Michael Brown shooting II

[ClarkMag]

The libs in the media look for a black victim issue where they can be wrong, and so goad the conservatives into a fight, and yet distract low information voters with a red herring "unarmed".

And the stupid conservatives will fall for it. They chase after the truth like dog chases after a squirrel.

 

[Mike!]

There may have been a thousand or more posts about this early on, between the first and current thread.

Considering that the shots ( the last group ) were rather close together. it is possible the shot to the top of the head ( possibly the last shot fired ) struck as brown was falling forward as a result of having already been hit several times.

There was also presented at least one shot of a football player, whose crown presented a clear target without their face being parallel to the ground.

45 Degrees is not a particularly extreme angle when running, or even walking..

Here's how I illustrated it early on (Posted in previous thread)...

The force from the first shot to the head, possibly, turned his head downward father, allowing the final 'top of the head' shot.
It also makes reasonable sense that the last four quick shots chased each other, and his body moving down, changed the impact points, upward on the body. (Speculation on my part, supported by visible evidence.)

 

[davefoc]

For the life of me I can't understand the people who think it's an error for a policeman to arrest crime suspects who are standing right in front of him. That's the job description, it's what we pay them to do. If we keep demanding ever more backup on scene every time some arrest goes sideways we'll soon be in a situation where a SWAT team is called to make a shoplifting arrest. Then the same people demanding more backup will be decrying the militarized police force.

I am amazed at your response here. We don't pay police to play fantasy versions of John Wayne. Wilson's job was not to put himself in danger when another alternative was available. It is also not his job to use his police authority to implement his own little system of mini vengeance. The Arman video showed that this is exactly how Wilson did use his police authority at least on one occasion.

Cause they cursed at him, that's why. The guy is human, he was p'd off...

I think stanfr got this exactly right. This is the probable situation. Wilson was pissed at the two guys that had disrespected him and he wanted his little piece of mini vengeance. That was more important to him than his own safety and that was more important to him than arresting two robbery suspects in a way that didn't have the potential to escalate into something like it did.

Brown reacted poorly, but he also reacted like many young men might have in a difficult situation. He was confronted with an in your face cop that scared him and he reacted in the way that we condition our young men to do. That is not to take crap from somebody. Although a lot of the posters in this thread can't imagine that they would have acted as Brown did, I think they might have, given something like this happening just as they were becoming a man. Becoming a man is messy business and a lot of us make mistakes along the way.

My sense of it here is that the feelings of the black community about this incident might be right in that Wilson's inappropriate decisions were a significant part of the problem here. But the black community's apparent consensus that Brown was shot while he was surrendering is probably wrong. I also suspect that Wilson wasn't a racist. I think he just had gotten comfortable with his using his police authority to treat people poorly when it suited him. But when you're black and the police officer is white it's difficult to distinguish between jerk and racist jerk.

 

[Skeptic Tank]

Do you think Brown was suicidal? Just curious, you need not provide evidence, I'm just wondering why anyone would charge a guy who is clearly ready to kill you. Assuming any sort of logical thought process is involved (agreed, this is an assumption) the only recourse is to 1) run (which clearly did happen) or 2) Give up.
Incidentally, while I admire the level of effort you've put into your analysis on a whole, the whole 'charging like a tackler' thing seems beyond absurd to me. I mean, he might as well have painted a target on his cranium too saying "kill me"

One POSSIBLE SCENARIO is that he realized he was not going to get away on foot and thought he could surprise Wilson by turning and charging/tackling Wilson before Wilson could make the decision whether to shoot or not. Or perhaps anger, having just been in a struggle with Wilson, got the best of him.

Applying what your or I see as "rational thought" in hindsight to Brown's actions in such a highly charged rapidly evolving scenario is folly. In the end, whatever Brown was thinking has no bearing because what matters is that, as borne out by forensic evidence and witness testimony, he did turn and charge Wilson.

Another possible/additional scenario is that for the second time that day, Michael Brown incorrectly expected Dorian Johnson to assist him in a criminal endeavor and ended up being left hanging by him instead.

Johnson was near by, and Brown had drawn all of Wilson's attention (or nearly all of it) when Brown turned to face Wilson again, he may have hoped/assumed that Johnson would come at Wilson from the side as he charged forward.

Ultimately though, we cannot suddenly be surprised by irrational, reckless behavior out of someone who had already engaged in multiple documented instances of it. It's mighty reckless to rob a store unmasked in broad daylight with no weapon and numerous eyewitnesses, in a neighborhood people know your face, with security cameras around. Brown can only have expected to get away with that if he felt the community completely supported criminality (he's since been proven disturbingly close to the truth there, but clearly not 100% on the mark) and if he had some hunch that the store owner would do exactly what he did do: refuse to report it in order to stay on the lawless community's good side, relatively speaking.

But this is a person who had already behaved super recklessly and put himself at risk of a serious felony conviction for robbery over $50 worth of cheap cigars... and then (in all versions) engaged in some sort of physical altercation with a police officer, and few things are more reckless than that. Both of these events had happened very close in time to the final charge at the cop.

Michael Brown was:
High
Stupid
Entitled
Violent
A bully
A thug
A criminal
A detriment to society

 

[TheL8Elvis]

Sorry if this has been answered.

Is there a scenario that explains Brown's wounds and is consistent with the testimony of Wilson?

I've always had difficulty reconciling the two.

Your logical fallacy is burden of proof

It seems to me you are (also) making a claim that the testimony is not consistent with the physical evidence.

Perhaps if you could be more specific ... what specific difficulties are you have trouble reconciling ?

 

[Cervelo]

Can anyone chime in on the "walking in the middle of the street" I see it all the time in my "hood".

 

[pharphis]

@skeptictank (lol nice name btw)
I can agree with most of your list.. but is him being stupid or (especially) high relevant?

I'm at the point that I think Wilson was probably justified in his actions. At the very least, I don't think there's enough evidence for a guilty conviction

 

[carlitos]

In my parents' neighborhood, the cops have finally started to apply the 'broken windows' theory and ticketing kids for walking in the middle of the street. It's a pure power play by the punk teenagers, designed to intimidate motorists.

 

[TheL8Elvis]

I am amazed at your response here. We don't pay police to play fantasy versions of John Wayne. Wilson's job was not to put himself in danger when another alternative was available. It is also not his job to use his police authority to implement his own little system of mini vengeance. The Arman video showed that this is exactly how Wilson did use his police authority at least on one occasion.

I too, am amazed. Your characterization of Wilson as John Wayne is over the top, to say the least.

When you say"Wilson's job was not to put himself in danger when another alternative was available", can you elaborate on the proper Ferguson police procedure when confronting suspects ? I haven't heard any credible claims that he violated procedure. I have heard lots of vague claims of "shouldn't have done xyz", but they are nothing more than someones opinion.

I think stanfr got this exactly right. This is the probable situation. Wilson was pissed at the two guys that had disrespected him and he wanted his little piece of mini vengeance. That was more important to him than his own safety and that was more important to him than arresting two robbery suspects in a way that didn't have the potential to escalate into something like it did.

That makes little sense to me. He was so pissed at being disrespected by Brown and Johnson that ... he drove off ?

Brown reacted poorly, but he also reacted like many young men might have in a difficult situation. He was confronted with an in your face cop that scared him and he reacted in the way that we condition our young men to do. That is not to take crap from somebody. Although a lot of the posters in this thread can't imagine that they would have acted as Brown did, I think they might have, given something like this happening just as they were becoming a man. Becoming a man is messy business and a lot of us make mistakes along the way.

That all reads as simply post hoc rationalization.

My sense of it here is that the feelings of the black community about this incident might be right in that Wilson's inappropriate decisions were a significant part of the problem here. But the black community's apparent consensus that Brown was shot while he was surrendering is probably wrong. I also suspect that Wilson wasn't a racist. I think he just had gotten comfortable with his using his police authority to treat people poorly when it suited him. But when you're black and the police officer is white it's difficult to distinguish between jerk and racist jerk.

No comment.

 

[marplots]

In my parents' neighborhood, the cops have finally started to apply the 'broken windows' theory and ticketing kids for walking in the middle of the street. It's a pure power play by the punk teenagers, designed to intimidate motorists.

Or, giving out tickets for it is a pure power play by cops designed to intimidate teenagers.

 

[carlitos]

I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, that you've never driven down a street that has sidewalks on both sides, and are obstructed by teenagers walking 4 or 5 abreast in the center of the street, daring you to drive through them by turning and glaring or taunting you. It really was a big problem in my parent's neighborhood, which has a lot of older residents who were genuinely intimidated. And a fair amount of residential burglary. I mean, as soon as you drive through / by, the kids see you park and know where you live.

 

[Mumbles]

Can anyone chime in on the "walking in the middle of the street" I see it all the time in my "hood".

Sometimes, the sidewalks are just poorly maintained, and thus unsuitable for walking. That was often the case where I grew up, which is why we would walk in the streets.

I'll freely grant that the sidewalk that Brown was near wasn't as bad as some of the sidewalks grew up around, though...

 

[eeyore1954]

In my parents' neighborhood, the cops have finally started to apply the 'broken windows' theory and ticketing kids for walking in the middle of the street. It's a pure power play by the punk teenagers, designed to intimidate motorists.

My wife has been intimidated in this way. They tried to not acknowledge they were in the way then continued walking refusing to get out of the way and then they gave her a look of abject anger when they did let her pass.
Apparently it is not an uncommon occurrence.

 

[eeyore1954]

Sometimes, the sidewalks are just poorly maintained, and thus unsuitable for walking. That was often the case where I grew up, which is why we would walk in the streets.

I'll freely grant that the sidewalk that Brown was near wasn't as bad as some of the sidewalks grew up around, though...

Would you walk in the middle of the street and not get out of the way when a car came? I don't know if that is what Mr Brown was doing but that is the way you do it near where I live.

 

[davefoc]

I too, am amazed. Your characterization of Wilson as John Wayne is over the top, to say the least.

When you say"Wilson's job was not to put himself in danger when another alternative was available", can you elaborate on the proper Ferguson police procedure when confronting suspects ? I haven't heard any credible claims that he violated procedure. I have heard lots of vague claims of "shouldn't have done xyz", but they are nothing more than someones opinion.



That makes little sense to me. He was so pissed at being disrespected by Brown and Johnson that ... he drove off ?



...

Obviously I don't think so. But I don't know what happened in either the first or the second confrontation. My guess is that Johnson and Wilson are lying. I think it's likely that Wilson did not confront the two guys in the street politely and the parties involved were already in an excited state after the first confrontation. What happened next is not clear, at least to me. Why did Wilson make the decision to confront two robbery suspects alone when they didn't seem to be making an effort to run?

If he knew at that time they were robbery suspects was it prudent to attempt to make an arrest when back up could be their quickly?

As to what Ferguson police procedures were with regard to this situation: I don't know, but my sense is that the general trend in policing has been to reduce risk for the officers and it seems like confronting two suspects alone for no apparent reason other than the machismo of the officer is a move away from that general trend.

How did Wilson propose to arrest these robbery suspects? It's considered bad form these days to force somebody to comply by pointing a gun at them. Both sides in that encounter know that the police officer is not empowered to shoot them if they flee, so what threat could Wilson make to force compliance with an arrest? If Wilson was attempting to arrest them or issue a ticket for walking down the middle of the street his action makes a little more sense. Most citizens aren't going to run because they're going to get a ticket.

 

[Kaosium]

Obviously I don't think so. But I don't know what happened in either the first or the second confrontation. My guess is that Johnson and Wilson are lying. I think it's likely that Wilson did not confront the two guys in the street politely and the parties involved were already in an excited state after the first confrontation. What happened next is not clear, at least to me. Why did Wilson make the decision to confront two robbery suspects alone when they didn't seem to be making an effort to run?

Here's a page with the audio of the relevant police calls that day, including the ones from Officer Wilson before the initial encounter (asking if the other cars on the robbery needed help since he was in the area) and between the encounters when he calls for back-up before initiating the second encounter. Listen to that second call, does he sound all that irate to you?

As for why he stopped them then and there, recall that both parties (Wilson and Johnson) agree that it was said that Johnson and Brown were almost at their destination. Wilson knows two other cars are in the area and are coming to back him up and he has a chance to effect an arrest before they get into that apartment complex where they might be able to elude him. It's perfectly reasonable in my mind that Wilson would stop them before they reached that complex, where the possibility of something dangerous would be even higher than out in the middle of the street.

 

[Skeptic Tank]

@skeptictank (lol nice name btw)
I can agree with most of your list.. but is him being stupid or (especially) high relevant?

Thanks.

I would say his stupidity and impairment are both pretty strongly relevant for people who are trying to make sense of him acting in ways that seem to defy rationality.

I've found that a lot of people in this world are simply too smart to fully appreciate just how dumb some people are, and they have a very difficult time understanding the actions of people who are vastly less intelligent than themselves. They self-select a peer group and they avoid stupid people. It's understandable and I did the same, and still do it.

In recent years though I had a particular career trajectory I won't waste keystrokes going into, but it was almost the perfect thing to enlighten me about just how stupid the vast bulk of our species is.

Stupidity is a humorous, abstract concept for many intelligent people. They have a caricature of it in their minds which isn't remotely realistic. I think they envision someone who somehow has the same raw intellectual power as themselves, which they attribute to the entire species, but who is somehow self-limiting its expression or has just allowed it to get bogged down with bad ideas or something.

Stupidity is very real, and there are people who are so intellectually limited as to truly terrify the intelligent if they actually come to grasp the truth of this, and just how unmovable it is.

When you say"Wilson's job was not to put himself in danger when another alternative was available", can you elaborate on the proper Ferguson police procedure when confronting suspects ? I haven't heard any credible claims that he violated procedure. I have heard lots of vague claims of "shouldn't have done xyz", but they are nothing more than someones opinion.

Let's just be honest here. A LOT of people these days have essentially been indoctrinated to believe that they are simply never allowed to question or blame a black person or hold them accountable for their actions. The one and only exception is a black conservative.

Blacks are designated victim categories in the modern leftist view of society, and they are people you make excuses for the bad decisions of, not people you hold accountable or expect much of.

So the problem for people who are indoctrinated into that worldview when they look at something like the Trayvon case or Michael Brown, is that they have been so well conditioned to not even allow their brain to start down the path of criticisms of that group, that they MUST find another place to point the blame.

This is why the most you'll get is a begrudging, weak acknowledgement that Brown made some bad decisions. They would much, much rather spend time infinitely picking apart Darren Wilson's every micro-movement that day.

They've been taught it's okay to watch Wilson's interview and immediately mock him for being a hick and a dullard and accuse him of lying, making horrible word choices, being bloodthirsty, you name it.

While on the other hand, Michael Brown's mother and stepfather can be some of the most blatantly trashy, violent, ignorant people in our society and not only do they not get looked at critically... they get invited to the U.N. and are probably having their plaster cast for a bronze statue in Times Square made as we speak (joking, I hope.)

The burning hot racism of the left can be seen in the rock bottom expectations they have of blacks.

The simple fact is, Darren Wilson did absolutely nothing wrong that day if his account is true (and it seems to be) and Brown did everything wrong, completely created the situation and was completely the author of his own richly deserved death.

 

[Aber]

All this talk about charging/football tackles as if it was relevant. However IIRC Michael Brown had never played football, was overweight/ out of shape and lost his shoes running away.

It seems far more likely that he stopped running because he realised he would never get away.

 

[Cervelo]

Another possible/additional scenario is that for the second time that day, Michael Brown incorrectly expected Dorian Johnson to assist him in a criminal endeavor and ended up being left hanging by him instead.

Johnson was near by, and Brown had drawn all of Wilson's attention (or nearly all of it) when Brown turned to face Wilson again, he may have hoped/assumed that Johnson would come at Wilson from the side as he charged forward.

Ultimately though, we cannot suddenly be surprised by irrational, reckless behavior out of someone who had already engaged in multiple documented instances of it. It's mighty reckless to rob a store unmasked in broad daylight with no weapon and numerous eyewitnesses, in a neighborhood people know your face, with security cameras around. Brown can only have expected to get away with that if he felt the community completely supported criminality (he's since been proven disturbingly close to the truth there, but clearly not 100% on the mark) and if he had some hunch that the store owner would do exactly what he did do: refuse to report it in order to stay on the lawless community's good side, relatively speaking.

But this is a person who had already behaved super recklessly and put himself at risk of a serious felony conviction for robbery over $50 worth of cheap cigars... and then (in all versions) engaged in some sort of physical altercation with a police officer, and few things are more reckless than that. Both of these events had happened very close in time to the final charge at the cop.

Michael Brown was:
High
Stupid
Entitled
Violent
A bully
A thug
A criminal
A detriment to society

Eeeeewwwww the truth how dare you!!!!

 

[Kaosium]

All this talk about charging/football tackles as if it was relevant. However IIRC Michael Brown had never played football, was overweight/ out of shape and lost his shoes running away.

Here's the video of Michael Brown in the Ferguson Market, does he really look out of shape or does he look big and strong? Note that Dorian Johnson (the one in the black shirt) is two years older than him.

It seems far more likely that he stopped running because he realised he would never get away.

Which may well be true and serves as an explanation of why he ran back towards Officer Wilson....