It is entirely probable that Wilson would have shot anyone of that size who did the same things that Brown did, and had he done so, the prosecutor would still want to protect a police officer from indictment regardless of the perpetrator’s race. But that is all really beside the larger point.
As with most individual events that touch the national consciousness, its not so much the individual event but the underlying context, which in this case is the unequal treatment that blacks receive from the justice system. This context has undergoing a slow burn for years, with flares when a particular event such as the Travon Martin case provides a start example of this unevenness taken to the extreme. At first the Brown case also seemed to be the perfect poster child for a focus for this resentment. But later evidence seems to indicate that Brown wasn’t quite as good an example as one might have hoped. Unfortunately by tying the issue of unequal justice symbolically to Brown it has become hard to distinguish between the facts of this individual case, and the very real issue at hand. So making an argument in favor of the exoneration of the Wilson racial bias in this case is seen as exonerating the entire justice system of racial bias, when in fact the too issues are entirely independent. Just because one extreme interaction between African American’s and the police is or is not racially charged has little to say in terms of the day to day experiences of African American’s interaction with law enforcement.
You keep saying that in multiple threads as if it were true. In most cases a prosecutor will only present enough evidence to show probable cause. But grand juries have much more power than that if needed. It is written into the law that way. In this case the grand jury was used in a particular way for a reason. So that the prosecutor does not unilaterally decide to determine if there is probable cause in a case in which his neutrality can be questioned. Since volumes of grand jury testimony have been released it should be no problem for you to find examples of how the prosecutor used the grand jury to shield the officer. I have not heard any evidence of this and I would be very curious to see it.
There is no doubt in my mind that the officer received preferential treatment.
That being said - the end result is the same. He appeared to provide all points of view. Normally a prosecutor only presents stuff that supports his point of view. The inclusion of exculpatory evidence is what would have happened at a trial.
If anyone really believe that a white guy who was as big as brown is could reach into a cop car and touch an officers gun and not get shot - they are smoking something.
Whether an officer should or should not shoot in these circumstances is irrelevant. It is common knowledge that if you make sudden movements towards the police - or two and get their gun - you are probably going to wind up dead. Police have training for incidents like these - and they do not think during stuff like this - they react based on their training. Once you go for an officers gun - if they officer isn’t 100% sure he can overpower you (say you are a six year old kid) - he/she is going to shoot you to prevent you from shooting him.
The bullet hole on the inside of the car door - along with the blood and other evidence - shows this shooting was justified.
If anyone thinks that at least one juror wouldn’t have found reasonable doubt - when the jury didn’t even find probable cause - they are overly optimistic.
Sure - the prosecutor could have only produced the lying witnesses - and had him bound over for trial, but is that what we really want? The solution is to provide indigent and other defendants with the same sort of rigor that was applied to this case - not to try and railroad a police officer cause people want to believe this kid is an example of racism.
There are plenty of examples of poor police behavior - this doesn’t seem to be one of them.
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
Was not Brown himself an “ordinary black citizen”?
[/QUOTE]
Not unless the ordinary black citizen of Ferguson is a dangerous thug, and I doubt anyone really believes that.
1)As far as the evidence goes, Martin assaulted Zimmerman. That is, there were injuries consistent with being assaulted on Zimmerman, and those injuries were inflicted before the gunshot wound that killed Martin. There were no marks consistent with being assaulted on Martin. There was an eyewitness seeing Martin on top of Zimmerman, and physical evidence consistent with Martin being on top and Zimmerman on the bottom. There was no evidence consistent with Martin ever being on the bottom, and no eyewitness who saw Zimmerman on top of Martin.
2) Since Zimmerman claims to have acted in self-defense, and since all the physical evidence and witnesses backed up the claim, it is not appropriate to remove “self-defense” from the hypothetical.
3) I have thought about that case, quite a bit. Reconsidering the evidence confirms that the resolution was entirely accurate.
4) OK, I’m back, as the hobbit said. The grand jury did not find any reasonable suspicion that a crime had been committed by Wilson.
I don’t think the problem is as much the racism of the police as it is the militarization and culture of the police. Every time the police kill somebody it has to be looked at on a case-by-case basis but there are numerous stories of the police killing or beating people for ridiculous things like people that are deaf and not responding to verbal commands, people having seizures or diabetics that need their insulin. Many times the police could subdue a subject but basically execute them, the police are way too quick to pull the trigger but again you have to judge these situations individually because sometimes the reaction is understandable. I think it being mandatory for each individual cop being required to wear a body camera would solve a lot of these issues.
I think given what I know and have read that in the particular case of Michael Brown, the officer probably was justified, but there is no doubt many times that prosecutors will not indict police officers in cases of clear-cut murder that is not justified and this must change.
You would do better to post pure opinion in IMHO and rants in The BBQ Pit.
Bickering over one’s mere beliefs does not belong in Great Debates.
I am moving this to IMHO and if you would like it to be a rant, you can take steeps to have it moved to the Pit.
Slight hijack: If Michael Brown had been white, he probably would have been shot. I suspect his body would have been processed properly, however, and not left to fester on the ground for four hours. Even if Brown had “deserved” to be shot, the community didn’t deserve that gruesome display.
The body could not be moved until the coroner moved it. The coroner did not move it because the scene was not secured. Several hundred people gathered at the scene and it became tense. It wasn’t until about 5 dozen police officers could get to the scene was it secured enough to let the coroner in. On a department with only about 50 officers total (obviously not all working at the same time) it would take a while to gather 60 officers. They came mostly from the county and had to come in from other calls. I don’t know if changing anyone’s race would have changed any of that.
Note: as per the timeline Brown is shot at 12:03. The body is covered at 12:10. Brown’s mother pleads with the crowd to move back at 4Pm. The body is picked up at 4:15.
This is likely true, because if Brown had been white, his death wouldn’t have been followed by the arrival of an angry mob throwing stuff, firing into the air, and preventing the medical examiner from doing their job.
ON another forum there are two videos posted. One is at the convenience store and the other is a dead man lying in the street. But my biggest question if I had been on the grand jury is how did he have time to go home and change his shoes between the one video and the other. It cannot be seen well enuff for me to know if it was the same face, but definitely wasn’t the same shoes.
Michael Brown was a thug. Given his actions, it would not have mattered if he was white, black, yellow, or purple. Anyone who acted in the same manner would have been shot. Not to mention that on top of his actions, he was literally asking for it.
“You’re too much of a p*ssy to shoot me” - Michael Brown as he grabbed ahold of the LEO’s weapon.
That quote was from Wilson’s testimony to the Grand Jury (see below link). I didn’t blindly accept Wilson’s story previously, but the evidence certainly seems to corroborate his story after looking through it. Thus why he wasn’t indicted.
I just added the quote from Brown because I thought it was a bit humorous. Famous last words, so to speak.
I think so much of the problem with race, and a lot of other issues, in the US, is this sort of thinking. People are on one side of an issue or another, and they will hear no evidence that contradict the conclusion they’ve jumped to.
Peddle your white guilt someplace else, these people have made and will continue to make their own cesspit, I say we brick it up and wait until they’ve killed each other.
I think we could say that if it had happened in a well off middle class neighborhood, then it is less likely there would be a dead body. Socio economic factors were probably big contributors to the outcome.
