aknowledgeableperson wrote:And for some of us there is a valid question whether it is ever legitimate for an officer to unload six rounds into an unarmed citizen, no matter how menacing he may be.
There has been one question that I have yet seen an answer to - why did the officer shoot? Was he just pissed off at Brown, did he have a fear for his own safety, or what? During the elections earlier this month I talked to a Cass County Sheriff's Deputy. I asked him about his equipment belt. He pointed out this and that. One item was a taser. Did the Ferguson officer have this non-lethal option? If so why wasn't that used. If not then the only option would be a gun for defense.
Why 6 rounds? Don't know how they can tell but according to the released autopsy results the initial wounds were to the arm area, wounds that wouldn't incapacitate Mr Brown. So, if Brown kept on rushing to the officer then he would keep firing until Mr Brown stopped.
Who started the fight? Depends on which side you want to believe. Mr Brown's friend said the officer started it. But the friend also stated that Mr Brown was shot in the back, something the autopsy shows isn't true so what else in his statement is inaccurate? Another witness also stated she saw Brown shot in the back and his body jerked. So if she says Mr Brown was shot in the back how much of her statement is accurate?
How many times did the officer fire his gun? 6 wounds but the audio that recently surfaced has the sound of 10 shots. Of course the audio has not been verified nor has it been released how many times the officer fired his gun.
"Kept on rushing the officer," give me a break. A bunch of identified eyewitnesses agree that this didn't happen, and one anonymous call claiming to be a friend of Wilson's relaying his story claims it did.
"Who started the fight?" Who cares? If Brown had broken off from the fight and tried to escape by the time he was killed (the fight occurred at the car, he fell 35 feet away), the fight is no longer germane. A private citizen would absolutely not be entitled to use lethal force because of a fight that was already over. Law enforcement admittedly has wider latitude to use force to effect an arrest, but MO's
law enforcement use of force statute is
unconstitutional. Luckily, the Supreme Court has
told us what a constitutional statute would look like: "[Deadly] force may not be used unless it is necessary to prevent the escape and the officer has probable cause to believe that the suspect poses a significant threat of death or serious physical injury to the officer or others." Will be very difficult to argue that an unarmed person on open terrain, not in close proximity to the officer or to anybody else, poses a "significant threat of death or physical injury" to anybody.
Re: witnesses saying he was shot in the back: believe the friend, Johnson, stated straight out that Brown was shot in the back, but the other witnesses inferred that he was shot in the back based on the fact that he jerked before he turned around. Not sure that any witness stated unequivocally "he was shot in the back." Given that they were all at some distance away, it's reasonable that they could have misconstrued something like whether Brown was actually shot or merely startled by the gunshots (there's also the issue of the injury on his arm, which indicates that he may have been grazed by a bullet as he was running away -- this could have caused the jerk and prompted him to stop and turn around). Whether or not Brown was shot in the back is something a witness is much more likely to misinterpret than whether or not he was charging at Wilson when he was dropped. Seizing onto an ultimately minor mistake does not cast into doubt the credibility of the entire statement, especially when multiple witnesses have made consistent statements.
Just think of how many times an officer is shot on what appears to be a routine traffic stop. Is it only because the officer has a gun or does the shooter have other issues with the law? A simple domestic dispute call can result in an officer being in a position to defend him or her self.
How many times
is an officer shot on what appears to be a routine traffic stop? We hear these sorts of horror stories, but statistically speaking, police are
slightly less likely to die on the job of
any cause (and more likely to be killed in traffic accidents than homicides) than the general population is to be murdered.
In any case, when police officers face actual mortal danger, they, like anybody else, should be entitled to protect themselves. When they don't, they shouldn't. Policeman keep coming out, saying "officer safety is our top priority." This is fucked up. The top priority of the police is supposed to be
public safety. When we hold up cops (or firefighters, or soldiers, etc) as heroes, it is because they are supposed to selflessly face dangerous situations so that we don't have to. We all want police to get home to their families at the end of the day, but their
top priority cannot be to get home to their families at the end of the day if this means that they're going to shoot first and ask questions later. This affirmatively endangers public safety -- the safety of wrongful suspects, of random passersby, and even of actual criminals themselves who, no matter how heinous their crime, are entitled to due process.
Nobody "has to die" simply because an officer has a gun. I see tons of armed officers everyday and I'm still alive to tell about. We don't know exactly what happened in the altercation in this case. One account of the story is that Brown tried to get the cop's gun. We don't know if that's true, but if it is, then Michael Brown is at least partly responsible for his own death. Does that mean he deserved to die? Absolutely not! But even if he did nothing wrong doing the altercation, if you're already breaking the law by shop lifting and smoking marijuana (both are against Missouri law), the chances of something bad and undeserving happening are much, much greater than if he had been obeying the law the whole time.
It's like someone who chooses to drink over the legal limit then "chooses" to drive home in their drunken state. The chances of something bad happening are much greater than if they had obeyed the law the whole time. But if something bad does happen, I wouldn't blame the car. Likewise, I wouldn't blame the gun in this case. Michael Brown was killed due to either his actions, the officer's actions or both.
Whether Brown went for the gun or not is irrelevant, because he wasn't killed during the struggle for the gun. The only one responsible for Brown's death is the man who killed him. The alleged robbery, the marijuana, etc are all distractions and character assassination.