Ferguson, Missouri

[grovester]

It's interesting to me the contrast that emerges when people who don't like the government, don't particularly care for authority, and in many cases don't care for and deeply mistrust law enforcement, are firmly on the side of a cop who gunned down an unarmed black teenager.

It's all about who you care for the least.

[bobbyhawks]

It's interesting to me the contrast that emerges when people who don't like the government, don't particularly care for authority, and in many cases don't care for and deeply mistrust law enforcement, are firmly on the side of a cop who gunned down an unarmed black teenager.

It's all about who you care for the least.

I wonder what the reaction would be to the IRS unfairly targeting a super-PAC.

[grovester]

It's interesting to me the contrast that emerges when people who don't like the government, don't particularly care for authority, and in many cases don't care for and deeply mistrust law enforcement, are firmly on the side of a cop who gunned down an unarmed black teenager.

It's all about who you care for the least.

I wonder what the reaction would be to the IRS unfairly targeting a super-PAC.

Sorry that was mean's quote with my caveat.

[mean]

It's all about who you care for the least.

Obviously, and the kid's race is so abundantly obviously a factor. The line I deleted before posting that last post opined that those who disregard race as a factor in this case must be being astonishingly disingenuous or unbelievably naive. I deleted it because I didn't want to come off as playing the race card; my central point was about the apparent lack of cognitive dissonance within people who ostensibly don't like the government in their lives, but don't have a problem with the government KILLING CITIZENS. That is remarkably inconsistent. "Stay out of my life, but kill anyone who does X," is a shocking enough position without making it about the kid being black. How can the government be any more deeply involved in your life than by being granted license to take it!?

[grovester]

But you have to play the race card. The downfall of the gop the last 10 years is the fact that their dogma doesn't apply to everyone equally, whether it's blacks, gays or felons. You can't have small govt for a select few and big govt for everyone else. (I realize that Dem/liberals have their own issues in this regard).

[mean]

No, I don't. I can point out the inconsistencies in the position without going to, "But it was a black kid!" Not that the kid's race is irrelevant, I very much doubt it is, personally, but if I'm going to attempt to make the people with inconsistent views acknowledge the inconsistencies in those views, the kid's race is not relevant. In fact, acknowledging the kid's race is a detriment in the event that their racial bias makes the shooting OK. You've got to separate those issues out and demonstrate that the government is the government, and that intrusion upon your sovereignty is an intrusion whether you are black or white. When you incorporate the race of the kid, people with biases against that race exclude all other factors. It doesn't matter that it's a black kid, because black kids are bad news. And that's despicable, but the framing is crucial. Make it about government infringement, and they get it. Make it about "a white dude shot a black dude" and they side with the white dude. I know these people. I simultaneously love and hate these people. I am the middle ground here, and I'm telling YOU how to win and not them, because you're right and they're wrong. But you have to learn how to frame it, or they will just ignore you.

I'm not defending racists, I'm trying to tell you how to beat them.

[aknowledgeableperson]

This part, which akp didn't bother to include, is particularly important:

This is the first public account of Officer Wilson’s testimony to investigators, but it does not explain why, after he emerged from his vehicle, he fired at Mr. Brown multiple times. It contradicts some witness accounts, and it will not calm those who have been demanding to know why an unarmed man was shot a total of six times.

Even supposing that Wilson's version of the car fight is 100% accurate, it doesn't justify gunning down a fleeing, unarmed person. If Michael Brown attacked Wilson, he should have been arrested and charged. Getting punched doesn't justify use of deadly force.

And that perception of a man fleeing and then surrendering with hands up is in question also. There have been witnesses before the grand jury, who just happen to be black, who support the officer's version of the incident. And that is Brown was rushing toward the officer.

[phuqueue]

We've been told that there are black witnesses who support Wilson's version of events. Grand jury proceedings are supposed to be secret, but you hear from anonymous sources that unidentified "black witnesses" support Wilson and that's good enough for you. Because after all, the county has been nothing if not completely transparent and above board through this whole thing, right?

The "perception" that Mike Brown fled shouldn't be "in question," considering he fell a hundred feet away from the SUV. His body didn't just teleport over there after he was dead.

[aknowledgeableperson]

Yes, he fled but he still stopped and turned around (and from what distance from the car was the officer? In other words what was the distance between the two?) What is in question is what happened after that point of time. One side says he was giving up, the other side (from public statements and sources that have been identified as from the US Justice Dept and one witness speaking to a paper) have stated Brown was rushing towards the officer and the space between the two was about 20 feet, or closer, at the time of the shooting.

[phuqueue]

What distance Wilson was from the car has no bearing on whether or not Mike Brown fled. What you're going on here is anonymous leaks from a supposedly secret proceeding that claim unidentified witnesses say that a kid who had already been shot nonetheless "rushed" Wilson. I'm not saying it couldn't have happened, I'm just saying it doesn't make any sense and a lot of identified witnesses have publicly told a different story.

[aknowledgeableperson]

Even supposing that Wilson's version of the car fight is 100% accurate, it doesn't justify gunning down a fleeing, unarmed person.

The "perception" that Mike Brown fled shouldn't be "in question," considering he fell a hundred feet away from the SUV. His body didn't just teleport over there after he was dead

You made he big deal that Brown was 100 feet from the car. So what????????? What is important is the distance between the two of them when the shooting started.

The officer pursued him after being attacked, something he has the right to do. Brown was not shot in the back as some so-called witnesses have said. The officer was not shooting at Brown while he was fleeing as some so-called witnesses have said. And it appears that the officer only shot at Brown not while he was stopped but as he was approaching the officer, probably less than 20 feet away. And this information is not from secret grand jury testimony but from evidence gathered by the federal investigation into the case. With regards to the unidentified witnesses they likely testified at the grand jury hearings and also were interviewed by the feds. And just because witnesses have been identified and have become public with their versions of the incident, which of course contradict each other at various points, doesn't make what they say is the truth.

[phuqueue]

What do you mean, "so what"? If you're going to say Brown wasn't fleeing, then I'm going to tell you he didn't just teleport a hundred feet away from the car. I'm not sure how to spell this out more clearly for you.

No witness said unequivocally that he was shot in the back, some witnesses said that as he was running away he flinched, which they took to mean that he had been hit. From their respective distances and vantage points, this is something they might understandably be unclear on, and as much as you want it to, it doesn't especially cast any doubt on their overall testimony (nor do the "contradictions" you keep alluding to -- the testimony substantially agrees on the salient points). Not sure where you're getting that Wilson wasn't shooting at Brown while he was fleeing, since it's certainly not in that NYT article or anywhere else. All we know is that Wilson didn't hit Brown in the back, we certainly don't know that he wasn't shooting while Brown had his back to Wilson. And it doesn't "appear" that Wilson shot Brown as Brown was approaching him because it has not been shown that Brown ever did "approach" him (at least not in the way that you really want him to have "approached" -- even some of the publicly identified witnesses you've disparaged have noted that Brown "moved toward" Wilson, but that he appeared to be stumbling forward after being hit, not rushing at Wilson). You're just assuming all the facts that you want to be true.

That Wilson has the right to pursue doesn't necessarily mean he has the right to use deadly force in his pursuit. MO's use of force by law enforcement statute actually is broad enough to protect Wilson if he "reasonably believes" that Brown committed a felony (and you're taking it for granted here that Brown attacked Wilson and that it wasn't the other way around), but such an application of the statute would be unconstitutional. Wilson's use of force might be constitutionally justifiable only under the most generous possible construction of the facts -- Brown attacked Wilson, Wilson pursued him without firing at him, then Brown stopped and turned around and attempted to rush at Wilson from a short enough distance that Wilson might have "probable cause" to believe Brown posed "a significant threat of death or serious bodily harm" to him (given that Brown was unarmed, this is a tough bar to clear, although the fact that Brown was much bigger than Wilson might help Wilson make his case). If all those pieces didn't fall into place, Wilson certainly didn't have any "right" to act as he did. If Brown didn't attack Wilson, there was no felony. If Wilson fired at Brown as Brown was running away, or if Brown never rushed at Wilson from a reasonably short distance, then Wilson used deadly force without any cause to believe that Brown posed any threat to him. If you discard witness testimony and go only on the physical evidence, we don't have enough evidence to say with any certainty whether this exact sequence of events did or did not happen. It could have. Of course, witnesses tell us it didn't. But we're eager to discredit them, lest it turn out that cops probably shouldn't kill unarmed kids.

[aknowledgeableperson]

I never said he wasn't fleeing. You are the one that keeps making this an issue. It's just not that big of a deal if he was 100 feet away or 1,000 feet away. The issue is how close the two were when the first shot were fired and how close when the last shot was fired.

Yes, one or two said he was shot in the back. One or two said the officer was shooting at him while he was running away. According to the leaked source the officer's shell casings were in one location and there were drops of blood that by the pattern indicated Brown was moving towards Wilson. They don't say how fast he was moving, just that he was heading in the direction of Wilson.

Brown's friend Johnson stated Wilson shot at Brown's back while running away.
Brady also stated Wilson shot at Brown's back and that Wilson shot while Wilson was moving towards the officer.
Crenshaw, at first, stated just about the same thing then changed her story somewhat after the release of the Brown's family autopsy report.
Mitchell, friend of Crenshaw, also stated that Brown was hit while running away and that Wilson was shooting while in pursuit.
And there where others who gave similar accounts in public statements to the press.

Yes, the physical evidence doesn't tell the whole story but can indicate what is true and untrue in statements. The problem is if parts of the statements provided are wrong then that leads to how credible they are. What did they actually see and hear as opposed to repeating what others have said they saw and heard?

You have been critical of me taking something for granted that goes in Wilson's favor but are you not also taking something for granted the statements that put Wilson in a bad light? You have taken the stance that, it seems, that Wilson is guilty (because of these witness statements) until proven innocent. He is guilty since he was white and armed and Brown was black and unarmed. Hell, Wilson may be guilty of something but at this point of time nothing definitive has been shown one way or the other.

[phuqueue]

You literally said the "perception" that he was fleeing is in question. The fact that Wilson's shell casings were in one place doesn't mean Wilson didn't fire at Brown as he was fleeing, it only means Wilson wasn't running as he fired. Brady, who also explicitly qualified his statement by saying that he couldn't see exactly what was going on -- and was apparently too far away to have heard the gunshot in the car, because he says he didn't -- is the only one who, to my knowledge, has clearly said that Wilson was moving as he was firing. Everyone else says Brown fled, Wilson pursued, Wilson fired, but I am looking again right now and not finding anyone's statement that Wilson was still running as he fired. We know that Mike Brown was facing Wilson when the fatal shots were fired, and we know that he was never hit in the back, but we have no reason to assume that no shot was fired while Brown had his back to Wilson -- except that it helps make the case that the witnesses are unreliable if we just assume that what they said wasn't true.

It's well known that witnesses can make mistakes, but where witnesses substantially agree, there is no good reason to throw out their statements just because of discrepancies that don't bear on the key issues. Eidetic memory is a myth, so every witness is going to misremember things. What's important is how much of their account can be corroborated by other evidence -- and other witness testimony is one such type of evidence. You're concerned about how much they've been influenced by what they've heard other people say, but, for example, the anonymous construction worker was recorded at the scene remarking that Brown "had his hands up," long before any narrative took shape in the media.

If I'm "taking for granted" the statements that incriminate Wilson, it's probably because they're the only statements we have. The sum total of statements in his defense are his own narrative (surely I don't have to explain why this is suspect), the police narrative (which completely skips over everything between the altercation at the car and then the ultimate shooting), and the insistence of anonymous leaks from the grand jury proceedings that there have been other witnesses who have supported Wilson's story. But we don't actually have their statements. We have a statement that they made a statement. We don't know what they said. We don't know to what degree their statements conflict with each other or with the physical evidence. None of these people have spoken publicly, not even anonymously. We don't know what their vantage point was during the incident. We don't know how much they could have been influenced by the pro-Wilson narrative that has taken shape. You're so critical of discrepancies on non-issues in the testimony of witnesses who are willing to go on television and put their name on their story, but when an anonymous leak from a supposedly secret legal proceeding tells you someone said something that supports Wilson, you just shrug and accept it.

I don't think Wilson is "guilty until proven innocent." I think the evidence that is available shows that Wilson is guilty. I think it is a very high bar to clear to prove that you were justified in gunning down an unarmed person. If Wilson weren't a cop -- if this were just a run of the mill self defense case -- the fact that he engaged Brown after Brown had attempted to break off from the encounter would be dispositive: murder. Of course, Wilson is a cop, so he has wider latitude to employ force in pursuit of a suspect, if in fact Brown legitimately was a suspect of anything. I think that's an open question. The PD has gone back and forth on whether or not Wilson knew about the cigar incident, and the fact that they have been unable to say unequivocally that he did leads me to believe that he didn't. Who started the scuffle at the car is a he said/she said, but I certainly find it more plausible that a white cop in suburban St. Louis (or, well, anywhere in America) would feel safe hassling a couple of black kids than that a black kid would be told by a cop to get out of the street and his response would be to pummel the cop and reach for his gun.

In any case, whether Brown was a suspect of either robbery or of assaulting a law enforcement officer is only the first step you have to clear (under MO law it's actually the only step you have to clear, but the Supreme Court has found such broad police power unconstitutional). Then you have to determine whether deadly force was necessary to prevent Brown's escape and whether he posed a significant threat of death or serious bodily harm to Wilson or anyone else. This requires you to believe that Brown, who had already been shot in the arm, first, would recklessly charge at Wilson, and, second, could inflict serious harm upon Wilson. Brown was a big kid, so, maybe. On the other hand, Brown already had a bullet in him, so maybe not. Witness testimony does not conflict with physical evidence that Brown moved toward Wilson at the end -- but the witnesses all agree that Brown was stumbling or falling forward, not that he was rushing at Wilson. The physical evidence isn't sufficient to prove or disprove this, but the only evidence we have for Brown rushing Wilson is Wilson's own leaked testimony that he offered months after the fact, and we didn't even hear that from Wilson himself.

I think it's kind of insane that you think I'm being unfair to Wilson. To whatever extent I have to give one party the benefit of the doubt, sure, I'm inclined to give it to the unarmed teenager who ended up with six bullets in him. But the bigger issue to me is that killing somebody is objectively wrong unless you can enrich the context of the killing with additional facts to make it acceptable. This seems like it should be uncontroversial, although I have found that it apparently isn't. But this is my starting point. Then I look for those additional facts that could justify the killing. I haven't found those facts here. I hesitate even if I accept Wilson's story as completely true because it is difficult to side with the guy with the gun when the question is whether he faced "significant threat of death or serious bodily harm" by the guy without. I hesitate even if I accept Wilson's story as completely true because it is not unreasonable to ask whether Wilson created whatever "significant threat of death or serious bodily harm" existed by pursuing Brown on foot and without backup (whether this pursuit was still legally permissible for a cop to undertake is less important to me -- I am not judge or jury in this case -- than whether it was morally justifiable). I hesitate even if I accept his story, but if I don't accept his story, then I clearly can't justify the killing. And as far as accepting his story goes, I don't know why I should privilege his version of events over that of multiple other eyewitnesses. Even if we generously assume that he would resist any impulse to intentionally lie, and is therefore telling what he believes to be the genuine and honest truth, the actor is no less susceptible to faulty memory than other witnesses are. Where he's the only one telling his version of the story, we should question the veracity of that story. And the Wilson side knows this, which is why we keep getting leaks about supposed other witnesses who support him. But again, we don't know who these witnesses are or what they've said. They could publicly but anonymously share their stories, but they haven't. Until I know what their stories are, I can't consider them to corroborate Wilson's.

[phxcat]

In addition to this (phuqueue' reply) it seems as if the pro Wilson side has taken evidence that could be taken multiple ways and used to to prove that Brown was trying to kill Wilson. Did he try to take the gun? Common sense would dictate that it is unlikely that a 300 pound man would think he would be able to go through a car window, reach over a grown man's body and unholster a gun from said man who is in a seated position. If he was going for the gun, common sense would dictate that the gun was already unholstered, which raises the question of why did Wilson unholster the gun? When faced with the proposition that Brown was reaching for a gun that was pointed at him in close range, it becomes much more likely that he was reaching for the gun in self defense, which the wound on his thumb would support.

Perhaps more egregious is the assumption is also made that the wounds to the top of his head were caused by Brown putting his head down to charge Wilson. That proposition is just idiotic. Try to put your head down like that and run any distance- you can't see where you are going, it is uncomfortable, and the most likely result of any contact is that you would break your neck. Nobody is going to do that. The fact that this is used as a defense of Wilson indicates that the pro-Wilson side has already decided that they are in favor of him and that no evidence will change their minds.

[phuqueue]

In a truly shocking twist, new surveillance footage of Wilson taken in the hours after the shooting doesn't appear to show any major injuries like those he allegedly sustained when Mike Brown allegedly assaulted him.

http://www.newsweek.com/new-video-darre ... him-284836

One, taken approximately two hours after Brown's shooting, depicts Wilson departing the department for a hospital, flanked by other officers and his lawyer, the Post-Dispatch reports.

...

The second security camera video shows Wilson returning to the police department. Both videos are grainy and low-quality, but Wilson does not appear to have suffered major injuries during his scuffle with Brown.

[KCMax]

Gov. Jay Nixon is a total embarrassment at this point.

[shinatoo]

Gov. Jay Nixon is a total embarrassment at this point.

As much as I used to really like Jay Nixon, and supported his run for Governor, and thought he would be a good presidential candidate, I have to think that if you can't perform proper Crisis Management in you own state you probably aren't going to do any better as Commander in Chief. This is a failure on his part.

[im2kull]

In a truly shocking twist, new surveillance footage of Wilson taken in the hours after the shooting doesn't appear to show any major injuries like those he allegedly sustained when Mike Brown allegedly assaulted him.

http://www.newsweek.com/new-video-darre ... him-284836

One, taken approximately two hours after Brown's shooting, depicts Wilson departing the department for a hospital, flanked by other officers and his lawyer, the Post-Dispatch reports.

...

The second security camera video shows Wilson returning to the police department. Both videos are grainy and low-quality, but Wilson does not appear to have suffered major injuries during his scuffle with Brown.

Regardless of how it appears on crappy low quality surveillance footage, the fact of the matter is that he had broken cheek bones and eye socket fractures. You can't fake that. Especially when it's diagnosed by a triage unit at a hospital.

That article is simply race baiting. Quit spreading that crap.

[phuqueue]

I suppose you have proof that he had broken cheek bones and eye socket fractures? A reputable source has reported that as a verified fact rather than as what the police department or anonymous sources have claimed?