, Factual Account Of What's Happening In Ferguson

[4588686]

Keep in mind that when your life is in danger (and I'm not arguing that his was or wasn't), you lose all thought process and simply react. Your body and reflexes take over, and your body's number one concern is preserving itself. If he truly was in danger, then it isn't a far-fetched thing to say all of the adrenaline made him want to make sure the threat was killed. It's the same reason why people who are attacked by dangerous animals but succeed in defending themselves often keep stabbing/shooting even after the animal is clearly dead, just to "make sure". When your life is in mortal peril, you take no chances.

 

Another possible explanation is that Mike was hopped up on some sort of drug like meth, but I haven't heard if they tested his blood for drugs or not.

 

 

If he reflexes so consume him that he shoots a suspect multiple times who is not a direct and obvious threat to his life or the lives of civilians then he needs to not be a police officer.  

[4588686]

idk I find irony funny.

 

folks who have convicted a cop without trial, full of righteous indignation about young black men getting convicted without trial.

 

seems a bit rich to me. not to you?

 

 

I think people are more upset about an unarmed suspect being shot multiple times and then an incredibly heavy handed and militarized response to the police in the face of protests.  

[PhuturePriest]

If he reflexes so consume him that he shoots a suspect multiple times who is not a direct and obvious threat to his life or the lives of civilians then he needs to not be a police officer.  

 

I was saying all of that in the context of Brown having a gun and threatening his life. If Brown did in fact none of those things, than the police officer is quite obviously a Barney and needs to work at a desk.

 

I do hope people know I'm referencing the Andy Griffith Show, but I have low expectations.

Edited August 17, 2014 by Fickle Yapping Fetus

[4588686]

During Friday's press conference, Ferguson Police Chief Tom Jackson tried to sow doubt that Brown really was One Of The Good Ones. He released stills from a "strong-arm robbery" showing someone who might be Brown grabbing a convenience-store clerk by his collar and throwing him backwards. The Good Ones don't rob convenience stores. The Good Ones don't assault clerks.

But this is a sick conversation. The Good Ones don't deserve to be shot when they're surrendering. But neither does anyone else.

It doesn't matter that Michael Brown was starting college on Monday. And it doesn't matter if he was involved in a robbery on Saturday. What matters is the precise circumstances in which Officer Darren Wilson shot Brown.

 

 

http://www.vox.com/2014/8/15/6005861/michael-brown-darren-wilson-ferguson-shooting

 

 

Edited August 17, 2014 by Hasan

[Lilllabettt]

I think people are more upset about an unarmed suspect being shot multiple times and then an incredibly heavy handed and militarized response to the police in the face of protests.  

 

in case you missed it, was responding to this post:

 

 

guilty until proven innocent! Strong arm robbery deserves capital punishment!

 

If white America refuses to acknowledge or listen to why there is such hostility between the police and Black men, this **** will keep happening over and over and over and overrrrr. Every time a black man dies at the hand of a police you see people coming out of the woodwork with the implicit assumption of "he must have some something to deserve it."  

 

 

yes, very bad to think black kid must be guilty of something.

also very bad to think white cop who shot black kid must be racist murderer.

see the connection?

 

Remember Trayvon Martin?  Media and community organizers strong armed the attorney general into prosecuting Zimmerman. Because to not do so would be evidence of systemic racism. Right? So they did it.

 

And over the course of the trial it became painfully obvious to observers of every persuasion that the prosecution did not in fact have a case worth a pile of horse manure. Regardless of what you think Zimmerman "deserved" on a moral level there was no way in hells bells any jury was going to find him guilty based on the law. Certainly not under Florida law.  Which is why the cops initially didn't go after him. They only did so in the end because of political pressure from the community and the media.

 

Got that? A political prosecution. Right here in the good-ol US of A. It was embarrassing. And nobody got upset about it. And nobody gets upset about it. But to me that is a pretty awful thing to have happen in a modern democracy. Land of the free, indeed.

 

Shooting someone 7 times does not make you guilty of murder. Depending on the circumstances it could be justified. Shooting someone who is unarmed does not make you guilty of murder. Depending on the circumstances it could be justified.

Do I know the circumstances? NOPE. 

You don't know either, no matter how many tweets you've read.

And guess what? Even if the cop is guilty of murder its still screwed up to try and convict him of murder in the public square.

"He's guilty until proven innocent" is the thought running through the otherwise empty brains of racist rednecks who follow black kids around the grocery store.

Lynch mobs can come in all the colors of the rainbow.

Irony = the breakfast of champions.  

 

 

 

 

the military-style police response is a separate issue. 

Edited August 17, 2014 by Lilllabettt

[Lil Red]

Some very good links I've been collecting and posting to my Facebook:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/16/ferguson-protesters-guard-stores_n_5684042.html <-----this has so much here in timeline form, it really is a must-read. in my opinion, the actions of a FEW looters do not deserve the heavy-handed response by cops. 

 

http://benswann.com/update-officer-who-shot-michael-brown-did-not-know-he-was-a-robbery-suspect/

"Ferguson, Missouri – Early Friday Ferguson, St. Louis police Chief Thomas Jackson released the name of the officer involved in the shooting of unarmed teenager Michael Brown, as well as documents alleging that Brown was involved in a “strong arm robbery” prior to the shooting. In the initial press conference, the media was led to believe that the officer who shot Brown recognized him as the robbery suspect. Hours later, in an afternoon press conference, the Chief clarified that the officer did not believe that Brown was a robbery suspect and was himself not aware of the robbery."

 

"The police say either Brown or Johnson pushed the officer into his vehicle and attempted to grab the officers weapon. A shot was fired in the vehicle before the chaos spilled onto the streets. At this point the unarmed Brown was shot multiple times.

 

Dorian Johnson told news stations that he and Brown were walking down the street when a police officer pulled up behind then and said “Get the F*ck out of the street”, before grabbing Brown and trying to force him into the car. Johnson says a scuffle ensued and the officer shot Brown. He claims he hid behind a vehicle while Brown attempted to escape. Johnson says Brown was shot in the back, chest and face while he held his hands in the air and attempted to tell the officer he was unarmed."

 

 

This link shares the story of a man in WI who got the law changed about independent reviews of cops: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/08/what-i-did-after-police-killed-my-son-110038.html?cmpid=sf#.U_D5PEuwieU

"Yes, there is good reason to think that many of these unjustifiable homicides by police across the country are racially motivated. But there is a lot more than that going on here. Our country is simply not paying enough attention to the terrible lack of accountability of police departments and the way it affects all of us—regardless of race or ethnicity. Because if a blond-haired, blue-eyed boy — that was my son, Michael — can be shot in the head under a street light with his hands cuffed behind his back, in front of five eyewitnesses (including his mother and sister), and his father was a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who flew in three wars for his country — that’s me — and I still couldn’t get anything done about it, then Joe the plumber and Javier the roofer aren’t going to be able to do anything about it either."

 

 

Photos from what's going on in Ferguson: http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/museums/images-coming-from-ferguson-mo-reveal-unfiltered-uncomfortable-truths/2014/08/14/5235f68e-23df-11e4-8593-da634b334390_story.html

 

http://sarahbessey.com/things-tell-ferguson/

This is NOT about looting. Don’t you dare. Don’t you dare bring up looting in the face of this situation. There was minor looting on one night of violence AFTER police brutality. Looting is not the point. People talk about looting because they cannot bear to face the truth of what is happening and why it is happening, it is a distraction. Same thing with folks who want to debate black-on-black violence right now. This is not that and this is not the time.

 

 

http://code3.jalopnik.com/how-police-departments-became-armies-1621517225/+leahfinnegan

Their story points out the immediate problem with this mentality, which directly conflicts with the original purpose behind modern policing as it was developed in England (a reason why police historically wore blue instead of red, as the latter was considered a military color):

 

The problem with this mingling of domestic policing with military operations is that the two institutions have starkly different missions. The military's job is to annihilate a foreign enemy. Cops are charged with keeping the peace, and with protecting the constitutional rights of American citizens and residents. It's dangerous to conflate the two.

 

As former Reagan administration official Lawrence Korb once put it, "Soldiers are trained to vaporize, not Mirandize." That distinction is why the U.S. passed the Posse Comitatus Act more than 130 years ago, a law that explicitly forbids the use of military troops in domestic policing.

 

In other words, when you militarize police, they start to see the people they're supposed to be protecting as their enemy.

 

[Winchester]

Keep in mind that when your life is in danger (and I'm not arguing that his was or wasn't), you lose all thought process and simply react. Your body and reflexes take over, and your body's number one concern is preserving itself. If he truly was in danger, then it isn't a far-fetched thing to say all of the adrenaline made him want to make sure the threat was killed. It's the same reason why people who are attacked by dangerous animals but succeed in defending themselves often keep stabbing/shooting even after the animal is clearly dead, just to "make sure". When your life is in mortal peril, you take no chances.

 

Another possible explanation is that Mike was hopped up on some sort of drug like meth, but I haven't heard if they tested his blood for drugs or not.

You can react that way. It doesn't mean you do.

 

 

A single shot does not necessarily bring down a man, nor are seven shots that long of a time frame.

[Lil Red]

It would be good to know if there was a toxicology test to check for meth or another drug.  However, after listening to a report today, it appears that the people of Ferguson are in no mood to listen to facts, as one was denouncing the tape of the strong-arm robbery as an attempt to smear Brown (or words to that effect).

 

The problem was, in the initial press conference, the PD made it sound like the reason Brown was stopped was because of the robbery, when in fact, he wasn't stopped because of that. He was stopped because he was walking down the middle of the street. 

 

 

[Lil Red]

"In the 1980s, a pair of Supreme Court decisions — Tennessee vs. Garner and Graham v. Connor — set up a framework for determining when deadly force by cops is reasonable.

Constitutionally, "police officers are allowed to shoot under two circumstances," David Klinger, a University of Missouri-St. Louis professor who studies use of force, told Vox. The first circumstance is "to protect their life or the life of another innocent party" - what departments call the "defense-of-life" standard. The second circumstance is to prevent a suspect from escaping, but only if the officer has probable cause to think the suspect's committed a serious violent felony."

 

"The key to both of the legal standards — defense-of-life and fleeing a violent felony — is that it doesn't matter whether there is an actual threat when force is used. Instead, what matters is the officer's "objectively reasonable" belief that there is a threat."

 

"And what's "objectively reasonable" changes as the circumstances change. "The moment that you no longer present a threat, I need to stop shooting," said Klinger. According to the St. Louis County Police Department's account, Wilson fired one shot from inside the police car. But Brown was killed some 35 feet away, after several shots had been fired. To justify the shooting, Wilson would need to demonstrate that he feared for his life not just when Brown was by the car, but even after he started shooting. The officer would need to establish that, right up until the last shot was fired, he felt Brown continued to pose a threat to him whether he actually was or not."

 

http://www.vox.com/cards/mike-brown-protests-ferguson-missouri/was-it-legal-for-officer-darren-wilson-to-shoot-michael-brown

Edited August 17, 2014 by Lil Red

[CrossCuT]

guilty until proven innocent! Strong arm robbery deserves capital punishment!

 

i actually had a friend on fb who posted that Brown got exactly what he deserved.

 

I asked her if she thinks stealing cigars is worthy of the death penalty...she didnt answer. 

[Lil Red]

i actually had a friend on fb who posted that Brown got exactly what he deserved.

 

 

:blink: 

I just can't even.  :crazy:

[CrossCuT]

:blink:

I just can't even.  :crazy:

 

Yeah...I was discussing it with my fiance. She replied later that if someone came into her house to steal something, she would shoot first and ask questions later. She said that apparently Brown thought cigars was worth dying over. BUt of course her comparison doesnt really make sense since the cop who shot Brown had no notion of the robbery....soooooo

 

I stopped replying at that point because I wasnt even sure how to respond. 

[dUSt]

This thread is racist.

[Winchester]

The man in the video of the strong arm robbery should have had the combat removed from him. Nothing wrong with that, at all. It is possible that an encounter over petty theft could lead to the death of the thief if he chose to escalate beyond the proportional amount of violence used to stop him. Proportional can vary. With the size differential between the thief and the store owner, it's clear to me that the store owner would have been right to respond immediately with the use of a weapon, since you don't know if the first shove from a person is the last, or is the beginning of a more protracted attack. 

 

This is why police should be hesitant  to restrain people. If a person is innocent and police attempt to restrain him, he has a moral right to resist their efforts. If they escalate, he possesses the right to defend his life. Costumes do not grant special powers, in spite of what Harry Potter cosplayers in the courts claim.

[Norseman82]

Yeah...I was discussing it with my fiance. She replied later that if someone came into her house to steal something, she would shoot first and ask questions later. She said that apparently Brown thought cigars was worth dying over. BUt of course her comparison doesnt really make sense since the cop who shot Brown had no notion of the robbery....soooooo

 

 

Back up a second here.....

 

Your fiancee is a she....and you're a female, according to your profile?