Thanks Richard Parker. That’s exactly what my response was addressing. I’ll add that any imagined scenario with which no physical evidence disagrees can be supported by the evidence; this does not give dispositive support to those scenarios however.
My apologies, then.
I hope everyone can agree with that. Other evidence from the scene would have to be gathered to address the question of whether shots were fired by Wilson while Brown ran away from him, but I don’t see how that could be entirely corroborated in the absence of audio-video records.
Certainly a lot less likely that Brown was struck (in the clothing) before turning around. And marginally less likely that he was under fire at all while facing away, though obviously it’s still well within the realm of plausibility that the first few shots missed and are what caused Brown to turn around.
As a witness, it would be pretty hard to distinguish between someone getting shot at (and missed) and turning around to a hail of bullets and someone being winged and turning around to a hail of bullets. So I wouldn’t put a lot of my assessment of credibility on whether he was hit before turning around (depending on the precise details of the narrative of course).
Do we know how many shots were fired, total?
Right. But you’d be assuming that the cop’s aim suddenly improved when he turned around, such that he missed all his shots before that and suddenly was able to hit him repeatly afterwards.
Again, it’s all possible, but becomes less likely.
[Unspoken in all this is the a priori assumption about how likely it is that a cop would shoot a fleeing suspect in the back to begin with. I tend to think this is generally unlikely, so I would tend to put less weight on that scenario even if the other evidence was ambiguous, but I imagine others here will differ.]
Doesn’t seem all that unlikely to me. Maybe he fired a single shot and missed, and then hit 6 of his remaining 11 shots (or something). Maybe he stopped moving when he turned around. Maybe the initial adrenaline rush of shooting at someone subsided a bit and he was more accurate. I think we’d really be peering at tea leaves at this point if we try to put too fine a point on it. The bottom line is that he almost certainly was not hit before turning around, and we simply don’t know whether he was shot at while facing away, but whatever your Bayesian priors were before the autopsy you should be revising the probability downward marginally.
More Bayesian priors. It seems plausible to me that there was some kind of altercation at the car, Brown ran, and the cop shot him. That scenario wouldn’t shock me at all. I have no idea if that’s what happened, obviously. This is just a parlor game until we get a lot more information.
Only if one were a low-grade moron.
Regards,
Shodan
As if the officer was out of the vehicle and running or walking in Brown’s direction until Brown turned around whereupon the officer stopped, planted his feet and assumed a more stable firing position. I’m not suggesting this is what happened, but it’s plausible as an explanation for the inaccuracy of shots fired from a moving shooter at a moving target followed by accurate shots from a stationary shooter at a target falling to the ground.
In this finest of all discussion forums existing and extinct, even our morons are held to a higher standard.
Agreed.
Having come to consensus, I am off to loot a liquor store. Anything I can bring back for you?
Regards,
Shodan
You should be a cop. You are clearly the coolest, calmest guy with all the answers on how someone else should act when they feel their lives are in danger. Please, scour the news and let us all know what others should have done when they felt they were in danger too. This should be pretty easy to do sitting behind the protection of a keyboard, detached from the threat, after the fact, thousands of miles away.
Shoot him in the leg? You think this is a video game where you keep shooting limbs until the baddie stops advancing? This is real life where dudes on PCP take 20 shots to the chest and keep on coming.
You’re a clown.
Bring back your arrest report, showing how you were approached and questioned by a peace officer after your looting, who then explained your rights, handcuffed you and took you to a clean holding cell while your paperwork was expeditiously processed. 'Cause that would be a nice change of pace to read about.
I’m guessing the the liquor is either all gone or well guarded by now.
The you only shoot to kill narrative is getting old. Let’s all be adults about this please. The use of a firearm in a defensive fashion is to convince the attacker to stop what they’re doing because getting shot hurts or to make them physically incapable of doing so. In either case getting shot does have the nasty side effect of potential death, and as such should not be used lightly.
It is very fair to ask why the officer chose to shoot his perceived attacker and why he chose to not use a taser or other physical restraint/compliant device. To say that the officer intended to kill simply because he used his firearm is disingenuous at best.
If it turns out that the officer used his firearm in an offensive fashion then the narrative completely changes and he should go to jail for murder. We could all wait until the investigation is complete and then make informed decisions.
And, just to add some facts to the discussion:
As noted by the CDC in 2001 the vast majority of non self inflicted gunshot wounds were not fatal.
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss5002a1.htm?mobile=nocontent
[QUOTE=xenophon41]
Bring back your arrest report, showing how you were approached and questioned by a peace officer after your looting, who then explained your rights, handcuffed you and took you to a clean holding cell while your paperwork was expeditiously processed. 'Cause that would be a nice change of pace to read about.
[/QUOTE]
But what if he shoots me in the front while I’m running away?
Regards,
Shodan
I wouldn’t hold my breath.
Regards,
Shodan
Weren’t you the one just complaining about low grade morons?
I’ll use small words: That would make me sad to read about. It would be much gooder to read about police work that doesn’t cause people -even doers of theft- to be dead afterwards.
That does indeed appear to be a fact, but its relevance to the topic is less clear.
Give it up, Bob. You are beating a dead horse.
Anytime anyone fires a gun at another, they mean to kill. People trained in the use of firearms are taught to shoot for center mass and the probability of killing someone with shots like that is very high. You’ve apparently watched too many re-runs of The Lone Ranger, who always managed to shoot the gun out of someone’s hand in the nick of time or other Hollywood-type BS.
The issue is not whether he meant to kill or not. The issue is whether the shooting was justified. And as more and more evidence keeps turning up, it looks like it was.
So how long until that toxicology report comes back?
While we wait, anyone want to play “Guess what he was on?”
Cubsfan can have PCP, which is a solid guess.
I’m going with bathsalts. That would explain a lot.
Probably the safest bet would just be alcohol and marijuana. He was stealing cigars, after all. I only know two uses for cigars. One involves drinking and one involves marijuana.
I’ve never known someone who would even smoke a cigar without a drink in the other hand. I can’t imagine stealing cigars would be any different.
Forgot about Clinton. Three uses. But I’m betting that wasn’t the case here.