<p>Cobrat, the police department did not arrest those journalists. They freed them after learning they had been arrested by the county SWAT team brought in to control the riot.</p>
<p>The story that Mr. Brown was totally innocent and was an innocent person who somehow got into this altercation with an officer that resulted in gun fire did not really make sense.</p>
<p>An officer responding to a report of a strong armed robbery and the culprit fighting with the officer when confronted and maybe trying to get the officer’s gun makes a lot more sense </p>
<p>
Perhaps explaining why the state highway patrol was brought in to replace both the Ferguson and county police departments.</p>
<p>Dadinator, “strong armed robbery” means the opposite of “armed”. It specifically means unarmed. It changes nothing. We don’t know if the incident was a robbery or a theft. And of course we don’t know if it was Brown or if it was, we don’t know if the officer who shot him knew that. </p>
<p>And do we know if the alleged injury to the officer was the result of a “punch in the face” as actingmt says? I don’t think any information has come out about how that happened. Several witnesses allege the policeman grabbed Brown who then struggled to break free. According to those reports, it’s also possible the officer hit himself on the car window. </p>
<p>The original police report said the officer yelled for Brown and his friend to get on the sidewalk. It didn’t reference any robbery. Why is that only being mentioned now? Some people have reported that Brown was wearing striped socks, while the video shows different socks. Do we even know if Brown was in the store?</p>
<p>Count me as someone who distrusts the local police leadership. I’ll wait for their version to be corroborated, given their history to date. </p>
<p>I don’t trust the police in this case. I do not. I want a full story. I’m tired of the police painting their victims of brutality as “fugitives” in an attempt to excuse their excessive force. </p>
<p>
Oh, officers can repeatedly shoot fleeing suspects? Looks like we have a law to change. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>The still photos of the robbery are more damning than the actual tape, which was just on tv. But the tape clearly shows someone who doesn’t have any regard for normal behaviour. Its someone who can just do as he pleases. </p>
<p>He doesn’t come across in the tape as someone who would be compliant in an arrest situation.</p>
<p>I’m glad I’m not a policeman. </p>
<p>There was struggle for the weapon inside the police car during which the gun went off and the officer was injured.</p>
<p>Now that I have found out that Brown was not an innocent kid that was gunned down for no reason (Brown had just committed a crime, roughed someone up, and was then stopped by a police officer; yeah, he resisted and fought with the officer), I have lost interest in the story. Just another thug.</p>
<p>
At this stage, any statement like this should be preceded by “According to [whoever said it],” because very few facts have been established.</p>
<p>And to clarify on the fleeing felon: if the fleeing individual was armed, and especially if he was shooting at the police, the police could shoot him. If there was reason to believe that he was dangerous to others (i.e., if he had just robbed a bank and shot somebody in the bank), they could shoot him. If he’s a shoplifter who is just running away, they can’t, even if he has a pocketful of diamonds.</p>
<p>Hmm. I think everyone agrees with those facts. The second young man said the officer grabbed Brown by the neck for no reason as they were innocently walking down the street and pulled him into the cruiser. Meanwhile, police say he was a felony suspect who resisted arrest and grabbed the officers face and went for his gun. No-one is disputing the struggle or the early gunshot shot I don’t think. Here’s a statement from the family in reaction to today’s developments.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2014/08/15/statement-from-michael-browns-family-and-attorneys-beyond-outraged/”>http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2014/08/15/statement-from-michael-browns-family-and-attorneys-beyond-outraged/</a></p>
<p>Hunt, if he attacked an officer, then what?</p>
<p>These kinds of cases are difficult, they are caught up in the emotions of the moment, with very little information. For example, the cops are claiming that Brown as a suspect in a convenience store robbery, but there is a long history of cops rousting someone based simply on the description of “the suspect is a young African American male”, there have been cases when a kid who was 5’ 4 was arrested and beat up by cops on a suspected rape charge, when the description was of someone 6’ or so…and these were cases in NYC, not in some rube-ville. Some cops assume any black kid is armed, and go into situations with their guns drawn with a hair trigger, they are often scared you know what less. And even big city police departments end up with situations caused by poor policy and procedure, Amadou Diallo died reaching for his wallet because the incident happened in a bad area, and the cops on the scene were untrained and unsupervised and panicked, even though the suspect posed no direct threat to them (the cops were behind their cops car, the victim in vestibule of an apartment building, reaching for his wallet to id himself)…the real problem there was police procedure.</p>
<p>It could be in this situation the cop panicked, thought Brown posed a threat and fired, we don’t know that., and we do need to wait to see what facts come out of it. I generally side with the cops, give them an edge, because I have lived in marginal areas, and I have seen what they face, and quite literally what they can face is not easy, it is very easy judging sitting in a living room watching on tv…</p>
<p>That said, I think the rioting and unrest says something, and it isn’t the Faux News “professional agitator” nonsense, whatever the facts of this case are, it says something when people get this worked up, it says something is wrong. Whether it is perceptions (that may or may not be true in reality), or in reality, people don’t react like that out of ‘having fun’ or other BS the right wing types tend to throw out there, and given that this is town, not a big city, where cops often are given a lot more power than perhaps they should be, and where the police force may not exactly be without their own biases, it strongly indicates to me something is wrong, irregardless of what the facts are in this case. Maybe the kid was guilty of shaking down a convenience store, but cops are not supposed to use deadly force unless they believe their life is threatened, and from the limited stuff I have read, it didn’t sound like it. Cops have other things they can use, their baton, night stick, they also have training in self defense…and if the kid was running away, as some claim, then using deadly force would probably be an issue of the cop pissed off that the kid resisted in my opinion (and that is all it is, my opinion). I am skeptical of town police forces, big city police departments have had their problems, have done bad things, acted badly, but comparatively suburban and small town police forces tend to still be caught in a time warp, haven’t been put under the spotlight, and thus haven’t developed procedures and policies in dealing with tough situations…not to mention in small towns and the burbs cops are given a lot more latitude and support in their actions then big city forces are, the attitude where i live tends to be if a cop does something, the person they do it to must have deserved it. </p>
<p>Hopefully someone will figure out that they can’t stonewall the people protesting, and they realize that they aren’t the result of anarchists or thugs or people looking for an excuse to loot (though I am sure some of those types of people are involved), and that if people are reacting like this it is because they feel like this was one thing too many to deal with, and the authorities need to realize that these emotions are very real, and it is up to them to either figure out what went wrong and show they mean to fix it, or if it turns out to be Brown was not clean and in fact had violently resisted the cops, show that they actually investigated it, show the evidence of what they had, and lay out why the cop did what he did, but also promise if they feel this shouldn’t have happened, to make sure it doesn’t happen again, and show that the authorities don’t see the cops as an army occupying enemy territory…how this is handled will probably be more important than the actual details of the case IMO. </p>
<p>We KNOW that this police department is incompetent, based on the way they handled the protests. We KNOW that Michael Brown was unarmed, and the police officer seems to have known it as well.</p>
<p>And we also seem to know, based on the pictures, that he died some 25-35 feet away from the police car. What possible justification would a cop have for shooting an unarmed fleeing suspect? The officer was not in mortal danger from this fleeing suspect. The public was not in mortal danger. Do police shoot fleeing suspects if they are white, or is it only young petty criminals who are black who get killed by police? </p>
<p>
Well, specifics matter, but I would say that an officer would not have the right to shoot a fleeing person just because he had been in a physical altercation with the officer, especially if the fleeing person wasn’t armed. There’s really no imminent danger to the officer or anybody else in that situation. You can’t shoot a person just to apprehend him; only to prevent danger.</p>
<p>I note with interest that the statement from Brown’s family doesn’t deny that he robbed the convenience store.</p>
<p>I don’t trust the police at all. However, watching the video and seeing what looks like Mr. Brown and more importantly, his friend who has been all over the press saying they hadn’t caused any harm to anyone, has given me pause. Which is, of course, a lesson in remembering that complicated situations are, well, complicated, and often the truth is somewhere in the middle. However, ultimately, committing robbery is not a capital offense.</p>
<p>Cardinal Fang-
Handling a protest in all fairness is a very different skill set then how they handle suspects, when you have not only protests, but also people trashing property and such, the ability to handle that may overwhelm an otherwise decent police force; this department may be Mayberry RFD for all I know, but one doesn’t necessarily mean the other, it isn’t necessarily a rational conclusion.</p>
<p>I am not defending the cops, what I am saying is that photos and claims of people may not mean anything. Supposed eyewitness can lie, there have been cases in NYC where the cops shot and killed someone and all these ‘witnesses’ claimed that the guy that was killed was unarmed,that he was gunned down in cold blood, and forensics evidence showed that the victim had discharged a firearm and later on a surveillance video showed the gunned down guy with a gun in his hands minutes before he was shot and killed…not to mention that witnesses also can be mistaken, or thought they saw what they claim. It is why there are forensics, it is why crime scenes are investigated, why they look for evidence and clues. The medical examiner can see if the shots came from behind and can tell if the guy was running away when shot, but that all takes time. Maybe the cops were a bunch of hyped up rednecks (or some equivalent thereof, I remember Joseph Wambaugh, the writer, who had been an LAPD cop talking about how some of the African American and Hispanic cops he worked with were more harsh with minorities then the white cops were…), but we simply don’t know until an investigation happens. I fully agree that the local cops should be out of it, the investigation should be done by either state investigators or maybe federal ones to try and reassure others that this isn’t Mississippi in the 60’s but rather is a real investigation done to find the truth, not cover it up. I think peaceful protests are their right, and I think it has done at least one thing, besides firing up the idiots on talk radio, I think it has scared/impressed the authorities enough that if they wanted to try and cover this up, they won’t be able to, too much is at stake. </p>
<p>A good discussion of the legal issues of whether deadly force was justified:</p>
<p><a href=“Lethal force: When is it legal for a cop to kill you? - Vox”>Lethal force: When is it legal for a cop to kill you? - Vox;
<p>IF, as eyewitnesses claim, Brown was no longer fleeing and had his hands up when the last shots were fired, then deadly force is not justified. I do not trust eyewitness evidence, but the autopsy results will be interesting. If, as witnesses claim, Brown was shot while on the ground (entry angle would be revealing here) that would seem to be clearly unjustified. If he was shot in the chest from a distance, that also looks bad for the officer.</p>
<p>The friend that was with him has admitted that Mike Brown stole the cigars.</p>
<p>Although things seemed more peaceful last night, one woman was shot (no arrests made yet). Police again had rocks thrown at them and three police cars damaged. Police also arrested four white men fleeing the area with weapons. So while the highway patrol may make it sounds like it was all hugs and togetherness, it was not. Thankfully, no tear gas though.</p>
<p>The police have endured things thrown at them and shots being fired at them for days. The FAA had to ban news helicopters because people were shooting at police helicopters. Multiple stores were looted and one business was burned down on Sunday. (The cigar story was known locally days ago and the protesters targeted the wrong convenience store.) I won’t say the police did the right thing with with tear gas and armored vehicles, but it was not done in response to peaceful protests (which there also were) as some seem to believe.</p>
<p>I agree about the autopsy results, Cardinal Fang. We should probably expect some information next week?</p>
<p>Here is another article</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.wdef.com/news/national/story/Lawyer-Friend-confirms-that-he-and-shooting/6VIgmQ_8ZUi7Vf9Q1jIfmg.cspx”>http://www.wdef.com/news/national/story/Lawyer-Friend-confirms-that-he-and-shooting/6VIgmQ_8ZUi7Vf9Q1jIfmg.cspx</a></p>
<p>We don’t have very many facts at all, and what we do know just results in more questions. </p>
<p>Three questions are just flashing in bright red neon, though. Why did the police wait 6 full days before alleging Brown was a thief? Why have the police not released the police report of the shooting? And why has nothing come out about the autopsy? I can’t believe the ME has other more pressing subjects to deal with. </p>
<p>Regardless, however, the parallel issue to the actual shooting is the police response to the protests. Way, way out of proportion. As someone said up thread. It appeared like the response of an occupying force rather than a community police department. Some people were even tear gassed while standing in their own yards watching. </p>
<p>The protests were basically a riot. See Post #116. </p>