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Certain "skeptics" in the thread would have been well advised to attend TAM this year, especially a certain talk:
"Just because someone tells you something happened with emotion, confidence and detail, doesn't mean it really happened" - Elizabeth Loftus, world renowned expert on false memories
Oh, boy. Apparently you failed a class in Persuasion 101, because you can't possibly think this act is winning you any converts. You're in luck, though. SkepticTank has your back.
Someone could say the cops killed an unarmed man with his hands in the air, and that would be correct, but it would also omit critical context. If the officers wanted to gun this guy down in cold blood, they could've done it much sooner. Aside from moral reasons and cultural indoctrination (thou shall not kill), I've heard cops complain about dealing with all the paperwork and bureaucracy. These sheriff deputies waited, giving the criminal/soon-to-be-victim enough time to turn around and reach into the car before coming right back out and thrusting his hands into the air.
Life is difficult. It's even more difficult if you're stupid.
The main factors in just about all of these types of situations are Hobbesian: fear and self-preservation. Racism/xenophobia heightens these fears. The fact Michael Brown was six foot three and almost three hundred pounds also heightens fears. If Wilson had indeed seen Brown carrying a cigar and connected him to the robbery earlier, then would further heighten his fears.
Real world racism is a little more subtle than people here seem to suggest. A white guy like myself, if I have a tie on and I'm wearing glasses, I'm gonna get the benefit of the doubt. I'm profiled as the kind of person who steals something with a handshake.
In the video Skeptic_Tank posted of the cops getting gunned down by the scrawny old man (last link)... at one point the guy's dancing in the streets. Later he disobeys orders by shoving his hands into his pockets. Now it's irrational to believe he had a gun in his pants pockets (do people in Georgia carry Derringers?), but the cop's screaming, his adrenalin's pumping. A knife could still be deadly in close quarters. It's completely possible that if this was a young black man, he wouldn't be able to reach into his truck without getting shot.
Citizens are shot, especially at night, when they cannot hear officers clearly. Officers who cannot clearly see mistake garden hoses and pens for firearms.
I remember reading a story about the danger of left-hand turns. A man and his son were crossing a street at night when a cab driver made a left-turn and ran them over. The kid died. The cab-driver claims he didn't see them. The mother of the boy finds this impossible to believe since her husband is 6'3". To add a racial charge, the victims are white and the cab-driver is an African immigrant. He wasn't on a cell-phone. He wasn't eating. He reportedly wasn't in a hurry.
Human beings are apes in pants. Mis-common is communication.
Obviously if we have multiple neighborhood witnesses telling us this officer needlessly finished off Brown when the situation had obviously lost all credible capacity to represent a danger to him... and that he did this in an "execution style" particularly if this was when Brown was on his knees, begging the officer not to shoot, with his hands raised... well, we've got a serious problem.
If that's what happened, depending on just how demented of a version we wish to believe (I feel some witnesses have gone further than others with the brutality they describe) this officer needs to face anything ranging from loss of his job all the way to murder charges. I don't think anyone would deny that.
And we obviously don't want to just dismiss these witnesses out of hand. But with that said, there are some very important considerations that must be kept in mind at this point.
Emotions are high, community and racial loyalty are factors. Hatred and distrust of whites, police officers, and white police officers in particular are all present and very real.
There's a "circling of the wagons" type of effect here.
A lot of people, if they just see the tail end of something and don't know how it began, but it culminates in a man with a gun shooting and killing, before their very eyes, a much younger man who is of their same race (and the shooter is not) and is unarmed... right out on their street no less? Well, let's just say that is a pretty rigorous test of one's objectivity and emotional control, and I wouldn't expect a lot of people to pass it.
Go back and watch the testimony and listen to the 911 call of Jane Surdyka, who didn't see much of anything the night Trayvon Martin was shot, except some shadows, but was in hysterics. Bawling uncontrollably on the phone with the police dispatch operator. She had given herself over completely to her emotions, and facts weren't going to get in the way of that. At trial she testified to things which weren't possible (Trayvon shot in the back while face down) in light of physical evidence and ballistics, etc. Her testimony had been very clearly infected by media coverage and by reflex sympathy for the deceased, younger party.
Those sorts of things are, almost without a doubt, at play in this case too.
That's why I feel we need something pretty substantial before we convict a wounded officer who was put in such a perilous situation as to have to discharge his firearm inside his own cruiser, and who, at this point, no reasonable person doubts was attacked by this established thug who'd attacked someone else shortly before.
This is no longer a question of "did he just execute this kid for not being respectful after being told to get on the sidewalk?" that is now off the table. We're down to just determining whether he kept firing after a point he should've stopped. And others have acknowledged already in this thread, sometimes a person can shoot their hands up in a "surrender" thing when the fatal shots and trigger squeezes are already a done deal.
And do I go out of my way to give this officer the benefit of the doubt, and do I start with a very dim view of a community which is capable of sustaining riots and looting over the course of several days, and where "snitches get stitches" is spray painted on the side of an innocent store owner's burned down business in the process? You bet I do.
I wonder how else you can describe someone who has dismissed out of hand the word of multiple eyewitnesses who all the same thing? Either they're all lying, or they all saw Officer Wilson commit a crime. So at some point, dismissing a large group of witnesses as simply inherently unreliable, or biased, or lying, transforms from skepticism to wishful thinking and outright denialism. Note that no one here is defending Brown at the store, nor is anyone claiming that it's all a hoax. In fact, this alleged criminal act is being taken at face value by everyone here. That's the epitome of rational investigation. Taking the facts as they come. Yet the "other side" (the side that wants Brown's shooting to be vindicated) has routinely engaged in conspiratorial thinking. In fact, according to them, every one of these witnesses is in on it, right?
In a case like this, I'm going to need more than a handful of eye witness accounts to believe this cop is guilty of a crime like murder. There's agendas on both sides, and it's frankly silly to pretend that there is no reason for witnesses to embellish, exaggerate or outright lie in a case that is charged with identity politics. In the crowd of protestors, I saw a woman holding up a "black Hebrew" inspired sign that said something along the lines of, "all devils should be killed", which is clearly a reference to white people. I believe there's racial hatred underlying the motivations of many of these protesters and rioters. I can't shake the feeling that some of the "witnesses" if not all have similar mindsets, and are therefore capable of framing a white cop for murder. The extremely far-fetched nature of at least one of those accounts (the one you recently pointed out, where he was executed with a headshot while he was on his knees and begging for his life) supports that.
I'm going to need tangible evidence to believe the leftwing narrative.
In a case like this, I'm going to need more than a handful of eye witness accounts to believe this cop is guilty of a crime like murder. There's agendas on both sides, and it's frankly silly to pretend that there is no reason for witnesses to embellish, exaggerate or outright lie in a case that is charged with identity politics.
Oh, boy. Apparently you failed a class in Persuasion 101, because you can't possibly think this act is winning you any converts. You're in luck, though. SkepticTank has your back.
I don't need to persuade anyone. Skeptics already understand these principals and are on my side. The true believers can keep believing, and I'll keep laughing at them.
Before we lynch this cop and destroy his life even more than it's already destroyed, it will require a video surfacing, or something very damning and very conclusive in the physical evidence which isn't compatible with any justifiable scenario.
Sound like a tall order? It is. Because we're talking about a man's life here. Brown's dead, sure, but he chose the life of a felon. This officer, at this time, seems pretty clearly to have been the victim in their encounter, at least during the early portions.
So the standard of evidence should be pretty high. If it isn't, it will be because of racial and political pressure.
So Michael Brown didn't choose the life of a violent felon?
Or, assuming you concede that undeniable point, are you saying that choosing the life of a violent felon shouldn't have any impact on how much society values your life?
Wow, that's pretty obvious evidence of trigger happy police. Or is it?
This does elucidate a point; why the heck don't the police cars in Ferguson have dash-cams? They would go a long way towards clearing up many of the issues in this case.
So Michael Brown didn't choose the life of a violent felon?
Or, assuming you concede that undeniable point, are you saying that choosing the life of a violent felon shouldn't have any impact on how much society values your life?
I thought we were "talking about a man's life". Then you immediately, in the next sentence, exposed what you really think of a man's life, which is nothing. Your thinking is completely muddled, made slow and plodding from a steady ingestion of toxic racism and bigotry.
I thought we were "talking about a man's life". Then you immediately, in the next sentence, exposed what you really think of a man's life, which is nothing. Your thinking is completely muddled, made slow and plodding from a steady ingestion of toxic racism and bigotry.
In a case like this, I'm going to need more than a handful of eye witness accounts to believe this cop is guilty of a crime like murder. There's agendas on both sides, and it's frankly silly to pretend that there is no reason for witnesses to embellish, exaggerate or outright lie in a case that is charged with identity politics. In the crowd of protestors, I saw a woman holding up a "black Hebrew" inspired sign that said something along the lines of, "all devils should be killed", which is clearly a reference to white people. I believe there's racial hatred underlying the motivations of many of these protesters and rioters. I can't shake the feeling that some of the "witnesses" if not all have similar mindsets, and are therefore capable of framing a white cop for murder. The extremely far-fetched nature of at least one of those accounts (the one you recently pointed out, where he was executed with a headshot while he was on his knees and begging for his life) supports that.
I'm going to need tangible evidence to believe the leftwing narrative.
The only thing on that tape is the guy's statement Brown was moving toward the cop:
Eyewitness: 'Then the next thing I know he doubled back toward him cus - the police had his gun drawn already on him'
Man 1: 'Oh, the police got his gun'
Eyewitness: 'The police kept dumpin on him, and I’m thinking the police kept missing – he like – be like – but he kept coming toward him
(crosstalk)'
I listened to the whole 10 minutes. (Shows they left the body in the street uncovered and in full view a full 10 minutes, BTW.) This account doesn't contradict the other witnesses at all who were closer. He doesn't say Brown's hands were up. That's it. He doesn't add a 4th witness who saw Brown surrendering.
Johnson and Mitchell were only feet away. I don't know where that third person was. We don't know where this guy was standing but it sounds like it was a lot further away from the event than the other witnesses.
There's no smoking gun contradiction here unless you imagine it.
Except for convicted murderer Michael Dunn. In that case you valued the life of the murderer and shrugged off the life of the victim. Weird. There's some sort of pattern here, but I just can't put my finger on it.
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