There is one glaring plot hole I thought about in the Ferguson "murder" case

[solid12345]

If officer Wilson did indeed kill Michael Brown in cold blood....why didn't he shoot and kill his friend Dorian Johnson, the main witness to the shooting too? Dead men tell no tales...

[TheButterZone]

Why didn't Ferguson PD summarily execute every black rioter in the city? These are the mysteries of the universe.

[pedrog]

Also journalists... Who knows?

[spazzdla]

If officer Wilson did indeed kill Michael Brown in cold blood....why didn't he shoot and kill his friend Dorian Johnson, the main witness to the shooting too? Dead men tell no tales...

Arrogance.. when was the last time you heard of a cop being charged with murder while on duty?  Paid leave at worst.. oooh okay.  The term Pig exists for a very good reason.

[Lethn]

I didn't even know he had a friend with him, is that true? I honestly haven't been keeping an eye on it very much, as disturbing as it may seem these things seem to be happening so often now I find myself not paying much attention to it anymore since most people in the know already realise that our governments are pretty fucking corrupt.

We get it over here as well in the UK but to a lesser extent, cops being corrupt and other cops covering for them because they all have dirt on each other most likely.

[wasserman99]

If officer Wilson did indeed kill Michael Brown in cold blood....why didn't he shoot and kill his friend Dorian Johnson, the main witness to the shooting too? Dead men tell no tales...

Because he didn't. The racists who pretend to be promoters of equality like Jessee Jackson and Al Sharpton and the liberal media tend to change what happened and make it look like people are targeting blacks. 

[koshgel]

If officer Wilson did indeed kill Michael Brown in cold blood....why didn't he shoot and kill his friend Dorian Johnson, the main witness to the shooting too? Dead men tell no tales...

His friend wasn't the only witness. There were other people around.

It would also be much harder to plead innocence after murdering two people instead of one

[TheButterZone]

If not for Jim Crow laws, there would have been some sane, law-abiding witnesses able to exercise the right to self-defense against the police officer if he was really summarily executing Brown.

[Chef Ramsay]

If officer Wilson did indeed kill Michael Brown in cold blood....why didn't he shoot and kill his friend Dorian Johnson, the main witness to the shooting too? Dead men tell no tales...

The problem here that people find hard to understand is that a person who is unarmed can still be a threat to an openly armed person if they run up on you, which is allegedly what set this situation off. I'm not a stranger to how cops lie or operate but every situation needs to be taken individually and not this meme of the poor black, unarmed teenager being murdered based on sensationalism. People grow up fast on the streets and learn mostly bad habits in drug addled, welfare dependent and single mother homes. At first, even I was hot on the police's ass for perhaps shooting first and asking questions later but after the situation had developed I knew there were extenuating circumstances. This cop was travelling through the 'hood' by himself as a white guy and it sounds like he didn't escalate the situation but the other way around which is unfathomable that someone would rush a cop when they're merely telling you to get off the street. However, I was happy for average people who view the news to see how militarized these cops can be. Unfortunately, this is now front and center and all other societal ills are overshadowed and likely will be for some time. Depending on how things go, this could be a rallying cry by the democrats for the midterms.

[TheButterZone]

Escalation...

If the officer hadn't apparently got out of his car to be within grabbing range of Mike Brown (who by all accounts, was walking in the street; not a reason to arrest someone) and instead used his PA to tell MB to get on the sidewalk (if there was one), and if MB didn't get out of the street then he could have used his sirens to annoy MB out of it, then used his car to slowly physically usher/block him out of it, then if he still insisted on walking in the street, then the cop could have said "ok dude, it's your right to commit suicide". All this would have been recorded on the dash cam and shown he was reasonable in leaving.

If you're in a deadly weapon on wheels, what's the military lingo? Button the fuck up.

Some of the most settled case law... police have no duty to protect anyone, whether it's suicidal people walking in the street from oncoming traffic, or the oncoming traffic from suicidal people in the street.

[solid12345]

It's not looking good for the narrative of the gentle giant...first the video of him manhandling that poor 5 ft. Clerk to steal those cigarillos comes out...then today it is revealed the officer had a fractured skull, now some of Browns raps come out boasting about murdering people and pounding some pussy

http://soopermexican.com/2014/08/15/listen-to-mike-browns-very-explicit-rap-songs-featuring-drugs-drinking-and-murder/

I'm no fan of the police, especially hate the militarization of them over the last few decades, but the left sure knows how to pick them when looking for a crusade, be it Tawana Brawley, the prostitute who lied about being raped by the Duke Lacrosse Team, Trayvon Martin, now this. The sad part is there have been numerous cases of real police abuse that go unnoticed because the media can't use them to divide people for ratings.

[beetcoin]

i don't really have a stance on what happened or didn't, but i do think there's a lot of racial tension in the country.. and black people have been disenfranchised for quite some time.

[freedomno1]

If officer Wilson did indeed kill Michael Brown in cold blood....why didn't he shoot and kill his friend Dorian Johnson, the main witness to the shooting too? Dead men tell no tales...

Since there were people in the house watching
It was a cold blood murder with more than a few sets of witnesses.

That said I was amused that a US think tank told Amnesty International to suck it after they sent 13 observers to check it out.
Also other countries get to condemn the USA for its human right abuses for once lol.

In response to the ongoing chaos in Ferguson, Mo., Amnesty International posted on Twitter that the United States “can’t tell other countries to improve their records on policing and peaceful assembly if it won’t clean up its own human rights record.”

Well, in response to that tweet, the Center for Strategic and International Studies told Amnesty, and we quote, to “suck it.”

Behold:
http://time.com/3145199/think-tank-says-its-sorry-for-telling-amnesty-international-to-suck-it-on-twitter/

[beetcoin]

the thing that perplexes me is why the government is giving all these military-grade weapons to police officers.. is government working with weapons manufacturers just to make money? and isn't that basically welfare for those corporations?

[freedomno1]

the thing that perplexes me is why the government is giving all these military-grade weapons to police officers.. is government working with weapons manufacturers just to make money? and isn't that basically welfare for those corporations?

I know the answer to this one so will share it
After 9/11 the military basically gives away all its old weaponry and gear to police forces for free, they are basically hand me downs to them.
In a sense yes the manufacturers do sell new stuff to the military and the old stuff gets given away so it likely is a way of getting the money back that corporations spend on lobbying politicians to purchase their products.

Corporatism at its best/worst in a sense.


http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/08/america-police-military-swat-ferguson-westcott-tampa

The nasty little secret of policing's militarization is that taxpayers are subsidizing it through programs overseen by the Pentagon, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Justice Department.

Take the 1033 program. The Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) may be an obscure agency within the Department of Defense, but through the 1033 program, which it oversees, it's one of the core enablers of American policing's excessive militarization. Beginning in 1990, Congress authorized the Pentagon to transfer its surplus property free of charge to federal, state, and local police departments to wage the war on drugs. In 1997, Congress expanded the purpose of the program to include counterterrorism in section 1033 of the defense authorization bill. In one single page of a 450-page law, Congress helped sow the seeds of today's warrior cops.

The amount of military hardware transferred through the program has grown astronomically over the years. In 1990, the Pentagon gave $1 million worth of equipment to US law enforcement. That number had jumped to nearly $450 million in 2013. Overall, the program has shipped off more than $4.3 billion worth of materiel to state and local cops, according to the DLA.

[TaunSew]

Where do you see the hand me downs?   They have National Guard there and you can tell who is better supplied and it's not the military.



You won't find any regulars in the armed forces as well equipped as these guys.  Maybe the Rangers, Navy Seals or some special forces types but those are niche occupations and they're small in number compared with all these militarized policemen.

It's not uncommon these days that the average policemen has weapons in the back of his Squad Car which is worth more than the car itself.

[freedomno1]

Where do you see the hand me downs?   They have National Guard there and you can tell who is better supplied and it's not the military.

You won't find any regulars in the armed forces as well equipped as these guys.  Maybe the Rangers, Navy Seals or some special forces types but those are niche occupations and they're small in number compared with all these militarized policemen.

It's not uncommon these days that the average policemen has weapons in the back of his Squad Car which is worth more than the car itself.

I guess by definition they meant the combat military hand me downs not the civilian forces/reserves hand me downs that the National Guard receives or buys for itself XD

Honestly the increasing militarization of American Police is chilling stuff, do they really need to be that overkill it's just inviting some sort of homegrown terrorism or fear of police.

I got a molotov cocktail protester well I got a few combat vehicles ...

[bitsmichel]

If officer Wilson did indeed kill Michael Brown in cold blood....why didn't he shoot and kill his friend Dorian Johnson, the main witness to the shooting too? Dead men tell no tales...

Reports say that Michel Brown was shot 7 times, so if this media report is true then it's clear Wilson wanted him dead. If he shoots one person he could claim it's an incident,  if he shoots more than one person he has no excuse.

[itsAj]

If officer Wilson did indeed kill Michael Brown in cold blood....why didn't he shoot and kill his friend Dorian Johnson, the main witness to the shooting too? Dead men tell no tales...

The problem here that people find hard to understand is that a person who is unarmed can still be a threat to an openly armed person if they run up on you, which is allegedly what set this situation off. I'm not a stranger to how cops lie or operate but every situation needs to be taken individually and not this meme of the poor black, unarmed teenager being murdered based on sensationalism. People grow up fast on the streets and learn mostly bad habits in drug addled, welfare dependent and single mother homes. At first, even I was hot on the police's ass for perhaps shooting first and asking questions later but after the situation had developed I knew there were extenuating circumstances. This cop was travelling through the 'hood' by himself as a white guy and it sounds like he didn't escalate the situation but the other way around which is unfathomable that someone would rush a cop when they're merely telling you to get off the street. However, I was happy for average people who view the news to see how militarized these cops can be. Unfortunately, this is now front and center and all other societal ills are overshadowed and likely will be for some time. Depending on how things go, this could be a rallying cry by the democrats for the midterms.

This is right. I would not at all be surprised if the so-called witnesses to the incident have lied about what they saw in order to make the police (who they despise for arresting them and their friends for doing and dealing drugs) look bad. It is very much a part of the inner-city culture to "hate" the police and to celebrate when anything bad happens to them.