Analysis of Michael Brown shooting witnesses: 16 out of 18 say hands up when shot

boing
23

It continues to astonish me how desperately some people need for Brown to be a dangerous thug, and for Wilson to be a victim. One would almost think racism still existed.

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24

Am I the only one that noticed four witnesses “voted” twice? Witnesses 14, 16, 41 and 44 had two interviews each.
Kind of a skewed “analysis”.

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25

Along with body cameras, etc., we need a change in the law to govern what happens when the evidence goes missing or devices are mysteriously turned off/not functioning. As Radley Balko puts, it,

And in cases where there should be audio or video that would
corroborate one side or the other, and due to no fault on the part of
the citizen there isn’t, there should be a presumption in any ensuing
litigation that the audio or video would have corroborated the citizen’s
account of the incident.

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26

Hmm, I suspect a coverup as much as the next reasonable person, but there’s a lot of inconsistency even between boingboing and PBS, and if we are trying for accuracy lets be diligent about it:

Boingboing headline: 16 out of 18 say hands up when shot (that implies to me that he held his hands up from start of shooting to end, or something like that)

PBS spreadsheet question the 16 of 18 answered affirmatively: Did MB PUT[my emphasis] his hands up when fired upon? (If he only put his hands up after being fired upon, then that implies to me that they were not up before.)

PBS article text linked from boingboing: More than 50 percent of the witness statements said that Michael Brown
held his hands up when Darren Wilson shot him. (16 out of 29 such statements). Hmm, it sounds like they are referring to the same question, but here they use the word HELD rather than PUT.

So did he hold his hands up or put them up when the firing started? Facts matter.

27

And the second he raised his hands to surrender, the firing should have stopped. I understand the “double tap” school of thought, but it’s more applicable in a military than a police setting.

If, once the shooting starts, Officer PissingMyself TriggerHappy empties half a clip before evaluating the results, he’s acting more like the much stereotyped “gang bangers” than a law enforcement professional.

Here is an example of what happens when cops go into a feeding frenzy…

http://rt.com/usa/158960-miami-police-fired-hundreds-rounds/

I would prefer the people I empower to detain, arrest, beat, maim, and/or kill me - and to be preemptively granted qualified immunity for doing so - be a bit more restrained in their use of deadly force.

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28

Whaddaya mean “weak?” I’m not taking Officer Wilson’s side here. I wanted him to be charged with something so there would be a trial with cross-examinations and all of that good stuff. I’m just saying that the phrasing in the chart might be taken to mean all those witnesses said he was surrendering, when in fact, at least one that I know of said he had his arms out and was looking down at his body.

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29

Here’s a direct quote from the PBS story:

“More than 50 percent of the witness statements said that Michael Brown held his hands up when Darren Wilson shot him. (16 out of 29 such statements)”

Those aren’t my parentheses. PBS says 16 out of 29. BoingBoing says 16 out of 18. BoingBoing simply excludes those witnesses who say they didn’t know, or those witnesses who didn’t answer that question, or weren’t asked it.

Also note how BoingBoing takes PBS’s wording regarding Michael Brown putting his hands up “When fired upon” and presents it as “at the time he was shot to death”.

30

What is the most dangerous part of the human body, the hand! Down with hands!

31

There are approximately 7 billion humans in the world, and if you asked each of them “were Michael Brown’s hands up when he was shot” the answer for almost all of them would be “I don’t know.” But we don’t say “16 of 7 billion people say Brown’s hands were up,” because the relevant number is the 18 witnesses who were able to answer that question. The additional 11 witnesses might not have even been there for that part of the encounter, or might have had their eyes on the guy with the gun instead of the guy he was pointing it at.

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32

There needs to be a full trial because it is in the public interest. Either:

  1. the sixteen witnesses are accurate. It’s established here that it’s perfectly legal for a police officer to shoot a man who has his hands raised in the air in surrender, and we’re happy with that arrangement, so we do not need to investigate the facts of the case further. We need no trial.

  2. It is illegal for a police officer to shoot a man (a jaywalking suspect, an assault suspect, an unconvinced man, not a convicted felon fleeing prison) … It’s illegal to shoot a man who has his hands raised in surrender, and there is reasonable doubt of Wilson’s account. In fact all 16 witnesses who said they saw Brown surrender in their interviews are mistaken. We need a trial to establish this.

  3. It’s illegal for a police officer to shoot a man who’s surrendered and the 16 witnesses are accurate, and Officer Wilson is guilty of some offence for carrying out the shooting. We need a trial and a conviction to protect the public from Officer Wilson.

  4. The witnesses are accurate and Wilson shot Brown while he was surrendering, which surprisingly is legal today. Wilson is innocent of committing a crime because the law is broken. We’re not happy with Wilson having legal protection from his actions and the law must be changed so the Brown killing can never be repeated. We need a trial to identify which laws must be changed so that no future defence can be mounted to an outrageous killing.

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34

41 admited to lieing. And couple said 4 cops fired or made up things.

35

We don’t actually know if these people were able to answer the question from first hand observation. What we do know is that they claimed to be able.

40

The shooter’s and victim’s races are extremely well known. They don’t need to be mentioned for the headline to be racially charged.

41

It’s pretty clear that Mike Brown was no angel, but that does not mean he should have been shot, nor does it mean officer Wilson is without any blame. A lot of pundits want to paint this incident minus any grey areas. From reading all the eyewitness accounts it sure looks like Wilson was overreacting from the get-go, he misinterpreted the situation and freaked out, and his testimony is slanted to justify the killing in his own mind and the mind of the public; a lot of the eyewitness accounts don’t match his description, and yet he is the one who did the killing. Cop or not, he is a human, with all the issues and insecurities that come with our pitiful human existence.

43

By that logic, any headline that involves Brown and/or Wilson is racially charged.

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44

Of course not, apparently all that needs to happen is that the headline suggest that it was wrong for Darren Wilson to shoot Michael Brown to death, then it becomes racially charged. I suppose if a headline says that Michael Brown robbed a convenience store before the shooting, or a story that reported that Darren Wilson said he was afraid for his life, those are just reporting plain, completely uncharged facts?

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45

Clearly, by even talking about this event, or any of the shootings that just happen to involve white cops and kids of color, we’re all playing the race card and hence are racist against white cops. /s

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46

I actually do realize that, thank you Brainspore. I don’t claim that the events are disconnected. BoingBoing’s phrasing implied that the shot that killed Michael Brown occurred when he had his hands up, and the autopsy report indicates otherwise. For example, Michael Brown may have put his hands up, then lowered them to charge at Wilson.

Furthermore, there’s a distinct difference between how PBS is presenting the story, and how BoingBoing is presenting it. And this difference is indicative of a pattern.

More generally, I do agree with the belief that the “social contract has been broken” in this country, and we need to address that. I just think that this specific situation is a very bad example to be held up as evidence of police violence against blacks by whites.

47

Why? What’s specifically doesn’t connect this to police violence against people of color? Because Michael Brown doesn’t conform to your notions of respectability? Because he might have been involved in a petty crime? [edited to add] Please explain what made Michael Brown eligible for instant execution, in your “wisdom”?

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48

Twelve shots were fired at Brown and six of them struck him. Sixteen of the eighteen witnesses who testified that they saw this take place claim Wilson started shooting when Brown’s hands were in the air. So now you’re complaining because there’s some question as to whether he put his hands back down after he’d already been shot one or more times?

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