So it seems that many (not necessarily here) are arguing that if Michael Brown did indeed steal from that store and assault that clerk, then that makes it much more likely, if not probable, that he did try to kill the police officer later, and that therefore his shooting was justified self defense.
I’d like to debate the attitudes behind that: namely, that a criminal’s word is not to be trusted, especially not above a law enforcement officer’s, and that criminals, ones they cross that threshold into breaking any law, are capable of doing anything. I’m not saying that such reactions aren’t natural, or that they don’t have understandable origins, or even that they’re always wrong. I just think that they’re dangerous, as countless cases of police brutality and corruption in the past have shown us.
It totally hinges on how likely the supposed perpetrator is to have done the crime and how serious the alleged crime was. If maybe he snagged a cigar and ran out that’s pretty different from five guys seeing him shoot the owner and steal all the cash.
Some people are more likely to believe the police version, community version, or wild eyed commentator version.
Where on Earth are you getting the idea that people think “a criminal’s word is not to be trusted?”
The issue is that previously, Brown appeared to be a completely non-violent individual with no reason to pick a fight with the police, so the police claim was considered unlikely to be true. Now, if the videos show what they appear to show, we discover that Brown was a violent individual with a reason to fear arrest from the police. That doesn’t mean we instantly take the police at their word, but it means their claim is much less outlandish than it at first seems.
This has nothing to do with any claim that since Brown appears to be a criminal, the witnesses claiming his innocence must all be lying.
When I was wrongly arrested for alleged DUI, after I described my route, the officer asserted that I had to have driven at least 5 miles with my car lights off, so after I was released, I went home and measured the actual distance traveled on my city map. The distance was approximately 1/2 a mile on a well-lit road, so you can’t take everything an officer says for truth.
In this case it’s not just a question of taking the word of a known police officer over the word of a known robber, but also that we have video evidence of Brown doing to the shopkeeper the same thing the cop says Brown did to him. The police officer’s claim that Brown responded to an authority figure confronting him about committing a crime and responding by shoving the authority figure out of the way is more credible when we know that this is a thing Brown does.
I don’t see how any of this is relevant. Let’s say he was a baby-killer, and occasional -eater. Let’s say he was known for killing police and lighting his stolen cigars with pictures of cops’ widows who still think they’re wives. None of that matters if he was shot in the back while fleeing, then several more times in the front after turning around with his hands up.
Based on what I’ve read, it definitely sounds like the cop summarily executed the guy.
But I could easily see the case made in court that, with the cop not being a stone-cold killer of hundreds, but rather someone who had been given a fright by almost having his own gun taken away and used against him, clicked into rampage mode. He did not act as a police officer should, but he may have acted in a way that humans do.
It’s relevant because if Johnson was lying about Brown assaulting the cop, it is foolish to assume he’s not also lying about the cop gunning him down in cold blood. Or to use your hypothetical, if he was eating babies at the time he was killed, any witness who tried to cover up his baby-eating ways would be immediately suspect, because they are proving themselves willing to lie to make Brown look like a victim.
“I didn’t rape her, and she’s accused dozens of other men of raping her in just the last three years.”
Neither of these examples is particularly relevant to this shooting. They’re just masturbatory straw men that allow someone to appeal to pre-held beliefs, instead of looking at the realities of the case.
To me, the relevant facts are:
Everyone agrees that the cop was trying to get them out of the street.
Everyone agrees that the cop executed the guy, even when he had turned around, with his hands up.
So if the idea is that the cop was using racial profiling or is a dirty cop who had some ulterior motive for assassinating the guy, or whatever, #1 blows those ideas out of the water. The only path that leads to point #2 is if an altercation broke out, and nothing that we’re aware of from point #1 leads us to believe that the cop would try to initiate such an altercation nor escalate it to the extent that he would go Rambo. The victim must have done something to provoke the officer. If we know that the victim had just committed a crime some minutes before, then the cause of the altercation/escalation becomes clear. The guy didn’t want to go to jail and reacted poorly.
If the idea is that the cop was justified in some way, #2 blows those ideas out of the water. All laws and police procedures would require that an officer use the least force to accomplish his aim. Even if the victim did temporarily get the officer’s gun out of the officer’s hands and put the officer in fear for his life, the instant the gun is back in the officer’s hands, there’s no argument to be made that the officer can use deadly force.
Almost certainly, both parties ended up in the wrong. There is no good guy in this story.
There are lots of crimes and they are not all the same. Rolling through a stop sign is not the same thing as genocide. So I don’t believe there is a “criminals” / “good people” dichotomy but rather a spectrum of behaviors–and human behavior is not consistent, either.
Secondly, and an important but technical point, is that police officers are only part of the system that determines if a crime has been committed. Only a jury or judge can make the final decision. When a cop calls someone a criminal but that person has not yet been convicted, they’re a bit ahead of the game.
Third, there’s an entire class of people who are universally honest and don’t make mistakes? Please. They’re human beings.
He is certainly not a “known robber” at this time. The person in the video has not been definitively identified. At the very worst he is someone suspected of being a robber. What is more, it appears that, at the time of the shooting, the cop had no reason to even suspect him of being a robber (apart from the fact of his blackness, of course :rolleyes:).
Yes, he has. According to Johnson’s lawyer, Johnson himself has identified him as having taken cigars from that store. So unless it was some other guy who looks like Brown accompanied by some guy who looks like Johnson, who also stole cigars from that store, he has been definitively identified.
Wrong. At the time of stopping him for jaywalking, the cop had no reason to suspect he was a robber. That does not mean he did not figure it out once he saw them with the same items stolen from the store. It also does not mean that the fact that Brown was said to be acting the same way when confronted by the cop as when confronted by the shopkeeper is not relevant.
Even if he knew for a fact that he was the cigar thief, it wouldn’t justify a shooting. However, it would explain why a person who was being stopped for jaywalking might escalate the situation. As the officer didn’t appear to know he was a suspect in the robbery, that escalation would be a surprise.
An escalation still doesn’t justify the shooting, it’s all about using an appropriate response to the situation you’re in.
It doesn’t exactly take the steadiest hand in the West to not put 6 bullets into a guy who has his hands up.
I’m generally pro-cop in these scenarios, but I’ve seen more than one instance of police thoroughly cocking up the situation, so I’m keeping an open mind here.