Late 80’s. The UK hadn’t gone mad about terrorists yet —despite active and damaging IRA bombing campaigns … 
Even now, UK police are still way more restrained than their US counterparts.
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But it’s a pipe dream to know what happened at that cruiser window. We know we’ll never have that information. We know we’ll never have a lot of information about that day. We can’t look to the specific incidents because we are stuck with a one sided story and 20+ conflicting witness accounts.
And you can bet that people’s reactions to police have already adapted to the situation,.A huge number of young black men react to police as people who might beat, falsely imprison or kill them and who can get away with doing so because that’s the reality, then the police use those reactions as ‘suspicious’ behaviour to justify their actions. The power relationship is so skewed that talking about how non-police interact with police is similar to talking about how children interact with parents.*** You can’t look at child abuse by examining what the child could have done differently.
The logic I see used to defend officers (‘have to take threats seriously’) is justification for black men to kill every cop they see on sight. They simply have to take seriously the threat that the cop might kill them. The only solution is for police to begin earning respect by treating people with respect, and to be willing to sit it out for months, years or even decades in some places to actually see any benefit.
*** I am absolutely not calling black people children. I’m comparing a power dynamic where one side holds so many cards that we have to hold it accountable for the situation.
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Wapo has a article on this subject here http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2014/11/29/b99ef7a8-75d3-11e4-a755-e32227229e7b_story.html
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Interesting how that article points out that at least a couple who saw him with his “arms raised” have him balling his fists up as he charged/moved quickly back… or have him doing anything but surrendering. But NPR just has it “arms upward” and boingboing has it “hands up”
How do you know he didn’t just raise his hands up and they weren’t completely flat OR “fists up” but rather loosely curled? Because I just rose my hands up and that’s a pretty natural position for my hands to take, unless I"m thinking “make sure they are spread wide and flat!” and doing that on purpose. Remember that this was a high stress situation that happened VERY quickly. Maybe he didn’t have time to flatten his hands fully.
Seems more likely this lands somewhere in the middle, rather than either/or, since we have several different accounts of how his hands were displayed while being raised, and considering witness testimony is rarely (never, really) perfect, it seems like a good theory to me.
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It’s irrelevant to Wilson’s actions, but it may be relevant to corroborate the narrative that Wilson was attacked in his car by a crazy person. Dorian Johnson, Brown’s friend he was walking with, described the convenience store robbery as being shocking and so out of character with the Mike Brown he knew. Johnson said he heard the clerk say he was going to call the police, and Johnson was scared about being caught when they saw a couple of police cars as they were leaving. But yet later Brown and Johnson are walking home down the middle of their street, light traffic passing them on either side, and Mike Brown is still carrying the stolen cigarillos in his hands visible for anyone to see.
That seems fookin’ crazy to me, and that’s just Dorian Johnson’s version of events.
I’m not saying this justifies an execution, but I am saying that based on what happened a few minutes earlier, Brown might have been acting erratically when he met Officer Wilson.
“I’m not saying this justifies an execution, BUT”
Seriously? Anything that comes after a “but!” negates anything before it.
Sigh. Okay, instead of a “but” pretend I put a period and started a new sentence. Also, make this all uppercase: I’M NOT SAYING THIS JUSTIFIES AN EXECUTION.
Mostly what I was trying to convey was this: the earlier robbery is irrelevant to how Officer Wilson acted, but it might be relevant to how Mike Brown acted.
Personally I would have liked to have seen the grand jury charge Wilson with something because to me, it SEEMS like there should have been ample opportunities to not shoot an unarmed young man dead. A public trial with cross-examinations and whatnot would have been a very good thing for everyone.
I’m have a HUGE problem with the topmost witness, OFFICER Darren Wilson:
- Was MB running away from DW when fired upon? N/A
- Was MB kneeling when fired upon? N/A
- Did MB put hands up when fired upon? N/A
WTF? If he doesn’t know, who does?
The chart isn’t a reflection of questions that were asked directly of the witnesses. It’s just trying to parse all the witnesses’ freeform statements into important bullet points that people following the case care about. N/A in this case just means that Wilson didn’t make any of those statements in his description.
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FYI - more details on this shooting [edited to add] and the cop had a body cam, and it was still ruled justified:
Still derailment from the topic at hand.
So what exactly are you saying?
That there shouldn’t be media outrage about Michael Brown? Because, hey, this one time there was an unarmed white guy who was shot by a black cop?
Or maybe there should be media outrage, and let’s try to fan it?
Or basically what?
Your reply to @Brainspore is pure, obtuse derailment, especially given the updates added by @Mindysan33
Also, welcome to the BoingBoing forums 
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Honestly, I’m not sure why it is any more derailing than @Brainspore’s comment, which seemed to be affirming the general consensus that there are two types of justice for black and white people. Black people are shot on suspicion without a second chance and this is excused by saying that “[police officer] thought [unarmed man] had a weapon and that he would use it against him”, “[unarmed man] was under the influence of drugs and alcohol” or “[unarmed man]'s mental state was unstable”. “[unarmed man] also failed to deescalate the situation and his actions led [officer] to believe that this was a sign of an impending gunfight”. In spite of the fact that the officer misjudged the actions of [unarmed man] and escalated a non-violent situation, the guy who was shot is blamed for this escalation and the officer is cleared of wrongdoing. In contrast, white people are given every opportunity to back down even when there is a clear threat and if they are shot, this happens almost apologetically followed by a trip to the emergency room. This is a counterexample to that narrative which would have been considered very relevant if Dillon Taylor had been black. Here’s another that’s more relevant to Michael Brown’s case.
I can’t say what @sockpuppettheatre was intending by sharing that particular link (which falsely claimed that the cop was black and does seem to be more concerned about liberal hypocrisy than the lives of either Dillon Taylor or Michael Brown), but I don’t see the problem with sharing some accounts that challenge the extent of the racial element to this event (especially if we are also discussing accounts that support the claim that Michael Brown’s death and the lack of a trial were largely racially motivated).
It’s not? Isn’t a vote how a jury decides its verdict?
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Alright, let’s be more clear. There are two types of justice: one for people who ‘fit in’ and one for people who ‘don’t fit in.’ White people might go into the second category if they are very drunk or stoned, if they are mentally ill, if they are deaf or hard of hearing and can’t understand the police officer (or aren’t even aware the police officer is yelling at them), if they are covering in tattoos, or for plenty of other reasons.
There are several things going on. One is that police in the US are madly trigger happy. I read that story @sockpuppettheatre linked and it sounds brutal. A cop shot someone basically because he turned around. Apparently if someone calls the police - in a state that allows unlicensed open carry - and says there is an ‘armed man in the area’ that gives all cops a license to indiscriminately kill. It’s not just that the cop was unjustified in shooting, he was unjustified in pulling his gun out in the first place.
But another thing is that the criminal justice system, and police violence, is terribly racist. Police decided, that Dillon Taylor’s life wasn’t worth anything because he was drunk, maybe because of his goatee, who knows. Police decide that black mens’ lives aren’t worth anything because they are black on an incredibly frequent basis. And when police kill anyone the wagons circle and protect the killer.
Where is the outrage in Taylor’s? I hope there is outrage. This thread has been open for a few days now, so odds are a couple more black men have been killed by cops since then. There should be outrage there too. Without any additional context, I can only assume that @sockpuppettheatre was trying to make the point that race is not a factor in who police kill. It’s pretty much the same as making the argument that cigarettes can’t cause lung cancer because you know someone who got lung cancer and never smoked a single cigarette in their lives. Cigarettes do give you lung cancer, but other things can too.
Black men get killed unjustly by cops. Other people get killed unjustly by cops too. There is enough data to say that there is a huge racial component.
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A counter-example? Maybe to your somewhat exaggerated interpretation of the argument.
Because most people know the deal: racism isn’t universal, it’s statistical. No, in any one case, you can’t say “this cop was racist in this situation and that’s why this person died” with 100% certainty. It may even be in this case that racism played no role whatsoever (although Ferguson’s other racially-charged problems, like the “got blood on our uniforms” incident, and the black cop who used his baton on a suspect attacking him and was charged, while Wilson killed and wasn’t, and the fact that Wilson’s first job was a police department disbanded, every officer fired, because of ongoing racial issues, certainly don’t inspire me to give him the benefit of the doubt). You can’t say for sure. There’s almost certainly cases of reasonable cops that talk down an armed black suspect, because they’re not racists (or if they are, they’re thoroughly professional despite this). And yes, there will be examples where unarmed white guys get shot by black or white cops. Because racism isn’t the ONLY problem.
But what you can see is, statistically, blacks get treated worse more often than whites. By a significant degree. The racism is there in the statistics.
Why isn’t there an outrage when the white guy gets shot? I’m outraged about it. I’m sure many others are too. Why doesn’t it catch fire in the same way? Because it’s YET ANOTHER example of the statistical racism, and it happened to be the one that boils the pot of resentment over. The Dillon Taylor story is not a counter-example in THAT, because it’s already factored into the statistics, it’s tragic, but it’s not part of the problem we’re talking about.
We’re not talking about THAT case, we’re talking about THIS case.
I mean, if we’re going to change the topic to one that’s tangentially related, I can do the same thing: why are you bothered about THIS racial discrepancy (the amount of outrage a white unarmed police shooting victim gets vs a black one) vs another one (the amount of media attention a white child who’s gone missing gets compared to a minority one, something that happens all the time)?
We can change topics all day, and when we do it in a way that minimizes real issues we’re talking about, it’s called derailing the topic. That’s why Brainspore’s comment (the point of which is “here’s another example of this issue in action”) isn’t derailing, but this one (the point of which is “this issue isn’t really so bad, here look at this other issue”) is.
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Fair enough; I wasn’t trying to claim that race is not a big factor, just that there did seem to be the implication that Michael Brown would not have died if he had been white, or that Lance Tamayo would have died if he had been black. The other shootings that have been mentioned involved very brief interactions with the police where the officer seriously overestimated the threat; Lance Tamayo’s case evolved from a negotiation where he was threatening to commit suicide, not kill anyone else. The police had been talking with him and were assembled in numbers at a distance, so they had time and resources to assess his mental state and make a strategy that didn’t depend on split-second reactions or lethal force. When he took out his gun and started pointing it at other people, the situation changed and they shot him - during the standoff he was not threatening other people. Race and other factors are going to be an issue, but I don’t think it was as decisive here as the comment suggests. The examples I used at least show that the police are willing to do the same to a white guy as they did to Michael Brown, give the same spurious reasons and get off without punishment.
We’re talking about Michael Brown’s case, and specifically about the different claims about his body language and the relevance this might have on his intentions just before he died. This thread is about that, rather than racism or other general issues. Other tangentially related cases will enter the discussion, which don’t have to involve black people to be relevant. Incidentally, I strongly agree with you about the “why no outrage?” tone of the link - I already criticised it in my original comment, but I don’t agree that the event itself is irrelevant to the discussion, or that bringing it up was off-topic, given that it was much more related to Michael Brown’s case than Lance Tamayo’s case was.
In any case, this is definitely getting off-topic by now so I’ll leave it there.
The narrative about Michael Brown is not dividing blacks and whites, though it may be helping to uncover divisions that have existed for a long time. Police brutality is a real problem and it’s much worse for African Americans. It’s about time that whites started making noise about it too; one of the only somewhat positive things that has come out of this tragedy is that the outrage comes from all communities, as it should.
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… and the execution of de Menezes was roundly condemned as a national disgrace. things changed as a result.
The info given to the police at the time was that there were five bombers, of whom four had carried out successful terrorist attacks the day before, killing over 50 and maiming hundreds. The police were looking to stop the fifth bomber who intended to bomb a tube station, and they shot an innocent man instead…
I’m willing to entertain the notion that the killing only happened because of the hysteria of the previous day, that it hasn’t been repeated in the last decade and it is unlikely to happen again in the UK
The system failed de Menezes and even the specific police officer involved in the killing, because it explicitly put the guns in the hands of a squad of officers and told them all “today it is your duty to shoot to kill”
Compared to Ferguson, there is no question of a lone policeman deciding to grossly abuse his authority, ignore an attempt to surrender, commit a killing in cold blood, and then attempt to hide behind procedural protections
In America there have been three further well-publicised executions of black men or children by white police since 9 August, each involving excessive force and a shoot-with-impunity mentality
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