ferguson riots

[Phil Williamson]

yeah, the witnesses were his friends and neighbors. plus this has now become a huge national thing with jesse jackson and al sharpton showing up and all that so there would be enormous pressure against coming clean at this point.

[Andres]

being his neighbor or acquaintance isn't plenty of reason to lie. it most certainly comes nowhere near close to the reason for the cop to lie, which is that his career and quite possibly his life is at stake.


by this standard, any witness of a crime that knew the victim is unreliable.

[Bravoie]

Unfortunately, the loudest group always gets the most exposure so I'm guessing that the looters are getting tons of tv time while the peaceful protestors are not getting any exposure, at least on the mainstream outlets. Meanwhile, people outside of the community will see it as validation of any sort of racial preconceptions that they had.

How many times did we see the pic of that ONE guy supposedly looting beer after Katrina? Everybody knows what I'm talking about it because it was everywhere and used to justify all sorts of terrible arguments in support of police brutality. This is a pattern that keeps repeating itself.

[Dungeon Snake]

Originally Posted by Andres

being his neighbor or acquaintance isn't plenty of reason to lie. i

what are you talking about


of course it is

[Dungeon Snake]

Originally Posted by Andres

by this standard, any witness of a crime that knew the victim is unreliable.

no, wrong. we aren't talking about "ANY WITNESS WHO KNEW HIM"; we're talking about current acquaintances and neighbors. and they aren't categorically unreliable; witnesses have to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis

[Dungeon Snake]

Originally Posted by Andres

comes nowhere near close to the reason for the cop to lie, which is that his career and quite possibly his life is at stake.

ok agreed but what then was the motivation for the shooting? uncontrollable murderous racism?

[Bobby Swisha]

Originally Posted by Andres

being his neighbor or acquaintance isn't plenty of reason to lie. it most certainly comes nowhere near close to the reason for the cop to lie, which is that his career and quite possibly his life is at stake.


by this standard, any witness of a crime that knew the victim is unreliable.

yeah I actually agree.

watching some of the witness testimony it doesn't seem to me like they're being untruthful.

by contrast we haven't heard any of the police testimony outside of vague press release statements. I'm inclined to believe the former just because of the way it's presented. if the cops came out the first day and were like "OK this is what happened" I would have been more inclined to believe them, now it just feels like they're trying to piece together a story that would justify it.

[Bobby Swisha]

I posted cringe here

[Andres]

Originally Posted by Rattlesnake

ok agreed but what then was the motivation for the shooting? uncontrollable murderous racism?

i don't think there is a motivation for the shooting in the sense that the guy planned to murder him and had a reason for doing so. what i think is that it's a combination of 1) the fact that it's presumably a tense, stressful situation and people react instinctively and often poorly during these, and 2) that there is a fundamental divide between police and guys like michael brown, who they see as potential enemies / potential criminals instead of people they should be protecting. when you're reacting, on instinct, towards people you see as your potential enemies, it's not unlikely that your reaction will be violent.

[Andres]

i don't even know what phil is even trying to say with this 'well i just don't know who to believe' shit.

the witness statements are already well-known. the witnesses say that brown was shot from behind, unarmed, as he was running away from the police car, and then was shot again multiple times.

the police have also said that brown was unarmed, that he was shot 35 feet away from the police car, and that he was shot multiple times.

i am pretty sure we are all in agreement that the police should not be shooting people who are unarmed, who are 35 feet away, in the back.

the discrepancy between the accounts of the guy who was with brown and the cop is that maybe brown 'started it' and maybe even fired the gun inside the car. but so what? how does this discrepancy actually make it ok to shoot an unarmed person in the back?!?


the police have NOT said that brown was armed, or that he was rushing towards the cop and he had to kill him in self defense, or anything of the sort. they really haven't said anything that suggests the murder is ok so what the fuck? all they've said is a number of things that are supposed to make us believe that since brown wasn't a saint (maybe robbed a store, maybe started the fight with the police officer), he deserved to be murdered

[Izak MD]

the whole incident strikes me as a political rorschach test

[Andres]

there was a preliminary autopsy which suggests the shots all came from the front. he was shot six times, apparently. this contradicts the notion that he was shot in the back at first, although the report is preliminary.

[Andres]

looks like the cops went ahead and just tear-gassed the press and a bunch of children.

[Jesterfoot]

What a shitstorm

[Damage Jackal]

yeah regardless of the circumstances of the shooting, the police in ferguson are now arresting (and threatening) journalists and tear gassing groups of bystanders. any way you cut it that isn't right, and it's all happening really openly

[Phil Williamson]

for what it's worth, Ferguson/St. Louis County police haven't been in charge for several days now. the Missouri Highway Patrol is now. that doesn't make anything they're doing less bad of course, but it's worth keeping in mind that the current cops aren't the same ones who shot the guy

[Bobby Swisha]

at this point I'm not sure it matters. these cops all seem more or less the same.

http://www.dailydot.com/politics/fer...u-in-the-face/

[Bobby Swisha]

[Bobby Swisha]

so this cop has a GoFundMe page, and has already received more than $10,000 in donations in less than 24 hours.

http://www.gofundme.com/SupportOfficerWilson

[Kevitus]

finally a niggerhater people can fund!

[Bobby Swisha]

I dunno man, I keep going back and forth on what I think about this. I think there might really be a chance this dude just charged the cop and the cop reacted cause he was scared.

[Izak MD]

actually this thing is sort of common, whenever someone does something supposedly racist (or condemned by the media as such) there's always an outpour of support. this is relatively minor compared to other things. like when paula deen got fired by her publisher, everyone started to buy her books in record numbers. of course, they were trying to support paula deen, not her publisher. but they wound up giving her publishers money and not her.

similar things have happened, like i remember there was some baseball player who did something racist and got suspended. when he got back he got like a standing ovation or osmething

[Bobby Swisha]

Someone found rap songs Mike Brown recorded:


http://soopermexican.com/2014/08/15/...ng-and-murder/

[Tony Clay]

All the cops I've ever encountered exercised too much force. I've been put in a headlock for just standing there rubbing my maced eyes. fucking cops over doing it. fuck em.

[Bobby Swisha]

I agree. But honestly the same argument can be made about these 'gangstas' in the hood too. Which is why it's so hard to tell what really happened here.

We know quite a bit about Mike Brown but we know almost nothing about the police officer who shot him. Did he have a history of abuse? Did he have a history of racism?

If he didn't, I really am sort of inclined to believe this may have been a defensive shooting. The one thing that doesn't add up with that is that the autopsy said that the bullet wounds indicate that he did have his hands in the air when one of the bullets entered him.