Michael Brown shooting II

[WildCat]

Cops are supposed to run away from criminals? What the hell are the handcuffs for?

Kinky sex play?

 

[PhantomWolf]

I'll say it more clearly. The chase and all shooting didn't have to happen. He could have retreated by placing his vehicle in drive and pressing the gas pedal before the chase.

Sheeze, sounds like another "He should have stayed in the car" rhetoric. He was doing his job. Of course unlike all the psychics here, Wilson had no way to see into the future and know that Brown would refuse to obey orders and instead attempt to attack him again. Nice to be able to see into the future though.

After the chase and the shots fired, he could have likely outrun a guy with several bullet wounds in him.

Except that at the time of the fatal shot, Wilson didn't know if he'd hit him, other then from the shot to the hand in the car. Brown hadn't reacted like someone that was shot, in fact he was acting completely unlike it, charging at Wilson. Perhaps he was on drugs or something, oh, right, he was!

Cops are supposed to avoid force and use lethal force when every other means fails.

Evidence?

Wilson did not have to pursue the perp on foot after he nearly lost his weapon to Brown.

It's his job!

He made a judgement error when he went after this dangerous crazed felon alone knowing that backup was moments away. He had an HT surely, and could have reported suspect fleeing north on foot, etc. It happens all the time. The identity of the suspect was very likely known since there were so many witnesses

Yeah, so the police should just let violent criminals go when they get violent rather then attempting to stop them.

Firing a weapon in a residential neighborhood to subdue a guy who stole a few items, threatened a shop owner and hit a cop is crazy unless that perp is on his way to abduct or kill someone.

You don't think that his charging directly at the cop while ignoring orders to stop and get on the ground might count as "on his way to abduct or kill someone"?

As for my questions about Wilson's characteristics, personality and medications, they are very relevant. In particular, anabolic steroid rage is poorly understood but might account for quite a few murders these days. Low self esteem is also very relevant when discovered in the personality of a police officer. Some cops drop out because they cannot get beyond their rage at being called names.

He seems to have a clean record, and his tox and drug screens come back clean as well. As to the rest, I'm sure that some of it's available if you look.

 

[PhantomWolf]

It's sort of funny. In our cop shows we often see the hero charging in without backup, chasing the bad guy for miles, bullets being exchanged in both directions, and we cheer them on.

A cop dares to do it in real life, and he's pegged by many as a psychopathic bully because he didn't cower in his car and wait for backup. Who'd want the job?

 

[MG1962]

I think you misunderstood that part. I haven't found any source that says that's what he told ABC's George Stephanopoulos, and it's certainly not what he told the Grand Jury and there's nothing that indicates that in the physical evidence of shell casing locations.

Sorry I was at the gym, I thought we were watching CBS

 

[Cylinder]

Excerpts from Darren Wilson's interview with ABC's George Stephanopoulos as aired on World News Tonight:

 

[Ammonitida]

Nice come back, care to disprove anything I stated?

He had 30kg on Wilson. This is a fact.
He was enraged, stated by Wilson, and also his actions
He was stoned, Autopsy results showed 150% the level of Impairment for THC
He was Homicidal. He was charging a cop after having tried to take the cop's gun, it wasn't like he intended to run over and shake hands.
He was charging, stated by Wilson, backed up by 2 independent witness and others stated that he was moving towards Wilson.

Ball is in your court.

Don't forget the blood trail which also corroborates the account that Brown charged at Wilson.

 

[Iamafalser]

An important thing to note: The root cause of what transpired on August 9.

Mr. Brown's behavior. I'm sure that his parents loved him and have suffered a great loss. I don't envy them that.

Maybe he was, for the most part, a good kid and not a "thug" at heart, but on August 9 he made some very bad and eventually fatal decisions:

1) The first was the strongarm robbery of a convenience store. IMO that didn't look too bad since he didn't attack the store owner, "merely" pushed him back but it is still an obviously illegal activity of theft involving a degree of physical assault.

2) When confronted by Wilson, he chose to make the encounter physically confrontational. Whether this was due to the bravado of being an 18 year old 290 pound badass to impress his friend, animosity towards law enforcement or fear of being arrested for the act he just committed doesn't matter. He chose to engage in a physical confrontation with a police officer. Like 1) above, he made this choice.

3) When fleeing after the SUV confrontation and being ordered to stop and hit the ground, he chose to stop and, for whatever reason, turn around and charge the armed officer, perhaps thinking he could tackle him before Wilson could make the decision to fire or not. We all know how that turned out.

Had Brown not made these decisions, Wilson would've had a "normal" cop day and not been confronted with feeling that his personal safety had been endangered not once, but twice, within a very short timeframe where he had to make some split second decisions regarding his own safety.

For those of you who want to second guess the decision Wilson made, you might want to demonstrate some intellectual honesty and recognize that Wilson would never have had to make the decision he did if Brown had not made the choices he did.

 

[Quad4_72]

This whole argument of "well the officer should not have put himself in that situation!" Is so incredibly idiotic it reminds me of the people who blame rape victims for getting raped because they were in a bad situation. So you are telling me officer wilson was wrong for trying to do his job? It was his fault that michael brown attacked him? Could he have not pursued brown? Sure. But he chose to pursue the violent criminal (as police officers normally do). It was Michael Browns fault deadly force had to be used, not Wilsons. Brown committed a felony of assaulting a police officer (possibly attempted murder of going for his gun). Brown could have chose to lay down. He chose to charge at the officer. Brown started the entire altercation. Get back to reality people and stop blaming the real victim, which is wilson.

Brown put wilson in an incredibly dangerous situation. He attacked a police officer. Lets not forget that.

 

[Olowkow]

I was just pointing out that your judgement of "superficial" was premature and should and was performed by competent medical personel.

Point taken.

If Wilson was charged and brought to trial, that is still no guarantee that anyone would be able to cross examine Wilson. Defendants do not have to take the stand, fifth amendment stuff. Him testifying for the grand jury, in effect was allowing a cross examination. The way I understand it, he was open to any and all questions brought by the grand jury.

Agreed. He could have certainly declined to testify. Open to questions, but not by skilled lawyers who are motivated to argue for their client or the state.

He was not justified in killing Brown, but he was justified in using deadly force to stop Brown, after Brown refused to comply with Wilson's repeated instructions to get on the ground. Fleeing is not part of the job description.

I need to look into this. I really don't know what the threshold for deadly force would be. I'm hoping it is fearing for one's life with no other recourse. Fleeing may not be part of the job description, but perhaps it should be. There's no room for machismo in this line of work. It certainly is the wise choice to fall back sometimes.

It is standard procedure for cops to break off a high speed vehicle chase when it becomes too dangerous to the general public.

You can't be serious. Talk about glossing over some important facts. If you hit a cop and try to take his....

Troll.

I'm quite serious. The gun was produced by a cop who got punched. It is certainly possible that the perp was attempting to take it away from him, but more likely that he was afraid of getting shot, and was trying to prevent the cop from shooting him. Pulling the gun was probably a judgement error and a result of the cop not being able to defend himself with his fists. This is why I think cops should be skilled in martial arts or at least in street fighting. We may never know what really happened, so conjecture is all we have.

No, not a troll.

Cops are supposed to run away from criminals? What the hell are the handcuffs for?

Handcuffs are for keeping someone in custody and to protect the law enforcement officer. Subduing the suspect and securing the cuffs is another matter, often requiring many cops.

If a cop is facing odds that are going to get him killed or injured, he should retreat and regroup with other officers in my opinion. I would, if I were in that position. I'm pretty sure their training covers this.

It's sort of funny. In our cop shows we often see the hero charging in without backup, chasing the bad guy for miles, bullets being exchanged in both directions, and we cheer them on.

A cop dares to do it in real life, and he's pegged by many as a psychopathic bully because he didn't cower in his car and wait for backup. Who'd want the job?

Who called him a psychopathic bully? I think he might have just escalated too quickly to firearm force. I can only guess why he pulled his gun. As for who'd want the job? Lots of very good cops who genuinely enjoy helping people every day. Cops who get hurt on the job, punched, bit, kicked, but have never fired a shot. I know a few.

 

[Tony Stark]

I'm not happy that Brown died, but the simple matter of fact is that it was his fault. Instead of charging a cop who was pointing a gun at him, he should have not done that.

 

[lionking]

Michael Brown was 6'4", and weighed 290 pounds. Darrell Wilson is 6'4" and weighs 215. I don't see how that relates. Wilson was in a police cruiser. Wilson had a car and foot. One of his options was move backward or forward and distance himself from Brown.

Exactly. Brown was running away from Wilson. Running after him shooting in a crowded street might be SOP for Ferguson Police, but not for any decent police force.

Sorry, I should go back lurking. I'm spoiling the glee of those celebrating the shooting and exoneration of Wilson.

 

[Kaosium]

I don't think that grand juries should even exist anymore given that they are usually a rubber stamp.

I disagree, especially in trial by twitter/tabloid cases like this. Consider how this got started, a lot of bogus and/or incomplete information was disseminated through the ether causing a firestorm on social media that the more traditional networks picked up on, fueling the conflagration. There never was any good evidence of two jaywalkers being accosted and then one gunned down by a crazed police officer, that was a narrative invented off of said bogus/incomplete evidence that drew people to Ferguson to protest in outrage. However somehow the fact that Michael Brown and Dorian Johnson had just been involved in a strong-armed robbery went unnoticed by the outlets spewing forth the false narrative despite the fact this video was posted the day after the shooting and specifically refers to the theft of the cigarillos. It would take the media propagating that false narrative five days to 'discover' this fact, many of whom would decry the release of that information to the extent that the governor of the state would condemn the release of actual germane information on the case which called into question the false narrative!

In a media environment like that there ought to be a check on the case going forward, one done by those who don't have to bow to public pressure because they convene in secrecy. It just so happens a Grand Jury meets that criteria and in an instance like this is the perfect mechanism for ending a case that has no business going forward. It's also perfectly aligned with the purpose of a Grand Jury which is to ensure the state has a legitimate case before ruining beyond recognition someone's life with a trial and wasting the resources of the state on a weak case.

But prosecutors that don't use them as rubber stamps don't really want to go to trial but want to shift the blame of that to the grand jury.

I think the Grand Jury deserves the credit in this case, the blame ought to go to those who propagated the false narrative.

 

[Doghouse Reilly]

We had a shooting here where the criminal was armed with an aluminium baseball bat and after forcing two officers about 50m down the street, closing the gap from 30m to 10m, one of them believed that they were about to be backed into a corner, and fired, killing the guy. He ended up facing a murder charge from a private prosecution, and was found not guilty. I read all the testimonies, what happened was extremely obvious to anyone that bothered reading the witness statements and the reports (which the police put online). There are still people that believe and claim it was a deliberate murder.

I firmly believe that some people are of the opinion that the Police should do everything to protect the life of criminals that given have the chance would show exactly no mercy to those same police officers, including running away and letting the violent thug get away rather than having the Officers try and sort the situation out because it might mean that the officers end up killing them in self defence.

Woah, a private prosecution? Those are pretty rare, aren't they? Many states have outlawed them, which I think is a good idea. That sucks for the cop.

 

[Tony Stark]

I disagree, especially in trial by twitter/tabloid cases like this. Consider how this got started, a lot of bogus and/or incomplete information was disseminated through the ether causing a firestorm on social media that the more traditional networks picked up on, fueling the conflagration. There never was any good evidence of two jaywalkers being accosted and then one gunned down by a crazed police officer, that was a narrative invented off of said bogus/incomplete evidence that drew people to Ferguson to protest in outrage. However somehow the fact that Michael Brown and Dorian Johnson had just been involved in a strong-armed robbery went unnoticed by the outlets spewing forth the false narrative despite the fact this video was posted the day after the shooting and specifically refers to the theft of the cigarillos. It would take the media propagating that false narrative five days to 'discover' this fact, many of whom would decry the release of that information to the extent that the governor of the state would condemn the release of actual germane information on the case which called into question the false narrative!

In a media environment like that there ought to be a check on the case going forward, one done by those who don't have to bow to public pressure because they convene in secrecy. It just so happens a Grand Jury meets that criteria and in an instance like this is the perfect mechanism for ending a case that has no business going forward. It's also perfectly aligned with the purpose of a Grand Jury which is to ensure the state has a legitimate case before ruining beyond recognition someone's life with a trial and wasting the resources of the state on a weak case.

You make good points.

I think the Grand Jury deserves the credit in this case, the blame ought to go to those who propagated the false narrative.

I agree. Unfortunately those who blame the grand jury/prosecutor for allowing Wilson to get away with executing an innocent black kid for no reason are not about to consider that the reason Wilson was cleared was because that's not what happened.

 

[marplots]

This whole argument of "well the officer should not have put himself in that situation!" Is so incredibly idiotic it reminds me of the people who blame rape victims for getting raped because they were in a bad situation. So you are telling me officer wilson was wrong for trying to do his job? It was his fault that michael brown attacked him? Could he have not pursued brown? Sure. But he chose to pursue the violent criminal (as police officers normally do). It was Michael Browns fault deadly force had to be used, not Wilsons. Brown committed a felony of assaulting a police officer (possibly attempted murder of going for his gun). Brown could have chose to lay down. He chose to charge at the officer. Brown started the entire altercation. Get back to reality people and stop blaming the real victim, which is wilson.

Brown put wilson in an incredibly dangerous situation. He attacked a police officer. Lets not forget that.

Wilson is the professional with the training and the experience. When he realizes he can't handle Brown physically, the right move is to get backup.

As soon as Wilson gets out of the vehicle, he's stacked the deck by reducing the options. Wilson has knowingly increased his risk and upped the ante. Brown is either going to comply, or die. And, since Brown has already reacted violently at the first confrontation, the odds are Wilson will be killing him.

No criminal charges will be filed. Wilson could still get fired for his poor judgement. Otherwise, these situations will continue to occur.

 

[lionking]

Wilson is the professional with the training and the experience. When he realizes he can't handle Brown physically, the right move is to get backup.

As soon as Wilson gets out of the vehicle, he's stacked the deck by reducing the options. Wilson has knowingly increased his risk and upped the ante. Brown is either going to comply, or die. And, since Brown has already reacted violently at the first confrontation, the odds are Wilson will be killing him.

No criminal charges will be filed. Wilson could still get fired for his poor judgement. Otherwise, these situations will continue to occur.

Agreed. He should be sacked at the very least, and civil action is a certainty.

 

[Tony Stark]

Exactly. Brown was running away from Wilson. Running after him shooting in a crowded street might be SOP for Ferguson Police, but not for any decent police force.

Sorry, I should go back lurking. I'm spoiling the glee of those celebrating the shooting and exoneration of Wilson.

Good thing that didn't happen.

Wilson started firing shots only after Brown charged him. He paused to consider the situation two or three times but Brown didn't stop charging until a bullet struck him in the head.

 

[Puppycow]

Exactly. Brown was running away from Wilson. Running after him shooting in a crowded street might be SOP for Ferguson Police, but not for any decent police force.

Sorry, I should go back lurking. I'm spoiling the glee of those celebrating the shooting and exoneration of Wilson.

Good grief, hasn't this been debunked a thousand times already?

 

[lionking]

Good thing that didn't happen.

Wilson started firing shots only after Brown charged him. He paused to consider the situation two or three times but Brown didn't stop charging until a bullet struck him in the head.

That's what he told the GJ, and the GJ brought it. Colour me skeptical.

So you tell me, is it good police SOP to chase someone through a crowded street, gun in hand (shooting or not) rather than waiting for backup? Wilson is a cowboy who will never be an operational cop again. The best he can expect is a desk job. Even a dysfunctional and disgraceful force like Ferguson realises this.

Hopefully Wilson will not act with the lack of class of our humble George Zimmerman, and will realise that there is no future for him as a cop.

 

[Cl1mh4224rd]

It's sort of funny. In our cop shows we often see the hero charging in without backup, chasing the bad guy for miles, bullets being exchanged in both directions, and we cheer them on.

A cop dares to do it in real life, and he's pegged by many as a psychopathic bully because he didn't cower in his car and wait for backup. Who'd want the job?

I suppose that's because some people understand the difference between fiction and reality. I do a lot of killing in the various videogames I play; doesn't mean I'm OK with the same type and frequency of killing out in the real world.