Michael Brown shooting II

[WildCat]

No, I just breeze into various threads and post so I can get my post count up.

Actually, yes I have been following this case since it hit the internet radar. I've seen the videos, the computer generated re-enactment, all types of articles from various sources, my diabetes related forum has a section on current events, so it's discussed their. I can't work so I spend a lot of time on the net. Does that qualify me to discuss this topic? Please kill the patronizing tone, it's very unbecoming.

If you (generic you) approach an incident with the idea that the police are always right, sometimes you can reach the wrong conclusion.

You're seriously still calling me out?

You are both active participants in this thread, yet neither of you in all this time can get basic, irrefutable facts correct such as where the shots were fired.

There's really no excuse for that, either neither of you are capable of basic reading comprehension, you are deliberately lying about the case, or some combination of that. Neither option makes you look good on a forum dedicated to critical thinking.

If you are going to dispute such basic facts at least try to come up with a rational argument, otherwise you really ought to be over in Conspiracy Theories.

 

[WildCat]

I think you're referring to the decision by Wilson (assuming Wilson's statement is true on this) to return to Brown & Johnson and confront them.

I agree with you. That seemed to be a significant error.

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.

 

[Kaosium]

why are you arguing with me, I agree he was bent over! Im saying he was not charging. Why don't you give it a try and feel how comfortable it is?

I have, I've played tackle football. Though I was more likely to get blindsided after making a catch than have it in front of me where putting my head down might get me an extra yard or two. On the tackling side you're trained to hit low, (the waist is where I was taught to aim) which means your body has to bend down, though you're supposed to keep your head up which is really tough to do sometimes as it doesn't come naturally and is even more uncomfortable with your neck like that.

Being as he definitely moved forward, he fell as though he were moving forward and the most debilitating shots (the top of the head and the one that went in the eye socket and out the jaw) indicate he was bent over I think it most likely he was charging and doing his best to reduce his profile and hit as low as he could on the center of mass, which makes tackling someone easier. He could also have stumbled and was falling forward when those last shots hit, but I don't see why it's all that relevant, frankly, as all that would amount to is that he was falling after having been charging, which is incidentally supported by witness evidence as well. As for that witness choosing the term 'charge,' wouldn't that be the natural term to use for someone closing on a target in a conflict?

 

[stanfr]

I have, I've played tackle football. Though I was more likely to get blindsided after making a catch than have it in front of me where putting my head down might get me an extra yard or two. On the tackling side you're trained to hit low, (the waist is where I was taught to aim) which means your body has to bend down, though you're supposed to keep your head up which is really tough to do sometimes as it doesn't come naturally and is even more uncomfortable with your neck like that.

Being as he definitely moved forward, he fell as though he were moving forward and the most debilitating shots (the top of the head and the one that went in the eye socket and out the jaw) indicate he was bent over I think it most likely he was charging and doing his best to reduce his profile and hit as low as he could on the center of mass, which makes tackling someone easier. He could also have stumbled and was falling forward when those last shots hit, but I don't see why it's all that relevant, frankly, as all that would amount to is that he was falling after having been charging, which is incidentally supported by witness evidence as well. As for that witness choosing the term 'charge,' wouldn't that be the natural term to use for someone closing on a target in a conflict?

I don't know about "natural', although I agree with you someone could conceivably use the word "charge" to describe something that is less than an all out sprint. I'm still waiting for someone to show me how the distance Brown moved forward was greater than 25 feet...if it wasn't then at best he was moving 3.4 mph, a stretch to call that a charge

 

[Iamafalser]

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.

 

[plague311]

Then reconcile them. I'm not making a claim. If they reconcile then fine. I'll concede and move on.

And you couldn't handle reading the statement you quoted from where I gave you the directions on what to do? Sorry I didn't hold your hand.

 

[Bikewer]

I've mentioned before that my thought about Brown's behavior was that he panicked. He had just committed a felonious robbery. At 18, he's legally an adult. He thought he got away with it, that he'd intimidated the store owner sufficiently..... And here comes the police.

No college...Prison. Brown goes into "I can't go to jail!" mode. This is familiar to all police officers. It's the mode that people in car pursuits get into. They are not rational. They are not thinking.... They have gone into "fight or flight" mode.... Sometimes both at the same time.

 

[Kaosium]

4+2=6, not sure what the problem is? Im not claiming he was hit multiple times from the rear, at most once, just as you said.

There were two shots fired at the police vehicle, almost certainly where the graze to his hand was inflicted (they found residue from a tiny part of his thumb in the vehicle to go with the soot in the wound). Then Michael Brown takes off running and the tape that Wildcat posted starts. That's when six shots were fired, a pause I counted as two seconds and you counted as three, then four more shots. There's a total of eight wounds, six entry and two grazes. The one to his hand is from before, so we can narrow it down to seven wounds that must be accounted for, from four bullets. If you try to claim the graze to the inside of the arm was made by a bullet that made another entry wound then you've eliminated the possibility it was made from the rear as all the other entry wounds had to come from the front or top.

Now perhaps I misunderstood, but I got the impression you were saying that Michael Brown was shot at while fleeing and the pause logically indicated that Michael Brown had stopped and turned around due to this line of your post:

One of the strongest consistencies IMO was that most witnesses said he was shot at while fleeing. This makes perfect sense, and it matches the evidence.
Its the only thing that logically explains the 3 second gap!!

My point is that doesn't match the evidence, even though I do agree (and originally assumed on more limited information) that it would make sense (and matches some witness testimony) that the reason Michael Brown stopped was he'd been hit and then he turned and the final altercation took place. The math doesn't add up though, and while it's possible Wilson fired at a fleeing Brown there's scant evidence that it occurred, and in no way is it possible that the six shots were fired at a fleeing Michael Brown.

 

[WildCat]

There were two shots fired at the police vehicle, almost certainly where the graze to his hand was inflicted (they found residue from a tiny part of his thumb in the vehicle to go with the soot in the wound).

Not only that but one of the bullets went through the car door from the inside and shattered the window which was rolled down inside it.

 

[Kaosium]

Not only that but one of the bullets went through the car door from the inside and shattered the window which was rolled down inside it.

A poor choice of words on my part, I should have said two shots fired from inside the police vehicle as opposed to 'at' the vehicle.

 

[Kaosium]

I don't know about "natural', although I agree with you someone could conceivably use the word "charge" to describe something that is less than an all out sprint. I'm still waiting for someone to show me how the distance Brown moved forward was greater than 25 feet...if it wasn't then at best he was moving 3.4 mph, a stretch to call that a charge

At the combine and pro days every year they have prospective NFL players run a ten yard dash and a forty yard dash. It usually takes almost as much time to do the first ten yards as it does the final thirty. From this chart of 10 and 20 yard dash times you can see that someone over 250 lbs doing a 10 yard dash in 2.1 seconds is above average, the next ten yards only takes about a second. I don't think Michael Brown was 'dashing' either, and may have slowed up when the first flurry of bullets hit him, then lumbered onward when he realized he could still move and being hit hadn't debilitated him.

 

[qayak]

I don't know about "natural', although I agree with you someone could conceivably use the word "charge" to describe something that is less than an all out sprintdemonize young black men and justify their murder by police.

FTFY.

 

[theprestige]

I had already read it was corrected... I was hoping someone could link me either to the discussion here about the correction or whatever article they originally got the information from.

I haven't been following this sidebar to closely. Did Wilson misstate, or did someone else misstate what Wilson knew and when he knew it?

 

[RandFan]

<snip>

Your logical fallacy is burden of proof

 

[RandFan]

I assume you mean "Brown" when you say "Wilson"?

IIRC the final shot, the fatal one to the top of the head, was from about 10'-15' away.

I think you mean Brown, Wilson is the Police Officer.

The rest I can't tell you too much, unfortunately the autopsy doesn't give actually give exact angles, but they were down and to the right.

Strikes me as odd that someone would bend over at a 45 degree angle with their face parallel to the ground and charge someone 10-15 feet away. Not that it didn't happen that way. I've never seen a football player charge with body and head both parallel to the ground for 10 feet. But that's anecdotal, I honestly don't know.

 

[Kaosium]

I haven't been following this sidebar to closely. Did Wilson misstate, or did someone else misstate what Wilson knew and when he knew it?

When Officer Wilson initially encountered Dorian Johnson and Michael Brown it was to tell them to get out of the road. After these words were exchanged Wilson drove forward and then realized those two matched the description of the call that had just gone out on the radio about a robbery at the Ferguson Market. He then returned and that's when the festivities started. This can be found in the first few pages of his post-shooting interview.

Compounding this was the fact that early in the case the police chief from St. Louis co. said one morning that Officer Wilson didn't know about them being involved in the theft of the cigarillos. He corrected himself later in the day but many media and bloggers ran with the original story long after the correction. This current one seems predicated on the testimony of an officer who stated that they'd heard Officer Wilson say he didn't know about them being involved in the theft of the cigarillos when he stopped them, which is true, initially. As for evidence that he eventually did there's the post-shooting report I posted and of course the fact he called for back-up (which showed up almost immediately after the shooting) before initiating the second encounter.

ETA: I found a page that details and links the calls made about the cigarillos. It includes Officer Wilson (before meeting Johnson and Brown) asking if the other cars needed help on the case, and his call for back-up after he realized the guys walking in the street (Johnson and Brown) were probably the ones from the robbery and before he initiated the second encounter.

 

[plague311]

Your logical fallacy is burden of proof

It wasn't a logical fallacy, you requested a specific breakdown of the situation because you couldn't reconcile Wilson's story. You quoted the post where I gave you a specific location to find the information you requested. I told you they reconciled, but despite quoting that part, you didn't include the directions I gave you to find that information.

Sorry, I don't need to use bold, and increased font to make my words look ridiculous while posting some snarky comment. Especially since you were begging someone else to do your research for you. "I can't piece this together, someone do it for me while I provide no evidence that the two don't fit together, just that I can't reconcile it."

Get over yourself.

 

[Kaosium]

Strikes me as odd that someone would bend over at a 45 degree angle with their face parallel to the ground and charge someone 10-15 feet away. Not that it didn't happen that way. I've never seen a football player charge with body and head both parallel to the ground for 10 feet. But that's anecdotal, I honestly don't know.

Here's what's definite: that Michael Brown was hit on the top of the head by a shot that ended all possibility of him moving again. Whether or not that happened as a result of him being in that position due to him charging that way or him being in the process of falling isn't that important in my opinion as it doesn't materially affect anything as far as I can tell. You can hear the last four shots were fired in rapid succession, it's certain the shot to the top of the head was in that group, probably the very last one as once that one hit he was down and out, and as previously noted he had to already be hunched over for that one to even hit, so once it does he goes straight down precluding the possibility of any further shots hitting where they did.

So what's the point of the incredulity? It won't change the facts, he had to be in that position and he was hit there, and that's the one which ended all movement.

 

[Skeptical Greg]

Strikes me as odd that someone would bend over at a 45 degree angle with their face parallel to the ground and charge someone 10-15 feet away. Not that it didn't happen that way. I've never seen a football player charge with body and head both parallel to the ground for 10 feet. But that's anecdotal, I honestly don't know.

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..

 

[William Parcher]

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

Your figure reminded me of the great Jesse Owens, but the head is not quite at the same angle.