The Darren Wilson case & Corruption in Ferguson

[Lord Raven]

Yeah so another case of a white cop killing an african american teen because the white cop is supposedly racist.  Let's bring the arguments in here.

I'm personally on the side where there's racism in society that causes this.  My viewpoint is a little more nuanced than that but that's basically the tl;dr summary.  I'll respond to people as they come in.

[sylar]

iiii think im gonna move responses from the how ya doin thread to this one, dont wanna clog it up or anything.

How many times did he shoot? If he shot more than once whilst he's acting initially in self-defence that's a loss of control and self-defence becomes ineligible as a defence for murder.

12 times, and i might have SOME numbers wrong in what i say next, but i think he was shot 2 times at the car, then 8 times between running and stopping with his hands up. which, by the way, is illegal in missouri. youre not allowed to shoot a fleeing suspect. in the trial(? is that the word?) of darren wilson, they were given documents that were deemed unconstitutional in the 80s as a means of defending wilson. (source)


also,

Someone blamed it on racism and everyone jumped on the racism bandwagon, that's what I meant.

I hate this sort of case just because people jump on the racism bandwagon too easily,

please stop saying people "hopped on the racism bandwagon". theres no bandwagon. nobody needs to jump on a bandwagon, nobody suddenly at one point whispered "do you think it might be... r-racism?" and suddenly everyone realised, at once, that "yeah, youre right!". you dont need to be blind to see that this is a white man, with ties to the kkk - you know what the kkk is, right? - as well as history of unnecessary brutality towards black people, shooting a black man for JAYWALKING. a white man would have been let off with a fine, a warning, anything but being shot to death.

we are listening to black peoples voices, those who have been through police brutality - some of whom have been through police brutality from wilson himself - for YEARS for just trying to live life. theyve seen that white people get away with so much more than what black people get killed for. BY POLICE. the black community worldwide have explained how and why this is racism. white people arent jumping the bandwagon, they arent just blindly following. theyve been presented with damning evidence, and have been bare witnesses to racism-driven police brutality towards their black peers, and they are seeing similarities in this case with those situations their black peers have faced and, as a result, listening to and amplifying the voices of black people who want their lives to matter.

i dont think wilson is innocent. i think hes racist, and i fully believe those presenting his case to the grand jury were just as racist and biased. i dont see how anyone could look at this and not see it as a racist act, no matter how much yall try to justify this as Not Racist, i just wont see it. im normally open minded and try to get different views and such, but theres just no way i can shift on this one because its just been proven too radically by so many sources for me to still look and listen to anything saying "its not racist, heres why:" to go "ah yeah thats a good point" haha.

[Lord Raven]

Kind of an FYI - the jury itself was 9 Caucasian Americans and 3 African-Americans.  The judge himself has a history of spottiness in his verdicts, and the Ferguson police have had their own horrible history of similar things, hiding evidence, and corruption.  To add onto this, Wilson did not carry a taser because it was basically uncomfortable for him to do so.

And the nail in the coffin is that this didn't go to trial.

[Kerou 犠牲]

12 times, and i might have SOME numbers wrong in what i say next, but i think he was shot 2 times at the car, then 8 times between running and stopping with his hands up. which, by the way, is illegal in missouri. youre not allowed to shoot a fleeing suspect. in the trial(? is that the word?) of darren wilson, they were given documents that were deemed unconstitutional in the 80s as a means of defending wilson. (source)

Yeah that shouldn't be defendable, didn't realise he could have had a taser instead until I saw Courtney's post in the other thread so even then it's negligence that he didn't have that which wouldn't have killed him :V

Not gonna go in depth into anything else other than this man seems like a nasty piece of work, absolutely disgusting. Sometimes I really do hate humanity =[

[sylar]

even worse on the taser point: he was outright asked, "do you think theres a way you could have prevented this?" and wilson said "no."

then admitted that he was given the option of a taser but it was just a bit uncomfortable so he chose not to take one.

im sure there was nothing that could have been done there pal, youre completely right lol.

[Milsap]

even worse on the taser point: he was outright asked, "do you think theres a way you could have prevented this?" and wilson said "no."

then admitted that he was given the option of a taser but it was just a bit uncomfortable so he chose not to take one.

im sure there was nothing that could have been done there pal, youre completely right lol.

Yeah, I mean those two long things that people use to walk with. One bullet there would have stopped someone in their tracks. It'd hurt like hell, but at least you'd live.

[Spriter]

(mutters some kind of apology for the other posts)

I was thinking the same thing, I saw the interview on the news and I was wondering why he couldn't shoot at the legs - but we know why, I suppose. Whatever distance it was that the poor guy was when he was shot dead (believe it was pointed out as further than 30 feet), with that sort of distance he could've and should've gone for the legs instead but nope, shot him dead :/ Not surprising if you give a look at the sources about Wilson.

[Lord Raven]

Shooting at the legs doesn't seem to do what we think it does - if he hits a nerve then he'll be on the verge of killing Brown.  It's far riskier than you think.

[Milsap]

Same could kinda be said for tasers. A guy over here got hit by one and died. There's a risk with anything, even these 'non lethal' rounds. A bean bag round to the back of the head for instance.

[Shaymin]

yeah but michael brown was shot twice in the head
aka a double tap
which yknow is illegal under the geneva convention

even if brown DID steal something, even if he DID seem threatening, Wilson had no right to take his life. he is not judge, jury, executioner. he was a cop. if he felt threatened, he should have called for backup, not unloaded twelve rounds in to brown

i've honestly been trying to avoid it on tumblr - lots of bogus stuff is going around, stuff without sources (ie, walmart giving wilson 10000$, which seems fishy)

i shall bring your attention to the case of another st louis cop, who is black. he hit a white man once with a baton (on the hand) because he was being unruly. he has been charged with second degree assault - and surprise surprise, was charged by the prosecutor who backed Darren Wilson.

Michael Brown didn't deserve to have been killed, no matter what he did. I'm sick of the fact people are saying Wilson's life is "over" when it's not - he'll go back to his job, sitting pretty on all the donations he's been getting whilst Brown is sitting six feet under with a future that was cruelly torn away from him.

[Milsap]

Double tapping is illegal? Because I've seen several SAS documentaries where former operatives have openly talked about doing it and training the FNGs to do it too.

[Shaymin]

well it may be legal in combat zones but this was an 18 yr old, unarmed, with his hands up in a peaceful civilian area, not a warzone.

also has anyone seen the pictures of wilson's so called "injuries"? he's trying to pass off shaving cuts and a birth mark as injuries

[Kpyna]

Yeah, I mean those two long things that people use to walk with. One bullet there would have stopped someone in their tracks. It'd hurt like hell, but at least you'd live.

Any sort of basic firearm training (maybe i just know this cause 'murica) will teach you that when you shoot, you have to shoot for the core of your target. You can't aim for legs because they're just too close to the ground. Even if you're an excellent shot, guns aren't always accurate, and bullets could easily ricochet off the ground and hit a bystander. That's kind of worst case scenario, but what's likely to happen is just having a high chance of missing entirely. So, basically, when you're shooting with a handgun, you do sort of have to shoot to kill.

That being said, I stand by this case less because of racism, and more due to police brutality and the trigger happy attitude american police have. There are so many ways to incapacitate people -- mace, tazer, rubber bullets -- guns should be an absolute last resort. This case should focus on the fact that cops are quick to use lethal force, which extends beyond race. Our government is so messed up in that respect that we don't even keep record of all of the people that get shot by police, but it's definitely in the range of hundreds per year, at the very least. This isn't even counting people's family pets which often end up with lead in their brains for absolutely no reason. Not sure if it's the same in other countries, but at least where I live, if an officer knocks at our door for any reason we freak out and hide the dogs since they'll just shoot them if your dog looks like it might get violent. Like, this is America and we can't trust officers around our freaking house pets. Not to get too off-topic with the dogs thing, but my point is, cops like to shoot first, ask questions later, and that's a totally wrong attitude from the people that you pay a chunk of your paycheck to to protect you.

Is it racially motivated? Yeah, I'd say yes. I don't think he had a logical thought process to shoot the kid, I just think it was kneejerk. It makes a lot of sense considering that it's a kneejerk reaction for a cop to shoot just about anyone or anything around here. Hell, I can recall several situations where a cop is asking me questions and he puts his hand on his gun. And I live in New Hampshire, which is one of the least sketchy places in the US.

Anyways, I just view Ferguson as a disgusting showcase of how out of control and impersonal cops have become. Cops do plenty of good, but we've been brainwashed to believe that they are flawless heroes. Not all of them are, I've met a few that are racist, sexist, unpredictable, and most likely have anger issues just in my experience. They don't get the nickname of "pigs" for nothing.

A few things I forgot to mention: There is no freaking excuse for a cop to not have something that can incapacitate someone without the objective of being lethal. In my opinion, in a perfect world, Officer Wilson should be able to get kicked off the police force for just refusing to wear that -- even if there were no altercations. We seriously need to purge all of the dangerous cops from our force.

[Turner]

Shades of Rodney King all over this to be honest. I'm not impressed by government funded body cameras either, it's nothing but a red herring considering the fact that the results we see in court prove that many of these officers are above the law anyway. If the riots continue, all we'll see is a scapegoat officer getting a suspended sentence for racially fueled violence that will quell the people into thinking something impressive or worthwhile has been done.

Other than that, I've seen this sort of thing happen so many times throughout history that Michael Brown is unfortunately just another name and a face. I'm more interested in what's actually going on in the background here, and while I don't doubt for a second that Brown was racially profiled, I don't think the cause is a random outbreak of 'racism' that has suddenly strung along a collection of black bodies over the past couple of years in particular. Firstly because as anyone who knows their history on the LA Riots/Rodney King incident and the surrounding culture that emerged will know that black cops were just as bad as white cops for singling out black motorists and pedestrians and subjecting them to various forms of police brutality.

And secondly because much like any of these outbreak incidences (LA Riots included), money is normally the motive. Considering that A) The US is/has been in deep recession recently and B) Violent crime in the US fell by 23% between 2000 and 2012, I would find it far more believable and likely that there is a tendency by some police forces around the country to fulfill a quota on incidences involving firearms in order to receive better funding for violent crimes (IE: Arms). Considering the lower-class black community is the easiest to instigate an adverse reaction from (gun crime), it's no surprise they would be ripe for profiling. And as we all know, like drugs, the police make a lot of money from seized weapons by selling them back to crooks.

But who knows, maybe it's something in the water. I'm sure if we burn enough KKK hoods and dox racists on the internet the problem will go away.

[Milsap]

Any sort of basic firearm training (maybe i just know this cause 'murica) will teach you that when you shoot, you have to shoot for the core of your target. You can't aim for legs because they're just too close to the ground. Even if you're an excellent shot, guns aren't always accurate, and bullets could easily ricochet off the ground and hit a bystander. That's kind of worst case scenario, but what's likely to happen is just having a high chance of missing entirely. So, basically, when you're shooting with a handgun, you do sort of have to shoot to kill.

Maybe I've played too many video games and seen too many films.

But then again. If you shoot one 9mm round at someone's torso, then that's enough. More likely to survive.

Shades of Rodney King all over this to be honest. I'm not impressed by government funded body cameras either, it's nothing but a red herring considering the fact that the results we see in court prove that many of these officers are above the law anyway.

British police have been using them since the spring (or summer, can't remember) and they've helped in not only catching crims, but proving people wrong when they scream police brutality or complain of racial profiling.