ST. LOUIS — A grand jury has declined to indict Darren Wilson, the white Ferguson, Mo. police officer whose fatal shooting of an unarmed black teenager sparked days of turbulent protests and a national conversation about race and police interactions with African Americans, prosecutors said Monday.
The decision means that Wilson, 28, will face no state charges in the August shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown. Although a parallel federal civil rights investigation of the shooting is continuing, federal investigators have all but concluded they do not have a case against Wilson, either, law enforcement officials have said.
A separate federal probe of the Ferguson Police Department is underway. But the prospect that Wilson will face no direct legal consequences for Brown’s death was expected to trigger protests in the St. Louis area, and in the hours before the announcement, scores of demonstrators gathered near the area where Brown was killed.
Protests are going on nationwide. In Ferguson, some businesses are going up in flames. Gun shots have been heard. I am not sure what protests will do. Would the behavior be the same if Wilson were not white? I am not sure. I have never felt that Officer Wilson was guilty, from what I read. However, I wasn’t there. Neither were most of the people out in the streets rioting.
As you comment, please attempt to be judicious in your comments. None of us were there. A set of parents have lost their son and a community has lost one of its young. Those things hurt. Michael Brown has become an icon, rightly or wrongly, for police brutality, especially in communities of color.
The prosecutor certainly rigged the process. He inrerrogated witnesses whose story contradicts Wilson’s, but you can see the questioner helping Wilson to get through his testimony and to frame it well – leading questions. The prosecutor didn’t just present evidence flatly. they acted as if they were Wilson’s defense attorney.
The fact that the prosecutor got in front of the cameras, a white man in a suit who talks well, made his statement, which was a subjective interpretion of evidence, heavily shaded, and in the service not of prosecuting or truth-telling but of justifying the Grand Jury’s decision, and then I see some people here parroting his line of thought as gospel truth makes me kind of sick.
If that’s justice, leave me out of it … the process absolutely failed here.
You tell me what kind of process it is when the PROSECUTOR actively works to frame the accused’s testimony as favorably as they can. He presumably had a defense attorney. And the prosecutor was actively helping him as well.
And if you don’t want to pore through the transcript to convince yourself of this, just reflect on that long statement the prosecutor made to justify the verdict and think about how far out of line that was, really. He’s not judge or jury.
Complete f***ing joke. Was this “prosecution” an example of white bias, of racial prejudice? Of course. Just look at it. No one could even pretend that this was a reasonable process if he hadn’t thrown so much shade at Michael Brown that most white people feel hostile towards the idea of prosecuting Wilson.
Some black people feel a little bit ashamed to be black when they see the looting and rioting.
I feel a little bit ashamed to be white when I see some people rushing to pretend this prosecution makes sense by parroting the prosecutor’s assertions and generally slobbering all over his testes.
@Rick Bentley
You have vid of the questioner “helping” the cop? Got a link? The entire transcript of what? The decision or do you have a link to something else? You have evidence that the prosecutor was framing the cop’s testimony? I’d like to see that.
You seem very obsessed with the top of the head shot.
Get over it.
The man was charging like a linebacker at the cop. At 8-10 feet, he would have his head down in a tackle.
But let’s go with YOUR scenario. Brown is charging him. Starts to fall due to wounds or even giving up…without raising his hands and laying down…..just doing what? Bowing his head?
The cop was dumping bullets in rapid fire against a 290 lb man charging him, who has already fought him by reaching through the window of his car. Brown made himself a deadly threat at that time. Disparity of force comes into play with the size difference between the men. The cop COULD NOT allow Brown to enter into a wrestling match with him.
“Get over it” and swallow the party line? And why should I do that?
A man is charging Wilson with his head completely down. Within 10-20 feet and moving quickly. you believe Wilson stands in place while he shoots, when the sensible thing to do is to move to the side while your blind opponent charges you? Absurd.
“At 8-10 feet, he would have his head down in a tackle.” How does that make any sense? Mind you, you say “would have”, not “might have”. If you’re attempting to tackle someone with a gun, who’s already shot you, you turn your head down like a battering ram? Tell me another one …
Brown committed a robbery + Brown was big + Scuffle in the car DOES NOT EQUAL Wilson’s rather incredible story about intentionally shooting the head – the only thing he could see – as Brown charged at him (with a “demonic” look on his face).
Anyone with common sense and an open mind can see what happened here. They were facing each other, Brown kept tugging at his pants (EVERY WITNESS saw that), Wilson assumed he was armed, and shot him. I assume at the end while Brown was falling or looking down to see if he’d been shot, Wilson who was on edge thought he was going for a weapon and shot him in the head as they both stood there. Which is consistent with many witness statements.
“You seem very obsessed with the top of the head shot.”
Because :
A. That’s the point where he killed him
B. that’s the point where Wilson’s story becomes quite incredible.
As to guiding his testimony – from http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/seemingly-unorthodox-police-procedures-emerge-in-grand-jury-documents/2014/11/25/48152574-74e0-11e4-bd1b-03009bd3e984_story.html
Prosecutors, who led the inquiry, regularly grilled witnesses, testing their memories and going to great lengths to discredit some.
But in questioning Wilson, prosecutors were far more gentle and at times seemed to be guiding his answers.
At one point, a prosecutor asks Wilson: “So you got out of the car, you are running, you are telling [Brown] to stop; is that right?
“Correct,’’ Wilson responds.
“And he’s not listening?’’ the prosecutor asks.
“No,’’ Wilson says.
At another point, a prosecutor tells Wilson that she doesn’t want to “put words in your mouth” even while asking that, as Brown was allegedly striking the officer in the face as he sat in his police car, “it was your opinion that you needed to pull out your weapon?’’
“I felt another one of those punches in my face could knock me out or worse,’’ Wilson testified. “I mean, it was, he’s obviously bigger than I was and stronger and I’ve already taken two to the face and . . . the third one could be fatal if it hit me right.’’
Cargo, a large man with the most demonic and evil look in his eyes is charging at you, from say 15 feet away, head completely down. YOU STAND THERE AND SHOOT HIM STRAIGHT ON? You don’t move to one side or the other whiloe you maintain your sights on him? You stand there that close to this possibly devil-posessed individual and you “aim for the head”, which as anyone knows is a bad place to target? Come on now.
Maybe you stand in place and you light up the torso, and maybe a shot hits him in the head.
But Wilson’s testimony is absurd. I guess this is why the prosecutor was so keen to throw shade on witnesses, and throw shade on Michael Brown. It’s only by getting people not to like Brown or care for his life that the end of Wilson;s story even STARTS to sound credible.
“At 8-10 feet, he would have his head down in a tackle”. Why? Because the demon that was possessing him was whispering in his ear “protect your torso! protect your torso! With your head!”
@Rick Bentley
I just read the transcript. You get that the prosecutor was helping him from just those couple of lines….out of the entire thing?
If you are already square on…. you have to choices, move to the side and keep the gun on target….which is hard to do or move backwards….which is more instinctive and easier……which is what the cop did.
By throw shade on Mike Brown…what do you mean? Because he’s on tape robbing someone. The forensic evidence shows that he fought with the cop inside the car…and cops do not pull you through a window into their car. His biggest lying supporter was his accomplice. He admits that he lied. Others lied. The facts show that. THAT is why the prosecutors checked their testimony. They did not match known facts.
Have you never played football? Have you never watched football? You start the tackle about 6-8 feet out, head down, shoulders down. aiming for chest and lower. You are obviously misconstruing the statements to imply that he had his head lowered the entire time. 8-10 feet is almost within arms’ reach for Brown, at his height. You can cross that distance in less than a second.
His testimony makes sense.
I’ll admit, those lines aren’t dramatic. But it’s funny that the prosecutor is more interested in interrogating witnesses than in interrogating Wilson. PARTICULARLY, because the end of his story doesn’t add up.
I’ll drop the argument about throwing shade. media people and facebook posts are doing it, but I’d have a harder time connecting it to prosecutorial misconduct.
You think Brown was trying to tackle him, trying to do a Brandon Merriweather and fly into him quickly, even though Wilson had a gun? I might believe that if more of the many, many witnesses saw something like that. they didn’t. they did see Brown reaching towards and maybe tugging n his pants over and over though.
First he runs away, then after being shot he comes back and tries to tackle him?
@Rick Bentley
First he ran away….. then realized that the cop was following him. AND that he now had assaulting the cop along robbery. He couldn’t lose the cop…the cop was alone…so he attempted to put down the cop. Seems to be a reasonable scenario.
Critical thinking did not appear to be one of his strong suits. Depending on how far apart they were, perhaps he thought that he could reach the cop before get shot critically. He almost did.
As I said….even with YOUR scenario…. Brown falling….. we’re talking split seconds. He fired about 10 rounds and hit with six…..And nobody described Brown as stopping until he was killed.
Every statement about his surrendering was about BEFORE the shooting started and was found out to be a lie.
“he attempted to put down the cop. Seems to be a reasonable scenario.”
Sigh …
“nobody described Brown as stopping until he was killed”
Not true.
“Every statement about his surrendering was about BEFORE the shooting started and was found out to be a lie.”
By who?
If you read all the witness statements – I have read the majority – there’s a lot of unanimity about a lot of things. Two witnesses tend to contradict the others, witness 10 and I think witness 40. Witness 40 is someone white who writes in her? diary about needing to use the n word less. I don’t know the story with witness 10. No idea who they are.
The discrediting of the majority of witnesses relies on faith in Witness 10 to be telling the truth where they aren’t. Again, it would be interesting to have witness 10 cross-examined. They certainly are at a minimum fallible, as their original statement has Brown and his friend walking on the curb and not in the street at the start.
I submit to you that the way McCullough has framed this evidence is highly subjective and that we do justice a disservice if we let him frame this evidence for us.
On the one hand, about 20 witnesses say Brown wasn’t attacking when he was shot, but that he was reaching down at his pants repeatedly. On the other, the officer and two witnesses say that brown was moving forward aggressively.
So then you should start to ask yourself, does Wilson’s story hold together – is it plausible? And at the end it is not.
I’m quite sure he shot him because he thought Brown was twicthing at a weapon, rather than pulling his pants up, that he covered this up rather than copping to it, and that McCullough did justice a major disservice.
Why were his pants down in the first place?
Public safety would be enhanced if all deaths at the hands of police were considered unjustified homicides. Police have the tools to enforce laws without killing people. When they do kill it is because they didn’t do their job properly.
All the witness statements and forensics is not relevant if the correct police procedure was to roll up the window wait for backup. When the perp disengaged, the officer was no longer in danger (if he ever was) until he got out of the car and re engaged the suspect.
We are wrong to consider every police killing to be defacto justified. Change that assumption and police tactics would change. It is police tactics that spawned the riots.
@Rick Bentley
Found out to be a lie by the grand jury.
I’m quite sure he shot him because he was in danger of being involved in HTH combat with someone that had already shown disregard for life by attacking him in the car and attempting to get the gun. Brown’s attempt to get to blows was enough to justify shooting him.
@Moon-howler
Loose pants? Thug style?
@Ed Myers
Right…… the cops can just allow criminals to leave. Why have them at all, then?
And we might as well just disarm the cops completely now….since all shootings would be unjustified. I mean, what with all those magical tools to enforce laws against violent people.
You might not have noticed…but the shooting was NOT defacto justified. Thus…the grand jury.
Congratulations Ed, that as got to be one of — if not the stupidest, least informed things ever written here.
Insulting every policie officer in the nation – putting them and their families in jeopardy and then doing it in the context of Fergusen is just unbelievable.
“Brown’s attempt to get to blows was enough to justify shooting him.”
The possible aggression by Brown may justify a shooting. But not while he’s falling down, unarmed. Which is almost surely what happened. The story of him running at Wilson with his head completely down, and Wilson standing on spot rather than moving to a blind spot, and intentionally aiming for the head, is not believable.
And so, I tend to believe the 20 or so witnesses who said Brown was in a defensive position, but tugging at his pants. Even though they’re all or mostly black. And even though that nice Mr. McCullough told us that we shouldn’t believe them, unless their testimony is in line with Wilson’s story and the paucity of evidence that Wilson’s story was concocted around.
For the record, I don’t agree with Ed.
I can’t vouch for this, but interesting food for thought here, a summary of witness testimony and reliability – http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/11/26/1347781/-Ferguson-what-the-witnesses-said
A community can determine how it wants law enforcement to respond to various crimes. In this case a white police officer, a white prosecutor and a white jury decided that killing a black teenager for acting wild was acceptable. If we demanded that police have to find non-lethal means of handling wild kids I’m sure they could. I would argue the black community has said that many times to the police. That the police didn’t listen and most whites support them in using lethal force disproportionately against poor and/or black men is telling. Hence the riots.
Wilson did not have to kill Brown. He had other options but chose to kill because he thought it was his job and legal right to do so. We can change the rules and retrain officers to handle this situation differently so no one is killed. The goal should be zero deaths of police or caused by police.
We don’t develop and deploy non-lethal approaches in law enforcement because most people demonize suspected criminals as savages that deserve to be slaughtered.
It does look to me as if Witness 14 is the most reliable witness. And she sees something very different from Brown charging head first.
Michael took a step off the sidewalk. As soon as his foot hit the street the officer let loose wham, wham, wham. … [Brown’s] hands were not steady like this, but he had ’em up to look look and see what was up. … he took a step to the street … it looked like he was, you know, he was giving up. Because that’s what we was saying. … [He was holding his hands like] palms were facing the officer … We were, “there, he’s giving up, he’s giving up.” … We are looking at [Brown]. He is giving up, but then as soon as he stepped on that street he got his foot in the street, [Wilson] fired three shots. … After he fired that … first volley he hit him [Brown] started staggering. He first kind of went back like pow from the impact. … He stepped back and then he started staggering and he was looking at the officer and as he brought his head up he looked down like “Oh God, I’ve been shot.” He looked up to the officer and he was looking at him, and he was staggering like he was trying to stay on his feet. Myself and my family was telling him “Stop, dude, stop-stop-stop,” hoping that he would hear us, but he was staggering and we could see that he was staggering. He took about, I don’t know, three or four more steps, but as he was taking his steps forward at that time the officer took a few steps back. … [Brown] was standing up when he was shot he was leaning like this, but his head was like this … you could tell he was about ready to fall because at the angle of his body was practically straight, knees wobbly, but the torso was like I wanna say a 45 degree angle. His hands had slowly been coming down … [Brown] was trying to stand up he was trying to maintain his self, but you could see his body was trying to give out on him … we were yelling at him, “Man, stop-stop-stop!” … my sister in-law said, she said “Oh God, he is getting ready to kill him. He is getting ready to kill him.” … [Brown] was not charging [Wilson]. He was defenseless, hands up. He was trying to stay on his feet and you could see that his knees were beginning to buckle and he was going down. … And then, no sooner she said that, no sooner than those words came out of her mouth, [Brown] was going down it looks like he was going down and [Wilson] let off four more shots wham, wham, wham, wham. … he hit face first. Splat.
Witness 14
Provides one of the most complete accounts, and also matches many–though not all–of the known facts in vehicle position, movements, and clothing. In general appears to be one of the better witnesses. 14’s account of Brown’s action seems to account for the behaviors observed by other witnesses without requiring Brown to be either superhuman or self-destructive.
Witness 10 (main witness whose testimony supports Wilson’s version)
Inaccurately describes cars, positions of players, and provides apparently invented comments by Johnson at the end of the event. Also initially reports that he is working with others, then claims to be working alone. Details of his narrative change under questioning enough to make his testimony questionable.
Witness 10 just happened to be working there that day, and has a different account from others. I’d be suspicious that Witness 10 could be a ringer.
The fact that you call a person that had just committed a felony robbery, and then assaulted a police officer a “wild kid,” explains much about your outlook on life.
Non-lethal means….Okay…you brought it up. Please…tell us what you mean by “non-lethal” means and what you mean by “wild kid” as opposed to criminal? I don’t want to misconstrue what you mean. We don’t deploy “non-lethal” approaches because there are no such valid approaches for stopping a deadly threat.
@Rick Bentley
Since ALL of the evidence is being sent to the FEDS…they will have a chance at him.
That’s a good point.
We do not consider felony robbery a capital crime. So any application of force to apprehend an alleged robber or police assailant that is reasonably expected to kill the alleged perp is unacceptable. Tasers, stun guns, mace, etc. are acceptable. Of course people can die from these devices too, but those deaths are accidental while the deployment of guns has the primary intent to kill the perp. New technologies will need to be tested and deployed that are more reliable at incapacitating a suspect without killing them. That won’t happen if every police shooting is judged to be justified.
Brown cannot be judged a criminal, only an alleged criminal, because there can not be a trial ’cause he is dead. I can judge his actions as wild and disruptive; anti-social behavior that should be punished…just not with death.
There are many ways to avoid a deadly threat. Retreat until one has sufficient force to win a battle with just the threat of violence instead of actual violence, for example. Deployment of defensive measures that reduce the probability that a violent action will be deadly. Body armor is an example. Asymmetric weapons that incapacitate the enemy before they can deploy violent action; tasers, for example.
I just joined this party, and I must say reading down through all 152 posts has been very interesting.
Rick, props to you for taking the heat, staying calm (unlike Mr. Bills!), listening to other views, re-examining the evidence and your positions and having the courage to stand pretty much alone in your convictions. After having said all that, it’ll be no surprise to hear that I pretty much agree with your conclusions.
The head shot that killed the young punk (Brown) looks a lot like an execution. It may not have been, but there certainly seemed to be enough evidence to justify a trial. No question that Brown was a bad kid and a criminal and a fool, but that wasn’t what the grand jury should have been concerned with- it was whether or not the officer committed a crime. Mr. Brown already paid for his crimes with his life.
The whole grand jury process was a sham. The prosecutor acted more as a defense attorney, leading pro-defense witnesses, refuting testimony harmful to the defendant, badgering witnesses, “explaining” crime scene evidence to the benefit of the defendant, leaking information to the press that supported Wilson’s story, etc.
The crime scene was compromised and not secured, no measurements were taken at the scene, Officer Wilson bagged his own weapon, cleaned evidence (blood) from his person and drove himself back to the police station, all violations of accepted protocol.
The prosecutor (McCulloch) should have recused himself for at least two reasons. First, his father was a police officer who was killed in the line of duty by a black man when he was 12. His mother, brother, uncle and cousin all worked for the St Louis Police Dept. Second, he has a history of manipulating the process in the officer’s favor in police shooting cases (the “Jack In The Box Case”). Taken together, particularly the last item, these would seem to be reason enough for recusing himself, especially in a sensitive case like this one.
When one considers the above, along with the killings of Trevon Martin and the 12 year old kid with a BB gun and all the others I think it is understandable how some could see race as a factor in these things. Throw in unfair drug laws that target minorities, “driving while black” police stops, etc., and I understand why folks are not happy with race relations in general.
@middleman
Well, all of this has been presented to the Feds for investigation. Should be interesting.
Here’s an opinion about your last paragraph:
https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10152314396513715
@Ed Myers
Robbery is not a capital crime.
Attacking an officer and attempting to take his gun is a deadly threat. Attempting to attack him again is also considered a deadly threat.
Such weapons are ineffective at stopping a deadly threat. Mace…. can be resisted. Tasers…. limited shots, limited effect. Stun guns…. have to allow the threat within reach.
“Retreat until one has sufficient force to win a battle with just the threat of violence instead of actual violence, for example.”
A threat of violence with no violence behind it is comical. Retreat allows the criminals to escape.
This is the world you want… for cops to run away in the face of danger.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/10/AR2005121001222.html
Excerpt: Johnson said British officers are instructed to retreat if they see a gun and call for backup from armed officers, but that can give suspects time to escape. He said he recently found himself in the same room with a man wanted for attempted murder and he could easily have taken the suspect by surprise and apprehended him.
But, Johnson said, because the man was believed to be armed, he was ordered not to approach him. The suspect walked away and was arrested by armed officers two days later.
“If he had gone out and committed more violent crimes in those two days,” Johnson said, “I would have felt personally responsible.”
@cargo, you have no creative talent for preventing violence except to be more violent first. That is a recipe for killing unarmed people and 12 y.o. Kids with fake guns.
You don’t want to avoid killing people who you think deserve to die. I get it. If more people did want to avoid having police kill people we could eliminate the deaths by police to the really low levels in Europe and Japan instead of the high rates we have now.
I prefer unarmed police. yes the British model seems more civilized to me.
Putting someone in prison in response to a violent threat is hardly letting the criminal go free. Once in shackles an impartial jury can decide what risk the alleged criminal poses to society.
@Ed Myers
Since I haven’t talked about the kid with the fake gun, you cannot speak to anything I might think about it.
I want to avoid killing anyone. However, I also believe that if you pose a deadly threat to someone, they should not have their hands tied in their self defense. I don’t think anyone deserves to die. I merely think attackers should be stopped. Tell you what…you invent a stunner like that found on Star Trek and we can use THAT.
Unarmed police are called witnesses. Notice….the “unarmed police” in England CALL THE ARMED POLICE to come save them….THEN they arrest the violent criminals. Nothing has changed, except it takes longer.
If you want an unarmed police, then you had better figure out a way to change our criminals to peaceful choir boys.
A lot of witness statements indicate that Brown was not charging or threatening the officer when the kill shot was taken. The accounts of that moment vary- hands up, stumbling, just turned, falling forward, saying “I give up,” casually walking, catching his balance, etc. This was after Brown had already been shot a few times, so he was probably losing energy from blood loss and trauma. Of course, other witness statements indicate that Brown was “charging” the officer.
Witness statements are notoriously unreliable, but when you pair the statements with the physical evidence- the downward trajectory of the head kill shot in particular, it doesn’t look good for the officer. Did he intentionally start out to execute Brown- not likely, but the officer was mad and scared and injured (by Brown) and probably not thinking clearly.
We’ve moved, since 9-11, to a semi-police state where there is an ever-widening divide between law enforcement personnel and civilians in this country. The cases mentioned above are just some of the cases recently that involve police shootings that are questionable. There is the case of the deaf black man killed because he didn’t respond to an officer he couldn’t hear. There’s the mentally ill black woman killed by police in her car near the capitol with her daughter in the back seat. There’s a lot of them: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enforcement_officers_in_the_United_States
It’s not just black people- this case is right here in N. Va: http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/fairfax-county-police-shot-an-unarmed-man-in-his-home-and-they-wont-say-why/2014/11/27/5a028690-74eb-11e4-bd1b-03009bd3e984_story.html
Along with militarizing the police, we’ve created more of a “them vs us” situation. The thin blue line has become a wide gulf.
@middleman
I actually agree with you on this.
I generally feel that it’s a mistake to make too much out of these incidents, to try to define race relations by these things … these things are going to happen. Some white kid somewhere got the Michael Brown treatment last night, and some officer covered up the details of what happened in a similar way, I’m sure.
But I got vocal here because i COULD NOT STAND seeing how quick many white people are to nod their head to the prosecutor’s statement, and presume that 10-20 black witnesses are all lying.
We’ll never really know what happened. But please don’t pretend that Wilson’s story is the logical way to connect the data points.
Black people do know that they’re angry and frustrated. I wish that white people had a similar level of self-awareness about how biased they are or can become.
It was not “white people” who decided that witnesses were lying or telling the truth or just mistaken. It was a grand jury of our fellow citizens gathered lawfully for that purpose. All we can do is read the written statements of a variety of witnesses and guess at their veracity. None of us sat in the jury room and watched and listened as those witnesses were examined as to the truth and reliability of what they claimed to have seen.
And if we are a nation of laws, we have to accept the grand jury’s opinion, the same as we have to accept the verdicts in the Zimmerman case, the Simpson case, and the Kasey child killer case. We might not like it but that’s how we roll in America.
“decided that witnesses were lying or telling the truth or just mistaken”
That’s not what they decided. It would be very interesting to hear from any of the jury members as to whether they did decide that. It would also be intreresting to know whether the vote broke down on racial lines.
We do have to respect the Grand Jury’s decision. We don’t have to respect the way McCullough prosecuted witnesses rather than Wilson, seems interested in closing off investigation rather than having an open mind, and gave a surreal and disgusting presentation on television as if he were judge and jury. And I DEFINITELY don’t respect the way I see a lot of (white) people using that as a framework to pretend they know what happened with Wilson and Brown, despite Wilson’s story straining credulity.
@cargo, the chances that I will be killed by police seem higher than the chances that I will be killed by a criminal that could have been stopped by an armed police officer.
This is simple risk analysis. The number of questionable deaths at the hands of police officers would be reduced by deploying less violent police tactics. Having a gun doesn’t seem to help police avoid ambushes. We would net fewer deaths without armed police in most day-to-day police activity.
Start with schools. They are like a prison…police should not routinely bring guns into a locked school building; there will be an incident in which the officer’s gun will be taken by students and used to kill someone or an officer will go crazy and start shooting. Unarmed police would no longer be the first target and could help direct a response that saves lives in a active shooter situation.
@Ed Myers
Then your understanding of cause and effect are faulty.
Unless you are doing something that conflicts with police…..or your address is picked for a SWAT team by accident… both of which are HIGHLY unlikely…the odds are that you won’t be killed by police. That said….. you also have long odds of being killed by a criminal since most murders are done between criminals.
As for your idea about schools and cops….. yeah….that keeps happening. NOT.
And please point out where a police man was the first target in a school shooting that did not directly target only the cop….since there has been ONE of those incidents. Also….please tell us how UNARMED police could direct a response that saves lives in an active shooter situation.
I am truly interested. How does an unarmed cop direct any response that saves lives in an active shooter situation? You obviously must have some ideas about this.
The fact of the matter is that if Michael Brown had actually put his hands up and said don’t shoot, he would be alive today. His family would have been spared their loss and I doubt Michael would have ever faced any prison time. Ferguson wouldn’t have experienced rioting, before or after Officer Wilson was exonerated. And how did this get started? Brown’s accomplice in the burglary started the hands ups mantra, which he has since recanted.
Instead, Brown was already pumped up from having strong armed – bullied – a small local shop owner. The hard evidence (i.e., the testimony that doesn’t contradict itself and the physical evidence) suggests that Michael Brown had no interest in surrendering. Perhaps if he had gotten out of the street, he might have again been simply arrested for the burglary. Instead, he attacked Officer Wilson, punched Wilson when the officer was still in his patrol car and attempted to take his gun from him. Thank goodness shots were fired in the car and Brown left blood evidence or can you imagine what some of you would be saying.
Then Brown ran. When he saw the officer following him, what does he do, he turns and instead of getting down – even he knows he is now facing real prison time now – rushes at Wilson. That Wilson fired is not police brutality or white on black discrimination – it is, rather, suicide by cop. We were not there and Wilson has a right to come home at night – as do other officers serving in high crime areas.
Now what as happened is that when the facts didn’t back their narrative, liberals began to dismiss the facts and retreated into paranoid suspicion of the legal system. It was rigged. And let’s be clear, whenever the facts are murky – and they are not here – the benefit goes not to the thug, but to the officer. So, rather than review the evidence and make a decision on his own, which he was authorized to do, the liberals have to take down the more than fair and more than risky to Wilson (for political not legal reasons) grand jury process. Who could really argue with a grand jury hearing everything. Was any information excluded? No and yet liberals continue to raise up testimony that was discredited by the facts and by other testimony as fact- in order to keep the pot boiling.
And according to the Left, that fact that Officer Wilson was allowed to testify to the grand jury is somehow wrong. Never mind that it is allowed in any grand Jury or that most defendant do not – because they have to do it without their lawyer present and anything they say can and would be used against them. Oh and the prosecutor should have removed himself from this case because his father was a cop. Really ! A jury of your peers does not require a jury of Felons either.
About 7 years ago and unarmed man was beating his wife in front of the PWCPD Police station east. Another officer intervened. The man turned on the officer and pummeled him while reaching for his gun. Another officer shot the assailant several times. Should that officer have been treated as a criminal, should either officer have been treated as a criminal. Apparently some of you think they should have been. The officer that was pummeled could no longer perform his duties for fear that any other incident could cause him to loose his life. Liberal come back again and again to the fact that Michael Brown was unarmed and that, in the struggle between the two, Officer Wilson only sustained bruises to his face, and if only Wilson had allowed Brown to beat him up and perhaps take his gun, things wouldn’t have had to escalate. That is dangerous BS. Useful liberal idiots that have no idea what the police are up against should wear a special pin and have a special bumper sticker, so that police can give their assailants, burgers, rapists, car jackers or other thugs they run into the special care they want.
The flaw in your argument is that you declared people and their opinions “left” and “liberal.” That isn’t really how this is coming down, is it?
Yeah it is. What groups would you note that have sought to stoke the flames of this issue would you not call the liberal left? Or are you saying this is not a liberal vs conservative gulf but is rather a white vs black gulf — which is equally wrong and opportunistic.
I might buy poor, and depressed high crime area reaction vs the “suburbs” gulf, but then you have to discount all the good folks in poor neighborhoods that thank god for the police every nioght.
I think it is undefined. It isn’t left or liberal though. Plenty of people who are liberal on a lot of issues certainly aren’t on the side of protesting.
@Cargo: Schools go into lockdown. First responders cannot get into the locked school quickly or in the right places without help and direction from someone knowledgeable about the campus and in direct communication with them. Also someone who can identify the assailant and help determine if there are accomplices thereby speeding arrival of medical help to the wounded.
We also need someone the teachers know and trust. Someone in SWAT uniform with a gun could be the perp. It was in the Colorado Theatre shootings.
The armed guard at the Navy yard was killed and his gun was used by the assailant to kill others. We don’t want that happening in schools.
@Blue, we don’t want police in H2H with criminals. The PWCPD officer should have used a Taser.