Posted on 08/16/2014 7:01:18 AM PDT by lwd
The "narrative" of Ferguson, Missouri changed somewhat today. But, amid the confusion, the blundering stupidity of the city's police department remains consistent.
This morning the Police Chief, Thomas Jackson, released security-camera shots of the late Michael Brown apparently stealing a five-dollar box of cigarillos from a convenience store. So the 18-year old shot dead by Chief Jackson's officer was no longer a "gentle giant" en route to college but just another crappy third-rate violent teen n'er-do-well.
{SNIP}
It's important, when something goes wrong, to be clear about what it is that's at issue. Talking up Michael Brown as this season's Trayvonesque angel of peace and scholarship was foolish, and looting stores in his saintly memory even worse. But this week's pictures from Ferguson, such as the one above, ought to be profoundly disquieting to those Americans of a non-looting bent.
The most basic problem is that we will never know for certain what happened. Why? Because the Ferguson cruiser did not have a camera recording the incident. That's simply not credible. "Law" "enforcement" in Ferguson apparently has at its disposal tear gas, riot gear, armored vehicles and machine guns ...but not a dashcam. That's ridiculous.
(Excerpt) Read more at steynonline.com ...
That's right, and you are short on data. For example, of the 450 no-knock raids made in New York City alone, PER MONTH, 10% were to the wrong address. That's how bad it's getting. This is a much bigger and more persistent problem than you apparently realize.
Steyn’s point is not whether this Brown kid was guilty or innocent, but why the camo, why the undeniable militarization of our domestic police?
The sheer number of rounds fired and the annual number of “justifiable” homocides should give one pause as to what is going on here.
Why not have all police cars with dash cams? It couldn’t hurt and it just might protect both the officer and the public.
Putting down rioting and looting is a job requiring heavier firepower and a higher level of training, but it seems like SWAT teams have become the norm for situations that never required them before.
He wasn’t going to college, he was going to a vocational school to be work on heating and air conditioners.
What do ya mean? Ferguson is for all intents is part of St. Louis, look at the map. It's simply a suburb with an imaginary line separating it from a major city, St. Louis. Like LA is to Long Beach, Yonkers to NY.
BTW, small town law enforcement agencies are some of the most corrupt in the country.
If the Pentagon can afford to give away equipment that we use against foreign enemies to local police for use against We the
People, perhaps they could throw in some of the video cameras that our troops wear.
Anyone authorized to carry a gun to enforce the law should be required to have all their actions recorded.
What I mean is that Steyn was griping in his article about small town cops who were bullys...and it is unfair to compare that type of policing that has to be done in an urban population.
Stopped reading at the $5 box of cigars. It was closer to $50.
It started with the Clintons... police work and a ‘police state’ are two very different concepts. Giuliani was doing a broken window strategy. Totally different.
And what I mean is small town law enforcement agencies are some of the most corrupt in the country.
This is no secret.
I dismiss your dismissal. I make an excellent point.
Unplug the router and they'd go.
Steyn is part of the problem. The security camera did not show the perp with a $5 box of cigarellos. He had something a little more substantial than what one would have if they purchased $5 worth of phony cigars. A five-dollar box of cigarillos would be roughly the size of a pack of cigarettes. One of the biggest issues here is getting the facts straight, no matter how trivial. In this case, a writer is minimizing a minor detail of the story and speeding off into the night to make his case on a totally different subject, leaving this supposed "fact" floating in the air for others to grasp and use for their own false arguments. Drive-by reporting as Rush would say.
I saw Andrea Tantaros do the same thing yesterday as she alluded to "a pack of cigarettes" being the property robbed from the store. Now, in the grand scheme of things, whether it be a "pack of cigarettes" or a "five dollar box of cigarellos" or, as initially reported, a $48 carton of Swisher Sweet Cigars, it doesn't really matter. But what good is the rest of your argument if you base it on "facts" that you have conciously chose to exaggerate, or otherwise not adequately proven, to sell your opinion?
It's like my ex... "I only spent like $35 or $40, but do you like it? Isn't it pretty? I reeeeally had a rough week at work..."
That didn't take long to realize that when she said that she actually spent closer to $45 or $50 (not including tax).
I'm sorry, that video needs to be renamed 'how not to get killed by the police.' Because if you do a lot of the stuff in the video, these days, you're far more likely to end up dead or in critical care for gun shot wounds rather than simply getting the appropriate *ss whooping that you desperately deserve.
“The store owner did not report any theft and did not volunteer the video as evidence.”
I’m pretty sure the store owner figured he would be dead meat if the racists knew it was him who did report it.
Gems? Not in my opinion.
First he mentions dash cams. Did the Brown incident happen right in front of the police car? If it happened to the side, the dash cam isn’t going to pick it up. The dept. I worked for got cameras put in the cars. The company that installed them screwed them all up and they eventually had to be sent back one by one to be fixed. Then the computers that downloaded all the information were insufficient for the cause and that created all kinds of problems. Point is, a dash cam only picks up things to the front of the car.
More departments are going to cameras that are directly placed on the officer. What the cost is I don’t know.
Then he goes on about the military style clothing. Most of that is worn by SWAT. Do they wear other colors than camo? Yes. We had black, I’ve seen blue. Could they wear another color? I suppose. Here’s the point. A pair of patrol pants cost me about $100 bucks. A pair of BDU pants cost about $30. Patrol pants don’t hold up as well as BDU’s. Same for the shirts. I doubt that SWAT is going to completely go away in America. I think changes have to be made though.
But I think the biggest thing about this article is comparing the police in Germany (also mentioning England and Wales) to the police here. Do we want to become a European socialist state so we can have lower crime? What are the gun laws in Germany? From what I’ve read good luck trying to have a gun there, self-defense evidently is not a valid reason to own a gun.
How many German cops are killed in the line of duty per year? I could find no numbers on that. I did find stats on homicides. In Germany one year (don’t remember which) there were about 660. Same year in the U.S. there were over 14,000. Violent crimes in America way outnumber violent crime in Germany as well.
Two very different countries.
Here’s a “gem.” “Which brings us back to the death of Michael Brown. Let’s assume for the sake of argument that everything the police say about this incident is correct. In that case, whether or not the fatal shooting of Mr Brown is a crime, it’s certainly a mistake. When an unarmed shoplifter* in T-shirt and shorts with a five-buck cigar box in one hand has to be shot dead, you’re doing it wrong.”
Is Steyn discounting the possibility of Brown attacking the officer in the car, trying to take his gun, etc.? If that’s the way it happened I don’t think the officer ‘did it wrong.’
So, I believe you're right about all of that...
My concern is the point where it became ‘police vs citizens’... and the militarization of the police as we know them... Opps company just arrived... later.
The argument of the Usual Suspects that Brown was "innocent" because he was unarmed is a fallacy in and of itself. A letter-writer in today's Houston Chronicle makes that point clear: police (or others) are not debarred from using deadly force simply because the perp/shootee-designate is not armed. E.g.: look what Trayvon did to George Zimmermann with his bare hands.
That dog won't hunt. "Brown was an innocent victim because he was not armed!" Bullhockey.
It appears he is, and if the reports I heard days ago, that Brown was fighting the officer in the officer's own squad car, are true, then Steyn is just wrong.
You are tempted to say “It’s just a $5 cigar”. But light that $5 cigar and try to walk through airport security and get on a plane and that $5 cigar becomes a major crime.
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