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yytz – such a great post! and you are so right about the politics hounds. Personally it doesn’t hold my interest, I don’t even know who many of the players are.
What you said we do for voting can be to think we know who is best, or think we know who is best, to the best of our knowledge. I think a yid should always add that drop of humility. Know that there is more to any story, there is always more to a person, and that only Hashem is all knowing. If you research something well, be proud. But drawing conclusions from facts without the small addition of “I really believe” or “it seems to me” is, in my opinion, not the proper display of anivus.
im not sure if it’s true but isn’t a cop able to put himself into a situation where he may have to kill someone? i’m talking legally not morally (morally is a completely different discussion)
I am by no means an expert, but I HAVE read up on the case, and here are my thoughts, if anyone cares to hear them:
To my understanding, there are two situations in which a cop is permitted use of lethal force. (Also important to note: “lethal force” means use of a potentially lethal weapon, not a carte blanche to kill on sight.)
1. If a cop feels that his life is in danger.
2. If a cop feels that a felon is violent and is about to put another citizen’s life in danger.
A cop is legally required to perform a quick assessment of the situation before EVERY discharge of a firearm in order to determine if lethal force is still necessary. Sometimes, a criminal who sees that the cop is ready and willing to fire his gun will surrender at that point.
Now, there is evidence that a scuffle took place between Brown and Wilson while the latter was still seated in his car. This much is evidenced by the bruise on Wilson’s jaw. During that scuffle, the gun was fired twice. (Wilson stated that Brown had put his hand on the gun as though to take it from him.) Once the gun had gone off, Brown took off running and Wilson was able to leave his car.
At this point, remember that Wilson was legally required to justify continued use of lethal force. That would mean that he’d need to believe that Brown, though he definitely acted like a thug and a lowlife, was an actual danger to Wilson’s life or that of another citizen.
Wilson then chose to pursue Brown, who was at that time running away from him. He yelled at Brown to stop, and then fired his weapon again several times when Brown did not comply. He saw Brown’s body jerk with the impact of at least one bullet, and then Brown turned around.
This next scenario is where witnesses’ and Wilson’s accounts start to differ sharply. Witnesses say that Brown raised his hands in surrender and ducked his head, then began jogging towards Wilson to be arrested. Wilson says that Brown’s hands were never up, and that he ducked his head in a charge. At any rate, that was when Wilson fired the fatal rounds that struck Brown in his head, killing him.
The way I see it, there are two main reasons that the black community is furious about what happened:
1. They don’t agree that lethal force was necessary, especially after Brown fled the scene after scuffling with Wilson. The discharging of the gun DURING the scuffle was necessary, since Brown was attacking a police officer who was trapped in his own car, but Wilson should not have left his car and continued firing until Brown was dead.
2. They believe that the reason Wilson DID continue to use his gun was that his assailant was black, and he considered use of lethal force against a black person a much lighter affair than against a white person who had acted similarly. In fact, they point to Wilson’s lack of non-lethal alternatives on his belt as proof that this was a police officer who intended to kill someone if the opportunity was right.
That said, I’m sure everyone can agree that one should NEVER attack a police officer and certainly never put a hand on his gun for any reason. But the source of the anger appears to be the idea that a white person who had done something similar would still be alive today as well.
DBM – I have not finished reading your post but I did get to here:
Wilson then chose to pursue Brown, who was at that time running away from him. He yelled at Brown to stop, and then fired his weapon again several times when Brown did not comply. He saw Brown’s body jerk with the impact of at least one bullet, and then Brown turned around.
I’m not sure where you got this from, doesn’t sound familiar from the media I read, but more significantly, it does not follow any of the autopsies which state there were no bullets to his back. You can even see the diagrams from the autopsy with the bullet marks drawn in. Nothing from behind. MY GUESS is that that piece of evidence was the most compelling of all in the acquittal.
and in regard to Wilson continuing his pursuit of Brown, Brown had a handful of cigars on him that coincidentally were just reported stolen (by force)from a store. Should Wilson have let Brown go with evidence in his hands becauce he didn’t want to get punched again? or should he have called him back after he started running away because he was obligated to bring him in as a suspect in a robbery?
Syag: I got the part about him being shot while Wilson was in pursuit from Wilson’s own testimony. You’re right, though, that he wasn’t hit in the back. I believe the bullet grazed his fingers, although I’m not sure. Wilson testified that he saw Brown’s body “jerk” before he turned around.
As to your second point: I’d venture to say that Wilson should have waited for the backup that he’d already called in at the start of the incident. (They ended up arriving moments after the fatal shots.) Even in circumstances where a suspect is ARMED but not an immediate danger, protocol is to wait for backup. By choosing to pursue and continue using lethal force against an unarmed person, Wilson was following the protocol for believing another citizen’s life was at risk, a conclusion that is difficult for me to understand given that Brown was heading away from the scene at the time and no longer threatening anyone.
As to the stolen merchandise: Wilson testified to his sergeant that he had not been aware of the robbery when he stopped Wilson; this was indeed publicly available information long before the grand jury’s decision. This testimony was completely changed during McCulloch’s press conference with no explanation.
Bear in mind that I am not in any way endorsing Brown as an innocent. By all accounts and as evidenced by the robbery video, the kid was acting like a thug and trying to flout the law and authority.
Like millions of OTHER unarmed teenagers do.
The reason an “incident” became a “fatal incident” was solely the discretion of Darren Wilson. Brown was not armed, and could not have shot Wilson even had he wanted to. He was a teenage thug wannabe who figured he’d intimidate a cop and ended up paying the ultimate price for being a punk.
” there are two main reasons that the black community is furious about what happened”
There is a third reason: It is pretty much unheard of for a prosecutor to let a grand jury see any evidence other than what is favorable for an indictment. For whatever reason, that was not what was done here. The grand jury naturally saw the conflicting evidence and declined to indict. But it should be noted that in a summary by NPR, 16 of 29 witnesses testified that Brown had his hands up while being shot while only two testified otherwise, and 15 of 29 witnesses testified that Brown was running away from Wilson when he was shot and only five testified otherwise. The prosecutor could easily have obtained an indictment by careful selection of witnesses and that is what is routinely done in thousands of counties across the US. Had Michael Brown been a Jew shot by a member of a police force with a history of treating Jews badly, WE would be up in arms.
“Brown was heading away from the scene at the time and no longer threatening anyone”
That is what the majority of witnesses said, but as I pointed out there were those that testified otherwise.
” ended up paying the ultimate price for being a punk. “
Nothing that Brown did is a death penalty offense under US law. Interestingly, the theft of the cigars would be under Noachide law. But the US rejected Noachide law back in 1788.
“Wilson testified to his sergeant that he had not been aware of the robbery when he stopped Wilson; this was indeed publicly available information long before the grand jury’s decision. This testimony was completely changed during McCulloch’s press conference with no explanation.”
That change of story would have been very damning to Wilson had he gone to trial. His lawyers would probably have had to keep him off the witness stand so the trial jury would not have been able to hear Wilson’s own account.
The facts are nowhere near as clear as people think.
There is a third reason: It is pretty much unheard of for a prosecutor to let a grand jury see any evidence other than what is favorable for an indictment. For whatever reason, that was not what was done here. The grand jury naturally saw the conflicting evidence and declined to indict.
We all know why that was done here. Because the prosecutor didn’t believe there was evidence to convict.
In an ordinary case where the prosecutor doesn’t think there is evidence to convict, they drop the case. But he couldn’t do that here, because public opinion was so strong. So he figured he’d show it all to a grand jury.
In an ordinary usage of the grand jury, the prosecutor has already made the decision to indict, and the grand jury is just confirming it. Here, he was asking the grand jury to make that decision.
This wasn’t the ordinary usage of a grand jury. Hence they didn’t follow the ordinary procedures.
This is all good. Everyone says “a grand jury would indict a ham sandwich,” but we all agree that ham sandwiches should not be indicted. Rather, only people who the prosecutor believes there is evidence beyond reasonable doubt to convict should be indicted.
That is why not everyone in America is on trial–right? If prosecutors were supposed to indict everyone they could, and it is so easy to indict, then all of us should be on trial. But that isn’t how it works, because there is supposed to be someone deciding whether this person actually should be on trial.
Get it? Prosecutor decides who should be on trial, and (in some states) a grand jury then approves the decision based on some minimal standard. In this case, the prosecutor expanded their role to making the decision also.
So I’m actually reading the court transcripts. I’ve read several hundred pages of it so far which included the testimony of the sergeant, the testimony of the detective investigating Wilson, the testimony of an FBI agent investigating civil rights abuses, Wilson’s testimony, and I’m currently in the middle of the Medical Examiner’s testimony. I’d just like to comment on a few of the comments here.
After the altercation in the police car (in which Brown allegedly tried to reach for the poiceman’s gun), Brown ran away.
Brown did not allegedly try to reach for the gun. In his testimony, Wilson said that he told the Sergeant that Brown “went for is gun” and one of the jurors pointed out that the term “went for his gun” is not at all what happened. What happened was that Wilson drew his gun and then Brown put his hand on the gun and redirected it towards Wilson. Wilson himself agrees to this.
I just find it hard to believe that a Police Officer wearing Mace a Taser and with the ability to call for backup as soon as things started getting contentious REALLY had to shoot the kid in the head multiple times in order to save himself.
He didn’t have a taser. He had already called for backup. If Wilson was telling the truth that Brown was charging at him, and knowing from the altercation in the car that Brown completely out matched him, it would make sense why he had to shoot him.
There were also autopsy reports that said straight out that he was shot in the head as he lunged for the gun.
I’m still in the middle of the Medical Examiner’s testimony so I won’t yet comment on what the autopsy said. However, I know it definitely did not say this. An autopsy can perhaps say that he was lunging, but it has no way of knowing what he was lunging at. Wilson was already shooting at Brown while he was a distance away. He said that the final shot was from about eight feet away.
“000646: The police officer said he DID NOT have a taser in his car.”
Well that would be incompetence or irresponsible.
The point is that it is really hard for me to believe that a Police officer acting in a correct and thought out manner would really be in a position where an unarmed person would kill him if the officer didn’t use lethal force. Why did he get out of the car himself? Couldn’t he have waited for backup? Did he mace the kid, hit him with a club when he charged? Why couldn’t he shoot the kid in the legs, or somewhere besides the head?
He said that the reason he did not have a taser is that they have a limited number of tasers and they’re large and uncomfortable. Wilson explained that he got out of the car because Brown was a threat to other people including other officers who would show up. He said that he was just trying to stall him for a little bit since he expected the backup to arrive in about 30 seconds. And he shot him several times not in the head which didn’t accomplish anything. Then he shot him in the head.
Syag: I got the part about him being shot while Wilson was in pursuit from Wilson’s own testimony. You’re right, though, that he wasn’t hit in the back. I believe the bullet grazed his fingers, although I’m not sure. Wilson testified that he saw Brown’s body “jerk” before he turned around.
Wilson did not testify anything of the sort. He testified that he did not shoot while in pursuit. Once Brown turned around and charged at him, he began shooting.
I’d venture to say that Wilson should have waited for the backup that he’d already called in at the start of the incident. (They ended up arriving moments after the fatal shots.) Even in circumstances where a suspect is ARMED but not an immediate danger, protocol is to wait for backup. By choosing to pursue and continue using lethal force against an unarmed person, Wilson was following the protocol for believing another citizen’s life was at risk, a conclusion that is difficult for me to understand given that Brown was heading away from the scene at the time and no longer threatening anyone.
I already explained why he pursued. And pursing is not lethal force. The lethal force was after Brown turned around and charged at him.
As to the stolen merchandise: Wilson testified to his sergeant that he had not been aware of the robbery when he stopped Wilson; this was indeed publicly available information long before the grand jury’s decision. This testimony was completely changed during McCulloch’s press conference with no explanation.
This was one of the main discrepancies in the testimonies. The sergeant testified that Wilson said that he had head the call about the robbery, but didn’t make any connection between that and Brown. Wilson testified that he told the sergeant that he did make the connection.
Perhaps I’ll be back with more later.
Anyone recall Eleanor Bumpurs?
I am frankly sick of this entire inyan already. The one main thing no one is emphasizing is that parents (black, white, purple) ALL need to instruct their children from day one, that they need to speak respectfully to people in authority, NOT give them attitude and a fresh mouth, and be compliant when confronted with the police, especially when they are doing something illegal, however minor. A little incident can rapidly escalate into a tragedy. This could have been avoided in the Garner case, had he had the brains to recognize he was doing something wrong, and do what the officer said. he should not have gotten a “death penalty” for selling cigarettes, but that would not have happened had he not tried to resist arrest.
Someone made a very valid remark on the radio today – these inner city kids are being subjected to HIDEOUS gangsta rap type music all the time which urges them to commit awful crimes, including homicide, and this is the continuous and powerful brainwashing in the guise of entertainment, with which they live. What responsible, caring adult is teaching them otherwise? They clearly have allowed this trash to become an intrinsic part of their urban culture, and are doing little to stop it. I believe in freedom of speech and expression, but not when it urges people to act like animals. If anyone reads Newsday, take a look at the political cartoon on the editorial page.
Racism is a self-fulfilling prophecy. The cycle doesn’t stop when the music changes.
oomis, I don’t agree. I think you have an authority problem
parents (black, white, purple) ALL need to instruct their children from day one, that they need to speak respectfully to people in authority, NOT give them attitude and a fresh mouth, and be compliant when confronted with the police, especially when they are doing something illegal
“Johnny, how many times do I have to tell you, when you rob a store, be nice to the cops”.
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