You've got people rioting and looting, throwing Molotov cocktails at cops, and from reports on live TV last night shooting at cops, what are they supposed to do? Rioting, looting, throwing bombs and shooting at cops or others isn't allowed, period. It doesn't matter how pissed off you are, you're not allowed to respond in that manner. If you do you're going to get fire-hosed, tased, shot or arrested, and the fault will lie squarely on YOU. If I'm the governor and that stuff is going down then of fucking course I establish a curfew and mobilize the National Guard. What else am I supposed to do, let them destroy the city? Burn businesses and homes, steal whatever they want? Bullshit.

When this first occurred I was on the side of the victim and viewed the cop's actions as culpable and illegal. I'm not so sure now, because more evidence is surfacing that lends credence to the police story. However, I'll refrain from judgement until more information is in, but if it turns out that Brown charged at the cop instead of putting up his hands and meekly surrendering then I'll have to say it was his own fault. You don't fight with a cop, how fucking hard it that to understand? If you do you'll get your ass handed to you on a platter at best, at worst you'll be lying on a slab in the mortuary. That's how it works.

Under no circumstance is this an excuse to go get a new flat screen TV, and if I were in charge looters would be shot on sight.

Some, at least, of the "looting" was for milk, a popular, though untested, treatment for exposure to tear gas.

That's not what's being described as looting so for you to try and play it off as though it is is a bit dishonest IMO.

orpheus wrote:

Acetone wrote:

So this is the way you think a society should be run? Cops should just be allowed to shoot "thugs"?

How, pray tell, will this sorting of citizens into "thug" and "not thug" be done, I wonder?

I'm certain that skin colour will play no part whatsoever in this process.

Yes, that's exactly what I said, cops should just be allowed to shoot thugs.

Why did you erase the rest of the post which clearly points to I'm being facetious?

Kind of funny that I'm pointing out that someone is trying to misrepresent what I said and you quotemine my sarcasm about it.

Thanks for clarifying that. I didn't get that it was facetious either.

Yep, here are some of those marginalized citizens, stealing crusts of bread to fed their starving children and milk to soothe their chemical burns.

I'm pretty sure that's hair extensions!

I'm not going to condemn all of the protesters, or poor people, because of some scum-bags.

Acetone wrote:

orpheus wrote:

Acetone wrote:

So this is the way you think a society should be run? Cops should just be allowed to shoot "thugs"?

How, pray tell, will this sorting of citizens into "thug" and "not thug" be done, I wonder?

I'm certain that skin colour will play no part whatsoever in this process.

Yes, that's exactly what I said, cops should just be allowed to shoot thugs.

Why did you erase the rest of the post which clearly points to I'm being facetious?

Kind of funny that I'm pointing out that someone is trying to misrepresent what I said and you quotemine my sarcasm about it.

My apologies — I really didn't know you were being facetious.


Edit: I see I'm not the only one.

re: looting

While I do not think its justified, except for Jean Valjean, how come some people loot and some do not? Sure, some people are probably "bad" by nature, but seeing how it happens around the globe when there is lack of order, except perhaps Japan, I do not find such answer satisfactory. This is not to say it should be allowed, just perhaps the real problem is "bad" environment.

Oldskeptic wrote:
I want to know, and so should you, is how a cop in a police car got his left arm around the neck of a 6'4" Big Mike while the cop was still in his seat? I'll tell you how. Big Mike stuck his head through the window going for the cop. The lying sack of shit and his script writers were too fucking stupid to figure out that you can't just reach out the window of a car and grab a man that tall around the neck.

The cop was not in a car but an SUV I believe so grabbing the collar of his shirt wouldn't be that difficult.

Then according to the lying sack of shit Big Mike was running away and the cop shot Big Mike in the back. Good story, but according to Baden's autopsy Big Mike wasn't shot in the back.

It seems plausible that he was struck from behind in the arm based upon the location of the bullets. He certainly wasn't running with his hands down and palms forward. I believe Baden's assistant said as much.

Its also plausible that he was shot with his arms up either surrendering or perhaps trying to use them to shield bullets if he were charging. But they aren't locations you would expect to find on someone hit in front who was running in a typical running form.


Seen ten minutes earlier pushing around and threatening a shop clerk and walking out of a store without paying for the cigars he was stealing was just minding his own business when a cop decided to shoot him for no other reason than that he was black. Give me a fucking break.

Here's a scenario for you. Big Mike and his pal are walking down the middle of the road blocking traffic. The cop pulls up and tells them to get out of the road. They tell the cop to fuck off. The cop opens the door of the police car. Big Mike slams it on the cop and goes for the cop through the window. The cop gets his arm around Big Mike's neck, pulls his gun, and shoots Big Mike in the arm. Big Mike backs off out of the car. The cop gets out of the car and 6'4" 300 lb Big Mike is still belligerent, not backing off, so the cop empties his revolver into poor innocent unarmed 6'4" 300 lb Big Mike.

Mike clearly had backed off since his body was found almost 15 yards from where the car was. So he had clearly ran at least that far. He apparently ran quite a bit further if we believe the officers account that Brown turned and was charging at him wouldn't go down despite getting hit multiple times.

So in that case Brown would seem to have sprint at least 20-25 yards away, stopped and turned around then started charging back into the gunfire towards the cop. Not saying that didn't happen but it is bizarre behavior to say the least.

Are police over reacting? You tell me what you'd want your police to do if protests were turning into looting riots and arson in your town? Yeah! Your town, your street, your business. What the fuck do you want them to do?

There have not been riots, arson, and looting in the town every night. In fact there was no real problems going on Wednesday until the cops showed up with their armored vehicles with snipers on top and the rest of their crew in full body armor and camo pointing rifles demanding the peaceful crowd to go home for no real reason.

Just to clear up a few posts that bother me,

The earliest reports was he was running away, the cop shot him, he turned with arms up, but the cop kept shooting.

Firebombs. I have yet to see a single photo of the damage done. Bullets, not seen a hole either, and it was a bean bag to start with. I think some of the cops heard their own sides weapons going off and blamed the protesters. Lets not forget the cops called the riot act and the people did not instantly obey them. Which we know is currently free licence to be killed in the USA.

Oldskeptic wrote:

Sciwoman wrote:

Peter Brown wrote:

Sciwoman wrote:

What in the goddamn fucking hell requires that kind of response outside of imminent threat to someone's life?

You can't count the number of bullets used as a contributing factor as from every report I've watched regarding US police gun use I simply doesn't matter how many officers to how many suspects there are. Each officer, even if there had been twenty of them, will fire the whole clip and reload.

How silly of me to think that using the minimum amount of force necessary to get the situation under control would be the sensible thing to do.

So tell me, if you have a 6'4" three hundred pound man coming at you in close quarters how long do you wait in between shots to determine that the last one was sufficient to get the situation under control?

Rethinking the 21 Foot Rule



I have a feeling that most people--most armed people, like LE--in that situation would empty the magazine/cylinder just to be sure.

A reading of "the law" when in a self defense situation mentions NOTHING about how many shots you may get off or where they are to land. The prevailing advice/training/pertinent etc stuff is that one continues to fire until the threat is stopped. Stopped, down, no longer able to threaten. If that means dead, so be it.

Peter Brown wrote:Just to clear up a few posts that bother me,

The earliest reports was he was running away, the cop shot him, he turned with arms up, but the cop kept shooting.

Firebombs. I have yet to see a single photo of the damage done. Bullets, not seen a hole either, and it was a bean bag to start with. I think some of the cops heard their own sides weapons going off and blamed the protesters. Lets not forget the cops called the riot act and the people did not instantly obey them. Which we know is currently free licence to be killed in the USA.

NONE In The Back: Brown Autopsy Shows He Was Shot In The Front Of The Body
No exit wounds.

Addicting Info is currently down for some reason. I'm going to guess servers got flooded too hard after they released a few articles on this case.

One on the fact the 'Robbery'video shows in fact just a dispute not a theft.

and Anonymous having released the Audio recordings of the incident.. If It comes back Up I can put the links up once more but right now it's all cloudflare backups which aren't helpful.

Edit: Double post Turned into links.

The store "Robery"
http://www.addictinginfo.org/2014/08/18 ... pd-busted/

Whatever words were exchanged between the man in the video and the store owner, they were not considered very serious, as the store owner nor the employees did not report a theft at the store. According to the stores attorney, the owners were bewildered when the police approached them demanding the surveillance tapes.

The store owners are now afraid of themselves becoming a target, due to the Ferguson PD’s attempt to tie their store to the fateful shooting. A gross abuse of police authority, one which now puts someone else at risk.

Dispatch Audio
http://www.addictinginfo.org/2014/08/15 ... -dispatch/

The Ferguson Police department attempted to take control of the civil unrest surrounding the cold blooded killing of a teenaged boy by a police officer. They attempted to try and cover their hides by claiming that the victim had robbed a convenience store earlier that day. However that excuse collapsed when it was revealed that the officer had no idea about the robbery at the time of the shooting.

Dispatch was not even aware of the shooting for several minutes after it happened. And when they contacted dispatch, it was not over the shooting, it was because they were worried about the people gathering. In reality, it took almost half an hour for the transmission of the shooting’s scope to be transmitted to the county dispatch.

Gallstones wrote:The prevailing advice/training/pertinent etc stuff is that one continues to fire until the threat is stopped. Stopped, down, no longer able to threaten. If that means dead, so be it.

The question, of course, is whether said stoppage did mean dead.

Wuffy wrote:One on the fact the 'Robbery'video shows in fact just a dispute not a theft.

I had heard that.

I really don't care that much ATM as the chief has said the cop did not even suspect Brown of being a suspect in the robbery until after the confrontation had begun.

The question really is whether the officer reasonably feared for his life when he shot an already-wounded unarmed man at a distance.

Nicko wrote:

Wuffy wrote:One on the fact the 'Robbery'video shows in fact just a dispute not a theft.

I had heard that.

I really don't care that much ATM as the chief has said the cop did not even suspect Brown of being a suspect in the robbery until after the confrontation had begun.

The question really is whether the officer reasonably feared for his life when he shot an already-wounded unarmed man at a distance.

That's really all that should matter. But as we see a lot of sentiment seems happy to dismiss this guy because he was potentially unsavory. Which is just... I can't even complete that thought on how much it worries me that this is actually a sentiment people seem to think is valid.

Came for some interesting discussion about the civil unrest in Missouri. Stayed for the war on hyperbole. Thank you, Ratskep.

Here's John Oliver's take on the matter.