Michael Brown shooting II

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As far as the evidence dump itself...first, they seem to have more evidence per day so far, aside from Thanksgiving. And second, I certainly haven't seen and read everything that was released so far...

I'm leaning more towards Wilson than I was before - but I'd still rather see a trial. Wilson's testimony is absolutely ridiculous when it comes to what Brown said, and his general attributes, and the only witness that agrees with him was observing from 100 yards away, which is the length of a (US) football field. That deserves examination. As do the sloppiness of the initial investigation. And no, 25 feet is not really enough to charge, stop, and then charge again. A good, public trial would be a good way to hash everything out, rather than a GR review, where the prosecutor apparently acts as a defense attorney.

(As I recall, police unions will usually help with these sorts of financial bills, but I may be mistaken.)
 
PhantomWolf said:
No, he mentions a more relax and friendly police force. The only people that he stated would be "cowed" were the criminal element. So unless you think that the entire community are criminals, then no, you got what was said totally wrong.
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I will say this one more time and then I'm done.

Because of their mutual distrust, the police are treating the community as if they were the "criminal element". Thus, the "criminal element" they would seek to cow is the community. This is not how you build mutual trust.

I'm done. Feel free to continue to ignore what I've pointed out while paradoxically accusing me of making strawman.
 
Mumbles said:
And no, 25 feet is not really enough to charge, stop, and then charge again.
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Several eyewitnesses, the credible ones who didn't change their stories, disagree with you.

On a separate topic:

As for appointing a special prosecutor, ANY experienced prosecutor is going to have close ties to police. Why? Because they're PROSECUTORS and they spend their entire careers working with police to put the bad guys away.
 
Mumbles said:
As far as the evidence dump itself...first, they seem to have more evidence per day so far, aside from Thanksgiving. And second, I certainly haven't seen and read everything that was released so far...

I'm leaning more towards Wilson than I was before - but I'd still rather see a trial. Wilson's testimony is absolutely ridiculous when it comes to what Brown said, and his general attributes, and the only witness that agrees with him was observing from 100 yards away, which is the length of a (US) football field. That deserves examination. As do the sloppiness of the initial investigation. And no, 25 feet is not really enough to charge, stop, and then charge again. A good, public trial would be a good way to hash everything out, rather than a GR review, where the prosecutor apparently acts as a defense attorney.

(As I recall, police unions will usually help with these sorts of financial bills, but I may be mistaken.)
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You say, "absolutely ridiculous"? You mean like Dorian Johnson's claim that Darren Wilson was choking and pulling Brown through the SUV window to give Brown the tactical advantage over him? I recall that you had no problem accepting that load of BS as plausible. Further, Witness 10 is not the only witness that supports Wilson's version of events (in particular the charging), but nice try. You should actually read the grand jury testimony before you start asking for a trial. Stop getting your information from biased articles (such articles are now spreading this "only witness 10" myth to the Gawker crowd). Contrary to those articles, three (possibly five) other witnesses also support his testimony that Brown charged at him. And 25 feet is more than enough to support this testimony. That distance is not at all consistent with someone taking just a few, non-threatening slow steps forward and then falling down at the last volley, as claimed by other so-called "witnesses". Funny how that was once such a LONG distance for someone to be a threat but now it's "too short" for a charge/stop/charge. Let's see, 100 yards (he said 50 to 75 actually to the grand jury) vs "witnesses" who saw two cops exit Wilson's car, multiple "witnesses" who saw Wilson walk over to Brown as he lay dead on the street and empty a clip into his back, witnesses who said that either Brown only walked few steps forward or didn't move at all before he was dropped, witnesses who admitted before the grand jury that they changed their testimony to match what really happened. You mean THOSE witnesses?

No need for a trial when all the prosecution would have are bigoted, lying "witnesses" whose lies are refuted by forensic evidence. A prosecution nightmare.

That 25 feet of blood splatter behind Brown tells the real story (there's also a theory that the first blood drops at 25 feet came from the first volley of shots and not the thumb injury, as such a superficial wound would probably not have been bleeding that profusely). Brown charged at Wilson, who defended himself. Even if he "walked" toward Wilson for 25 feet or more (lol), he still showed himself to be a threat, causing Wilson to back up as evidenced by the shell casings being found behind Brown's body.
 
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Upchurch said:
I will say this one more time and then I'm done.

Because of their mutual distrust, the police are treating the community as if they were the "criminal element". Thus, the "criminal element" they would seek to cow is the community. This is not how you build mutual trust.

I'm done. Feel free to continue to ignore what I've pointed out while paradoxically accusing me of making strawman.
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An overwhelming police presence - in terms of numbers of police, not in terms of threatening armaments or tactics (as I've made clear repeatedly) - cows the criminal element without the police having to be threatening to anyone else (or even the criminal element itself). It is irrelevant whom the police believe to be the criminal element. The criminal element remains law-abiding simply because of the police presence, leaving the police feeling free to treat everybody, bad guys and good guys, with respect.

For example, a criminal may walk into a Dunkin Donuts planning to rob the cashier, but if he sees 4 police officers in the place drinking coffee and eating donuts, he's going to leave his gun in his pocket, order a donut, pay the cashier, and walk out very respectfully. The criminal element is cowed without the non-criminal element being cowed. Do you see how that works?
 
It's anecdotal, but I have lived very close to 2 urban police precincts, and the sheer number of cops around makes me feel safer. Last time we called, they got here in like 2 minutes and caught a guy trying to steal our cable wires for scrap.
 
sunmaster14 said:
An overwhelming police presence - in terms of numbers of police, not in terms of threatening armaments or tactics (as I've made clear repeatedly) - cows the criminal element without the police having to be threatening to anyone else (or even the criminal element itself). It is irrelevant whom the police believe to be the criminal element. The criminal element remains law-abiding simply because of the police presence, leaving the police feeling free to treat everybody, bad guys and good guys, with respect.

For example, a criminal may walk into a Dunkin Donuts planning to rob the cashier, but if he sees 4 police officers in the place drinking coffee and eating donuts, he's going to leave his gun in his pocket, order a donut, pay the cashier, and walk out very respectfully. The criminal element is cowed without the non-criminal element being cowed. Do you see how that works?
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That's not being cowed; that is being deterred. Temporarily.
 
Iamafalser said:
As for appointing a special prosecutor, ANY experienced prosecutor is going to have close ties to police. Why? Because they're PROSECUTORS and they spend their entire careers working with police to put the bad guys away.
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Because, hey, who needs an independent judiciary when we have a nod-nod, wink-wink between boys!
 
The following is from the first page of the first thread from Skeptic Ginger:
Another cop that was unprepared to deal with disrespectful teens. I don't get it why they aren't trained how to manage disrespect. Look what happens when some kids disobey their authority, you kill a kid for the crime of jaywalking and mouthing off*.


*According to the kid who was not shot, he initially said they were walking in the street. The cop told them to move to the sidewalk. They argued. The cop drove off but immediately turned around and came back.

From there it's speculation but the facts which are indisputable: the crime was walking in the street and failure to obey the cop telling them to get out of the street.


No matter how you feel about the audacity of teens who refuse to obey a cop, it was not necessary to attempt arrest, and shoot, if the cop had been better trained how to manage defiant teens. It did not call for shooting the kid who was almost certainly not a threat to the cop.
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This is what I've been mocking during the entire thread.
Here is the link to that first page, give it a read and reply if you wish.

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=281607
 
epepke said:
So would I.

There are numerous really odd things about the way the Grand Jury investigation was handled.
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Have you ever read the 5th Amendment?

You don't commit civil rights violations because the lynch mob demands it.
 
Wolrab said:
The following is from the first page of the first thread from Skeptic Ginger:


This is what I've been mocking during the entire thread.
Here is the link to that first page, give it a read and reply if you wish.

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=281607
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It's too bad SG didn't came back after the forum moved. It would have been entertaining to watch the Olympic grade gymnastics necessary to continue her narrative of 'what obviously happened'. :rolleyes:
 
epepke said:
So would I.[seen a trial]
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I believe that better decisions by Wilson would likely have prevented the death of Brown, I am skeptical of Wilson's description of the initial interaction between himself, Brown and Johnson and I think that it is in the plausible range that Wilson's shooting of Brown was a crime.

But I don't think there should have been a trial. If you put this in the context of the strength of evidence usually needed to convict somebody, the case might not have even made it to a grand jury.

For those of you who think that a trial might have reduced the level of violence in Ferguson even if it had ended in an acquittal: I'm not so sure and even if you think so, bringing a case forward with such shaky evidence might have caused big problems for the people who testified and it is difficult to imagine how the cause of justice would have been served.

I am not sure that racism is a factor in the shooting of black defendants by white police officers. I tried to find statistics that would make the case one way or the other and I didn't find them.

I did find a table (table 3) in a Mother Jones article that had this statistic:

between 2003 and 2009
white arrest related deaths - 2026
black arrest related deaths - 1529
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/08/police-shootings-michael-brown-ferguson-black-men

Based on the black to white population ratio (about 4.5 to 1) one would have expected 450 black arrest related death so it looks at first there is systemic racism here. But the black murder rate is about four times higher than the white murder rate and that suggests that there would be a lot more police confrontation of violent offenders in the black community. Assuming that it is reasonable to take the black murder as a measure of the likelihood of violent police encounters the number of blacks killed by police is about what one would expect if one assumes that racism is not a factor.

The statistic I would like to have found is the rate that white police officers kill blacks in arrest related incidents versus the rate that black police officers kill blacks in arrest related incidents.

But regardless of whether racism is a significant factor in black shootings by police not, US police officers kill a lot more people percentage wise than cops in western European countries and that suggests to me that a review of shooting related policies in the US might be justified.
 
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epepke said:
So would I.

There are numerous really odd things about the way the Grand Jury investigation was handled.
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Would the eyewitnesses be able to remain anonymous if there was a jury trial?

It appears that witness intimidation, fear and retribution was a concern for the eyewitnesses of the grand jury even though they were anonymous.

This witness was scared. He had Googled himself and found the phrase: "Snitches get stitches.".

He was scared that black neighbors would find fault with his description of what happened when a white police officer, Darren Wilson, shot dead an unarmed black man, Michael Brown, in Ferguson, Mo.

He was scared that white supremacists would accuse him of hurting Wilson's case. "I do think of the Ku Klux Klan. I do," he told investigators.

From the first day a grand jury met, it is clear that fear and anxiety played major roles in the struggle to paint a precise picture of what unfolded between Wilson and Brown on Aug. 9.
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http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-ferguson-fear-20141127-story.html

Wouldn't it be reasonable to think their testimony could be less truthful if they were no longer anonymous and open to intimidation or retribution?
 
WildCat said:
Have you ever read the 5th Amendment?

You don't commit civil rights violations because the lynch mob demands it.
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Because being murdered was not a violation of Brown's civil rights, but having a fair trial is a violation of Wilson's. The grand jury was given instructions such as to make it practically impossible for the case to go to trial.

The instructions to the grand jury given by prosecutors before they started the deliberations, stated that "[…]you must find probable cause to believe that Darren Wilson did not act in lawful self-defense and you must find probable cause to believe that Darren Wilson did not use lawful force in making an arrest. If you find those things, which is kind of like finding a negative, you cannot return an indictment on anything or true bill unless you find both of those things. Because both are complete defenses to any offense and they both have been raised in his, in the evidence. [sic]" In other words, the prosecutors instructed the jury that they had to find not only that there was probable cause to believe Wilson had committed a crime, but also that he did not act in self-defense and that he did not act to affect an arrest.
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The jury had to be able to prove that Wilson was not acting in self-defense before it could even go to trial. They had to be able to prove a negative. Wilson should've had to prove that there was a clear and present danger to his life, and the only way he could've protected himself was by killing Brown. Instead, it was the other way around.
 
Axiom_Blade said:
Wilson should've had to prove that there was a clear and present danger to his life, and the only way he could've protected himself was by killing Brown. Instead, it was the other way around.
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The evidence presented to the Grand Jury showed that Brown was approaching Wilson to within 10 feet. Since Brown had already assaulted Wilson, it is clear that Wilson was justified in using deadly force to stop Brown who was refusing to comply with Wilson's legal orders to get on the ground. If Brown wasn't resisting arrest and hadn't assaulted Wilson, then Wilson would not have been justified in shooting Brown.



I think the prosecutor's job is to determine the facts of the event.

Brown got his justice, too bad he elected to commit suicide.
 
Axiom_Blade said:
The jury had to be able to prove that Wilson was not acting in self-defense before it could even go to trial. They had to be able to prove a negative. Wilson should've had to prove that there was a clear and present danger to his life, and the only way he could've protected himself was by killing Brown. Instead, it was the other way around.
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Nonsense. Had the case gone to trial, Wilson would not have had to prove that. The prosecution would still have had to prove that it was not self-defense. The only difference is that at trial, they would have needed to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt, whereas for the grand jury, they only needed to meet probable cause. And if they can't even meet probable cause, how the hell are they going to prove beyond a reasonable doubt?

The obvious answer is that they couldn't. So why bring it to trial, when there was no chance at victory? Just to temporarily placate the baying mob? That's not justice.
 
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