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Michael Brown Shooting

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Mike! said:
I would hope it might depend on how busy a street it is. I've seen it referred to as a 'cul-de-sac' here, but I don't know that is true or not.
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Pictures of the street with the body in it clearly show a very narrow 2 lane street. It may have been an arteriole. It was narrower than the street in front of my house that actually is an arteriole. Cars come minutes to dozens of minutes apart. People walk in the street, they move out of the way when a vehicle comes. I cannot fathom a cop telling anyone to get out of the street in front of my house. It wouldn't cross my mind a cop would ever do that on a small residential street.

Claiming it was a law doesn't make it any less true that cop was hassling these two for no obvious reason other than he felt like it.
 
Skeletor said:
I looked up "2900 Canfield Dr, Ferguson MO" on Google Maps, and I see a wide street, one with double yellow lines down the middle (that indicate a no-passing zone) and with sidewalks on both sides. With the curves in the road, it looks like a terrible place to have a pickup basketball game, especially if you're driving a car through it.

ETA: The shooting happened at about noon, there are large, shady trees on both sides of the street, why would anyone deliberately want to induce heatstroke by walking in the middle of the road instead of using the sidewalk?
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Oh for pity's sake, look at the picture of the body in the street!
Lv7UVl0.jpg


I don't know what you looked at but the body is lying in a very narrow two lane street.

The cop car is at a diagonal across the lane and it blocks a lane and then some. An SUV is about 15 feet long. That makes the street only about 20-25 feet wide, both lanes.
 
Lerxst said:
If you think some laws are unnecessary, and certainly many would argue that some are, you should work to get them changed. Refusing to comply is not going to get you anywhere except often landing you in jail.
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If you think cops don't ignore a gazillion laws when it doesn't matter and don't hassle people for no good reason, you need to get out more.
 
Mike! said:
The middle of a street with curves, busy enough to require double yellow no passing lines, doesn't seem like the healthiest place to take a leisurely stroll home on a Sunday afternoon.
Seems like one could come to a bad end there with almost no warning at all.
But what do I know?
I'm just nutty enough to use a perfectly good sidewalk, if one is available.
Call me a rebel.
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See the picture, unless you think that cop car/suv is as long as a limo, we can see how wide the street is. The curves are in a different section and the yellow line only means it is an arteriole. The street in front of my house is a designated arteriole. That's another way of saying it's a through street. People walk in the street, no one cares and traffic isn't blocked.

I get it people want to excuse justify this cop's behavior. But at least be realistic about it, save the justifying for the shooting. Why would any cop waste his time telling them to get on the sidewalk?
 
Skeletor said:
I looked up "2900 Canfield Dr, Ferguson MO" on Google Maps, and I see a wide street, one with double yellow lines down the middle (that indicate a no-passing zone) and with sidewalks on both sides. With the curves in the road, it looks like a terrible place to have a pickup basketball game, especially if you're driving a car through it.
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Mike! said:
The middle of a street with curves, busy enough to require double yellow no passing lines, doesn't seem like the healthiest place to take a leisurely stroll home on a Sunday afternoon.
Seems like one could come to a bad end there with almost no warning at all.
But what do I know? ...
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tyr_13 said:
No.
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LTC8K6 said:
Yes, but it was 1977 and it was not a street with a line down the middle.
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Skeletor said:
In the initial reports of the shooting, the street I had pictured was just like the link you provided! Yes, you can play basketball, stickball and hockey here...maybe even walk down the middle of the street. Not on Canfield Drive.
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Cain said:
I would like to say the same thing, but why risk going from the right position to the wrong one?
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[qimg]http://i.imgur.com/Lv7UVl0.jpg[/qimg]

:dl:
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
Oh for pity's sake, look at the picture of the body in the street!
[qimg]http://i.imgur.com/Lv7UVl0.jpg[/qimg]

I don't know what you looked at but the body is lying in a very narrow two lane street.

The cop car is at a diagonal across the lane and it blocks a lane and then some. An SUV is about 15 feet long. That makes the street only about 20-25 feet wide, both lanes.
Click to expand...

Just does block one lane in this shot. No "and then some".

http://images.dailykos.com/images/99824/large/ferg3_copy.jpg?1408031070

Different cameras are giving different impressions of sizes and distances.
 
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"People walk in the street, they move out of the way when a vehicle comes."

Clearly not what happened in this case. It's not totally unreasonable for Brown and Johnson to walk down that street just as it's clearly not unreasonable for Wilson to suggest they "move out of the way when a vehicle comes."

Since it's undisputed that Brown and Johnson took issue with this lawful -- and sensible -- order then the distinction becomes fairly meaningless.

Even in white people land, people are told to walk on the sidewalk fairly routinely. I don't see what it is about Brown or Johnson that should render them immune from that possibility.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
Pictures of the street with the body in it clearly show a very narrow 2 lane street. It may have been an arteriole. It was narrower than the street in front of my house that actually is an arteriole. Cars come minutes to dozens of minutes apart. People walk in the street, they move out of the way when a vehicle comes. I cannot fathom a cop telling anyone to get out of the street in front of my house. It wouldn't cross my mind a cop would ever do that on a small residential street.

Claiming it was a law doesn't make it any less true that cop was hassling these two for no obvious reason other than he felt like it.
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Note there is a sidewalk parallel to the street. Sidewalk for people, street for vehicles. If it was safe to walk down the middle of the street, the government wouldn't go to the expense of building sidewalks. This actually has been thought out. Consider that no one would tell their children to make sure and walk down the middle of the street when they are leaving to go over to their friend's house.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
Oh for pity's sake, look at the picture of the body in the street!
[qimg]http://i.imgur.com/Lv7UVl0.jpg[/qimg]

I don't know what you looked at but the body is lying in a very narrow two lane street.

The cop car is at a diagonal across the lane and it blocks a lane and then some. An SUV is about 15 feet long. That makes the street only about 20-25 feet wide, both lanes.
Click to expand...

By following what I see on Google Street View, I'm not limited by the perspective of the photograph and where it was taken from.

For reference, I'm linking to another street 9137 Ellison Dr. that's just off Canfield Dr, and is a much narrower street, complete with basketball hoop. Note the distinct lack of yellow lines, and parking on both sides of the street. On Canfield Dr, I can't find any areas on Google Street View that shows vehicles parked on the side of the road.

Skeptic Ginger said:
See the picture, unless you think that cop car/suv is as long as a limo, we can see how wide the street is. The curves are in a different section and the yellow line only means it is an arteriole. The street in front of my house is a designated arteriole. That's another way of saying it's a through street. People walk in the street, no one cares and traffic isn't blocked.

I get it people want to excuse justify this cop's behavior. But at least be realistic about it, save the justifying for the shooting. Why would any cop waste his time telling them to get on the sidewalk?
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Who's justifying what? I still haven't made up my mind in this case. But the circumstances, such as Brown and Johnson walking in the middle of this particular road, need further inquiry. Was it necessary for Wilson to stop them? Maybe they were weaving over the double yellow line...speaking of which:

"No Passing" had better mean "No Passing," this is a pretty universal way we mark pavement in the United States. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_yellow_line
There's a Double Yellow all the way from Florissant to well past the scene of the incident.
 
One of the two times a cop ever reprimanded me was for starting to walk across a street when the hand light was flashing. I was seventeen, coming home from school. I had crossed that street hundreds of times. I even pointed out that in the course of our little conversation, the light was still green, and I would have certainly made it safely to the other side. He didn't care. In that moment, I knew in my heart that NWA was right.

http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/18clq07c6uvvojpg/original.jpg
 
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Cl1mh4224rd said:
Does no one here remember playing, for example, hockey with your friends in a residential street as a kid? And without fear of running afoul of law enforcement?
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Most residential streets don't have a double-yellow line in the middle. As I pointed out ages ago, this is a side street directly off the main drag in Ferguson, connecting a bunch of apartment complexes to the shopping areas.

But yeah I remember playing in the street and getting out of the way whenever a car came by. We even had a charming little chant:

Car, car C-A-R, stick your head in a jelly jar!
 
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