The Chief of Police for the city of Ferguson MO., apologized to the people of Ferguson today, saying that he was sorry to the family of Mike Brown for, among other things, the length of time Mike Brown’s body was left in the street of Ferguson. And he tried to explain that the reason was to allow the officers time to collect all the evidence in the shooting of the unarmed teenager.
“I’m truly sorry for the loss of your son. I’m also sorry that it took so long to remove Michael from the street,” he said.”Please know that the investigating officers meant no disrespect to the Brown family, to the African-American community or the people (in the neighborhood where Brown was shot). They were simply trying to do their jobs,”
Chief Thomas Jackson, who has received much criticism for how he and the officers of Ferguson handled the shooting and protests in Ferguson, also apologized to the demonstrators who felt that they lost their right to peacefully assemble and protest because of the militant police response.
“The right of the people to peacefully assemble is what the police are here to protect. If anyone who was peacefully exercising that right is upset and angry, I feel responsible and I’m sorry.”
The chief ended the video by once again apologizing to the family of Mike Brown, saying once again that he “was sorry.”
“For any mistakes I’ve made, I take full responsibility. It’s an honor to serve the city of Ferguson and the people who live there. I look forward to working with you in the future to solve our problems, and once again, I deeply apologize to the Brown family.”
I posted the first part of this post which was originally published on The Daily Beast. This is definitely a must read for all.
“I can pretend to belong here better than Trayvon and Mike Brown were ever given the chance to. But however hard I try, however well they treat me, I know this is not my country.”
—
When my father first came to this country as a graduate student, there was an incident where he and a friend were walking home and were suddenly confronted in a parking lot by a group of apparently intoxicated students in a car, driving around them in circles, shouting threats and racist catcalls.
My father’s friend counseled him to ignore it, to wait for them to get their jollies and leave, that this is just the kind of thing that happens once in a while.
My father waited, and they didn’t leave, and then my father picked up a rock and said, “I’m counting to thirty and if they’re not gone by then this rock is going through their windshield.”
Luckily, they tired of the sport and peeled off around when my dad hit fifteen. It’s good for me that they did—had the rock gone through the windshield, had glass flown in a thousand bright shards across the asphalt, had the driver slumped over, bleeding, and the car doors swung open and his friends stormed out filled with anger, had police been called and charges been filed—well, I probably wouldn’t be here.
If by chance one of those students had been a Zimmerman, carrying a firearm for “self-defense” against “violent criminals” armed with rocks, I very definitely would not be here.
There was a moral to this story when my father told it to me, a moral that I hated more than any of the other morals that came attached to his other anecdotes.
It was a moral that explained many things. It explained, for instance, why he never went to parent-teacher association events, never integrated himself into “the community.” Why he consistently obeyed Rule #1, a rule that my friends’ white suburban parents had never considered—a rule I would not hear from others until I actually met people who’d grown up urban and poor when I got older—Never Talk to the Cops. (In the Bill of Rights it’s actually Rule #5.)
Why he urged me to choose a career specialization based on objective assessment of skills and achievements, one where success was quantifiable, one whose practitioners were organizationally indispensable. To take an “Asian” job like engineer, scientist, programmer. One where there was little room for subjectivity, where the personal impression of the interviewer counted less. To stay away most of all from fields where I would be judged purely based on how well people could relate to me, like direct sales, like middle management, like the performing arts.
To never, ever, ever put my livelihood in a position where I depended on white people liking me.
Because it was a lesson he learned the night that some random drunkards decided that terrorizing two pedestrians in a car, swerving toward them again and again, would be fun—would have no legal consequences because the cops wouldn’t care, would have no moral consequences because the victims didn’t matter.
A lesson he learned every time he was pulled over for a speeding ticket, or pulled aside by the store detective and asked to turn out his pockets, or quietly scoffed at and eyerolled at by a customer service rep for his accent.
That lesson was:
This Is Not Your Country.
You can live here. You can make friends. You can try to live by the law and be a decent citizen and even maybe make a lot of money.
But you will never, ever belong. You will never, ever be one of them. And you must never, ever trust them.
In a new video released by CNN’s Anderson Cooper, two contractors are seen watching the police shooting of Michael Brown.
“He had his fucking hands in the air!” one of the men is heard shouting in the moments after the Aug. 9 shooting of the black teen by a white police officer.
CNN aired the footage during “Anderson Cooper 360” and said it was filmed by an unidentified man near the scene of the shooting. CNN also talked to the two men who were shown on the video.
The men, who didn’t wish to be identified, told CNN they witnessed the shooting from about 50 yards away. The man shown in the video in a pink shirt told CNN that they heard one gun shot followed by another about 30 seconds later. He said he saw Brown staggering and putting his hands up saying “Okay, okay, okay” but that “the cop didn’t say get on the ground, he just kept shooting.”
The man in the green shirt told CNN he saw Brown running away from the police car with his hands up as the officer chased him. He also said the police officer shot Brown again when his back was turned, according to CNN.
After Mike Brown was murdered by a Ferguson police officer, his dead body stayed in the street where he was shot down for over 4 hours. His killer was then whisked away to a secret location with round the clock security, his identity kept under wraps and protected for days while the people of Ferguson protested in the street.
The killer, as far as we can tell, is still receiving a paycheck from the Ferguson police department.
But while the dead, cold body of Mike Brown laid in the street like roadkill, the Ferguson Police department led by their Chief was already trying to come up with ways to tarnish Mike Brown, as if he was responsible for his killer pumping multiple shots into his body as he tried to run away. One of the ways they tried doing this was to release a video of an alleged Mike Brown robbing a convenience store. No one knew why this video was released, especially since the video had nothing to do with Mike Brown’s slaughter.
The police chief however, tried explaining why he released the video.
Ferguson Police Chief Thomas Jackson said, that there were multiple request for the video. “We got a lot of Freedom of Information requests for this tape,” Chief Jackson said, “and at some point, it was just determined we had to release it.”
The Post-Dispatch filed a public records request the day the video was released, requesting all the written requests for records that the city had received.
The records, which were provided to the newspaper 11 days later, showed that no organization had specifically requested before Aug. 15 a video of Michael Brown robbing a convenience store.
But requests from the Post-Dispatch and the organization Judicial Watch sought all documents related to Brown leading up to and including the shooting. A third request from ABC News asked for any video and audio records associated with Brown’s death.
The Post-Dispatch reporter who made one of those requests, Joel Currier, said he had heard rumors prior to Aug. 15 that Brown had committed a robbery just before he was killed. But Currier had no indication the alleged robbery was captured on video.
In conclusion, the killer is still being protected. He has not given his version of what happened the day he murdered Mike Brown. No incident report, but given all the time in the world to come up with a defense if the case even goes to court! But while they go out of their way to protect the killer, the Ferguson police, led by their trusted Chief, LIED. They’re doing all they can to release information about the victim, information that no one requested.
Victimizing the victim! Of course! Why not. This is how they make and deliver ‘news.’ It’s how they contaminate any potential jurors against Mike Brown. This is how they cultivate people’s opinion, planting doubts about the victim and raising questions like, was Brown really capable of being a good kid? This is how they attempt to soften the effects of this horrendous crime, where a police officer opened fire, almost emptying his clip as the unarmed teenager ran away for his life.
Requesting this information about Brown’s past served no real constructive purpose of course but Charles C. Johnson, a conservative blogger, and The Post-Dispatch filed a petition in St. Louis County Circuit Court to unseal and reveal something, anything to show that Brown may have had a ‘criminal’ past. Johnson and others have claimed that Brown was facing a murder charge at the time he was shot to death.
Cynthia Harcourt, a lawyer for St. Louis County Juvenile Officer Kip Seely, argued against releasing those records, but acknowledged there were no convictions for the most serious types of felonies. After the hearing, she told the Post-Dispatch Brown was not facing any serious felony charges when he died.
Class A felonies include second-degree murder and first-degree robbery; the penalties in adult court range from 10 years in prison to death. Class B felonies include voluntary manslaughter, second-degree robbery and first-degree burglary, with a maximum penalty of five to 15 years.
So, do you think they will stop victimizing the victim now that his records show no serious infractions? Do you think they will now look at the record of officer Darren Wilson – the actual killer – to see whst his past looks like?
It’s not just Darren Wilson, there are multiple incidents showing police force and brutality against the people they are supposed to protect, and multiple investigations into different officers in the Ferguson police department.
Federal investigators are focused on one Ferguson, Mo., police officer who fatally shot an unarmed black teenager, but at least five other police officers and one former officer in the town’s 53-member department have been named in civil rights lawsuits alleging the use of excessive force.
In four federal lawsuits, including one that is on appeal, and more than a half-dozen investigations over the past decade, colleagues of Darren Wilson’s have separately contested a variety of allegations, including killing a mentally ill man with a Taser, pistol-whipping a child, choking and hog-tying a child and beating a man who was later charged with destroying city property because his blood spilled on officers’ clothes.
One officer has faced three internal affairs probes and two lawsuits over claims he violated civil rights and used excessive force while working at a previous police department in the mid-2000s. That department demoted him after finding credible evidence to support one of the complaints, and he subsequently was hired by the Ferguson force.
Police officials from outside Ferguson and plaintiffs’ lawyers say the nature of such cases suggests there is a systemic problem within the Ferguson police force. Department of Justice officials said they are considering a broader probe into whether there is a pattern of using excessive force that routinely violates people’s civil rights.
The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart was back to form last night when he took on the crazies at Fox News for their stupidity and their comical reporting on the tragic events in Ferguson MO over the last few weeks, when an unarmed teenager was massacred by police.
Now there were many areas where Fox’s stupidity prevailed, but Stewart zeroed in on Bill O’Reilly’s decision to break his vacation to comment on Mike Brown’s shooting, and Stewart also focused on Sean Hannity – the stupidity is abundant with this guy folks – and Hannity’s idiotic statement saying, that if he found himself in the same situation as Mike Brown, he would just raised his shirt to show the cop that he didn’t have a gun.
“You really do have no f*cking idea, do you?” Jon said. “If only Michael Brown, instead of holding his hands over his head, had reached down to his waist and lifted up his shirt to show the gun he did not actually have, well, this whole tragedy could have been avoided.”
Stewart then went on to explain the difference between Blacks and Whites in this country, and how they are treated. To illustrate, he shared that a white “The Daily Show” producer clad in “homeless elf attire” once went out in New York City to tape an interview, accompanied by a black correspondent for the show dressed in a well-tailored suit. The black correspondent was the one stopped when entering the building.
“Race is there, and it is a constant,” Stewart said. “You’re tired of hearing about it? Imagine how f*cking exhausting it is living it.”
In the wake of all the police brutality activities finally coming to light, Dean Obeidallah of the Daily Beast tried to answer this question and did a little research in his quest to answer – why do killer cops walk free?
Seems a Supreme Court decision has something to do with it.
I would predict that few have issues with the police shooting dangerous criminals who are truly threatening them or the public at large. Regardless if we are white or a minority, we want the police to protect us. In fact, we pay them to do just that.
But the problem arises when we see the police kill a person in circumstances that shock our conscience. In these instances, our sense of right and wrong demands that the police officer be held criminally responsible for his actions.
However, this happens very infrequently. Why? In large part, this is due to a 1989 U.S. Supreme Court decision that held a police officer can legally use deadly force if the officer has an “objectively reasonable fear” that someone will be killed or suffer serious bodily injury. This ruling, by design, insulates police officers from criminal liability because of the unique, life-threatening challenges of being in law enforcement.
CNN has released a new audio recording done by a man in Ferguson depicting the moment Mike Brown was gunned down on August 9th.
On the recording, the man – who requested anonymity – is heard on a video chat telling someone “you are pretty…” as the gunshots rang out in the background. In the video, there were at least 10 to 11 shots fired. The man’s lawyer later said that he had no idea what was happening right outside his home as he chat on the video.
The FBI has questioned a man who says he recorded audio of gunfire at the time Brown was shot by Ferguson police on August 9, the man’s attorney told CNN.
In the recording, a quick series of shots can be heard, followed by a pause and then another quick succession of shots.
Forensic audio expert Paul Ginsberg analyzed the recording and said he detected at least 10 gunshots — a cluster of six, followed by four.
“I was very concerned about that pause … because it’s not just the number of gunshots, it’s how they’re fired,” the man’s attorney, Lopa Blumenthal, told CNN’s Don Lemon. “And that has a huge relevance on how this case might finally end up.”
The man, who asked that his identity not be revealed, lives near the site of the shooting and was close enough to have heard the gunshots, his attorney said.
He was speaking to a friend on a video chat service and happened to be recording the conversation at the same time Brown was shot, Blumenthal said.
They have no idea what happened because the cop, Darren Wilson has not given his side of the story. But the basic fact is clear – an unarmed Mike Brown was running away from the police, erasing all threats the officer may have felt. And while running away, Brown was shot multiple times by Wilson, then left in the street for almost 4 hours for all to see.
That is the fact. But that fact is enough for some to conclude that the officer was absolutely correct in being Brown’s prosecutor, jury and executioner. And these people are putting their money where their love for Wilson is.
Almost $400,000 has been raised on the fundraising site gofundme.com for the six-year police veteran. After the first fundraising drive reached its goal of $234,000, a second page was established and has brought in more than $153,000 in four days. More than 9,000 people combined have contributed to the two fundraising pages.
By contrast, more than 8,600 people have donated about $250,000 to the gofundme page set up for Brown. Thousands of mourners attended Brown’s funeral Monday in St. Louis.
Someone needs to tell me why cops have tasers. Are they for when a kid kicks them in the shin? Or maybe when a woman starts to argue about being pulled over for doing 66 in a 65. Is that what tasers are for? Heck I’m so old I can remember when there was no such thing as a taser. Only on Star Trek. You know, when their ray guns were set to “stun” instead of “kill.”Seems like the guys on the Starship Enterprise knew when to set their guns to either level. If only cops were as smart.
Or as courageous. I think I remember when cops had courage. Been a while though. Now when an “assailant” is 25 feet away with a knife, and that assailant is on crack or heroin or meth and can barely speak or move, it’s OK for a cop to shoot that person 15 times. Come on, you only do that if you want to kill someone. If you’ve just been waiting for your chance. Maybe that’s why you became a cop in the first place.
According to the police chief in St. Louis that kind of action is actually protocol these days. When a guy who is shaking and frail is within 20-25 feet with a knife, even a Swiss Army knife, he is considered to be “life threatening” to the officer. An officer who is armed with a baton, mace, taser, a bullet proof vest and a gun. I’m no hero but I wouldn’t consider that to be “life threatening” to myself…without all of that weaponry and armor. I would probably look to just knock the guy out when I got my chance. But if I were a cop I would opt for the safer route and just mace the guy. If he kept coming which is highly doubtful, I would go to the taser. End of story.
Now cops seem to shoot when someone yells “Boo.” Well especially if it’s a black guy yelling. If this is the case why do we even need cops? Any civilian can kill someone for little or no reason. Where does the training come in? With cops like these we might as well just have law of the jungle and kill each other. Who needs them? Who needs to pay them with our tax dollars? Hey, speaking of which why aren’t conservatives screaming about our socialist police department being out of control and over militarized? Why don’t they want our police force defunded like Obamacare? I mean I haven’t heard a word, a whisper, have you?
I digress. We call our cops “warriors” these days but I’ve never seen warriors so cowardly. Like when they shoot at a black woman in a car full of kids because she might have been breaking the speed limit. I mean how dangerous she is! Or when they beat a black woman into submission on the side of the road because she isn’t “obeying.” Or when they beat the crap out of the wrong guy and charge him with “bleeding on their uniforms”. That’s YOU Ferguson PD. Or when they choke a guy to death because he is selling cigarettes on the street. Or when they shoot an unarmed black kid six times because well..who knows.
I could write 100 paragraphs about the 21st century cop and how afraid they are to use their brains or fists or less lethal weapons because someone standing 25 feet away without a firearm is considered a “threat.” Example after example of police “overreach”, of escalation instead of a calming deescalation which is what they are paid to do. Escalation usually means homicide. Sometimes it’s tear gassing an entire crowd because one guy threw a bottle…of water. Once again I’m no hero but I will take the “water bottle challenge” and allow 20 cops to throw bottles of Evian at me and if I survive, all of those cowardly cops (and I don’t give a shit if they were under the command of Ron Johnson) that tear gassed pastors and woman and children, lose their jobs. How about THAT challenge?
I mean cops with helmets and shields and tanks and guns and mace and tasers and they gas an entire crowd because of thrown bottles? And yes there were many journalists who reported that it was only the bottles that got the the cops going…into their default escalation mode. What courageous officers of the law we are hiring! Yes WE are hiring and paying them which means WE can fire them? Right conservatives? I mean you guys would agree with that right?
So here is one of our modern day heroic cops. He continues his complaining and racist wayson twitter. I’m not going to get into all of the disgusting things he says about Eric Holder or the people he is supposed to be “protecting and serving.” I only have one question…why not find another job? I mean he hates being a cop so much, complains about everything he has to deal with so why not quit? Nobody is forcing him to be a cop, and nobody forced him to become a cop. It’s a lifestyle choice.
Our cops are also getting dumb and dumber. When you start to push, threaten and arrest journalists, point your weapons at them and have them overhear you bad mouthing protesters, you really can’t be too intelligent. I mean your I.Q. can’t be very high. Speaking of which, here is an example of what I’m talking about. It is indeed possible to be “too smart” to get hired as a cop in the USA. I’m guessing they don’t have these regulations in any other country. It takes a certain kind of dumb to actually lose the support of the mainstream media!
Then there is the cop who pushed CNN’s Don Lemon. How did this loser get hired in the first place? It’s not like he is able to hide his grotesque beliefs. Maybe it’s because the people who hired him have similar beliefs. These are some of the same cops who were enforcing those protest rules in Ferguson. Like walk but don’t stop. So the protesters couldn’t take a breath and stand in one place without getting harassed by the police. I don’t seem to find any clause in the First Amendment which says “Freedom of speech, except no standing still while exercising those freedoms.” Or “Freedom of the press but only in designated areas as assigned by local police.” Can you? If so send those clauses along to me please.
Where are all of those Second Amendment purists screaming and yelling about all of the First Amendment violations? I can’t seem to find them anywhere. They believe a group of white people protecting a rancher from having to pay taxes is “patriotic” but black people protesting the murder of an unarmed teenager is not. A German Journalist had to come to Ferguson to realize, as so many Americans are finally, at long last realizing, that the USA is not a free country. That all of those heroic soldiers really died for nothing, for shit. But hey, because of “freedom” right conservatives?
Speaking of Germany, police officers in that ENTIRE country shot off 85 bullets in a full YEAR. In the U.K. it was three shots, half of the number of bullets Mike Brown was hit with. In Iceland the first civilian ever was just killed by a cop. The entire country is in mourning. This is civilization, this is freedom, this is real law enforcement.
Maybe we need cops who aren’t afraid of their own shadows. We don’t need super heroes or anything, just people who aren’t 300 pounds, who can run or use their hands to protect themselves in situations where someone doesn’t have a gun. Where the training and the laws REQUIRE them to use the mace or the taser when the suspect has a knife or a bat and is 30 feet away. Cops who can disarm and apprehend without discharging their weapon 6-15 times. Maybe this is what we need.
By the way I love firemen. They put out fires, unlike the police, who ignite them.
Mike.Caccioppoli@yahoo.com
@CaccioppoliMike
Correction: I’m reminded by the loyal followers of DailyKos.com that the Star Trek weapons were known as Phasers not Tasers. If only our police forces had those instead.
We use cookies to improve your experience on our site. By agreeing to this, we can analyze browsing behavior and unique IDs on this site. Declining or revoking consent may affect certain features.
Functional
Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes.The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behavior or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
