Dorian Johnson was walking with Michael Brown when they were stopped by Officer Darren Wilson. According to Johnson’s eyewitness account:
…a police car pulled up alongside Brown and him, and the officer—who has been identified as Darren Wilson—allegedly told Johnson and Brown to “get the f–k on the sidewalk.”
The two men told the officer that they were only minutes away from their destination. Johnson said that Wilson backed up his car and asked Brown and Johnson what they just said. Johnson claimed that Wilson then tried to open his car door but the door ricocheted off of Brown’s body and closed again.
Johnson said that Wilson pulled Brown through the car window by his neck, and Brown began to try to pull away. Johnson said that Wilson shot Brown during the scuffle, and Brown managed to break away from Wilson’s grip. Brown and Johnson then began to run away from the police vehicle.
Johnson said that Wilson got out of his car and began to shoot at Brown while Brown was running away. Brown then stopped, put his hands in the air, turned around and pleaded with the officer to stop shooting, since he didn’t have a gun.
Johnson said that Wilson continued to fire several more shots before Brown’s body fell to the ground.
That account is from The Root. The article there includes four other eyewitnesses collaborating parts or all of Johnson’s account.
Some right-wingers have doubted those accounts. On The 700 Club, Pat Robinson discussed the Michael Brown shooting:
“The facts aren’t totally clear,” he admitted. “But this great big guy — this gentle giant, they call him — went into a convenience store where he wanted some cigars. So, he stole some cigars. And when the clerk tried to stop him, he pushed the clerk aside, pushed him down, walked out into the middle of the street.”
“Now, was he high on some kind of drugs?” Robertson asked. “That hasn’t come out yet… But the next thing we understand was he was walking down the middle of the street and obstructing traffic, which says to me he probably was high on something.”
The televangelist speculated that Brown “knew he committed a crime,” but “the police maybe didn’t know about it yet.”
“So then, did this giant man charge the police officer, and the police officer tried to defend himself?” he wondered. “It doesn’t seem like there was some kind of wonton act of assassination or execution. That just doesn’t fit the pattern.”
Over on Ethics Alarms, Jack Marshall makes a similar case:
The witness accounts of the death of Mike Brown that have received all of the publicity suggest that the unarmed teen, after being shot in a police cruiser while resisting arrest, bolted from the car and was shot dead by Officer Darren Wilson as he tried to escape, even after the victim stopped and appeared to surrender.[…]
To those who are convinced that the police are evil, jack-booted racists and that a police officer with no record of equivalent misconduct would shoot down an unarmed and surrendering teen in public, this undoubtedly seems like a plausible scenario. It sure doesn’t to me. I can see one way it might have happened this way: After Brown, who was huge, hurt and frightened Wilson in the car when they fought, Wilson lost his composure, and fired in rage. If that was the case, then he should be prosecuted for murder. Nothing in even that scenario proves or even suggests racism, but Brown was black and the officer was white, and for too many in the African-American community, that is proof enough.
Now another account has surfaced, on that might support Wilson’s account. It is also more plausible, because it both explains and even justifies the shooting. That account suggests that rather than turning from his flight and surrendering, Brown charged Wilson, placing him in legitimate fear of bodily harm.
In both Robertson’s and Marshall’s accounts, that the police officer Wilson might have been the aggressor and acted irrationally is dismissed as not fitting “the pattern” and not a “plausible scenario.” However, neither of them comments on how implausible it seems that Michael Brown, suddenly and for no apparent reason, decided to essentially commit suicide by cop.
Someone claiming to be a friend of Officer Wilson has been telling what she says is Wilson’s side of the story. CNN somewhat confirms this, saying “A source with detailed knowledge of the investigation later told CNN the caller’s account is ‘accurate,’ in that it matches what Wilson has told investigators.”
In this version of the story, which has been widely reproduced by conservative news sources, Brown literally dares Wilson to shoot him:
And then Michael just bum-rushes him [Darren] and shoves him back into his car, punches him in the face. And then Darren grabs for his gun. Michael grabbed for the gun. At one point he got the gun entirely turned against his hip. And he shoves it away. And the gun goes off.
Well, then Michael takes off with his friend and gets to be about 35 feet away. And Darren’s first protocol is to pursue. So he stands up and yells, “Freeze!” Michael and his friend turn around. And Michael was taunting him, ‘Oh what you’re gonna do about it. You’re not going to shoot me.’
And then all of a sudden he [Michael] just started to bumrush him [Darren]. He just started coming at him full speed. And, so he [Darren] just started shooting. And he [Michael] just kept coming. So he [Darren] really thinks he [Michael] was on something because he just kept coming. It was unbelievable. So he finally ended up, the final shot was to the forehead. And then he [Michaelo] fell about two, three feet in front of the officer.
To suggest that a cop would suddenly and for no apparent reason shoot an unarmed teenager is, right-wingers like Robertson and Marshall say, outside “the pattern” and not “plausible.” But somehow, they don’t find it implausible that an unarmed black teenage boy for no apparent reason charges an armed cop, virtually (and in some accounts literally) begging to be shot.
I don’t know what the truth is. It’s possible that Brown irrationally attacked Wilson (and the witnesses to the contrary misunderstood events); it’s possible that Wilson irrationally shot Brown; we just don’t know for sure, and maybe we won’t ever know. But to say shucks golly, it’s just plain implausible that any cop would ever act like that, while not finding anything at all implausible in thinking that a college-bound black kid suddenly decided to attack an armed cop, is an obvious double-standard.
Of course, a similar double-standard was in play after George Zimmerman shot Trayvon Martin. We were told over and over again that it was ridiculous to suggest that Zimmerman started a fight with Martin (even though Zimmerman was the one stalking Martin in the dark with a gun), but the same people had no problem accepting that Martin attacked Zimmerman for no apparent reason. For young black men to suddenly and for no reason commit irrational attacks is never seen as “implausible.”
* * *
Some more Ferguson-related links:
Missouri GOP: Michael Brown Voting Registration Booths ‘Disgusting’ The person objecting to voter registration is Missouri RNC executive director Matt Wills. Nice.
Michael Brown and the Danger of the Perfect Victim Frame – COLORLINES
When it comes to police mistreatment and harassment, Blacks and whites live in entirely different universes. Which relates to my post above: The white conservatives who declare what stories are and aren’t “plausible” believe that they’re speaking from a neutral, unbiased view. But actually they’re speaking from the perspective of white people who aren’t in a position to be aware of even a small fraction of the irrational police harassment Blacks face.
A comment on “Black-on-Black crime”
The Ferguson Police Department’s Top 10 Tips For Protester Relations
Documenting the arrests of journalists in Ferguson – Boing Boing
Police are operating with total impunity in Ferguson – Vox
A local public defender on the deeply dysfunctional Ferguson court system – Vox
Say What?: On Speechlessness, Racism and Respectability in #Ferguson | The Crunk Feminist Collective
The Timing of Elections Matters (Ferguson Edition)
[Post later edited to add in Dorian Johnson’s account. –Amp]
Some other interesting links.
1) Simple Justice has some good writing on this and a lot of other links. Highly opposed to the shooting, but written from a criminal defense perspective.
2) Coyote Blog, which is often quite right-wing, has some interesting analysis of the VERY high tendency of Ferguson cops to profile folks. “…By the way, I want to highlight one other figure. Black cars are stopped at about a 6x higher rate for “equipment” deficiencies than whites. Nitpicky regulations on car conditions (in Arizona your licence plate frame cannot cover any part of the word “Arizona” on the licence plate) are the great bugaboo of the poor and a nearly unlimited warrant for the police to stop minorities….”
3) Popehat has a “Lawsplainer” post addressing the effect of the alleged robbery.
4) Volokh talks about federal prosecution and how that would work, largely as a result of the fact that Holder has been sent there.
5) Not a link but a note: Anyone who talks about other sides to the story should be prepared to talk about the fact that unlike all normal defendants under investigation, the people “countering” the murder claims have had days to look at the evidence and tailor their responses to it. IOW, the fact that the competing testimony is a “good fit” for the existing evidence is not because it’s accurate. It’s probably a good fit because someone took the time to make it a good fit. And to make it seem plausible. And so on.
There’s a reason why we lock people in a room ASAP during an investigation, and it is to prevent shit like that. They aren’t supposed to know what the camera saw or what the other witnesses saw or what people said, BEFORE they decide what they say on their own. It is fucking incredibly stupid to have allowed all of the defense to sit and wait.
Also, you left out the last paragraph of the linked post, without which the earlier stuff doesn’t make as much sense:
To which I will add my own $0.02:
If this ends badly–which I hope it does not–make sure to blame the right problem. If the cop gets off, it may not be the result of a biased justice system. It’s more likely to be the result of a police union which has managed to negotiate rules preventing immediate interviews and tapings of cops after shootings, and which has managed to stifle introduction of body cameras, and so on. Those “secret” rules are often ignored by the media but can be the real problem behind everything.
Police killings are not only a minority problem, they’re just a predominantly minority problem. At least one police killing (of a white kid) led to some progress.
Like many police killings, there was no call for this one. We don’t need to execute people for theft or for resisting arrest or for striking a cop.
If it were up to me, I’d disband almost all PDs and recreate them with different goals, methods and structures.
Here’s what I’ve learned about the police, as currently extant, in my 40s. Don’t talk to the police, nothing good can happen for you. Fear the police.
That’s it and it sure doesn’t make it sound like a thing that exists for my benefit.
gin-and-whiskey’s clearly going for the most false claims about the US justice system in two paragraphs.
And you seem to be going for the least specific comment ever. At least say, which two paragraphs?
Could you folks take a look at this video of Michael Brown buying (?) cigars. I’m not very sure of what’s going on– there’s some sort of interaction, but I didn’t see him actually pay. Nor did I see a box of cigars.
@gin-and-whiskey,
Isn’t this a bit of hair-splitting? If the police have organized themselves such that they are unaccountable, even when engaging in violence that results in death, isn’t that part of what makes the justice system so biased? I’m not a fan of police unions, so I’m not arguing that they aren’t a part of the problem here. I’m not just clear on why you think they need to be called out as separate from the other elements of the justice system that produce ugly outcomes.
@Nancy Lebovitz, what happens is that up to about 12 seconds, cigars are requested, paid for, and handed off to Brown’s friend; then at 17 seconds Brown reaches across the counter and grabs an additional box of cigars, which he apparently does not pay for (at least according to statements by the friend). The clerk comes around from behind the counter to confront him at the end of the video. So while money changes hands, it doesn’t seem to have been enough to cover all the purchases.
Note that apparently nobody employed at the store called 911–that was one of the other customers.
I keep seeing this and I’m not sure why this is relevant. Why is this relevant?
It’s only a robbery if the owner decides it is. If my girlfriend lets herself into my house and takes some cash from my draw, it doesn’t make her a thief if I’m okay with it.
Great article, Cpl things to add
They want us to believe that he suddenly stopped , taunted, and then charged. More over they want us to believe he did this AFTER taking one or two bullets….let’s talk about the plausibility of someone who has already been shot, turning around and taunting the shooter “you’re not gonna shoot me, etc” (gotta love liar “Josie’s” blackcent when she mimics Mike Brown).
Also she says the officer yells ‘freeze’. No one else reports this, because it’s a lie.
Oh and that supposed sudden – stop turn and taunt? Well I thought the officer was pursuing? So what, when Brown stopped -Wilson put on his brakes too? Wouldn’t that put him physically close to MB? At that point how could Mike rush the killer from the distance alleged? He couldn’t. Cops a liar.
I think it speaks to the severity of the incident (in the store only). That is, the victims didn’t think it warranted emergency police intervention. If our argument for relevance is Mike Brown’s state of mind–which it is, at least for some–then it matters if the people involved thought it was a violent incident or not.
Who do you mean by we, are you Saudi? In the US we tend to wait for probable cause before arrest, allow access to lawyers, and respect the right to silence and allow suspects to give an account as and when they please. The occassions where we’ve just grabbed people asap and forced an account out of them without counsel tend to have not worked out very well.
Sure. But calls to fix “the justice system” are a bit like calls to “fix the tax system” or “fix the healthcare system:” valid, nice-sounding, and unlikely to produce much valuable reform because they are so general.
Also, calls to fix things from people who don’t study the area can often focus on things which sound good but aren’t so great–like, say, “training cops better”–and often ignore things which aren’t obviously as effective but which can actually help a lot–like, say, changing laws w/r/t personal liability, or body cameras.
This is largely because the justice system is incredibly complex. Most laypeople don’t really understand how it works very well. Even fewer have an understanding of how apparently-small factors can have an enormous effect on end outcomes. So you end up having folks spend a lot of political capital on things which are inefficient.
I don’t like to identify where I live but I find your U.S. justice system fascinating. I dare say that I’ve read enough to have a better understanding than most folks. Although I don’t have personal experience, I hope to come to the US soon and study it in more detail.
I suppose it’s possible that you might know more about it than I do but it certainly isn’t obvious from your posts. What’s the basis for your claim of expertise?
Breaking News: Hundreds More Unarmed Teenagers Still At Large
–many of them black or Hispanic, sources say–
Police in fear for their very lives
I still don’t see how the severity of the incident is relevant to the killing. The police officer wasn’t aware of the incident when he stopped them.
Just because no store employee called the police doesn’t mean the incident wasn’t serious. But since the officer wasn’t aware of the theft, the severity of it doesn’t enter inter the equation.
But, just for the sake of argument, let’s assume the officer knew about the theft. And let’s assume that assault was included in the description. Does that justify killing an unarmed suspect?
What I see on all sides of this story is “We don’t know for sure what happened, but we figure that for [x] to act in [y] fashion would be irrational, so we figure that [that didn’t happen/someone’s lying] and therefore it’s much more likely that [z] happened.”
The only true part of the above is “We don’t know for sure what happened”. The world is full of good, intelligent people who in a moment of crisis do something incredibly stupid and irrational. Whether either one – or both – of the people involved in this are such remains to be seen. But claiming that [x] would be irrational so therefore [y] didn’t do it is absurd.
For anyone to say that they’ve got a good handle on what must have happened based on what’s public knowledge so far is just so much bullshit. Let the State investigate on the basis of the possibilities of murder or police brutality. Let the FBI investigate on the basis of the possibility of a violation of Mr. Brown’s civil rights. Let’s see what the eyewitnesses say when they’re talking to a lawyer under oath instead of to a reporter under camera lights. Let’s see if the rumors of the officer having sustained injuries are true or false, and what physical evidence may be found from the inside of the police car that Mr. Brown reportedly reached into or entered.
I join calls that all of this may be accomplished as quickly as possible consistent with proper procedures. And God knows I’m no fan of public unions and their goal of protecting their members against the public interest. But until then speculation may drive the 24-hour news cycle industry but doesn’t do much else.
gin-and-whiskey, I’ve been seeing a lot of calls for police being required to wear cameras when they interact with the public.
The least stupid claim I’ve seen made is that, since Brown knew he had just committed a robbery, he was wary of/unhappy about interacting with the police above and beyond what he would have been in a “normal” situation, and therefore might have acted more suspiciously/aggressively than was the norm for him. (For example, g&w’s link #3 discusses this. It’s likely an argument Wilson’s defense will make.) So it matters, to that argument, what the nature of the incident was.
Clearly not.
Nancy, the lead editorial in today’s Chicago Tribune is calling for just that. In fact, they said that based on experiences in other cities that have done so, the cost would be offset by reduced payouts to settle claims of police misconduct.
Talking about jumping to conclusions before the facts are known, apparently the Governor there, Jay Nixon (D-Mo.) is leading the charge:
No call for an investigation, mind you. Nope. Neither the word nor the concept appears in the Governor’s statement. I didn’t ellipsis any such thing out. The expectation is that there will be a prosecution. Only a prosecution will achieve justice. This from the chief law enforcement officer of the State of Missouri. If you were the police officer in this situation, do you now think you can get a fair trail in Missouri? Or do you think you’re going to get thrown under the bus to satiate the mob?
Ron – As the article you link to says, it’s probably more incompetence (a badly written statement) than malice (a genuine belief that we should have trials before investigations).
But as a general rule, in controversial police shootings, I’d like there to be a trial whenever possible. Given the public’s lack of trust in any of our available institutions to investigate the police fairly, it’s a problem that investigations by their nature are opaque, and therefore do not reassure the public that they were fair and impartial. Trials are the most transparent aspect of our justice system (they are often open to the public, sometimes televised, always at least reported on).
I’m not saying that a trial should happen without justification, and I’m certainly not calling for any particular outcome. But if a trial can be justified at all, then I think it’s best for society that a trial takes place – at least if a trial is unfair, it’s transparently unfair. (And if history is any guide, we have far more reason to worry about courts being biased in favor of police defendants than we do that courts will be biased against them.)
Re “satiate the mob” – have you noticed that whenever black people protest, conservatives call them a “mob”? (Example.) But in this case, the large majority of protestors have been peaceful and not-mob-like (despite a small minority of looters). In fact, I think the word “mob” is a much better description of how some of the police in
Gin and Whiskey, the main reforms I’ve been seeing people calling for in the past week are demilitarizing the police (i.e., both reducing the amount of military surplus the police receive, and better regulating when it is used) and putting cameras on police. Both of those seem like good reforms to call for, as do others. But in the end, we can’t know how well reforms work until after they’ve been in place for a few years.
Cameras, for instance, can have their footage “accidentally” lost.
The story, for those who don’t click through, is about a black man who the Ferguson cops mistook for a wanted man with a similar name, handcuffed, and beat up in his cell. (They later tried to charge him for the damage caused to their uniforms by his blood.)
I don’t see your statement as controversial. But it’s entirely one thing for you to state that you’d favor a trial. It’s entirely another for the chief law enforcement officer of the State that will initiate and oversee an investigation into a possible crime and that will prosecute any trial proceeding from that investigation to state – before an investigation is complete – that a trial must be held to provide justice.
.
No. I haven’t. In any case, the vast majority of what I’ve read about this particular case has referred to the circumstances of the incident itself and not the reaction of either the crowds or the cops. I’ve paid little attention to the rioters, and I don’t recall coming across the use of the word “mob” to describe this situation. This is the first time I’ve used that term in a very long time. I don’t think it’s a fit word to use to describe a collection of peaceful protestors, but I do think it fits the rioters, which is where I was going with that. If people keep their hands to themselves and don’t threaten people or property I’m fine with them hitting the streets 24 x 7 no matter what slogans they shout or what signs they carry.
And I’m dead set against the militarization of the police. It’s an unwarranted expansion of State power – and as we may well have seen (it needs to be the subject of an entirely separate investigation) just having and deploying these kinds of equipment and tactics can lead to their overuse. There are situations that can justify calling out forces such as the National Guard – but that needs to be the Governor’s call, not the call of a Police Chief who has equivalently equipped personnel (but perhaps not equivalently trained or experienced) at his or her disposal.
Amp, I’m in favor of a camera system. Let me design it. Cameras wirelessly sending encrypted digital video to an in-car server that is physically secure and automatically uploads periodically to a remote server will be a lot harder for a cop to hack than a stack of VHS tapes. Between my co-workers and I we can make this figuratively bomb-proof. And not nearly as expensive as you might think.
Incompetence in making that statement? Maybe. That’s a matter of opinion. I don’t share that opinion. More than one person will have looked at that statement before it went out. The Governor surely did, and you’d think it would jump out at him given his job and his experience – according to Wikipedia, he’s been a lawyer in private practice and Attorney General of Missouri before his present job. I have a very hard time thinking that he read through that and let it go based on incompetence.
No, I think this Governor’s commitment to satisfying his voting base is stronger than his commitment to his job. Lord knows I see plenty of that here in Illinois. I see no reason why it shouldn’t show up just across our border. Oh, at some point he’ll probably release an apologetic mealy-mouth pro forma “correction” – but his first statement will have set the tone.
It seems so plausible that a police officer would drive up to a couple of jaywalking teenagers and yell at them, telling them to stop jaywalking and expecting them to show immediate deference. (It happens all the time.) It’s also painfully plausible that those teenagers would talk back to the cop, showing no respect at all and saying they’re going to disobey his order for a while. Under those circumstances, it seems excruciatingly plausible that the cop would lose his temper.
An awful lot of murders happen when a person who has never murdered anyone before loses his temper.
In a neighborhood and context where cops are believed to beat up on black kids at the slightest provocation, it seems amazingly stupid to do that. Again – people do stupid $h!t, so I can believe it CAN happen. Heck, I’m from a white middle-class neighborhood where my Mom dated the Police chief when they were in high school together and the whole F’ing town knew me as “the goody-goody smart kid” and even I got “the talk”.
Of course, when my Dad was in high school his grades were Sh!t for a few semesters because he decided that it was more fun to ride along with the cops during the day than go to school some days. Maybe he got an eyeful of how they did their jobs.
And no teenager has ever done anything that seemed amazingly stupid after the fact.
I kind of feel like Ron acknowledged that when he said “Again – people do stupid $h!t, so I can believe it CAN happen.”
OK, yes, you’re right.
How confident are we that the man in the convenience-store video is Michael Brown? (At first when I read this story I thought Chief Jackson was saying that Brown was no longer thought to be the man in the video, but when I read it again I guess he was just saying that the confrontation that lead to Brown’s death was not related to the convenience-store robbery. But he still doesn’t seem to be saying that it was definitely Brown in the video.)
The part where Wilson opened the car door and it bounced off Brown (according to Johnson) or pushes Wilson back in the car (according to Wilson, secondhand) stands out to me as something where both Johnson and Wilson could sincerely believe that’s what happened, especially if Brown raised his hands defensively/automatically when the car door was about to collide with him.
It seems pretty certain – Johnson (through his attorney) has confirmed that it’s
WilsonBrown in the video.BTW – if your parents are alive, talk to them. I didn’t find out about my Dad doing ride-alongs with the cops when he was in high school until I was helping my Mom pack up her belongings as she moved out of assisted living to the nursing home. Among her belongings were my Dad’s high school report cards. I looked through them and noticed that his grades took a nosedive for a couple semesters and asked her why (they went to high school together). I wish I’d have known that when my Dad was still alive. I bet he could have told some pretty good stories.
It appears that the autopsy is consistent with Officer Wilson’s account of the events.
Ron,
It’s worth pointing out that we simply don’t know Officer Wilson’s side of the story. Everything that is claimed as “Wilson’s account of the events” is told second hand by an anonymous source. One hopes that the Post-Dispatch was scrupulous in verifying the source’s story before publishing it. Not all news sources are that scrupulous.
It’s also worth pointing out that the claims about the autopsy report are not as robust as the Post-Dispatch’s headline claims. From the links embedded in the page you linked to, the headline about the autopsy report says, “Official autopsy shows Michael Brown had close-range wound to his hand[…]” If you read the page, the analysis was performed by two individuals who are not part of the investigation and who have never examined Brown’s body directly. They’re just going by the autopsy report alone, and in the actual article they frequently offer caveats about the claims they’re making. For example, when describing the injury on Brown’s thumb:
That’s not exactly a slam dunk.
Normally I wouldn’t belabor this, but literally yesterday there was a discussion about Laci Green’s comments, and about being less careless about uncritical acceptance of clickbaity headline claims. Your comment of “It appears that the autopsy is consistent with Officer Wilson’s account of the events” greatly overstates how robust the findings are in the link you provided.
[Crossposted with Kohai’s much better response to Ron.]
Yes, but it’s also consistent with other accounts of Brown’s death. Everyone agrees that there was a struggle through the car window, and that the gun was fired at least once inside the car.
This version of Wilson’s story doesn’t seem totally consistent with the prior version we’ve heard; although in both cases, the police and/or Wilson’s lawyers released it through an anonymous source, meaning that they’re free to keep adjusting the story they’re telling in public without harming Wilson’s legal position.
Yeah, I was writing about how the report on the autopsy report seems consistent with both stories we’ve heard about the struggle but Kohai & Amp did it better than my attempt.
I am curious as to why CNN’s legal analyst believes it supports Officer Wilson’s story. There’s no further detail to the analyst’s statement, so I have no idea why he thinks that.
Your comment of “It appears that the autopsy is consistent with Officer Wilson’s account of the events” greatly overstates how robust the findings are in the link you provided.
It is also worth remembering that “consistent with” only means “doesn’t literally disprove,” which means that is it is usually almost no evidence at all. This gets forgotten too often.
The difference, of course, is that none of us are accusing Ron of deliberately lying so as to advance his agenda. We understand that it’s easy to wrongly believe stuff that confirms your preexisting biases and that everyone makes dumb mistakes.
—Myca
True. But I do think that the salient concept – that Officer Wilson was attacked by Mr. Brown and that Officer Wilson was at least initially defending himself – seems Officer Wilson’s only justification for what happened, and is quite LIKELY to be the story that comes out. In any case, that’s why people should be waiting to see what comes out instead of listening to one side of the story and rioting.
Which is why I just cited the article instead of posting the headline. Headlines are very often misleading.
No, it does not. “Consistent with” (a phrase I chose quite carefully) does not equal “Proves”. I did not overstate anything.
BTW – mea culpa, Myca. Another reason why I chose the phrase I did. You might also note that I took note of the criticism and no longer claim that there’s proof Ms. Green was lying.
RonF,
I think the actual text within the links contains enough qualifiers and caveats that it is inherently misleading to say “It appears that the autopsy is consistent with Officer Wilson’s account of the events.” I take your point that you didn’t say “proves,” and I think it’s fair for me to admit that you did not greatly overstate the case. But I do think that you overstated it more than slightly. Here’s why.
The situation is this: an anonymous individual offers a second hand account of what they claim Officer Wilson’s version of events is. The Post-Dispatch simply identifies the source as someone “with knowledge of his [Wilson’s] statements.” It’s possible that the source 1) heard and correctly understood Wilson’s version of events, 2) reported the account accurately, 3) while remaining unbiased in the face of conflicting incentives.
It is also possible, and completely plausible, that the source is 1) a Ferguson police officer, 2) who has incentives to protect Officer Wilson, even if that means playing loose with the facts or even outright lying, 3) part of an agenda on the part of the Ferguson PD to opportunistically release unofficial statements in order to gauge public opinion, influence the jury pool, and see what sorts of evidence and public statements shake out in the meantime. That way, when and if Officer Wilson ever faces his day in court, he needn’t worry about having a history of official statements that conflict with evidence and testimony that emerged after the fact.
I’m not claiming certainty over either of the scenarios that I laid out above. But there seems to me ample reason to regard the anonymous source’s claims as suspect.
As I mentioned above, the analysis of the autopsy is also not strong. Some evidence is consistent with a close-range shooting, such as the microscopic debris that could have some from a discharged firearm. Some evidence conflicts with that claim, such as the absence of stippling on the hand. The St. Louis County medical examiner says that sometimes stippling is absent in close range shootings, and I have to take him at his word. At best, there is some not-fully-conclusive evidence that is consistent with a close-range shooting; at the same time, some of the the evidence that is typically present in a close range shooting is absent in this case.
I’m not claiming there’s nothing of value in the autopsy report analysis. But I still think that when you say “It appears that the autopsy is consistent with Officer Wilson’s account of the events” that you are overstating the amount of meat that is available to be chewed off that particular bone.
From today’s LA Times:
RonF, the fact that you think the only reason are protesting is “the investigation isn’t complete yet” says volumes about your understanding of Michael Brown’s death, and I am thinking of the kind of volumes that interior designers glue together and attach to shelves as decoration, rather than as books one would actually read.
As has been pointed out to you repeatedly, we don’t actually know what Wilson’s account of events is, because that’s been very carefully passed out from sources other than Wilson directly. After all, he can’t be accused of perjury or cross-examined on “an anonymous police source claimed Wilson said thus-and-such”.
I’m worried that this is becoming a pile on, on Ron, but I wanted to post this link, because it adds some needed context to the story.
Expert: My Michael Brown Autopsy Analysis Was Taken ‘Out Of Context’
What’s worrisome here, I think, is that it seems that there are people in law enforcement who are attempting to help the officer who shot Michael Brown by selective and deceptive leaking of privileged information. I have no problem with people publicly taking sides on this issue – or, rather, I approve of it (public debate is good). But attempting to spin the debate with anonymous leaks of out-of-context police information that isn’t available to the public seems like an abuse of their position.
Grace, are you reading this? What do you think?
Just to emphasize how important it is to look at facts from the autopsy in combination with the overall evidence, I noticed that different news outlets were reporting differently on the significance of the shot to the back of Brown’s forearm. Some are reporting it as evidence against him, because it is inconsistent with a “hands up” position. Some are reporting it as evidence against Wilson, since it is consistent with the claim that Wilson shot at Brown when Brown was trying to flee.
Ampersand:
What do I think about what, specifically? I have not been following this incident and investigation. I prefer not to judge specific incidents which involve officers without knowing all the details, and learning details from the media is about the worst way to gather evidence that there is.
One example: suppose an autopsy shows that a person was shot in the back. Does that mean that the shooter shot the other person as he was running away, on purpose? It does not. It CAN mean that, but by itself it does not prove that. Until a person understands the concept and application of human reaction time, that person’s opinion regarding the meaning of evidence like that is worthless.
If, as you say, officers who know something about the incident are passing info anonymously to the media, then in general I think they should shut up; that’s a really good way to inflame tensions without enabling quick resolution. On the other hand, the media is one of the checks and balances in our system, and if that info rises to the level of whistle-blowing, then I’d reconsider my default reaction of STFU.
Grace