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<p>Never heard of one. And there are certainly plenty of white fleeing felon suspects.</p>
<p>LasMa, the video does not start right after the killing, so we don’t know whether any paramedic approached Brown before then. In the middle of the video, we see a paramedic come to his body. The video is just a cellphone video. </p>
<p>We can hear people discussing the situation: “N---- lying on the street dead, brains all over the **** street.” “Killed for no reason.” The most awful thing, to me, is that his parents were there, with their son lying dead and alone in the middle of the street. His mother is heard screaming. His father (or uncle?) approaches the body, but is shooed away. It’s so unbearable, I just can’t…</p>
<p>Bless your heart Flossy. Bless it. Do you really think the lawyers drum up all of the negativity surrounding their clients? The KKK rallies, the character assassinations, the police state of an American city. Are you that delusional or just a ■■■■■?</p>
<p>OMG Fang. :(</p>
<p>In no way do I think this was a deserved shooting. It’s not defensible as a good reaction to whatever the situation was in the moment. I do think we see Brown in a state of mind just prior to the event which was menacing and intimidating. I think it’s reasonable to consider he may have interacted with the officer in the same manner and that fear from both sides influenced this shooting. </p>
<p>No, Beachcomber. I think they drum up the gentle giant innocent child stuff that turns out to be wildly inaccurate, though. I have no idea if this was a defensible shooting or not and we don’t have the ending of the story yet either. Details matter. And, we don’t have them.</p>
<p>Flossy, what’s the scenario where the shooting was defensible?</p>
<p>It’s Beachlover and what’s the excuse of drumming up the affluenza defense? Or the “he couldn’t get laid” defense? What about the brilliant grad student who lost his way?</p>
<p>It’s beachlover, not beachcomber. Yes, details do matter. :)</p>
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<p>And yet you go on to defend it:</p>
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<p>I don’t know how to link from my phone but there was also a twitter feed from an eyewitness in real time. According to him, there didn’t seem to be a reason why Brown was suddenly dead in the street (meaning, there hadn’t been a big altercation leading up to it). He seemed genuinely shocked. I wonder if twitter posts can be used as testimony?</p>
<p>Oops. Sorry. Beachlover.</p>
<p>Cops can shoot a dangerous fleeing felon in many jurisdictions. I don’t know about MO. They haven’t even claimed the shooting was justified yet, though. They are investigating.</p>
<p>My take on it, and I have seen this up close and personal, was that the cop got into an altercation with the kid who was killed, might have gotten punched, and at that point probably panicked, maybe assumed the kid had a gun, and fired at him. Was it racism, was it because the kid was black? That is a hard question to answer, because we don’t know the mind of the cop, and I can only speculate. Did he sit there coolly, like some redneck sheriff in the 1950’s, and blow the kid away thinking ‘damn <whatever>, I’m gonna blow him away’…I doubt it. Deep down, did he harbor attitudes about young black men, that maybe even subconsciously made him panic and shoot to kill? That is probably more likely IMO (and I am not judging the cop and saying he is guilty, I am simply trying to give an idea of what I think). A person who in their conscious mind doesn’t harbor negative attitudes about blacks, can cringe when they see a young black men or a group of them walking down the street towards them…</whatever></p>
<p>I don’t think the cop was a cold stone racist enjoying killing a black kid, I think he was scared, and may have reacted instinctively in shooting the kid because the kid was black and maybe assumed the kid must be armed. Like with the Amadou Diallo case in NYC, the cops were in a bad area, they supposedly were looking for a suspect in a violent crime, and they had someone they thought was suspicious, and panicked when he reached for his wallet, even though a more rational person would look and say “WTH? they weren’t threatened”. Cops are supposed to be trained, but they panic, and it is a killer, literally, and I think that is what probably happened here. </p>
<p>I can’t say it about this cop, but even in big cities cops often have attitudes about the people they are supposed to protect. Cops working in an area like the south Bronx in the 1970’s (an area I have some experience with), often were white, lived in the burbs someplace, and literally saw their job as working in a combat zone or jungle (and these are words I have heard used by cops, this is not made up or speculation). It influences what they do, and more importantly, it often keeps them from doing one of the most important things a cop can do, getting to know the area they are in, the people, and seeing who is doing what. If you see yourself as an occupying army or keeping the wild at bay, it is a very different attitudes. One of the things they did in NYC was to try and change that, to emphasize learning the neighborhoods and such, and it paid off. While the strong arm tactics did do some things, in other things it left them blind to the real problems going on.</p>
<p>And I have seen panic, I was working construction one summer in the late 70’s in the South Bronx, and saw a couple of cops surrounded by an unfriendly crowd, someone threw a rock, and the cops had their guns drawn and they were shaking like a leaf, literally. and they were probably one thing away from opening fire on the crowd (their tails were saved by a number of pretty big guys off the construction site, who made it clear to the crowd if they didn’t take a hike, some of them would end up in pretty bad shape). Believe me, it happens.</p>
<p>I think part of the problem is that for many of us, who grew up in relatively safe areas, like the burbs or towns, for us the cops are something that gives us something of a feeling of security, we feel like they are on our side (well, okay, except if they give out speeding tickets…). I grew up in the burbs, and I didn’t understand why people got upset at the cops until I saw it up close and personal, the kind of tactics bad cops used, the way people, ordinary people, in bad areas were treated by the cops. It isn’t even just racial, friend of mine grew up in a tough neighborhood in a city, that was white, mostly lower class Italian and Irish, and people there weren’t treated well by the cops either, and the feeling was often mutual. Like I said in another post, whatever the real story with Brown is, the people there are not reacting like this because they love doing it or are just agent provacateurs, it is because they probably have experienced a lot of crap at the hands of the cops and don’t believe them. Among other things, when you have a police force that is near lily white with an area that is mostly black or other non whites, it isn’t going to help the situation. </p>
<p>As far as Brown being a crook, it is irrelevant to this case. If he had been accused of armed robbery, the cop knew it and acted because of that, the crime would be relevant; the fact that the cop didn’t know the guy was involved in a crime when he rousted him, basically means that is irrelevant, whether angel or demon, if the guy wasn’t armed and the cop had no reason to believe he was armed (sorry, being black is not enough), then there won’t be justification for him being shot based on the theft. </p>
<p>What it is going to boil down to with this case is did the cop have justification to use deadly force, and that is going to come down to whether the cop had any reason to believe the guy posed the threat of deadly force to the cop or anyone else. Simply being the wrong demographic is not justification, nor is panic, which is personally what I think it was.</p>
<p>And for those not understanding the outrage, let me post a hypothetical (that actually has happened, believe it or not). Suppose you had a daughter that went to a club in a so so area (that was common in NYC until it has gotten so sanitized it looks like disneyland for billionaires and tourists), and was wearing club wear, the high heels, revealing outfits, etc, and was walking out of the club and down the street to let’s say get a cab, and gets arrrested by a cop on suspicion of prostitution simply because of the way she was dressed and the area she was in…would you be happy about it, or want the cops family jewels in a jar? It is in assuming someone is guilty of something because they don’t look right or are in the ‘wrong’ area or whatever that gets people angry, that being young and black and a male is not a crime or make them guilty of something. The cop in this case probably rousted the kids for jaywalking (and would probably not do that in a better off area, you can bet on it), the kid probably resisted arrest or maybe punched the cop, and the cop panicked, because he assumed the black kid would have a gun, and shot at him. He wasn’t thinking, he was reacting, if I am right, and he reacted like that because he was scared of the kid because of assumptions about who he was…</p>
<p>It remains to be seen what facts come out of this, it is all speculation at this point. What isn’t speculation is that people are angry, and dismissing it as rabble rousing and such is ignoring a very real problem. </p>
<p>"Flossy, what’s the scenario where the shooting was defensible? "</p>
<p>Wow. Let’s all pile on Flossy. This is a message board for people considering college and parents of prospective college students. The conclusion jumping going on here is amazing. How about waiting until the FBI investigation is complete? Now that photos of the physically imposing “victim” robbing a store have surfaced you all are quick to defend it as “shoplifting.” We do not yet have all the facts. I doubt this is some deep national police state conspiracy. It’s sad that many of you will be disappointed.</p>
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<p>Eight times. The kid was shot eight times (about eight, anyway, according to all the witnesses, eyewitness and earwitness). The scenario here then is that the cop panicked, shot the kid about four times, there was a space, and then he shot him four more times? </p>
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<p>This is true. And it’s racism. I’m not saying this to criticize people, because I, sad to say, have this reaction myself, but it’s racism, and we have to call it what it is. Doesn’t matter whether the person is a conscious racist-- unconscious racism still means the black person doesn’t get hired. Or they get shot eight times by a cop who wouldn’t have shot a white shoplifting teenager.</p>
<p>sally, I would think that the author of the tweet could be called to testify.</p>
<p>Osprey, you are speculating as much as anyone–and revealing your biases with your choice of words. It’s pretty funny to be scolded for “conclusion jumping” in a post that does exactly that. </p>
<p>Yep, this is gonna get worse than Trayvon Martin. So sad. I honestly thought he was our rock bottom. How naive was I.</p>
<p>Lets assume brown did get in an altercation with the cop, and the cop shot him while in the car. After brown and his friend started running AWAY, the shooting should’ve stopped. </p>
<p>At least I’m bright enough to know Twitter posts aren’t legal testimony. I think if all the “witnesses” we saw on TV last week would come forward there would be a swift conclusion to this investigation.</p>