There are two types of state; police, and failed.
So yes, I do roll my eyes at anyone who intimates that a state where the police have the power to enforce the law is a bad thing.
Legal question: Once MB attacked Wilson in the car and tried to grab his gun, he’d committed a felony and lethal force was then justified, even if he was fleeing - is this correct?
Perhaps Bo was making the point that, since the urine test can detect marijuana for days or weeks after use, it cannot tell whether the subject had used marijuana recently enough to be impaired, at is completely useless at telling how impaired the subject may or may not have been.
But of course it was a Black Man on DRUGS! He is therefore a superhuman godless killing machine, impervious to pain, fear, reason or the respect that is due his superiors. It’s not like he was a normal person drinking a coffee, sipping white wine, taking some aspirin, or popping a viagra. He was on DRUGS.
Now it’s my turn. :rolleyes:
I haven’t seen a bigger strawman since Delta marched out of their hearing cause Dean Wormer was ‘bad mouthing the USA.’
(underline added)
Are you suggesting that there are no discrepancies between the multiple eyewitness accounts to this event? Really? Seriously?
"Dale Sams:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Snowboarder Bo
Excellent post, Airman.
I disagree. There are plenty of Youtube links of police malfeasance…such as coaxing an escaped animal over so it can be shot…but still not nearly enough wiping out of the Thin Blue Line."
I’m confused. What about Airman’s post was not excellent or, put another way, disagreeable (though you only commented on Snowboarder’s observation that it was excellent)? 
I’ve gone out of my way to quote individual witnesses, even pointing out the parts where they don’t agree and/or probably got something wrong, and describing how despite all of that the (limited) forensic evidence we have does not amount to a justification to disregard all of their interviews entirely. I’m pretty sure you’ve read all of that and you still think that the forensic evidence is a slam dunk to ignore all of the witnesses except Darren Wilson, so go ahead and completely mischaracterize everything I’ve said by claiming I’m ignoring any discrepancies between eyewitness accounts because you’re obviously not interested in having a real discussion.
This is the problem with the white community (and most groups actually) . . . you don’t accept that another group GENUINELY disagrees with you. You think they just pretend to disagree with you in order to be loyal to their group. And of course in your mind that makes them dishonest, and sinister. Thus capable of “media-enabled bullying”.
I’m sure you would have no problem with any group, black or otherwise, protesting and demonstrating if YOU felt there was an injustice. But because you don’t, they shouldn’t.
I’m only disagreeing with the statement ‘open season on the people they (police) wrong is over’
Brown decided to rob a store. Why? Who knows? Minutes later, Brown decided to participate in a physical confrontation with a police officer, while Brown was carrying evidence of that robbery. Why would he do that? Maybe it was because he didn’t want to be arrested for robbing a store? Brown reached into the police vehicle. Why? To steal a donut? Did Brown have the munchies?
Brown made a lot of bad choices that morning. Smoking weed wasn’t the worst of them.
The key term here is “active”. Urinalysis can tell whether you’ve smoked within the last 30 days. It cannot tell whether you are high right now.
And anybody who thinks the protests in Ferguson and across the world have anything to do with the particular details of this case are severely misinformed. Read Airman Doors’ post again. Even if Mike Brown was proven to be a sociopathic serial killer and Darren Wilson was Andy Griffith, the nation-wide complaints against police in general stand. And the protesting won’t stop until meaningful changes are made.
Cliven Bundy attracted a whole army’s worth of armed militia who actively threatened federal agents with deadly weapons, but they were (wisely) tolerated and the standoff ended peacefully. Yet a few pissed off black folks in North County light candles and picket and the police start bashing heads, imprisoning journalists and philosophers, tear gassing innocent citizens and pointing machine guns at the very people they swore to serve and protect.
This has nothing to do with Mike Brown. He was just the spark that spurred action against the disgustingly corrupt profession supposedly acting on behalf of voters and taxpayers. This is about reigning in rogue organizations who have strayed too far from their mission and pissed off their employers in the process. The sooner the public figures this out, the sooner we can fix the problem and improve our country.
I’ve gone out of my way to read your posts. Reading your posts does not mean that I must automatically agree with everything you say.
You made up the statement, “And when there aren’t discrepancies but enough people say there are, you believe whatever you want”, not I.
I asked for clarification of your statement.
As far as I can see, there is a plethora of discrepancies among the (alleged?) eyewitnesses. The forensic evidence usually trumps a collection of varying eyewitness testimony.
No.
First, your phrase “even if he was fleeing” suggests that shooting him when he was not fleeing would also be justified. But that’s not correct. The officer is obligated to assess, at the time he pulls the trigger, whether the suspect is a threat to him. If, as some witnesses have said, Brown had surrendered, then it doesn’t matter what came before that.
Second, the modern fleeing felon rule only applies to felons who use deadly force in the course of the felony or who pose an imminent risk of deadly force at the moment of the use of force by the police. Unclear if the car struggle qualifies as deadly force or not, and if he was a deadly threat at the moment he was shot then the fleeing felon rule is largely irrelevant since it would be ordinary self-defense.
Clarified:
And when there aren’t discrepancies [between the bulk of the eyewitness accounts and the forensic evidence] but enough people say there are, you believe whatever you want
If your argument is that Bundy and his fellow traitors should have been treated the way traitors deserve, then I agree.
I personally believe the BLM agents would have been justified in firing at the militia in self defense, specifically because those militia members were threatening them with a deadly weapon. My point is that they were being both practical and wise in not doing so, and prevented a massacre in their restraint.
Certainly, some Ferguson protesters crossed quite a few lines by lobbing molotov cocktails, looting, and burning down QT. But they were a tiny minority – and in comparison to the Bundy standoff, much less dangerous of a threat – and the officers would have been wise to withhold the tear gas and beatings. In either case, removing their name tags, targeting journalists and flaunting their support of the known killer (however justified he might have been) who sparked the protests was a very disappointing, corrupt and frankly poorly made decision.
“Between the bulk of the eyewitness accounts” indicates that there are still discrepancies outside of the bulk of the eyewitness accounts. In fact, there are still many discrepancies within the bulk of the eyewitness accounts.
I believe I will believe what the forensic evidence suggests, if it’s credible, and I will believe the bulk of the eyewitness accounts “IF” they can ever agree on what actually happened.
Multiple eyewitness accounts are known to be sketchy and inconsistent. When investigating crimes, LEO are more suspicious of accounts that match up too much than than they are ones with discrepancies.
4% is pretty high. I think you are contradicting yourself.
EVERYONE “puts his life” at risk. There are many jobs riskier than being a cop, and many of them have fewer groupies.
I give human beings- I guess militaristic cops call them “civilians” the benefit of the doubt. In general I err on the side of the individual vs. the state/state agents.
I would say that the overreaction to this incident, probably has a lot to do with the fact that there HAVE been MANY incidents w/ cops over the years, that have been well-documented by journalists (if not given wide mainstream attention). Incidents where cops have used extreme violence to serve search warrants for non-violent offenses, shot MANY family dogs (usually while running away), raided many wrong addresses/houses, maimed babies with flashbang grenades, made extensive use of known liars and proven racist scumbags with agendas as criminal informants, burned down houses over unpaid tickets, murdered 93 year-old ladies, shot women while holding their babies, crashed tanks down residential streets, framed/used violence to destroy small business owners, use civil forfeiture for personal gain under always dubious pretenses, fund entire municipalities including full-time salaries for unneeded police/courts through harassment and arrest of people mostly guilty of being poor, make a mockery of law enforcement by celebrating scumbags like Joe Arpaio and allowing people like Shaq to ride along on wrong-house raids and Steven Seagal to raid cockfights, I could go on. Combine that with prosecutors who use “experts” who make-up complete bullshit quakery and attempt to pass it off as science (see various nonsense in bullet trajectory, arson psuedoscience, bite mark “analysis”,etc), have been shown manufacturing false evidence, use “medical examiners” who are not accredited and are paid to perform 5x the number of annual autopsies considered humanly possible by National Association of Medical Examiners while holding down 3-4 other jobs-then have those guys give quack testimony for the prosecution in capital cases . Those are just a few things I know that happen/happened that I can think of, that state-worshiping human-haters seem to love. If you can kill an extra dog or terrorize a few more kids, bonus points. In fact, police departments give medals for things like killing a guy for gambling and the “bravery” of raiding the wrong address and getting a kill (of a “civilian”) rather than accepting responsibility.
Maybe if things like that didn’t happen for years and get little notice, there wouldn’t be a huge overreaction when it looks like a cop may have been negligent in a killing.
Or maybe if cops were ever held responsible, other cops weren’t fired for “snitching”, or they weren’t actually promoted for doing a HORRIBLE job (I think in most occupations making a mistake that results in horrible violence due to careless work or relying on bad information does not usually result in keeping a job and being celebrated)- maybe that would help.
Maybe if every time something happened, there weren’t millions of self-hating cop-worshipers ready to defend every cop in the world as some noble benevolent servant instead of someone just doing a job (often just falling into it, like any career) AND advocating that cops are supposed to be meting out extra-judicial punishment. Because, really, historically there have been a lot more blind “law and order” types worshiping police than there have been human beings vocally support the lives and dignity of other human beings.
What you are saying, IMHO, is that you hold people w/ important positions (entrusted w/ safety and in many cases a monopoly on the use of force) to LOWER standards than “civilians.” That makes absolutely no sense to me. If anything cops should be held to higher standards and shouldn’t be protected and rewarded when they screw up, as if they were spoiled small children.
People know that, even when a cop most likely is in the wrong, nothing is going to happen and nothing is going to change. There is a history and pattern of not valuing the lives of civilians ( and yes, especially black ones). Policing gets more and more militaristic and more and more “Us v. civilians” and confrontational. And even as crime GOES DOWN, the use of fear and violence increases. And I guess millions of people are OK with that, because at some point they became conditioned to worship authority. Maybe one-time 50 years ago, your parents or whoever told you that some guy with a badge, who was taking a break from wearing a sheet and beating his wife and kids to earn a paycheck, was your friend that was there to protect you and make sure you were safe from bad guys. Sometimes they were probably even right. But I don’t think they are the same guys profiting off crime these days. Hell, I have relatives who are cops, and I’m not worshiping any of those guys. One is a really good guy, too (this is probably illustrated at least partially by the fact that he’d rather have another job). But, he pretty much has the mentality of a gang member, because he’s in the one gang that’s accepted and is allowed to openly have a “no snitching” policy without any public outcry.