If I ran a department, all cops would wear Google Glass with all video recordings uploaded in real-time to a central server. There’s no reason nowadays for the police not to have footage of arrests.
To be clear the perp wasn’t shot for stealing cigars....assault of a police officer occurred before the shooting. Time will tell if it was a good shoot or not but the narrative being floated doesn’t jive with that video!!
Just think what the gentle, college bound giant could’ve accomplished if he had not run into that policeman.
Has the world perhaps been denied the developer of a cure against cancer, diabetes, depression and hangnail?
Someone reported it though, because it was broadcast to the police.
I'm not sure if a dashcam would have recorded the actual shooting because the action was on the driver's side of the vehicle.
PING
First we were treated to Saint Trevon, now we have Saint Michael.
Seems the idiots we support and pay with our tax dollars see us - the public - as the enemy. It's mentally ill paranoid stuff. It fueled Lois Lerner. Kept the FBI from interviewing Tea Party member. Armed up Social Security with millions of bullets. It's nuts.
It's not just Ferguson it's happening around the country. Cops being told they're soldiers in a hostile country. That 'lone wolves' are out to get them.
Democrats are behind this paranoid police state mentality - with ONE exception. Democrats have exempted the people who protect our borders. I'm surprised they allow border agents to have guns. (Do you sense something's wrong?)
Brutal 'police as occupying force' was designed to intimidate middle class Americans. It started with lies put out by the Southern Poverty Law Center that conservative Americans wanted to kill police officers. That's where the militarization started. Totalitarian idiots like Holder and Jef took it to new heights... pushing lies about 'conservative lone wolves'... paranoia in the minds of these fools. So here we are sixteen years later with pictures that look more like a war zone than an American city.
I agree that the police are becoming too militarized, but I think Steyn is underestimating the type of feral crowds that exist in Ferguson as opposed to areas of Europe. Europe can get away with their socialist societies because almost everybody contributes and pays taxes. With ‘47%’ of Americans uneducated, uncivilized and unproductive, it leads to powder keg situations like Ferguson.
Secondly, if you think the police are so bad, take a look at what happened when there was no police.
I have no idea what actually happened, but it seems like there was a struggle in the police car (and I’ll assume it was the perp who started it, but I don’t even know that), this freaked the cop out as he was suddenly fighting for his life, the perp made a break for it, and in a panic the cop shot him dead.
If, as I describe above, my story is accurate, then the police officer is guilty of murder of some degree. When the mind panics, it essentially stops thinking and goes into survival mode. While this understandable on the human level, police officers are supposed to be trained to avoid panic and staying cool.
This does not mean the Perp was a good person. It does not mean the looting is justified. It only means the cops might have made a terrible mistake so bad, it cost a teen of questionable character his life. Not Good.
From a political standpoint, most black teens and young black adults are killed by other blacks. This, as we know, gets zero attention although it happens all the freakin’ time. When, however; a white dude kills a black dude, the left wing politicians try desperately to pull us back into 1950’s Selma Alabama. One of these days, I hope we can finally tell the ‘race hustlers’ to go blow.....the system is a a good one.....it’s in place.....and, all this will be sorted out in a court of law.
One very good point almost made here is, how about passing a law that all police departments install dash cams in the cars and the images are sent in real time to a secure site that the cops can’t get to when said images are ‘inconvenient’. Penalty, among others, all involved are fired for non-compliance including the chief or sheriff. Cops shouldn’t get in the car if the cam doesn’t work.
Steyn ping!
Money quote:
“In 2014, when a police cruiser doesn’t have a camera, it’s a conscious choice. And it should be regarded as such.”
I thought it worked out beautifully. The timing of the release of the video was perfect...while it did not defuse the passions do the looters--whose passionate are of the thieving variety--it took the wing out of the sails of the looting lawyers that became absurdly desperate as their anticipation of a big contingency fee payout slipped away from them.
It humiliated the race pimps. Sorry Mark--Michael Brown was just another mean punk.
I never thought I’d see the day conservatives would be writing pieces based on hearsay & testimony from lefty media types & lefty biased eyewitnesses.
This week, I’ve seen it time and again, and it’s embarrassing to see people like Steyn making statements on what they THINK is true, without bothering to know for sure.
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.
Stopped reading at the $5 box of cigars. It was closer to $50.
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).