Michael Brown Shooting

[Maleficent_2014]

>who was the aggressor?

 

meaningless question

 

>all but 4 people think that brown is in the wrong

 

well, i figured that much. this community is a plurality of 110 IQ 19-year-old white conservative boys

 

>"officer" darren wilson

 

lol/10

The ad hominem is strong with this one.

[elsuper]

110 IQ

 

I know Hereno knows how IQ works, so I'm trying to figure this one out. Is there an insult intended? What if there isn't?

[Memph]

The Jury had 2 decisions: 1. either charge Darren Wilson, and there wouldn't be rioting/looting, but it wouldn't be right (on what the evidence says). or 2. They would do what the evidence tells them and let Darren Wilson go, but there would be rioting.

 

It doesnt matter what opinions of the people are, the evidence told them what to do.

The evidence is inconclusive and conflicting. Darren Wilson could have used excessive force, or he could have acted reasonably. However it's not up to the Grand Jury to decide whether or not Darren Wilson is guilty, that's something that should have been decided in a trial, but there was no trial.

[Hereno]

I know Hereno knows how IQ works, so I'm trying to figure this one out. Is there an insult intended? What if there isn't?

it was not an insult it was an accurate portrayal

 

just enough intelligence within the realm of average to not sound stupid but to still hold incredibly stupid positions and to see oneself as intelligent

Edited November 26, 2014 by Hereno

[Maleficent_2014]

it was not an insult it was an accurate portrayal

 

just enough intelligence within the realm of average to not sound stupid but to still hold incredibly stupid positions and to see oneself as intelligent

 

Which is funny because you're making an "informed" decision on the average intelligence of the rest of us, when you have literally no intellectual leg to stand on. Apparently if the facts and science don't fit the narrative, everyone is just dumb. Who'da thunk it?

[Hereno]

We've finally heard from Officer Darren Wilson.

 

Wilson had been publicly silent since the events of August 9, when he shot and killed 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. And, even as the grand jury announced its decision not to indict him, he remained silent. He had his attorneys release a statement on his behalf.

 

But on Monday night, St. Louis County prosecutor Robert McCulloch released the evidence given to the grand jury, including the interview police did with Wilson in the immediate aftermath of the shooting. And so we got to read, for the first time, Wilson's full, immediate account of his altercation with Brown.

 

And it is unbelievable.

 

I mean that in the literal sense of the term: "difficult or impossible to believe." But I want to be clear here. I'm not saying Wilson is lying. I'm not saying his testimony is false. I am saying that the events, as he describes them, are simply bizarre. His story is difficult to believe.

 

The story Wilson tells goes like this:

 

At about noon on August 9th, Wilson hears on the radio that there's a theft in progress at the Ferguson Market. The suspect is a black male in a black shirt.

 

Moments later, Wilson sees two young black men walking down the yellow stripe in the center of the street. He pulls over. "Hey guys, why don't you walk on the sidewalk?" They refuse. "We're almost at our destination," one of them replies. Wilson tries again. "But what's wrong with the sidewalk?" he asks.

 

And then things get weird.

 

Brown's response to "what's wrong with the sidewalk?", as recorded by Wilson, is "!@#$ what you have to say." Remember, Wilson is a uniformed police officer, in a police car, and Brown is an 18-year-old kid who just committed a robbery. And when asked to use the sidewalk, Wilson says Brown replied, "!@#$ what you have to say."

 

"Wilson says Brown replied, "!@#$ what you have to say.""

 

Wilson backs his car up and begins to open the door. "Hey, come here," he said to the kid who just cursed at him. He says Brown replied, "What the !@#$ you gonna do?" And then Brown, in Wilson's telling, slams the car door closed. Wilson tries to open the door again, tells Brown to get back, and then Brown leans into the vehicle and begins punching him.

 

Let's take a breath and recap. Wilson sees two young black men walking in the middle of the street. He pulls over and politely asks them to use the sidewalk. They refuse. He asks again, still polite. Brown tells Wilson — again, a uniformed police officer in a police car — "!@#$ what you have to say." Wilson stops his car, tries to get out, and Brown slams the car door on him and then begins punching him through the open window.

 

What happens next is the most unbelievable moment in the narrative. And so it's probably best that I just quote Wilson's account at length on it.

 

I was doing the, just scrambling, trying to get his arms out of my face and him from grabbing me and everything else. He turned to his...if he's at my vehicle, he turned to his left and handed the first subject. He said, "here, take these." He was holding a pack of — several packs of cigarillos which was just, what was stolen from the Market Store was several packs of cigarillos. He said, "here, hold these" and when he did that I grabbed his right arm trying just to control something at that point. Um, as I was holding it, and he came around, he came around with his arm extended, fist made, and went like that straight at my face with his...a full swing from his left hand.

So Brown is punching inside the car. Wilson is scrambling to deflect the blows, to protect his face, to regain control of the situation. And then Brown stops, turns to his left, says to his friend, "Here, hold these," and hands him the cigarillos stolen from Ferguson Market. Then he turns back to Wilson and, with his left hand now freed from holding the contraband goods, throws a haymaker at Wilson.

 

Every bullshit detector in me went off when I read that passage. Which doesn't mean that it didn't happen exactly the way Wilson describes. But it is, again, hard to imagine. Brown, an 18-year-old kid holding stolen goods, decides to attack a cop and, while attacking him, stops, hands his stolen goods to his friend, and then returns to the beatdown. It reads less like something a human would do and more like a moment meant to connect Brown to the robbery.

 

Wilson next recounts his thought process as he reached for a weapon. He considered using his mace, but at such close range, the mace might get in his eyes, too. He doesn't carry a taser with a fireable cartridge, but even if he did, "it probably wouldn't have hit [brown] anywhere". Wilson couldn't reach his baton or his flashlight. So he went for his gun.

 

Brown sees him go for the gun. And he replies: "You're too much of a !@#$ing !@#$ to shoot me."

 

"You're too much of a !@#$ing !@#$ to shoot me."

 

Again, stop for a moment and think about that. Brown is punching Wilson, sees the terrified cop reaching for his gun, and says "You're too much of a !@#$ing !@#$ to shoot me." He dares him to shoot.

 

And then Brown grabs Wilson's gun, twists it, and points it at Wilson's "pelvic area". Wilson regains control of the firearm and gets off a shot, shattering the glass. Brown backs up a half step and, realizing he's unharmed, dives back into the car to attack Wilson. Wilson fires again, and then Brown takes off running.

 

Wilson exits the car to give chase. He yells at Brown to get down on the ground. Here, I'm going to go back to Wilson's words:

 

When he stopped, he turned, looked at me, made like a grunting noise and had the most intense, aggressive face I've ever seen on a person. When he looked at me, he then did like the hop...you know, like people do to start running. And, he started running at me. During his first stride, he took his right hand put it under his shirt into his waistband. And I ordered him to stop and get on the ground again. He didn't. I fired multiple shots. After I fired the multiple shots, I paused a second, yelled at him to get on the ground again, he was still in the same state. Still charging, hand still in his waistband, hadn't slowed down.

The stuff about Brown putting his hand in his waistband is meant to suggest that Wilson had reason to believe Brown might pull a gun. But it's strange. We know Brown didn't have a gun. And that's an odd fact to obscure while charging a police officer.

 

Either way, at that point, Wilson shoots again, and kills Brown.

 

There are inconsistencies in Wilson's story. He estimates that Brown ran 20-30 feet away from the car and then charged another 10 feet back towards Wilson. But we know Brown died 150 feet away from the car.

 

There are also consistencies. St Louis prosecutor Robert McCulloch said that Brown's DNA was found inside Wilson's car, suggesting there was a physical altercation inside the vehicle. We know shots were fired from inside the car. We know Brown's bullet wounds show he was only hit from the front, never from the back.

 

But the larger question is, in a sense, simpler: Why?

 

Why did Michael Brown, an 18-year-old kid headed to college, refuse to move from the middle of the street to the sidewalk? Why would he curse out a police officer? Why would he attack a police officer? Why would he dare a police officer to shoot him? Why would he charge a police officer holding a gun? Why would he put his hand in his waistband while charging, even though he was unarmed?

 

None of this fits with what we know of Michael Brown. Brown wasn't a hardened felon. He didn't have a death wish. And while he might have been stoned, this isn't how stoned people act. The toxicology report did not indicate he was on PCP or something that would've led to suicidal aggression.

 

Which doesn't mean Wilson is a liar. Unbelievable things happen every day. The fact that his story raises more questions than it answers doesn't mean it isn't true.

 

But the point of a trial would have been to try to answer these questions. We would have either found out if everything we thought we knew about Brown was wrong, or if Wilson's story was flawed in important ways. But now we're not going to get that chance. We're just left with Wilson's unbelievable story.

 

copy/pasted from: http://www.vox.com/2014/11/25/7281165/darren-wilsons-story-side

full interview: http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1370766-interview-po-darren-wilson.html

[Maleficent_2014]

Two things here that contradict the narrative of an innocent black teenager who would never harm an officer of the law. One being that there was significant content of THC in his system, and according to the medical reports, it was twice the limit where in Washington State you could be charged with DWI. THC is a known behavioral affectant that has shown to impair judgement and increase the tolerance of certain pains and other adrenaline affected responses in the human body. I'm not claiming that he was so hyped up on weed that he was unstoppable, or that it drove him insane and to go on a robbery spree and attack the cop. I am saying that He was high not only on marajuana, but also on the adrenaline after having robbed the store and assaulted the clerk. He was confident, familiar with the area and the streets and He had one of his closer friends with him. He was arrogant. To act like He wouldn't be belligerent to a police officer, and then once committed to a situation where he likely knew the officer would find out about the robbery, see it to it's conclusion, simply because he was an 18 year old teenager is naivé and sticking a little too close to the media narrative of a "poor unarmered black boy", and highly unrealistic

 

Secondly, the waistband motion is one of two things. The first being what the officer thought, and what we now know to be true: Brown did not have a gun. How do we know? Because Brown's body was searched as a part of the initial investigation. Did this happen before Officer Wilson shot Brown, and did Wilson know this before that? No, so acting as if Officer Wilson should have known this person who had just struggled for Wilson's gun (because saying "Why didn't Brown use his gun if he had it?" means nothing - At that range, getting Wilson's weapon is as good as shooting him with your own and disarms the cop and stops him from responding) inside the cruiser and had already assaulted Wilson, had a gun, is the definition of unbelievable. The second possibility is that most young black men generally wear loose or baggy pants that would be consistent with what Brown was wearing that day. It is common for people who wear this type of clothing to hold their waistband up to prevent their pants from riding low or falling down while walking or running. Which is more likely to have happened, after the fact? The latter. But we only know that now, after the fact of the matter, and none of which is really credible as a means to discredit the officer's actions.
 

 

Why did Michael Brown, an 18-year-old kid headed to college, refuse to move from the middle of the street to the sidewalk?

 

 

Why did he rob a store, and assault and batter the clerk? Why are you attempting to paint a criminal as someone who was minding his own buisness and had such a bright future ahead of him? If he was going to college, regardless of whether or not he was stopped by Wilson that day He would not be going to college based solely on his actions prior to meeting Officer Wilson. Stop pushing a narrative that doesn't exist.

 

Why would he curse out a police officer? Why would he attack a police officer? Why would he dare a police officer to shoot him? Why would he charge a police officer holding a gun? Why would he put his hand in his waistband while charging, even though he was unarmed?

 

 

I addressed both of these points in my above paragraph but it goes without saying that the only person who knew he was unarmed, was Brown and he didn't act like he was defenseless. Any number of things ranging from the latter of my two reasons in the above, or a third being that he wanted to bluff wilson. Who knows? Better still: who cares. Just because someone is unarmed in terms of a firearm does not mean they are defnseless, and in capable of causing serious injury.

 

None of this fits with what we know of Michael Brown. Brown wasn't a hardened felon. He didn't have a death wish. And while he might have been stoned, this isn't how stoned people act. The toxicology report did not indicate he was on PCP or something that would've led to suicidal aggression.

 

 

Stone people do stupid things, and while your attempts at mitigating the circumstances around how THC can interact with the brain and impair judgement notwithstanding, the evidence shows He did and had all these things. He was a felon as of earlier that day. Before that there is photo evidence of him pointing a handgun at a camera in taking a photo. That's a weapon's charge right there, another felony if it's not registered ( I'll bet it's not but hey, prove me wrong). He apparently did have a death wish based on the forensic evidence taken from inside the vehicle, and what witness testimony from I believe witness 10 reported. Why do you continually try to paint this as a poor, defenseless boy who was doing nothing wrong? Why are you so ignorant to fact, and instead reject science, experience and fact to instead cling to an ideology of balkanization, hatred and racism?

 

But the point of a trial would have been to try to answer these questions. We would have either found out if everything we thought we knew about Brown was wrong, or if Wilson's story was flawed in important ways. But now we're not going to get that chance. We're just left with Wilson's unbelievable story.

 

 

That is because it wasn't a trial. It was a Grand Jury, in which the only bar set to charge a suspect to proceed towards a trial, is probable cause. The Grand Jury, given the facts and the science gathered, determined that there was not enough probable cause to charge the officer. Learn about how the legal system works before you try to game it with racial politics.

Edited November 27, 2014 by Maleficent

[Hereno]

Two things here that contradict the narrative of an innocent black teenager who would never harm an officer of the law. One being that there was significant content of THC in his system

i stopped reading here

 

this, this right here, is why i went ahead and dismissed you and your side of this "argument" before bothering to post that article

[Maleficent_2014]

i stopped reading here

 

this, this right here, is why i went ahead and dismissed you and your side of this "argument" before bothering to post that article

 

Which simply reinforces why I think you ignore science, fact and experience in favor of petty racial politics. I accept your surrender.

[Dietrich]

Just to be clear, Maleficent (because I agree with you in most other respects): Hereno only quoted the article in his post; he didn't actually write it. It shouldn't be unexpected that there would be redundancies between our debate here on P&W and an article written for Vox.

 

Anyway, I think that it's very possible that Wilson used excessive force in his efforts to defend himself from Brown, but if his testimony is true - and I, for one, am far more willing to believe his testimony than any of the myriad other testimonies available - then he didn't have very many options available. If he had had a taser, then obviously he should have used it instead of his gun, but he didn't have a taser. He had a baton, but when someone you just shot is able to shrug off the hit and is now charging you down, I don't think it would be unreasonable to want to keep your distance.

 

On the other hand, was Brown really charging him down from less than a dozen meters away? We can't know for sure. This is why I tend to think that the force exercised by Wilson in this situation may have been excessive; if nothing else, he could have attempted to aim lower (at the legs) in order to incapacitate Brown rather than kill him. What I'm trying to keep in mind, however, is that I wasn't there, and I don't know how I would have reacted in a similar situation. I mean, if someone had just shrugged off a bullet and was charging me down, no matter the distance, in the heat of the moment I would probably be more inclined to shoot wherever I think I can land a hit than to take any kind of careful aim.

 

Ultimately, when a criminal is attacking a police officer and seriously threatening his or her safety, I think that we have to think long and hard before condemning retaliation by the police officer. The use of deadly force should undoubtedly be discouraged, but there's a very good reason that we authorize police officers to carry deadly weapons, and we shouldn't forget that. Whether or not Wilson's use of force was excessive, I'm willing to debate; but the only circumstance under which I think that his use of force would have been completely unjustified is if there is solid evidence that he was not being attacked, and as it stands most evidence seems to indicate a quite different story (that he was, at least at one point, being directly attacked by Brown).

 

All of that said, I would have liked to see a trial. There was clearly plenty of evidence, contradictory and unreliable as much of it is. I don't necessarily trust the politicized Justice Department to conduct an unbiased and thorough investigation; I'd much rather see an open, vigorous investigation.

 

My only qualm about holding a trial is that I don't think that an unbiased jury could be assembled to the satisfaction of both sides, because a black majority would almost definitely convict Wilson regardless of any evidence presented during the trial, while a white majority would be accused of bias by Brown's supporters, as the grand jury was several days ago.

 

My proposed solution is to hold a trial with an exclusively Asian-American jury, because Asian-Americans are universally recognized as incapable of racial bias, amirite gais?

[Maleficent_2014]

I guess I just responded more to the narrative I think he posted.

[Pwnius Scrubius]

I guess I just responded more to the narrative I think he posted.

It's an inquistor article to be exact, published days ago.

[Solomon]

My only qualm about holding a trial is that I don't think that an unbiased jury could be assembled to the satisfaction of both sides, because a black majority would almost definitely convict Wilson regardless of any evidence presented during the trial, while a white majority would be accused of bias by Brown's supporters, as the grand jury was several days ago.

The same argument was used in the 1960's during the violence that accompanied the civil rights movement. How far have you come, baby?

[Maleficent_2014]

Seems like most of the violence being done to blacks, are done by other blacks. Have far have you come to accepting that racism is and has been on the decline for some time now?

[Hereno]

Seems like most of the violence being done to blacks, are done by other blacks. Have far have you come to accepting that racism is and has been on the decline for some time now?

another brilliant post completely disproving my characterization earlier

 

>blacks

>black on black crime having anything to do with this

>racism is on the decline

 

it must be nice to live in white america where your only exposure to inner city crime is to hear about it on the news and thank god that you don't have to live anywhere near those angry black people who really just need to get jobs amirite

[Tim Armstrong]

I tend to agree with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's views as expressed in this article http://time.com/3132635/ferguson-coming-race-war-class-warfare/

 

Class warfare is what we should be contemplating not race war.

 

This book on class and status in America is interesting too http://www.amazon.com/Class-Through-American-Status-System/dp/0671792253

[Mutant]

Cops and Military are trained to shoot to kill. A full magazine being shot is typical for police officers, and sometime necessary with 9mm. From my active duty experience, adrenalin and training take over when in conflict.

 

Hereno's opinion will always be the exact opposite of the majority, because he's a rebel.

Edited November 28, 2014 by Mutant

[Maleficent_2014]

Again, ad hominem attacks and baseless character assessments. Do you intend on actually addressing the facts of the matter?

[Solomon]

Cops and Military are trained to shoot to kill.

I don't understand why U.S.* police officers are trained to shoot to kill. They're not military or paramilitary.

 

* I'm guessing you're referring to police in the U.S. but it'd be easier for all if you specified where you're talking about. I know for example that most European policing is based on "remove the threat" rather than "shoot to kill".

[Mutant]

This is a US case, so yes I'm referring to US cops...

 

Shooting a suspect in the arm or the leg would be difficult for John Wayne, never mind the most skilled marksman on the force, said Candace McCoy, a professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice at the City University of New York.

 

If a police officer decides to fire, and is justified in doing so, they will be shooting under intense pressure at a dangerous suspect who is likely moving quickly, all of which makes it incredibly difficult to hit a target, McCoy said. Officers are trained to shoot at “center massâ€, roughly the chest region, because they’re more likely to hit the target and stop an imminent threat.

 

McCoy said the legal threshold for using deadly force is high: an officer can only shoot at a suspect who poses a life-threatening risk to the officer or the public. She said allowing officers to “shoot to wound†would lower that threshold.

 

“As a policy, [shoot to wound] is a really bad idea because it would give the police permission to take that gun out of the holster under any circumstance,†she said. A shoot to wound policy could lead to more unintentional police killings by expanding the range of circumstances in which an officer would be allowed to use his or her weapon.

 

The concept of shooting to wound is much the same as using a fly swatter to wound a fly, but not kill it.

Edited November 28, 2014 by Mutant

[WISD0MTREE]

I bit and searched this out further. It was a talk by a Dr. Michael Brown examining Israel, unrelated to Ferguson, which disappointed me, because I was hoping it was some kind of conspiracy theory.

Aww...

 

I'm interested in a word count; anyone know how to get one of this?

Sadly, it is a PDF. That means that you would have to convert it to a word document or something like that. 

 

I don't understand why U.S.* police officers are trained to shoot to kill. They're not military or paramilitary.

 

* I'm guessing you're referring to police in the U.S. but it'd be easier for all if you specified where you're talking about. I know for example that most European policing is based on "remove the threat" rather than "shoot to kill".

#landmanagement 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundy_standoff

 

EDIT: (In response of the above post) 

As a non-police shooter, I can confirm this. I have spent so much time on the range... 

Edited November 28, 2014 by WISD0MTREE

[Solomon]

The concept of shooting to wound is much the same as using a fly swatter to wound a fly, but not kill it.

A fly swatter is huge compared to a fly whereas a bullet is small compared to a thigh, a heart, a shoulder, or a brain. People generally swat flies to kill them. I'm not sure what parallel you're trying to draw.

[Ayayay]

A fly swatter is huge compared to a fly whereas a bullet is small compared to a thigh, a heart, a shoulder, or a brain. People generally swat flies to kill them. I'm not sure what parallel you're trying to draw.

Life isn't a video game or movie. Shoot to wound is a figment of Hollywoods imagination. 

[Solomon]

Life isn't a video game or movie. Shoot to wound is a figment of Hollywoods imagination. 

The phenomenon of life mirroring movies and vice versa certainly isn't unique to the U.S.A. but I challenge you to come up with a country which is more defined by its cinematographic output. Can you can tell the difference?

[Morgan]

I'm not going to speak on this particular incident, but I believe all people including police have the right to defend their life if they believe their life is in imminent danger of being ended. However I believe police here in America should try to the best of their abilities to use lethal force as a last resort. Too many people in this country are killed and beaten and abused by law enforcement.