WILSON NOT INDICTED
janklow
Members, Moderators Posts: 8,613 Regulator
Ferguson police officer won’t be charged in fatal shooting
discussA grand jury has declined to indict Darren Wilson, the white Ferguson, Mo. police officer whose fatal shooting of an unarmed black teenager sparked days of turbulent protests and a national conversation about race and police interactions with African Americans, prosecutors said Monday.
The decision means that Wilson, 28, will face no state charges in the August shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown. Although a parallel federal civil rights investigation of the shooting is continuing, federal investigators have all but concluded they do not have a case against Wilson, either, law enforcement officials have said.
A separate federal probe of the Ferguson Police Department is underway. But the prospect that Wilson will face no direct legal consequences for Brown’s death was expected to trigger protests in the St. Louis area, and in the hours before the announcement, scores of demonstrators gathered near the area where Brown was killed.
Comments
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I feel sorry for his Mom. And black people in this country.
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Real f***** up situation. From the very beginning they had no intention to indict Darren Wilson. From All the information I read concerning this case he surrendered at least 15+ feet away from the officer and had his hands up with multiple witnesses confirming this . This ? is completely rigged .
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This is a travesty of justice in my opinion, he was 30 feet away! He should have gotten involuntary manslaughter at the least, damn I feel bad for his family
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Yo amazing St Louis Livestream from a police scanner....cops in St Louis and Ferguson are being shot at like crazy....many times they're being told to retreat, that's how bad ? is getting
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/st-louis-county-police-scanner -
It sucks to have to experience injustice. But, I think it sucks more when someone who experiences injustice who can't rightfully express that for themselves without everyone else in it. I understand the aspect of being supportive, but I feel that the protests and riots cover up the fact that Mike Brown's parents lost a son and they must ultimately deal with it. The only ones who should have a right of passage to break stuff in this case is the parents of Mike Brown if they choose to do so.
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This is merely a wake up call to all the black men and women killed in this nation discriminately. I'm at a lost for words for this man parents but usually this sparks for a bigger picture look. Black men are targeted in this nation and under no circumstances should this be about one boy because in two consecutive years they have given killers free reign. Zimmerman and Wilson are only the beginning. So use this momentum to go further.
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Maybe now we will return to the teachings of MALCOLM X AND MARCUS GARVEY.
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"i wish white cops didnt racial profile/ find black people suspicious. lets make them stop being suspicious of us by committing a bunch of crimes against people who havent done anything wrong. that will teach those crackers to assume we are criminals".
and the cycle continues and the ignorant cheer them on. theres a special place in hell for those rioting sick-o's. as for darren, i don't know i wasnt there. simple as that. -
? THE POLICE!
SOMEHOW A BLACK MAN IS A MONSTER WHEN HE UNARMED & THE COCKSUCKIN WHITE COP WITH THE GUN IS INNOCENT! OH YEAH THAT MAKES ALOT OF SENSE. BURN THE AMERICAN FLAG & REPLACE EVERYWHERE WITH A PAN AFRICAN FLAG CAUSE THAT AMERICAN FLAG IS TAINTED ? THAT EVERY BROTHA & SISTA NEED TO WIPE THEIR ASS WITH!
? UNCLE SCAM!
? THE FLAG!
& ? THE POLICE!
SOMEBODY NEED TO GET A ROCKET LAUNCHER & BLOW THAT ? POLICE STATION DOWN!
RIP MIKE BROWN,IM SO SORRY THAT INJUSTICE IS HAPPENING!
HOLLA IF YA HEAR ME ERRYBODY!
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JUST LIKE MIKE BROWN'S STEPFATHER SAID ''BURN THIS ? DOWN!''
? THESE RACIST ? CHICKEN ? MUTHAFUCKAS
HOLLA IF YA HEAR ME! -
Thoughts @Janklow
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Maybe now we will return to the teachings of MALCOLM X AND MARCUS GARVEY.
No we need black supremacy. -
Troubles what this world's about
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well, i think everyone should be able to agree on this much no matter WHAT you think happened. seriously, that's still her child.I feel sorry for his Mom.
called it?playmaker88 wrote: »Thoughts @Janklow
that and i have endured so many ? opinions in person and on social media today on both sides of the issue.
summation: janklow remains annoyed with Americans
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also, i wanted to link in this article because it relates to our pre-decision chat:
Why many ‘eyewitnesses’ in the Darren Wilson investigation were wrong
not an indictment of any witnesses.The somber, gray-haired prosecutor stood before throngs of cameras on Monday night and considered the many problems that plagued the investigation into the killing of unarmed teenager Michael Brown. There was the media, he said, and “its insatiable appetite for something, for anything to talk about.” Then there was chatter of social media and its “nonstop rumors.” And finally, there were the dozens of witnesses, many of whom remembered conflicting versions of the same events.
All claimed to have seen the final moments of Brown’s life, St. Louis County Prosecutor Robert McCulloch said. They all claimed to have witnessed Ferguson cop Darren Wilson pump bullets into the youth. But that’s just about where the similarities ended. And soon, as investigators sank deeper into a controversy with national implications, it was difficult to parse who saw what and who saw anything at all.
“At least one witness stated that as Officer Wilson got out of his vehicle, he shot Mr. Brown multiple times as Mr. Brown stood next to the vehicle,” McCulloch said. “Yet another witness stated that Officer Wilson stuck his gun out of the window and fired at Mr. Brown as Mr. Brown was running. One witness stated there were actually two police vehicles and four officers present, but only one officer fired a weapon.”
Of all the tools at an investigator’s disposal — DNA analysis, forensic evidence, witness testimony — by far the least reliable are the recollections of witnesses, studies suggest. More often than not, they raise more questions than they answer and sometimes produce deeply flawed cases.
“Surveys show that large proportions of people, at least in the United States, think that human memory works like a video tape or a DVD,” Scott Lilienfeld, an Emory University professor who has studied the shortcomings of such testimony, told New York Magazine. “And we know of decades of psychological research that human memory, including eyewitness memory, doesn’t work that way.”
It works even less when it turns out that an “eyewitness” didn’t witness a thing. That happened in testimony before the grand jury that investigated the Ferguson killing, said McCulloch. Some described what happened at critical moments, he said, only to concede “in subsequent interviews” or testimony that they didn’t actually see what they were describing.
It’s not a matter of people lying, he suggested. Asked by a reporter if he was contemplating perjury charges against any witness, McCulloch answered with a definitive no. “I think they truly believe that’s what they saw, but they didn’t,” he said.
On Ferguson’s streets, rumor begat rumor. “Some [eyewitnesses] were running for cover, some were relating what they heard from others or, as I said, what they assumed happened in the case,” he said.
McCulloch’s remarks were by no means the first indictment of eyewitness testimony, which has come under increasing suspicion in the past generation as innocent men, sent to prison by incorrect witness identification, are exonerated. The human mind is a malleable thing. More so memory.
“The most common element in all wrongful convictions later overturned by DNA evidence has been eyewitness misidentification,” according to the Innocence Project, which works to exonerate people it believes have been wrongly convicted of capital crimes. In fact, in the past few decades, 73 percent of 239 convictions overturned through DNA testing were because of faulty eyewitnesses, Scientific American reported. “One third of these overturned cases rested on the testimony of two or more mistaken eyewitnesses,” Hal Arkowitz and Lilienfeld wrote in the article. “How could so many eyewitnesses be wrong?”
Simple, found Scientific American. And many of the reasons can be seen in Ferguson. They include: “extreme witness stress at the crime scene or during the identification process; presence of weapons (because they can intensify stress and distract witnesses); [and] a racial disparity between the witness and the suspect.”
When it comes to memory, there are all kinds of opportunities for mistakes. What your friends say can skew what you think you saw. What the TV says can skew what you think you saw. What you wanted to see can skew what you think you saw. So witnesses plug memory’s holes with assumption, wrote Barbara Tversky in the Stanford Journal of Legal Studies. It’s human nature.
“Reliance on assumptions are necessary to function in our society,” she said. “…We are constantly filling in the gaps in our recollection and interpreting things we hear. For instance, while on the subway, we might hear garbled words like ‘next,’ ‘transfer,’ and ‘train.’ Building on our assumptions and knowledge, we may put together the actual statement: ‘Next stop 53rd Street, transfer available to the E train.’ Indeed, we may even remember having heard the full statement.”
But those hypothetical people didn’t hear the full statement. They just think they did.
And once an inaccuracy becomes part of a person’s recollection, it’s almost impossible to dislodge. Even when that person, Tversky wrote, is challenged with direct information that refutes his or her own memory. “Once witnesses state facts in a particular way or identify a particular person as the perpetrator, they are unwilling or even unable — due to the reconstruction of their memory — to reconsider their initial understanding.”
This appears to be what occurred in the Darren Wilson investigation. Even when authorities challenged witnesses with forensic evidence — which McCulloch said “does not change because of public pressure or personal agenda” — they didn’t back down. He gave as an example witnesses who said they saw Wilson pump bullets into Brown’s back, sticking with their story even after autopsies demonstrated that no bullets entered Brown’s back.
They “stood by original statements even through their statements were completely discredited by the physical evidence,” McCulloch said. -
and related to THAT... Klein breaking down the comparison between Wilson and Johnson's narratives:
Michael Brown spent his last day with his friend Dorian Johnson. Here's what Johnson saw.Earlier today, I wrote that Officer Darren Wilson's newly released account of his altercation with Michael Brown was unbelievable. Which isn't to say it was wrong. It was just hard to believe that events played out exactly as Wilson described.
But the story Wilson tells makes much more sense if you also read it alongside Dorian Johnson's testimony — and use the two accounts to balance each other out.
Johnson, remember, was Brown's friend. He was there when Brown robbed the convenience store. He was there when Wilson first saw Brown. And he was there when Brown was shot and killed.
The story he tells confirms some key aspects in Wilson's account. But it contradicts others. Wilson presents Michael Brown as a rage-filled lunatic attempting to commit suicide by cop. Johnson presents a more nuanced picture of provocations on both sides, followed by escalation, followed by a fight in which both men grew enraged — and in which one man had a gun.
But let's start at the beginning.
The convenience store robbery
Johnson calls Brown, exclusively, "Big Mike." And he says he only knew him for a few months before the shooting. But though he liked Brown, Johnson's portrayal of him isn't flattering. In fact, his story begins on the morning of the shooting, when Big Mike commits a brazen, bizarre crime that puts Johnson in considerable danger.
Johnson says he ran into Brown on his way to buy some cigarillos from the convenience store. The two men decided to smoke weed together later, so Brown goes with Johnson to get some cigarillos of his own. Only Brown doesn't buy any cigarillos. He steals them — in fact, he steals a lot of them — and then shoves his way past the clerk.
In Johnson's telling, he's shocked. And he's terrified. Brown, he says, "is basically laughing it off, be cool, be calm…but in my head I’m like, I can’t be calm, I can’t be cool, because I know what just happened and we were on camera." Johnson has a daughter. He has a girlfriend. And now he's Brown's accomplice in a robbery — a robbery that was probably caught on a security camera. His friend has put him and his family in danger.
Or so he says. Johnson has some incentive to portray himself as an innocent bystander in this robbery. But if you do believe Johnson was innocent, what happens next is weird. Rather than abandon Brown so he's far, far away if the cops come to pick up his friend, Johnson walks home with Brown to smoke. Johnson professes to be stunned at what Brown did in the convenience store, but he doesn't act stunned, or angry, and in any case, he drops it pretty quickly.
"Get the F on the sidewalk!"
It's a Saturday morning, and the streets are empty. A few blocks from home, Brown and Johnson are walking in the middle of the road. This is when Officer Darren Wilson pulls up — and when Johnson and Wilson's accounts begin to both converge and diverge.
As Wilson tells the story, he was extremely, unfailingly polite — more befuddled than anything else by these two young black men who seem to have forgotten to use the sidewalk. "Hey guys, why don't you walk on the sidewalk," he remembers saying. That's not how Johnson tells it.
"He said 'Get the F on the sidewalk!'" Johnson tells the grand jury. Either way, on this next point, Johnson and Wilson agree. It's Johnson who replies and says they're just a minute from their homes, and they'll be off the street shortly.
This is the break point in the story. This is the moment when, even though you know how it ends, you're hoping against hope that things play out differently, because it so clearly could have gone a different way. But here is when Wilson and Johnson begin telling stories that only barely converge.
As Wilson tells it, he then asks, "what's wrong with the sidewalk?", and Brown's response, as reported by Wilson, is "? what you have to say."
As Johnson tells it, Wilson never says "what's wrong with the sidewalk," and Brown never says "? what you have to say." Rather, both Johnson and Brown think Wilson is satisfied with Johnson's answer and is driving off.
"We continued to walk and have our conversation," Johnson tells the grand jury, "but almost a split second [later], we heard the tires screech, and the officer, he pulled back in the truck very fast at an angle [where] if we didn’t hear his tires screech, the back of his cruiser would have struck one of us."
The fight
The story Johnson tells from this point is straightforward: a cop feels disrespected by two young men, he reasserts his power, and then things spin out of control.
Wilson, having almost hit them with his truck, delivers the classic line of authority: "What did you say?" But Johnson is adamant that Brown hadn't said anything. Maybe he mouthed something silently. Maybe he stared Wilson down. Maybe he did something else that Johnson couldn't hear. But Johnson was right next to Brown, and Brown didn't say anything.
But if he didn't speak earlier, Brown starts now. Wilson had almost hit him with a truck. Brown is ? . And so is Wilson. Brown says something and then Wilson hits him with the door of his cruiser. "He thrust his door open real hard," says Johnson. "We was so close to the door that it hit mostly Big Mike, but it hit me on my left side and closed back on him, like real fast. Just the same speed, boom, boom, that fast."
Compare this moment to Wilson's rendering:
I go to open my door, say, "Hey, come here." He said, "What the ? you gonna do?" And he shut my door on me. The door was only open maybe a foot. I didn't have a chance to get my leg out. I shut the door and he came up and appro ached the door. I opened the door again, trying to push him back, tell him to get back. Um, he said something. I'm not sure exactly what it was and then started swinging and punching at me from outside the vehicle.
At this point, Johnson and Wilson's accounts become mirror images of each other. Wilson says Brown slammed the door into him and then reached into the car and began throwing punches. Johnson says Wilson slammed the door into Brown and then "his arm came out the window, and that’s the first initial contact that they had. The officer grabbed, he grabbed ahold of Big Mike’s shirt around the neck area."
The narratives continue to split. Wilson describes a scuffle deep inside the car, with Brown as the aggressor trying to beat the hell out of Wilson who is trapped in his cruiser. Johnson described a tug-of-war, where Brown has "one hand on top of the cruiser and the other hand more right up under the window, the side mirror. He’s trying to pull off the officer’s grip." Wilson is trying to pull Brown in, Brown is trying to escape. -
continued:
Michael Brown spent his last day with his friend Dorian Johnson. Here's what Johnson saw.
bolded seems, well, pretty reasonable.Michael Brown did pass off his cigarillos
But Johnson does semi-corroborate a key moment in Wilson's account. I noted this incredible passage in Wilson's telling earlier:
I was doing the, just scrambling, trying to get his arms out of my face and him from grabbing me and everything else. He turned to his...if he's at my vehicle, he turned to his left and handed the first subject. He said, "here, take these." He was holding a pack of — several packs of cigarillos which was just, what was stolen from the Market Store was several packs of cigarillos. He said, "here, hold these" and when he did that I grabbed his right arm trying just to control something at that point. Um, as I was holding it, and he came around, he came around with his arm extended, fist made, and went like that straight at my face with his...a full swing from his left hand.
The idea that Brown stopped punching Wilson just long enough to hand his contraband to his friend struck me, on first read, as beyond belief. But Johnson backs at least part of that account:
While the officer is grabbing ahold of Big Mike, he kind loses grip around his neck, that's how I knew he had a good grip. He never fully let Big Mike go, now he has a good grasp on his shirt. So now Big Mike's able to turn different angles while he is trying to pull away. And at a point he turned, now we are face-to-face, and he put his hands like, grab these, Bro. And in shock, I'm so not unconsciously, my hands open to where he could put the rillos in my hand.
So Johnson and Wilson agree: there is a moment when Brown turns to Johnson and hands over the stolen cigarillos. But Wilson tells it as Brown freeing his hands to more effectively pummel Wilson, and Johnson tells it as Brown freeing his hands to better escape Wilson.
It goes on like this. Johnson, Wilson, and the ballistics report all agree that the first shot was fired from inside the car. But where Wilson says this shot came after Brown tells him, "You're too much of a ? ? to shoot me," and then lunged for the weapon, Johnson reacts with total confusion when the grand jury suggests Brown was trying to get at Wilson's gun inside the car.
"In order for Big Mike to have touched the gun, it is almost like his whole top half of his body had to be inside the vehicle and that never happened," Johnson says. It's a pretty specific objection: he doesn't just say Brown never went for the gun, but that he was never so deeply embedded in the car that he could have gone for the gun. Johnson's whole memory of the fight is Wilson trying to pull Brown towards the vehicle and Brown trying to get away.
The shooting
The testimony where Johnson recounts Brown being shot dead is devastating. He says Brown had already been shot and was running away. He says Brown stopped running after the second shot. He says Brown turned and yelled, "I don't have a gun," and took a kind of half step towards Wilson. And then he began to say something else, and since this is the crucial, terrible moment in the testimony, I'll let him tell it:
The second statement he was starting to say I, you know, he couldn't get the full sentence out before the rest of the shots hit his body. And I stood and watched face-to-face as every shot was fired and as his body went down and his body never — his body kind of just went down and fell, you know, like a step, you know what I'm saying? Like a step, his body just kind of collapsed down and he just fell.
This is a sharp contrast to what Wilson says:
When [Brown] stopped, he turned, looked at me, made like a grunting noise and had the most intense, aggressive face I've ever seen on a person. When he looked at me, he then did like the hop...you know, like people do to start running. And, he started running at me. During his first stride, he took his right hand put it under his shirt into his waistband. And I ordered him to stop and get on the ground again. He didn't. I fired multiple shots. After I fired the multiple shots, I paused a second, yelled at him to get on the ground again, he was still in the same state. Still charging, hand still in his waistband, hadn't slowed down.
And then Johnson runs. He is hyperventilating, and vomiting, and running. It takes him only a minute or two to get to his apartment, he says, but "I'm still throwing up, I have been throwing up since I started running. I've been throwing up all the way along the run."
A more recognizable story
As with Wilson, it's impossible to know where Johnson is telling the truth, where he's lying, and where his memory is simply faulty — eyewitness accounts are completely unreliable even under the best of circumstances, and these were not the best of circumstances.
And my hunch is Johnson is shading the truth in at least a few places — starting with the robbery, but potentially continuing up through the tussle. Johnson says he never saw Brown throw a punch but he's not totally convincing on it, and Wilson did suffer some contusions on his face (though it's not clear those injuries back Wilson's testimony, either).
But where Wilson's account presents Brown as completely irrational and borderline suicidal, Johnson's account is more recognizable. It isn't a blameless, kindly beat cop who gets set upon by a rampaging Michael Brown. And nor is it a blameless, kindly Michael Brown who gets set upon by a cold-blooded murderer with a badge.
It's a cop who feels provoked by these two young black men who won't get out of the street, and who tries to teach them a lesson, to put them in their place. His actions escalate the situation, and then the adrenaline floods, and then there's a struggle, and the situation escalates, and escalates, and escalates, and then Darren Wilson shoots Michael Brown and Michael Brown dies.
All this happened in less than two minutes. The fight happened in even less than that. And so there's also room for both accounts to be subjectively right. With the adrenaline pumping Wilson might really have grabbed Brown first, but then thought Brown was trying to grab his gun, or beat him to a pulp, even as he was really trying to get away. Brown might have sworn at the cop who almost clipped him with a truck, but after that, he might have really been trying to simply survive the altercation.
Indeed, we might never get to the truth of what happened in those two minutes on August. But the point of a trial would have been to get us closer. We would have found out if everything we thought we knew about Brown was wrong, or if Wilson's story was flawed in important ways, or if key witnesses completely broke under pressure. We would have heard real cross-examination. We would have seen the strongest case that could be mounted by both the prosecution and the defense. But now we're not going to get that chance. We're just left with these Rashomon-like testimonies, a dead 18-year-old, and a shattered family. -
scottsteiner wrote: »? THE POLICE!
SOMEHOW A BLACK MAN IS A MONSTER WHEN HE UNARMED & THE COCKSUCKIN WHITE COP WITH THE GUN IS INNOCENT! OH YEAH THAT MAKES ALOT OF SENSE. BURN THE AMERICAN FLAG & REPLACE EVERYWHERE WITH A PAN AFRICAN FLAG CAUSE THAT AMERICAN FLAG IS TAINTED ? THAT EVERY BROTHA & SISTA NEED TO WIPE THEIR ASS WITH!
? UNCLE SCAM!
? THE FLAG!
& ? THE POLICE!
SOMEBODY NEED TO GET A ROCKET LAUNCHER & BLOW THAT ? POLICE STATION DOWN!
RIP MIKE BROWN,IM SO SORRY THAT INJUSTICE IS HAPPENING!
HOLLA IF YA HEAR ME ERRYBODY!
Lol I hear u man....the anger is real -
This whole case was fixed.....the prosecutor didn't even interrogate Darren Wilson on the witness stand. WTF??!!! What kind of grand jury hearing was this?? This whole case is one giant cover up. He didn't even ask him why he didn't write a full report in front of the jury, this is ? . And of course they won't tell us the racial makeup of the voting....9 white jurors, 3 black jurors in a town that is 70% Black, the fix was in
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continued:
Michael Brown spent his last day with his friend Dorian Johnson. Here's what Johnson saw.
bolded seems, well, pretty reasonable.Michael Brown did pass off his cigarillos
But Johnson does semi-corroborate a key moment in Wilson's account. I noted this incredible passage in Wilson's telling earlier:
I was doing the, just scrambling, trying to get his arms out of my face and him from grabbing me and everything else. He turned to his...if he's at my vehicle, he turned to his left and handed the first subject. He said, "here, take these." He was holding a pack of — several packs of cigarillos which was just, what was stolen from the Market Store was several packs of cigarillos. He said, "here, hold these" and when he did that I grabbed his right arm trying just to control something at that point. Um, as I was holding it, and he came around, he came around with his arm extended, fist made, and went like that straight at my face with his...a full swing from his left hand.
The idea that Brown stopped punching Wilson just long enough to hand his contraband to his friend struck me, on first read, as beyond belief. But Johnson backs at least part of that account:
While the officer is grabbing ahold of Big Mike, he kind loses grip around his neck, that's how I knew he had a good grip. He never fully let Big Mike go, now he has a good grasp on his shirt. So now Big Mike's able to turn different angles while he is trying to pull away. And at a point he turned, now we are face-to-face, and he put his hands like, grab these, Bro. And in shock, I'm so not unconsciously, my hands open to where he could put the rillos in my hand.
So Johnson and Wilson agree: there is a moment when Brown turns to Johnson and hands over the stolen cigarillos. But Wilson tells it as Brown freeing his hands to more effectively pummel Wilson, and Johnson tells it as Brown freeing his hands to better escape Wilson.
It goes on like this. Johnson, Wilson, and the ballistics report all agree that the first shot was fired from inside the car. But where Wilson says this shot came after Brown tells him, "You're too much of a ? ? to shoot me," and then lunged for the weapon, Johnson reacts with total confusion when the grand jury suggests Brown was trying to get at Wilson's gun inside the car.
"In order for Big Mike to have touched the gun, it is almost like his whole top half of his body had to be inside the vehicle and that never happened," Johnson says. It's a pretty specific objection: he doesn't just say Brown never went for the gun, but that he was never so deeply embedded in the car that he could have gone for the gun. Johnson's whole memory of the fight is Wilson trying to pull Brown towards the vehicle and Brown trying to get away.
The shooting
The testimony where Johnson recounts Brown being shot dead is devastating. He says Brown had already been shot and was running away. He says Brown stopped running after the second shot. He says Brown turned and yelled, "I don't have a gun," and took a kind of half step towards Wilson. And then he began to say something else, and since this is the crucial, terrible moment in the testimony, I'll let him tell it:
The second statement he was starting to say I, you know, he couldn't get the full sentence out before the rest of the shots hit his body. And I stood and watched face-to-face as every shot was fired and as his body went down and his body never — his body kind of just went down and fell, you know, like a step, you know what I'm saying? Like a step, his body just kind of collapsed down and he just fell.
This is a sharp contrast to what Wilson says:
When [Brown] stopped, he turned, looked at me, made like a grunting noise and had the most intense, aggressive face I've ever seen on a person. When he looked at me, he then did like the hop...you know, like people do to start running. And, he started running at me. During his first stride, he took his right hand put it under his shirt into his waistband. And I ordered him to stop and get on the ground again. He didn't. I fired multiple shots. After I fired the multiple shots, I paused a second, yelled at him to get on the ground again, he was still in the same state. Still charging, hand still in his waistband, hadn't slowed down.
And then Johnson runs. He is hyperventilating, and vomiting, and running. It takes him only a minute or two to get to his apartment, he says, but "I'm still throwing up, I have been throwing up since I started running. I've been throwing up all the way along the run."
A more recognizable story
As with Wilson, it's impossible to know where Johnson is telling the truth, where he's lying, and where his memory is simply faulty — eyewitness accounts are completely unreliable even under the best of circumstances, and these were not the best of circumstances.
And my hunch is Johnson is shading the truth in at least a few places — starting with the robbery, but potentially continuing up through the tussle. Johnson says he never saw Brown throw a punch but he's not totally convincing on it, and Wilson did suffer some contusions on his face (though it's not clear those injuries back Wilson's testimony, either).
But where Wilson's account presents Brown as completely irrational and borderline suicidal, Johnson's account is more recognizable. It isn't a blameless, kindly beat cop who gets set upon by a rampaging Michael Brown. And nor is it a blameless, kindly Michael Brown who gets set upon by a cold-blooded murderer with a badge.
It's a cop who feels provoked by these two young black men who won't get out of the street, and who tries to teach them a lesson, to put them in their place. His actions escalate the situation, and then the adrenaline floods, and then there's a struggle, and the situation escalates, and escalates, and escalates, and then Darren Wilson shoots Michael Brown and Michael Brown dies.
All this happened in less than two minutes. The fight happened in even less than that. And so there's also room for both accounts to be subjectively right. With the adrenaline pumping Wilson might really have grabbed Brown first, but then thought Brown was trying to grab his gun, or beat him to a pulp, even as he was really trying to get away. Brown might have sworn at the cop who almost clipped him with a truck, but after that, he might have really been trying to simply survive the altercation.
Indeed, we might never get to the truth of what happened in those two minutes on August. But the point of a trial would have been to get us closer. We would have found out if everything we thought we knew about Brown was wrong, or if Wilson's story was flawed in important ways, or if key witnesses completely broke under pressure. We would have heard real cross-examination. We would have seen the strongest case that could be mounted by both the prosecution and the defense. But now we're not going to get that chance. We're just left with these Rashomon-like testimonies, a dead 18-year-old, and a shattered family.
"Teach them a lesson" "Put them in their place"
Particularly, since by both Johnson & Wilson's accounts, neither Brown nor Johnson immediately complied with Wilson's command to get on the sidewalk. Wilson probably felt his authority was disrespected and tried to strongarm 'em into submission like many law enforcers do, which ultimately lead to an avoidable death.
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well, i think everyone should be able to agree on this much no matter WHAT you think happened. seriously, that's still her child.I feel sorry for his Mom.
called it?playmaker88 wrote: »Thoughts @Janklow
that and i have endured so many ? opinions in person and on social media today on both sides of the issue.
summation: janklow remains annoyed with Americans
FWIW many people (myself included) who operated strictly (or primarily) from a American law perspective, could and did predict that this would eventually unfold like this. Especially when the discrepancies started to appear more and more evident. So, you're definitely not alone in that regard.
Your summation has piqued my interest, moreover I'm all for objectivity but many people I've met online and in person have hid behind the convenience of this neutrality safeguard, especially when it comes time to confront/acknowledge the proverbial pink elephant in the room - which is the obvious subtext of this unfortunate matter.
Simply coming away from this with a perspective that synthesizes multiple social groups (and their interactions) under one opinion/emotion (a feeling of annoyance) seems like a cop out or an oversimplifying takeaway from this entire ordeal, at best.
Judging by the articles that you've linked, it's obvious that you acknowledge/accept the political and legal implications/intricacies of the outcome and that it required a relatively impartial, nuanced perspective to discern such things. I just wonder if you acknowledge/accept the social and racial implications of this ordeal? Because if one does, then it's hard to fathom how one can come away equally annoyed at the social groups involved, especially with a historical context in mind. -
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No surprise here.
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All 3 Black jurors voted to indict...the White jurors voted to acquit Darren Wilson.....these ? White crackas man.....mostly White juries almost always do ? like this in cases involving a dead Black victim, so why the ? was this jury pool 75% White in a 70% Black town?? These crackas make me sick sometimes SMFH
http://mediatakeout.com/260494/mto-super-worldwide-exclusive-all-three-black-jurors-in-ferguson-voted-for-an-indictment-but-they-were-overruled-by-white-jurors.html
http://youtu.be/XWXvR2v5EnE
