Well then, maybe you would like to point us to a better example?
Would John Crawford suit your purposes? Oh, too late, those cops have already been let off the hook by their own grand jury.
How about Tamir Rice? How long do you think it will be before every sin in his young life it trotted out for public appraisal?
More specifically, what would be a good enough example?
Does it need to be out and out murder for the example to suffice?
If not Michael Brown, who? If not now, when?
By the same token:
Emmet Till is a âbad example to be held up as evidence of violence against blacks by whitesâ because he may have publicly flirted with a white woman before being beaten to death.
Rodney King is a âbad example of police violence against blacks by whitesâ because he is believed to have been driving under the influence at the time he was viciously clubbed by police.
Oscar Grant is a âbad example of police violence against blacks by whitesâ because he may have been involved in a fight and possibly even resisted arrest.
Trayvon Martin is a âbad example of violence against blacks by whitesâ because heâd had some trouble at school and had been suspended for carrying a marijuana pipe.
In fact there are thousands of well-documented âbad examplesâ of black people who faced deadly, disproportionate violence for relatively minor infractions, real or imagined. That doesnât mean we should sweep all those lives under the rug just because they didnât meet some arbitrary and nebulous standard of good citizenship.
By no means does should this be instant execution, but stealing a carton of cigarillos and shoving an aged man over a counter and to the ground, and swinging at him, is not petty theft. Itâs assault and battery during the commission of a robbery. Thatâs a felony. Petty theft is taking the baseball cards and walking out the door.
I do think Darren Wilson should be put on trial for something so that we could get further information clarified and explained. But I donât think diminishing the violent robbery that took place beforehand is a good idea either.
Edit:
Also, the mob targeting this manâs shop because they feel heâs âresponsibleâ for the police coming and thus Brownâs death, and ransacking and looting the place and attempting to set it on fire, while assaulting the guy AGAIN is not âprotesting.â Itâs also assault, battery, robbery, and rioting.
I donât think thatâs by the same token. I actually had something along the lines of âMichael Brown is no Emmett Tillâ in one of my previous posts, but deleted it before posting because the post was becoming rambling.
The felony that Michael Brown committed before the shooting isnât the entire reason why heâs a bad example. Thereâs also the physical evidence that verifies Darren Wilsonâs account. For example, they didnât find Emmett Tillâs DNA on a police officerâs gun.
Please note that Wilson had NO IDEA Brown may have been involved in any sort of theft or altercation at that convenience store. What happened at the convenience store prior to Wilson confronting and then shooting and killing brown is IRRELEVANT because Wilson had no idea about it and it had nothing to do with why he confronted Brown. So can people please stop fucking talking about it? Itâs irrelevant and the only reason it is brought up is to further discredit Brown and make it seem as if he somehow deserved death in a totally unrelated incident later in the day.
Actually, thatâs a myth that the grand jury testimony of the dispatcher and Wilson has countered. He was responding to the theft and assault at the store according to multiple witnesses and the dispatcher , as well as the logbook. I donât know why the press reported otherwise, but the logbook clearly states (as well as radio records) that he was responding to the robbery and was given a description of the two suspects.
Gosh, EDIT again. To be clear, he was responding to the description. He heardthe call out of the description, and radioed in that he had suspects in that. HE knew about the robbery and knew who he was looking for because he heard it over the radio. He was not assigned to respond, but was on patrol.
Rodney King is a better example.
The John Crawford and Tamir Rice situations are extremely disturbing. Iâm not exactly sure how to best place them into greater context with the Michael Brown incident, but Iâm certainly open to your analysis. I think perhaps theyâre not generating as much outrage as the Michael Brown incident because they were holding toy guns that looked like real guns.
One of the nuances in the Tamir Rice situation was that he had an airsoft gun with the orange safety tip removed. And although the initial 911 call that mentioned him specifically stated that the gun was âprobably fakeâ, this critical detail was not given to the officers. Iâll be interested to see the opinions of the grand jury in that case.
And still should not warrant an executionâŚ
I know 911 operators , my mom was one for a good long while. If the witnesses to something are not certain, the 911 operators are trained to generally not pass the information on. They donât want officers going into situations where someone may have a weapon with doubts. If the person KNOWS it was a toy, theyâd pass that on⌠but nobody seemed to know about the nature of Tamirâs gun, and multiple people did call 911 on it. Some people said outright that it was a gun, capital G U N.
100% agreed.
And that is what happened to him. The incident at the store is irrelevant.
I respectfully disagree that it is irrelevant. But , would definitely have preferred a trial to answer these questions.
That is what we are not getting - in part because of questions about the respectability of Brown, because it was even a question. No matter what you think of Wilson, Brown, or the whole situation, this should piss you off, because itâs a miscarriage of justice. Someone who did not deserve to die, died, murdered, because of someone else, someone who is paid to âprotect and serveâ, and because of that, he will not be put on trial so Brownâs family, the community, and even Wilson himself can get the answer to these questions.
Interesting, thanks. I wonder what the police officer training is for a situation like this. If it looks like a gun, treat it like a gun?
As much as people like to pretend cops are trained for everything, theyâre still human. If theyâre getting 911 calls about a âkidâ âmanâ âteenagerâ pointing a âgunâ, âgun maybe a toyâ, âgunâ, âgunâ at people at random, pulling it out from and putting it back into his pants, and looking upset/mean⌠theyâre going to treat it as though theyâre going into an active gunman presenting a threat situation.
If they tell the person to put their hands up, and out comes something completely indistinguishable from a gun, theyâll react like any human beings would.
The thing is, that people donât get⌠I have guns. I have an airsoft weapon based off my handgun (theyâre cheaper to shoot target with.) This is made to be almost an identical item. The weight is the same. The look is the same. The safety, slide, magazine release, and methods of disassembly are the same. The only real difference is, in the airsoft version, the mechanism is compressed air based, and in the hand gun, the mechanism is firing pin based. Oh, and the orange cap. If I took the orange cap off the gun, and set them side by side, they are literally indistinguishable from a foot away. Same markings, same manufacturer, same trigger, same grip, same sights, same grip safety, same trigger safety.
Weâre not talking about a space ray versus a Springfield Arms XDM here. Weâre talking two guns made to look exactly the same, one firing 9mm bullets and the other firing pellets via compressed air.
I think the response has to be to treat it as if itâs real.
I just had a look at Airsoft on Wikipedia. I see your point about being indistinguishable from a foot away.
I wonder if itâs practical to require that toy replicas be more permanently marked as such. I had a cheap plastic squirt gun when I was a kid that was made to look like a fully automatic rifle. It was battery-powered, and you could actually just hold the trigger down and fire away repeatedly. It had a 1-2" orange plastic tip on the end of the barrel. I didnât remove the tip, but Iâm sure it couldâve easily been removed. It may not have fooled anyone from a foot away, but it couldâve definitely caused confusion from 10 or 20 feet away.
Ehh, itâs a little ambiguous for me⌠thereâs something of a timeline from the radio records here:
By that timeline, when the robbery report and description was given, Wilson was responding to a call about a 2 year old with breathing problems (he reported he was done with the call at noon, the robbery report came at 11:53 and the description came â4 minutes laterâ). I assume he didnât turn off his radio, so he probably heard it, but itâs also probably safe to say that he may not have had his full attention on it. After that, I havenât seen anything (outside of Wilsonâs testimony) that definitively suggests he knew these were the robbery suspects. He had his encounter when he says âget on the sidewalkâ (or âget the F on the sidewalkâ depending on who you believe), then, only seconds later, he pulls up on them and the confrontation begins.
Presumably when he said âget on the sidewalkâ he didnât realize they were suspects. He may have put it together in the seconds where they left him and when he slammed into reverse, or he might not have, but (and correct me if Iâm wrong) thereâs no indication that he made the knowledge clear over the radio (he did at once, presumably before the encounter, talk to police and ask if they needed help, and, at some point, he did ask for more cops, but itâs not clear to me when that is with respect to the confrontation⌠it could have been in the seconds that he was backing up, it also could have been in the time after they had the tussle in the car and Brown was running away⌠none of the sources I could find say that he said WHY he requested more cops).
Though this is all academic because his participation in a crime doesnât justify his death. Honestly, I have a lot of doubts about the nature of the fight in the car, too⌠it seems like an outright crazy thing to do to just reach for a copâs gun, but, I could see them getting into a tug of war, and, if maybe the cop brought his gun out, that heâd try to push it away. And really, to me, everything supports Brownâs associateâs story there: they got into a physical fight that was mostly a tug of war (Wilson said Brown punched him several times in the head full force, but had very minor bruising at most⌠Brownâs a huge guy, and to me those limited injuries make much more sense if they it was mostly a tug of war without any serious punches thrown)⌠and, assuming Wilson knew these were robbery suspects and thatâs why he came back on them⌠it just doesnât make sense that heâd reverse suddenly, stop RIGHT next to them, and start getting physical (or allowing Brown to get physical), rather than coming at them at a distance with weapon drawn or just following them and waiting for backup. At the very least, if thatâs what happened, it strikes me as horrible police work. Two suspects, one cop, you want to come at it from a place of control, donât you? Getting so close makes no sense.
But what does make some amount of sense to me is if Brown said something and Wilson felt disrespected and tried to âteach him a lessonâ in an authoritarian way⌠grabbing him by the shirt collar (as Johnson said) and saying something like âwhat did you say to me?â And he probably wasnât intending on Brown fighting back (which he may not have done if he hadnât just committed a crime), or intending on shooting him, but it spiraled out of control fast.
Well, hereâs a recent story about police responding to a guy with a real gun, who really pointed it at police and innocent bystanders (including children) alike. Did they empty their service weapons into him on sight? No. They tried negotiating with him for about 15 minutes, repeatedly asking him to put the gun down before reluctantly firing a single shot and then rushing to get him to the hospital in time to save his life.
Guess what color the manâs skin wasnât?
Those things were all the rage when I was at University, but they didnât even have orange caps on the end of the barrel at that time. A group from my year were ambushed by armed police while messing around in a public park âshootingâ at each other. But fortunately this was in the UK and their Tactical Firearm Squads are less trigger happy than US beat cops appear to be. So no-one died and they just got a telling off âŚ
Youâre lucky it wasnât surrounding the time of London Tube Bombings. Code Red protocol said to put multiple shots into the head of a suspect. Thatâs what they did to Jean Charles De Menzes. Eight shots to the head as a âsafety protocol.â
