Remember Mike Brown?

Here is the story of Michael Brown’s murder that we all believed: One sunny day in Ferguson, Mo., a huge behemoth of a man named Michael Brown walked into a convenience store; committed a strong-arm robbery, escaping with the invaluable loot of a pack of cigarillos; and while he was walking home, Darren Wilson, a brave cop responding to the robbery, stopped him.

When Wilson tried to detain Brown, Brown reached for the cop’s gun and the policeman shot him. But Brown wouldn’t quit, and the officer thought that Brown might have a weapon, so Wilson shot a few more times to stop Brown from harming him.

[...]

After a documentarian released video this past weekend that dispels the myth of the Mike Brown corner-store robbery, more information is emerging about the n-word-using patrolman who was accused of racial discrimination and excessive force even before he pumped at least six bullets into Brown on Aug. 9, 2014, killing him. New court papers reveal that Brown never tried to take the officer’s gun, never struck the officer and did not initiate any contact with Wilson, who was cleared of wrongdoing by a secret grand jury in November 2014.

[...]

In a court docket filed Dec. 28, the cop who killed Brown admitted to using racial slurs, cursing at Brown before he was killed and grabbing him without provocation.

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The next part of the testimony will confound the conservatives who stated that Wilson did not shoot Brown in the back. Wilson admits that after the first shot, Brown started running away from him and he fired another shot, which missed Brown.

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Wilson agrees that after the second bullet was fired, the teen turned around, faced the officer and—although Wilson was trained in “defensive tactics and techniques”—began shooting as soon as Brown started running toward him.

He fired 10 times.

After shooting Brown in the face, Wilson kept firing, shooting him again in the top of the head.

[...]

I’m sure this news will comfort the family, friends and loved ones of Brown, who only got 18 years on this earth, while the man who shot him rests comfortably in the free house he bought with the $500,000 in donations he received from supporters, who rewarded him for shooting the teen.
  The Root

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Michael Brown Legacy

St. Louis has developed a plan to change:


PIER "Making a Safe City"

Murder in St. Louis

The 159 murders in St. Louis this year — through Tuesday — have made 2014 the most violent of recent years, with at least 39 more murders than last year. It’s the highest yearly tally of criminal homicides since 2008, when the city recorded 167 murders.

[...]

The reasons for the rise in St. Louis are unclear, especially at a time when homicides in several other U.S. cities this year are continuing a downward trend.

[...]

University of Missouri-St. Louis criminologist Rick Rosenfeld said the increase in homicides in four north St. Louis neighborhoods alone — Wells Goodfellow, St. Louis Place, the West End and Kingsway East — accounted for most of the year’s overall rise in murders.

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Police Chief Sam Dotson said he believed one of the reasons for the increase here since August could be what he has called the “Ferguson effect,” the belief that criminals became more emboldened since the Aug. 9 killing of Michael Brown by a Ferguson police officer. Dotson said he believed crime rose in part because police were diverted from regular patrols to special details focusing on civil unrest.

  St. Louis Today

So, it’s the fault of protesters? Really?

The year began on pace with 2013, but a bloody spring pushed the number of homicides in St. Louis 47 percent above the previous year by the end of April.

April, eh?  Not August?

This month, Dotson asked the mayor to find money to hire 160 more city officers over the next two years.

It will be good news if they're going to put police on neighborhood patrols. I guess the Brown murder can at least account for that.

 Or not.

That followed the death of Bosnian immigrant Zemir Begic, 32, who was beaten to death by a group of teenagers with hammers in the Bevo Mill neighborhood Nov. 30. Three days later, a woman was killed and five other people were shot in an attempted robbery at Pooh’s Corner, a bar in south St. Louis popular with retired and off-duty police.

Two whites.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Meanwhile In Cop Shootings

A white former Milwaukee police officer who fatally shot a black man in a downtown park in April won’t face criminal charges, the county’s top prosecutor said on Monday.

The Milwaukee County district attorney, John Chisholm, said in an emailed press release that Christopher Manney will not be charged because he shot Dontre Hamilton in self-defense.

[...]

Manney shot 31-year-old Hamilton on 30 April after responding to a call for a welfare check on a man sleeping in the park. Manney said Hamilton resisted when he tried to frisk him. The two exchanged punches before Hamilton got a hold of Manney’s baton and hit him on the neck with it, the former officer has said. Manney then opened fire, hitting Hamilton 14 times.

Hamilton’s family said he suffered from schizophrenia and had recently stopped taking his medication.

Police chief Edward Flynn fired Manney in October, saying Manney instigated the fight with an inappropriate pat-down. The chief said Manney correctly identified Hamilton as mentally ill but ignored his training and department policy, and treated him as a criminal.

[...]

Hamilton’s death preceded those of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner in New York City, but the case hasn’t attracted as much attention despite frequent, mostly peaceful protests.

  The Guardian

That’s why it’s not getting any attention.

Manney has appealed against his firing and applied for disability, saying the shootings in Milwaukee and Ferguson have cost him sleep and made it difficult for him to think clearly.

Awwww.

 ...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

People Do Care

Opinion of an Ex-St.Louis (Black) Cop

Unfortunately, I don’t think better training alone will reduce police brutality. My fellow officers and I took plenty of classes on racial sensitivity and on limiting the use of force.

The problem is that cops aren’t held accountable for their actions, and they know it. These officers violate rights with impunity. They know there’s a different criminal justice system for civilians and police.

Even when officers get caught, they know they’ll be investigated by their friends, and put on paid leave. My colleagues would laughingly refer to this as a free vacation. It isn’t a punishment. And excessive force is almost always deemed acceptable in our courts and among our grand juries. Prosecutors are tight with law enforcement, and share the same values and ideas.

[...]

The number of people in uniform who will knowingly and maliciously violate your human rights is huge. At the Ferguson protests, people are chanting, “The whole damn system is guilty as hell.” I agree, and we have a lot of work to do.

  WaPo

And he gives examples from his own experience in the article.

The Other Grand Jury

Surely they won't be making the same mistake.

New York officials are preparing for likely protests as a grand jury decides whether to charge police in the death of a black man subjected to a banned choke hold, although they are aiming to avoid the kind of violence that engulfed Ferguson, Missouri last month after the grand jury decision in the Michael Brown case.

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It is not clear when the grand jury will rule.

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'We're just praying and hoping that things don't get out of hand,' said Bobby Digi, a Staten Island activist and businessman. 'We've been doing a lot of behind-the-scenes work to just try to get temperaments at bay.'

  alJazeera

I think this is going to take more than praying and hoping.

Hazel Dukes, president of the New York state chapter of the NAACP civil rights group, said she was 'very worried' about the possible response if no charges are brought by the Staten Island grand jury, which has been meeting in secret since August.

Yes, I imagine that would just about blow the roof. As well it should.

Garner suffered a heart attack after officers compressed his neck and chest as they restrained him for selling loose cigarettes, the medical examiner ruled, calling his death a homicide.

A 400-pound asthmatic Staten Island dad died Thursday after a cop put him in a chokehold and other officers appeared to slam his head against the sidewalk, video of the incident shows.

“I can’t breathe! I can’t breathe!” Eric Garner, 43, repeatedly screamed after at least five NYPD officers took him down in front of a Tompkinsville beauty supply store when he balked at being handcuffed.

[...]

Police officials said Garner had a history of arrests for selling untaxed cigarettes. Cops said they observed him selling his wares Thursday on Bay St. and moved in for an arrest.

  NY Daily News

And went for the kill.

A law enforcement source said the incident was troubling.

“A guy is dead in our custody. That is always a potential problem,” the source said.

I sure hate it when the law is troubled with a potential problem.

And, perhaps they want to rethink this as well.

Investigators are considering whether to charge Michael Brown's stepfather with attempting to incite a riot for urging a crowd in Ferguson, Missouri, to "burn this bitch down" as part of a larger inquiry into violence after a grand jury declined to indict a white police officer in the shooting death of the unarmed black teenager, authorities told NBC News on Tuesday.

  NBC News

Bob McCullough - the same prosecutor who called the Wilson Grand Jury - will decide whether to charge him.

The Ferguson Coverup

[U]nlawful denial of the records is a civil violation of the law – but the “knowing” violation constitutes a Class A Misdemeanor in Missouri.

On August 12th the ACLU made a public records request under Missour’s Sunshine Law – for the St. Louis County Police Department’s Incident Report of the Officer-Involved Shooting (involving Wilson and Brown).

On August 13th the St. Louis County Police Department responded – DENYING the request – claiming that it was EXEMPT based on a claim that there was an “open-investigation” and that this exempted it.

After which the ACLU filed a lawsuit the next day to compel them to produce the record – and to get other relief. They were followed in this by the National Bar Association in a suit filed on August 18th.

[...]

Last weekend I made a new public records request for that particular Incident Report. I included in that a statement of the law that the Incident Report is NOT the equivalent of the Investigation Report, the latter IS exempt while the investigation is ongoing, the former IS NOT – but is a public record AT ALL TIMES.

[...]

What I was told was a bit disturbing. Their email system had just been brought back up online. And so all the emails from that weekend had “disappeared.” So I stated to the Lieutenant what I requested and then stated that I would send it again – and I would contact all the others to resend theirs. The Department as well as the City of Ferguson have been claiming that emails are not being received because their systems are under attack by Anonymous. But I have seen no credible evidence that this is the cause of the problem.

[...]

I did not hear back from him until about 7 pm that night. He did email me – recognizing he did not deliver as promised – and stated that he could not send the record that day because he had been called out to Ferguson all that day.

On Wednesday, however, he produced it pursuant to my request. I then provided what I received to the ACLU and National Bar Association.

I stated to him that there was a significant set of information – namely the “narrative summary” of the officer about what they were called to, what they found, and what they did – that is glaringly absent.

[...]

Here is the actual statute that is applicable to this – what the Police MUST create, maintain, and produce upon request:

610.100 Revised Missouri Statutes:

(4) “Incident report”, a record of a law enforcement agency consisting of the date, time, specific location, name of the victim and immediate facts and circumstances surrounding the initial report of a crime or incident, including any logs of reported crimes, accidents and complaints maintained by that agency;

What is further revealed in the Report released – is that it did not exist when the original request was made and then denied. But - problematic for the official story – is the fact that if no record existed this would have been stated to the ACLU, rather than making the claim (knowingly false – a class A misdemeanor) that it was exempt because of an investigation.

What is also clear from the record as well as my conversations with Lt. Burk – this record of this Incident Report was created in response to my request, rather than at the time of the incident as is normally required, and that it intentionally has been created to withhold the key narrative elements.

(I am inclined to believe an Incident Report DID exist prior to and independent of what has now been produced – and they are playing a game of sleight of hand to avoid giving it to the public.)

[...]

[If] an invocation of the right against providing self-incriminating testimony occurred on the part of Officer Wilson there would, again, have to be a public record to this effect. So I made that request of the Ferguson Police Department. In their response, that there was no such record, they have thus answered the question: No, Wilson has not invoked the fifth amendment.

[...]

And so I have been asking for other records – and I have been gradually getting most of them. Some are not being honestly responded to and I have had to follow up to try and enforce the law with regard to record production. And I will get all of them even if it is necessary to go to court to compel the police to produce them.

  PINAC

Or unless, like so many coverups before them, those records get destroyed.

What we now can state firmly in addition to this is that Ferguson Police also do not have a Use of Force Report that their policies required to be produced – not by Officer Wilson but by the Watch Commander on duty that day.

Ferguson is deliberately violating both the laws and its own policies to prevent any information from being produced and made public that could be used to hold Officer Wilson to account for his actions.

[...]

For even the response that there is no record as requested provides evidence. It is an answer to the question, in this case, did the Ferguson Police Department, including the Chief of Police , follow the law and the Department’s policies?

[...]

[Refusal to release documentation] suspiciously allows Officer Wilson, and the rest of the Ferguson Police Department, to wait until all the evidence against Wilson is discovered and collected, and afterwards to write reports that will neatly fit the evidence.

[...]

In this case, therefore, there is ample reason – in fact actual evidence – for the public to have no faith or confidence in anything these Departments, their officials, or the officers employed therein do or say. And certainly there is no reason to trust that they can honestly and faithfully participate in the process inquiring into and investigating the shooting by Officer Wilson.

  PINAC

More Witnesses in Brown Shooting

 And I think we can expect serious trouble shortly:

The latest evidence that the fix is in came this week from The Post’s Kimberly Kindy and Carol Leonnig, who discovered that [St. Louis County prosecutor Robert] McCulloch’s office has declined so far to recommend any charges to the grand jury. Instead, McCulloch’s prosecutors handling the case are taking the highly unusual course of dumping all evidence on the jurors and leaving them to make sense of it.

McCulloch’s office claims that this is a way to give more authority to the grand jurors, but it looks more like a way to avoid charging [police officer Darren] Wilson at all — and to use the grand jury as cover for the outrage that will ensue.

  WaPo

Ferguson Police Update

[O]fficers in Ferguson, Missouri, are now wearing body cameras to film their work.

[...]

Experts say police body cameras would help to provide an accurate account of police-involved incidents, possibly resulting in fewer incidences of police abusing their powers.

  RT

Until they turn them off, or they “accidentally” get damaged or quit working for some unexplained mysterious reason just at a crucial moment.

Meanwhile, Digital Ally, which produces tiny cameras that fasten to the shirt of police officers and relay images back to a centralized location, reported last week a 387 percent surge in its stock price since the slaying of Michael Brown on August 9.

Well, at least the shooting of an unarmed teenager 35’ away in the street was good for somebody's business.

Public Advocate Letitia James has endorsed video cameras for New York police officers following the death of Eric Garner as police attempted to arrest him for selling black-market cigarettes. A cell phone video captured the tragic incident, which showed one police officer applying an illegal [ed: and, as it turned out in this case, deadly] chokehold on Garner.

The pilot program would cost $5 million and equip 15 percent of the city’s police officers with the devices.

Ferguson - Grand Jury

No surprise here.

Photo Op in Ferguson

Photo Gene Demby NPR

And the cameraman is standing on the Michael Brown Memorial.  Michael who?

Ferguson

UPDATE:  

Cop Being Sued Over Beating Is Now a Ferguson City Councilwoman

Don't miss this story about the Ferguson, Missouri, police department and the prosecuting attorney. It seems there is currently a lawsuit on appeal by a black man who was wrongly arrested (mistaken identity - same name, different middle initial - how difficult is that?), beaten and bloodied by Ferguson police held for "several" days, and then charged with destruction of property for bleeding on their uniforms after having missed his exit in a heavy rainstorm.

In the second link, we learn that, while police are saying Darren Wilson (the officer who shot and killed Mike Brown) was a model officer and had no previous incidents on his record, it is possible that, according to the way the police department kept records prior to 2010, he could have been writing his own use of force reports, and that none of them went into his file.

Ferguson

The Ferguson police chief said Friday afternoon that the initial contact between an officer and Michael Brown, which ended with Brown shot dead, was not connected to a robbery that had occurred shortly before Brown was killed.

[...]

Rather, it stemmed from the fact that Brown and his friend were “walking down the street blocking traffic,” Jackson said.

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Jackson described Wilson, the officer involved in the shooting, “a gentle, quiet man” and “a distinguished officer.”

  WaPo

As opposed to the giant bully Brown. Is what he’s saying. (Video of Brown shoving and moving threateningly toward a convenient store clerk is posted with this article.)

No doubt there will be a lawsuit.  I expect the family's lawyer will try to have the video barred from admittance.  Probably successfully.  But who is going to sit on a jury who won't have seen it by then?

“Let me be real clear to everyone here that this family has never said that Mike Brown, Jr. was a perfect kid,” [attorney Anthony] Gray said at the top of the press conference, before moving on to address the alleged robbery photos directly.

  Mediaite

No the best way to have to start.

Ferguson

Police trying to lay some background...see? Cops only kill bad guys.

 

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Clowns

Look, America, you've had your fun. It was great to pretend that we all are just a nation of bootstrappy pioneer entrepreneurs who Built It All Ourselves. It made us feel all warm and tingly in our Chris Matthews parts when our favorite millionnaire radio hosts and TV stars told us what strong and independent people we are, what stalwart heirs to the best traditions of the Founders we are, and how absolutely spiffy we looked in our tricorns and knee breeches out there on the mall. It made us feel powerful when we elected a Congress full of loons and vandals. It was a tremendous, rolling good time to follow this year's Republican primary, in which, while the rest of the world likely looked on in horror, one of our two political parties allowed a veritable Wrestlemania of political dementia to produce the most singularly soulless and mendacious nominee since it allowed Richard Nixon to rise from moldy earth again. It was great good jolly fun to come right up to the edge of n-bombing the president and then, giggling like schoolboys caught wanking out a window, run away.

But, honestly, it's time to get real about things. Honestly, it's time for someone to politicize this storm for what it is.

[...]

[F]inally at the end of its tether, Irony washes down forty-five Xanax with a bottle of Kentucky Gentleman, and hurls itself off a cliff:

  Charlie Pierce

Former FEMA Director Michael Brown offered criticism of President Obama’s early responses to Hurricane Sandy yesterday .

[...]

“One thing he’s gonna be asked is, why did he jump on [the hurricane] so quickly and go back to D.C. so quickly when in…Benghazi, he went to Las Vegas?”

[...]

Brown is not the only one making the insinuation that Obama and his administration are responding too quickly to Sandy only for political reasons. He’s joined in his accusations by such prominent right-wing commentators as former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and columnist Charles Krauthammer.

However, Brown’s comments carry a special irony due to the role he played during the Hurricane Katrina debacle in 2005. As director of FEMA during the legendarily botched response, Brown, famously dubbed “Brownie” by President Bush, was in the center of criticism from both sides of the aisle that the Bush administration was too slow to respond. An internal review by the Department of Homeland Security’s Inspector-General following the disaster concluded, “Much of the criticism is warranted.” Brown resigned from his position as director less than two weeks after Katrina hit.

  Think Progress

You'd think, of all people, Brownie Brown, the literal horse trader with no experience appointed to run FEMA by George W. Bush in return for campaign contributions would keep quiet about the response to a national natural disaster, particularly a hurricane. Apparently, he hasn't gotten any smarter since Katrina.

[E]ven though the Republican half of it was an embarrassing clown show, this election has come down to a battle between two visions of the functions of the national government and, through that, a battle over whether the political commonwealth exists at all. It is not politicizing anything to point out the obvious fact that one side of these arguments is lying as a soggy pulpish object on the beaches of New Jersey, and the other one is out there trying to get the lights back on.

[...]

Willard Romney and Paul Ryan [...] are on record — and on audiotape, and on video, and all over the Intertoobz, and, for all I know, bellowing from the fillings in your teeth — as recommending that the federal government's responsibility for things like disaster relief be either handed back to the states, or privatized entirely. They have made this argument in public. They have made this argument as part of the reason why you should vote for them.

[...]

What they are saying now in an attempt to walk back their earlier arguments is almost assuredly nothing but a barrel full of lies. They'd be out there saying the very same things today if they hadn't gotten blindsided by this storm.

  Charlie Pierce

Yes, I wonder how the states of New York and New Jersey would be handling disaster relief right now if they were cut off from any Federal assistance.  (And, BTW, I think we all know who the Republicans will be running for the office in 2016 - we're looking at you, Governor Christie, as you know full well.  Nicely done.  No snark.)

Doesn't matter though. Abortion! Gay marriage!

I don't need to state explicitly that I am not endorsing Barack Obama, do I? There are other, better - far better - choices.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.