<p>“A Bosnian immigrant was beaten to death with a hammer by black youths the other night. Other than some in the St. Louis Bosnian community rallying, no one will notice. Since the victim wasn’t robbed, it was likely a pure hate crime. This sort of thing goes on daily and the nation collectively shrugs its shoulders.”</p>
<p>Well, first off, the Bosian immigrant wasn’t beaten to death by a policeman and I will be as up in arms when the black youths aren’t indicted for this person’s murder. Please let me know when that happens. TYIA. </p>
<p>Where are their parents that teens are out at 1am. killing strangers with a hammer for no reason? Stuff like this happens daily and gets no attention. </p>
<p>“How many cops have been attacked or killed by young men in that neighborhood of Ferguson (in the middle of the day, or ever)?”</p>
<p>Doesn’t matter. As someone who used to live in St Louis, I’ll go on record as saying I wouldn’t really want to wander the streets of Ferguson, especially as a white upper middle class woman. It’s not downtown Clayton, where the courthouse was (and near Wash U). It’s an area that has petty crime. You know, like convenience stores being robbed. I hear that happens there a lot more than in Clayton, go figure. </p>
<p>Marie’s post - that’s another area of North St. Louis County, where Ferguson is. I <em>expect</em> the cops in North County to be a bit more suspicious and tougher and more hardened than the cops in Clayton or in West County (which is the more affluent area of the St. Louis suburbs). Just like I expect the cops on the West side of Chicago to be a bit more suspicious and tougher and more hardened than the cops in my nice little affluent suburb area. </p>
<p>Tatin, the Bosnian case is horrible and those kids deserve to be prosecuted fully for the crime. And yes, it was publicized or else we wouldn’t know about it.</p>
<p>It’s obvious what your subtext is here. We have all managed to keep this thread going for 55 pages. Please don’t get it shut down.</p>
<p>Here’s another “where were the parents?” story. Only in this case, it was little 12-year-old white girls, in the middle of the day, with a truly evil and premeditated plan to kill their friend. </p>
<p>Iglooo–for a start, the higher standard is reflected in the fact that this is reported by media widely, while random street crime is not. I think most people can agree that this is expected and basically correct. which is why it’s totally red-herring for someone to google a random act of street violence and ask why it’s not being equally reported. That is what I was referring to.</p>
<p>Said friend who was a formerly very conservative and sheltered in his outlook before going off to college and law school also posted the following quip above that article link: “If it’s all white, it’s alright.”</p>
<p>EXACTLY the point that multiple posters have tried to make on this thread, and all have been ignored, spun, shouted down, and flat out ignored by the handful of “so called” enlightened posters who insist on making this tragedy about race…when it plain and simply isn’t.</p>
<p>NO ONE on this thread feels that there isn’t a serious issue with interactions between young black males and police in far too many communities around this country. Everyone recognizes that there needs to be a national dialogue concerning the bias, prejudice, and pre-conceptions about BOTH parties…police and young AA males. But by continuing to blindly insist that the events in this tragedy are race based is laughable. The results of all 3 autopsies, INCLUDING the one specifically done for the Brown family, all provide forensic evidence that completely supports Officer Wilson’s version of the shooting. NOTHING from any of the autopsies supports the FALSE NARRATIVE that the “eyewitnesses” spread initially which was immediately picked up by the media, and which some of the posters here use to continue to spread misinformation.</p>
<p>JUST STOP IT!! It is tragic that Michael Brown in dead, but he is responsible for instigating and escalating the circumstances that led to his death. HE committed a strong-armed robbery in the convenience store (it WAS NOT shoplifting), and HE refused to comply with police instructions. HE escalated the situation to a point where lethal force was justified when HE tried to grab Officer Wilson’s gun. Absolutely NONE of the initial narrative that was initially fed to the media is supported by ANY forensic evidence. He WAS NOT running away when shot, he WAS NOT shot in the back, he WAS NOT shot while 150 feet away. It’s all crap, and the forensics bear that out and completely align with what Officer Wilson has said from the outset. You nitpick about seconds in a timeline but completely ignore the fact that the pro-Brown narrative is COMPLETE FABRICATION. You set yourselves up in the “racist white cop shoots another unarmed black male” camp 30 seconds after you heard the initial news reports, and you refuse to even entertain the possibility that your initial assessment was completely wrong. You ignore the FACTS OF THIS CASE and instead rely upon your own bias, prejudice, and in some cases outright ignorance to form your own version of events.</p>
<p>Several other posters have already pointed out that continuing to paint this tragedy as race-based is counterproductive and negative to the dialogue that needs to take place. Until reasonable, objective people can focus on the far too prevalent number of instances of racially tainted crimes in this country the dialogue will not move forward…and possibly may even lose momentum. For several of the posters on this thread, I’d suggest starting with a good long look in the mirror at your own biases and prejudices as a good place to initiate a positive change.</p>
<p>Oh, I thought you meant a higher standard on the conduct of an officer as in what Wilson should have done differently. I am sure there are things Wilson could have done differently in hindsight but I don’t see that he did what he shouldn’t have done. Fair assessment of hard evidence points that he didn’t shoot Brown in the back, he didn’t shoot Brown after Brown fell down and it is unlikely that Brown was in a surrender position when shots are fired. Not to get distracted from the case at hand, we should focus if the assessment is reasonable. If we can settle that, what Wilson is responsible will follow. Or at least, that’s what I hope for since that may be the only thing that will bring both sides to some agreement.</p>
<p>The above could have been upended to every post that relied on the false rhetoric, and it would NOT have swayed any of the posters who fitted the above narrative. Some here did point to the faulty logic of most who complained about the process to no avail. </p>
<p>There is no hope for reconciling the impossible. And so it goes! </p>
<p>The problem being that; admitting the fallacy of this ‘average black kid executed by average white cop’ story undermines the meme that police behavior with black males is all and only about racism. </p>
<p>Whether you’re a fan of the underlying institutional racism storyline or not, there doesn’t appear to be any other logical reason to continue beating this horse.</p>
<p>The gentle giant could have been recorded yelling, “Die, pig,” as he rushed towards the officer, but the narrative was already out there. People choose to ignore any inconvenient facts that don’t fit the narrative.</p>
<p>I fear xiggi may be right on this. Just imagine 30-40 years down the road when the demographics will be so different from now. We won’t have a common ground to agree on anything. Every ethnic group may have their own “standard” that may be in conflict with other ethnic groups. We can no longer agree “what is reasonable”. Babylon?</p>
<p>Officially, they’ve about given up. The Michael Brown attorney’s shifting to calling him a symbol of an institutional problem. Meanwhile, businesses are burnt, more residents have rap sheets after riot arrests, distrust and division are at all time highs. And, Darren Wilson and his pregnant wife, a current Ferguson cop on medical leave, are facing death threats and figuring out what to do next. This is just all so wrong.</p>
<p>So it’s still OK to shoot an unarmed person some feet away if he’s scary looking to you? The only indisputable things about this case is that Ex-officer Wilson confronted two jaywalkers and killed one of them. That itself is a failure of the system. It takes a series of bad decisions to turn jaywalking into death and mayhem.</p>
<p>Every witness except for Wilson says he was shooting while Brown was running away. Wilson was the only one to say he was being “bull-rushed,” contradicting at least 8 other witnesses. Wilson was the only one to say Brown reached into his waistband.</p>
<p>I was good friends with a policeman back east and he spoke openly how they are trained to change the narrative to manipulate juries and public opinion. It is obvious from Wilson’s testimony he was coached on what to say and how to say it. Most middle-aged white people will believe those words from one policeman because it fits their view of the world. I would guess most African-Americans from Ferguson have enough of a collection of local police stories to believe the eight witnesses that said he had surrendered.</p>
<p>From my privileged suburban perch, I should be more concerned with social justice than I am. Fact is our government and social system will continue to consume teenagers like popcorn - jails, wars, random shootings like Marysville or this one, a host of other failures - and my world will go on largely undisturbed. </p>
<p>Iglooo, you may not have meant to but you just admitted that you view the world through a lens of ethnicity. Not all of us do.</p>
<p>No one is happy about the “distrust and division” or the destruction of businesses. It just would have been nice to have had a less biased prosecutor who actually did his job and an admission by the officer that he broke protocol both during and after the incident. Demonizing (literally) Michael Brown also inflamed passions, and the media seized upon every opportunity to rile people up with selective reporting. </p>