The Glade 4.0

Is the problem that the prosecuting attorney performed incompetently or maliciously or that public outcry pushed something to a Grand Jury where probably cause could (factually) never have been established?

The DA is supposed to push for an indictment, but they also, typically, operate from the MO of maintaining high conviction rate. Why would they push for indictment if a conviction was unlikely?

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"It's real, grew up in trife life, the times of white lines
The hype vice, murderous nighttimes and knife fights invite crimes" - Nasir Jones

It is actually quite true that the way the general population interacts with the cops in Europe is completely different than how it works here, to the point that it's very alien and difficult for both sides to understand the other. Other than the UK, in Europe, the police are to be feared and respected. For example, have any of you seen the movie Elysium? For a European watching this movie, it will probably take some time for them to get the intended message of "this is an ultra-dystopian hellhole" because the opening scenes with the robot cops are pretty much how they would expect cops to act. Namely, if you're a known felon and you start mouthing off to one like in the movie, getting thrown to the ground and having them deliberately break a few bones to keep you docile while they riffle through your stuff would not be unheard of. They won't need to cover it up either, they won't have any trouble with the law for doing it and the system will have no sympathy for you.

The potential defendant doesn't normally testify at a Grand Jury because it is so heavily weighted towards the prosecution, and anything the defendant says can be used against him at trial. The fact that Officer Wilson was allowed by his own attorney to testify rather than take the Fifth is indicative of just how overwhelming the evidence was in his favor - which we now know. The circumstances were never "questionable" in reality, they were only "questionable" in the eyes of a public being sold a bill of goods. In view of the facts the prosecution actually had available to them, they had absolutely NO chance of a conviction.

The only reason the prosecutor ever had to go to a grand jury was precisely to avoid accusations of just letting the cop off, and had he not presented all the evidence, he would have been faced with dragging this out months longer with a trial he had no chance whatosever of winning. As in, none. There was, for those that actually had all the facts, NO question that Officer Wilson was 100% in the right. He was attacked by a felon that tried to take his gun and kill him, after all he'd done was tell the felon not to walk in the **** street. The defense would have had a very good chance of simply getting the case dismissed after presentation of the prosecution's case because there is just no way the prosecution could have proved their case beyond a reasonable doubt without engaging in the kind of misconduct we saw in the Duke rape case.

There is a legitimate beef that the Grand Jury process probably results in unnecessary trials because most prosecutors don't present all the evidence, but there is also the fact that most Grand Jury proceedings are not a presentation of a futile case in a vain effort to appease an angry mob.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

How can you claim the circumstances aren't even questionable, DE? The cop's version of events leading up to the shooting strain credibility to say the least. We're supposed to believe that a guy who just robbed a convenience store and is literally carrying the stolen goods on his person (1) decides to mouth off to a cop who merely politely asked him to walk on the sidewalk, (2) prevents that cop from getting out of his vehicle and actively leans in through the window to beat the **** out of him with zero provocation, (3) pauses mid-beating to hand the stolen goods to his buddy (who is apparently just calmly standing there while his friend assaults a cop inside his own squad car in broad daylight in the middle of the street), (4) attempts to grab the cop's gun and taunts the cop by saying he's too much of a pussy to shoot him, (5) steps back when the gun goes off the first time but then steps back in to fight some more, (6) runs away after the second shot but then changes his mind and, now that the cop is out of the car with his gun drawn and ready to fire, decides to stick his hand in his waistband (even though he's unarmed) and charge straight back at the cop.

On top of that dubious description by the defendant, we have eyewitness accounts claiming the victim was stopped or slowly walking back with his hands up when the cop opened fire (outside the car). Yes, there are also eyewitness accounts that are ambiguous or favorable to the cop, so maybe an acquittal would be the correct result at the end of the day, but do you seriously believe there's nothing even questionable about this situation?

Good news everyone!

http://reason.com/blog/2014/11/26/polic ... -cleveland

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

It's not a matter of what I believe - it's a matter of the evidence that's now been revealed (thankfully, as normally Grand Jury proceedings are secret) makes it turn out that the version of events you present above is only what was presented to the public, and is somewhat questionable. The actual evidence available to people actually working on the case - which we can now see - should have told them almost immediately that there was practically no case against Officer Wilson.

Furthermore, the "witness" making the claims about Brown having his hands up was doing so in contradiction of the forensic evidence, not just the officer himself and the other witnesses AND he was with Brown when Brown was robbing a convenience store, and claiming Brown was shot from behind when he had no such bullet wounds!

Finally, the fact that you think the officer's version is really that hard to believe indicates part of the problem. That kind of macho, never-back-down, ****, they won't dare shoot me behavior is a regular thing. I see dope smugglers do that on a pretty much weekly basis. Do you remember LadyKate talking about black girls walking right down the middle of her street and shouting at her and Nitefox as they drove past "Oh, Hit me! Hit me! I need a check! I NEED a check!" I saw this sort of rowdiness on a daily-weekly basis in my neighborhood in Ohio. I used to get it from students in the charter school I dealt with, "I'm gonna hit you if you dis me!" or words to that effect were almost every day. This sort of crap is the sort of things police see in poor communities every single day. It is by no means confined to young blacks, but it is there.

The fact that you wonder why I "really think that" is very telling indeed, just like when you were "betting dollars to donuts" about how the confrontation between Zimmerman and Martin went down. I don't know where you get the idea that your intuition is so infallible, because your argument here amounts to "DE, I just sorta feel based on my assumptions about cops that his story was questionable, why don't you?" It's because I know how frequent Michael Browns are and because there are no less than 7 witnesses, many black, and a mountain of forensics indicating that Officer Wilson was completely in the right! Instead of wondering how I can really think that, spend a little time wondering how you can really be so easily suckered into believing bullshit stories about police officers.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Hmm.. young black male pulls out a real-looking gun and gets shot.

The officers may be in the right here, they may be in the wrong, but Reason magazine - possibly the biggest misnomer on the internet - is not the place to find out. Their video does not "appear to contradict" the officer's claim; you cannot see what the kid is doing with his hands at all - but as usual, people will see what they want in a video. Moreover, if cops ever really just drove up and randomly blasted young pre-teens in the street, we'd have a hell of a lot more than a few hundred police shootings annually in this country.

Moreover, pointing out that cops in Cleveland may have illegitimately shot a young black man does not change the fact that Officer Wilson was 100% in the right.

You are part of the problem, Elmo. "Oh, this case didn't turn out the way I hoped, let me go find another and try to rush to judgement all over again!"

Even if these cops are totally in the wrong, problems like that cannot be effectively address while the sorts of people that wanted to railroad Officer Wilson are taken seriously - and that includes you, Elmo.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I am firmly convinced that the ONLY way people having no involvement in the case believe that these "teens" are not acting as described (i.e. ...strain credibility) is that those same people have had ZERO interaction with some these little teen angels in real life.

It's the only explanation I can come up with for otherwise intelligent rational beings to hold such outlandishly false beliefs.

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

I watched the video on the Cleveland.com Website. And just from what I am seeing: The cop who pulled the trigger opened the door and fired as he was stepping out of the car. This is around 7:07 in the video on their site.

Mind you, if what I am seeing in the video is right, it looks like the cop realized what he did and dropped his own weapon around the 7:30 mark.

PS- I linked the site but not the video, because I do not want to disturb anyone's sensibilities. Nor do I know what would disturb their sensibilities.

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Darksiege
Traveller, Calé, Whisperer
Lead me not into temptation; for I know a shortcut

It strikes me as odd that a criminal thug like Michael brown can attack a police officer, get gunned down, and start nationwide protests, while a completely innocent black 12 year old in Cleveland gets gunned down by police and it mostly gets ignored. Whether the actions of the police are justified or not, the latter was a tragedy. Michael brown was, if not justice, at least predictable.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

The facts don't actually matter. The outrage is about pretending that racism is the cause of all things that happen to blacks either as a group or as individuals. If the facts started to matter, that would endanger the narrative. Plus, it's colder now and people want to be home for Thanksgiving. Outrage over a racist system and the "hunting of black males by police" isn't a sufficiently important matter to go out in cold weather or miss Thanksgiving. The National Guard responded to orders and stood around in the slush and cold. The rioters called it mostly quits after the first night when they discovered it's not August anymore.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

the facts in the latter case were also less in dispute I think. It was generally accepted early on that the kid had (what was perceived) as a weapon and was going for it rather than complying with police instruction. However its still early and all the activism is being focused on toy gun control rather than race issues, perhaps because we have Ferguson to cover that.

But yeah the Cleveland case is a case of a true tragedy with no heroes or villains more than the other.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

Al Sharpton was already busy with the other incident?

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Although not demonstrably related to Ferguson it seems there's people that would be just fine with more police response.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I'm more concerned with how apparently Eric Holder can't even give a speech anymore without getting shouted down by protesters accusing him of being a race traitor. I gotta tell you, you've got some real problems with reality if you think Eric Holder is trying to shortchange black people.

As in black people saying he's selling out black people? That just boggles my mind...

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The Dude abides.

It's okay, though. This incident wasn't racially motivated.

Also, remember. Fox is terrible and using code words like thug.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Yes, there is a call for police to carry out their law enforcement duties properly. Some of you seem to be confused with what that entails. For example, police in numerous countries manage to enforce the law without firing tear-gas at reporters, arresting peaceful protesters, and firing a dozen shots into a suspect. Even if a suspect warrants being shot, when you fire double digit rounds into them, you cast doubts on your ability to correctly assess when your firearm is required.

Now, if it's too hard for someone to be a police officer without carrying out those actions, they aren't fit for the job and need to be released from the force.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Darren Wilson resigned from the Ferguson Police Department, likely in advance of his own termination with cause. While I don't dispute any of the evidence presented in court, one element of that evidence and Darren Wilson's testimony has been bugging me the entire time: he accidentally discharged his weapon. Darren Wilson accidentally discharged his weapon because he could not control his adrenaline response.

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Modern handgun ammunition, even so-called self-defense loads of expanding ammunition, provides modest stopping power at best. The problem of ballistic weapons is that they provide very little chance of incapacitating a human target without also (eventually or immediately) killing the target, but conversely, a greater probability of latent lethality without providing critical incapacitation.

If a round does not strike a load bearing bone, the chances of falling an opponent are bad. If a round does not penetrate CNS, one of three organs (all of which would prove fatal, anyhow) or a major blood vessel, the chance of providing critical incapacitation are bad.

Simply by the nature of modern ballistic weapons and the necessity of providing immediate and reliable incapacitation, shooting to stop is shooting to kill.

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"It's real, grew up in trife life, the times of white lines
The hype vice, murderous nighttimes and knife fights invite crimes" - Nasir Jones

Except that sometimes those actions are necessary, and those other countries are not the United States and do not fce the issues we do based on our history and social situations.

The only person here confused about what that entails is you. You have no more business talking about what police work entails than Xeq did telling Rafael or you how nuclear reactors work. The fact that you think that arbitrary numbers of rounds actually matter is positive proof that you have no idea what you are talking about. This is the police-shooting equivalent of arguing that dinosaur bones are planted by Satan.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Except, it's a well established fact that the Ferguson Police Department engaged in bad behavior. They did tear-gas reporters. They did forcibly detain protesters without legal justification.

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SATAN... not Santa... that suddenly makes so much more sense.

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Darksiege
Traveller, Calé, Whisperer
Lead me not into temptation; for I know a shortcut

This was addressed earlier in the thread. Detaining people without lawful cause is disputable, tear-gassing reporters may have been intentional or accidental depending on which specific incident you mean, and the simple fact remains is that the protest as a whole was not peaceful - THAT fact is not in dispute as the people whose businesses were burned can attest.

There is a right to PEACEABLE assembly. There is no right whatsoever to violent assembly. None. As soon as the first rock is thrown, the right to assemble goes right out the window for everyone there. People do not have a right to technically pretend to be peaceful while acting as human shields for violent rioters. Putting a few "peaceful" people up front to hold signs while other people throw rocks is a well-known agitator tactic, and then take the selective video for YouTube, and wait for the press to try to make it's buck pointing fingers at the police.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Hamas has demonstrated this is very effective.

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"It's real, grew up in trife life, the times of white lines
The hype vice, murderous nighttimes and knife fights invite crimes" - Nasir Jones