Zonie63
Posts: 2826
Joined: 4/25/2011
From: The Old Pueblo
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ORIGINAL: subrosaDom
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FR
Two things:
1) I've read that there weren't any powder burns on Michael Brown's body so, unless and/or until powder burns are found on his clothing, he must have been shot at a distance. Is this correct? It doesn't mesh with Brown leaning through the cop's car window, from what I can see.
2) Reportedly, the whole incident with the cop telling Brown to 'Get the f**k onto the sidewalk'. Is that standard tough-talk that a young man might expect from a cop (just about imaginable to me - though I wouldn't expect it here in the UK, I don't know the culture there), or does it indicate an already-angry man?
1) That I don't know. Not a ballistics effort. Someone else would have to answer. I imagine that if someone is rushing toward you at say 10mph, you'd shoot them before they were instantly upon you and hence the distance might be sufficient to avoid powder burns because the collision was imminent. But that's a guess.
2) Yes. Absolutely standard, especially in a situation like this. It's got no racial connotations whatsoever. It doesn't indicate anger. It indicates dominance -- not in a bdsm sense, but in a "stand down" sense, as opposed to "please get on the sidewalk, sir" which would be appropriate in a non-confrontational situation, but not here.
From what I understand the get the f off the roadway was the 3rd or 4th time he had told them, it started off more civil.
Yes, but this appears to be the root of the whole problem. This cop just had to establish "dominance," as part of the ego trip that all those with badges get whenever their "authority" is challenged. So, rather than just let it go, the cop chose to escalate the situation and kept pushing it until it ended up with the confrontation. Can't let anyone ignore a cop's orders on the street, otherwise that will just breed disrespect for law enforcement. That's the conventional wisdom of police departments, yet it hasn't worked out too well for them, has it?
Let's have anarchy instead. Walking in the middle of the street with other cars coming is a serious accident waiting to happen. You blame the cop when politely moving back onto the sidewalk (now, that's a real racist demand) would have solved the entire problem. Do you really think "fuck" hurt Brown's feelings? The little 6'4", 300lb Mormon Tabernacle Choirboy?
Was he actually walking "in the middle" of the street, or was it just a matter of not being on the sidewalk? Was the officer genuinely concerned with Brown's safety? Was it even a busy street?
Sure, the best course of action Brown could have taken was to move back onto the sidewalk, although I never suggested that the officer was racist for asking him to do so. However, it's been my experience that there are some cops, especially those who have the "Barney Fife" complex, who tend to get a bit overzealous (which you referred to as "dominance" up above). Your opinion seems to be that the best course of action was for Brown to "submit" to the "dominance" of the police.
But because he chose not to respect the authority of the badge, then the cop also might have believed as you do, that to let something like that go would be to bring about anarchy. (???)
But isn't that kind of what's been happening precisely because someone decided that had to enforce law and order no matter what? Based on the police version of events, what we really have here, when it all boils down to brass tacks, is that we have a dead man and over a week of rioting because some cop got his balls in an uproar over a jaywalker. It seems like the conventional wisdom of cops establishing their "dominance" to prevent "anarchy" is having exactly the opposite effect. Perhaps it's not a very wise policy to use the Barney Fife approach to law enforcement.
I don't see why you and others keep mentioning Brown's size, but when you really look at it, that also works against the officer's story. I don't know if anything about the size of the officer has been mentioned in any of the reports, but if he didn't think that he was able to handle Brown physically, why would he stop his car and exit his vehicle where a physical confrontation was almost certain?
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RE: Rioting is the answer - 
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