<p>This is a parents forum. He needed parenting. If anyone thinks society or we can raise someone else’s children successfully I fear disappointment and failure.</p>
<p>I actually think in a place like ferguson, with that mix of races on the police force versus the population, and with their history, they have earned a civil rights investigation. </p>
<p>The fact that they left that boy out there like that after he was shot and killed, justified shooting or not, shows a real contempt and systemic issue, particularly aside certain facts. </p>
<p>I don’t think you can get around that, even if Wilson wasn’t criminal in his actions. There just should have been a trial. </p>
<p>Also Xiggi. I doubt his parents think anything is worse than his death. Or his friends and family. </p>
<p>BTW, I actually think the lower crime rate in societies like Japan or S. Korea may be due to the group or herd mentality there (instead of the individualism being more respected and valued here.) For example, if 60% of population there think the general population should not own the guns, the most of the other 40% dare not deviate from the norm accepted by the majority otherwise there is too much a repercussion in that kind of society. In other words, the life of an outlier is really not easy. This great force , good or bad depending on what you value, regulates the behavior of the population at large.</p>
<p>From wiki:</p>
<p>“Herd mentality is a phenomenon wherein individual members of a crowd subvert their will to the perceived unified will of the mass. In biology, herd mentality is most clearly seen through animal packs that travel, feed, and hunt together. Outliers are often either left behind or targeted by predators. The phenomenon is more diverse in humans, but the same instinct — namely, to stick with the crowd to the exclusion of personal desires or interests — remains the foundation.”</p>
<p>Xiggi,</p>
<p>More “Let them eat cake” type lectures, ehh? Sounds like someone who obviously has never had much contact or actual contact with folks who have been subjected to abuses by law enforcement…or learned much of anything from US or world history…</p>
<p>Hate to break it to ya, such types of patronizing lectures didn’t work for the aristocrats and their hangers on during the Ancien Regime…nor did it work for southern elites and their allies during the antebellum or the Jim Crow era up till the '50s and '60s.</p>
<p>The former ended up getting free consultations with Dr. Guillotine’s now notorious invention and the latter’s descendants are still bitter about the “Lost Cause”, General Sherman’s March to the Sea, loss of Jim Crow laws, and mass media/“agitators” even though the apocryphal tales of brutality in the March To Sea seems to have been exaggerated by Lost Causers to further justify their whining about losing the “good old days”. </p>
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<p>So once someone grabs at an officer’s gun, that is license for execution? I’m sure you don’t believe that. Even though Brown grabbed at Wilson’s gun, he didn’t get it, or at least he didn’t keep it. Suspects grab at guns from time to time, and mostly they are not subsequently shot to death.</p>
<p>When Brown was shot to death, he did not have the gun. He did not have the gun, and he was not within arms reach of the gun. If there were a trial, we would have been able to inquire into the circumstances at the time Wilson shot Brown to death. Was Brown charging Wilson? Was Brown simultaneously charging and reaching to his waistband for his non-existent gun, as Wilson says-- that seems very implausible. </p>
<p>We should have had a trial. And we should have trials for all the other times LEOs shoot suspects to death in what many find to be questionable circumstances, such as the 12-year-old with the toy gun who was shot down at the park, and the white kid, Dillon, who was shot in what many think was a dubious LEO killing of a suspect.</p>
<p>There seems to be an alarming lack of LEO ability to attack problems with anything other than a gun. Perhaps this is bad training, or bad selection of officers, but there have been far too many cases of shoot first, ask questions later, particularly when the suspect is black, but also with non-black suspects.</p>
<p>^^</p>
<p>Again, for some having a trial was not a necessity as much as needing a … conviction. Regardless of the process followed, nothing would have satisfied them if was not in the form of a lengthy sentence. Even a short one would not have mattered nor stopped the civil unrest. The claims that more discovery or an open forum might have helped answer questions is a canard. </p>
<p>As far as Brown’s corpse laying for a long period of time, it is undeniable that it shows our government at its worst with all its usual ineptitude. More than malice, one should consider that it happened on a Saturday and at noon. You need to look no further to understand that Saturday and Sundays are special days, and so are Fridays and Mondays in terms of performance. Simply stated, the chain of command was doing what it does best, and that is not being of great help to the citizens they are supposed to serve. </p>
<p>One can look at the statement sent to the community or look at the way your typical public entity functions with all kinds of rules that make no sense and cannot resist inquiry or scrutiny. Who was allowed to touch the body after a police shooting? Who was supposed to analyze the crime scene? Who was responsible for the corpse, and who was responsible to ensure the safety of the people dispatched? </p>
<p>The human side of this is darn awful. But it was --unfortunately-- not THAT unusual. The problem is that the usual remains so unacceptable. On a small note, even in a town that has gained experience with several thousands street killings, it is not unusual for the experts to take hours before removing a body from the scene when it involves one of the police forces. </p>
<p>From Tim Wise:</p>
<p>“If your concerns about violence are limited to property damage and looting, and you have never shed two tears for the history of institutional violence, murder, colonialism, segregation, lynching, genocide and police brutality against peoples of color, your words mean nothing; they mean less than nothing. Your outrage, in such a case is grotesque, an inversion of morality so putrescent as to call into question your capacity for real feeling at all. So long as violence from below is condemned while violence from above is ignored, you can bet that the former will continue–and however unfortunate that may be, it is surely predictable. If you’d like the former to cease, put an end to the latter, and then I promise you, it will.”
<a href=“Redirecting...”>https://www.facebook.com/pages/Tim-Wise/140254320968</a>
<a href=“http://www.timwise.org/”>http://www.timwise.org/</a></p>
<p>The police explained that it took so long to process the crime scene on the day of the shooting because people had gathered on the street and were breaking through the police tape. Everyone was hysterical and shots were being fired as the officers tried to conduct the investigation. The last police shooting here happened on the freeway and the body of the white murder suspect was out there for hours, although they eventually covered him with a blanket. But, death investigations do take a while under even the best of circumstances. I don’t remember why they shot that guy. He was in a car so maybe it was a shoot out but I don’t know. There was no outrage and it was promptly ruled justified. Actually, it was more like good job guys in the press and in the community so it is interesting</p>
<p>"So once someone grabs at an officer’s gun, that is license for execution? "</p>
<p>It means that the officer is justified in using deadly force if need be. </p>
<p>“Hate to break it to ya, such types of patronizing lectures didn’t work for the aristocrats and their hangers on during the Ancien Regime…nor did it work for southern elites and their allies during the antebellum or the Jim Crow era up till the '50s and '60s.”</p>
<p>Cobrat, it is not an argument to compare people to the antebellum south or the court of Marie Antoinette or bourgeois elites or whatever other period of history you want to bring up. </p>
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<p>Exactly. And the trial would determine whether “need be.”</p>
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<p>The police were lying, then. We have pictures and videos of the scene; it is not a riot scene. Occasionally someone breaks through, but that is clearly not a license for the police to just leave the body there for hours, nor does there appear to be significant interference with police investigations, such as they were. Moreover, nothing excuses the police not even covering up the body decently.</p>
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<p>You know, Cobrat, I started typing a reply that was not very kind, but still entirely à propos. In the spirit of Thanksgiving, I will post the nicer version. </p>
<p>Here we go: First of all, you should make a lot fewer assumptions about people, and especially about their knowledge of US or World History. If it empowers you to dig deep in obscure reminders of European history, you might consider that others can easily match your prowess in googling or simply quote from their memory of the contemporary of Robespierre. Heck, perhaps all we need is think about Les Miserables or Esmeralda. Trust me, for some who read your posts, that is hardly anything new. </p>
<p>In the meantime, I wish you will understand that you do not score any points with all that ancient history or more recent quotations from an unending set of cousins, friends, or other family members. Do you not understand that people raise their eyebrows and simply overlook the rest, including what might have been a reasonable argument? </p>
<p>Feel free to continue to follow the same path that has made you highly recognizable here. I wish you’d follow Robert Frost’s suggestion to change course. Stop indulging yourself if what you want to pass as superior intellect and keep the conversations a lot simpler. After all, remember we are not that sophisticated around here! Even we know who invented the guillotine and know it was NOT a certain physician named … Dr. Guillotine. Go check the spelling if you want to show all your erudition. After all, the fanous doctor might have added: “La culture c’est comme la confiture, moins on en a, plus on l’étale.” It would have worked well with Marie-Antoinette’s brioche.</p>
<p>“Occasionally someone breaks through, but that is clearly not a license for the police to just leave the body there for hours, nor does there appear to be significant interference with police investigations, such as they were. Moreover, nothing excuses the police not even covering up the body decently.”</p>
<p>Whether or not the body was covered up decently has nothing to do with anything. It’s unfortunate that it was left like that, but it really has nothing to do with whether or not Wilson was justified in using force against, well, a thug who had just knocked over a store, shoved a business owner, and was now walking down the street and defied a request by a cop to move out of the street, and consequently grabbed the officer’s gun. </p>
<p>I fully believe that blacks are / can be mistreated by law enforcement. This just isn’t the case I’d ever hang my hat on.</p>
<p>Oh well, time to go to something productive and pay more attention to my rabbit. Cobrat, for you, that is called “Lapin à la bière et à la moutarde.” </p>
<p>Happy Turkey Day to all! </p>
<p>I really don’t know why people are unable to grasp the concept that one can believe that blacks are mistreated by law enforcement, unfairly targeted when going about their business, etc. AND also believe that in this particular case, Wilson’s action were justifiable and understandable. Some of you keep trying to argue that if we don’t believe in your version of this case, that we must believe all is fine and dandy with race in America, and no one thinks that. </p>
<p>I agree with Pizzagirl. Black people are definitely mistreated. Watch the case in Staten Island and then let’s talk again if no indictment.</p>
<p>What is the case in Staten Island ?</p>
<p>@Pizzagirl
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<p>This. It’s like people don’t realize that it’s perfectly normal to hold two apparently conflicting concepts in your head at the same time. I can disagree with US involvement in the Middle East, and still believe that veterans from Iraq deserve better treatment than they currently get. I can disagree with the way women are still treated in society and still not lose my marbles over a guy’s shirt.</p>
<p>What’s even sadder is the way people are flying on their emotions with this issue. It’s possible to use this as a focal point to discuss race and police brutality in general, even if Wilson’s actions are not representative of the problem. But the way this is going it will all just fizzle out with nothing meaningful learnt or implemented from the outcome.</p>
<p>Staten Island-- was that the loose cigarettes guy?</p>
<p>On edit: It was. The guy was put in a choke hold for selling loose cigarettes. He kept saying he couldn’t breathe. The police ignored his pleas. He died.</p>
<p>Would the police have even investigated that case if the video didn’t go viral? </p>