The Guardian has something of a livestream from the press conference: Ferguson protests: Michael Brown family calls for calm amid criticism of video release â as it happened | World news | The Guardian
Of note, Chief Jackson said Wilson was unaware of Brown being a robbery suspect.
You actually still have no idea whether Brown robbed and assaulted a store owner, because itâs not proven and we donât even know if itâs Brown in those video stills. He might have been a suspect for a minor larceny ⌠that could have been sorted out without lethal force
Ferguson PD have finally got someone working PR. An evil, awful someone, but someone who knows what heâs doing. This is a calculated strategy to:
- Deflect attention away from the shooting of an unarmed teen.
- Attack the character of the victim.
- Undermine the efforts of local activists and the authority of state officials and Captain Johnson from the Missouri State Highway Patrol who have worked with them.
I donât give a shit if he was a suspect. I donât give a shit even if he was guilty - which is not something the police get to decide anyway.
Robbery does not carry a death sentence.
The police are not the judiciary, they donât get to impose sentences.
In the case of concern that a suspect is armed (Iâm being ultra generous to the police in allowing that this might even be the reason they shot him), they should err on the side of not shooting unless certain they themselves are at risk, even to the point of getting shot at first. Theyâre meant to be the good guys.
And thereâs also this:
I sincerely hope he wins his appeal.
Yeah, and they were going to charge Mike Brown with âimpeding the lawful flight of a bulletâ in case he survived.
I wonder/hope some of this is on tape.
Even if they guy stole something, that doesnât merit lethal force. If he struggled in the cop car, it might. But if it went down like the reported eye witness said where he was on his knees with his hands up staying âdonât shoot meâ then the threat is no longer and lethal force isnât merited. Neither is standing over the body and shooting again.
This is one from L.A. (Downey, CA) that sticks out in my mindâŚ
Cop with Machine Gun shooting an unarmed guy in the back. Stupid (harmless) guy kept on running awayâŚ
The city ended up paying out a $4.5M settlement for a wrongful death/civil rights suit.
Police officer cleared in Michael Nida shooting
Prosecutors declined to criminally charge the officer, citing Nida's resistance and that he had run from officers three times.
This is important.
At the time of the killing, the officer performing the execution had no better justification than jaywalking.
In the first news conference the Chief strongly implied (and garbled the sentence) that the officer was responding to the robbery call, but in the hasty second news conference, the Chief admitted that Brown was not being stopped because of the robbery.
Exactly. But heâs a cop, so itâs going to be a long time before Justice is served in this case, if it ever is.
Here is a case of a pharmacist who fended off an armed robbery. He had shot one of the robbers (the one who had a gun) and chased the other out the door and down the street. That one got away, so the pharmacist returned to the store.
In the quote below, Ersland is the pharmacist, and Parker was the erstwhile robber.
[quote]âWe conclude the physical and forensic evidence showed that, when Ersland returned to the pharmacy and shot Parker five times in the body, Parker was unarmed and unconscious but alive, and did not pose a threat to Ersland or anyone else in the pharmacy,â the judges wrote in the 39-page opinion.
âEvidence further showed that, in order to shoot Parker, Ersland stepped across Parkerâs body, turned his back, went behind the counter, put down his empty revolver, opened a drawer, took out the Kel Tec, walked to where Parker lay on the floor, stood over him, and fired five shots almost straight down into Parkerâs body, close together and in rapid succession. Ersland did not appear flustered or hurried, and acted in a deliberative manner,â they wrote.[/quote]
Ersland is serving a life sentence for first degree murder.
If the incident that resulted in Mike Brownâs death is even remotely like what the eyewitness has described, then Darren Wilson committed murder.
After todayâs developments, I will not be surprised if most of the Ferguson PD is revealed to belong to a secret white supremacist society.
They already do.
The Ferguson PD.
I read, in one of these threads, that the chief of police displays the Confederate flag.
I took it as hyperbole at the time, but if itâs not⌠
Displaying the Confederate Flag is a clear signal: âNon-whites, ESPECIALLY blacks are not welcome.â It is a racist intonation, one of the few remaining outward signals of racism within the premises.
The notion that black people routinely get away with crimes is pretty fucking bizarre. Divorced enough from reality that I donât think Iâve heard it from even the nuttiest of racist wingnuts, with the possible special-case exception of the first O.J. trial. Where are you seeing this lunatic assertion?
Are you willing to subject the, alleged, killer of Mike Brown to the same standard of justice?
To which I respond that there are a number of unarmed white Americans that get shot by police, âso why arenât we hearing about that?â
