So there's this riot going on right now

[Cerin]

The main question in my mind is, should the penalty for failing to comply instantly with a police officer's order be death? Or, in the case of tasers, disabling pain with a nonzero risk of death?

Of course not. I bet you won't find a single person who thinks so. But I do not believe that is the issue here. The man was shot after he had somehow become engaged in a physical fight of some sort with the officer -- not for walking in the road, nor for failing to comply with an order. How did it come to a physical fight?

So in order to save the buildings they attacked their inhabitants.

Did they attack the inhabitants? Or did they fire tear gas canisters into the area to keep a crowd from gathering? From the coverage I saw, the tear gas wasn't being fired into groups of people, but to make it an uncomfortable area to remain in. Given the tension and racially polarized nature of the situation, what ought they to have done? Vacate the area and just let a crowd continue to gather? I would guess that if the situation hadn't devolved into vandalism and looting the first day, the police response might have been more measured on the second day.

[axordil]

They fired tear gas canisters into people's yards to force them indoors. They fired rubber coated steel rounds *at* people. I call those attacks.

What they should have done: not start a confrontation with a non-violent crowd composed to a great extent by people who lived in the neighborhood, or adjacent ones. It's actually pretty easy to tell a crowd of demonstrators in a street or parking lot from looters--the looters are the ones breaking into stores, looting. The protesters are the ones still grouped up where they started. If the police had been less concerned the first night with containing the prayer vigil and protest, if they hadn't put so many resources and armored vehicles and dogs around the people who weren't causing any actual trouble, they would have had far less trouble catching looters before they really got going--but the police were working on the assumption that it was all one angry undifferentiated mob, because that's how bad cops think.

[Frelga]

First off, I am disinclined to take this officer's word for anything, given that the suspect will not have a chance to testify. Second, I would hope that American police is capable of subduing a single, unarmed suspect without killing him on the spot. Especially since all over Europe, the police manages to do that, and in many places they don't even carry weapons.

No excuses.

[River]

And yes, we should be very much surprised, shocked, and appalled when a cop is so incompetent, functionally or morally, as to end up killing someone for no reason other than "failure to jump high enough when I said frog."

I agree with that, but I just don't see how it's what happened here. It may have begun with the officer picking on Brown for no good reason, but the only reason it ended with Brown getting shot is because he went on the attack*, which is neither a legal nor a smart response to police harassment.

*again, unless the police are 100% lying, which I'll concede is not impossible

Had a co-worker who went to an anti-war demo in SF in 2003. He had a camera and he took video of a cop, who was trying to disperse the crowd, just up and out of the blue slam a baton onto the arm of a woman holding a sign. The cop then arrested the woman for assault.

My co-worker hunted down her lawyer and handed over the video. She was acquitted and she won her civil suit.

My sister saw something similar happen at a Critical Mass event in NYC. Sadly, she did not have a camera.

My point is that it is entirely within the realm of possibility that the cop in Ferguson made an extremely poor decision regarding the use of force and then lied about it to cover his behind. Scumbags can be found in any profession. The trouble with scumbags in public service is they end up interacting with the general public.

BTW, I'm finding the implications that an unarmed kid was "asking for it" somewhat creepy. Almost like blaming the victim, isn't it? Yeah, it takes two to have a fight...but one of those two was an armed adult supposedly trained to deal with stuff like this in a manner that doesn't involve shooting. If the kid wasn't armed and truly went on the attack, is there any reason why the cop couldn't pull out some pepper spray?

[Frelga]

Or, hell, even the baton.
Because... Let me see if I can get through this one without using swearwords.
Because arresting the suspects and bringing them to trial alive is what the police is supposed to do.
Whew!

[Cerin]

BTW, I'm finding the implications that an unarmed kid was "asking for it" somewhat creepy.

No one here has implied that the kid was asking for it. I have wondered how the situation came to physical confrontation. Dave has observed that physical altercation with police isn't a legal or wise course of action. I agree that there is no excuse for this outcome, but there are reasons this happened; there is some chain of events that turned what should have been a non-incident into a citizen's death. I am interested in understanding what happened.

I cannot help wondering if the kid would still be alive if he'd gotten out of the street when told to do so. If I were his mother, I imagine I would be wishing that he had. Does this mean I think he was asking for it? No.

[axordil]

Third verse, same as the first. Police added sonic weapons to the arsenal tonight, like they have to try out all of their toys. They also arrested a couple of reporters for not getting out of a McDonalds fast enough when they wanted to close it down.

[Primula Baggins]

The images from there are pretty scary. A guy on the roof of a huge armored military vehicle with a big swiveling automatic weapon aimed at the crowd of protestors.

[Frelga]

http://new.livestream.com/accounts/9035 ... s/3271930A
Videos from Ferguson.
Don't read the comments. Just don't.

[Jude]

I'm getting a 404 error from your link...

[axordil]

Livestreams are, as I understand it, only up when they're live.

Video of the Washington Post reporter being arrested:
[media] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXI2ln_2Tac[/media]

Video of the St. Louis County and Ferguson police advancing with tear gas, rubber bullets, flash-bang grenades and the sonic cannon (NSFW):


Tear-gas grenade thrown at Al-Jazeera news crew. Their equipment was then damaged by the police.

[axordil]

I'm obviously not using the youtube tags right, but the links should work.

[Jude]

Let's see if I can get the youtube tags right...

Video of the Washington Post reporter being arrested:


Video of the St. Louis County and Ferguson police advancing with tear gas, rubber bullets, flash-bang grenades and the sonic cannon (NSFW):


Tear-gas grenade thrown at Al-Jazeera news crew. Their equipment was then damaged by the police.


I doubt that there's any charge that will hold up in court, regarding that reporter in the first video.

[axordil]

Thanks, Jude!

If there's one small silver lining to yesterday's events: the reporters getting arrested made the mainstream media finally start paying real attention to the story. Rachel Maddow covered it, footage crept into the CNN hourly cycle, etc.

And in the stopped clocks being right twice a day department:http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2014/07/ ... arization/

[axordil]

My "favorite" part is when people were asked to stop recording with cameras and phones. This was after the police pushed the news vans out.

[Jude]

It's been all over the news at CBC, right from the beginning.

[Dave_LF]

I just arrived here from the "Israel and Gaza" thread, and was struck by some of the similarities:
-For all three of Brown, the protesters, and the Palestinians, the main complaint boils down to "you hit us back too hard" (pending more details in Brown's case). Even when it's true, that's a morally weak position to argue from.
-Even excepting present events, both communities seem to have been legitimately and systematically wronged over the years, but they're both ruining their chances of outside sympathy by expressing their complaints through random violence. And by choosing the wrong heroes.

[Frelga]

I don't see a parallel at all. Hamas forms a major part of Palestinian government (werent they going to have an election soon?) and it was using military weapons to shoot at the neighbouring state. That's an act of war.

Here, the most generous interpretation of what happened involves an incompetent officer killing an unarmed jaywalker. If Brown had any criminal history, I expect we would have heard by now. And he's dead.

Now we have police using tear gas on nonviolent demonstrations and people standing in their own yards, and arresting reporters for reporting. On what planet is that acceptable and what does it have to do with a military conflict elsewhere?

[Dave_LF]

No; he killed an unarmed attacker who responded violently to what was probably a swaggering order to stop jaywalking. Again, unless the police are lying about everything, in which case we go back to square 1.

And the protests have been both violent and destructive. Police cannot allow a situation like that to continue; it would be a fundamental violation of their mandate. Imagine if they took a gentle approach and a flashmob subsequently burned down a business/apartment before police could get there, killing everyone inside. They would be sued left and right and accused of racism too ("you never would have let it go this far if it was happening in a white neighborhood). I don't like the things they're doing either--it sounds to me like everyone is in the wrong here (sound familiar?)--but the situation does warrant a heavy-handed response, IMO. Again as in the Middle-East, the nonviolent are suffering for the acts of the violent among them.

[axordil]

Or maybe the presence of so many toy soldiers, pointing their freakin' rifles at people, is making angry people even angrier, because it sends the message: we can kill you too, and no one can stop us.

I live here, Dave. I have friends who have been in the protests. The protests were NOT violent and were NOT destructive UNTIL THE COPS MADE THEM THAT WAY. The looting Sunday night WASN'T BY THE PROTESTERS, and in fact, almost all of the people arrested Monday night for looting were from elsewhere. If the police hadn't been so busy trying to force the protesters off the street Sunday, maybe they'd have been able to do something about the looters faster...but you know what? That's not their goal. Their goal is to destroy resistance to their authority via intimidation, fear, and force.

unless the police are lying about everything

At this point I believe it's a safe assumption this is so. Everything they've done smacks of desperate doubling-down on a cover-up we're not letting them get away with.