Michael Brown shooting II

[This is The End]

I think there is a larger point here. Law enforcement personnel are human but they are also professionals. They should be trained to act in a way as to deescalate situations and to protect and serve. If the stories are correct then there was a pervasive atmosphere of us vs them mentality that may well have contributed to this tragic event. Even if the officer was reasonably in fear of his life I think it quite possible that he, the officer, contributed to the escalation.

Exactly. The officer should be held to a higher standard because of that.

Let us not forget that just a few years ago Wilson was part of a department (Jennings, MO) that was so corrupt and racially charged that it was disbanded entirely. The entire department of 45 officers was fired. No disciplinary records (or records of what exactly transpired in that corrupt department) were kept. Some say there were records that were destroyed.

That Jennings police department was reformed, from scratch. Mostly with some county officers and also with some specifically chosen officers who were disbanded. It was been claimed, quite logically, that those officers who were given their jobs back were the ones most trusted by the city council that did the original investigation (the city council also in charge of both the disbanding and the reforming the department).

Officer Wilson was not one of those officers.

Can we read something into that? Perhaps. Perhaps not.

But we do know that he went to another department that has had a similar history of racial tension.

 

[JohnnyG]

That's complete nonsense.

Standing on your porch filming a police officer at the end of your sidewalk and asking his name in no way prevents him from delivering a summons and is no way is confrontational. Why, as a matter of fact, it's protected speech.

And the fact that you call filming someone who is 10 to 15 feet away being "in his face" is the nonsense cherry on the nonsense cake.

The only person in that video being confrontational and getting in someone's face is Wilson. And this the exact kind of slipshod, dishonest logic that corrupt cops use to get away with such flagrant abuses of Constitutional rights.

I don't know how anyone can watch that 15 second video and not see that Arman was being defiant and confrontational.

Filming someone isn't what makes it "in your face", and neither is the distance. It's the provocative manner in which it is done.

 

[RandFan]

I don't know how anyone can watch that 15 second video and not see that Arman was being defiant and confrontational.

Americans have the constitutional right to be both defiant and confrontational. This point has been sourced in this thread. Do you need the links again? What a citizen doesn't have a right to do is interfere with a police officer performing his or her duties. Being defiant and confrontational is not on its face interference if you are the subject of police attention. You have to follow lawful orders. That's it.

Link in next post.

 

[RandFan]

Filming someone isn't what makes it "in your face", and neither is the distance. It's the provocative manner in which it is done.

Americans have a constitutionally protected right to be provocative.

Link

The court explained that, much like police are expected to withstand verbal challenges from citizens without threatening arrest, this “same restraint demanded of law enforcement officers in the face of ‘provocative and challenging’ speech must be expected when they are merely the subject of videotaping that memorializes, without impairing, their work in public spaces.”

 

[Wolrab]

This is getting ridiculous again. Wilson saying something stupid about arresting someone 2 years ago for recording him as he is being recorded (for 15 seconds) and the recording obviously wasn't confiscated and destroyed by Wilson does not have a damned thing to do with the Brown shooting.

Wilson's name is not included with all those complaints from the other jurisdiction he worked for.
Him going to work in Ferguson instead of reapplying for his old job has nothing to do with anything.
Attempting to use any of that to call Wilson a bad racist cop is nothing but obfuscation in an downplay or distract from the real bad guy here, Michael Brown.

Brown stole from and attacked someone literally minutes prior to a cop pulling up, yelling at him to get off the street. When Wilson stopped and came back, Brown KNEW it was about the robbery (no I'm not reading his mind, but he knew) and all the rest of the events transpired because of what Brown did.
Wilson will walk, and rightfully so.

 

[RandFan]

I'm confident Wilson will walk. I'm not at all confident that the police in Ferguson don't have a pervasive problem of bad policing that has fed racial tensions. I'm also not at all confident as to what level Wilson contributed to this confrontation. Was it simply an error in judgement that he was close enough to Brown for there to be an opportunity for Brown to struggle with the officer? Did the officer treat Brown professionally when he ordered him off of the street?

I suspect the reason people have been marching and protesting is because there is a a real problem with policing and community relations in Ferguson.

 

[johnny karate]

I don't know how anyone can watch that 15 second video and not see that Arman was being defiant and confrontational.

Filming someone isn't what makes it "in your face", and neither is the distance. It's the provocative manner in which it is done.

People have a Constitutional right to film the police. That is not in dispute.

So please explain how someone may exercise that right in a manner that you personally approve and differs from what takes place in that video.

 

[johnny karate]

This is getting ridiculous again. Wilson saying something stupid about arresting someone 2 years ago for recording him as he is being recorded (for 15 seconds) and the recording obviously wasn't confiscated and destroyed by Wilson does not have a damned thing to do with the Brown shooting.

Wilson's name is not included with all those complaints from the other jurisdiction he worked for.
Him going to work in Ferguson instead of reapplying for his old job has nothing to do with anything.
Attempting to use any of that to call Wilson a bad racist cop is nothing but obfuscation in an downplay or distract from the real bad guy here, Michael Brown.

Brown stole from and attacked someone literally minutes prior to a cop pulling up, yelling at him to get off the street. When Wilson stopped and came back, Brown KNEW it was about the robbery (no I'm not reading his mind, but he knew) and all the rest of the events transpired because of what Brown did.
Wilson will walk, and rightfully so.

I have no doubt Wilson will walk, and have said as much upthread.

However, I do find it interesting that you profess to know what happened in the incident with Brown with enough confidence to assign all the blame to Brown.

How did you come by this knowledge?

 

[WildCat]

Yeah, because that means something completely different.

Why yes it does, is English not your first language?

The guy had a video recorder. That's why there is video. Not stills. I do not know if the officer misspoke or if he sincerely did not want his face captured on video but was fine with voice recording. It's clear that the officer was talking about the video recording. Which the resident had a right to record. I'm not making a distinction between voice and video here.

Of course he had the right to record, however the officer had the right to arrest Arman for ignoring the previous summons regarding his derelict vehicles. If Atman had been doing jumping jacks instead of cooperating with Wilson wrt the derelict vehicles summons would you be claiming he was arrested for doing jumping jacks?

 

[TheL8Elvis]

What was the lie, exactly?

That video can be interpreted in many ways, since it's so short and out of context. One way is that Wilson wasn't going to arrest Arman for ignoring the summons if he would stop taking pictures and cooperate with him.

We do know that Arman was arrested not for taking pictures, but for ignoring the summons previously given for the derelict vehicles on his property. Funny Arman never mentioned the derelict vehicles or the summons about them he ignored, and tried to make it look like Wilson just walked up on his property to harass him for no reason.

Let's clear this up and see if we can put all the info in one place if we are going to continue to argue about it.
video and article on the guardian

First point - There was no "ignored previous summons". Wilson was there to serve a summons for the vehicles.



I think the above description occurred prior to the beginning of the recording.

However, Armand claims:
Arman disputed Wilson’s account of the start of their encounter, saying that he “began recording within moments of Wilson approaching the property” and that Wilson only mentioned a voice recording being acceptable after Arman had been arrested.

Then:


"I advised Arman that I would not comply with his demand and to remove the camera from my face in order for us to complete the process of the derelict vehicles Arman refused to abide by any of my requests and only replied by stating that he needed my name. It should be noted Arman was capable of reading my department issued name plate attached to my uniform.

I then ordered Arman off the porch and to place his hands behind his back, as he was being placed under arrest..."

This would seem to be the description, from wilsons POV, of what happened in the recording. The recording ends as wilson walks up to Armand. I assume at that point, armand is arrested.

The lie, as described by Unabogie and others, is that on the recording Wilson says:
"If you wanna take a picture of me one more time, I’m gonna lock your ass up.”
He then writes a report that says: " I then advised Armand that he was under arrest for Failure to Comply, as he refused to comply with all requests needed in order to complete the summons process"

The "lie" , as I understand it, is that Wilson claimed to have arrested Armand for failure to comply, but he actually arrested him for taking a video, as threatened, and made up the failure to comply charge.

Wilsons initial description seems reasonable to me. It seems rather unlikely that Armand started recording within moments of Wilson appearing, because there was absolutely no discussion on the video of why Wilson was there. Then during that discussion, Armand decided to record the summons process.

After that though ... we don't hear Wilson make any demands for Armand to comply with on the video. And the video. None of the things Wilson claims are on the video.

Here is link to to Issuance and Service of Summons or Other Process in MO : http://www.courts.mo.gov/page.jsp?id=871
I'm no lawyer, but it seems like a pretty straight forward process - you can post the summons. If the person refuses to accept the summons, that is also proof of service. So what is it Wilson needed Armand to comply with ?

Also - When Wilson writes:
" It should be noted Arman was capable of reading my department issued name plate attached to my uniform"
Shouldn't it also be noted that Wilson was capable simply saying his name ???

After going over this for a few days - I think at the end of the day, Wilson is a typical cop who arrested Armand on a ******** charge because Armand made his job more difficult, or pissed him off.

It probably also informs us of how he interacted with Brown and Johnson. I agree with davefoc when he said:

However I think that the video provides some support for my view that Wilson acted in ways that unnecessarily ramped up the possibility of violence. Wilson was delivering a summons. That is a pretty straightforward thing to do and his actions and words needed to stay focused on that goal. Whether Arman could keep cars in his front yard or not was a dispute between the city and Arman. Wilson wasn't there to prove his manhood or to convince Arman of the wrongness of his ways. At the point that Arman refused service Wilson needed to calmly inform him of the consequences and at any point where Wilson noticed that Arman was not going to cooperate Wilson needed to call for back up.

Wilson is not very good at his job if he had to arrest Armand. And writing him up for pitbulls seems like it could easily have been out of spite at that point.

I'm still not sure how it all plays into the shooting of Brown, if at all.

 

[WildCat]

Americans have the constitutional right to be both defiant and confrontational. This point has been sourced in this thread. Do you need the links again? What a citizen doesn't have a right to do is interfere with a police officer performing his or her duties. Being defiant and confrontational is not on its face interference if you are the subject of police attention. You have to follow lawful orders. That's it.

Link in next post.

You'd have a great point if Arman wasn't already subject to arrest because he ignored his previous summons regarding the derelict vehicles on his property. Being confrontational to a police officer who already has grounds to arrest you is almost always going to result in your getting arrested, whether it's recording them or singing Kumbaya.

 

[Upchurch]

I'm confident Wilson will walk. I'm not at all confident that the police in Ferguson don't have a pervasive problem of bad policing that has fed racial tensions. I'm also not at all confident as to what level Wilson contributed to this confrontation. Was it simply an error in judgement that he was close enough to Brown for there to be an opportunity for Brown to struggle with the officer? Did the officer treat Brown professionally when he ordered him off of the street?

I suspect the reason people have been marching and protesting is because there is a a real problem with policing and community relations in Ferguson.

This, right here, is the root problem that is not being addressed. Nothing is going to get better until it does. It might get quieter, but it isn't going to get better.



On other news, I've heard several murmurs from unrelated sources around town that the Grand Jury announcement will be on Sunday. Take those fifth- and sixth-hand rumors for what they are worth.

 

[WildCat]

Let's clear this up and see if we can put all the info in one place if we are going to continue to argue about it.
video and article on the guardian

First point - There was no "ignored previous summons". Wilson was there to serve a summons for the vehicles.

There were "ignored previous summons", it's in the very document linked in your article one sentence before the one you quoted.

 

[TheL8Elvis]

There were "ignored previous summons", it's in the very document linked in your article one sentence before the one you quoted.

Yes, there were previous summons.

There were not "ignored" previous summons.

Arman was not arrested, as you keep claiming, for "ignored previous summons."




The Ferguson Courts department then requested a summons be given to the property owner (Michael Arman) for the additional derelict vehicles...

That summons is why Wilson was there. And that is the summons that was being served that Armand failed to comply with.

Would you also care to try to explain what part of receiving a summons Arman failed to comply with ?

 

[TheL8Elvis]

You'd have a great point if Arman wasn't already subject to arrest because he ignored his previous summons regarding the derelict vehicles on his property. Being confrontational to a police officer who already has grounds to arrest you is almost always going to result in your getting arrested, whether it's recording them or singing Kumbaya.

You made that up.

 

[WildCat]

Yes, there were previous summons.

There were not "ignored" previous summons.

Arman was not arrested, as you keep claiming, for "ignored previous summons."


[qimg]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/imagehosting/thum_50044546f4eb4ed342.png[/qimg]

The Ferguson Courts department then requested a summons be given to the property owner (Michael Arman) for the additional derelict vehicles...

That summons is why Wilson was there. And that is the summons that was being served that Armand failed to comply with.

Would you also care to try to explain what part of receiving a summons Arman failed to comply with ?

You may be correct, we really don't know. We do know that the situation was not resolved.

 

[RandFan]

You'd have a great point if Arman wasn't already subject to arrest because he ignored his previous summons regarding the derelict vehicles on his property. Being confrontational to a police officer who already has grounds to arrest you is almost always going to result in your getting arrested, whether it's recording them or singing Kumbaya.

You'd have had a great point if Wilson had secured an arrest warrant and the intent of arresting Arman. Further, you'd have had a great point if the arrest report had specified that Wilson had gone there to arrest Arman.

As it is there is no evidence whatsoever that Wilson went there with the intent of arresting Arman. On the contrary, there is evidence that Wilson threatened Arman with arrest for recording Wilson. Wilson used the logical operator "if" in his threat demonstrating further that Wilson had not gone there with the intent to arrest.

 

[Belz...]

No, he didn't. He said "I'll lock you up if you don't stop taking pictures" or something similar.

Oh, well that's totally different, then.

 

[WildCat]

You'd have had a great point if Wilson had secured an arrest warrant and the intent of arresting Arman. Further, you'd have had a great point if the arrest report had specified that Wilson had gone there to arrest Arman.

As it is there is no evidence whatsoever that Wilson went there with the intent of arresting Arman. On the contrary, there is evidence that Wilson threatened Arman with arrest for recording Wilson. Wilson used the logical operator "if" in his threat demonstrating further that Wilson had not gone there with the intent to arrest.

You may well be correct, thinking about it ore if Arman had not shown up in court for the previous summons Wilson likely would have showed up with an arrest warrant rather than another summons.

But the fact remains that Arman was arrested not for recording Wilson, but for interfering with the delivery of the summons.

 

[TheL8Elvis]

You may be correct, we really don't know. We do know that the situation was not resolved.

You can do better than that, although I think I should probably just take this

It's all in his report ... we really do know.

"The Ferguson Courts department then requested a summons be given to the property owner (Michael Arman) for the additional derelict vehicles...
...
I advised Arman that I would not comply with his demand and to remove the camera from my face in order for us to complete the process of the derelict vehicles Arman refused to abide by any of my requests and only replied by stating that he needed my name. It should be noted Arman was capable of reading my department issued name plate attached to my uniform.

I then ordered Arman off the porch and to place his hands behind his back, as he was being placed under arrest
...
I then advised Armand that he was under arrest for Failure to Comply, as he refused to comply with all requests needed in order to complete the summons process"