Ferguson Unrest

[Rangeet]

I'm saying that it's fine for protests to be violent. I know that's an unpopular opinion, but I stand by it.

But when a protest does that, then the entire movement is on a fine line. There cannot be any collateral damage, like there has been here. Then it becomes shitty, then it becomes violence against random people instead of your enemies.

I disagree with those who say a good protest can't be violent at all.

[Doppleganger]

Originally Posted by Rangeetsuper

I'm saying that it's fine for protests to be violent. I know that's an unpopular opinion, but I stand by it.

But when a protest does that, then the entire movement is on a fine line. There cannot be any collateral damage, like there has been here. Then it becomes shitty, then it becomes violence against random people instead of your enemies.

I disagree with those who say a good protest can't be violent at all.

Okay. I disagree, but mostly because I don't see any link between violence and solving the social issues. In a totally cynical world, a non-violent or violent protest has zero impact on the social climate. In a less cynical world, the non-violent protest has no impact, but the violent protest has negative impact and might even regress the social climate to worse than it was before. So, even if we have a scenario which I think you're implying is fine (where the protesters would challenge the police directly) I don't think it satisfies anyone or does anything productive.

Historically, violence has solved a lot of problems, including class struggle, but regime/attitude changes are the most difficult to approach whether through violent or peaceful means, especially in this limited capacity.

[SoS]

Originally Posted by Concept

To be perfectly honest; a jury with access to far more information than any of us have didn't find this officer guilty, and we're all picking and choosing which of the contradictory reports to believe based on nothing more but our own personal biases. No-one here has literally any reason to strongly believe one side over the other. I happen to agree that it mostly likely was a case of a racist cop, but none of us have reason to believe that beyond our own personal biases in who to believe.

Nitpick: This jury was determining whether the case would go to trial, not whether he was guilty. What they're saying is that the case merits no further discussion, in spite of Brown's death and the many, many contradictory reports. Why not settle this in a trial?

[Talon87]

Originally Posted by Son_of_Shadows

Nitpick: This jury was determining whether the case would go to trial, not whether he was guilty. What they're saying is that the case merits no further discussion, in spite of Brown's death and the many, many contradictory reports. Why not settle this in a trial?

That is not what they're saying. They're saying that there is insufficient evidence for a trial verdict and therefore this shouldn't go to trial.

Originally Posted by NPR

After sitting through hours of testimony and reading through thousands of pages of documents, a grand jury decided that there was not enough probable cause to indict police officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of Michael Brown, an unarmed 18-year-old.

A discussion was very much had. But the discussion, rather than being over the would-be defendant's guilt or innocence, was over whether the prosecution could even have a case against him at all. If you don't have a case, then your case is thrown out of court before you even go to trial. Normally the decision for a trial to be or not be held would be left up to a judge and/or the DA's office; but in this case, a grand jury was called upon to determine whether the case should go to trial (99.9% likely because if a single man or woman made the decision then there would have been [even louder] cries of foul play).

Some of the important takeaways from the evidence presented to the grand jury:

• There was little consensus amongst the eyewitness testimonies. They ranged the spectrum: Brown initiated, Wilson initiated; Brown was shot when surrendering himself, Brown was shot because he did not surrender himself; Wilson began shooting inside the car, Wilson didn't begin shooting until he exited the car; Brown was clearly hit, Brown didn't look like he'd been hit at all; so on and so on and so forth. With so little agreement between the numerous eyewitnesses, it casts into doubt each eyewitness's testimony. You would need at least a pocket of eyewitnesses who agree with one another and whose stories mesh with the forensic evidence. That apparently didn't happen.
• The autopsy found that Michael Brown was never shot in the back, as some early witnesses claimed.
• Forensic analysts found Brown's blood inside the police car and on Wilson's gun. This implies that there was close-range contact as Wilson alleges.

Granted, you can argue that all three of these factors were sabotaged by corrupt officials if you like. There's really no way to disprove such allegations. But if you believe in the fairness of the legal system, if you believe that the evidence was not tampered with in any way and that all interviews were honest, then these three facts certainly support the grand jury's verdict that Wilson acted within the scope of the law.

That stated ...

I find it disappointing that NPR fails to note what the autopsy did find regarding the gunshot wounds: namely that they were not only numerous but that several of them were headshots. Any officer will tell you that headshots are incredibly difficult to pull off at anything short of point-blank range, let alone on a target in motion. Officers are trained to aim for the chest precisely because you can take someone down that way (for certainty of hitting them) whereas headshots are too unreliable. Yet the autopsy notes ...

Injuries: There is a gunshot entrance wound of the vertex of the scalp. There is a gunshot entrance wound of the central forehead. There is a gunshot exit wound of the right jaw. There is a gunshot entrance wound of the upper right chest. There is a gunshot entrance wound of the lateral right chest. There is a gunshot entrance wound of the upper ventral right arm. There is a gunshot exit wound of the upper dorsal right arm. There is a gunshot entrance wound of the dorsal right forearm. There is a gunshot exit wound of the medial ventral right forearm. There is a tangential (graze) gunshot wound of the right bicep. There is a tangential (graze) gunshot wound near the ventral surface of the right thumb. There is a gunshot related defect present near the right eyebrow that measures 4.0 2.0 cm. There is a gunshot related defect present near the right eyelid that measures 3.0 1.0 cm. There is an abrasion present near the right forehead that measures 7.0 cm in greatest dimension. There is a dried abrasion present near the lateral right face that measures 3.5 cm in greatest dimension. There is an abrasion present near the upper right cheek that measures 3.0 cm in greatest dimension. There are scattered abrasions present near the lateral right surface of the lower lip that range in size from 0.1-0.2 cm in greatest dimension. There is an abrasion present near the upper right chest that measures 2.5 cm in greatest dimension. There is an area of abrasions present near the right hip that measures 1.0 0.2 cm. There is a dried abrasion present near the left thumb that measures 0.2 cm in greatest dimension. There is an abrasion present near the dorsal surface of the left wrist that measures 2.0 1.5 cm. There is a focal area of discoloration present near the dorsal surface of the 5th 16ft flnger that measures 0.2 cm in greatest dimension. There is a linear abrasion present near the ventral surface of the left forearm that measures 3.5 cm in greatest dimension. There are scattered post mortem abrasions present on the hands.

So let's tally:

• Headshots: 2 (entrance scalp, entrance forehead)
• Total shots that hit Brown: at least 8 by my count (6 clearly noted entrances and two tangentials; I didn't count any of the noted defects as they could be results of previously-noted shots and in most cases clearly seem to be such)

Any one of the headshots noted by the coroner would have killed Brown on the spot. A shot to the vertex of the scalp? Instant death. A shot to the forehead? Instant death. And strangely, the autopsy report earlier notes that the right eye has been obliterated by a gunshot wound ... yet it fails to clarify whether a third entrance wound to the head or else whether the second (unlisted) exit wound of the head was Brown's right eye socket or not.

So yeah, I'm disappointed that this isn't getting more attention (since two headshots in the heat of a firefight are incredibly unlikely and one headshot followed up by a second headshot later clearly suggests ill intent), but to suggest that the court isn't interested in having more discussion seems to misrepresent the circumstances. It sounds like the jury was tasked with examining hundreds if not thousands of hours of evidence. That's an awful lot of discussion right there. For all intents and purposes, you can think of this grand jury trial as though it were a regular trial that had no need for a grand jury lead-in. That is to say, you may as well transcribe "Wilson was never indicted" to "Wilson was indicted but found Not Guilty by a jury of his peers" if you'd prefer.

[Lil'twick]

Alright. This entire issues has made me extremely pissed off. Not the verdict, yes I don't agree but what has happened is much worse. Social media has become a complete nightmare, and it seems that our rights have been crumbling. This isn't even as bad as the rest of the world, but in my opinion this is pretty severe for the US. THe protesters are going to try and stop the Macy's Day Parade and Boycott Black Friday. I feel like this is going too far, and is too severe, to spread your messages.

[Talon87]

To be perfectly honest, the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade feels incredibly Pleasantvillian (and all of the inappropriateness that that entails) in a world like ours. I'd liken it to going to Disney World the same week an immediate family member of yours died.

To be fair to the parade, though, I can appreciate the sentiment that it's important to give people something to smile about. I forget if Macy's was canceled in 2001 but iirc it wasn't and we all really respected that it wasn't.

[Mercutio]

Why is this not in debate

[Doppleganger]

We're not exactly debating an issue, just digesting a current event. Any debates are spun off from the topic.

[Mercutio]

So exactly like what goes on in debate.

[Doppleganger]

"Any debates are spun off from the topic." = the side stuff goes in debate. I don't think current events are inherently Debate material, because the most distilled form of any discussion is a debate. I don't want to debate Ferguson specifically because that avoids the more interesting issue of police shootings (especially given Tamir Rice's death earlier today) that are more relevant to an open thread about "shooting first, asking questions later".

[Sneaze]

I have to agree that this should be in Debates. I'm really not a fan of the first active topic presented to anyone looking at UPN being anything even remotely close to this controversial.