MO - Grief & protests follow shooting of teen Michael Brown #14

[gngr~snap]

MSM = isn't what it used to be.
Maybe I should say "journalism" in general. I can't believe how many articles from numerous sources are exactly the same. Word for word.
Someone is still doing investigative journalism, but we won't see them on CNN, HLN or FOX.
moo

All posts are MOO

 

[katydid23]

Saw something interesting in the newsweek article posted upthread:

"McCulloch will not be working with the grand jury himself in this case; two longtime prosecutors in his office will work directly with the grand jury. But Magee said McCulloch will be “kept abreast of what goes on and then offer his guidance and experience.”

So apparently, McCulloch will not even be in the Grand Jury room.

http://www.newsweek.com/ferguson-prosecutor-robert-p-mccullochs-long-history-siding-police-267357

 

[dandy]

I believe there are two different investigations going on. IMO, if the GJ returns a "no true bill", there will still be the federal "civil rights investigation":

Police investigation

On August 10, Jon Belmar, chief of the St. Louis County Police Department, announced that their department would be in charge of the investigation, after receiving a request from Ferguson Police Chief Tom Jackson to investigate the shooting.[48][89] The Ferguson Police Department initially declined to name the officer involved in the shooting, citing concerns for his safety, and refused to commit to a deadline for releasing a full autopsy report.[76] Robert P. McCulloch, the prosecuting attorney for St. Louis County, will be the official charged with determining if state charges will be filed.[89] On August 20, a grand jury started hearing evidence in the shooting.[90]

County executive Charlie Dooley called for a special prosecutor, saying that McCulloch is "biased and shouldn't handle the case."[91] Democratic politicians said that the investigation should be conducted by a higher authority than the local prosecutor officer because of a poor history of prosecuting law enforcement officers in controversial cases, and said that McCulloch should withdraw.[92]
FBI investigation

On August 11, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) opened a parallel civil rights investigation into the incident,[10] and United States Attorney General Eric Holder instructed the Justice Department's staff to monitor the developments.[93] According to the spokeswoman for the FBI's St. Louis field office, the protests and riots played no role in the FBI's decision to investigate.[94] On August 13, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri, Richard G. Callahan, announced a civil rights investigation into the case.[95] On August 17, Attorney General Holder authorized an additional autopsy of Brown by a federal medical examiner.[96] A spokesman for the Justice Department cited "the extraordinary circumstances involved in this case" and a request by the Brown family for the autopsy.[96]

On August 16, Ron Johnson, a captain in the Missouri State Highway Patrol, said there were 40 FBI agents going door-to-door looking for potential witnesses that may have information about the shooting.[97][98] Additionally, the Justice Department confirmed that attorneys from its Civil Rights Division and from the United States Attorney's Office were participating in the investigation.[98]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Michael_Brown

i'm just amazed & dismayed at the # of resources/hours the federal govt is putting into this case.

**Federal Bureau of Investigation opened a parallel civil rights investigation
**Justice Department's staff to monitor the developments
**U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri, Richard G. Callahan, announced a civil rights investigation into the case.
**Civil Rights Division and from the United States Attorney's Office were participating in the investigation


are these agencies required to share its info/keep st. louis county informed - or are their investigations confidential?

also, i'd bet that 90% of the ferguson le are out looking for a transfer - who would want to work there now?

 

[KEVINinTO]

Yep. So the fundamental question is this. How is it that witnesses, two of whom mentioned their phones in their accounts, three of whom filmed the aftermath of a crime they said they saw, did not start any recording for at least eight minutes after the fact? No logical explanation for this if they actually saw the crime, IMO.

This is an excellent point! There is no logical explanation for waiting so long after they witnessed the shooting to start recording. The witness account of Michael Brady is already very suspect IMO. He claims he witnessed from the window of his apartment, OW firing shots at MB after OW exited the SUV. Brady then claims that he ran downstairs and outside of his apartment where he witnessed the final shots. We now know that the volley of gunfire lasted only 8 seconds in total including a 2.7 second pause between the first 6 shots and the final 4 shots. How was it possible for Brady to get from inside his apartment to the outside in the space of approximately 4 seconds? When he was first interviewed by Anderson Cooper I wish Cooper had asked Brady to reenact his movements.

If we are to believe Brady he was able to get from his bedroom window to outside his apartment in about 4 seconds but it took him about 8 minutes to start recording the crime scene?

 

[Trident]

According to many posts here, it seems that folks are blaming the citizens of Ferguson for not voting McCulloch out of office (claiming that if they don't like him or don't trust him, why didn't they vote him out), which was why I posted the above stats in my preceding post.

Thing is, there are a lot of elected officials in Washington DC that "I" didn't vote in but since other people did "I", as a law-abiding citizen, have to live with it. The people of Ferguson need to understand this. They need to put emotionalism aside, understand the way our system works, then act accordingly. We cannot have two sets of laws.

My opinion only

 

[Footwarrior]

MSM have reporting and fact-checking resources. They gather information, evaluate it, and attempt to depict it in a balanced, objective way. Blogs typically promote one particular ideology or another; they use information that other media sources have gathered; they do not have resources for checking facts, nor do they care to do so, as they're attempting to promote an opinion rather than to report a fact. While some may say that, for instance, MSNBC and Fox have ideological bents, the fact remains that they do have reporters, fact checkers (of a fashion), and report on many topics that have absolutely no political angle whatsoever, and so they are MSM.

Another difference is that MSM outlets will issue corrections after discovering an error in a report. Tabloids and political blogs seldom do.

 

[DebinGA]

AP is probably where most people get their news, because it's so much more cost-effective for newspapers to run an AP account of an event than to send their own reporter. AP covered last night's protest march in Ferguson, and noted that it was organized by representatives from Nation of Islam, the St. Louis Chapter of the NAACP, and the Better Family Life org. in St. Louis. Blogs go beyond the basics and provide info, for instance, my google of Better Family Life showed it was a St. Louis "nonprofit" org. with dubious accounting practices:

http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/...cle_df6a436e-039e-5fc9-9ec3-3d43a7b290bc.html

Any wonder that an entity, whose two top officers are a man and wife who bill the county for services related to counseling hunting people, would have an interest in keeping the "hurt fires" burning? Don't know if CEO Malik Ahmed and his VP/wife DeBorah Ahmed are connected to the Nation of Islam or Anthony Shadid, and I doubt the msm is interested in finding out. Going below the superficial facts of a story is where blogs are very useful imo.

 

[oceanblueeyes]

Yep. So the fundamental question is this. How is it that witnesses, two of whom mentioned their phones in their accounts, three of whom filmed the aftermath of a crime they said they saw, did not start any recording for at least eight minutes after the fact? No logical explanation for this if they actually saw the crime, IMO.

Good Morning Everyone!

I am glad to see I am not the only one this has bothered. From the very beginning it never made any sense to me. Something is very strange about that, imo. Why no video of the actual altercation or all the events that transpired before/during MB was shot? Yet they videoed everything else after it has already happened?

Something is very suspicious about that, imo.

If what they have said is true they would want to get the video rolling immediately to show the "rouge cop" in action but not one piece of video captures the event. That is highly convenient for the naysayers isn't it?

I do think possibly more video footage was taken but they erased the first part and only turned in the aftermath. If so, the FBI will know if there is more video footage. I really don't think some of the witnesses who videoed the scene afterwards would be knowledgeable enough to know that the police can determine there was more video footage taken.

IMO

 

[Footwarrior]

Hey guys some thoughts before I cash out for the night....

I'd like an American or 10 to weigh in on this, as a Canadian, my cultural experiences go from here (Canada/Ottawa), to Japan (Near Nara), to Ireland (near Ulster). This incident much like the TM one made me think a bit..

- Is a great distrust of LE common in the states?

Here it isn't, we have similar issues with NP rather then AA's and LE, but it rarely ever gets this bad (Caledonia blockade), it just seems that a lot of this issue stems from people not wanting to take the word of LE, largely due to racial tensions, but I wonder if that's the root of it.

Racial tensions are part of the problem in Ferguson, but there are other factors at work.

The town of Ferguson balances it's budget with fines for minor infractions. The police are expected to issue tickets for things that would at most result in a warning in other communities. A recent study found the average household in Ferguson owes about $2,500 in fines and fees.

The people of Ferguson do not see the police as part of the community. The police seem to share this attitude. It isn't helped by the fact that most of the officers live outside of town.

Compared to Canada, police in the US are quick to resort to lethal force. Just a few days after MB was shot, a clearly disturbed man was gunned down only a few miles from Ferguson. The police made no attempt to calm him down when they arrived on the scene. Nor did they attempt to subdue him with non lethal weapons. They just got out of the car with firearms drawn and started yelling. When the suspect made a small move toward the police, they started shooting and kept firing even after he was down.

 

[Lovejac]

“I tell these kids, if you don’t like the rules, go to law school. We need black lawyers, black judges. But this griping in the streets will get you dead. It means nothing,” she said. “You want to fight? Fight for utility rates to go down like we did back in the ’60s when I was a little kid. Fight for something that means something. Fight for getting somebody’s rent

http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/pro-darren-wilson-rally-finds-unlikely-hero


:clap:

She is delightful! What a breath of fresh air.

 

[TheDuchess]

Good Morning Everyone!

I am glad to see I am not the only one this has bothered. From the very beginning it never made any sense to me. Something is very strange about that, imo. Why no video of the actual altercation or all the events that transpired before/during MB was shot? Yet they videoed everything else after it has already happened?

Something is very suspicious about that, imo.

If what they have said is true they would want to get the video rolling immediately to show the "rouge cop" in action but not one piece of video captures the event. That is highly convenient for the naysayers isn't it?

I do think possibly more video footage was taken but they erased the first part and only turned in the aftermath. If so, the FBI will know if there is more video footage. I really don't think some of the witnesses who videoed the scene afterwards would be knowledgeable enough to know that the police can determine there was more video footage taken.

IMO

Good morning! As far as the videos go, I find that none of them really show anything. No one videoed the actual event, so any video after the fact really doesn't help unless the videos actually show evidence to substantiate justifiability of the shoot or the use of excessive force. All the videos shot that I can tell are just confirmations of things we already know, such as that MB had been shot by a cop. For example, Piaget shows OW speaking with another officer. She says that shows that he was distraught because he realized that he just shot a boy for no reason. How, exactly, does her video show that? You cannot hear what the officer is saying. He could very well have been explaining how crazy it was that MB was coming at him and that he thought he must have been on something. That he couldn't believe what this kid just did. Only OW and the other officer can truly know what was said during that exchange and my educated guess tells me that conversation has already been documented (i.e. with OWs statement separate from that of the responding officer.)

I'm not exactly sure what value Piaget or anyone else's videos have if they don't show any real evidence of the actual incident.

 

[oceanblueeyes]

Another difference is that MSM outlets will issue corrections after discovering an error in a report. Tabloids and political blogs seldom do.

Maybe some do but some never do.

I watch MSM cable news outlets everyday. Lots of misinformation is put out that they never retract nor correct. They just run with the misinformation over and over again.

Imo, journalism has changed. There was a time if the media had a video they would never put it on the air UNTIL it was vetted to be authentic but now they air it anyway knowing it hasn't been authenticated at the time.

Journalism has become more about ratings and being the one to have 'breaking news' than worrying about what they put out is the truth or not. They just run with it nowadays.

Another drastic change I have seen is reporters are reporting with a biased slant these days depending on the agendas of the media outlet they work for. I have also seen them try to be part of the story itself and making the story about them instead of just reporting the facts. Don Lemon has been the worst concerning this case, imo. Real journalist years ago did not inject their own personal emotions and opinions about any case. They remained neutral as they should have and simply reported the facts and the citizens could decide what to believe based on the vetted facts that were released. Those days have been long gone and will never return, imo.

In this case I have even seen some reporters be a part of inciting the anger and passions of others hoping something bad would happen so they would have the latest breaking news story.

Of course they can be sued but they rarely are and they really don't care if they are anyway. Even if they have to pay out funds later on the rating boost they got for putting out misinformation offsets it.

Some of the MSM have been the worst reporters concerning this case. IMO

IMO

 

[Lovejac]

Racial tensions are part of the problem in Ferguson, but there are other factors at work.

The town of Ferguson balances it's budget with fines for minor infractions. The police are expected to issue tickets for things that would at most result in a warning in other communities. A recent study found the average household in Ferguson owes about $2,500 in fines and fees.

The people of Ferguson do not see the police as part of the community. The police seem to share this attitude. It isn't helped by the fact that most of the officers live outside of town.

Compared to Canada, police in the US are quick to resort to lethal force. Just a few days after MB was shot, a clearly disturbed man was gunned down only a few miles from Ferguson. The police made no attempt to calm him down when they arrived on the scene. Nor did they attempt to subdue him with non lethal weapons. They just got out of the car with firearms drawn and started yelling. When the suspect made a small move toward the police, they started shooting and kept firing even after he was down.

Was that the guy with the knife?

 

[Elley Mae]

Racial tensions are part of the problem in Ferguson, but there are other factors at work.

The town of Ferguson balances it's budget with fines for minor infractions. The police are expected to issue tickets for things that would at most result in a warning in other communities. A recent study found the average household in Ferguson owes about $2,500 in fines and fees.

The people of Ferguson do not see the police as part of the community. The police seem to share this attitude. It isn't helped by the fact that most of the officers live outside of town.

Compared to Canada, police in the US are quick to resort to lethal force. Just a few days after MB was shot, a clearly disturbed man was gunned down only a few miles from Ferguson. The police made no attempt to calm him down when they arrived on the scene. Nor did they attempt to subdue him with non lethal weapons. They just got out of the car with firearms drawn and started yelling. When the suspect made a small move toward the police, they started shooting and kept firing even after he was down.

bbm What are the fines and fees for?

 

[bettybaby00]

Morning...

Thing is, there are a lot of elected officials in Washington DC that "I" didn't vote in but since other people did "I", as a law-abiding citizen, have to live with it. The people of Ferguson need to understand this. They need to put emotionalism aside, understand the way our system works, then act accordingly. We cannot have two sets of laws.

My opinion only

Great point.

 

[Footwarrior]

bbm What are the fines and fees for?

Most of the fines are for minor traffic offenses.
http://www.npr.org/2014/08/25/343143937/in-ferguson-court-fines-and-fees-fuel-anger

 

[Elley Mae]

Most of the fines are for minor traffic offenses.
http://www.npr.org/2014/08/25/343143937/in-ferguson-court-fines-and-fees-fuel-anger

Those # should change, maybe npr should go back in a year and see if the #'s don't drop. I got a ticket a bit back on a holiday weekend no less, double fine. I paid it, 160.00, I was going 74 in a 55, I was wrong.

Ticket quotas banned in Illinois
2014/06/16
http://www.ktrs.com/ticket-quotas-banned-in-illinois/

 

[tlcya]

BBM

I've been politically active in my community. I've attended caucuses and have been elected as a delegate for my presidential candidate. During that process, I learned how disenfranchised some folks feel. I've learned how some folks have come to the point where they believe that no matter how hard they try, no one is there for them and no one has their back.

When apathy sets in, it's incredibly difficult to overcome it, especially when generational or cultural apathy has arisen due to decades of oppression.

Regarding the above bolded bit: I agree 100%. But we can't lump the law-abiding protesters in with the looters, the thugs, and the arsonists.

I think it behooves each and every one of us to listen to the legitimate protesters, even if they cry out in anger - even if they may seem to be misguided in their methods cos we think we know how a protest should be conducted, or we think we know what they oughta be doing 'stead of marching in the streets and complaining.

It's as if some folks are accusing the law-abiding protesters of being 'uppity'.

Personally speaking, this entire event has taught me that I don't know nearly as much as I thought I knew.

One thing I do know is this: I want to learn. I want to understand. I want to listen.

Learning, understanding, and listening can only occur in humility.

:goodpost: I always appreciate your well constructed thoughful posts Sorrell. Thanks

 

[Footwarrior]

Was that the guy with the knife?

Yes. It was one of those cases we refer to as suicide by cop. Unlike the MB shooting, the entire event was captured on video. This NPR report has includes the cell phone video, but you may find it disturbing:

http://news.stlpublicradio.org/post/st-louis-police-release-video-calls-city-shooting

 

[TorisMom003]

Most of the fines are for minor traffic offenses.
http://www.npr.org/2014/08/25/343143937/in-ferguson-court-fines-and-fees-fuel-anger

Driving with a suspended license, no insurance, etc are not what I call minor traffic offenses. The law is the law. If folks don't want to pay the fines for breaking the law, then they shouldn't break the law.

MOO