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Michael Brown Shooting

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Monketey Ghost said:
I reiterate my challenge:

I'll willingly admit to being wrong if the coming reports show the cop wasn't justified in shooting.

Anyone wanna join that group, the potential "I was wrong" list? Sign up!
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Define your criteria ahead of time for 'justified'.

If you base that solely on Wilson's word, then I call BS.

Given past acquittals of cops, like in spite of the Rodney King video evidence, or in public trials like with the DNA evidence in the OJ trial, I'm not even willing to base it on the final legal finding.

However, if you want to define the forensics criteria which you stake your "I was wrong" on, I'll join that group.

If the rest of the autopsy results support the conclusion Brown's arms were out, away from the body, consistent with getting down on the ground, or up, palms facing toward the shooter,either one consistent with arms in surrender, given the kill shots to the top of the head, that pretty much says Brown was trying to surrender.

Now you can argue that Wilson wasn't quick enough to see Brown was surrendering. I don't call that justified, I call that negligent.


So what are your criteria? Spell it out before the rest of the autopsy is released.

And don't forget to explain the one shot to the palm.
 
An interesting column from Mark Steyn about the whole mess:
http://www.steynonline.com/6524/cigars-but-not-close
It's mostly not about the shooting itself (there's not a lot to say when so many critical facts remain unknown) but about general policing atmosphere and tactics. A small excerpt:

The most basic problem is that we will never know for certain what happened. Why? Because the Ferguson cruiser did not have a camera recording the incident. That's simply not credible. "Law" "enforcement" in Ferguson apparently has at its disposal tear gas, riot gear, armored vehicles and machine guns ...but not a dashcam. That's ridiculous. I remember a few years ago when my one-man police department in New Hampshire purchased a camera for its cruiser. It's about as cheap and basic a police expense as there is.​

I'm a big fan of not just dashboard cams, but also body-worn police cameras.
 
newyorkguy said:
I think your putting the cart in front of the horse. When police shoot an unarmed eighteen year old six times and the officer is not charged with anything isn't it reasonable to be a little skeptical about THAT?
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What is a skeptical response to that assertion?
Seems to me some skeptical positions about that might be looking into whether or not he was really unarmed, or really shot six times, or that the shooter wasn't really a cop. Hard to be skeptical about claims that are not made
 
jhunter1163 said:
You're assuming there was police misconduct, which is (at least to my mind) hardly proven. Yes, Brown was unarmed in the sense that he didn't have a weapon, but it's disingenuous to suggest that a six-foot-four, 290-pound man (which Brown was, despite his youth) with a demonstrated tendency toward aggression (see the robbery video, plus the assault in the police car) did not, or could not, present a threat to Officer Wilson.
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Okay only you've taken this completely out of context. The comment was made that the initial reaction of skeptics should've been to question the protesters. The original OP was based on the fact an unarmed sixteen year old had been shot six times. In fact if you go back and read the beginning of the thread Unaboogie wrote:
Unabogie said:
Michael Brown was walking, unarmed, with his friend when he was stopped by a policeman. What happened next is in dispute, but his friend says he was shot in the back while running away...
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Then he listed some of the vicious comments he'd seen on a local blog. There was skepticism that this shooting was really justifiable. I was posting in this thread Friday when it suddenly went ballistic. Up until that point it was pretty moderate.
 
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LTC8K6 said:
So what are we going to have, 5 or 6 different interpretations of the autopsies?
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Only if you count the news media and all the extra expert talking heads.

I watched the news conference where Dr. Baden very clearly clarified the statement "all the shots came from the front" is not what they found, it was what the reporter mistakenly concluded from the anatomical drawing. Both Baden and his assistant explained the standard diagram was not indicative of where the arms would have been when shot.

He also said and demonstrated that the graze wound on the inner arm could have been from the back, or from the arm in front of Brown, defensively, or in another position. The examiners could not tell what position the arms were in from the evidence they had. They need the crime scene evidence, the clothing and the pre-autopsy X-rays of the bullet locations to know more.

It's clear this autopsy was done because the body was released to the family but the rest of the evidence was not released.

Baden also said in the vast majority of the cases the autopsies are going to agree and he didn't expect this one to be different.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
Only if you count the news media and all the extra expert talking heads.

I watched the news conference where Dr. Baden very clearly clarified the statement "all the shots came from the front" is not what they found, it was what the reporter mistakenly concluded from the anatomical drawing. Both Baden and his assistant explained the standard diagram was not indicative of where the arms would have been when shot.

He also said and demonstrated that the graze wound on the inner arm could have been from the back, or from the arm in front of Brown, defensively, or in another position. The examiners could not tell what position the arms were in from the evidence they had. They need the crime scene evidence, the clothing and the pre-autopsy X-rays of the bullet locations to know more.

It's clear this autopsy was done because the body was released to the family but the rest of the evidence was not released.

Baden also said in the vast majority of the cases the autopsies are going to agree and he didn't expect this one to be different.
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That's all doubt. It's not even a tie, which would still go to the officer in court. It's reasonable doubt.
 
Oh yeah, forgot to add, no evidence of a struggle as in a fight with Wilson through the car window.

So far that's consistent with pushing the car door into Wilson hitting his face, but not consistent with struggling for a gun or punching Wilson through the car window.

And all you forumites claiming no one here is looking at the evidence, we're all confirming our biases prematurely, if it turns out some of us were looking at the evidence, are you going to take that back?:rolleyes:
 
Distracted1 said:
Lots of talk about " skeptical-ness " in this thread.
Seems to me that the positive assertion from page one is that the policeman unjustly killed an innocent teen.
Doesn't skepticism in that case, mean questioning that assertion. How is it a display of skepticism to take that initial narrative at face value?
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Asserting that the shooting was justified is also a positive claim. So by your logic, skepticism would mean questioning that assertion and not taking it at face value.

I would say that true skepticism in this case - at least as at this juncture - would a be a position of relative neutrality.

And to that point, maybe we should wait until all of the facts are in instead of high-fiving each other and gloating over every little new piece of information that supports our predetermined conclusions.
 
I suspect the news media paid Baden to do "the family's autopsy". NYT didn't get it from a leak, they paid for it up front.
 
casebro said:
I suspect the news media paid Baden to do "the family's autopsy". NYT didn't get it from a leak, they paid for it up front.
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You're not keeping up. Baden waived his standard 10K fee.

And it was Baden who said the report of all shots being from the front was a misrepresentation of their findings. It was Baden who said one shot could have been from the back, in today's news conference. He made a point of correcting that mistake the reporter made.
 
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This is essentially a rerun of the Zimmerman case. The big difference is we don't have the police reports, including the statement(s) of the shooter, and that makes a huge difference. Without that information, it is hard to know much of anything at this point.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
Define your criteria ahead of time for 'justified'.

If you base that solely on Wilson's word, then I call BS.

Given past acquittals of cops, like in spite of the Rodney King video evidence, or in public trials like with the DNA evidence in the OJ trial, I'm not even willing to base it on the final legal finding.

However, if you want to define the forensics criteria which you stake your "I was wrong" on, I'll join that group.

If the rest of the autopsy results support the conclusion Brown's arms were out, away from the body, consistent with getting down on the ground, or up, palms facing toward the shooter,either one consistent with arms in surrender, given the kill shots to the top of the head, that pretty much says Brown was trying to surrender.

Now you can argue that Wilson wasn't quick enough to see Brown was surrendering. I don't call that justified, I call that negligent.


So what are your criteria? Spell it out before the rest of the autopsy is released.

And don't forget to explain the one shot to the palm.
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Justified: no charges are filed against the officer and it is officially judged to be a right shooting.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
Translation: you aren't going to state what forensic evidence will convince you that you were wrong. Got it. :rolleyes:
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Thing is, forensics about bullet wounds can be very shaking. I saw this with the Jodi Arias case (I disagreed with the pathologist on a number of things).

I'd like a video of the shooting, but that's probably not going to happen. Wilson's story needs to have gaping holes in it. Something that just smells like BS. Like Zimmerman's claim that Treyvon Martin told him, "you're going to die tonight", which always sounded like a lie to me.
 
I don't know what to say about that toxicology report. As a smoker, it goes against my bias to think that it matters.
 
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