Posted on 09/05/2014 4:01:52 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Moves to uncover the youth records of the 18-year-old Black youth are misplaced and akin to efforts to blame the victim.
In the days after Michael Brown was shot in Ferguson, Missouri, there was a behind-the-scenes tug of war between the local police officials and the Justice Department over the integrity of releasing a video of the 18-year-old Black man shoplifting some cigars from a neighborhood convenience store.
Justice Department officials contended that releasing the unflattering video of Brown served no practical purpose and that it was motivated by a desire to portray the young man in a negative light. That, they wisely concluded, might further stir passions on the streets of Ferguson in an already tense period.
The Ferguson police, however, dismissed the concerns and requests of the Justice Department and went ahead with the release of the video. The video, shot in a convenience store, have no bearing on the shooting of Brown. In fact, the police officer who shot the young man made clear that he knew nothing of the event when he confronted Brown on that fateful afternoon on a Ferguson street.
In cases like that of Michael Brown, just as in the case of Trayvon Martin, there is always an undercurrent of character assassination. There are forces that always seem to make effort to portray the unarmed, dead teenager as someone whose life was so checkered that the average person paying attention to the story might feel some degree of sympathy for Darren Wilson, the Ferguson police officer who shot and killed Brown.
The issue of digging into Michael Brown’s past did not end with the video taken in the convenience store. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch and an online journalist in California filed separate actions in the Family Court of St. Louis to expose whether Brown had legal troubles as a youth. In making their case, the organizations said the public had a right to know about any past indiscretions on the part of young Brown.
Such history is completely irrelevant to the decision to kill him (in the interest of full disclosure, I worked for the St. Louis newspaper during a summer while in college and my father had been the first Black reporter there in the 1940s through the early 1960s). Juvenile records are confidential in the state of Missouri. However, police have maintained that Brown had no criminal record as an adult. More than anything, Michael Brown deserves the same level of privacy that everyone else is entitled to in the state of Missouri.
People should abandon their witch hunts. If there is significant baggage to the life of Michael Brown, let it come out in the course of a swift trial against Darren Wilson, which would be the best outcome of this tragic event.
Real bad.
And as if on cue, just five minutes after your comment: New Evidence Indicates Michael Brown's Friend Joined Attack on Ferguson Cop.
I love it when the mask slips and we find out who these people really are.
So, they spoke up when the police officer’s address was made public? (since they are so concerned about the right to privacy, I mean).
That’s true. Luckily for FR, his records will leak somehow and we will decide!
And his criminal record is completely relevant, especially since they tried to portray him as an upstanding college-bound citizen, and also considering that just moments before he had used violence to rob a store.
Well said.
Funny. Or when George Zimmerman’s, his parents, that poor elderly couple who had nothing to do with it, the time the Black Panthers put a $10,000 (later a million dollar) bounty on Zimmerman wanted “dead or alive” which is a felony and etc., etc...
They want to have it their way, no matter how contradictory. They want complete power and freedom, minus any responsibility. Another example is in the calls for the Ferguson PD to “reflect the community”, while at the same time denying that right to majority-white communities, and also demanding jobs (for which few qualified blacks apply) in safer, low-crime white communities.
How true, he wrote” People should abandon their witch hunts. If there is significant baggage to the life of Michael Brown, let it come out in the course of a swift trial against Darren Wilson, which would be the best outcome of this tragic event”.
He meant to say “let it come out in the course of a swift LYNCHING against Darren Wilson”
I agree. As long as they are enabled by everyone from the Leftists, to the media, to the top of our government, they’ll never grow up.
Darren Wilson’s record has been exposed. He came from a troubled department but had no record of trouble himself.
“There is a class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs-partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs. ~ Booker T. Washington (1856-1915.) ~ Educator, Author, Civil Rights Leader
Never let a tragic event involving black Americans go to waste scream racism loudly and nonstop -- immediately! before facts eliminate the opportunity.
You are right to love black people.
Correct. That couple actually had to leave their own home. They had absolutely nothing to do with any of it. But that didn’t bother Spike Lee or the Black Pampers. They want white blood, any white blood.
His criminal record and the convenience store robbery have a huge bearing on Michael Brown’s own behavior.
If he were an innocent, upstanding citizen, the story that he attacked a cop, fractured his eye socket, and was coming back to finish the job when he was shot, would make no sense. What would be his motivation.
If, however, one takes into account that he was in trouble with the law, perhaps on probation, and had just roughed up a shopkeeper, Michael Brown’s actions make a lot more sense.
As far as he knew, Officer Wilson was stopping him for knocking over the convenience store. If he had already been in trouble with the law, he might have been facing some pretty severe penalties for his most recent crime. If so, the story that he made a decision to struggle with the police officer is much more plausible.
And finally, it is silly to say the video make Michael Brown look bad. Michael Brown made Michael Brown look bad. Stealing stuff and roughing up shopkeepers is bad, whether the video winds up on the news or not.
And how is he a “victim” anyway when he got what he got only after assaulting the police officer, severely? Blacks are always victims, no matter what-and even when it’s self-inflicted, like the looted businesses, whites are to blame and must pony up whatever is required to “fix” it.
From his father and Anthony Shahid, he has leaned to write Black.
All relevant points, well said.
That’s like saying My Lai is my fault even though I enlisted 10 years after it happened.
First sentence BS alert. The evidence we have so far is the only known "victim" is the Mini Mart owner strong-armed and robbed by Mike and his criminal friend.
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