Robbery with violence at that. A far cry from shoplifting. I don’t know why people feel the need to try to minimise these things. The kid was committing a violent robbery. Doesn’t justify what appears to be a police execution, but pretending it didn’t happen just makes you appear biased and unreliable.
Cite please.
Do you have a cite for Johnson’s lawyer admitting that?
Not challenging just legitimately curious. I haven’t followed the case too closely. I can’t even say if the cap was a Cardinals baseball cap or not.
Wikipedia is surprisingly useful for current events like this. It’s only the contentious aftermath when it becomes worthless.
From here:
Thank you. I mean that genuinely.
Ferguson officer realized during encounter that Michael Brown might be suspect in robbery, chief says
Jackson said the officer was aware cigars had been taken in the robbery of a store nearby, but did not know when he encountered Brown and Dorian Johnson that they might be suspects. He stopped them because they were walking in the street, Jackson said.
**But Jackson told the Post-Dispatch that the officer, Darren Wilson, saw cigars in Brown’s hand and realized he might be the robber.
**
Ok, so your cite is the Chief of police.
Well, yes. Who else would know what the policeman knew or saw? And what is yours?
I wasn’t making any judgements, just noting who your source was for your rather definitive statement.
He threw the storekeeper out of the way when the storekeeper tried to block his exit. I get that it changes the crime committed, but it’s not exactly robbery at gunpoint, either. I would revise that opinion slightly if the storekeeper was elderly (I don’t know, I can’t watch the video from here).
Just to be clear, the accused strong-armed robbery committed in this case is called specifically in Missouri a “Robbery in the Second Degree” and is a Class B Felony.
So Brown is the bigger of the two alleged felons in that tape correct? On the right is the store owner and on the left is Brown’s friend.
The basic picture(s) of Brown that I’ve seen make him appear to be alot smaller/younger.
There is some sort of horrific irony, that when a criminal is shot, other criminals riot and commit crimes, to protest the police shooting criminals.
Those rioting and committing crimes are not most likely not the same individuals as the people protesting what they feel was an an unjustified shooting. Just pointing that out (for the second time).
No. When an unarmed man is shot, members of the community protest what they perceive as unnecessary police brutality. Some other criminals take the protest as an opportunity to riot and loot.
BBC interviewed a member of the black community in Ferguson. I’m sorry I didn’t catch his name or what sort of position he held, but he was laying the blame for the violence squarely on what he called “white provocateurs” among the crowds. Again, looking at this from afar, this sounds rather disingenuous to me even taking into consideration the heated emotions at the moment. This was BBC, and I don’t know if anything similar was aired on any US news programs.
It is disingenuous. It is that mindset that causes the violence and the looting, not any alleged provocateurs. People who pretend they are not responsible for their own actions - that only white people have any agency while black people are slaves to unconscious reflex - only encourage these self-destructive fits.
What gets me about some of the protestors is that they say that the fact the police officer didn’t know about the robbery when he initially contacted the two, (or maybe that he knew, but didn’t suspect them as being involved), means that is has no bearing at all on the escalation of violence.
Well, about that: the Officer Wilson may not have known, but Brown surely did, and knowing that he had strong-arm robbed a place only 10 minutes prior to the cop showing up, it’s safe for most anyone to suspect he was freaking out in his own head, “Oh shit! The cop knows I robbed that place! Damn, I’m caught.”
The wiki includes a much better statement to this:
As more evidence comes out about the possible assault on the officer and the shooting happening entirely on the front of the victim (and now even that the victim was charging the officer while getting shot), racism seems to be less and less and less factor, as opposed to the simple circumstance of a violent attack on an officer that resulted in someones death.