Riots in Missouri - Part 2

[Thundercrack85]

After the last riots, some threatened to riot again if the government didn't clean up the destruction.

What are they going to do? Burn the rubble?

 

[chaseter]

Demon is the new racist term against black people now? That puts The Exorcist in a whole new racist light. The priests were racist!

 

[Asgard]

Asgard, I removed that link. The story had a bit too much language that get censor here

Seriously?

Uh, I guess Ill just repost the article instead and censor the offensive words and if anyone wants the source just pm me.

We've finally heard from Officer Darren Wilson.
Wilson had been publicly silent since the events of August 9, when he shot and killed 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. And, even as the grand jury announced its decision not to indict him, he remained silent. He had his attorneys release a statement on his behalf.
But on Monday night, St. Louis County prosecutor Robert McCulloch released the evidence given to the grand jury, including the interview police did with Wilson in the immediate aftermath of the shooting. And so we got to read, for the first time, Wilson's full, immediate account of his altercation with Brown.
And it is unbelievable.
I mean that in the literal sense of the term: "difficult or impossible to believe." But I want to be clear here. I'm not saying Wilson is lying. I'm not saying his testimony is false. I am saying that the events, as he describes them, are simply bizarre. His story is difficult to believe.
The story Wilson tells goes like this:
At about noon on August 9th, Wilson hears on the radio that there's a theft in progress at the Ferguson Market. The suspect is a black male in a black shirt.
Moments later, Wilson sees two young black men walking down the yellow stripe in the center of the street. He pulls over. "Hey guys, why don't you walk on the sidewalk?" They refuse. "We're almost at our destination," one of them replies. Wilson tries again. "But what's wrong with the sidewalk?" he asks.
And then things get weird.
Brown's response to "what's wrong with the sidewalk?", as recorded by Wilson, is "**** what you have to say." Remember, Wilson is a uniformed police officer, in a police car, and Brown is an 18-year-old kid who just committed a robbery. And when asked to use the sidewalk, Wilson says Brown replied, "**** what you have to say."
Wilson says Brown replied, "**** what you have to say."
Wilson backs his car up and begins to open the door. "Hey, come here," he said to the kid who just cursed at him. He says Brown replied, "What the **** you gonna do?" And then Brown, in Wilson's telling, slams the car door closed. Wilson tries to open the door again, tells Brown to get back, and then Brown leans into the vehicle and begins punching him.

Photos surround Michael Brown's casket in Ferguson, MO. (Richard Perry-Pool/Getty Images)
Let's take a breath and recap. Wilson sees two young black men walking in the middle of the street. He pulls over and politely asks them to use the sidewalk. They refuse. He asks again, still polite. Brown tells Wilson — again, a uniformed police officer in a police car — "**** what you have to say." Wilson stops his car, tries to get out, and Brown slams the car door on him and then begins punching him through the open window.
What happens next is the most unbelievable moment in the narrative. And so it's probably best that I just quote Wilson's account at length on it.

I was doing the, just scrambling, trying to get his arms out of my face and him from grabbing me and everything else. He turned to his...if he's at my vehicle, he turned to his left and handed the first subject. He said, "here, take these." He was holding a pack of — several packs of cigarillos which was just, what was stolen from the Market Store was several packs of cigarillos. He said, "here, hold these" and when he did that I grabbed his right arm trying just to control something at that point. Um, as I was holding it, and he came around, he came around with his arm extended, fist made, and went like that straight at my face with his...a full swing from his left hand.
​

So Brown is punching inside the car. Wilson is scrambling to deflect the blows, to protect his face, to regain control of the situation. And then Brown stops, turns to his left, says to his friend, "Here, hold these," and hands him the cigarillos stolen from Ferguson Market. Then he turns back to Wilson and, with his left hand now freed from holding the contraband goods, throws a haymaker at Wilson.
Every ******** detector in me went off when I read that passage. Which doesn't mean that it didn't happen exactly the way Wilson describes. But it is, again, hard to imagine. Brown, an 18-year-old kid holding stolen goods, decides to attack a cop and, while attacking him, stops, hands his stolen goods to his friend, and then returns to the beatdown. It reads less like something a human would do and more like a moment meant to connect Brown to the robbery.
Wilson next recounts his thought process as he reached for a weapon. He considered using his mace, but at such close range, the mace might get in his eyes, too. He doesn't carry a taser with a fireable cartridge, but even if he did, "it probably wouldn't have hit [Brown] anywhere". Wilson couldn't reach his baton or his flashlight. So he went for his gun.
Brown sees him go for the gun. And he replies: "You're too much of a ****ing p*ssy to shoot me."
"You're too much of a ****ing p*ssy to shoot me."
Again, stop for a moment and think about that. Brown is punching Wilson, sees the terrified cop reaching for his gun, and says "You're too much of a ****ing p*ssy to shoot me." He dares him to shoot.

And then Brown grabs Wilson's gun, twists it, and points it at Wilson's "pelvic area". Wilson regains control of the firearm and gets off a shot, shattering the glass. Brown backs up a half step and, realizing he's unharmed, dives back into the car to attack Wilson. Wilson fires again, and then Brown takes off running. (You can see the injuries Wilson sustained from the fight in these photographs.)
Wilson exits the car to give chase. He yells at Brown to get down on the ground. Here, I'm going to go back to Wilson's words:

When he stopped, he turned, looked at me, made like a grunting noise and had the most intense, aggressive face I've ever seen on a person. When he looked at me, he then did like the hop...you know, like people do to start running. And, he started running at me. During his first stride, he took his right hand put it under his shirt into his waistband. And I ordered him to stop and get on the ground again. He didn't. I fired multiple shots. After I fired the multiple shots, I paused a second, yelled at him to get on the ground again, he was still in the same state. Still charging, hand still in his waistband, hadn't slowed down.
​

The stuff about Brown putting his hand in his waistband is meant to suggest that Wilson had reason to believe Brown might pull a gun. But it's strange. We know Brown didn't have a gun. And that's an odd fact to obscure while charging a police officer.
Either way, at that point, Wilson shoots again, and kills Brown.
There are inconsistencies in Wilson's story. He estimates that Brown ran 20-30 feet away from the car and then charged another 10 feet back towards Wilson. But we know Brown died 150 feet away from the car.
There are also consistencies. St Louis prosecutor Robert McCulloch said that Brown's DNA was found inside Wilson's car, suggesting there was a physical altercation inside the vehicle. We know shots were fired from inside the car. We know Brown's bullet wounds show he was only hit from the front, never from the back.
But the larger question is, in a sense, simpler: Why?
Why did Michael Brown, an 18-year-old kid headed to college, refuse to move from the middle of the street to the sidewalk? Why would he curse out a police officer? Why would he attack a police officer? Why would he dare a police officer to shoot him? Why would he charge a police officer holding a gun? Why would he put his hand in his waistband while charging, even though he was unarmed?
None of this fits with what we know of Michael Brown
None of this fits with what we know of Michael Brown. Brown wasn't a hardened felon. He didn't have a death wish. And while he might have been stoned, this isn't how stoned people act. The toxicology report did not indicate he was on PCP or something that would've led to suicidal aggression.
Which doesn't mean Wilson is a liar. Unbelievable things happen every day. The fact that his story raises more questions than it answers doesn't mean it isn't true.
But the point of a trial would have been to try to answer these questions. We would have either found out if everything we thought we knew about Brown was wrong, or if Wilson's story was flawed in important ways. But now we're not going to get that chance. We're just left with Wilson's unbelievable story.

 

[Lily Adler]

 

[ChrisBaleBatman]

Demon is the new racist term against black people now? That puts The Exorcist in a whole new racist light. The priests were racist!

I think people are concerned about how it dehumanizes him when Wilson said, "It was a demon".

I'll say this, Wilson makes Brown out to be superhuman. Going by Wilson's testimony, he makes him seem more like Bane or something. The intensity, the anger, he was massive, "it was demon", he kept coming at him and Wilson kept firing and Brown kept getting angrier as he was getting shot and seemingly "bulking" after being shot.

Also, something interesting was pointed out last night on cable news networks. That in the state of Missouri, it's legal for police officers to shoot a fleeing suspect. They made it seem out of the norm for most states.

 

[Kelly]

The exaggeration that is being gleaned from his interview is ridiculous.

 

[Asgard]

The exaggeration that is being gleaned from his interview is ridiculous.

How is it ridiculous?

 

[SuperT]

I'll say this, Wilson makes Brown out to be superhuman...

I know I already posted this, but I mean.....http://www.slate.com/articles/healt...gth_speed_pain_tolerance_and_the_magical.html

And we all just laughed at it when it originally came out but now in this context, it's truly frightening.

 

[Kelly]

How is it ridiculous?

Because it is way over the top, and grossly tries to infer facts that are not there in order to further one's agenda.

 

[ChrisBaleBatman]

I know I already posted this, but I mean.....http://www.slate.com/articles/healt...gth_speed_pain_tolerance_and_the_magical.html

And we all just laughed at it when it originally came out but now in this context, it's truly frightening.

Yeah...I remember thinking that it must have been misquoted, or exaggerated because of the leak.

But, it seems accurate to Wilson's testimony. I really think Wilson makes the encounter seem like he was up against someone superhuman. Almost sounded like accounts of encounters with people who were on bath salts, if you can remember when that stuff popped up in a few places.

 

[Kelly]

Well, looks like another police car is about to go up in flames...there it goes. Good grief...where the hell is the National Guard.

 

[Slushy]

In Minneapolis, protesters got ran over by a car when blocking traffic. Gee, you think?

 

[Asgard]

Because it is way over the top, and grossly tries to infer facts that are not there in order to further one's agenda.

The writer isnt inferring facts, he's giving his opinion on how unbelievable Wilson's story is.

Ive read his interview detailing what happened that day and it sounds completly fabricated to make it look like a justified killing.

 

[Thundercrack85]

In Minneapolis, protesters got ran over by a car when blocking traffic. Gee, you think?

He's lucky he got away. That crowd would probably have killed him.

 

[Apollo]

In Minneapolis, protesters got ran over by a car when blocking traffic. Gee, you think?

reminds me of that scene in Austin powers

[YT]qLlUgilKqms[/YT]

Just move out of the way... my gosh...

 

[Howlett]

The writer isnt inferring facts, he's giving his opinion on how unbelievable Wilson's story is.

Ive read his interview detailing what happened that day and it sounds completly fabricated to make it look like a justified killing.

It's exactly that. Opinion. It's an editorial based on really nothing but the writer's opinion of what he thinks the two people involved might have been thinking.

It's click bait to generate hits to his web site. Notice the lack of facts and forensics.

 

[dodgers2213]

It's exactly that. Opinion. It's an editorial based on really nothing but the writer's opinion of what he thinks the two people involved might have been thinking.

It's click bait to generate hits to his web site. Notice the lack of facts and forensics.

But it mirrors his feelings on what happened or at the very least clouds the subject enough to hurt the opposite side, facts/forensics be dammed, therefore it is reliable and you should consider it

 

[Mike_D202]

What exactly is the National Guard there for? Things are still being destroyed.

 

[MessiahDecoy123]

Here's the problem with police investigating themselves. They can intentionally botch the investigation then claim reasonable doubt.

http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/6220814

 

[Victarion]

What exactly is the National Guard there for? Things are still being destroyed.

It looks like they're basically trying to sequester the rioting to Ferguson, or something, maybe a specific part of the city. I'd also heard they were set up guarding the St Louis police station. So I'm confused about that, too.

 

[SuperJediHero]

Too much assumption that this police officer Wilson is not a good cop without any solid facts.

I am not trying to defend him or anything, but again, where are all the facts AGAINST him?


People want to think about police coverup/conspiracy all they want, but until anyone can really prove it, it's just not a fact! Going on and on about a police conspiracy without facts to prove it is ultimately meaningless!


People are smart to see thru this conspiracy, or that people are just paranoid, it could go either way.

 

[DDS]

Has anybody been near or in one of the protests/riots going on about Ferguson? I'm a college student in Tucson and there was a huge mob with lots of cops very close to my apartment earlier.

Of course, this is the same city that rioted over a ****ing basketball game (also near where I was living at the time).

 

[Asgard]

Here's the problem with police investigating themselves. They can intentionally botch the investigation then claim reasonable doubt.

http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/6220814

Jesus...Im just gonna quote the article so that people can read it in the thread, but man that is infuriating. McCullough made it seem like the authorities did everything they could to handle the investigation properly and that it all led to a no indictment verdict, but as the article states, there are NUMEROUS mistakes made by the Ferguson PD. I mean, one of the most important aspects of Wilson's story which really paints Michael as an aggressor is that he grabbed his freaking gun. Yet, they didnt even test it to see if it had his fingerprints on it? Wth? They also didnt even measure the distance between Brown and Wilson, because they thought it "wasnt necessary".

Soon after Officer Darren Wilson shot and killed Michael Brown, an unarmed 18-year-old, law enforcement’s handling of the case was already being criticized as callous and sloppy. Residents of Ferguson, Missouri, looked on in horror as police officials failed to cover and later to remove Brown’s body from the street for hours.
Now that the grand jury evidence, including forensic records and testimony from Wilson and those investigating the fatal shooting, has been released, it's clear that other mistakes were made in attempting to figure out what happened on that August afternoon. The best physical evidence and testimony might not have been as ironclad in Wilson's favor as prosecutor Robert McCulloch characterized it on Monday night.
From the reams of grand jury testimony and police evidence, here are some key points that, if this case had gone to trial, could have been highlighted by prosecutors (not including the witnesses who appeared to contradict Wilson’s testimony):
1. Wilson washed away blood evidence.
In an interview with police investigators, Wilson admitted that after the shooting he returned to police headquarters and washed blood off his body -- physical evidence that could have helped to prove or disprove a critical piece of Wilson’s testimony regarding his struggle with Brown inside the police car. He told his interrogator that he had blood on both of his hands. “I think it was his blood,” Wilson said referring to Brown. He added that he was not cut anywhere.

A photo of Wilson's injuries taken at the hospital after his altercation with Brown, released by the St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney's Office.
2. The first officer to interview Wilson failed to take any notes.
The first supervising officer to the scene, who was also the first person to interview Wilson about the incident, didn’t take any notes about their conversation. In testimony more than a month after the incident, the officer offered his account from memory. He explained that he hadn’t been equipped with a recorder and hadn’t tried to take any written notes due to the chaotic nature of the situation. He also didn’t write up any notes soon after the fact. “I didn’t take notes because at that point in time I had multiple things going through my head besides what Darren was telling me,” the officer stated.
The same officer admitted during his grand jury testimony that Wilson had called him personally after they both had been interviewed by investigators. Wilson then went over his account again with the officer. The officer told the grand jury that there were no discrepancies between Wilson’s first account in person and his second account on the phone. But the call raises questions about whether Wilson may have influenced witness testimony.
3. Investigators failed to measure the likely distance between Brown and Wilson.
An unnamed medical legal examiner who responded to the shooting testified before the grand jury that he or she had not taken any distance measurements at the scene, because they appeared “self-explanatory.”
“Somebody shot somebody. There was no question as to any distances or anything of that nature at the time I was there,” the examiner told the jury.
The examiner also noted that he or she hadn’t been able to take pictures at the scene -- as is standard -- because the camera's batteries were dead. The examiner later testified that he or she accompanied investigators from the St. Louis County Police Department as they photographed Brown’s body.

A photo of the Aug. 9 crime scene in Ferguson, released by the St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney's Office.
4. Investigators did not test Wilson’s gun for fingerprints.
Talking with police investigators and before the grand jury, Wilson claimed that Brown had grabbed at Wilson's gun during the initial incident in the police car and that Brown's hand was on the firearm when it misfired at least once. Wilson also told police that he thought Brown would overpower him and shoot him with his own gun. “I was not in control of the gun,” Wilson said. Eventually he regained control of the weapon and fired from within the car.
Investigators could have helped to prove or disprove Wilson’s testimony by testing his service weapon for Brown’s fingerprints. But the gun was not tested for fingerprints. An investigator argued before the grand jury that the decision was made not to test the weapon because Wilson “never lost control of his gun.”
5. Wilson did not immediately turn his weapon over to investigators after killing Brown.
A detective with the St. Louis County Police Department, who conducted the first official interview of Wilson, testified to the grand jury that Wilson had packaged his own service weapon into an evidence envelope following his arrival at the police station in the wake of the shooting. The detective said the practice was not usual for his department, though he was unclear on the protocol of the Ferguson Police Department. He said he didn’t explore that aspect further at the time.
According to the detective’s testimony, standard practice for the St. Louis County Police Department would be for an officer involved in a shooting to keep his or her weapon holstered until it can be turned over to a supervisor and a crime scene unit detective. While that clearly didn’t take place in Wilson’s case, the detective also testified that he believed the firearm was handled in a way that preserved the chain of custody.

A photo of Wilson's service weapon, released by the St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney's Office.
6. An initial interview with investigators was delayed while Wilson traveled to the hospital with his superiors.
The same St. Louis County Police Department detective also testified that while he had intended to conduct his initial interview with Wilson at the Ferguson police station, a lieutenant colonel with the Ferguson Police Department decided that Wilson first needed to go to the hospital for medical treatment. The detective said that while it is common practice to defer to any medical decision of this nature, Wilson appeared to be in good health and didn’t have any notable injuries that would have prevented an interview from being conducted at the station. Wilson would also testify that he didn’t believe he needed to go to the hospital.
But that day, Wilson got into a vehicle with the lieutenant colonel and another Ferguson police official and went to the hospital, while the St. Louis County detective traveled in another vehicle.
7. Wilson’s initial interview with the detective conflicts with information given in later testimony.
In his first interview with the detective, just hours after Brown’s death, Wilson didn’t claim to have any knowledge that Brown was suspected of stealing cigarillos from a nearby convenience store. The only mention of cigarillos he made to the detective was a recollection of the call about the theft that had come across his radio and that provided a description of the suspect.
Wilson also told the detective that Brown had passed something off to his friend before punching Wilson in the face. At the time, the detective said, Wilson didn’t know what the item was, referring to it only as “something.” In subsequent interviews and testimony, however, Wilson claimed that he knew Brown’s hands were full of cigarillos and that fact eventually led him to believe Brown may have been a suspect in the theft.

 

[Flint Marko]

Jesus...Im just gonna quote the article so that people can read it in the thread, but man that is infuriating. McCullough made it seem like the authorities did everything they could to handle the investigation properly and that it all led to a no indictment verdict, but as the article states, there are NUMEROUS mistakes made by the Ferguson PD. I mean, one of the most important aspects of Wilson's story which really paints Michael as an aggressor is that he grabbed his freaking gun. Yet, they didnt even test it to see if it had his fingerprints on it? Wth? They also didnt even measure the distance between Brown and Wilson, because they thought it "wasnt necessary".

Seriously? This is all grasping at straws.
Let's look at what we do know:
Michael Brown was a criminal who had just stole from a convenience store, and was clearly violent in doing so.

Spoiler

6'4" 260-300 lbs. Again depending on your source. Most seem to say closer to 300 lbs

He and his friend were walking in the middle of the street (another crime, but whatever) and the officer initially confronted them telling them to get off the street. The criminals themselves admitted they refused and were uncooperative. I can send you a link verifying this.

Here are some more stone cold facts. According to documented police records, the order of events are as follows:

11:53: the call comes in about the convenience store robbery
11:57: the description of said thieves goes out, describing exactly what Brown was wearing
12:00: Wilson radios in asking if the other officers need backup to find said suspects, clearly showing he had heard the previous dispatches

Unspecified times: Wilson sees Brown and Johnson jaywalking and yells at them to get back in the sidewalk: according to Johnson's own admission, they refused and were uncooperative

12:02: Wilson requests backup (what a strange thing to request for two simple jaywalkers?) after allegedly recognizing Brown as the suspect in question.

At this point, in the official story, Wilson tells them to get onto the street but then realizes Brown is matching the description of the aforementioned robber in the convenience store. He then reverses his car and gets out either to confront him about the jaywalking or the robbery (depending on which story you encounter; either way, clearly the two were disruptive and uncooperative) and an assault continues. That being said, I feel like common sense would tell you to believe the story of the guy with the gun, badge, and spotless record as opposed to the people who had just committed a crime mere minutes beforehand.
After that, the rest is history.
I'm sorry but the stone cold facts that we do have just don't support this outrage a lot of people seem to find themselves in, and the jury appears to agree with me. And I say that as someone that does not know everything involved with this case. People need to quit looting in the name of a supposed "martyr" who was clearly a criminal to begin with. People need to stop making this race thing. An unarmed teenager died and while that is tragic, it isn't all that ridiculous, crazy, or unheard of considering he attacked somebody with a gun to begin with.
Also if I had a gun and someone were reaching for it, I wouldn't exactly expect that their fingerprints were on the gun as I might be dead if that were the case.

 

[Godzilla2000]

Where are all these rioters going to live after they've destroyed their home?