Michael Brown shooting II

[davefoc]

Has anyone posting in this thread read through all the eyewitness accounts including what the eyewitnesses might have said before the grand jury trial and where the eyewitnesses were in relationship to the shooting and compared their accounts with the physical evidence to make an objective assessment of what the most likely scenario is and what is the range of scenarios that are possible given the physical evidence and the witness statements?

I took a look at what that entailed last night and it seemed to be something that would require quite a bit of effort.

I was listening to Sean Hannity last night and according to him five eyewitnesses are all in agreement that Brown was charging Wilson. I took a look at a summary of witness statements and there were five out of 45 total witness that agreed that Brown was charging. Seven witnesses claimed he wasn't. Are the witnesses that report charging so credible that their accounts are much more likely to be true than the witnesses that reported something else?

As to the wounds to the top of the head proving that Brown was charging: I don't think so. A body staggering forward and bent over will take a difficult to predict time to rotate fully and crash to the ground. Earlier I made a short video that showed why the simplistic notion that a head that was attached to a body would fall at a free fall rate was just wrong. While the head is attached to the body the physics of the body need to be taken into account to determine how the head will move. And the problem with predicting how the head will move is that we need to know how the body will move and rotate after Brown is shot. And to predict how the body will move and rotate after Brown is shot we need to know the forward speed that Brown is moving at, where he is in his stride, how his legs reacted after he was shot, how his neck reacted after he was shot and how bent over he was when he suffered his first head wound. None of that seems knowable right now so I am inclined to believe that any ideas about knowing how Brown was moving before he was shot based on the location of the head wounds are not well founded unless they are unaccompanied with data and analysis demonstrating that the theory had a credible basis..

 

[Upchurch]

So? No riot gear. And no context as to what that truck is for, might just be a handy platform to get high above the crowd to observe. It's certainly not being used to attack protesters in that pic.

May I take it that the moving goal posts means that you don't have any evidence that the riots and looting came first?

 

[Upchurch]

Yep, as I've said earlier Upchurch wants prosecutors to act like the guy in the Duke lacrosse case and other prosecutors who withheld evidence and railroaded innocent people into serving decades for crimes DNA later showed they couldn't have committed.

I have said nothing of the sort. I never said any evidence should be withheld during the discovery phase of the trial. In fact, it never even got that far.

I have said over and over that if McCulloch didn't think there was a case, he shouldn't have taken it to the Grand Jury. He should not have used the Grand Jury as an excuse to avoid the blame for making an unpopular decision.

Too many 'skeptics' want justice to be about feelings instead of facts.

Wait a minute. You where the one who said McCulloch had to take the case to the Grand Jury, not because facts of the case merited it, but because of an emotional plea to consequences.

 

[Puppycow]

Has anyone posting in this thread read through all the eyewitness accounts including what the eyewitnesses might have said before the grand jury trial and where the eyewitnesses were in relationship to the shooting and compared their accounts with the physical evidence to make an objective assessment of what the most likely scenario is and what is the range of scenarios that are possible given the physical evidence and the witness statements?

I took a look at what that entailed last night and it seemed to be something that would require quite a bit of effort.

I was listening to Sean Hannity last night and according to him five eyewitnesses are all in agreement that Brown was charging Wilson. I took a look at a summary of witness statements and there were five out of 45 total witness that agreed that Brown was charging. Seven witnesses claimed he wasn't. Are the witnesses that report charging so credible that their accounts are much more likely to be true than the witnesses that reported something else?

As to the wounds to the top of the head proving that Brown was charging: I don't think so. A body staggering forward and bent over will take a difficult to predict time to rotate fully and crash to the ground. Earlier I made a short video that showed why the simplistic notion that a head that was attached to a body would fall at a free fall rate was just wrong. While the head is attached to the body the physics of the body need to be taken into account to determine how the head will move. And the problem with predicting how the head will move is that we need to know how the body will move and rotate after Brown is shot. And to predict how the body will move and rotate after Brown is shot we need to know the forward speed that Brown is moving at, where he is in his stride, how his legs reacted after he was shot, how his neck reacted after he was shot and how bent over he was when he suffered his first head wound. None of that seems knowable right now so I am inclined to believe that any ideas about knowing how Brown was moving before he was shot based on the location of the head wounds are not well founded unless they are unaccompanied with data and analysis demonstrating that the theory had a credible basis..

Hi davefoc. Have you read the Justice Department report?

http://www.justice.gov/usao/pam/Documents/DOJ Report on Shooting of Michael Brown.pdf

 

[Giz]

Wait a minute. You where the one who said McCulloch had to take the case to the Grand Jury, not because facts of the case merited it, but because of an emotional plea to consequences.

Nope. A rational analysis of the likely consequences.

The subordination of reason in favor of emotion has been on team lynch wilson.

 

[Upchurch]

Nope. A rational analysis of the likely consequences.

But nothing to do with justice and facts and everything to do with acting according to people's emotions.

The subordination of reason in favor of emotion has been on team lynch wilson.

Of which, I'm sure you see, I was never a member of.

 

[HenryLee]

In what possible universe is this an even remotely excusable act?

Don't they call that "resisting arrest"?

 

[Mumbles]

Don't they call that "resisting arrest"?

The correct answer is apparently "When you're white, and the police are conducting a no-knock raid on your house".

I'll state this yet again - this is smethign black people hav been discussing (misconduct by *all* police, with black cops often being even worse than white cops) for*decades* now. If it takes a polce force acting like a military from some crazed dictator, and a few stores belong burned, just to get some mayors to say "Oh no, we're not like them, let's all stay calm", then, well, what else were folks supposed to do? And while we're stll seeing black guys being shot, strangled, or beatenfor being in stairwells, running away, not running away, carrying expired IDs, supposedly selling looseys, presenting ID when asked for ID, and so forth, at lest now the White House is looking into it. At least now people are saying "Hm, maybe we *should* give cops body cameras." And that's better than the "Oh, no, he once had cheap gold fronts and quoted Kanye West on Twitter, he was a thuggity thug thug who deserved to be killed for walking home from the store."

 

[HenryLee]

...and when you leave out physically attacking someone those examples sound horrible. I'm sure it makes sense to somebody that if someone doesn't want to be handcuffed and slaps the police's hands away, the police should just shrug their shoulders and say "whatever, maybe next time."

"You're under arrest, put your hands behind your back." "No!" "Curses, foiled again!"

I didn't realize that George Zimmerman just drove up and shot Trayvon Martin as he was walking down the street. How'd that guy get acquitted? Oh, that's right, there's a few steps left out of "killed for walking home from the store" that changes things. Wounds the narrative as it were that these things are just happening to poor innocent people who were just minding their own business, doing nothing wrong when BAM! Racists appear from nowhere and start throwing lead!

"All I did was drive a stolen car, lie to the police, flee a traffic stop and fought them to keep from being restrained. Why am I the bad guy? Can't you see I'm the victim here?"

"Punch a cop, get shot" is tragic but can be avoided by...wait for it...not punching cops. Most people seem able to avoid it. Some folks learn the hard way.

 

[Mumbles]

...and when you leave out physically attacking someone those examples sound horrible. I'm sure it makes sense to somebody that if someone doesn't want to be handcuffed and slaps the police's hands away, the police should just shrug their shoulders and say "whatever, maybe next time."

"You're under arrest, put your hands behind your back." "No!" "Curses, foiled again!"

I didn't realize that George Zimmerman just drove up and shot Trayvon Martin as he was walking down the street. How'd that guy get acquitted?

I thought I said long ago that I was done with the absurd argument that it's normal to jump out of your car ad chase someone down because you see them walking down the street. We're done here. I stand by what I said. If fires and police shootings are whats needed to get people to actually do something more than listen to some clown likeDon Lemon, then I have no idea what else what we're supposed to do.

 

[davefoc]

Hi davefoc. Have you read the Justice Department report?

http://www.justice.gov/usao/pam/Documents/DOJ%20Report%20on%20Shooting%20of%20Michael%20Brown.pdf

I read through quite a bit of it. Thank you.

I disagree with the apparent consensus here that the report proves Wilson's innocence, but I may be quibbling a bit. The clear purpose of the investigation the report is about was to determine if there was sufficient evidence to charge Wilson. The conclusion of the report was that there wasn't. That does not mean that the report concludes that Wilson was innocent.

However, the evidence that he was innocent is stronger than I imagined and it seems to me that information in the report comes very close to proving the idea that Wilson was factually innocent.

I found this particularly probative with regard to the guilt or innocence of Wilson. From section C 1 ii of the report

Witnesses Consistent with Prior Statements, Physical Evidence, and Other Witnesses Who Inculpate Wilson
There are no witnesses who fall under this category.

This section follows several pages that describe in detail witness statements that are consistent with Wilson's account, their prior statements, and physical evidence. This comes much closer to proving Wilson innocent than I thought was possible.

This does not mean that Wilson's actions were appropriate throughout. I continue to believe that Wilson's decision to pull the car close to Brown may have been a contributing factor to the problem here. Did Wilson just make a simple procedural error with tragic consequences? Was Wilson in a state of substantial anger at the disrespect he received from Brown and the way he maneuvered the car was designed to intimidate Brown as a form of vengeance? I don't know. But the report went a long way to making me believe that Wilson was an unfortunate victim of events, perhaps including routine police activity in Ferguson that had so angered the local population that they were primed to accept an anti-police narrative with little resistance.

 

[Giz]

the local population that they were primed to accept an anti-police narrative with little resistance.

not just the local population it seems.

 

[Upchurch]

not just the local population it seems.

You did see the other DOJ report, did you not?

 

[Wolrab]

The saddest part of all this is the lies that are now gospel. I saw a pre-teen black girl from a southern state on the news. She was expressing her fear of the police and said (paraphrasing here) "When I see a policeman I think about those boys in Missouri."
She was talking about Brown, the dope with the sandwich gun, and the dope at the gas station that drew and fired (IIRC) on a cop. All three died because of their own actions, but she will probably never know that and think these guys were gunned down only because they were black.

Any healing will need to come from all sides.

 

[Monketi Ghost]

The saddest part of all this is the lies that are now gospel. I saw a pre-teen black girl from a southern state on the news. She was expressing her fear of the police and said (paraphrasing here) "When I see a policeman I think about those boys in Missouri."
She was talking about Brown, the dope with the sandwich gun, and the dope at the gas station that drew and fired (IIRC) on a cop. All three died because of their own actions, but she will probably never know that and think these guys were gunned down only because they were black.

Any healing will need to come from all sides.

Matches my experience talking with high school aged black kids.
Tough age though- they know everything about everything, even when they actually know very little about very much.
At that age I'd've bought the anti-Wilson narrative much more easily, I'm sure.

 

[Upchurch]

The saddest part of all this is the lies that are now gospel. I saw a pre-teen black girl from a southern state on the news. She was expressing her fear of the police and said (paraphrasing here) "When I see a policeman I think about those boys in Missouri."
She was talking about Brown, the dope with the sandwich gun, and the dope at the gas station that drew and fired (IIRC) on a cop. All three died because of their own actions, but she will probably never know that and think these guys were gunned down only because they were black.

Any healing will need to come from all sides.

Maybe she just saw the what the police did after the shooting to both protestors and reporters, which wasn't lies.

 

[Wolrab]

I wish I had a link, it was probably the NBC Nightly News. She said nothing of the protests.

I am also disappointed that Wilson's actions are intentionally lumped in with the FPD's racism. There is nothing out there suggesting Wilson iswas a bad racist cop other than him being a cop on the FPD. Guilt by association I guess.

The way the media, the activists (SJW), even posters on this forum were and are so eager to make Wilson some kind of monster is telling.

What happened played out in seconds. Picking apart everything Wilson did in those seconds, from his telling them to "get out of the ***** road", how he backed up, the struggle in the car, and the shooting of a violent Brown coming back at Wilson happened so fast I can find no fault with Wilson. He had to make some literally life and death decisions fast. Brown was the one who put him in that position.

Brown was stoned, a thief, a strong armed robber, and he attacked Wilson in the car. I can't really see this playing out any other way all thanks to Brown.

Hands up don't shoot is a lie deliberately made up to inflame everyone and was repeated constantly till it has become the accepted "truth" for a lot of people.

 

[Monketi Ghost]

I wish I had a link, it was probably the NBC Nightly News. She said nothing of the protests.

I am also disappointed that Wilson's actions are intentionally lumped in with the FPD's racism. There is nothing out there suggesting Wilson iswas a bad racist cop other than him being a cop on the FPD. Guilt by association I guess.

The way the media, the activists (SJW), even posters on this forum were and are so eager to make Wilson some kind of monster is telling.

What happened played out in seconds. Picking apart everything Wilson did in those seconds, from his telling them to "get out of the ***** road", how he backed up, the struggle in the car, and the shooting of a violent Brown coming back at Wilson happened so fast I can find no fault with Wilson. He had to make some literally life and death decisions fast. Brown was the one who put him in that position.

Brown was stoned, a thief, a strong armed robber, and he attacked Wilson in the car. I can't really see this playing out any other way all thanks to Brown.

Hands up don't shoot is a lie deliberately made up to inflame everyone and was repeated constantly till it has become the accepted "truth" for a lot of people.

Excellent post. The highlighted facts have been argued or outright dismissed with a hand wave on practically every other page of this thread, which astounded me. Early on I felt as if I had to keep checking what forum this was. "Wait-- yes, it's the critical thinking forum. Huh."

 

[jimbob]

I wish I had a link, it was probably the NBC Nightly News. She said nothing of the protests.

I am also disappointed that Wilson's actions are intentionally lumped in with the FPD's racism. There is nothing out there suggesting Wilson iswas a bad racist cop other than him being a cop on the FPD. Guilt by association I guess.

The way the media, the activists (SJW), even posters on this forum were and are so eager to make Wilson some kind of monster is telling.

What happened played out in seconds. Picking apart everything Wilson did in those seconds, from his telling them to "get out of the ***** road", how he backed up, the struggle in the car, and the shooting of a violent Brown coming back at Wilson happened so fast I can find no fault with Wilson. He had to make some literally life and death decisions fast. Brown was the one who put him in that position.

Brown was stoned, a thief, a strong armed robber, and he attacked Wilson in the car. I can't really see this playing out any other way all thanks to Brown.

Hands up don't shoot is a lie deliberately made up to inflame everyone and was repeated constantly till it has become the accepted "truth" for a lot of people.

Excellent post. The highlighted facts have been argued or outright dismissed with a hand wave on practically every other page of this thread, which astounded me. Early on I felt as if I had to keep checking what forum this was. "Wait-- yes, it's the critical thinking forum. Huh."

I said before that based on what I've read, Wilson probably isn't guilty. However police in many other countries have to deal with large, drugged up people and usually manage without lethal force. I think the protocols or training in the FPD seem to be inadequate.

 

[davefoc]

Excellent post. The highlighted facts have been argued or outright dismissed with a hand wave on practically every other page of this thread, which astounded me. Early on I felt as if I had to keep checking what forum this was. "Wait-- yes, it's the critical thinking forum. Huh."

I am unaware of a single post that dismisses Brown's behavior with a hand wave. Where are the posts that excuse Michael Brown's behaviors in this thread?