Posted on 11/26/2014 9:36:31 AM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
The bitter irony of the Michael Brown case is that if he had actually put his hands up and said don't shoot, he would almost certainly be alive today. His family would have been spared an unspeakable loss, and Ferguson, Missouri wouldn't have experienced multiple bouts of rioting, including the torching of at least a dozen businesses the night it was announced that Officer Darren Wilson wouldn't be charged with a crime.
Instead, the credible evidence (i.e., the testimony that doesn't contradict itself or the physical evidence) suggests that Michael Brown had no interest in surrendering. After committing an act of petty robbery at a local business, he attacked Officer Wilson when he stopped him on the street. Brown punched Wilson when the officer was still in his patrol car and attempted to take his gun from him.
The first shots were fired within the car in the struggle over the gun. Then, Michael Brown ran. Even if he hadn't put his hands up, but merely kept running away, he would also almost certainly be alive today. Again, according to the credible evidence, he turned back and rushed Wilson. The officer shot several times, but Brown kept on coming until Wilson killed him.
This is a terrible tragedy. It isn't a metaphor for police brutality or race repression or anything else, and never was. Aided and abetted by a compliant national media, the Ferguson protestors spun a dishonest or misinformed version of what happened—Michael Brown murdered in cold blood while trying to give up—into a chant ("hands up, don't shoot") and then a mini-movement.
When the facts didn't back their narrative, they dismissed the facts and retreated into paranoid suspicion of the legal system. It apparently required more intellectual effort than almost any liberal could muster even to say, "You know, I believe policing in America is deeply unjust, but in this case the evidence is murky and not enough to indict, let alone convict anyone of a crime."
They preferred to charge that the grand jury process was rigged, because St. Louis County prosecutor Robert McCulloch didn't seek an indictment of Wilson and allowed the grand jury to hear all the evidence and make its own decision. This, Chris Hayes of MSNBC deemed so removed from normal procedure that it’s unrecognizable.
It's unusual, yes, but not unheard of for prosecutors to present a case to a grand jury without a recommendation to indict. Regardless, who could really object to a grand jury hearing everything in such a sensitive case? If any of the evidence were excluded that, surely, would have been the basis of other howls of an intolerably stacked deck.
It’s a further travesty, according to the Left, that Officer Wilson was allowed to testify to the grand jury. Never mind that it is standard operating procedure. As former prosecutor Andrew McCarthy points out, guilty parties usually don't testify because they have to do it without their lawyer present and anything they say can be used against them.
It is also alleged that the prosecutor McCulloch is biased because his father was a cop who was killed by a criminal. Follow this argument though to its logical conclusion and McCulloch would be unable to handle almost all cases, because of his engrained bias against criminality.
Finally, there is the argument that Wilson should have been indicted so there could be a trial "to determine the facts." Realistically, if a jury of Wilson's peers didn't believe there was enough evidence to establish probable cause to indict him, there was no way a jury of his peers was going to convict him of a crime, which requires the more stringent standard of beyond a reasonable doubt.
Besides, we don't try people for crimes they almost certainly didn't commit just to satisfy a mob that will throw things at the police and burn down local businesses if it doesn't get its way. If the grand jury had given into the pressure from the streets and indicted as an act of appeasement, the mayhem most likely would have only been delayed until the inevitable acquittal in a trial.
The agitators of Ferguson have proven themselves proficient at destroying other people's property, no matter what the rationale. This summer, they rioted when the police response was "militarized" and rioted when the police response was un-militarized. Local businesses like the beauty-supply shops Beauty Town (hit repeatedly) and Beauty World (burned on Monday night) have been targeted for the offense of existing, not to mention employing people and serving customers.
Liberal commentators 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, or what Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo calls an "irritated cheek." The subtext is that if only Wilson had allowed Brown to beat him up and perhaps take his gun, things wouldn't have had to escalate.
There is good reason for a police officer to be in mortal fear in the situation Officer Wilson faced, though. In upstate New York last March, a police officer responded to a disturbance call at an office, when suddenly a disturbed man pummeled the officer as he was attempting to exit his vehicle and then grabbed his gun and shot him dead. The case didn't become a national metaphor for anything.
Ferguson, on the other hand, has never lacked for media coverage, although the narrative of a police execution always seemed dubious and now has been exposed as essentially a fraud. "Hands up, don't shoot" is a good slogan. If only it was what Michael Brown had done last August.
QUESTION for all the unarmed child supporters.........what happeneds if you decide to take an officers gun?
If the Politico is admitting the facts, it must be really bad for the liberal/progressive writers. Their meme must be exploding.
So, then, who forces the millions of retractions and apologies that are due the honest families of Ferguson, MO?
George Zimmerman might beg to differ here.
If Wilson or anyone would simply point out that he (Wilson) was protecting the community, and not just Wilson it would be better.
In any case, body cameras are not the answer. Our judicial system works when used properly
People either believe this or not. No amount of camera recording will convince the unconvincible
I wanna know WHY this became such a ridiculous national story? Who benefits from this? What is the agenda that keeps this story alive? Anyone with 2 brain cells in their head can clearly see he was a thug and acted stupid and reckless. You try and reach for a cops gun you’re pretty much guaranteed something bad is going to happen.
Why was Trayvon such a big deal?
> “This is a terrible tragedy”
No it’s not. A tragedy is an unforeseeable event, a freak event like a tree falling on a passerby.
Attacking a cop has consequences. Brown attacked a cop, the consequences are obvious. He had a chance to surrender, he charged instead. There’s nothing tragic about it - he got what he wanted.
Hear! Hear!
That begs the same question! Who is doing this and why? Who stands to profit from this? Media sells more ad time cuz nobody watches their crap anymore otherwise. That’s who’s pockets I see getting fat by this!
As an expression of justice, no. As an expression of naked political power, that is precisely what the Left was (and remains) after in this. Are we actually to believe that the 170 cities the media are trumpeting participated in demonstrations did so spontaneously? Not a chance.
The original Occupy riots were a tune-up. This was a dress rehearsal. The next one will be for real.
What Good Can a Handgun Do Against An Army?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-backroom/2312894/posts
It does seem that the puppet masters are replacing blacks with Hispanics. There is now a situation that clearly shows (as does the Obama administration) that blacks will not stand up and criticize other blacks. Not just a wimper, but get out there in Ferguson and other protest locations and demand that the outside agitators leave their city.
All those Hispanics and other invaders getting Obama work permits? They've just become a whole lot more employable than blacks, who should be protesting and demanding that US citizens get US jobs. Instead, they're defending the right of agitators to burn their communities.
“It’s unusual, yes, but not unheard of for prosecutors to present a case to a grand jury without a recommendation to indict. Regardless, who could really object to a grand jury hearing everything in such a sensitive case? If any of the evidence were excluded that, surely, would have been the basis of other howls of an intolerably stacked deck.”
I have served on a Criminal Grand Jury here in California. I did not feel that the prosecutor was trying to stack the deck in the four cases I heard, but rather simply layout what had occurred and let us decide whether or not there was enough evidence to indict. A Grand Jury is simply a mechanism to bypass arraignment and all the pre-trial crap that clogs up the system. It’s a good process from my experiences with it.
Are there still Freepers who believe that the main problem is scary-looking cops rather than rioting vandals?
Look through the various other Ferguson threads. There’s all kinds of them.
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