Ferguson grand jury.

[AllPurposeAtheist]

If you want to know why I strongly question all this read how sloppily it was handled by Furguson police, even Wilson.
.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/seemingly-unorthodox-police-procedures-emerge-in-grand-jury-documents/2014/11/25/48152574-74e0-11e4-bd1b-03009bd3e984_story.html?tid=pm_politics_pop

No chain of custody, near zero accountability which screams coverup and police misconduct.

[Hakurei Reimu]

So the assumption is that with the entire nation watching that the local authorities, being watched by the FBI, and under the glare of the US Attorney General, had some hack forensic scientist manufacture his findings, then fabricate pictures and maybe add a bullet hole or two after the victim was dead, because you know, other forensic experts would be fooled into coming to the same conclusions and all the testimony from multiple residents that were completely different was teased from said authorities to conflict with each other with the purpose to convince a jury, gullible, hand picked and bribed, into reaching the same conclusion....sounds reasonable.

Forget that. That's what happened in the altercation. I'm talking about what happened afterward. That Willson did not render aid onto Brown after he collapsed like he's supposed to, to â€"at the very leastâ€" call an ambulance for the guy that Willson knew for a fact had a bullet wound.

The most generous interpretation of this is that there is now someone on the Ferguson police force who has proven that he cannot do his job. He has proven that, in exactly the kind of situation where he professionally required to keep a level head, and people's lives are depending on him keeping a level head, has proven that he cannot do so. As such, he should be dismissed from the force and replaced by someone who can keep a level head in this kind of situation. Where he is, Officer Willson is a proven danger to the public safety of Ferguson because he is incapable of performing those duties in exactly the kind of stressful situations that police officers are expected and required to perform in. This alone should worry you.

[aitm]

Forget that. That's what happened in the altercation. I'm talking about what happened afterward. That Willson did not render aid onto Brown after he collapsed like he's supposed to, to â€"at the very leastâ€" call an ambulance for the guy that Willson knew for a fact had a bullet wound.

The most generous interpretation of this is that there is now someone on the Ferguson police force who has proven that he cannot do his job. He has proven that, in exactly the kind of situation where he professionally required to keep a level head, and people's lives are depending on him keeping a level head, has proven that he cannot do so. As such, he should be dismissed from the force and replaced by someone who can keep a level head in this kind of situation. Where he is, Officer Willson is a proven danger to the public safety of Ferguson because he is incapable of performing those duties in exactly the kind of stressful situations that police officers are expected and required to perform in. This alone should worry you.

I have absolutely  no problem with your opinion on that.

[Solitary]

It's another conspiracy I tell you The whole police force is out to get the blacks, the FBI is in on it, the courts are in on it, and it's all Obamas fault. Give me a break, the guy was way bigger than the cop, hit him two time in the face with his fist, then goes to hit him again and the cop shoves the door open knocking him down, then gets out of his car and tells him to stop and he ignores him and gets shot. Did any of you see the gangs of thugs did after when they went in the store and stole the cigars the guy that got shot had robbed cigarillos the day before? When you are in a life or death situation, your flight or fight emotions kick in, and you will stop anyone putting you in that situation.

The idea he was unarmed is bull shit, I had two men as big as that knock down with one punch, one I got up and got him in a Chinese strangle hold and would have killed him if I hadn't been stopped. And it would have been illegal   because of my training, even though I was unarmed. If I had had a gun in both situations they would have been shot---right or wrong.  Why is the cop being judged and not the big thug for what he did? If the big thug would have killed the cop, would everyone still stick up for the thug because he was black?

[Cocoa Beware]

I am talking about the unbelievably racist comments on all of the news stories about this (and in my own Facebook feed), and the invariably dismissive attitude toward the larger problem, mostly by white American men. There's no problem! They are just being the animals they are, and have you seen the prison statistics and the unmarried birthrate and what races are doing the looting and blah blah blah.

I am actually kind of on the fence about Ferguson itself. I think the law is difficult to enforce, and requires judgment. His word against Brown's was what it boiled down to. But this uprising is not about Ferguson in essence. It is about a much larger problem and this happens to be a possibly inappropriate pressure relief valve.

Id be a lot more understanding if they were stealing and destroying the property of people like those who made those comments, rather then doing it indiscriminately.

Id be immensely more sympathetic if the protesting in Ferguson was demonstrated more peaceably (Imo it would almost certainly get a lot more accomplished)

Knee jerk indulgent violence like this... well...

[Mermaid]

Yeah. It's stupid and short sighted and terrible. The people involved in wrecking the town aren't doing anyone any favors.

There is a fundamental problem, however. This is not about the shooting, it's about the larger picture. The press and the populace attributing this behavior to people because of their race is at the center of the problem.

[AllPurposeAtheist]

There seems to be a perception that I and many others assume Wilson to be guilty of murder and Brown to have been some benevolent kind child which is not the case. Brown probably was a bully or maybe a large guy who hadn't yet learned his boundaries.
That's not what is so disturbing.
What is disturbing is that in this nation police are given near free reign to use deadly force whenever there is the slightest threat even against unarmed civilians. In the Brown case Wilson is about the same size as Brown. People forget that 6'4" and appx 250 lbs Wilson is no fainting wall flower and not a man likely to be bullied by an 18 year old kid and I use the term kid not to make him sound innocent, but to indicate a level of maturity.
The courts have and are ruling that police for all intents and purposes don't have to fear anything or anyone because the courts are going to side with them in nearly every case regardless of reason for shooting another human being and lacking absolute irrefutable evidence with video and signed confessions by police they're going to keep getting away with murder. Sloppy police work? No problem. No chain of evidence? Who cares? The fact that the town is 75% one race and nearly all the police in the town another color? Not a problem and the most damming in this case is no trial and no cross examination which is part of the larger pattern of policing, no accountability and the presumption that police only kill when there's an eminent threat to their lives.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

That's not what is so disturbing.
What is disturbing is that in this nation police are given near free reign to use deadly force whenever there is the slightest threat even against unarmed civilians.

I notice the waffle word "near" in that sentence, so you can say any level of reality is "near" free reign.

[AllPurposeAtheist]

Parse every word in the name of the law..That justifies it..The fact of the matter is it's extremely difficult to indict a cop for a shooting and yet easy as hell to indict a civilian for so much as jaywalking.. And before you jump all over that indictment doesn't mean conviction.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Parse every word in the name of the law..That justifies it..The fact of the matter is it's extremely difficult to indict a cop for a shooting and yet easy as hell to indict a civilian for so much as jaywalking.. And before you jump all over that indictment doesn't mean conviction.

Nah, you're just trotting out the sweeping generalization. Free to do so, of course.

[AllPurposeAtheist]

Nah, you're just trotting out the sweeping generalization. Free to do so, of course.

As if suggesting it's all some grand conspiracy theory isn't?

[AllPurposeAtheist]

Oh yeah..everything handled properly and the big bully deserves to die. Forget the facts because they just get in the way of just us.
http://m.dailykos.com/stories/1347880

During his "Rewrite" section last night, MSNBC host Lawrence O'Donnell pointed out a very serious error that the St. Louis assistant district attorney made when preparing the jury to hear the testimony of Ferguson, Missouri, police officer Darren Wilson.

Transcript

From Raw Story:

    O’Donnell said that early on in the jurors’ deliberations, [Assistant D.A. Kathy] Alizadeh handed them a copy of a 1979 Missouri statute saying police were “justified in the use of such physical force as he or she reasonably believes is immediately necessary to effect the arrest or prevent the escape from custody.” However, he explained, the Supreme Court found those kinds of statutes to be unconstitutional six years later.

    ...

    “She was taking the hurdle that Darren Wilson had to get over in his testimony, and flattening it,” O’Donnell argued. “She was making it impossible for Darren Wilson to fail in front of this grand jury.”

In 1985 the Supreme Court found laws such as this to be unconstitutional and effectively struck it down. As a result this statute has not be part of Missouri law since that time.  But this isn't the worst part of Alizadeh's error. She did not provide the grand jury with the correct statute for several weeks, not until they were about to do their deliberations. Worse still, when her office noted the problem with current case law, it failed to explain to the jury how the law had changed and how this difference would affect their decision-making as to whether Wilson was legally justified in using deadly force. And when one of the jurors asked about it, and whether a Supreme Court decision can trump Missouri state law what they were told was this:

    “As far as you need to know, just don’t worry about that,” Alizadeh told the juror. Alizadeh’s colleague, Sheila Whirley, added, “We don’t want to get into a law class.”

Continue reading over the fold.

As was noted here on DailyKos the decision made by the Supreme Court in 1985 under Tennessee v. Garner included the following:

    “where the officer has probable cause to believe that the suspect poses a threat of serious physical harm, either to the officer or to others, it is not constitutionally unreasonable to prevent escape by using deadly force.”

So the difference, which the St. Louis County DA's Office failed to explain, is that the law changed from allowing officers to use deadly force when they "reasonably believe" a person could be dangerous to him- or herself or to others to requiring that they have "probable cause" for such a belief.

Between the two, "reasonable belief [or suspicion]" is the lesser and far easier to reach standard. As O'Donnell explained, the prior standard allowed police officers to shoot and kill fleeing suspects even when the crime they were suspected of committing was far less than a capital offense. In one case brought up by O'Donnell, a person who simply spat on an officer was shot and killed simply because he turned and ran away afterward.

Here's short discussion of how reasonable belief/suspicion differs from probable cause.

    Reasonable suspicion is a term used to describe if a person has been or will be involved in a crime based on specific facts and circumstances. It may be used to justify an investigatory stop. Reasonable suspicion is more than a hunch that a crime has been committed but does not require as much evidence as probable cause.

    ...

    A person may not be arrested based on reasonable suspicionâ€"an arrest is made based on probable cause. However, if probable cause develops during an investigatory stop, the officer may arrest the suspect.

    ...

    Probable cause is defined as a reasonable belief that an individual has, is, or will commit a crime. This belief must be based on facts, not a hunch or suspicion. To determine if there was probable cause, the court must find that a person with reasonable intelligence would believe that a crime was being committed under the same circumstances. Probable cause requires stronger evidence than reasonable suspicion.

So when Wilson testified before the grand jury, all they had been told is required for an officer to be justified in using deadly forceâ€"even though this standard was 29 years out of date and hadn't been constitutional since Darren Wilson was a toddlerâ€"is that he or she has little more than a hunch, a belief, a feeling, that a person might be a danger to them or the public and that shooting at the person while he or she flees is necessary to protect the public.

The problem is that people can believe all sorts of things.

They can believe in Santa Claus, they can believe in the Tooth Fairy, they can believe that if they stop clapping Tinkerbell is going to die. The Earth is only 7,000 years old despite fossils that are millions of years old. Green energy and electric cars will never work, even though they are working more and more every day. The president is an illegal alien with a fetish for redefining the Constitution out of existence. President Bush didn't violate the War Crimes Act by authorizing torture. For some people those are perfectly reasonable beliefs to hhold even as many of the rest of us think they are the full-on nutty. But the Supreme Court decided we really shouldn't let police officers decide who lives and who dies based on just that.

What they need in order to use deadly force are facts, not just a belief.

Based on the very excellent and easy to understand summary of all the relevant witness statements written by Mark Sumner, it appears that the initial aggressor in the conflict was Wilson who multiple witnesses stated nearly hit Michael Brown and Dorian Johnson with his car, and then actually did hit them with the car door as he opened it, which then bounced back onto him. He then reached through the window and grabbed onto Brown by the shirt and throat. A struggle ensued with Brown pulling back away from the car, possibly punching to get Wilson to release him until ultimately Wilson pulls his gun and fires two shots, one hitting Brown in the thumb.

Brown and his friend Dorian Johnson then ran  in opposite directions away from Wilson's SUV, with Brown traveling about 50 yards and turning into a driveway where he stopped after multiple witness seem to think he's been shot a second time [possibly in the right arm].  He looks at his bloody shirt and turns, talking to the officer as he draws closer in pursuit and then takes several steps back into the street while raising his hands to shoulder height, palms facing Wilson.

Wilson continues to fire, striking Brown again. Brown begins to wobble, stumbling and falling forward, his arms curl inward as he takes a few more steps as he's hit in the eye and top of the head, ultimately landing face first on the pavement.

I can see, from Wilson's perspective that he could believe that as Brown falls and stumbles forward it might seem as if he's trying to run toward him. But besides it not making no any sense for anyone to try to run head first into a hail of bullets, it's goes against the preponderance of witness statements. With the exceptions of witness #10,, whose story is full of holes, witness #40 who is an admitted racist, and Witness #48 whose details are vague and may have had an obstructed view in a minivan, all witnesses state that Brown was in the process of surrendering as the fatal shots were fired.

The overall consensus of the majority of witnesses wasn't that Brown was "bulking up" to attackâ€"uh, and who does that anyway?â€"he was falling onto his face and pulling his arms under him to help break his fall until the final shot went into the top of his head and killed him.

The grand jury should have been wondering what facts there were to prove that Brown was a continuing threat after he fled, after he stopped and turned, after he began to surrender and as he began to fall because it's during all of that period of time that Wilson continued to fire and ultimately kill Michael Brown.

And they could have looked at many of Wilson's own statementsâ€""when I grabbed him he felt like Hulk Hogan," "I felt like a five-year-old," he was so mad he looked like a "demon," no one "likes that neighborhood"â€"to show that what he believed could have been twisted by his own negative attitude and predisposition to assume the worst intentions about the area and of Brown.

Are there enough facts to show that Wilson's use of deadly force was unwarranted? Well, the reason we have demonstrations and even violence and property damage all around the country is because a great many people believe the answer to those question is a resounding "Yes."

But the grand jury didn't do that, they couldn't, because the St. Louis D.A. gave jurors the wrong law to consider and let them keep that incorrect perception right through their deliberations. Under these circumstances there was literally no practical way for them to indict no matter what the majority of witnesses had to say because it doesn't matter what they think or what the facts of the situation were. The jurors were told all that mattered was what officer Darren Wilson believed.

Even if what he believed was totally, completely, flat-out wrong.

In closing I want to also note that St Louis Police Department, which was charged with investigating this case, also made several catastrophic blunders in this case as the grand jury data dump shows.

1. Wilson washed away blood evidence on his own.

    In an interview with police investigators, Wilson admitted that after the shooting he returned to police headquarters and washed blood off his bodyâ€"physical evidence that could have helped to prove or disprove a critical piece of Wilson’s testimony regarding his struggle with Brown inside the police car.

Wilson was not cut, but had blood on both handsâ€"blood that clearly must have come from Michael Brown.

2. The first officer to interview Wilson failed to take any notes.

    The first supervising officer to the scene, who was also the first person to interview Wilson about the incident, didn’t take any notes about their conversation. In testimony more than a month after the incident, the officer offered his account from memory.

    ...

    “I didn’t take notes because at that point in time I had multiple things going through my head besides what Darren was telling me,” the officer stated.

Wilson and the supervising officer spoke on the phone about the incident several hours later to go over his story after both had already been interviewed by investigators, an open question remains as to whether this call was an attempt to help shape the supervisor's testimony by cementing a narrative in his memory that couldn't be verified by comparing it to his notes.

3. Investigators failed to measure the likely distance between Brown and Wilson.

Yes, reallyâ€"they didn't bother.

    An unnamed medical legal examiner who responded to the shooting testified before the grand jury that he or she had not taken any distance measurements at the scene, because they appeared “self-explanatory.”

    “Somebody shot somebody. There was no question as to any distances or anything of that nature at the time I was there,” the examiner told the jury.

Frankly, from the description by some of the witnesses, the two were quite close after Brown turned around and began to fall forward as the officer continued to approach. Some seem to describe the final shot as, in my opinion, essentially a coup de grâce execution-style blast to the head.

The medical examiner also didn't take pictures of the scene because the batteries on her camera were dead.

4. Investigators did not test Wilson’s gun for fingerprints.

Wilson claimed that Brown grabbed or reached for his gun, but police investigators testified that they never tested the gun for fingerprints, which could have confirmed Wilson's story, because "the gun was never out of Wilson's control."

5. Wilson did not immediately turn his weapon over to investigators after killing Brown.

Wilson left his gun in his holster after using it on Brown, took it back to the station and placed it in an evidence bag himself. Essentially the person who did the shooting was also the last person with chain-of-custody control of the murder weapon.

Standard practice for the St. Louis PD is for an investigator or supervising officer at the scene to place any relevant weapons into evidence.

6. An initial interview with investigators was delayed while Wilson traveled to the hospital with his superiors.

Instead of being interviewed by investigators at the scene, Wilson was first taken to the hospital where he was checked for injuries. Meanwhile, Michael Brown's body lay in the street for four-and-a-half hours, with no measurements or pictures being taken by the medical examiner.

7. Wilson’s initial interview with the detective conflicts with information given in later testimony.

Wilson changed his story. In his initial interview he claimed that he didn't know that Brown was a possible suspect in the cigarillo theft from the local liquor store. He only claimed to have heard the call about the theft on the radio.

Wilson also initially told investigators that although he did see Brown pass something in his hands to Dorian Johnson as the conflict began, he didn't know what it was. It was only in later interviews and testimony that Wilson claimed that he saw the cigarillos in Brown's hand and that this is what led him to believe Brown might be the suspected thief.

With all this in mind, the lackadaisical interviews, sloppy evidence gathering, chain of custody issues and general disinterest in treating this situation as a crime being investigated, it's little wonder that the prosecutors took six weeks to figure out the use of force law from 1979 is no longer in effect.

Or then again, all of these "mistakes" could just as easily have been by design so as to protect a "brother officer" as by happenstance. Perhaps the U.S. Justice Department and the FBI will have to be the judge of that.

Fri Nov 28, 2014 at 10:29 AM PT: I've seen some commentary by a proclaimed attorney that Garner would not affect this case since that was Civil, not Criminal matter - an argument I've yet to see confirmed - however what the Supreme Court found in that case in 1985 has to be underlined with what they found in 1989 under Graham.

    In the United States, this is governed by Tennessee v. Garner, (U.S. Supreme Court 1985) which said that "deadly force...may not be used unless necessary to prevent the escape and the officer has probable cause to believe that the suspect poses a significant threat of death or serious bodily harm to the officer or others." This case abolished the Fleeing felon rule where a fleeing felon who posed no immediate threat to society (e.g., a burglar) could be shot if they refused to halt.[2]

    In Graham v. Connor, (U.S. Supreme Court 1989) the court expanded its definition to include "objective reasonableness" standardâ€"not subjective as to what the officer's intent might have beenâ€"and it must be judged from the perspective of a reasonable officer at the sceneâ€"and its calculus must embody the fact that police officers are often forced to make split-second decisions about the amount of force necessary in a particular situation.

So in reality the Constitutional burden is slightly higher than even O'Donnell describes.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

As if suggesting it's all some grand conspiracy theory isn't?

Who did that?

I know something you won't do, ever. You won't stop before posting and replace "cops" with "African Americans", "Native Americans", "Latinos", just to see if you're making a bigoted statement and think it's okay because of the target group. Never gonna do that.

[Solitary]

What police in other towns do is irrelevant to this case.

Here are the facts presented to the Grand Jury and FBI, decide for yourself if they are in cahoots to lie about the case:

Michael Meyers is the executive director of the New York Civil Rights Coalition. By the way he is black.

The grand jury in St. Louis County showed its unique role in America.

The jury showed its magnificence in standing between the mobs that demand revenge for a horrible death of an unarmed black teen who stood at the end of a white cop’s pistol â€" and an unsteady and uncertain prosecutor who decided to trust the grand jury with the decision as to whether to charge Police Officer Darren Wilson, who shot Michael Brown.

Bombshell evidence, testimony laid out in fatal shooting of Michael Brown
From the angle of race relations and the law, trust is necessary and earned, not assumed. This grand jury earned its stripes, laboriously, having taken its time to focus on evidence, and ignoring racial rhetoric.

Some of the evidence presented to the grand jury appeared to support Officer Darren Wilson's statement that he shot unarmed Michael Brown in self-defense â€" but other details seemed to cast doubt on the cop's account.

In announcing Monday that a grand jury in Ferguson, Mo., voted not to indict the white officer in the highly charged killing of the black teen, St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Bob McCulloch discussed important elements of the evidence.

EDITORIAL: Full facts on Ferguson required in wake of grand jury decision
Speaking at length during a nationally televised press conference, McCulloch described a miscellany of sometimes-conflicting accounts of the 90 fateful seconds that passed between the moment Wilson spotted Brown and a pal walking in a roadway in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson around midday on Aug. 9, to the volley of 12 rounds that left the 18-year-old dead in the same street.

Wilson testified before the grand jury, according to transcripts released Monday night, that before he fired, the teenager slammed the door of his police cruiser on him, prompting him to draw his gun. "I said, 'Get back or I'm going to shoot you,' " Wilson testified.” He immediately grabs my gun and says, 'You are too much of a pu--y to shoot me.'"

Wilson was aware that Brown was wanted for stealing cigars from a convenience store minutes earlier. That point had been in dispute since Ferguson police released a video of the convenience store and said Wilson had known Brown was a suspect â€" only to have the police chief retract that statement not long after, saying the cop didn't make the stop in relation to the theft.

SEE IT: ALL EVIDENCE RELEASED BY ST. LOUIS COUNTY PROSECUTOR BOB MCCULLOCH
Wilson, in his grand jury testimony, said Brown charged his police car. "The only way I can describe it, it looks like a demon, that's how angry he looked," Wilson told the panel, according to the transcript.
Other details also appeared to align in Wilson's favor.

The first two shots were fired when the officer was still sitting in his vehicle, leaving blood inside the car as well as on Wilson's pants.

"Mr. Brown's blood or DNA were found on the outside of the door," the prosecutor said.
That appeared to support Wilson's statement that Brown tried to strip him of his weapon during the altercation that followed the teen's alleged charging. Brown was 6-foot-4 and 292 pounds, and Wilson said he feared for his safety â€" yet the cop himself is an inch taller and 210 pounds.

RELATED: PARENTS OF MICHAEL BROWN TO MET WITH REV. AL SHARPTON

Wilson testified that Brown punched him in the head after the door-slam, causing him to fear for his life. The teen took off after the first two shots but then stopped, the officer said.

"His right (hand) goes under his shirt in his waistband and he starts running at me," Wilson told the jurors. "I tell, keep telling him to go to the ground. He doesn't. I shoot a series of shots. I don't know how many I shot."

In Wilson’s account, Brown keeps charging at him as he fired: “At this point it looked like he was almost bulking up to run through the shots, like it was making him mad that I'm shooting at him.”
Ten shots were fired from outside of the police car

Wilson told the panel that, with the charging Brown about eight to 10 feet away from him, he aimed a final shot at his head.
“When he fell, he fell on his face,” the cop testified. “And I remember his feet coming up, like he had so much momentum carrying him forward that when he fell, his feet kind of came up a little bit and then they rested.”

RELATED: NYC PROTESTERS MARCH TO TIMES SQUARE, BLOCK BRIDGE TRAFFIC
Wilson added: “I’ve never seen that much aggression so quickly from a simple request to just walk on the sidewalk.”
I tell, keep telling him to go to the ground. He doesn’t. I shoot a series of shots. I don’t know how many I shot.
McCulloch said that Wilson suffered "some swelling and redness to his face" â€" potential evidence that he was punched. Hospital photos shown to the grand jury depicted a minimally injured Wilson with some discoloration on his right cheek and the back of his neck.

McCulloch defended his handling of the matter and release of the material. He said that the case is no longer pending, so there was no reason to withhold the evidence.

"It is now a closed investigation," the prosecutor said.
The U.S. Justice Department is conducting a separate civil rights investigation.
Asked of his thoughts about the incident, Wilson said: "I think I'm just kind of in shock of what just happened, I really didn't believe it.”

[Cocoa Beware]

Yeah. It's stupid and short sighted and terrible. The people involved in wrecking the town aren't doing anyone any favors.

There is a fundamental problem, however. This is not about the shooting, it's about the larger picture. The press and the populace attributing this behavior to people because of their race is at the center of the problem.

Yeah, exactly.

I mean Im not suggesting a Gandhi or Martin Luther King type figure is needed, but I think people should at least make an effort to look to their example.

I agree about the media, I think they have been irresponsible this entire time. Its almost as if they are willing to sell people out just for the story.