Where's Obama?
Presidents get into helicopters at the drop of a hat to tour disaster areas if such a trip can get them 2 minutes of empathy-demonstration on the nightly news broadcast. Their presence is generally a hindrance to progress as first-responders have to drop everything to plan for the visit.
For once, in St. Louis, a Presidential visit might actually do some good and Obama sits in Martha's Vineyard. I never thought of him this way, but for much of the African-American community, Obama represents a unique, special, almost mythical figure in whom a lot of hopes and dreams were invested. An Obama visit urging peace combined with a promise from him that a fair and complete investigation would be undertaken would, IMO, bring the rioting to a halt. If I were he I would go out there as the true friend of the African-American community that many perceive him to be and say, "the national has heard you and shares your frustration. Change can happen. But further violence in the streets is only going to undermine your position and give the advocates of militarized policing further, ah, ammunition. It is reasonable for a President to defer to local and state authorities -- in fact it would be disastrous for the President to make a habit of sticking his nose in local criminal cases -- but he may be the only person with the credibility with local residents to make this end.
Since I last posted on this, there have been two new pieces of information. One, Michael Brown apparently committed petty theft a few minutes before he was picked up, though the officers that picked him up did not know this. And two, an autopsy reports that the unarmed Brown was shot at least 6 times. It is hard to imagine any story that adequately explains shooting an unarmed man** who was not known to have committed a crime 6 freaking times. And since the police have still not released any narrative of what happened from their point of view (they are still working with Michael Bay's screenwriters to see if they can come up with something), all we can do is imagine.
**Update 8/18: I am willing to believe I am being unfair here. I am simply exhausted by the lack of accountability and the pass we give to officers involved in shootings. However, just because many such shootings are unjustified and subject to cover-ups does not by any means they all are. The question from all of this is how do we start holding the police accountable without having to have riots.
This report turned out to be completely false. Probably the view of the New Black Panthers.
The bad cop who witnesses have said was charged by the "victim" after being asked to get out of the middle of the street.
Of course the cop looks bad with all those reports you keep posting from the Am Sharpton newswire - and they are all false. At some point you need to admit when you are wrong.
The cop didn't know of the robbery or that Brown had robbed a place - he initially was concerned that Brown was in the middle of the street. If Brown acted normal - he couldn't have gotten away with a yes officer and went on his merry way - on the sidewalk.
You are excusing the criminal for his stupidity because of your irrational hatred of cops.
I think there are enough witnesses and audio tape of witnesses during the event to show that the kid was not acting rationally and was acting in a way that could get him shot. Your sticking with old facts, old stories, and a heart full of cop hatred.
I'm ready to believe that there is a problem violence by non-blacks (including police) against blacks. However, When Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown are the two "best" examples of this, it serves to make me more skeptical, not less. Shouldn't there be an Emmett Till people who think this is a problem can rally around?
It appears that Brown committed a felony, broke a cop's orbital bone, the fled and subsequently charged toward the police. If anything, I'm beginning to wonder if I should be less, not more, skeptical of police if this is the best case people have to rally around.
You know, when you consistently alter the small facts of this case, one can have no faith in your comments about any other "facts".
i.e. - your massive bias is showing.
Ok, lets try a hypothetical case. We'll set a 6'4" dude 35 feet away from you. He'll rush at you. You have a few seconds to pick either your pepper spray, baton, or your taser to stop him.
My guess is, in this situation, you'll be heading to the hospital.
I agree that's true. Then why did you need to discount the value by 90%?
People, seriously, stop with the discussions about 9mm being
“weak.”
Pretty much all auto pistol rounds are weak. The officer would have seen little difference
had he been shooting a .45, or anything else.
Ballistic test after ballistic test proves that the
difference between 9, 40, and 45 is absolutely minimal. Yes the 45 is more powerful, but how many of
you can actually give the real numbers on how much more powerful it is? Very few, because most of you are just parroting
information thrown out there by 45 fanbois who look at the difference between 414
foot pounds of energy at the muzzle (45 ACP Federal Hydashock) and 382 foot
pound of energy at the muzzle (9mm, NOT +P, because the +P rounds actually
exceed the 45 ACP with 500 foot pounds of energy, but don’t tell the fanbois,
they’ll shit themselves) and think that the difference there is going to be
even noticeable at all.
It won’t be, for all practical purposes.
You know that little “poodle popper, worthless POS” 5.56
round they shoot out of M4s? The one
that everyone says is so underpowered and weak?
1,800 foot pounds of energy. Kind
of puts your super-pistol hypothesis to shame, doesn’t it?
Pistols, and especially auto pistols, are not powerful. They are weak, wimpy excuses for firearms,
designed to be easy to tote and carry, with the sacrifice being that they are
wimpy as hell. So stop with the .45 ACP
fanboi shit, and the 9mm bashing. They
are virtually identical in every real ballistics test imaginable.
Tasers don't fire 35 feet, as far as I know, and pepper spray certainly doesn't.
By the way, 6 shots isn't unreasonable, generally speaking, when you are shooting at someone. You shoot until the threat stops. If that means one bullet, fine. If it means 10, that's just what happens. Real life isn't like the movies, and you can't generally drill someone in the chest and get a one-shot stop.
If you think that trying to subdue a 300lb guy with a baton is a good idea, you should rethink that.
A gentle reminder that there may be another way.
http://reason.com/blog/2012/05/14/german-police-fired-85-rounds-in-2011-wh
Paraphrasing what I read elsewhere: nothing says I am working to hold police accountable like looting stores.
What if a 6'3" 260 lb stoned man whom you already shot once charged at you, would you shoot and keep shooting until he fell? This is exactly the story I've picked up from the meida and it accounts for the number of wounds. I also use the term "man" because Michael is exactly what a marine recruiter is looking for, a 6'3" 260 lb man.
The author of the blog needs to see the video of Mchael committing strong arm robbery ten minutes before his death to get an idea of his size and his belligerence.
I think Brown provoked the whole event. That said, I did see one good comment on all the blogs:
If a civilian shoots a cop, they are put into custody immediately, and immediately interrogated before they have time to fabricate a story. The suspect may choose to remain silent.
If a cop shoots a civilian, they are immediately cosseted, and work with enablers to develop a believable story line, often with heavy union representation. Even before any shooting, unions and police bureaucracies have created a set of rules to almost always exonerate an officer.
Basically, if an officer determines there is a threat, they are entitled to shoot, under rules that exist in most jurisdictions.
Another point: Brown may have gone after Wilson's gun. That's a big non-no. An officer is obligated to try to shoot you if you do that. He is not only protecting himself, but the brotherhood. You go after a cop's weapon and you will die. That one I understand.
The LAPD uses bullets that expand on impact, Hollow points. Does that effect the argument?
IF either the shooting or the PD's handling of the protests is a civil rights violation, then there certainly is federal jurisdiction. However,
1) There is now a picture of the cop going around the internet, and he certainly was punched very hard. Cops are often liars, and apparently Ferguson cops have been caught in contradictory accounts before (see #3 below), but this is confirmation of much of the cop's story. Given the size and apparent strength of the dead man and evidence that he did attack in a rage, shooting him until he was down to stay seems like reasonable self-defense.
2) The Ferguson PD's response to the protests was bone-headed and probably turned protests into riots. But if it's illegal, there are a lot of federal officials that should be arresting themselves. E.g., anyone involved in creating "free speech zones".
3) OTOH, I can see why people in Ferguson do not trust or believe their PD. E.g., some of these cops arrested the wrong man, beat him bloody in a jail cell, and charged him with bleeding on their uniforms - and then admitted that this was a lie. (Or else they did get blood on their uniforms, and then lied about it when they realized how telling the court about that was going to go...)
http://overlawyered.com/2014/08/wrongfully-arrested-man-charged-getting-blood-cops-uniforms/