Got an alert from my Scanner Radio app that there are several thousand listeners to Missouri State Highway Patrol Police (58,000+) and West St. Louis County Police (10,000+) radios. Looters in a restaurant, destroying a gas station, an armed group of people spotted near the police station, an apartment cooking fire, a cardiac arrest, a unit reporting several prisoners, violent agitators throwing bottles at police cars, now venting the unit for the cooking fire, protestor line moving north, three journalists hit by bricks, shots fired in front of the Fire Department…
That was just the last 10 minutes listening to patrol and dispatch chatter.
Put him to trial, rather than doing any of that. Their job is just to see if a prosecution is possible, not figure out what happened. That’s what a trial is for.
Shooting the guy was not a part of his sworn duty. His defense is that it was self-defense. And self-defense claims should be handled at trial. I said that with Zimmerman and I stand by it.
Of course, I can’t fault the actual grand jurors. They were doing what they were told. I fault the system that gave them a job they shouldn’t have had to do.
That is not the only way grand juries are used. Often they are used as just a simple check that there is probable cause. Sometimes like in cases like this they are given a bigger job. They are used as an impartial third party and given all the facts and evidence. In some states it is required that all police related shootings regardless of facts must be heard in front of a grand jury.
You’re comparing apples and oranges. Compare apples and apples (which the article you cited does, after a couple of fallacious arguments). Compare the number of Grand Jury investigations of police shootings vs. indictments.
Oh, please; they are used as a rubber stamp for the prosecutor. In this case, a prosecutor with a long history of shielding racist police. “Probable cause” has nothing to do with grand juries.
Again, that article’s title is “It’s Incredibly Rare For A Grand Jury To Do What Ferguson’s Just Did”. And yet, inside the article, it states that it is in fact a regular occurrence for a Grand Jury to do what Ferguson’s just did.
The police had 100 days to decide how to respond to a no indictment decision.
Their choice? To dress in riot gear, make a barricade face to face with the crowd and push back and immediately begin clearing the streets. They set an immediate confrontational tone and have responded to everything, including people carrying an injured woman, by shooting smoke/gas.
How hard would it have been to hang back, given people a platform to make speeches about their reaction and only engage when it became disruptive? These are the folks trained in handling such situations. They started from the get go with assumption things would go out of hand.
I fully blame and am disgusted by violent protesters and looters. The cops are the professionals. What did they try to diffuse the situation?
Yes, everyone knowledgeable about riot control prepared with the assumption things would get out of hand, because it was obvious to everyone on the planet that things would get out of hand. Every professional jack-ass troublemaker in the country had 100 day to get there and prepare how to start shit.
I’d be leery of believing stuff we’re only hearing about on the internet from dubious sources in real time. From everything we’ve seen the past few weeks the police had put a lot of effort into a measured response to things after the really bad early days in Ferguson, so I’d be surprised if they just instantly started firing tear gas and pushing protestors away.
I’ve been watching live coverage since the verdict was read. I was going by what I saw and what reporters were describing. Of course not being there I can’t be 100% positive, but I’m not just retweeting my info, for the reasons you state.
My gut feeling is that what they were prepping for was a confrontation and riot, not a peaceful way to let people express their frustration.
I’m watching CNN and the only thing I’ve seen is a protestor mentioned a woman had a heart attack and the police started firing tear gas at her, I don’t consider that strong evidence in a time of chaos. Even if tear gas was fired near a woman who was having a heart attack I think it’s a stretch to assume the police even noticed one distressed woman in a crowd. It’s an incendiary statement about which we can know very little without being there ourselves.
I’d love to hear what else they are supposed to be doing. In another 10 minutes, they’re responding to looting at a Shop&Save, looting and a large crowd at a Dollar General, another cardiac arrest, a seizure at a nursing home, and looting at Walgreens which is confirmed on fire now.
I can’t stop listening and it’s just making me cry. Jeez, the poor employees of those stores just trying to be at work.
And frustration at what? The black community needs to learn that civil rights doesn’t mean getting to screw over white people with criminal cases just because black people have been screwed by criminal cases. “What’s good for the goose is good for the gander” is toxic racial philosophy.
I honestly have always said rioters should be shot on sight. This was standard protocol in the past. Napoleon cleared the streets with cannons and the British used to have the riot act. People need to learn that the cost for violating law and order is a heavy one. The stability of the state is always supreme over the rights of rioters.