Ferguson Riots

[bmags]

Let's be completely honest here. The jaywalking investigation turned bad because the person being investigated turned physically aggressive, and it's most likely because he himself was aware that he had committed a strong armed robbery. I don't care what your opinion is, that's how I see it. Either way, it went south because the dead person became physically combative.

 

And to the knife/shooting, if the police DIDN'T shoot him and he ended up stabbing a bystander or even one of the cops, why do I feel like the cops would be blamed for not acting on it?

 

There doesn't seem to be a distinction between turning bad and death, though. He wasn't roughed up, he was shot.

[Milkman delivers]

Looking at that video though, look at when the shoot. Didn't it seem to be a bit sudden? Alpha keeps posting about how quickly knife attacks can occur, but none of those situations are really present there. The knife was out already. The cops were 10-15 feet away (from the looks of it anyway). The cops were behind metal doors.

 

I'm even fine with them having their guns out. I don't think that escalates the situation when you're dealing with someone who has a knife and is an obvious threat to anyone around him. But I dunno, they just shot so quickly. Seems like shooting was their first choice, not their last choice. And I say that knowing that we're talking about a few seconds and a few feet, but to me that's an appreciable difference.

 

The Brown case is automatic for me if he did run back towards the cop. The cop's already been attacked once. Brown is attempting to do it again. I have no problem responding with shots in that situation.

 

If that's the case in Ferguson, then yes. But the facts aren't all out yet.

 

This guy had a weapon and approached police with it in hand, disobeying orders to stop. There is not a single thing wrong with their response. Not a single department would disagree. I don't know what to tell you. It's a suicide by cop, I'd bet anything on it.

[Milkman delivers]

There doesn't seem to be a distinction between turning bad and death, though. He wasn't roughed up, he was shot.

 

We gotta wait for the facts to come out. Right now we're arguing over hypotheticals. We don't know what caused each step of rising force on either side. I think we both understand where we're each coming from though.

[StrangeSox]

This is easy. Weapon in view, your weapon is out.

 

When he was teenager, my cousin was pretty prone to rage and fighting with his parents. In one incident, he threatened his dad with a knife, and I think he had already hit him a few times. Police were called, but weapons weren't drawn. They talked him down out of his rage and ultimately left with a "boys will be boys" shrug because his parents didn't want to press any charges.

 

I don't know how things would have turned out if the police rolled up and immediately pointed guns at him, but I can only think that it would have increased the chances of something awful happening.

[iamshack]

Every department I'm familiar with DOES have civilian oversight.

 

And not saying you can't question things, but you certainly can't question the use of deadly force on an openly armed threat. That's open and shut. This knife situation is not similar at all to the Mike Brown case, which is much more nebulous. The facts still have to come out in Ferguson. This other one is as by the books as it gets.

Cops don't get paid well enough to take risks with crazy assholes on the street.

 

I don't particularly care for police officers, to be completely honest. But I certainly don't expect them to mess around with the lunatics they encounter on a daily basis.

Edited August 22, 2014 by iamshack

[Jenksismyhero]

If that's the case in Ferguson, then yes. But the facts aren't all out yet.

 

This guy had a weapon and approached police with it in hand, disobeying orders to stop. There is not a single thing wrong with their response. Not a single department would disagree. I don't know what to tell you. It's a suicide by cop, I'd bet anything on it.

 

In a perfect world, to me, they would have waited another few seconds or a few more feet. Again, it was a shoot first response, which doesn't seem entirely appropriate. I'm not even sure they warned him first. They just kept saying stop.

[Milkman delivers]

When he was teenager, my cousin was pretty prone to rage and fighting with his parents. In one incident, he threatened his dad with a knife, and I think he had already hit him a few times. Police were called, but weapons weren't drawn. They talked him down out of his rage and ultimately left with a "boys will be boys" shrug because his parents didn't want to press any charges.

 

I don't know how things would have turned out if the police rolled up and immediately pointed guns at him, but I can only think that it would have increased the chances of something awful happening.

 

Maybe, I don't know. It's a case by case situation, but the officer would never be unjustified in having his weapon out in those situations.

[Milkman delivers]

Cops don't get paid well enough to take risks with crazy assholes on the street.

 

I don't particularly care for police officers, to be completely honest. But I certainly don't expect them to mess around with the lunatics they encounter on a daily basis.

 

Love you, too, shack

[Milkman delivers]

In a perfect world, to me, they would have waited another few seconds or a few more feet. Again, it was a shoot first response, which doesn't seem entirely appropriate. I'm not even sure they warned him first. They just kept saying stop.

 

Ha, you don't have to say "stop or I'll shoot". The order is enough. It could help to say it, or it might not.

[southsider2k5]

If that's the case in Ferguson, then yes. But the facts aren't all out yet.

 

This guy had a weapon and approached police with it in hand, disobeying orders to stop. There is not a single thing wrong with their response. Not a single department would disagree. I don't know what to tell you. It's a suicide by cop, I'd bet anything on it.

 

The facts will never be out there. So many versions of the "facts" are out already that literally anyone can paint any version of the story they want and be right based on the "facts".

[Milkman delivers]

The facts will never be out there. So many versions of the "facts" are out already that literally anyone can paint any version of the story they want and be right based on the "facts".

 

I'm about 100% positive there's more that'll be out sooner or later.

[StrangeSox]

Yeah, we will eventually have Wilson's actual testimony, sworn statements from all of the actual witnesses, the other autopsy reports, ballistics reports, medical reports on Wilson, etc.

[StrangeSox]

whoops never mind, the case was turned over to county police right away, they have the incident report

 

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/michael-b...-report-n186431

Edited August 22, 2014 by StrangeSox

[greg775]

I don't really care what your opinion on the whole thing is but the fact that you're still calling for cops to shoot someone in the leg or use a taser on a guy with a deadly weapon either means you're not reading the thread or that you're just ignoring facts.

I read Milkman's stuff and I still think I'm right. The guy didn't have to die and I'm surprised there are not riots over that video. I agree more with what Caulfield said. Apparently questioning cops is a no-no.

 

I have a very hard time accepting that the only outcome of a man walking towards two police officers armed with a steak knife is that he's shot dead.

Me too.

 

wander/meander in the general direction of the police and menacingly go at the police are two quite different things

Exactly. The guy doing the cell phone video was horrified the cops killed that guy. Cause deadly force seemed excessive.

I was hoping somebody would shoot the Colorado movie theatre killer and people on here laid into me saying he deserved a fair trial, etc. Funny how no cop just happened to find an excuse to shoot that creep who'd already killed a ton of innocent people in a movie theatre and they off this wandering guy holding a knife.

Edited August 22, 2014 by greg775

[Balta1701]

This piece at Reddit does a convincing job of arguing that the police made multiple mistakes in the suicide by cop case that forced them into a position where they had to shoot. The writer argues that they parked way too close, putting themselves in a position where the moment they exited the car they were within the danger-range for a person with a knife, they didn't retreat and actually moved closer to the person escalating again, parked in a position where there were bystanders behind the guy with the knife such that if he hadn't moved there would have been innocent people at risk if they had to shoot, and made no effort to de-escalate the situation after their arrival by moving back or trying to find safer positions.

[StrangeSox]

This piece at Reddit does a convincing job of arguing that the police made multiple mistakes in the suicide by cop case that forced them into a position where they had to shoot. The writer argues that they parked way too close, putting themselves in a position where the moment they exited the car they were within the danger-range for a person with a knife, they didn't retreat and actually moved closer to the person escalating again, parked in a position where there were bystanders behind the guy with the knife such that if he hadn't moved there would have been innocent people at risk if they had to shoot, and made no effort to de-escalate the situation after their arrival by moving back or trying to find safer positions.

That was the first thing that I noticed when I watched the video, that the guy recording it and presumably others were directly in the line of fire for a while until the guy with the knife took a wide path to the officers' right.

[DrunkBomber]

Cops don't get paid well enough to take risks with crazy assholes on the street.

 

I don't particularly care for police officers, to be completely honest. But I certainly don't expect them to mess around with the lunatics they encounter on a daily basis.

This is exactly where Im at with all of this. In general I think there a lot of police officers who abuse their power and there is a lot of corruption going on, however in situations like this I think its unfair to criticize the decisions they make when their lives are on the line and someone is coming at them with a deadly weapon.

 

Its easy to draw conclusions when youre on your computer at home watching a video that shows what happened for a couple minutes prior to the police arriving but in reality these guys responded to a complaint and almost immediately upon arriving had someone going straight towards them with a knife in his hand. For all these cops knew this guy could have just stabbed someone in the store they were outside of. They dont have time to assess everything that is going on or determine if the guy coming at them is mentally stable. Tensions have obviously been high in Ferguson for a while now, cops are being shot at, having molotov cocktails thrown at them and there have been several other violent crimes happening every day so if 2 cops feel like their lives or other peoples lives around are in danger and a man is coming at them with a kinfe saying "shoot me" I dont see how deadly force isnt justified.

 

On the other hand, it seems a lot of people are asking why non lethal options werent available and to me this seems more like a discussion on if we should look into changing police procedures and not whether or not these cops did something wrong/illegal. As Milkman said this is just about as cut and dry as you can get and there is no way these guys will get in any sort of trouble for how they handled this as it appeared to be pretty much textbook. Now maybe if it was 2 different cops and they were carrying tasers they could have chosen to subdue the guy non lethally but again thats at the discretion of the cops and contingent on whether or not Ferguson PD are carrying tasers.

[DrunkBomber]

That was the first thing that I noticed when I watched the video, that the guy recording it and presumably others were directly in the line of fire for a while until the guy with the knife took a wide path to the officers' right.

Do we know what information the cops had before they arrived? Did they even know there was someone with a knife or did they just know someone had stolen something? Also did they know exactly who they were looking for as they pulled up?

[Jenksismyhero]

I'm sure the call coming in was deranged man waiving a knife around.

 

[Balta1701]

Do we know what information the cops had before they arrived? Did they even know there was someone with a knife or did they just know someone had stolen something? Also did they know exactly who they were looking for as they pulled up?

According to the statement by the police, two 911 calls both stated that the suspect was armed with a knife.

[StrangeSox]

I hadn't realized that the source of the "orbital blowout fracture" was The Dumbest Man on the Internet, Jim Hoft. Turns out he crudely doctored some xray scan he found on the internet.

 

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/43...ick_His_Readers

[Buehrle>Wood]

I hadn't realized that the source of the "orbital blowout fracture" was The Dumbest Man on the Internet, Jim Hoft. Turns out he crudely doctored some xray scan he found on the internet.

 

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/43...ick_His_Readers

I agree his report is bunk and his site is just awful but I don't think he ever claimed that was Wilson's scan. He actually linked to the website the image is from. I think he was just trying to show what an orbital fracture was.

 

 

 

Also I believe Fox, independent of that, reported the same injury. Take that, um, fwiw.

[StrangeSox]

At one point he crudely erased the "university of Iowa" stamp on the image.

 

But most of the conservative media jumped on it as the actual images from Wilson, coulter drudge etc. I don't believe the fox news report was independent.

[Balta1701]

A St. Louis County police officer who had worked on crowd control in Ferguson, Mo., has been suspended after an online rant surfaced in which he disparaged a variety of groups, from LGBT people to Muslims to victims of domestic violence.

 

The officer, Dan Page, a 35-year veteran, also described himself as "a killer," according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. CNN reported that the video appeared to have been taken in April at an event for Oath Keepers, the right-wing law enforcement group that is aligned with the Patriot movement.

 

"I'm into diversity. I kill everybody, I don't care," Page said, per the Post-Dispatch. He also referred to President Barack Obama as an "undocumented president" and warned the audience that the government wanted to place their children in indoctrination camps.

 

"I personally believe in Jesus Christ as my lord savior, but I'm also a killer. I’ve killed a lot. And if I need to, I'll kill a whole bunch more," Page said. "If you don't want to get killed, don't show up in front of me, it's that simple. I have no problem with it. God did not raise me to be a coward."

Yeah, so this department isn't exactly covering itself in pride these days.

[greg775]

I wonder if the city will burn itself down if the cop isn't ultimately charged. After Monday's funeral you'd think it will be quiet there until the cop gets off unscathed.