Ferguson No Fly Zone

[Greenday]

yeah, the way I interpret it, shooting brown DURING the close-quarters struggle in the car? probably justified, albeit regrettable. Shooting Brown while he was running away, even IF he turned around and charged Wilson? not justified, as he could, at that time, use the non-lethal options he had available.

Enough time to holster his current weapon and grab another one? Sure is easy to armchair it despite little believable evidence at hand and call him a murderer.

[D_Yeti_Esquire]

I'm not going to do this for a third thread, but from a legal standpoint keep this in mind:

Tennessee v. Garner 1985, "deadly force...may not be used unless necessary to prevent the escape and the officer has probable cause to believe that the suspect poses a significant threat of death or serious bodily harm to the officer or others."

From a legal standpoint, a jury would be forced to analyze this through what an objective police officer might conclude at the scene and the reality that an officer is often asked to make split second decisions. That's per Graham vs. Conner 1989.

So the grand jury's biggest question is going to be who they believe started the altercation in the car. If he started a scuffle with Brown for no reason, that becomes murder. You can't be absolved by the law using the above guidelines if the assault of an officer was precipitated by battery of a civilian. How they answer that question probably makes all the difference. They ought to just pass the buck to the jury trial and let them suss it out.

But as for what the number of gunshots probably means? By law, very little.

[Panacea]

Multiple gunshot wounds in the body of an unarmed suspect is always cause for concern.

Concern, certainly. Anytime a police officer shoots someone, armed or not, should be a cause for concern.

But the number of shots by itself doesn't put the situation in context. The context is very important; if it took that many shots to stop a charging suspect, then the amount of force is justified. That's the issue at question: did Michael Brown charge at Officer Wilson or not? The answer right now? We don't know. That's going to be one of the key issues the grand jury will grapple with.

Wilson testified he could not use pepper spray because of the close quarters and that he could not use his baton because it was on his belt behind him.

Having been accidentally pepper sprayed by a corrections officer who decided to fill up the cell of a psychotic and out of control inmate whom I was trying to verbally de-escalate, I can understand why Wilson didn't use pepper spray. In such close quarters he would have gotten himself as much as Brown, and placed himself at grave risk. You also need adequate space to use a baton. The confines of a car make that difficult. The gun was risky too, but Wilson clearly felt it was the least risky.

He testified that Brown simply attacked him out of nowhere when he parked his car.

There you go with the hyperbole again. Wilson didn't say "out of nowhere." He said that when he stopped his car to talk to Brown, Brown tried to slam the door shut on him.

Due to be unable to use non-lethal force and due to Brown being "incredibly strong" he felt he had to draw his service weapon to defend himself. The struggle for the weapon occurred after Wilson drew and pointed it at Brown. 2 shots were fired. One hit Brown. Brown fled.

This is not in dispute, so I'm wondering why you feel the need to repeat near verbatim the entire post I responded to.

At this point, Wilson decided to pursue. Wilson testified he did not radio for back up because his chest radio got changed to the wrong setting during the struggle ( that's an eyebrow raiser on a side note ).

No, it's not. I've used this type of radio before, when I worked for campus police in college, and when I do volunteer work for HOBY we use campus police radios of the type commonly used in law enforcement. The mic is attached to his chest; the radio itself is on his Sam Brown belt. The knobs are easy to jostle if you're struggling near the radio for something like say, your gun.

He also testified that when he perused Brown he does not remember saying or yelling anything at Brown. Meaning Brown allegedly, after being shot once and fleeing, decided fuck it and turned around to charge an armed officer because ?. While Wilson, now free of the close quarters that prevented him from using non-lethal force, did not use said non-lethal force because ?.

It's not surprising he doesn't remember yelling anything at Brown; his adrenaline was pumping. Other witnesses have testified he yelled "Stop!"

We don't know what Brown was thinking. We do know he had just pushed a C store clerk into a rack, and not five minutes later he encounters a cop. Fear of arrest had to be going through his mind; he didn't know Wilson didn't know anything about the robbery. If we're going to assume what Brown was thinking, it is far more likely he was thinking "I'm not going to jail," rather than "fuck it, I'll just charge the guy."

We don't know everything Wilson has said to the grand jury to know why he thought he had to use lethal force, other than that Brown was charging him at the time of the shooting.

According to Wilson's version of events this is basically suicide by cop and the reasons for it shall always remain a mystery because he put two rounds in Brown's head.

I would not call it suicide by cop. I don't think for one minute that Michael Brown wanted to die.

All this is, of course, ignoring the fact it took a grand jury hearing to get Wilson's side of the story. That the initial incident report that should have had his account was redacted and that the initial autopsy report which had part of Wilson's account was not released until FOIA requests forced the matter a few weeks ago. Giving Wilson and the Ferguson PD over 2 months to get their stories straight.

We have something in our Constitution called the 5th Amendment: the right against self incrimination. It does not speak poorly at all of Officer Wilson that he did not make any public statements as to what happened, and still hasn't, and only told the whole story to his superiors and to the grand jury. That it took a grand jury to do that is not surprising, it is not a sign of conspiracy, and it has no bearing on the veracity of Wilson's story.

FOIA does not exist to give the police time to "get their stories straight." There is nothing to get straight. The medical examiner does not work for the Ferguson police department. They got an initial statement from Wilson before the autopsy began (that's the only part you can view publicly; the full report with the dissection isn't available anywhere on the internet I can find). The police did not get the "review" the report before it was finalized.

No, that is not at all how police are trained in the use of firearms and it would be a scary fucking world if it was. Police are trained to use only the minimum amount of force necessary to gain compliance or neutralize a threat. They are also trained to only use lethal force as a last resort. It's harder to justify a use of force with each additional shot fired. And just like you said, "most shots miss," they are to use extreme caution discharging firearms in residential areas for that very reason.

Kara, almost everything you said is true. But if you DO have to fire your firearm, the point is to bring down the suspect. Not to wound. To kill. Nothing you said actually contradicts what I said.