No, it doesn’t seem odd at all. What seems odd to you about the fact that the police haven’t released all the details of an ongoing investigation? Despite what you and others seem to think, you have no right to know these details, and frankly the more details that come out the harder it will be to investigate properly.
Let alone the damage to a trial that can come from too much evidence - or “evidence” - being leaked early. Witnesses interviewed after things come out are inherently less believable, as it’s harder to know whether they are saying what they remember or what they read. Or, more accurately, their memories become corrupted by the other information, and what they sincerely believe happened is not what they actually saw.
And this is all ignoring that, as yet, there’s not been a determination that there’s any case to answer.
Well, how far away was Brown when the officer opened fire? Got any idea? Was he running or standing, in pursuit or holding his ground? Where was Brown standing when he was first hit, compared to where he was standing when he was killed? Makes a lot of difference, don’t you think? How many shell casings from the officers pistol? Which is to say, how many times did he fire?
if there is blood on the pavement thirty feet away, and more twenty five feet away, and the body is twenty feet away, he was moving towards the officer. Duh. And conversely, conversely. But if the blood is all in one place, then he was shot where he stood.
And the car? A bullet in the car, a spent shell casing in the car? Kinda important, don’t you think?
If the evidence exists that totally corroborates the officer’s story, wouldn’t that go along way to resolving the problem? And the police insist that his story is true, so, therefore, the hard evidence would reflect that, yes?
Well, then, release the exonerating evidence, what’s the problem? i think maybe I know what the problem is, pretty sure you could guess if you get a couple of free tries.
Johnson has already admitted being involved. He wasn’t charged because he didn’t leave the store with the cigars that Brown gave him and Johnson wasn’t videoed manhandling the clerk. And because he probably gave police a statement about Brown illegal activities.
The problem could be that the prosecution doesn’t want to release their case against the officer. At least until after a grand jury has a chance to rule on the evidence and the officers guilt or innocence.
elucidator, I think the release of any and all of this evidence to the public is at the discretion of the prosecutor’s office. And whether or not the county prosecutor recuses himself and another prosecuting attorney takes the case, it may not be a grand idea to release that evidence, whichever way it points. I can imagine it might taint a future jury pool to have all of the measurements and site geometry and physical evidence discussed ad nauseum (and boy, do I mean that) prior to trial.
He admitted to being in the store when the robbery occurred, not that he was involved in it. Being present when your friend commits a crime doesn’t make you an accomplice to it.
My honest opinion is that no, releasing that evidence (if it exists) would not go very far to solving the problem - the problem, I assume, being the ongoing issues in Ferguson resulting from this shooting, and to a much lesser extent the arguments here.
I mean, we’ve already had claims that evidence has been fabricated, claims that no matter what happened the policeman should have resolved it without killing (BobLibDem being the most obvious example), and a significant amount of anti-cop feeling that will continue no matter what the facts. A feeling that rather disturbingly parallels the anti-black feeling among certain people… Anyway, as we saw quite clearly in the Zimmerman/Martin case, even when it turned out there was practically no evidence of wrongdoing on Zimmerman’s part, people still called him a murderer, and I don’t expect it to be any different here.
But, as I said in my previous post, there are good reasons not to release the evidence at this point, even if exonerating evidence exists, and other people have added further reasons.
If your point is that the police haven’t bothered investigating, and didn’t gather the evidence, well, I rather doubt that’s the case. Even if it was obvious at the scene that no crime had been committed (as is my gut feeling here), I can’t imagine them not investigating just to cover their own backs.
But rather sadly, it looks like we’re back to the bizarre concept of, just because someone kills someone, they shouldn’t be presumed innocent. Which is a tragedy for all involved, and a travesty of justice.
I tend to agree with elucidator. The reason for releasing the robbery video was to cast aspersions on Brown and make Wilson look better. For me, it worked to some extent, as it showed that Mike Brown was no “gentle giant” and very well could have (even likely) attacked Wilson first. Yet it would seem that mentality would follow with other exonerating evidence for Officer Wilson.
Ya know, this police crackdown is typical of Obama’s America. These protestors should start openly carrying. If they exercise their second amendment rights they could put a check on government over reach. I bet the NRA would support that.
Hitching your wagon to fascist pigs or urban youths (dat euphemism) gets both sides burned. Why do it? Libs looked like fools after the Martin incident but they couldn’t do a 180 because they were too invested, so one would think they might be a little reserved here. Guess not.
Did anyone see them doing it? That isn’t strange to anyone, that no one saw a bunch of cops combing over the area, bagging shell casings, marking where they were, drawing that ever popular chalk silhouette of the dead guy? Did they sneak in in the middle of the night? The scene had people around it, media around it, and nobody saw them doing it, nobody posted any pictures of the chalk outline?
Because the first rule of Fight Club is *you don’t talk about Fi— *uh, erm, sorry; that’s not it.
I really think it would have been more remarkable -and hence, remarked on by someone- if none of that was done at all. Camera phone videos of the scene shortly after the shooting show uniformed and plainclothed people inside the crime scene tape walking around. What were they all doing if they weren’t collecting evidence? And wouldn’t we have heard some specific complaints from the Brown family attorneys about the lack of an investigation and the lack of evidence gathering? They’ve been complaining about lack of transparency and about the selective and self-serving releases of evidence from the police, but not about that.
Could have. Terr was speaking in more concrete terms and I was just cautioning that we don’t know for a fact that the officer had any clue they were involved in a robbery.
Actually, now that I’m thinking about it, how would he have known? They were carrying cigars? Hardly damning evidence. As far as I’m aware, he hadn’t been to the store, so he hadn’t received any description of them.
Does anyone know the distance from the robbery to where Brown was killed? Same street? Around the block? Several blocks away?
I’m not going to post a link to it, but there’s a new picture being circulated that is allegedly Michael Brown. It shows him with cheap booze, a wad of money in his mouth and pointing a gun at the camera.
It’s reportedly a real Facebook post, posted by a cop. I’m not really sure what that’s supposed to even mean.
But even if the picture is real, I can’t imagine why a sane cop would want to bring attention to this right now. It will only add to the craziness.
Have you been watching the same films as BobLibDem? The chalk outline isn’t a real thing, at least in the last few decades…
It seems, again, you need to be reminded that lack of evidence isn’t evidence of lack. Unless you can come up with a witness who says the police did none of what you say they should, we have no way of knowing what they did. I see no reason, at the moment, to conclude that any of the police involved in this incident didn’t follow procedure. Including the shooter, assuming it’s procedure there to defend yourself against an attack that leaves you with a fractured face.