A Black Man Speaks Out About The St. Louis Lootings....

[Niner]

If all "people of color" were as smart as this gent, their lot in life would be a lot better.....


http://youtu.be/B092acMImJE

[Buckrub]

You oughtta heard the black guy on Fox News that the wife was watching, just a few minutes ago. He spoke straight. However, I left the room and came in here. Tired of 'news'.

This is maybe going to be the turning point. We'll see.

[HideHunter]

I'd like to buy that guy a beer.

[LW]

Or a tv network...

[Buckrub]

Where were the riots for this one????

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/10/23/body-found-may-be-missing-new-jersey-girl-police-say/

[Bwana]

Can I get an "Amen?"

[DeputyDog]

Here is another interesting perspective.

An Open Letter to Captain Ronald S. Johnson

From a former St. Louis Metro Area police chief

I have to call you out.

I don’t care what the media says. I expect them to get it wrong and they often do. But I expect you as a veteran law enforcement commander—talking about law enforcement—to get it right.

Unfortunately, you blew it. After days of rioting and looting, last Thursday you were given command of all law enforcement operations in Ferguson by Governor Jay Nixon. St. Louis County PD was out, you were in. You played to the cameras, walked with the protesters and promised a kinder, gentler response. You were a media darling. And Thursday night things were better, much better.

But Friday, under significant pressure to do so, the Ferguson Police released the name of the officer involved in the shooting of Michael Brown. At the same time the Ferguson Police Chief released a video showing Brown committing a strong-arm robbery just 10 minutes before he was confronted by Officer Darren Wilson.

Many don’t like the timing of the release of the video. I don’t like that timing either. It should have been released sooner. It should have been released the moment FPD realized that Brown was the suspect.

Captain Johnson, your words during the day on Friday helped to fuel the anger that was still churning just below the surface. St. Louis County Police were told to remain uninvolved and that night the rioting and looting began again. For much too long it went on mostly unchecked. Retired St. Louis County Police Chief Tim Fitch tweeted that your “hug-a-looter” policy had failed.

Boy did it.

And your words contributed to what happened Friday night and on into the wee hours of Saturday. According to the St. Louis Post Dispatch, you said the following regarding the release of the video: “There was no need to release it,” Johnson said calling the reported theft and the killing entirely different events.

Well Captain, this veteran police officer feels the need to respond. What you said is, in common police vernacular—bullshit. The fact that Brown knew he had just committed a robbery before he was stopped by Officer Wilson speaks to Brown’s mindset. And Captain, the mindset of a person being stopped by a police officer means everything, and you know it.

Let’s consider a few examples:

On February 15, 1978 Pensacola Police Officer David Lee conducted a vehicle check. He didn’t know what the sole occupant of the vehicle had recently done, but the occupant did. Who was he? Serial killer Ted Bundy. Bundy attempted to disarm Lee. Lee was able to retain his firearm and eventually took Bundy into custody.

On April 19, 1995 Oklahoma State Trooper Charlie Hangar stopped a vehicle for minor traffic violations. He didn’t know that 90 minutes earlier the traffic violator, Timothy McVeigh, killed 168 people with a truck bomb at the Murrah Federal Building. But McVeigh sure knew it, didn’t he? Fortunately, given his training and experience Hangar was able to take McVeigh into custody for carrying a concealed firearm. It was days later before it was determined that McVeigh was responsible for the bombing.

On May 31, 2003 then-rookie North Carolina police officer, Jeff Postell, arrested a man digging in a trash bin on a grocery store parking lot—an infraction that would rise to about the level of jaywalking. Postell didn’t know that he had just captured Eric Rudolph, the man whom years earlier had killed and injured numerous people with bombs and was on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list.

So now, let’s consider Ferguson Officer Darren Wilson’s stop of Michael Brown. Apparently Wilson didn’t know that Brown had just committed a strong-arm robbery. But Brown did! And that Captain, is huge.

Allegedly, Brown pushed Wilson and attempted to take Wilson’s gun. We’re also being told that Officer Wilson has facial injuries suffered during the attempt by Brown to disarm him. Let’s assume for a moment those alleged acts by Brown actually occurred. Would Brown have responded violently to an officer confronting him about jaywalking? Maybe, but probably not.

Is it more likely that he would attack an officer believing that he was about to be taken into custody for a felony strong-arm robbery?

Absolutely.

Officer Wilson survived the encounter with Brown as did Lee, Hangar, and Postell. Michael Brown didn’t survive and it’s too soon to say if Officer Wilson’s use of deadly force was justified and legal.

You and I both know that not all officers survive such confrontations. Officers die in incidents like this Captain Johnson, including a couple that I remember from your own organization:

On April 15, 1985 Missouri Trooper Jimmie Linegar was shot and killed by a white supremacist he and his partner stopped at a checkpoint; neither Trooper Linegar nor his partner were aware that the man they had stopped had just been indicted by a federal grand jury for involvement in a neo-Nazi group accused of murder. The suspect immediately exited the vehicle and opened fire on him with an automatic weapon.

Just a month before, Missouri Trooper James M. Froemsdorf was shot and killed—with his own gun—after making a traffic stop. When the Trooper made that stop he didn’t know that the driver was wanted on four warrants out of Texas—But again the suspect knew it.

So Captain Johnson, I guess the mindset and recently committed crimes of the suspects that murdered those Missouri Troopers didn’t mean anything. The stops by the Troopers, as you have said, are entirely different events right?

Bullshit.

Some information contained in this article came from the Officer Down Memorial Page (ODMP).

[Thumper]

'Nuf said! Thanks Deppity.

[Chicken Dinner]

This is sure getting interesting. From Fox News:

Darren Wilson, the Ferguson, Mo., police officer whose fatal shooting of Michael Brown touched off more than a week of demonstrations, suffered severe facial injuries, including an orbital (eye socket) fracture, and was nearly beaten unconscious by Brown moments before firing his gun, a source close to the department's top brass told FoxNews.com.

“The Assistant (Police) Chief took him to the hospital, his face all swollen on one side,” said the insider. “He was beaten very severely.”










According to the well-placed source, Wilson was coming off another case in the neighborhood on Aug. 9 when he ordered Michael Brown and his friend Dorain Johnson to stop walking in the middle of the road because they were obstructing traffic. However, the confrontation quickly escalated into physical violence, the source said..

“They ignored him and the officer started to get out of the car to tell them to move," the source said. "They shoved him right back in, that’s when Michael Brown leans in and starts beating Officer Wilson in the head and the face.

The source claims that there is "solid proof" that there was a struggle between Brown and Wilson for the policeman’s firearm, resulting in the gun going off – although it still remains unclear at this stage who pulled the trigger. Brown started to walk away according to the account, prompting Wilson to draw his gun and order him to freeze. Brown, the source said, raised his hands in the air, and turned around saying, "What, you're going to shoot me?"

At that point, the source told FoxNews.com, the 6 foot, 4 inch, 292-pound Brown charged Wilson, prompting the officer to fire at least six shots at him, including the fatal bullet that penetrated the top of Brown's skull, according to an independent autopsy conducted at the request of Brown's family.

Wilson suffered a fractured eye socket in the fracas, and was left dazed by the initial confrontation, the source said. He is now "traumatized, scared for his life and his family, injured and terrified" that a grand jury, which began hearing evidence on Wednesday, will "make some kind of example out of him," the source said.

The source also said the dashboard and body cameras, which might have recorded crucial evidence, had been ordered by Ferguson Police Chief Thomas Jackson, but had only recently arrived and had not yet been deployed.

St. Louis County police, who have taken over the investigation, did not return requests for comment about possible injuries suffered by Wilson.

Edward Magee, spokesman for St. Louis County Prosecutor Robert McCullough, said the office will not disclose the nature of the evidence it will reveal to a grand jury.

"We'll present every piece of evidence we have, witness statements, et cetera, to the grand jury, and we do not release any evidence or talk about evidence on the case."

Nabil Khattar, CEO of 7Star Industries – which specializes in firearms training for law enforcement and special operations personnel – confirmed that police are typically instructed to use deadly force if in imminent danger of being killed or suffering great bodily injury.

“You may engage a threat with enough force that is reasonably necessary to defend against that danger,” he said.

Wilson is a six-year veteran of the Ferguson police force department, and has no prior disciplinary infringements.

Massive protests have since taken over the St. Louis community, prompting Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon last Thursday to place Highway Patrol Capt. Ron Johnson at the helm of security operations in an effort to calm ongoing tensions. The federal government is also investigating the death, and Attorney General Eric Holder has taken the lead – calling “the selective release of sensitive information” in the case “troubling.”

On Friday, Ferguson police released surveillance video showing Brown stealing cigars from a convenience store just before his death. Jackson came under intense criticism for disclosing the tape and a related police report as he also insisted that the alleged robbery and the encounter with Wilson were unrelated matters. Brown’s family, through their attorney, suggested the tape’s release was a strategic form of “character assassination.”

However, FoxNews.com’s source insisted that there was absolutely no spin agenda behind the tape’s release and that there were a number of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) media requests filed by media outlets seeking it. Tom Jackson is said to have waited on publicly releasing it, and did not want it shown until Brown’s grieving mother first had the chance to see it.

“He defied the FOIAs as long as he could,” noted the insider. “A powerful, ugly spin has completely ruined public discourse on this whole situation.”

[BarryBobPosthole]

If this is true, and there's no reason to believe it isn't, then why hasn't any of this information been released prior to two weeks into this deal? It doesn't seem like anyone in a leadership role has done anything to provide a defense of the policeman. And it doesn't take two weeks to debrief an eye witness either.
There's absolutely no excuse for looting a third party's business in retaliation for perceived wrong, and there's no excuse for the rioting in the streets. But by the same token, there's plenty of stupid going around on the folks that by all rights are on the right side of this thing too.

What a clusterfuck.

BKB

[Chicken Dinner]

That's the best description I've heard of it yet and it's only going to get worse. It's puzzling why the only first hand account was from the guy's buddy who would have been an accomplice to a felony strong-armed robber 10 minutes earlier.

[LJ3]

I keep waiting for a live night shot in that town and seeing a nekkid angel walking by playing a trumpet.

[Captain]

http://youtu.be/wMGfhXCpN2k

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[Chicken Dinner]

http://www.angelicscorn.co.uk/angelic-angels/angel.jpg

After the rapture, this poster will vanish.

[Buckrub]

My mind has vanished. You Americans took it. Dang ya.