<p>Ikgrg17,
You can’t shame people into keeping their mouths shut. Questioning the actions of a police officer does not negate appreciation and understanding of the job that they do. If police officers are under scrutiny it is because of the importance of their job and because they hold so much power. For goodness sake, should we just look the other way and write off every act on the part of a police officer as due to stress or fear?</p>
<p>Edit to add: I agree that the work is not for everyone. I personally know at least two police officer’s who have no business being on the force. One I wouldn’t trust to take my car to the corner store and yet he carries a gun.</p>
<p>Yep, you nailed it @lkgrg17. It is very easy for people to sit in the safety of their own homes and opine on Officer Wilson’s actions that day. I am grateful that we have people like him willing to put their own lives on the line to try and bring some order into our everyday lives.</p>
<p>Post of the day, lkgrg17. Second by second scrutiny by people who would never consider themselves or their children to ever be on the police force. Expectations that officers must be able to slow down time and have the perfect reaction for every situation like robots, disregarding any personal danger or fear. But hey, they must come and protect us the second we call, and they’d better never make a split second decision that we disagree with. </p>
<p>Not to me. According to Autopsy, bullets on Brown’s chest indicate that he was leaning forward waist up as in charging. Wilson just had an incident fighting Brown over his gun. Wasn’t he about to get a rerun of the gun struggle? And what if Brown overpowers him and grabs the gun? Would Wilson be alive?</p>
<p>I don’t know if this was intentional, I notice that the bullets are all on the right side of Brown’s body. Would that mean bullets missed most crucial organs in Brown’s body? And that Brown would’ve lived except for the skull shot? I don’t think Wilson aimed at the skull. Brown was falling a highly inopportune moment.</p>
<p>Leaning forward could just as easily indicate that he was falling over forward or trying to comply with the order to lay down. That, to me seems more likely than the charging theory.</p>
<p>Igloo, are you suggesting that Wilson intentionally aimed his shots at the right side of Brown’s body so that he would avoid vital organs and that Brown could have survived if he hadn’t leaned forward?</p>
<p>This from a cop who was so frightened for his life, running on adrenalin that he found it necessary to shoot an unarmed teen? I guess the wild shots that hit nearby homes were well thought out as well? What was the purpose of those?</p>
<p>And for anyone who might be attending the protests in Toronto, below are the guidelines for the “White/Non Black Allies” as distributed by the leaders of the Black Lives Matter movement in that city:</p>
<p>Unlikely he was falling over before any shots are fired. Do you comply with the order by leaning forward or by raising hands and kneeling with chest straight up? How do you bend your knees if you are leaning forward waist up?</p>
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<p>No, I didn’t say it was intentional. That will be a bit too dramatic to my taste. I just wondered if police training involves avoiding left chest. I am quite sure Brown would have survived if not for the skull shot. An MD can chime in.</p>
<p>Yes, but he was already leaning forwad at the time the first bullet hit him. That rules out his leaning forward is the result of hitting by bullets. For whatever reasons, Brown leaned forward and Wilson took it threatening. I don’t think that’s out of line.</p>
<p>Why is that? Is it because police officers are not trained to de-escalate situations, but rather to simply let them escalate and then use deadly force? Is it because there are so many guns on the streets that police are legitimately scared? If that’s the case, maybe better gun control laws are the answer, not an arms race in which police rush to shoot first simply because there’s a <em>chance</em> that someone might have a gun – and then, maybe, more and more people decide they need guns to protect themselves against trigger-happy police officers?</p>
<p>However, I do NOT think that police officers are legitimately scared. I think they’ve been taught to be scared, taught that every traffic stop is a potential danger incident. Here are the facts, as reported by the [National</a> Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund](<a href=“http://www.nleomf.org/assets/pdfs/reports/2013-End-of-Year-Preliminary-Report.pdf]National”>http://www.nleomf.org/assets/pdfs/reports/2013-End-of-Year-Preliminary-Report.pdf): the number of police officers killed in the line of duty has decreased by 42% since the 1970’s, when it was at its highest. And even then, you know how many officers were shot and killed in 1973, the highest year on record? 156. In 2013, the number of officers who died of “firearms-related causes” in the line of duty was 33. (More officers died in the line of duty due to traffic accidents than due to being shot.)</p>
<p>So why are we a country where being a police officer is actually LESS risky than it was 30 years ago, but police officers are killing MORE residents than they used to?</p>
<p>I think Darren Wilson is a product of his environment, just as Michael Brown was. I think we have a society where young black men are seen as a violent threat, and we train police officers to treat them all as threats. When violence ensues, we point to that violence and say “see? We’re right to be afraid. Officers should be given free rein to defend themselves against these thugs.” Meanwhile we deprive the “thugs” of any chance to ever be anything other than “thugs.” </p>
<p>So why are we a country where being a police officer is actually LESS risky than it was 30 years ago, but police officers are killing MORE residents than they used to?</p>
<p>It doesn’t matter that some of us would never want to be cops or have our kids be cops. Those that do should still be expected to do a good job.</p>
<p>We had a case in my community in which a young, drunk-ish guy entered the house next door to his own by mistake and the owners called 911, thinking their home was being broken into. One of the homeowners came out and tried to walk the guy back to his house, but he became agitated and somewhat confrontational and the officer who arrived on the scene shot him dead. The homeowners were incredibly rattled because they could never have foreseen the way the event played out or that it would escalate so quickly. Meanwhile the officer was cleared of any wrongdoing and retired early with a disability pension due to the PTSD he claims he suffered in the incident.</p>
<p>“If that’s the case, maybe better gun control laws are the answer, not an arms race in which police rush to shoot first simply because there’s a <em>chance</em> that someone might have a gun – and then, maybe, more and more people decide they need guns to protect themselves against trigger-happy police officers?”</p>
<p>Are gun control laws helping control the violence in cities like Detroit, Chicago, Oakland? Are people really buying guns to protect themselves against “trigger-happy police officers?” If you are buying a gun to protect yourself against police officers, and actually think that will make you safer from those officers, you are an idiot.</p>
<p>Here is a question that should be asked. Why are the most dangerous cities in America disproportionately black? Do you think that the murder/violence rate of young black men may be why some police officers consider a young black man as a particular danger?</p>
<p>“However, I do NOT think that police officers are legitimately scared. I think they’ve been taught to be scared, taught that every traffic stop is a potential danger incident.”</p>
<p>Uh…that is because every traffic stop is a potential danger incident. Every single stop, no matter what the person looks like, could be the one where someone has a gun or will try to run you over. If a cop stops you, do not reach for anything, put your hands on the wheel where they can see them. Comply with what they ask, do not make any move that could be threatening. View some videos of dashcams where cops were killed or injured at a traffic stop, and you might understand a little better.</p>
<p>Police make “mistakes” and sometimes cover-ups happen. This incident occurred near where I live–an innocent man is beaten by cops, then charged with assault. The only reason he’s not in jail now is because a dashboard camera film, which had been initially suppressed, finally came to light.</p>
<p>Yes, of course police make mistakes and cover-ups happen. And, violent teenagers attack cops who are justified in using lethal force, too. This is not an either/or situation. </p>
<p>Gun control laws by municipality won’t show any effect as long as all you have to do is go outside city limits to buy all the guns you want. And my comment about buying guns to protect against trigger-happy police officers was sarcastic. Obviously getting into a shoot-out with police is not a good move. </p>
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<p>Oh my freaking God. Are you really implying that black people are inherently more violence-prone than other races??? </p>