Brown is a crimeless victim? Did he assault the officer? Did he steal from the store?
I think the point is that Brown is not the victim of any crime. As in, he was not murdered, or assaulted, his rights were not in any way infringed, and so forth.
Certainly that’s the view of the people who have seen all the evidence, and a view I have no reason to disagree with. Not that I’ve read all the evidence, of course, but I’m sure those that do disagree will cite that evidence when making their case…
Bill Cosby was apparently a monster, unfortunately he was able to either buy off or intimidate his victims and with the statute of limitations will never stand trial. We’ll never get a trial, but I believe he was a rapist.
We needed a trial for Darren Wilson. Shooting an unarmed person multiple times is not a justifiable use of force.
George Zimmerman is a racist gun-toting moron. He foolishly put himself in a position where he could shoot an unarmed teen and claim self-defense, which the jury foolishly bought.
Ok, as long as you understand that your belief here is meaningless.
Yes it is.
Zimmerman is demonstrably not racist, as even a cursory glance at the character witness statements would show. He’s certainly foolish, but that’s not a crime. Neither is killing someone in self defence, so the jury were far from foolish to buy it, they were absolutely correct.
I really don’t understand what people like you have against self defence, and perhaps more importantly why you choose people like Martin or Brown to be the poster children for anti-racist campaigns or whatever. There are a vast amount of people genuinely victimised by it, but these two were provably not. It makes you, and your arguments, look ridiculous even when they aren’t.
What a strange thing to say.
The way you put “multiple” in there suggests it can be justifiable to shoot an unarmed man once – and I of course agree, if someone like Michael Brown is charging forward to resume his attack on a law-abiding exponent of self-defense. But if one shot doesn’t stop him, then why the heck wouldn’t a second shot be justified?
For starters, they could extend that extra serving of privilege to all the other felony suspects in the county. It’s not actually a good thing if Darren Wilson gets the deluxe grand jury package when nobody else does.
The grand jury was exceedingly thorough and saw all the evidence? Cool. That’s not inherently bad. But what would it have done if Michael Brown had shot Darren Wilson?
Brown was unarmed, yes, but at the moment when the officer was telling him to Freeze!, and the officer is pointing his weapon at him and had already fired it at him, after Brown had previously struck the officer, well that was not a good time for Brown to rush the officer and also reach under his shirt.
Bob if you were that officer, at that moment, do you know for certain that Brown was unarmed? Of course you don’t. And if you used deadly force to protect yourself, you’d be justified.
They were reporting weeks ago that a sizeable portion of the demonstrators were “imported” from other parts of the country. Which is why everyone was expecting a riot no matter what the grand jury did.
Because, if [del]Al Sharpton[/del] some racist douche pays to have 50 protestors bussed to Ferguson and put up in area hotels, schlepping home without incident is not an option.
So your theory is shoot everybody just in case they’re armed? Effective if your only goal is to make sure that policemen never have to assume the slightest risk of injury. Not so much if you care about the citizenry.
Suppose, and I disagree, but suppose a first shot was justified. Why not wait a second and see what happens? Does he charge like a rhino? Does he collapse to the street? If the latter, he might be saved.
Zimmerman only followed his victim because he was black. If Martin had been white, Zimmerman wouldn’t have given a second thought to his presence.
Really? Can you link me to testimony from Zimmerman that says that, or let me borrow your mind-reading machine?
This is not the place to debate the facts of the case, racial politics, police behavior, Reps vs. Dems, etc. Go to any of the numerous threads elsewhere on the SDMB to do so.
Keep this on the specific reactions of people to the verdict, including the rioters.
I’m not going to go back and mod note the entire thread to this point (and my apologies for having a real life that prevented me from being online until now), but I’m going to be enforcing these moderator instructions going forward.
twickster, MPSIMS moderator
If you’ll remember, Zimmerman was hispanic, not white.
Don’t bother with facts; they don’t help.
Regards,
Shodan
But if it’s the former, then it’s a scenario you said isn’t a justifiable use of force.
I’d like to reveal my deep ignorance for a moment.
Did the officer have a video camera that at least got some audio? If not, why? Where they too far away from the camera when the incident occurred?
I have zero judgment either way at this point, as I have yet to see all the evidence that is available.
Has anyone found any good morning after video of the damage? Aerial footage would give the best perspective of the extent. A drone would give the best shots.
CNN has some footage but nothing that shows it in a very wide shot.
Anyway, day 2’s reaction will crank up soon.
At the time of the shooting, the Ferguson Police Department had not equipped any of its cars with cameras.
Most PD have forward facing car-mounted cameras, for things like traffic stops. Fewer depts have rear (either back seat for prisoners or exterior looking)&/or side-mounted ones, primarily due to cost of additional equipment. Further some of them only record/record audio when the emergency lights have been activated.
Body worn cameras are relatively new & few depts/officers have them.
ETA: Ninja’d. But even if they did, it may not have recorded anything if 1) the ‘action’ didn’t take place in front of the car & 2) he didn’t activate the lightbar.
It doesn’t appear that the police were intimidated by the “this shit will cost you” tactic.
Protestors decided to honor Michael Brown’s day of robbing a store and attacking a cop by robbing stores and attacking cops. The arson was just a way of further illuminating their stupidity.
And yet a massive cost was exacted. Pretty clear ‘victory’ to the rioters, to the extent that the concept has any applicability.
No, not “protestors.” Rioters. As I said, a riot isn’t about addressing public policy. It’s a thing that happens when democratic dynamics have failed.