Mayhem in Missouri Breaks Out

[The Truth Is In There]

the multi-culti madness of the usa. coming soon...to a city near you. just throw people from all kinds of races and religions into one large melting pot and then watch as it begins to boil.

[panopticon]

So, who'd have thought that removing militarised, heavily armed police would defuse a volatile situation.

Imagine that.

Gov. Jay Nixon's announcement that state Highway Patrol Capt. Ron Johnson, who is black, will now be in charge of policing efforts at the protests came after the local police response drew heavy criticism. The fact that Brown, an unarmed black teenager, was shot multiple times by a white policeman was just the first spark. The aggressive response from the local police force has so far only added to the community's anger.
Source

Meanwhile, in Missouri, a black police chief who is now in charge of policing the protests in St Louis over the death of a black teenager walked among the crowd as he began the 'shift' away from military style policing.
Captain Ron Johnson said: 'I'm not afraid to be in this crowd today' as he marched with 1,000 people in the suburb of Ferguson.

The Missouri Highway Patrol chief said he wanted a 'new day' and an end to the violence.
Protests are planned for a fifth night in Ferguson, the once quiet suburb of St Louis, where Missouri Governor Jay Nixon said today that State Highway Patrol will take over supervision of security.
Source

Maybe I'm just cynical, but I'll leave that to someone else (if they see fit) to comment on in relation to suddenly bringing in an African American to run protest control...



There were also protests across the US with one in New York shutting down Times Square for 1000's of protesters (source).



Gives me hope for the next generation. Oh, and do not feed the trolls.

-- Pan

[panopticon]

What caused the Ferguson riot exists in so many other cities, too
By Elijah Anderson, August 13th 2014.

We must change how we're policing poor, black communities.

[Links are available in the original article]

SWAT teams and angry protesters clashed in a small St. Louis suburb for a third day Tuesday, following the death of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown. The eruption of protests and violence has been a long time coming. While I certainly do not condone rioting, examining the conditions surrounding Brown’s death — and the deaths of several other unarmed black men killed by law enforcement recently — makes clear that community reactions like those in Ferguson, Mo., are bound to happen. America has continued to isolate poor black people in economically depressed neighborhoods under increasingly oppressive police tactics that breed distrust and hostility.

Ferguson has suffered from “white flight” in recent years, leaving pockets of structural poverty and deeply alienated black people. The once predominantly white suburb now is 65 percent black. Poverty afflicts 22 percent of residents, twice as many as in 2000, according to the Census Bureau. Ferguson’s story isn’t uncommon in the United States. Authorities often see fit to heavily police towns with growing black and poor populations, to surveil them, and occasionally to harass them in the name of a “broken windows theory” of policing, banking on such methods to control crime. The broken windows theory, promulgated by James Q. Wilson, holds that where there is urban disarray, there is crime. Wilson argued that cleaning up trash and fixing broken windows — but also quickly policing deviants and miscreants for even small-scale crimes — would lessen crime overall. The thinking was that by taking care of the small stuff, you won’t face as much big stuff. The theory caught on, and authorities began to use it all over the country. For example, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and police commissioner Bill Bratton employed this theory in New York City, and it seemed to reduce crime. But increased “stop-and-frisk” incidents — which allow officers routinely to stop sometimes law-abiding citizens in search of illegal drugs, firearms or other criminal possessions — resulted in ever greater tension between communities of color and police, and in ever larger numbers of minority men being incarcerated.

The use of “broken windows” policing meant, ​in practice, increasing harassment of young black men. This sort of harassment is doing as much to breed hostility as to prevent crime. For example, the New York Police Department’s use of the controversial stop-and-frisk practice is most commonly exercised against young blacks and Latinos. A recent report by the Center for Constitutional Rights found that black and Latino people are stopped much more frequently than whites under this program, even in mixed and especially in predominantly white communities. Further, the report noted, “Blacks and Latinos are treated more harshly than whites, being more likely to be arrested instead of given a summons when compared to white people accused of the same crimes, and are also more likely to have force used against them by police.” The racial biases underlying this disparity extend to other forms of aggressive policing, causing black people to associate police officers with humiliation and injustice, and stirring distrust for police in black communities around the country.

The intensified police presence in poor black communities fosters this negative association in residents from a young age. As children, they see police officers walk the hallways of their schools like in a prison. When black boys are involved in an altercation or disruption, instead of being sent to the principal’s office, they are too often handcuffed on the spot and given a criminal record. Experience teaches black men that police officers exist not to protect them, but to criminalize and humiliate them. Few black boys get through adolescence without a story of police harassment, and with age, their stories proliferate. Aggressive police tactics turn black males into subjects of suspicion and skeptical scrutiny. This makes them vulnerable to harassment, whether their crime is real or imagined. Black men engaged in innocuous activities — walking home from a corner store, holding a BB gun at Walmart, leaving his bachelor party — become targeted as criminals by authorities. With each negative encounter, black men build up antagonism toward law enforcement. They develop defense mechanisms and toughen up to protect their pride and perceived respectability. With this built-up hostility, interactions over minor offenses, like suspicion of selling loose cigarettes, become quickly charged.

While this is not the first time in history that aggressive police tactics have plagued black communities, this generation of young people have limited tolerance for such experiments in policing at their expense. Compared to their grandparents, the millennial generation — regardless of race — is less inclined to blindly respect and trust authority. A 2011 MTV poll found that 70 percent of millennial respondents believed they could “successfully negotiate anything with authority figures.” Further, a Pew Research poll found that millennials are detached from hierarchal institutions and are distrustful of people in general. This generation isn’t intimidated by authority. On top of that, images of police brutality against black men have proliferated online, turning what might have been isolated local antagonisms into national grievances.

Practices like stop-and-frisk have exacerbated tensions between blacks and police officers. At the same time, police departments are increasingly militarized, applying military-grade weapons to a domestic population — especially to those they see as criminal — and effectively criminalizing the everyday lives of black people. Under authoritarian oversight and normalized police harassment, a generation of young people were bound to get fed up and respond with the defiance and turmoil we are witnessing in Ferguson. Clearly, the relationship between the police and the communities they are charged with “protecting and serving” needs to change.

Elijah Anderson is the William K. Lanman, Jr. Professor of Sociology at Yale University and a leading urban ethnographer. He has authored several books on urban black life, including Code of the Street and The Cosmopolitan Canopy.

Source

[panopticon]

Ferguson atmosphere 'almost festive' after shift in policing of Michael Brown protests
By Cristen Tilley, 15th August 2014


[For more images and links visit original article]

After four nights of tension between police and protesters in the US town of Ferguson, a change in law enforcement has seen a shift from scenes of hostility to a party-like atmosphere as residents peacefully demonstrate their objection to the killing of a black teenager.

Michael Brown, 18, was shot dead by a police officer in the town last weekend. The circumstances of his death are disputed, with police asserting there was a struggle with the officer, and witnesses saying Mr Brown held up his hands in surrender before being shot several times.

Locals in Ferguson, and now other cities in the US, have started a 'hands up, don't shoot' movement to protest his death and to demand that the officer's name be released. Sporadic looting was reported and a convenience store was burned down on Sunday.

Americans were shocked on Wednesday night local time as the increasingly heavy-handed tactics of the St Louis County Police culminated in mobile sniper nests training their sights on locals in the streets, and the use of gas masks, rubber bullets and wooden pellets on crowds and the media.

Ten people, including two reporters and a local councillor, were arrested.

US president Barack Obama called for peace, saying: "Now is the time for healing. Now is the time for peace and calm on the streets of Ferguson."

But after the Missouri Highway Patrol, led by black police captain Ron Johnson, took over security on Thursday, the demonstrations took a different turn.

"We are going to have a different approach," Mr Johnson said at a news conference, adding that he would go to "ground zero" - the area where Mr Brown was killed and also where the convenience store was burned down.

The resulting scenes stunned onlookers and protesters, as officers hugged residents and walked with them on a largely peaceful march and rally.

Local St Louis reporter Matt Sczesny tweeted that the atmosphere was "almost festive" as police mingled with protesters.


Capt. Ron Johnson

Source

[seeker/reader]

Posted by The Truth Is In There (here)
the multi-culti madness of the usa. coming soon...to a city near you. just throw people from all kinds of races and religions into one large melting pot and then watch as it begins to boil.

That is what America is, a melting pot of races and religions. It has been that way from its inception. Unless someone is a descendant of a native American (2% http://www.census.gov/newsroom/relea...cb13-ff26.html), everyone else here is a descendant of an immigrant.

We also have the freedom of speech, which is what people are doing right now across America.

[ulli]

Posted by The Truth Is In There (here)
the multi-culti madness of the usa. coming soon...to a city near you. just throw people from all kinds of races and religions into one large melting pot and then watch as it begins to boil.

If anything, the US didn't go far enough with this melting pot scenario.
Too many "neighbourhoods' of segregation in my view; and probably this is something which originated in New York where immigrant ships arrived.

Nor am I in favour of government over-interfering, such as busing laws, to take kids to schools in different neighbourhoods.

I just feel that it was lack of visions by town planners who could have prevented many of these problems by discouraging the uniformity of housing developments.
Allow a more organic process, with different lot sizes, where individuals of all races are actually encouraged to build their own homes.

I have lived in several multi-racial countries, where you can find people of mixed races living on the same street, where there are shacks as well as mansions, and this provides a better opportunity of everyone getting along.
Whereas in the US huge housing corporations designed uniform housing projects, aiming at similar income groups, and even targeting and merchandising towards distinct races. This is why racism is so rampant there.

[seeker/reader]

This is the link to the MSNBC interview of new witness Tiffany Mitchell

http://on.msnbc.com/1oTDpmg


Link to the article below.

http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/st-louis-...-michael-brown

In an interview with msnbc’s Lawrence O’Donnell, Tiffany Mitchell described hearing tires squeak and seeing “Michael and the officer wrestling through the [car] window.” Brown, she said, was struggling to get away while the officer continued to try to pull him closer. Concerned, Mitchell pulled out her phone, at which point she said the first shot was fired “through the window.” Mitchell then saw Brown break away from the officer’s grip and run down the street from the police vehicle.
“The officer gets out of his vehicle,” Mitchell said, “and he pursues him,” continuing to shoot at Brown. “Michael’s body jerks as if he was hit,” Mitchell explained, “and then he put his hands up,” and the officer continued to shoot at Brown until the teenager collapsed “all the way down to the ground.”

Related: Eyewitness to Michael Brown shooting recounts his friend’s death

Altogether, Mitchell said, at least five or six shots were fired.

Contradicting an earlier statement by St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar, Mitchell said she did not see Brown or anyone else assault the officer. Brown’s body stayed out of the police vehicle the entire time, Mitchell said. She also contradicted Belmar’s statement that there was a struggle over the officer’s weapon.

An attorney for Johnson, the earlier witness, confirmed to msnbc that Johnson had been interviewed by federal authorities days after local investigators initially declined to speak with him.

Freeman Bosley, the attorney, said federal investigators questioned Johnson Wednesday for about three-and-a-half hours. “It went really well,” he said. “They were very non-combative, which is a good thing.”

Bosley said that Johnson, now a federal witness, has been relocated to a nearby safe house.

After calls for calm from President Barack Obama and Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon, police in Ferguson did not come out in military gear on Thursday, and residents expressed their overwhelming relief.
“It’s freedom. Just to see our people out here, it’s how it should’ve been. There’s no violence here and finally our voices can be heard, ” said Anubis Dey, 32.

“Last night it was an environment of conflict and tension. Tonight people are able to exercise their constitutional rights,” said Pastor Rahson Jordan, 37, adding, “but now we have to do more than stand with these young people; we have to embrace them. Long after the marches are over there will be issues to deal with. They’ve all been traumatized.”

Earlier Thursday, Nixon sought to return peace to Ferguson by placing security and crowd control under the leadership of the Missouri State Highway Patrol. His decision came after a violent night in which law enforcement used tear gas, rubber bullets, and stun grenades to disperse protesters.

“It means a lot to me personally that we break this cycle of violence,” said Nixon, who earlier had appeared at a church in Ferguson after first speaking with the president on Thursday.

Capt. Ron Johnson, who took the lead for the highway patrol, said his crew will implement a different approach, “that we are in this together.”

Congressman John Lewis — a recognized leader of the Civil Rights movement — spoke out on the police violence, during an msnbc interview, saying Obama should use the authority of his office to declare martial law to “federalize the Missouri National Guard to protect people as they protest.”

“People should come together, reasonable elected officials, community leaders, and address what is happening there … If we fail to act, the fires of frustration and discontent will continue to burn not only in Missouri but all across America,” Lewis said on “Andrea Mitchell Reports.”

At least 16 people were arrested by late Wednesday in the suburb, including a St. Louis politician and two reporters, after police fired tear gas and pepperballs on protesters rallying over last weekend’s police killing of the unarmed black teen.

Following a meeting with Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder said the scenes occurring in Ferguson in recent days can’t continue.

“Such conduct is unacceptable and must be unequivocally condemned,” Holder wrote in a statement. “By the same token, the law enforcement response to these demonstrations must seek to reduce tensions, not heighten them.”

A day earlier, Holder’s officer launched a civil rights investigation into the circumstances surrounding Brown’s killing. Nixon said the new operational shift won’t affect the responsibility of the investigation.

It was unclear how many people remained in police custody on Thursday. The Ferguson Police Department did not respond to msnbc’s multiple requests throughout the day and evening for comment about the overnight arrests and detainment of protesters.
Ferguson Police Chief Tom Jackson asked that demonstrators cooperate with authorities, and for “everyone to calm down.”

“I understand that what it looks like is not good. The whole situation is not good at this point,” Jackson said Thursday at a brief press conference. “We don’t want to have any violence on our part. We want this to be peaceful.”

“We have to respond to deadly force,” Jackson continued, adding that police acted Wednesday night after protesters threw rocks, bricks, bottles and a Molotov cocktail at them, and when gunshots were fired. ”What I’m satisfied with is that we haven’t hurt anybody. Nobody’s gotten injured or killed.” Jackson said that two police officers were injured Wednesday night, including one who suffered from a broken ankle after being hit by a brick.

Jackson did not reveal the identify of the officer who shot Brown after reporters questioned him about the accuracy of several names circulating online. He said that various officials have been involved in different meetings to evaluate possible tactics moving forward with the investigation.

Obama also urged “calm” and “peace” on the streets of Ferguson during a brief statement prior to Jackson’s press conference.

“Put simply, we all need to hold ourselves to a high standard, particularly those of us in positions of authority,” he said from Martha’s Vineyard, where he was vacationing.

Ferguson Mayor James Knowles defended the force used by police, saying Thursday that officers endured a “highly stressful situation” the previous night.

“I am confident that all the law enforcement agencies that are participating are professionals. And if there are some videos that show someone losing their temper in a highly stressful situation, I am sure they’re under a great deal of stress,” Knowles told msnbc’s Alex Witt. “It does not make it OK; they are human, and I can understand their frustrations as well.”

“I can’t second-guess these officers. They’re the professionals,” he added. “Right now we’re just going to try our best to maintain order.”

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, a Republican, blamed government for the unrest in Missouri. “Anyone who thinks that race does not skew the application of criminal justice in this country is just not paying close enough attention. And the root of the problem is big government,” he wrote in an op-ed for Time.

Missouri Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill spoke with constituents on Thursday in Ferguson, warning against the adverse effects of police arriving at a scene in riot gear.

“We need to de-militarize this situation. This kind of response by the police has become the problem instead of the solution,” she said in a statement. “I obviously respect law enforcement’s work to provide public safety, but my constituents are allowed to have peaceful protests, and the police need to respect that right and protect that right. Today is going to be a new start, we can and need to do better,” she said.

But, she said, she will not second-guess the information released by law enforcement on the state and local levels.

“I don’t think there’s any questions that this is a wound that is not going to heal overnight. This is going to take patience and this is going to take time,” she said at a press conference.

The harsh police tactics have been on clear display in Ferguson. Wesley Lowery, a reporter for The Washington Post who was detained by officers, told msnbc’s Jose Diaz-Balart that he saw a black man in a police car Wednesday screaming out for medical care, but that officers laughed off the man’s request.

“This story is not about us journalists, but the journalists here in many ways are the eyes and the ears for the nation who need to see what’s going on, need to hear what’s going on,” Lowery said.

Four days after Brown’s death, protesters continued to clash with officers. By 8 p.m. Wednesday, a massive police force, on foot and in armored vehicles, descended on the area demanding the crowd’s dispersal. Police arrested then later released Alderman Antonio French, a St. Louis politician. His wife, Jasenka Benac, wrote on Twitter that French “was ordered out of his car and arrested because he ‘didn’t listen.’”

Lowery, of The Post, and Ryan Reilly, of The Huffington Post, were arrested while covering the events. They were later released, but without further explanation. According to their reports, they were taken into custody when they didn’t pack their bags quickly enough after police ordered them to leave a McDonald’s restaurant. Wesley said the police slammed him into a soda machine and then handcuffed him when he asked to stop to adjust a strap on his bag that had slipped off his shoulder. Both journalists have accused officers of using unnecessary force.

Officers present at the news conference Thursday said the reporters were released at the scene the previous night.

Related: Ferguson police use tear gas on protesters, arrest at least two reporters

Missouri state Sen. Maria Chappelle-Nadal, who said she was tear-gassed Monday night while peacefully protesting over Brown’s death, questioned Jackson during a press conference Wednesday, asking: “Will I get tear-gassed again?” During the peaceful demonstration earlier this week, Chappelle-Nadal led a group to sit in the street, initially refusing officers’ demands to move.

“All we want to do is to peacefully display our right to free speech, that’s all. We were not violent, whatsoever,” she told msnbc’s Andrea Mitchell on Thursday. Chappelle-Nadal represents Ferguson, and Brown was one of her constituents.

The smoke-filled scene Wednesday night erupted just hours after police asked residents to gather and pray peacefully only during daylight hours. Nixon announced late Wednesday that he had canceled his appearance at the state fair for the following day.

During her interview Thursday on msnbc, Chappelle-Nadal called Nixon a “coward” for not immediately visiting the scene of the shooting and protests.

Related: The militarization of Ferguson

Authorities earlier this week declined to release the name of the officer who shot Brown amid social media threats and other public safety concerns. In an exclusive interview Wednesday, Jackson told msnbc he wanted to uncover the truth about the killing and be “part of the solution.” Four days after the shooting, police have yet to reveal many details, including the number of shots the officer fired at Brown. Jackson met with the national president of the NAACP and the local chapter of the NAACP Thursday morning.

As the scene unfolded in Ferguson, Obama attended a party while on vacation. Holder and White House Senior Adviser Valerie Jarrett briefed the president on the situation in Ferguson. White House deputy press secretary Eric Schultz tweeted that at the event on Wednesday night, “a good time was had by all.”

Obama previously called the teen’s death “heartbreaking” and offered condolences to the Brown family.

Authorities released Brown’s body to the Austin A. Layne Mortuary in St. Louis. The Browns haven’t finalized funeral arrangements for the teenager. Officials haven’t revealed details from the autopsy reports.

[CD7]

Posted by The Truth Is In There (here)
the multi-culti madness of the usa. coming soon...to a city near you. just throw people from all kinds of races and religions into one large melting pot and then watch as it begins to boil.

Lol no need to throw them in a melting pot....Herrrrooow, Mayhem is going on all over the globe...those poor people in the mountains of Irac. Who says you have to be of different races----Slaughter goes on everywhere in the land of the lost and BLIND

[Dennis Leahy]

Posted by panopticon (here)
...I ... evaluate what is said and interpret underlying messages that are prominent in speeches from persons in positions of power.

Listen to the meter of Obama's voice his emphasis on certain words to carry a point to the listeners subconscious mind, his phraseology, there are so many things to listen/watch for.

Let's briefly examine the "who" & "what" questions in relation to this speech.

Who is it aimed at in general? Citizens of the US who are angered at this attack by police on peaceful protesters and journalists.

Who is it aimed at specifically? The people I mentioned earlier who were locked up in jail with Alderman French. You know: the people running the peaceful protests. By and large the support for Obama comes from these very same people and, as I said earlier, this strategy is well known. When there is civil unrest those trying to disperse that unrest speak to the moderate voices who are sympathetic to the position of the persons in power. The persons trying to disperse a protest try to make these moderates believe that they are doing the right thing in trying stop or limit the protests. If this is unsuccessful then they use other means (bribery, blackmail, threats/intimidation, assassination). As I said earlier in relation to Alderman French's detention:

Posted by panopticon (here)

French said he should never have been locked up, nor should the dozen or so others he shared cell space with overnight.

"Inside that jail is nothing but peacekeepers," he said. "They rounded up the wrong people ... reverends, young people organizing the peace effort."
Source

I say they rounded up exactly who they were aiming to.

Not only did this give the opportunity for angry protesters to attack police over the injustices of these "good people" being arrested but maybe a night in the cells might make those "good people" have second thoughts about protesting again.

It's all about control and power...

So, enough of the "who", time for examining "what" was said...

I'll deconstruct a part of Obama's speech segment because it is a classic example of some well used techniques.

... ... ...

I will always write about how money, control and power is exerted as a means of oppression. Have most of my life and see no reason to stop now.

-- Pan

Pan, your analysis and deconstruction are nothing short of brilliant. Don't. Ever. Stop.

Dennis

[Maia Gabrial]

Why blacks are always targeted baffles me, whether they're here in America or in Africa. What is it about them that threatens TPTW? Anyway....

Whenever we hear arguments in our own neighborhoods or on Lamestream medias, enough of us can defuse it by saying continuously, "There is Divine Peace in the collective consciousness of humanity." We're being hit so hard from every direction, here and abroad and yet, TPTW are not getting their WW3. And the US corporation isn't getting their martial law no matter what despicable things it does.

[seeker/reader]

Name of police officer who shot Michael Brown has been released.

http://on.msnbc.com/1nWeAB3

[Snowflower]

The eventual outcome of Ferguson - and the entire country - will depend on whether or not the cop that killed Michael Brown is charged and convicted of murder. Two unrelated, well publicized, eye witnesses, have clearly described murder. No evidence has come forward at all that says otherwise. The man, so far unknown, has been tried and found guilty by the entire country. If they give him anything less than life in prison, well, this could finally wake up America.

[panopticon]

To those people who say that this case isn't about systemic failures & prejudice I suggest they read the article below.

Is America really "the land of the free"?

###

The Day Ferguson Cops Were Caught in a Bloody Lie
By Michael Daly, August 15th, 2014



The officers got the wrong man, but charged him anyway—with getting his blood on their uniforms. How the Ferguson PD ran the town where Michael Brown was gunned down.

Police in Ferguson, Missouri, once charged a man with destruction of property for bleeding on their uniforms while four of them allegedly beat him.

“On and/or about the 20th day of Sept. 20, 2009 at or near 222 S. Florissant within the corporate limits of Ferguson, Missouri, the above named defendant did then and there unlawfully commit the offense of ‘property damage’ to wit did transfer blood to the uniform,” reads the charge sheet.

The address is the headquarters of the Ferguson Police Department, where a 52-year-old welder named Henry Davis was taken in the predawn hours on that date. He had been arrested for an outstanding warrant that proved to actually be for another man of the same surname, but a different middle name and Social Security number.

“I said, ‘I told you guys it wasn’t me,’” Davis later testified.

He recalled the booking officer saying, “We have a problem.”

The booking officer had no other reason to hold Davis, who ended up in Ferguson only because he missed the exit for St. Charles and then pulled off the highway because the rain was so heavy he could not see to drive. The cop who had pulled up behind him must have run his license plate and assumed he was that other Henry Davis. Davis said the cop approached his vehicle, grabbed his cellphone from his hand, cuffed him and placed him in the back seat of the patrol car, without a word of explanation.

But the booking officer was not ready just to let Davis go, and proceeded to escort him to a one-man cell that already had a man in it asleep on the lone bunk. Davis says that he asked the officer if he could at least have one of the sleeping mats that were stacked nearby.

”He said I wasn’t getting one,” Davis said.

Davis balked at being a second man in a one-man cell.

“Because it’s 3 in the morning,” he later testified. “Who going to sleep on a cement floor?”

The booking officer summoned a number of fellow cops. One opened the cell door while another suddenly charged, propelling Davis inside and slamming him against the back wall.

“I told the police officers there that I didn’t do nothing, ‘Why is you guys doing this to me?’” Davis testified. “They said, ‘OK, just lay on the ground and put your hands behind your back.’”

Davis said he complied and that a female officer straddled and then handcuffed him. Two other officers crowded into the cell.

“They started hitting me,” he testified. “I was getting hit and I just covered up.”

The other two stepped out and the female officer allegedly lifted Davis’ head as the cop who had initially pushed him into the cell reappeared.

“He ran in and kicked me in the head,” Davis recalled. “I almost passed out at that point… Paramedics came… They said it was too much blood, I had to go to the hospital.”

A patrol car took the bleeding Davis to a nearby emergency room. He refused treatment, demanding somebody first take his picture.

“I wanted a witness and proof of what they done to me,” Davis said.

He was driven back to the jail, where he was held for several days before he posted $1,500 bond on four counts of “property damage.” Police Officer John Beaird had signed complaints swearing on pain of perjury that Davis had bled on his uniform and those of three fellow officers.

The remarkable turned inexplicable when Beaird was deposed in a civil case that Davis subsequently brought seeking redress and recompense.

“After Mr. Davis was detained, did you have any blood on you?” asked Davis’ lawyer, James Schottel.

“No, sir,” Beaird replied.

Schottel showed Beaird a copy of the “property damage” complaint.

“Is that your signature as complainant?” the lawyer asked.

“It is, sir,” the cop said.

“And what do you allege that Mr. Davis did unlawfully in this one?” the lawyer asked.

“Transferred blood to my uniform while Davis was resisting,” the cop said.

“And didn’t I ask you earlier in this deposition if Mr. Davis got blood on your uniform?”

“You did, sir.”

“And didn’t you respond no?”

“Correct. I did.”

Beaird seemed to be either admitting perjury or committing it. The depositions of other officers suggested that the “property damage” charges were not just bizarre, but trumped up.

“There was no blood on my uniform,” said Police Officer Christopher Pillarick.

And then there was Officer Michael White, the one accused of kicking Davis in the head, an allegation he denies, as his fellow officers deny striking Davis. White had reported suffering a bloody nose in the mayhem.

“Did you see Mr. Davis bleeding at all?” the lawyer, Schottel, asked.

“I did not,” White replied.

“Did Mr. Davis get any blood on you while you were in the cell?” Schottel asked.

“No,” White said.

The contradictions between the complaint and the depositions apparently are what prompted the prosecutor to drop the “property damage” allegation. The prosecutor also dropped a felony charge of assault on an officer that had been lodged more than a year after the incident and shortly after Davis filed his civil suit.

Davis suggested in his testimony that if the police really thought he had assaulted an officer he would have been charged back when he was jailed.

“They would have filed those charges right then and there, because that’s a major felony,” he noted.

Indisputable evidence of what transpired in the cell might have been provided by a surveillance camera, but it turned out that the VHS video was recorded at 32 times normal speed.

“It was like a blur,” Schottel told The Daily Beast on Wednesday. “You couldn’t see anything.”

The blur proved to be from 12 hours after the incident anyway. The cops had saved the wrong footage after Schottel asked them to preserve it.

Schottel got another unpleasant surprise when he sought the use-of-force history of the officers involved. He learned that before a new chief took over in 2010 the department had a surprising protocol for non-fatal use-of-force reports.

“The officer himself could complete it and give it to the supervisor for his approval,” the prior chief, Thomas Moonier, testified in a deposition. “I would read it. It would be placed in my out basket, and my secretary would probably take it and put it with the case file.”

No copy was made for the officer’s personnel file.

“Everything involved in an incident would generally be with the police report,” Moonier said. “I don’t know what they maintain in personnel files.”

“Who was in charge of personnel files, of maintaining them?” Schottel asked.

“I have no idea,” Moonier said. “I believe City Hall, but I don’t know.”

Schottel focused on the date of the incident.

“On September 20th, 2009, was there any way to identify any officers that were subject of one or more citizens’ complaints?” he asked.

“Not to my knowledge,” Moonier said.

“Was there any way to identify any officers who had completed several use-of-force reports?”

“I don’t recall.”

But however lax the department’s system and however contradictory the officers’ testimony, a federal magistrate ruled that the apparent perjury about the “property damage” charges was too minor to constitute a violation of due process and that Davis’ injuries were de minimis—too minor to warrant a finding of excessive force. Never mind that a CAT scan taken after the incident confirmed that he had suffered a concussion.

Schottel has appealed and expects to argue the case in the early fall. He will contend that perjury is perjury however minor the charge and note that both the NFL and Major League Baseball have learned to consider a concussion a serious injury.

Schottel figures the courts might take the problems of the Ferguson Police Department as more than de minimis as a result of the protests sparked when an officer shot and killed an unarmed 18-year-old named Michael Brown on the afternoon of Aug. 9.

“Your chances on appeal are going up,” a fellow lawyer told him.

At least one witness has said that Brown was shot in the back and then in the chest and head as he turned toward the officer with his hands raised.

“I said, ‘Well, that doesn’t surprise me,’” Schottel told The Daily Beast on Wednesday. “I said I already know about Ferguson, nothing new can faze me about Ferguson.”

Schottel has also deposed the new chief, Thomas Jackson, who took over in 2010. Jackson testified that he has instituted a centralized system whereby all complaints lodged against cops by citizens or supervisors go through him and are assigned a number in an internal affairs log. Schottel views Jackson as “not a bad guy,” someone who has been trying to make positive change.

“He wants to do right, but it was such a mess,” Schottel said Wednesday.

Jackson has seemed less than progressive as he delayed identifying the officer involved in the shooting for fear it would place him and his family in danger. Jackson would only say the officer is white and has been on the job for six years. This means that for his first two and most formative years the officer might have been writing his own force reports and that none of them went into his file.

“It’s hard to get people to clean things up, especially if they’re used to doing things a certain way,” Schottel said.

On Friday, police finally identified the officer as Darren Wilson, who is said to have no disciplinary record, as such records are kept in Ferguson. We already know that he started out at a time when it was accepted for a Ferguson cop to charge somebody with property damage for bleeding on his uniform and later saying there was no blood on him at all.

Source

[Zaya]

Totally agree, Snowflower. This case will be CRITICAL to our future, even more so than the Trayvon Martin case because this is not just about race (though it is a lot about race). This will be a trial that will decide once and for all... is the government for the people by the people? .... Or is it for itself? Those are the only two outcomes possible in terms of the people's relationship with the government/police enforcement from here on out. Are you with us or against us? Pick a side. You can't possibly let this cop off and still maintain the facade that the police are here to protect. Not convicting him will show the people that we do not have anyone backing up our rights.

On another note, here are some images that have sent me reeling:


Returning fire: A protester throws back a smoke bomb while clashing with police in Ferguson, Missouri, as clashes entered their fourth night running


Flash bang: An explosive device deployed by police goes off in the street as police and protesters clash in Ferguson


Cover: A protester takes shelter from smoke billowing around him on Wednesday during another night of chaos in Ferguson





An Al Jazeera television crew, covering demonstrators protesting the shooting death of teenager Michael Brown, scramble for cover as police fire tear gas into their reporting position

[panopticon]

First press conference from day after shooting:

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=zUXqPDT8hr4

Presser from today:

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=5X_NN9kgwqo

I've seen images of both the suspect during the strong-arm robbery [of 6 cigars] & Mike Brown dead on the road. There appears to be some consistence between the two but other aspects are not so clear.

I am waiting to see if there is a clearer image of the suspect in the theft.

-- Pan

[jagman]

I just watched the video and it appears Michael Brown committed strongarm robbery
of a local convience store right before he was shot. The video shows Brown ruffing up
the clerk and stealing some cigars.

[panopticon]

Here's the police report on the robbery. Evidently the cigars were worth almost $50.



-- Pan

[Zaya]

Jagman, do you have the link to this video?

[panopticon]

There are reports that Captain Johnson has just participated in a presser in which all the right words are used (not seen in full excerpt at end of post, from French's Twitter feed). "Last night was a great night", "What happened last night is what's going to happen here forward", "You're going to see a bunch of smiles, a bunch of hugs, and a bunch of conversations [tonight in Ferguson]", "In our anger we have to make sure we don't burn down our own house"...

This is after the ground work was laid yesterday with the "moving forward" rhetoric...

Here's the vid footage from the convenience store (the clerk does not look very intimidated):

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=FHxXGvXQrno

Doesn't seem to be much different to what was said by Dorian Johnson the day after the shooting (if I'm understanding him correctly):

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=tfy5FiqzWHI

-- Pan

Addendum:

Adding Gov. Jay Nixon's presser the other day when he bought in Johnson:

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=dTIeRVIWIyk

Full Obama presser that I critiqued a part of is available here.

Oh, and here's an excerpt of the Nixon presser I mentioned at the start of this post with Nixon & Johnson (now ain't that ironic) using all those key words:

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=VuV8DmjSg1c

[jagman]

Posted by Zaya (here)
Jagman, do you have the link to this video?

No I dont not yet sorry