This situation is very incredibly heated. The riot on the first day lasted a good twelve hours. It spread away from Ferguson and moved into nearby cities. EVERYONE was afraid, even my friends across the river in Illinois. It was out of control. The next day, more looting, more shots fired, more people arrested. Apparently since then, the rioting and looting has calmed down. But everyone in the St. Louis area is on edge. I think nearly every citizen near St. Louis agrees, this officers name is better kept away from the public. The news reported the department would be releasing the name. I have never seen so many comments of people telling them not to. After all the cops getting injured in the riots, after the death threats to the department, these people are mad at cops right now. Telling them the name of a cop that shot an innocent teenager is asking for trouble. I am completely confident when I suspect that someone will KILL that cop. I'm sure there are plenty of people who just want to know, to give Brown justice. But those people who want to know aren't the same people looting and rioting and destroying the city. Someone will kill him. I think it's just human curiosity to want to know. But I believe it shouldn't be public until tensions have gone down. The looting was definitely out of hand, but people are making the mistake of thinking that every peaceful protester was involved in the looting, which was not true. People who are trying to keep their integrity are even cleaning up the aftermath of the riots, volunteering to show that not everyone in Ferguson is bad. I also don't believe the looting was about a free tv either. They were angry -- at the government mostly -- so the rioting and looting was a way to say "you don't own me." Do I agree with it? Absolutely not. But I understand it. Brown was fleeing and stopped after he was shot a second time. Hands in the air, to me, signifies surrender. According to a report I read, Brown was shot eight times. Once in the car, once running away.. So at this point, he was shot six more times. Why shoot someone, unarmed, that was surrendering? I'm really curious to hear exactly what happened from the officers perspective. But I don't think it will matter. Unarmed, hands in the air.... That's just straight murder.
Here's how a MO state senator feels about Jay Nixon. Apparently she was tear gassed while standing with protesters. http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/missouri-state-sen-fuck-you-jay-nixon
Looks like tension is starting to wane. http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2014/08/14/with-highway-patrol-hugs-and-kisses-replace-tear-gas-in-ferguson/ And I'm so thankful! Police forces are letting the people protest peacefully. News crews are allowed back in. Fox News in St. Louis is live streaming the protest online. It's just such a welcome change. People are still angry, of course, but now it's more of a controlled anger and not a fueled rage. Now it's just time for justice for Mike Brown.
Another witness or this is the one that Sharpton played an interview of earlier, Tiffany Mitchell. She didn't know the victim, didn't live in the neighborhood, was coming to pick up her employee for work. She was very close. That's easily checked. She sounds very credible. She tells the same story as the friend. One shot at the car, another one hit Michael as he ran, he turned around and faced the officer with his hands up. The officer kept shooting, "several more shots". If that autopsy corroborates these witnesses, it's pretty incriminating for that officer. [deleted until more info]
Not only is the witness, Tiffany Mitchell, credible and her story corroborated by the other two witnesses, she also said the officer never once checked Brown to see if he still had a pulse. She's incredibly credible.
Actually, this reminds me of a quote, "The sad thing is, young black men are seen as problems before they are seen as people."
This was amazing. Give it a listen -- it is less than 4 minutes long. http://www.npr.org/2014/08/15/340419821/after-a-traffic-stop-teen-was-almost-another-dead-black-male
Onion has a great take once again. I think that one possible resolution would be trying to get police of the same group to the area. Of course that shouldn't be taken in to extreme.
They released the name of the officer today. Darren Wilson. I watched the press conference. They also released details on a strong-arm robbery, and I didn't really understand the connection. But I think they were saying the suspected Brown was the man who committed the robbery, which is why he was stopped. From the reports I've been reading, the police are saying the fatal shot to Brown occurred during the struggle over the weapon in the car. That doesn't explain how he was shot eight times and ended up in the street. The police aren't telling the whole story here.
So now it turns out Brown was a petty thief suspect and jaywalking. Dorian Johnson has apparently already said Brown stole a carton of cigarillos. The police reports and the video from the mini-mart show Brown grabbing or pushing the store clerk so the charge is "strong-arm robbery". It only changes the initial encounter through the police car window. It doesn't change the shooting of the fleeing suspect who apparently had then given up and turned around with his hands up. It's only going to make the police look like they are covering up by the police not saying the officer was stopping a robbery suspect as opposed to confronting a jaywalker who refused a police order. Nothing the officer did is consistent with a normal stop for a robbery. We've all seen videos of police telling suspects to get on the ground, show your arms, that scenario. Police don't typically pull up to a suspect and confront him through the car window. But a cop might do that if he was just dealing with disrespectful kids. If the store clerk says Brown claimed he had a gun that would justify the cop pulling his weapon. But if the cop thought Brown did or might have a gun, he sure didn't handle the stop that way. If there is a dispatch call (which are all recorded) telling the cop to look for the suspects, that again gives the reason for the stop, but not the method the cop used. But if the cop concocted the story after the shooting, the dispatch recording (or lack of one) might be important. This is really going to depend on the autopsy. If your arms are raised when you are shot, blood spatter might show that. You can bet the officer is going to claim Brown was reaching for something if he shot Brown who had turned around.
Apparently a hacker got ahold of the dispatcher feed from Ferguson. The officer didn't even call the shooting in. The dispatcher found out about it from the news.... There's something incredibly fishy about that.
Got to be careful with that video. It's already come out that the FaceBook page of a racist woman was not the police chief's wife as it was claimed, and the Anonymous disclosure of a different officer's name was fake. One thing right away, (and I'm only a couple minutes into the video): "Dispatch learned of the shooting on the news". I give flu shots every year to two local dispatch centers. Very sophisticated operations and no one is watching the news or listening to the radio while on duty. Further in they say other people are calling 911. That could be true. "Be advised, this information came from the news" That could be the 911 caller called to ask about it. People do that, stupidly call 911 like it is an information source. So the rest of it about a police state is a bit too paranoid for me. Oh for crying out loud, the web site is worse than Alex Jones'.
During the 2003 WSOP (World Series of Poker), I worked with ESPN on their coverage of the event. The tournament was turning into a Cinderella story very quickly as a young unknown, Chris Moneymaker began an unlikely march from a $40 satellite entry fee toward the final table and a record breaking $2.5 million dollar payday. We had hundreds of hours of footage of Moneymaker and he was playing some great poker. Like everyone else in the tournament who had outlasted 90% of the field, he had gotten lucky a few times as well. It was decided that the footage of him playing brilliantly was going to get tossed and that it would make more compelling television if they relied heavily on his 'luck'. So, every hand in which his odds were close or he was an underdog to win the hand were televised, and every hand in which he was an overwhelming favorite was cut. I get the same sense with situations like this mess in Ferguson. The cops sit on information that is not available to anyone else and I'm afraid they simply edit away anything that shows guilt on the part of the officer and highlight anything that shows guilt on the part of the victim. I don't know this to be true of course, but I am concerned that it might be. Too, it is disconcerting to listen to folks say things like, "Well, let's wait for all the facts before we make up our minds." This sounds reasonable on the surface, but if the place that you are getting 'all the facts' are from one side - a side for whom it is legal to lie to the public, a side who has had the better part of a week to edit the facts, and a side that is well documented to protect their own at any cost... how reliable can their facts be? How can we trust them even if what they tell us is the truth? How would we know the difference?
Police Chief interview: ... robbery not related to the initial stop which was for "walking down the street blocking traffic". The press is relentless trying to make it look like the police are trying to tarnish Brown's image by releasing the robbery video but I don't see any reason to believe that is true. The media always wants it to be a scandal. Reporting the facts, not so much.
The mayor of St. Louis just said on MSNBC that Ferguson is a suburb of St. Louis. For those that were arguing.
Dammit! You win this time, @Lewdog ! But I'll be back, oh I'll be back alright, with sources of my own.
Back in 2009, cops in Ferguson arrested the wrong man (who's black by the way), beat him even though he never resisted arrest, and then charged him because he got blood on their uniforms. You can read more about this here. I honestly can't believe something like this actually happened.
There away more looting last night. Dorian Johnson, a witness to Browns murder and his friend, admitted that he and Brown committed the strong arm robbery but claims they dropped the cigars at the store, which would explain why the cigars weren't found on the scene. Now the family is angry, because they feel the police department and media is trying to paint Brown in an ugly light by saying his murder was justifiable because he had just robbed a store. Unfortunately, Darren Wilson, the cop who killed him, didn't suspect Brown of the robbery. He stopped him because he was "walking in the middle of the street and blocking traffic." So the family feels that the robbery has nothing to do with the murder, since he wasn't a suspect to begin with. So several people looted the store that Brown robbed, even with protestors trying to stop them. The scariest part about all of this to me is that now the conspiracy theorists are coming out of the woodwork, saying the DHS have been acting undercover in the protests, encouraging people to riot. According to these theorists, the DHS wants total chaos so they can declare martial law. I believe a few theories about America and the things our government does.. But this just seems far-fetched to me. But I guess I can't put anything past our government.
