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Michael Brown Shooting

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Skeptic Ginger said:
Fire trucks are about 8 feet wide and it takes up most of the lane.
[qimg]http://i.imgur.com/6sIeSML.jpg[/qimg]
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To me that looks like about a third of the width of the street.

It doesn't really affect anything though.

a_unique_person said:
As Jones writes in The Atlantic, Americans' segregated social circles have influenced responses to the events in Ferguson, Missouri, over the past few weeks. Polls show deep divides between blacks and whites on topics from the role of race in Ferguson to the propriety of responses by protesters and police.
The numbers above offer insight into why so many whites have expressed bafflement over protesters' responses to the shooting of Michael Brown. The history between many black communities and the police forces that serve them is long, complicated, often violent, and characterised by an extreme imbalance of power. But as Jones notes, most whites are not "socially positioned" to understand this history, simply because they know few people who've experienced it.
To be fair, the numbers suggest there is plenty of racial self-selection in black Americans' friend networks, too. But focusing solely on black-white relations, there's a pretty big difference between having only one member of a given race in your friend network, and having eight of them.
In fact, PRRI's data show that a full 75 per cent of whites have "entirely white social networks without any minority presence." The same holds true for slightly less than two-thirds of black Americans.
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Some more information on the background to the protests.
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If true, those are shockingly high proportions.
 
marplots said:
Should she have shot him?
Was backup on the way?

I'm not sure we'll get too far with unrelated incidents of violence.
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It was just an example of what an "unarmed" person can do. The Apostles of St. Michael seem to be stuck on the fact that he was unarmed, therefore the mean policeman had no reason to shoot him.
 
The Central Scrutinizer said:
It was just an example of what an "unarmed" person can do. The Apostles of St. Michael seem to be stuck on the fact that he was unarmed, therefore the mean policeman had no reason to shoot him.
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Does the cop get to fight back? That's what I'd do. At least until my buddies arrived to pile on. I've seen that on cop shows, seems quite effective.

Are cops allowed to run away? That might actually be a better option if you think you are going to lose a fight.
 
marplots said:
Does the cop get to fight back? That's what I'd do. At least until my buddies arrived to pile on. I've seen that on cop shows, seems quite effective.

Are cops allowed to run away? That might actually be a better option if you think you are going to lose a fight.
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What if it's not your buddies who pile on?

What if they get your gun from you?
 
TheL8Elvis said:
Unless you think there is a conspiracy, or the police chief is lying or mistaken, this appears to be the best account we have (so far) of what the officer had to say about what happened:

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...el-brown-ferguson-missouri-timeline/14051827/

Sunday Aug. 10

10 a.m. – Michael Brown, 18, was unarmed, St. Louis County Police Chief Joe Belmar says in a news conference. Belmar says Brown physically assaulted the officer, and during a struggle between the two, Brown reached for the officer's gun. One shot was fired in the car followed by other gunshots outside of the car.
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This timeline is pretty good...seems to be updated regularly because of details of Brown's funeral.

Going through that timeline, I keep coming across the "No Justice, No Peace" slogan. What does this mean? How can we define "Justice" in this circumstance? Wilson's head on a pike?
 
LTC8K6 said:
What if it's not your buddies who pile on?

What if they get your gun from you?
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What if I get AIDS from blood spatter?

We are always going to accept some level of uncertainty. People only differ on where they want to set the dial and why. If I think black citizens are getting a raw deal from the police, I might want to set the dial lower. If I think police are in too much danger, then higher.

I probably wouldn't harp on it except for the glaring example of policing without guns in England. If those cops face the same sort of physical violence and deal with it, why can't we? Was Michael Brown more dangerous than a soccer hooligan with a brick?
 
Skeletor said:
This timeline is pretty good...seems to be updated regularly because of details of Brown's funeral.

Going through that timeline, I keep coming across the "No Justice, No Peace" slogan. What does this mean? How can we define "Justice" in this circumstance? Wilson's head on a pike?
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For those people and the speaker at Brown's funeral I heard on NPR this morning, they are of the opinion that the story and all its details start and stop with "Wilson saw Michael Brown and shot him for no reason" - and no amount of facts will shift that opinion.
 
Polaris said:
For those people and the speaker at Brown's funeral I heard on NPR this morning, they are of the opinion that the story and all its details start and stop with "Wilson saw Michael Brown and shot him for no reason" - and no amount of facts will shift that opinion.
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You have to ask, though, why those who hold that view think it's valid. Even if they are completely off-base, there's some context informing the belief.
 
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marplots said:
You have to ask, though, why those who hold that view think it's valid. Even if they are completely off-base, there's some context informing the belief.
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Oh there's definitely lots of room for grievance WRT the police in the black community, and the response to the Ferguson protests should be included in them. I just think they hitched their wagon to the wrong cause here - and I began looking at this case on their side. The shooting of Michael Brown is looking less and less like the latter day murder of Emmett Till that a lot of people expected this to be, as I see it.
 
Polaris said:
Oh there's definitely lots of room for grievance WRT the police in the black community, and the response to the Ferguson protests should be included in them. I just think they hitched their wagon to the wrong cause here - and I began looking at this case on their side. The shooting of Michael Brown is looking less and less like the latter day murder of Emmett Till that a lot of people expected this to be, as I see it.
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Yes. This isn't the guy everybody should be praising to the skies as a gentle man. He wasn't, at least not always. I for one don't believe that store video was the first time he'd ever used his size and violence to do wrong things.
It could be the first time he ever did that sort of thing but I wouldn't bet money on it.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
You mean this one where the car has no problem whatsoever getting around the people in the street?
[imgw=400]http://i.imgur.com/qLGxHsS.jpg[/imgw]

The width of a small sedan is about 5 feet. That makes the lane about 10 feet wide. :rolleyes:
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Yes, and a football field is only 60 yards long.

:dig:
 
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a_unique_person said:
Some more information on the background to the protests.

As Jones writes in The Atlantic, Americans' segregated social circles have influenced responses to the events in Ferguson, Missouri, over the past few weeks. Polls show deep divides between blacks and whites on topics from the role of race in Ferguson to the propriety of responses by protesters and police. <snip> But as Jones notes, most whites are not "socially positioned" to understand this history, simply because they know few people who've experienced it.
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Very true. The difference between seeing Michael Brown as that punk who pushed past me on the street the other day and seeing Michael Brown as, "He look's like Derrick's kid."
 
Why should cars have to slow down and maneuver around people deliberately walking down the middle of the road when sidewalks are there to allow people to...walk down the side?
 
Monketey Ghost said:
<snip> This isn't the guy everybody should be praising to the skies as a gentle man.<snip>
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Except everybody ISN'T praising him as "a gentle man." Hardly anyone has within the thread, despite multiple accusations. (If you agree I'm right, please don't respond. :) )
 
Wolrab said:
Why should cars have to slow down and maneuver around people deliberately walking down the middle of the road when sidewalks are there to allow people to...walk down the side?
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And how is it in the public's best interest for the officers we pay to patrol our streets to ignore said traffic violations? That's what I don't get. Of course the cop had a right, and a responsibility, to tell people to get out of the road.
 
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