The Ferguson thread / additional race discussion

[bit_pattern]

 

[bit_pattern]

State Police have taken over law enforcement in Ferguson - a recognition from the governor that the local cops there are out of control

http://mashable.com/2014/08/14/ferguson-missouri-unrest/

 

[What 23]

Meanwhile, a woman in the same town was shot in the head in a drive by. Makes hardly no news at all.

You do know people fired shots at the police, right? And threats abound. You do know that the civilian shot, besides Brown, brandished a weapon, right?

I'm not saying police response was perfect.

I imagine this might be less an admittance that they handled protests and rioting and looting and arson the wrong way, and more bowing to social pressure... In an attempt the keep the peace.

 

[Bardeaux]

^Well, that and the state police are even better equipped and organized than local police.

The more I dig into this event, not necessarily the shooting itself, but the police response to the public response, the more I realize exactly how tactical and militarized our police forces are. It's nothing I wasn't aware of, but seeing it in practice is quite different. I came across this collection of statements from US military veterans, claiming that the armor and weapons given to infantry while invading Iraq are the same as what is being paraded around by local police in Ferguson.

For instance, here is an officer keeping a watchful eye over Ferguson today.

 

[Bardeaux]

Meanwhile, a woman in the same town was shot in the head in a drive by. Makes hardly no news because the perpetrators were black.

I'm quite sure if a black officer had done the shooting the response would be no different.

Inequality and the determinants of such random violence are a part of the issue here.

You do know people fired shots at the police, right? And threats abound. You do know that the civilian shot, besides Brown, brandished a weapon, right?

Is there a source for this? I looked briefly but couldn't find one.

 

[What 23]

I would need to find it, but I'm pretty sure it has been mentioned by multiple sources. I deleted the part about being black prior to your response, but from the responses I have seen in social media, I believe it would be different.

 

[Bardeaux]

Ah, you must be talking about the guy who was shot in the days after the shooting, not the guy Brown was with.

White guys commit the same level of violence and it flies under the radar as well. This is random violence. What's being protested here is sanctioned, institutionalized violence, often in poor minority neighborhoods. It's quite different from street level violence, which is more or less seen as it's own major social issue.

 

[What 23]

It's party time, I guess...

 

[Bardeaux]

Hopefully this chaotic display turns into an organized movement.

 

[Shrooms00087]

Hopefully this chaotic display turns into an organized movement.

If I read correctly the police were relieved of duty? What a perfect time to prove their duty. How easily one can imagine cops at the sides of an organized group wanting a formal investigation, trial, and conclusion to the tragedy.

 

[Bardeaux]

There were actually police marching with the protesters today

I thought it was great, and lends a bit of credibility to the political response to this situation.

 

[realtalkloc]

this is what thug life is about.

 

[spacejunk]

^ fuckin' a.
The thing that seems clear from across the pacific is that America has problems with;
a) violence
b) ethnic tension (racism/Jim Crow shit that simply morphed into something else)
c) police corruption, brutality and increasing militarisation (of methods and equipment they are issued with)

"Race Riots" have been happening in US cities for decades, if not centuries.
The zoot suit riots in the 40s, the hundreds of street battles in the 1960s, the post-Rodney King riots of '93 as Bardeaux pointed out.

This is not an isolated incident - it is a country divided by "race" and "racial" injustice.
The civil war some people seem to always hang on about from their white enclaves? An ugly pipe dream.

Angry mobs tearing communities apart and setting neighbourhoods on fire? That's an American traditional response to gross injustice.

People don't want to be so furious and disenfranchised that they fucking destroy and loot their neighbourhoods. They're scared, angry, and sick of fascist pigs getting away with murder (literally).
This stuff goes back hundreds of years. Don't pretend it doesn't, stateside friends.

I say raise the black flag and bring the war home. Fuck corporate America, the racially disproportionate incarceration of non-white people. Fuck the war machine, the propaganda that starts at childhood.
Fuck it all, go steal yourself some household appliances.
This is what a country with liberal gun laws looks like.
Not so fucking pretty is it?

 

[Shrooms00087]

I say raise the black flag and bring the war home. Fuck corporate America, the racially disproportionate incarceration of non-white people. Fuck the war machine, the propaganda that starts at childhood.

Saying "Fuck Corporate America" isn't going to solve America's economic problem (Which reflexively affects the justice system). "Fuck the war machine" --all you have to do is not sign up for the military and you've done your part according to your ethics, this is regardless of the propaganda that starts at childhood. So, I would say it has little effect.

"Fuck it all, go steal yourself some household appliances" This is the real trouble in our society, like the London riots, when public anxiety meets with 'movement'. What we should be scared of as civilians is that our first go-to is to steal material things. It is as if their motivations and tension is animated by materialistic hedonism instead of organized structure.

As for your last sentence the most ugly thing aside from the death of the innocent; is that when our society faces itself with it's own tension it reverts back to its hedonistic roots. With this and what happened in London, I am FAR more concerned about how our society deals with materialism as such.

 

[What 23]

Edit - Apparently Anonymous has identified the police officer as Bryan Willman, and have released his phone number, current address and email addresses. No solid verification though. It turns out normal citizens also have access to computers and information networks.....

Apparently this was the wrong guy. Anonymous needs to stay out of things like this.

 

[socko]

What23: Socko- what is a "big" interpretation of those stats? I included that socioeconomic factors had probably something to do with them. At this level of inquiry, what more do you want? The fact still remains that they are disproportionate... Even if Blacks are arrested more out of racism.

Everybody who is familiar with you on here can probably guess why you choose to post those stats here in this thread. When you post things like that, you are attacking the victim and saying he somehow deserved it. The underlying socioeconomic factors that you allude to (in your case, I believe only as a smoke screen for your agenda) are a big deal and need to be resolved. Other problems are violence, corruption, and ethnic tension.

You also said in post #18 that you have never seen anybody carrying an "assault" weapon where you live in Indianapolis or wherever. The definition of "assault" weapon is kind of hazy, so I was wondering if you have seen people (not police or military) openly carrying any kind of firearm there. I would be really surprised if you say you haven't. I've seen people carrying weapons (pistols, rifles, and sport/"assault" style weapons) in other similar mid-western cities. Even here in the San Francisco area, an NRA chapter in one of the nearby suburbs (Hercules which is just across the bay) has meetings at the local Starbucks. Club members wear some kind of weapon there to those meetings.

 

[What 23]

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/mi...ren-wilson-cop-who-shot-michael-brown-n181326

Ferguson Chief Names Darren Wilson as Cop Who Shot Michael Brown

A six-year police veteran named Darren Wilson was identified Friday as the officer who shot and killed an unarmed black teenager in a St. Louis suburb last weekend, touching off a week of sometimes violent protests and a military-style police response.

A police report made public Friday also revealed that the teen, Michael Brown, was suspected of stealing a box of cigars from a convenience store and assaulting a clerk minutes before the officer shot him to death.

Thomas Jackson, the police chief of Ferguson, Missouri, said later that the officer did not know Brown was a suspect in the robbery when he stopped Brown. Asked why Brown and a friend were stopped, the chief said: “Because they were walking down the middle of the street blocking traffic.”

The chief described Wilson, 28, as a distinguished policeman and a “gentle, quiet man” who was devastated by what happened. Wilson has been a policeman for six years, including on the Ferguson force. The chief declined to say where Wilson was or what security precautions had been taken for him.

Jackson described what at the convenience store before the shooting as a “strongarm robbery.” The police report said that Brown was there with his friend, Dorian Johnson. Police also released pictures taken from surveillance video that appeared to show a confrontation.

Stills released by the Ferguson (Mo.) Police Dept. from surveillance video that appear to show a confrontation at a convenience store.
__________________________________

A 911 call about the robbery came in at 11:51 a.m., according to the police chief. A minute later, dispatchers gave a description of the suspect. The officer encountered Brown at 12:01 p.m. Three minutes later, the shooting was over, and a second officer was on the scene, he said.

The chief said earlier in the week that the officer had been taken to a hospital with injuries to his face. He has been on administrative leave since the shooting. Jackson had declined for days to release the name of the officer, citing threats issued on social media.

Sharply different accounts of the shooting have been given previously by police and by Johnson.

Police have said that an officer encountered Brown and another man on the street. They have said that one of the men pushed the officer into his patrol car and that there was a struggle over the officer’s gun. They have said that Brown ran and the officer fired multiple times.

Johnson, however, told MSNBC that the officer ordered him and Brown off the sidewalk. He said that the officer tried to thrust his car door open but the door slammed into Brown and bounced closed. He said the officer then grabbed Brown by the neck, pointed the gun at him and said, “I’ll shoot.”

Johnson also said that the officer fired shots after Brown turned with his hands up and said, “I don’t have a gun, stop shooting!”

Another witness emerged Thursday and, in an interview with MSNBC, corroborated major details of Johnson’s account.

Johnson’s lawyer confirmed to MSNBC on Friday that Brown had taken the cigars from the store.

The unrest in Ferguson escalated and peaked on Wednesday night, when police fired tear gas into crowds of protesters and arrested 16 people, including two reporters. Police were criticized for a military-style presence that included officers atop armored trucks aiming rifles at crowds.

Relative calm was restored Thursday night after Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon put the state Highway Patrol in command.

Nixon, in a statement on Friday, said he was pleased that the officer’s name had been released.

“For the sake of the family, the citizens of Ferguson, and the entire region, it is vital that the investigations into the shooting death of Michael Brown move forward in a thorough, open and transparent manner to ensure that trust is restored and justice is done,” the statement said.

 

[StoneHappyMonday]

Ah a confrontation you say? Deserved to be shot then. Nice bit of highlighting What 23.

Burn Missouri.

 

[One Thousand Words]

Hopefully this chaotic display turns into an organized movement.

Hahaha, if by organised movement you mean stealing booze and flat screen televisions as some sort of reverse taxation for past civil liberties being ignored.

I can understand the need for riot police response when trying to control looting and rioting by an arm population. At this stage to serve and protect could be applied to the poor shop owners whose businesses are being robbed.

However I don't understand why or how a mounted machine gun would be used in any other way than cutting down a poorly organised group of citizens. By all means use shields, tear gas, armoured vehicles to regain control of your streets, but arming your self with high powered assault rifles only echoes the Cold War mentality that every everyone has a nuclear weapon then there will be peace. All this does is provoke the population to arm themselves, which in turn forces the police to do the same.

Quit protecting the rouge element in you police forces and get back to what policing was originally design to do, serve the public, not the government.

 

[Bardeaux]

Johnson’s lawyer confirmed to MSNBC on Friday that Brown had taken the cigars from the store.

Let the smearing begin.

I'll be waiting for a record of brown's tweets about sipping lean and smoking weed.

Hahaha, if by organised movement you mean stealing booze and flat screen televisions as some sort of reverse taxation for past civil liberties being ignored.

This would fall under the "chaotic display" portion of my statement.