Mayhem in Missouri Breaks Out

[dianna]

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bvmrt1YIYAAuptD.jpg

http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?74090-The-Sound-of-Silence-Dillon-Taylor-Who

[Octavusprime]

Marlowe, you may be right about the event but that really doesn't matter much now.

Octavusprime

@ Octavus...Maybe you should put me on ignore ......As long as people keep labeling Darren Wilson a murderer before he has been put on trial I will continue to respond to those people calling Officer Wilson a murderer....

And BTW I have been posting about the bigger picture on this thread but maybe you haven't watched the videos

I've posted about how the shooting has become a way for TPTB to instigate martial law nation wide.....

And I'm absolutely convinced that if more rioting pops up in other cities there will be shoot to kill orders given to the mercenaries that have taken over now that the national guard has left...

If you google "Army training to kill Americans en mass / youtube " you will get 6 or 7 hits....

As I've posted earlier Webbots and the National Dream Center are both predicting that the electric grid will go down this fall ...Webbots sees 2.4 million Americans dying this October as a result of not being able to get their meds , food , water , etc....

Pan labeled my last post as "tosh" when , in fact , it was logical and realistic...

So my advice to you all is put me on ignore ....IMO the reason some here don't like my posts is because they don't want people disagreeing with their agenda to paint all cops as murderers....or maybe just Darren Wilson as a murderer.....And BTW..Wilson will be cleared so all of you need TO GET OVER IT....LOL..

I never called anyone a murderer. I also read all your posts and watched the videos posted. Agree to disagree on the message presented.

Cheers,

Octavusprime

[Jake]

As long as people keep labeling Darren Wilson a murderer before he has been put on trial I will continue to respond to those people calling Officer Wilson a murderer....



That is commendable. However as long as people suggest that somehow Darren Wilson is the victim in all of this,,, I will continue to point out that the victim was shot dead in the streets without a trial..

Jake.

[ThePythonicCow]

I will continue to point out that the victim was shot dead in the streets without a trial..
In my personal view, and in the laws that apply, lethal force is justified when required to stop an immediate and substantial lethal threat.

That may well have been the case here. If I had to guess now, based on the weight of almost no credibly substantiated evidence whatsoever, that was indeed the case here. But I honestly have no way to know.

Whether or not it was, years (centuries, actually, if not millenia) of oppression of blacks has created a tinderbox of immense potential energy. The fronts (media, government, police, military, agents provocateur, ...) for the bastards in power are now in the process of lighting a torch to that tinderbox.

The details of the spark, match or lightning bolt that starts an immense forest fire hardly matter, when seeking to understand that fire, its progress, its potential for damage, and the long standing conditions, both man made and natural, that fuelled that potential. Whether it was an arsonist, a child playing with matches, a careless camper or a lightning bolt ... the fire is still the fire.

[ThePythonicCow]

From a good ZeroHedge article (http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-08-22/when-anti-government-violence-erupts-who-really-fault) on these events, by Brandon Smith of Alt-Market blog (http://www.alt-market.com/articles/2290-when-anti-government-violence-erupts-who-is-really-at-fault):



The Ferguson shooting itself almost becomes irrelevant in comparison to the government response to public protest. State officials cite the explosion of looting and violence as a reason for the insertion of heavily armed and armored SWAT units, as well as the National Guard. However, riot police and militarized units IGNORED looters and rioters (http://nation.foxnews.com/2014/08/16/there-are-no-police-ferguson-store-owners-forced-fend-looters), and instead aimed the brunt of their attacks at peaceful protesters. This reveals a government disdain for 1st Amendment activities that goes far beyond the controversy of Michael Brown or even the inevitable "race-war" propaganda.

[Jake]

I will continue to point out that the victim was shot dead in the streets without a trial..
In my personal view, and in the laws that apply, lethal force is justified when required to stop an immediate and substantial lethal threat.

That may well have been the case here. If I had to guess now, based on the weight of almost no credibly substantiated evidence whatsoever, that was indeed the case here. But I honestly have no way to know.

Whether or not it was, years (centuries, actually, if not millenia) of oppression of blacks has created a tinderbox of immense potential energy. The fronts (media, government, police, military, agents provocateur, ...) for the bastards in power are now in the process of lighting a torch to that tinderbox.

The details of the spark, match or lightning bolt that starts an immense forest fire hardly matter, when seeking to understand that fire, its progress, its potential for damage, and the long standing conditions, both man made and natural, that fuelled that potential. Whether it was an arsonist, a child playing with matches, a careless camper or a lightning bolt ... the fire is still the fire.

Of course, fair enough.. :) I just fail to see how an unarmed person can be considered a lethal threat. Cops defend themselves all the time, without killing people. As highly trained, and as decorated as this officer is,, a proper arrest could have been made. I don't know of a single case where the cop hasn't got away with it. Has nobody ever seen a tussle with a cop? I have, several times.. Something has changed within the rank and file police groups. The order to shoot first has been given... Another cop story: I was up against a wall being frisked by a cop,, (bar fight, everybody was up against the wall...) The officer was a bit to 'grabby' when he groped my crotch, and my right foot shot upwards in instinct. Well, I caught this cop off guard with a lucky shot to his testicles. Needless to say, he went down.. I turned and began to apologize, but my hands were forward and in a reaching manner,,, this cop got on his shoulder radio and began demanding 'Officer down,, officer down...!!! Officer attacked, suspect is on foot and highly dangerous!!!"

I have absolutely NO way of knowing what would have happened if I would have stuck around. But if I were in Ferguson, dealing with this very same situation,,, I could very well be dead right now...

I admit, my entire opinion is based on anecdotal subjective evidence. But it is based in personal experience..

It gets my blood boiling when someone suggests that an investigation and fair trial for the officer is more important that a proper arrest, investigation and trial for citizens. Why aren't people upset over MBrown being robbed of his due process??
If it were you or me that shot MBrown,,, self defense or not,, we would be in jail. Period...

I shall digress, as I cannot disagree with anything that you have said. And the truth is that the 'he said/she said' is moot, at this point. I just can't wrap my brain around cops killing people as a FIRST resort...

Cheers mate. :)
Jake.

[Jake]

The shooting of MBrown is not irrelevant.. 'Shoot First' laws have resulted in many more deaths of citizens than without them,, and may be the first step in the government controlled theatre that resides in Ferguson.

http://s1.ibtimes.com/sites/www.ibtimes.com/files/styles/v2_article_large/public/2013/07/23/stand-your-ground.png?itok=YPc7clp4


Note that in MO,, The shooting is legal if the 'shooter is in the car'???

[gripreaper]

The shooting of MBrown is not irrelevant..

Jeez, Jake, no one said MBrown shooting is irrelevant. The energetic signature of these events is amplifying the fear adrenaline "fight or flight" brainstem response in society, which overrides reason. These situations are escalating all over the planet. Social memes are being pounded into the consciousness of all humanity.

What used to be civil servants are now fully armed tactical paramilitary police, and what used to be law abiding citizens are now fearful, desperate, hungry and broke people.

This is by design, and does NOT take away from the tragedy or the inhumanity of the situation. It does point out how the problem, reaction, solution works, how collective emotions are vested, how social memes are created, how synthesis is generated, and how new paradigms occur without the cognitive reasoning or the unified support of the masses.

The same old tricks as always. The elite get their way, the slaves get beaten down, and the 1% are able to control the 99%, through triggering the basic instincts of the primitive brain, and ushering their agendas while the emotions are high and the people are distraught and helpless and hopeless.

Works every time. Don't fall for it.

[ThePythonicCow]

I just fail to see how an unarmed person can be considered a lethal threat. If a 6 foot 3 inch, 300 pound young man has already punched you in the face, breaking bones and almost taken your gun, and if he is bull rushing you again, unfazed by shots to the limbs, then he is a lethal threat. If he gets within punching distance a second time, you're as good as dead.

I do NOT know that this is what happened. It is one of several, plausible, versions of what happened.

[Jake]

Jeez, Jake, no one said MBrown shooting is irrelevant.

Actually, I was referring to the Brandon smith article (http://www.alt-market.com/articles/2290-when-anti-government-violence-erupts-who-is-really-at-fault)posted by Paul, where he DOES say that the MBrown shooting is irrelevant compared to the government response to the public protest



So, yes,, it is being referred to as irrelevant.

I don't disagree with you, just pointing out that my post isn't just me talking out my arsse... :)

Jake .

[gripreaper]

Actually, I was referring to the Brandon smith article (http://www.alt-market.com/articles/2290-when-anti-government-violence-erupts-who-is-really-at-fault)posted by Paul, where he DOES say that the MBrown shooting is irrelevant compared to the government response to the public protest

So, yes,, it is being referred to as irrelevant.

I don't disagree with you, just pointing out that my post isn't just me talking out my arsse... :)

Jake .

Fair enough :)

[Jake]

I just fail to see how an unarmed person can be considered a lethal threat. If a 6 foot 3 inch, 300 pound young man has already punched you in the face, breaking bones and almost taken your gun, and if he is bull rushing you again, unfazed by shots to the limbs, then he is a lethal threat. If he gets within punching distance a second time, you're as good as dead.

I do NOT know that this is what happened. It is one of several, plausible, versions of what happened.

I guess we have different definitions of the word 'plausible'. In MO,, it is only legal for cops to shoot in this situation if the shooter is in a vehicle... It seems plausible to me that that is why witnesses have said that MBrown was being 'pulled into the car'... It is not about justifying it morally,,, it is about justifying it 'legally',,, which (in my opinion) not only shows a murder, but a premeditated one, at that!! Look at the 'shoot first' statistics. Shootings are up in each state that has them... (shoot first laws) What a coincidence that these killings are rampant in states that allow for a legal 'out' for the cops. Why aren't they up in other states?? is it because there is less crime? lol... NO!! It is because if you allow cops to kill people,,, THEY WILL KILL PEOPLE!!!!

It seems that we may have to agree to disagree on this one. I'll not dwell on it anymore...

Peace to you all.
Jake.

[panopticon]

... We are intentionally being presented with a conflicting situation, and various posts are noticing various aspects of it.

The bastards want the two conflicting, but compelling, sides of this story to pull us away from, and against, each other. I will continue to do my best to resist their divisive tactics.

Good observations Paul. Another reason why I view this as a "test in the wild".

I reckon its important to watch what is occurring and to try to not get caught up in a personal position.

It does not matter whether I believe that Darren ran at Michael shooting or if Michael ran at Darren and Darren shot in self defence.

It matters even less that Dorian allegedly stole a back pack 3 years ago and gave a false middle name to the interviewing officer.

That is part of the layering of the story and a means of camouflage. Deliberate (most unverified) leaks, anonymous sources and 3rd party hearsay accounts all lead me to believe that this is possibly a test of a carefully constructed containment strategy.

We will only get a fuller understanding of this operation in hindsight.

-- Pan

[Jake]

Okay, last post about it. You guys, it matters. This 'test in the wild' will become reality in many more places. We have to know how to deal with the emerging mindset of police.. We have to know how to deal with it if it happens in our own towns, or right in front of us,,, or TO us.. We have to be able to defuse the overall plan to bring martial law to America. What if MBrown were a member of Avalon, and he had become much wiser to the influences of authorities... What if he never gave anyone the chance to ever consider him a criminal, because he knew how to, wisely, deal with the police, and the law??? What if we could prevent it from happening by learning the truth??

It sux that we don't know what happened, and that it is all smothered in ambiguity.. But that doesn't mean that it doesn't matter.

I humble myself to other viewpoints. :) Thanx, btw for the respectful discussion. I love you all, I mean it. :):)

Jake.

[panopticon]

I second Dennis' praise. Thank you for bringing up the unjust court system. The court system is now nothing more than a revenue stream with the end goal of charging as many fees as possible to squeeze the most amount of money out of the population.

The courts know they have no power. Either they take money or they throw you in jail that is the only incentive they currently use to "force" people to obey their laws. So if you have the money you pay and walk. If you don't have money you spend time incarcerated. So how does this help?

Say I'm a single parent living off minimum wage and have 3 kids. I am running late to my job because I had to drive 20 miles to drop off my kids at my mothers house and there was an accident on the highway. My boss sucks and I fear losing my job if I'm late. I am racing to work and get pulled over. The speeding ticket is $600 dollars and I can't afford it. At court I set up a $50 a month payment plan knowing that I can't pay all my bills and feed my family on top of the $50 a month. I fall behind on the payments and now a warrant is issued for my arrest. I go to jail for 3 weeks, lose my job, my kids are psychologically scarred, I still can't pay the fines and now I'm worse off than I was before. All over a speeding ticket....

The system is set up in a way to punish the poor and give the upper class a small slap on the wrist.

The outrageous penalties, fees and fines need to be re-evaluated. Perhaps a tiered system based on income? In addition, if you can't pay a fine for a minor non-violent offense than there needs to be systems in place so that people aren't forced into further poverty and desperation... It's just feeding the fire of inequality and injustice. Perhaps donating your time to a charity in your community could be used for "payment" for your crime.

The whole system is a money hungry parasite that is feeding off our country. The court system should not be used as corporation under the local government to fund it's insatiable appetite.

G'day Octavusprime,

I haven't come across anything in the US system for converting fines into community service.

Does that exist in the US?

It's used extensively in Australia to assist those on unemployment/disability etc and low incomes to not have to pay certain fines.

What it is supposed to do is reconnect them with their local area through strengthening their sense of civic engagement and through this empower both them and their area. This is of course in contrast to the fine/warrant/jail revolving door to destitution.

It doesn't apply to all fines but would in the case of traffic infringements and other municipal fines that target lower income groups unfairly.

From the Australian State of Victoria's Magistrates Court website:


Pay My Fine FAQ

I have a fine – what are my options?

There are essentially four options available for anyone who has been issued with a fine. These options include:


Pay the fine by the due date.
Convert the fine to community work. Five hours of community work equates to approximately $100.00 and a minimum of 8 hours is required to be worked. If an order of compensation has been made, this amount can not be converted to community work. Further information on converting a fine to community work can be obtained from court staff in your local area.
Fail to pay the fine and take no action. In this case a warrant will be issued for your arrest and provided to the Sheriff to enforce.
Convert the fine to time in custody. This option should only be considered as a last resort. One day spent in prison equates to approximately $100.00 of a fine. Further information on converting a fine to time spent in custody can be obtained from court staff in your local area.


How do I convert a fine to community work?

If you wish to convert a fine to community work, you must attend a Magistrates’ Court and submit an application with the registrar. There is no fee payable to submit this application. The registrar will usually only grant an application if you are unemployed or if there is some exceptional reason why the fine cannot be paid off by instalments. Generally, if you are working the registrar will allow you to pay off the fine by instalments but this will be assessed on a case by case basis.

The registrar is allowed to ask you questions about your financial situation and request to see your financial records or documentation to support your application. In some cases, you may be required to swear an affidavit as to your financial situation.If your application to convert a fine to community work is granted, you will be asked to sign a form and be required to report to community corrections by 4pm, usually on that day or the next day.

It will be up to community corrections as to when and where you work and the type of work you perform. You will be required to do a minimum 8 hrs of work and the conversion is one hour for approximately every $20 owing.If your fine has resulted originally from an infringement and has come to court via the Infringements Court (for example, a parking fine), application for conversion of your fine can only be made to a magistrate and not to a registrar.

Source (http://www.magistratescourt.vic.gov.au/howdoi/pay-my-fine-faq)
This is why I was so stunned by what appear to an outsider to be the municipal justice system's obvious targeting of those on a low income.

As a separate but noteworthy example, and a contributory reason as to why so many indigenous Australians are incarcerated in Australia, is the trifecta (not only used against indigenous Australians but is well documented in police charges against this group in urban areas).

The old trifecta is used extensively in some areas in Australia by police to meet arrest quota's. The officer provokes a person by a statement (for example: "you're a useless piece of black rubbish aren't you" or "you've got a nice arse for a gin"). The person ignores the officer. The officer then further antagonises the person (for example: "your a bit lippy for a coon" or "what's the matter bitch") until a response is give (for example: "what is your problem"). This allows the officer to further antagonise the person who may tell the officer to "f*ck off".

Offence 1: Abusive language.

The officer then grabs the persons arm and the person pulls their arm back.

Offence 2: Resisting arrest.

Finally the officer then "subdues" their "assailant" (loaded language for court proceedings) and in the "arrest" the officer gets hit by an arm.

Offence 3: Assaulting a police officer.

There may be more than one person involved after the original attempt at arrest and it turns into an "incident" requiring backup and possibly tactical...

This gets reported later in the media as: "Group of Aboriginal Youth Attack Police".

These tactics are used to make people compliant. To give over to police authority in every instance.

Trouble is they only work if people aren't aware of them. If you don't respond other than with your name no charges can be elicited from the interaction. There is of course the instance where the officer makes false accusations. In this instance it is preferable to have someone recording the incident on a mobile.

Knowledge is power.

-- Pan

[panopticon]

Thousands To March Against NY Chokehold Death (http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_POLICE_CHOKEHOLD_DEATH)
By Jonathon Lemire August 23rd 2014

http://hosted.ap.org/photos/1/1818c9aa-5cd3-4c26-a3f0-af4bc910a4cf-big.jpg

NEW YORK (AP) -- Thousands of marchers are expected to protest the death of an unarmed black man who was placed in a chokehold by a white New York police officer.

The march on Saturday is being led by the Rev. Al Sharpton's National Action Network. It will begin at the street where 43-year-old Eric Garner was placed in the fatal chokehold and culminate with a rally at the office of Staten Island District Attorney Daniel Donovan, who this week sent the case to a grand jury.

Sharpton has repeatedly called Garner's death - and the shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown by police in Ferguson, Missouri - a "defining moment" for the very nature of policing. Members of both Garner's and Brown's family are expected to join the "We Will Not Go Back" march.

Garner, an asthmatic father of six, was unarmed when he was stopped by police on July 17 for allegedly selling loose cigarettes. In a confrontation captured on cell phone video, Garner, who is black, was placed in a chokehold - an illegal tactic - by a white officer and can be heard screaming "I can't breathe!" as he was forced to the ground.

He died a short time later. The city medical examiner ruled the death a homicide and two NYPD officers have been reassigned during the investigation.

Sharpton and other activists have demanded that Donovan bring criminal charges against the officers and have called for federal investigators to step in. But the Justice Department has signaled that it likely will wait for the local probe to conclude before making a decision.

Saturday's half-mile long route winds itself through a heavily-minority neighborhood, one of several in the nation's largest city where residents have said they feel unfairly targeted by police for suspicion of crime and enforcement of low-level offenses.

Source (http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_POLICE_CHOKEHOLD_DEATH)

[panopticon]

After Ferguson: Calls For police 'Body Cameras' (http://bigstory.ap.org/article/after-ferguson-calls-police-body-cameras)
By Barbara Ortutay, August 23rd, 2014

http://binaryapi.ap.org/5295fb8f45df411d9840c84d02e60781/460x.jpg

NEW YORK (AP) — What if Michael Brown's last moments had been recorded?

The fatal police shooting of the unarmed black 18-year-old in Ferguson, Missouri, is prompting calls for more officers to wear so-called body cameras, simple, lapel-mounted gadgets that capture video footage of law enforcement's interactions with the public. Proponents say the devices add a new level of accountability to police work.

"This is a technology that has a very real potential to serve as a check and balance on police power," says Jay Stanley, senior policy analyst at the American Civil Liberties Union.

The case supporters make is simple: Cops and criminal suspects alike are less likely to misbehave if they know they're being recorded. And there's some evidence supporting it. In a recent Cambridge University study, the police department in Rialto, California — a city of about 100,000— saw an 89 percent decline in the number of complaints against officers in a yearlong trial using the cameras.

The number of times the police used force against suspects also declined. After the trial, the cameras became mandatory for the department's roughly 100 officers.

Rialto isn't unique. Across the U.S. and in England, Australia, Brazil and elsewhere, a growing number of departments are implementing the cameras, in addition to — or instead of — the dashboard-mounted cameras that are already widely used in police cars. Some one in six U.S. police departments now use body cameras in some form, according to ACLU attorney Scott Greenwood.

A recent petition submitted to the White House website calls on President Barack Obama to create a bill that would require all police officers at the state, county and local levels to wear cameras. The plea has more than 142,000 signatures.

White House officials say every petition that crosses the 100,000 signature threshold is reviewed and will receive a response. The administration could use the petition to weigh in on the broader issue of police accountability and transparency.

In the meantime, the Los Angeles Police Department is testing the cameras and the New York City Police Department said this month that the department is exploring the feasibility of using the devices. The city's public advocate, Letitia James, has called for the cameras as a check on police misconduct following the death of a black man placed in a chokehold by a white police officer last month in Staten Island.

Cameras come with complications, however. It's unclear whether a police body camera would have altered the situation. A bystander recorded Eric Garner shouting "I can't breathe!" as police officer Daniel Pantaleo placed him in a chokehold. Garner later died. The city medical examiner ruled the death a homicide and the Staten Island District Attorney said this week that the case is going to a grand jury.

Although body cameras provide a record that courts and police can use to reconstruct events, there's no guarantee the footage will provide easy answers. There are privacy concerns for all those being recorded, whether it's the police officers, crime suspects, victims or innocent bystanders. There are also legal and procedural questions: Who gets access to the recordings? And what happens when an officer's device mysteriously malfunctions or gets turned off at an inopportune moment?

Experts including the ACLU's Stanley caution that with the gadgets must also come with well-thought-out policies, including guidelines that spell out how long recordings are kept and what to do in situations where footage goes missing.

"We live in a time when most people's reaction to any problem is 'clearly, if we have an app or some sort of a digital device, that will solve the problem,'" says Neil Richards, professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis.

Richards says the notion that body cameras might solve problems of police misconduct is "naive."

"The problem is that we can't fix deep-seated social problems with a $10 gadget or with a million-dollar tank," he says.

The body cameras currently used in police work vary. They include devices that can be worn as glasses, including Google Glass, the company's $1,500 Internet-connected eyewear. But more common are the small, rectangular lapel cameras that attach to an officer's uniform and record audio and video with the touch of a button.

Taser International Inc., which says it is the largest provider of body-mounted cameras to U.S. law enforcement agencies, has seen sales of its wearable cameras increase sharply in the past year. Bookings for sales of the cameras, which cost $400 to $700 each, grew from between $1 million to $2 million in early 2013 to $11.4 million in the April-June period, says Taser CEO Rick Smith. The company's stock is enjoying a run in recent days as calls for body cameras increase. Since Aug. 12, Taser's shares have jumped 33 percent to around $16 on Friday.

Taser's cameras are constantly recording, but the footage is deleted every 30 seconds unless an officer presses record. In that case, the 30 seconds before the officer hit record are kept in addition to everything else that's subsequently captured.

The recordings are stored on Taser's Evidence.com online service. Smith says the site is to the cameras what iTunes is to iPods.

"It's not the hardware that's difficult, it's how you manage the data coming out of all these devices," he says.

Brian Smith, a former police officer who is now assistant professor at the University of New Haven in Connecticut, expects that eventually every police department will use the cameras. He compares them to the now-common dashboard cameras used in police cars, which had their own supporters and skeptics when they were first introduced.

"Officers went from being suspicious of them, worried that they would get caught doing something — not terribly wrong — but (something like talking about their bosses)," Smith says. But he says they started to come around after seeing that the recordings could help prove false claims against them wrong.

"And also on the flip side, if we did have a few officers, bad apples, that did engage in misconduct, they were being recorded on camera," Smith says.

Source (http://bigstory.ap.org/article/after-ferguson-calls-police-body-cameras)

[ThePythonicCow]

If I had had a little more spare time earlier today, I would have posted the same story about retired Sergeant Major Dan Page showing up for the Sheriff's department myself. What Page had to say in his speech two years ago, and what is happening now (with his presence even) is very relevant, in my view.
Three months ago, I had posted a link to the entire 2012 speech of Dan Page (http://youtu.be/1XA_yW7Z5OM?t=1h2m37s) in this post: Brief warning from Lindsey Williams (2 May 2014) -- Post #44 (http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?71073-The-economic-train-wreck--was-Lindsey-Williams-warning-of-May-2014--&p=832762&viewfull=1#post832762).

And in related news: Sgt. Maj. Dan Page Suspended From Job (http://beforeitsnews.com/u-s-politics/2014/08/sgt-maj-dan-page-suspended-from-job-cop-warned-of-new-constitution-seen-in-ferguson-missouri-2473570.html) (CNN News video at this link):
Sgt. Maj. Dan Page has been suspended from his job as a police officer in Missouri after a recent Before It’s News story outing him as a cop in Ferguson after warning Americans about what’s coming next went viral.

[Octavusprime]

I second Dennis' praise. Thank you for bringing up the unjust court system. The court system is now nothing more than a revenue stream with the end goal of charging as many fees as possible to squeeze the most amount of money out of the population.

The courts know they have no power. Either they take money or they throw you in jail that is the only incentive they currently use to "force" people to obey their laws. So if you have the money you pay and walk. If you don't have money you spend time incarcerated. So how does this help?

Say I'm a single parent living off minimum wage and have 3 kids. I am running late to my job because I had to drive 20 miles to drop off my kids at my mothers house and there was an accident on the highway. My boss sucks and I fear losing my job if I'm late. I am racing to work and get pulled over. The speeding ticket is $600 dollars and I can't afford it. At court I set up a $50 a month payment plan knowing that I can't pay all my bills and feed my family on top of the $50 a month. I fall behind on the payments and now a warrant is issued for my arrest. I go to jail for 3 weeks, lose my job, my kids are psychologically scarred, I still can't pay the fines and now I'm worse off than I was before. All over a speeding ticket....

The system is set up in a way to punish the poor and give the upper class a small slap on the wrist.

The outrageous penalties, fees and fines need to be re-evaluated. Perhaps a tiered system based on income? In addition, if you can't pay a fine for a minor non-violent offense than there needs to be systems in place so that people aren't forced into further poverty and desperation... It's just feeding the fire of inequality and injustice. Perhaps donating your time to a charity in your community could be used for "payment" for your crime.

The whole system is a money hungry parasite that is feeding off our country. The court system should not be used as corporation under the local government to fund it's insatiable appetite.

G'day Octavusprime,

I haven't come across anything in the US system for converting fines into community service.

Does that exist in the US?

It's used extensively in Australia to assist those on unemployment/disability etc and low incomes to not have to pay certain fines.

What it is supposed to do is reconnect them with their local area through strengthening their sense of civic engagement and through this empower both them and their area. This is of course in contrast to the fine/warrant/jail revolving door to destitution.

It doesn't apply to all fines but would in the case of traffic infringements and other municipal fines that target lower income groups unfairly.

From the Australian State of Victoria's Magistrates Court website:


Pay My Fine FAQ

I have a fine – what are my options?

There are essentially four options available for anyone who has been issued with a fine. These options include:


Pay the fine by the due date.
Convert the fine to community work. Five hours of community work equates to approximately $100.00 and a minimum of 8 hours is required to be worked. If an order of compensation has been made, this amount can not be converted to community work. Further information on converting a fine to community work can be obtained from court staff in your local area.
Fail to pay the fine and take no action. In this case a warrant will be issued for your arrest and provided to the Sheriff to enforce.
Convert the fine to time in custody. This option should only be considered as a last resort. One day spent in prison equates to approximately $100.00 of a fine. Further information on converting a fine to time spent in custody can be obtained from court staff in your local area.


How do I convert a fine to community work?

If you wish to convert a fine to community work, you must attend a Magistrates’ Court and submit an application with the registrar. There is no fee payable to submit this application. The registrar will usually only grant an application if you are unemployed or if there is some exceptional reason why the fine cannot be paid off by instalments. Generally, if you are working the registrar will allow you to pay off the fine by instalments but this will be assessed on a case by case basis.

The registrar is allowed to ask you questions about your financial situation and request to see your financial records or documentation to support your application. In some cases, you may be required to swear an affidavit as to your financial situation.If your application to convert a fine to community work is granted, you will be asked to sign a form and be required to report to community corrections by 4pm, usually on that day or the next day.

It will be up to community corrections as to when and where you work and the type of work you perform. You will be required to do a minimum 8 hrs of work and the conversion is one hour for approximately every $20 owing.If your fine has resulted originally from an infringement and has come to court via the Infringements Court (for example, a parking fine), application for conversion of your fine can only be made to a magistrate and not to a registrar.

Source (http://www.magistratescourt.vic.gov.au/howdoi/pay-my-fine-faq)
This is why I was so stunned by what appear to an outsider to be the municipal justice system's obvious targeting of those on a low income.

As a separate but noteworthy example, and a contributory reason as to why so many indigenous Australians are incarcerated in Australia, is the trifecta (not only used against indigenous Australians but is well documented in police charges against this group in urban areas).

The old trifecta is used extensively in some areas in Australia by police to meet arrest quota's. The officer provokes a person by a statement (for example: "you're a useless piece of black rubbish aren't you" or "you've got a nice arse for a gin"). The person ignores the officer. The officer then further antagonises the person (for example: "your a bit lippy for a coon" or "what's the matter bitch") until a response is give (for example: "what is your problem"). This allows the officer to further antagonise the person who may tell the officer to "f*ck off".

Offence 1: Abusive language.

The officer then grabs the persons arm and the person pulls their arm back.

Offence 2: Resisting arrest.

Finally the officer then "subdues" their "assailant" (loaded language for court proceedings) and in the "arrest" the officer gets hit by an arm.

Offence 3: Assaulting a police officer.

There may be more than one person involved after the original attempt at arrest and it turns into an "incident" requiring backup and possibly tactical...

This gets reported later in the media as: "Group of Aboriginal Youth Attack Police".

These tactics are used to make people compliant. To give over to police authority in every instance.

Trouble is they only work if people aren't aware of them. If you don't respond other than with your name no charges can be elicited from the interaction. There is of course the instance where the officer makes false accusations. In this instance it is preferable to have someone recording the incident on a mobile.

Knowledge is power.

-- Pan

Pan,

Community service is often added onto the fines and/or jail time. I do not know of any municipalities that currently use this as an option for paying of fines. On paper it sounds like a win win situation. The people donate their time instead of money and at the same time donate to and connect with their community.

[panopticon]

Notice at the end of the article the reason why police aren't wearing badges is because they are concerned about data that has been already taken. How does that even make sense? I really don't follow the logic.

Also, 3 officers have been stood down so far following the highlighting of certain behaviour that has been deemed inappropriate by senior officers for a person within that occupation.

-- Pan

###

Ferguson police officers computers hacked, FBI investigating (http://kfor.com/2014/08/22/ferguson-police-officers-computers-hacked-fbi-investigating/)
August 22nd, 2014

FERGUSON, Mo. (CNN) – The FBI has opened an investigation of hacking attacks directed at the personal computers and accounts of police officers who are part of the law enforcement response in Ferguson, Missouri, three U.S. law enforcement officials told CNN.

The cyber attacks are believed to be the work of hackers affiliated with the group Anonymous, the officials said Friday.

It’s not clear how much personal data was compromised by these alleged cyber attacks, but it’s one reason why officers working the streets of Ferguson aren’t displaying their names on their uniforms, according to the officials.

Source (http://kfor.com/2014/08/22/ferguson-police-officers-computers-hacked-fbi-investigating/)

[panopticon]

Remember I said back everything up?

The radio station 100.7 FM (Viper Rocks) was the source of the report that Dorian Johnson had recanted his statement to police with the following Facebook post:

http://apanopticview.drivehq.com/images/breaking-wilson-justified.jpg



Now it reads:


http://apanopticview.drivehq.com/images/breaking-wilson-justified-2.png

Subtle differences there. Notice the "edited" in the second one next to the date? Where's the mention of Dorian Johnson gone? No longer is Darren Wilson going to be "cleared of the shooting" now it is "there is a likelihood that Ferguson officer Darren Wilson will not be charged in the shooting of Michael Brown."

Yeah, "there is a likelihood" sounds like a qualifier has been added and what about the recant that has been all over the conservative media?

Don't believe me? That's alright I get used to it.

The tea party site still has their version of the original report there too (at least at the time of me writing this). So open:
http://teapartyorg.ning.com/forum/topics/dorian-johnson-mike-brown-s-friend-recants-statement-says-mike-di

Next go to the 100.7 FM Facebook page where I got the screen captures from and check out the August 19th post:
https://www.facebook.com/1007TheViper?hc_location=timeline

Wonder how long before this gets picked up (I have been checking there myself as I had a feeling it would change).

-- Pan

[panopticon]

It's interesting the way people respond to those who disagree with their perspective.

Lowery has reported the following:


At one point tonight, Michael Brown protesters chanted "hands up, don't shoot!"
Darren Wilson supporters responded: "Shoot! Shoot! Shoot!"
Source (https://twitter.com/WesleyLowery/status/503362482883538945)

This matches up with some of the incredibly bigoted things I've read coming from Darren's supposed supporters. I don't see how depicting him as someone he may well not be does anything for his position.

Seems this has bought out all the "white separatists" and stormfront's "mantra munchers".

"Why are people so unkind?"

In all my research into Darren I've not come across any reference to him being anything other than a hard working father of four who got divorced this time last year.

-- Pan

[panopticon]

This article is well worth a read.


Darren Wilson’s first job was on a troubled police force disbanded by authorities
By Carol D. Leonnig, Kimberly Kindy and Joel Achenbach August 23

The small city of Jennings, Mo., had a police department so troubled, and with so much tension between white officers and black residents, that the city council finally decided to disband it. Everyone in the Jennings police department was fired. New officers were brought in to create a credible department from scratch.

That was three years ago. One of the officers who worked in that department, and lost his job along with everyone else, was a young man named Darren Wilson.

Some of the Jennings officers reapplied for their jobs, but Wilson got a job in the police department in the nearby city of Ferguson.
Source (http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/darren-wilsons-first-job-was-on-a-troubled-police-force-disbanded-by-authorities/2014/08/23/1ac796f0-2a45-11e4-8593-da634b334390_story.html)

Read more here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/darren-wilsons-first-job-was-on-a-troubled-police-force-disbanded-by-authorities/2014/08/23/1ac796f0-2a45-11e4-8593-da634b334390_story.html

-- Pan

[panopticon]

Another troubling article that is well worth a read:


Ferguson Police Officer Justin Cosma Hog-Tied And Injured A Young Child, Lawsuit Alleges (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/24/justin-cosma-ferguson-police_n_5705409.html)

A Ferguson police officer who helped detain a journalist in a McDonald's earlier this month is in the midst of a civil rights lawsuit because he allegedly hog-tied a 12-year-old boy who was checking the mail at the end of his driveway.

According to a lawsuit filed in 2012 in Missouri federal court, Justin Cosma and another officer, Richard Carter, approached a 12-year-old boy who was checking the mailbox at the end of his driveway in June 2010.
[...]
Then, the officers "became confrontational" and intimidated the child, the lawsuit claims. "Unprovoked and without cause, the deputies grabbed [the boy], choked him around the neck and threw him to the ground," it says. The boy was shirtless at the time, and allegedly "suffered bruising, choke marks, scrapes and cuts across his body."
[...]
Eddie Boyd III, an officer who faced allegations of hitting children while serving under the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department, quietly resigned and sought employment with the Ferguson Police Department. Boyd faced three complaints of physical abuse against children between 2004 and 2006, two of which were dropped. Internal affairs sustained the third complaint against Boyd, saying there was sufficient evidence to support the allegation that he struck a 12-year-old girl in the head with a pistol, and recommended Boyd be fired. The St. Louis police chose to demote him.
Source (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/24/justin-cosma-ferguson-police_n_5705409.html)

Continue reading here (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/24/justin-cosma-ferguson-police_n_5705409.html).

Yeah, there's something wrong in Ferguson...

-- Pan

[panopticon]

My thoughts are with the Brown family on this day.

I hope all will respect their day of silence request.

-- Pan

[seeker/reader]

Please go to the link to get to the audio referenced below
********************************************
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/26/michael-brown-audio_n_5714287.html

New audio has surfaced that allegedly captures the moment when Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, was shot dead by Darren Wilson, a white police officer, on Aug. 9.

CNN aired the unverified recording on Monday night. Six shots can be heard, followed by a pause, then several more. A private autopsy performed on Aug. 17 at the request of Brown's family found that the 18-year-old was shot 6 times, including twice in the head.

A man who lives near the scene of the shooting says he inadvertently recorded the shots that killed Brown, his lawyer, Lopa Blumenthal, told CNN. The man, who wished to remain unidentified, was recording a video chat with a friend when gunfire rang out in the background. Blumenthal said her client has already been interviewed by the FBI about the recording.

Brown was shot on Aug. 9 after he and a friend, Dorian Johnson, were walking in the street and were stopped by Wilson. Johnson, said that Wilson attacked Brown, then shot at the 18-year-old as he was trying to get away. Ferguson Police claim that Brown attacked Wilson, and said that Wilson was injured after the altercation. Multiple witnesses have said that they saw Brown with his hands up in the air when he was shot.

Police released footage on Aug. 15 that they said showed Brown robbing a convenience store for cigarillos. Ferguson Police Chief Thomas Jackson said that Wilson was not aware that Brown was a suspect in a robbery when he stopped the teen, though Jackson later said that Wilson "made the connection" during the course of the stop. The family's attorney accused police of trying to "assassinate the character of Michael Brown" to divert attention from his death.

[panopticon]

Please go to the link to get to the audio referenced below
********************************************
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/26/michael-brown-audio_n_5714287.html

New audio has surfaced that allegedly captures the moment when Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, was shot dead by Darren Wilson, a white police officer, on Aug. 9.

CNN aired the unverified recording on Monday night. Six shots can be heard, followed by a pause, then several more. A private autopsy performed on Aug. 17 at the request of Brown's family found that the 18-year-old was shot 6 times, including twice in the head.

A man who lives near the scene of the shooting says he inadvertently recorded the shots that killed Brown, his lawyer, Lopa Blumenthal, told CNN. The man, who wished to remain unidentified, was recording a video chat with a friend when gunfire rang out in the background. Blumenthal said her client has already been interviewed by the FBI about the recording.

Brown was shot on Aug. 9 after he and a friend, Dorian Johnson, were walking in the street and were stopped by Wilson. Johnson, said that Wilson attacked Brown, then shot at the 18-year-old as he was trying to get away. Ferguson Police claim that Brown attacked Wilson, and said that Wilson was injured after the altercation. Multiple witnesses have said that they saw Brown with his hands up in the air when he was shot.

Police released footage on Aug. 15 that they said showed Brown robbing a convenience store for cigarillos. Ferguson Police Chief Thomas Jackson said that Wilson was not aware that Brown was a suspect in a robbery when he stopped the teen, though Jackson later said that Wilson "made the connection" during the course of the stop. The family's attorney accused police of trying to "assassinate the character of Michael Brown" to divert attention from his death.

Thanks seeker/reader. I counted 10 shots. Initially 6 shots then a ~3 second delay followed by one shot, a brief pause, and then three shots. This marries up with most of the initial eye-witness reports of 10 shots fired. [BTW, I'm glad he liked the videos??? That's just some freaky crap right there :wacko: ].

Here's the CNN report on it:
cfJwNHFx--0
I've also been looking at some other videos and found this one which is interesting. US members @Avalon are probably well aware of these incidents, but I wasn't.

92toXdu2KR0
Article on this "incident" here (http://7online.com/archive/9440401/).

Then there's an interesting article, by a retired lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force whose son was shot by police, which says this violence by police is not just against minority groups...


After police in Kenosha, Wis., shot my 21-year-old son to death outside his house ten years ago — and then immediately cleared themselves of all wrongdoing — an African-American man approached me and said: “If they can shoot a white boy like a dog, imagine what we’ve been going through.
[...]
Yes, there is good reason to think that many of these unjustifiable homicides by police across the country are racially motivated. But there is a lot more than that going on here. Our country is simply not paying enough attention to the terrible lack of accountability of police departments and the way it affects all of us—regardless of race or ethnicity. Because if a blond-haired, blue-eyed boy — that was my son, Michael — can be shot in the head under a street light with his hands cuffed behind his back, in front of five eyewitnesses (including his mother and sister), and his father was a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who flew in three wars for his country — that’s me — and I still couldn’t get anything done about it, then Joe the plumber and Javier the roofer aren’t going to be able to do anything about it either.
Source (http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/08/what-i-did-after-police-killed-my-son-110038.html)

Read the rest if you have the time because it helps show how cronyism & gross systemic failures have lead to what appears (to me at least) to be a lack of accountability within some US police departments.

The officer put the gun to the youths head and pulled the trigger. It misfired, so he did it again...

I've also noticed the repeated motif of 'he's going for my gun' or 'he went for my gun'. In the 2 accounts I've referenced this was used to justify assault & a point blank shooting (which sounds execution style).

Is this a default fall back position amongst police in the US?

-- Pan

[Ahnung-quay]

I posted the story of Michael Bell from Kenosha a few pages back. If you read the article you will see that it took $1.75 million plus (the families' remedy that they received through the court system) and a decade for them to get a police accountability review bill passed in Wisconsin.

Michael Bell's hands were cuffed behind his back when he was executed for allegedly "going for" one of the officer's guns. Unfortunately, the police do use it as a fall back position in the U.S. It seems to excuse their lack of training and ability to control themselves.

[panopticon]

I posted the story of Michael Bell from Kenosha a few pages back. If you read the article you will see that it took $1.75 million plus (the families' remedy that they received through the court system) and a decade for them to get a police accountability review bill passed in Wisconsin.

Michael Bell's hands were cuffed behind his back when he was executed for allegedly "going for" one of the officer's guns. Unfortunately, the police do use it as a fall back position in the U.S. It seems to excuse their lack of training and ability to control themselves.

Hey Ahnung-quay,

I was a bit surprised to come across the story of an officer saying "they were going for my gun" and it later being proven "inaccurate"... Then another story almost the same. Then another where eye-witnesses allege that what has been reported about a suspect trying to take a gun was not what occurred...

It really did start to look a bit like a possible fall back of last resort.

Thank you for confirming it.

It was also pointed out to me elsewhere that the use of "stop resisting arrest" and the comment "stop trying to take my gun" in the first video were probably used to justify the assault. The film is quite grainy so difficult to clearly make out what is happening without commentary. It also explains why the second vehicles film was not initially submitted. Can't have a clear view of a suspect with their hands in the air while getting beaten now can we...

I don't doubt that there are instances where a person attempts to take an officers weapon.

The number of times it is used by an officer and later found to be "inaccurate" might be an interesting statistic.

I wonder if it's possible to find... I doubt it would be well advertised nor possibly even admitted to given the way it could rightly shake the public perception of those supposed to "serve and protect".

-- Pan

[steveofengland]

I posted the story of Michael Bell from Kenosha a few pages back. If you read the article you will see that it took $1.75 million plus (the families' remedy that they received through the court system) and a decade for them to get a police accountability review bill passed in Wisconsin.

Michael Bell's hands were cuffed behind his back when he was executed for allegedly "going for" one of the officer's guns. Unfortunately, the police do use it as a fall back position in the U.S. It seems to excuse their lack of training and ability to control themselves.

This is truly terrifying, I can't vouch for how different things are in the uk as the only experiences I've had with police have never been unpleasant, but uk traffic police view people more as "customers for revenue" rather than violent criminals, but I've never had to deal with anything other than a vehicle stop.
The abuse in the USA is vile. A badge, a gun and a hatred of lesser mortals takes a certain kind of person doesn't it. Psychopaths.

[panopticon]

I came across a reference to the night of Michael Browns shooting (ie 9th August) and something that contributed to the flare-up in the area where Michael Brown was killed.

I had already read that the police had trampled the candles and roses placed as a memorial at the spot Michael Brown died.

What I hadn't read was that a canine unit officer had his dog urinate on that spot (source (http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/08/ferguson-st-louis-police-tactics-dogs-michael-brown)).

I'll write that again for clarity.

A canine unit officer had their dog urinate on the spot where Michael Brown died while his family, friends and neighbours watched.

That's incitement to riot if ever I heard...

What kind of person does that?

:tsk:

Then later in the article:


On the afternoon of August 19, [Missouri State Representative Sharon] Pace and her colleague Rep. Tommie Pierson, whose district abuts hers, were standing near the McDonald's on West Florissant Avenue, observing a group of about 100 protesters marching down the street. There was a strong police presence but the atmosphere remained peaceful, Pace told me, and their goal was to mediate between their constituents and law enforcement. Police officers approached and ordered the crowd to keep moving. A female Missouri Highway Patrol officer confronted Pierson, reaching for her mace.

"Are you getting ready to mace me?" Pierson asked in disbelief. The officer backed off after Pace explained to another cop who they were.

"It's bad when you don't have any respect for anybody," Pierson told me last week. "Even now that's still going on: 'You do what I tell you, or I'll mace you, I'll shoot you, no questions asked.'"
Source (http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/08/ferguson-st-louis-police-tactics-dogs-michael-brown)
Nothing to see here. Move along now...

Finally, here's an observation that I made about the manipulation/co-opting of symbolism to maintain the status-quo.

One of the most symbolic photos from the resistance by protesters to police using tear-gas etc came in the photo of a youth picking up a cannister and throwing it back at police.

It is a magnificent representative moment illustrative of resistance and visually very powerful. Some conservative pundits initially claimed that it was a molotov but were soon proven to be wrong (seems to be a trend appearing here).

http://apanopticview.drivehq.com/images/LibertyRaw.jpg

Anyway that photo was changed for t-shirts, posters, graffiti etc and while not as powerful as the original photo it would serve as a good rallying image for any protest movement:

http://apanopticview.drivehq.com/images/Liberty.jpg

Then the collaborators and status-quo merchants came in and claimed it as their own with this:

http://apanopticview.drivehq.com/images/LibertyStolen.jpg

See the way claims are made over powerful visual representations of resistance to limit/minimise their impact. This even brings the original photograph's power and legitimacy into question...

I find myself harking back to earlier in this post and asking once again:

What kind of person does that?

Nope, I've got absolutely no idea.

-- Pan

[panopticon]

BTW, one of my favourite images (*obviously staged) out of Ferguson illustrates the way in which the practices of the old system have not adjusted to its new reality.

The almost realised new system that is still in its becoming.

The live-feed, streaming real-time observation of events instantly reported to a 1000 people. The 1000 instantly relay this to their circle of friends. 1000 becomes 100,000 and that becomes news worthy.

Remember Officer GFYS? 5 years ago he would not have been identified.

Now we watch them as they watch us...

http://apanopticview.drivehq.com/images/WhoWAtchesTheWatchmen-Large.jpg

Never forget, we are winning.

-- Pan

[Ahnung-quay]

Pan- that "fall back position proven wrong" would be an interesting statistic! Unfortunately, it probably doesn't exist unless it does on a small scale done by dedicated individuals. The "Justice department" doesn't want to make itself look bad as evidenced by all of the police officers who magically retain their jobs after they commit homicide. Shooting unarmed civilians who are running away or who are obviously incapacitated by your handcuffs is just that in my opinion.

I want to thank you for all of your work on this story and its inconsistencies in the MSM. You have a gifted B.S. meter!

[Ahnung-quay]

Here's an interesting article that I found when I Googled "use of deadly force by police in the U.S."

Police using deadly force are rarely convicted

View Larger
Police using deadly force are rarely convicted
Elissa Eubanks
Tramaine Miller, who was shot in the face by off-duty Atlanta police Officer Reginald Fisher, leaves Grady Memorial Hospital in May 2009. The bullet remains lodged in Miller’s neck today. ELISSA EUBANKS/eeubanks@ajc.com
Related

View Larger
Police using deadly force are rarely convicted photo
CITY OF ATLANTA
Former Atlanta police Officer Reginald Fisher said Miller was a “suspicious” individual. COURTESY CITY OF ATLANTA
View Larger
Police using deadly force are rarely convicted photo
Elissa Eubanks
Lawyer Mawuli Mel Davis and Tramaine Davis leave Grady Memorial Hospital in May 2009. ELISSA EUBANKS/eeubanks@ajc.com
Ferguson: Could it happen here?
Racial makeups of selected metro Atlanta police forces
Could Atlanta explode in riots? gallery
Could Atlanta explode in riots?
Three Generations of “The Talk” gallery
Three Generations of “The Talk”
In Ferguson, working to restore peace, end apathy
Tensions in Ferguson

Why NYT's 'No Angel' Label For Michael Brown Touched A Nerve
Protesters Mark Two Weeks Since Police Shooting in Ferguson
Media In Ferguson: Helpful Or Hurtful?
Ferguson Exposes Cultural Misperceptions
FBI director: Agents sent to Ferguson, Mo. to learn the facts
7 Arrested During Calm Night of Protests in Ferguson
> More
By Steve Visser
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The APD bullet is still in Tramaine Miller’s neck, a legacy of what at best was a bad decision by a hard-pressed police officer or at worst the reflexive act of a trigger-happy cop.
Former Atlanta Police Officer Reginald Fisher testified at his 2011 trial that he mistook the cellphone in Miller’s hand for a gun. Miller, a fast-food worker, was leaving a Mechanicsville apartment after helping his quadriplegic aunt. He refused to unlock his car door when confronted by Fisher, who was working an off-duty security job and had deemed Miller suspicious.
Fisher smashed out Miller’s car window with his baton, saw something in Miller’s hand and shot him.
A Fulton County jury acquitted Fisher, then 42, who argued that he was working in a high-crime neighborhood and feared for his life.
“We felt the policeman went over the line and felt very strongly that he should be charged,” District Attorney Paul Howard told The Atlanta Journal Constitution last week. “I think the jurors thought he made a legitimate mistake and gave him the benefit of the doubt.”
Police departments follow U.S. Supreme Court decisions in deadly force policies; the laws boils down to whether a reasonable officer would believe his life or another citizen’s life was in danger in the moment before he shoots, said Dale Mann, former director of the Georgia Public Safety Training Center.
The Supreme Court and Georgia law give police wider discretion than the average citizen has, Mann said. A brawler in a bar fight who shoots a guy preparing to hit him with a bottle will likely get indicted. A police officer breaking up that fight who shoots the guy with the bottle likely will not.
The officer can shoot multiple times. While a prosecutor will use multiple shots against a murder defendant who claims self-defense, in policing they’re standard procedure.
“The officer is trained to stop the threat — it is as simple as that,” said Gary Robinette, a retired FBI agent who testifies as an expert for plaintiffs in police brutality or shooting cases. “That means shooting as many times as you have to until the guy is down. The old thing where they were taught to shoot to kill became politically incorrect, but it is the same thing.”
The elements become dicier for the officer if the suspect/victim is clearly unarmed — as in the Ferguson, Mo., case in which Officer Darren Wilson shot 18-year Michael Brown, experts said. Shooting at a fleeing Brown, as a witness said Wilson did, was illegal under the law unless Wilson had a reasonable belief that Brown constituted a threat to law officers or the public.
Police are trained on a use of force policy in which an officer is taught to use a baton or Taser on an unarmed aggressor and can escalate to deadly force if the aggressor is armed with a weapon that could do grave injury — or if the officer believes he is about to lose his weapon, experts said.
“The police are going to say the fight with the officer is a felony so the logic is Michael Brown committed a violent felony so you take him down — I just don’t agree with that analysis,” said Decatur attorney Mawuli Davis, who brings civil lawsuits in police shootings. “If you are a properly trained officer, when this guy is running away you call for back-up and you pull your Taser. If he comes back at you, you put him down with the Taser.”
Marietta attorney Bill McKenney is a former police commissioner and prosecutor in New York. He said the shot at the fleeing Brown — which the police say missed — and the shots that killed him when he was about 35 feet from the officer represent a high hurdle for Wilson in trying to show the shooting was justified.
“The fight is over, the assault on the officer is completed and the individual is running away and has no weapon,” said McKenney, who has represented officers in shooting cases. “The only defense that I think could be imposed is that the individual was coming back at the officer and … might be coming back to take the officer’s gun.”
A successful prosecution would be an anomaly. Former DeKalb District Attorney J. Tom Morgan said the only officers he knows of going to jail in metro Atlanta in a shooting case were rogue Atlanta officers involved in the killing of 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston in a botched 2006 drug raid.
Morgan, who as a defense lawyer represented Fisher, contended the bar should be high to indict police whose job requires endangering themselves.
“Officers have to decide whether to shoot in a matter of seconds,” Morgan said. “Tragedies and mistakes are made but that doesn’t make them a crime.”
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution was unable to reach Fisher for a comment on this article.
Howard ,more than most district attorneys, has sought indictments against cops he believes unjustly killed others. But grand juries generally have not indicted and if they did, as in Fisher’s case, a jury or a judge has acquitted the defendant.
Howard said in police shootings often the only witnesses are police, often the shooters are investigated by sympathetic officers and often the dead or wounded have blemished records.
In a case involving a College Park officer who shot a man during a DUI arrest, Howard retained an expert whose analysis of bullet trajectories proved the officer’s self-defense account was untrue.
But the victim had a history of confronting police, and the grand jury didn’t indict. In the case of teenager shot in Buckhead by an officer in questionable circumstances, a judge ruled the case against the officer unproven.
In Fisher’s case, Miller had a drug conviction — which might have persuaded jurors to follow an expert witness’s testimony that Fisher would be justified if he mistook the phone for a gun, Howard said.
It was a case that Davis, who represents Miller in a civil suit, had felt relatively confident would end in conviction: the only law Miller had broken that day was parking in a handicapped space.
“Obviously everybody was very disappointed that you can shoot an unarmed man and get away with it,” Davis said. “Tramaine Miller is now disabled — that one encounter disabled him. He lives a life of constant pain. You can still see the bullet protruding under the skin in the back of his neck.”

http://www.ajc.com/news/news/crime-law/police-using-deadly-force-are-rarely-convicted/ng8Nf/

[Ahnung-quay]

And another interesting link from an expert in the field of criminal justice:

http://prospect.org/article/expert-us-police-training-use-deadly-force-woefully-inadequate

¤=[Post Update]=¤

But, that expert also believes in a centralized, nationalized police force; yikes!

[Ahnung-quay]

http://journalistsresource.org/studies/government/criminal-justice/police-reasonable-force-brutality-race-research-review-statistics#

Some statistics and lack thereof.

[onawah]

Powell Shooting (Cell Phone Camera)
Forbidden Knowledge


You don't have to watch this because
it does show a young man being shot
to death a dozen times, for no good
reason.

The entire event of the partially-point-
blank-range killing of Kajieme Powell,
25 on August 19th by "Peace Officers"
who are paid to protect the communities
they serve, not to kill its members was
recorded on video by a cellphone.

In a city still reeling with revolts over
the police killing of unarmed teenager,
Michael Brown, just ten days earlier,
these events certainly prove that the
local police had learned nothing, after
ten days of outrage and revolts.

They felt so immune from prosecution
that they believed that they were totally
above the law. This video also proves that
they lied - and that it incredibly unsafe to
be a young black man in Greater Metro
area of St. Louis, Missouri.

The policemen who killed Kajieme Powell
in this video claimed that he was lurching
at them with a "steak knife," with his arms
"raised high". They further claimed that he
was within 3 feet of them but the video
clearly shows that he was about 15 feet
away when they began to fire upon him -
but that yes, by the time he'd fallen off a
berm and rolled onto the sidewalk - and
the police were into their final shots of the
dozen bullets which hit him, he was THEN
three feet away from the cops.

At no time during Powell's interaction with
the police were his arms "raised high,"
even as the police instantly escalated the
situation, by jumped out of their truck with
guns drawn, as if the only thing they could
even imagine doing was to kill the guy.
Powell's arms were down by his sides - and
the "steak knife" must have been pretty
small, because it is not even visible in this
video.

Powell looked like he needed mental help,
not killing.

But the clincher is this: the fact that these
"Peace Officers" handcuffed Powell, when he
was already deader-than-a-doornail proves
to me that they KNEW that they were guilty
and were hastily trying to cover it up, to the
rightfully cynical comments of onlookers.

In my opinion, the perpetrators of Powell's
shooting death should all be fired and tried
for murder.


Video (6 and a half min):
j-P54MZVxMU
Powell Shooting (Cell Phone Camera)

http://www.ForbiddenKnowledgeTV.com/page/26637.html

[Jake]

Nothing else that this fellow could have done.. I am not posting this vid to 'pile on', with regards 'bad cop' scenarios... I am posting it because it shows the INABILITY of this cop to 1) Tell the truth, 2) Follow police procedures, 3) Show any sort of rationality, 4) Precede in a Peaceful manner, 5) Regard citizens with Respect. This video pretty much highlights my experiences with cops, in general. And it highlights the type if irrational, psychopathy that runs rampant in police departments in America.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIjBjZrJN5U

I hate it. I really effin hate it.
Jake.

[Snowflower]

Did they kill him? I ****ing hate it, I ****ing hate it, I ****ing hate it. I am shaking and crying for that young man. He should not have stepped out of the car.

[Jake]

Did they kill him? I ****ing hate it, I ****ing hate it, I ****ing hate it. I am shaking and crying for that young man. He should not have stepped out of the car.

The text in the vid is in first person, and he mentioned that he moved his family away from there, so I am pretty sure that he is still alive.. Vile treatment, nonetheless.. People believe that there is no reason to fear the police.. I am baffled by that!

Jake.

[Belle]

Police are not here to 'protect and serve' us...the regular folks...

They are protecting and serving the status quo, the government, the elite...a buffer between 'citizens' and those who are calling the shots.

Always moving their agenda forward, the controllers know people will push back when they are pushed too far. Thus, the police have been militarized in order to handle any possibility of revolution and keep it from their doors. The police have been given the tools to prevent an all out assault, and fed fear of the public to create a 'hair-trigger' reaction to anything less than complete surrender to their so called 'authority'...and even then, they still shoot out of fear. They are being used...and don't even realize it.

After the police, the National Guard is called in...and finally, at some point, the military who are being trained to fire on American citizens. Quite a buffer between 'them' and 'us'...

People are blaming the police now (and rightly so)...it will move up the ladder one step at a time, through the National Guard and the military to the politicians, then the banksters, etc... Get it now? So many 'patsies' between those that move the pieces around the chessboard and us....to keep 'them' safe....while fomenting conditions that will eventually lead to all out revolution. Hoping we'll do their job for them and kill each other off? After all, the more of us there are, the more difficult it is to maintain control.

imo

[Octavusprime]

Journalist and author of Rise of the Warrior Cop, Radley Balko interview with Vice News:

uTWy8tjTiTw

Gamer is invaded by swat team due to prank while live streaming the event. Swat teams are increasingly being the tool of choice in house interactions but should swat teams be utilized for all warrants? If so shouldn't the teams be taught rules of engagement? Loaded guns pointed in the direction of peoples faces seems like an unnecessary tactic in most domestic situation. Starts at 6:30 minute mark.

uH-uRFIr3mA

[Jake]

"I'll f***ing put a round in your ass so quick" Yep, folks there is a problem in Petersburg FL, too...

Simply unbelievable. (http://www.infowars.com/cop-points-gun-threatens-to-kill-citizen-in-response-to-cell-phone-recording/)

After all is said and done,, check out THIS ignorant remark from this CHIEF OF POLICE!!!


“When I watch this video, I don’t see a car full of young men who are behaving in a manner consistent with fear of the police.”

What the hell?? Not showing fear to police will get you abused in Petersberg... I thought it was about basic respect the law and for police... C'mon, some of you are saying it is about respect,,, BS..

It is about FEAR.. Fear and abuse. Watch the vids if you want to..

This cops statements have seriously stabbed me in the heart. Who can support this crap???

I am starting to feel bad for folks who have buried their head in the sand regarding the Nazi's that roam our streets with badges and guns... Please wake up...


Jake.

[RunningDeer]

"I'll f***ing put a round in your ass so quick" Yep, folks there is a problem in Petersburg FL, too...

Simply unbelievable. (http://www.infowars.com/cop-points-gun-threatens-to-kill-citizen-in-response-to-cell-phone-recording/)

After all is said and done,, check out THIS ignorant remark from this CHIEF OF POLICE!!!


“When I watch this video, I don’t see a car full of young men who are behaving in a manner consistent with fear of the police.”

What the hell?? Not showing fear to police will get you abused in Petersberg... I thought it was about basic respect the law and for police... C'mon, some of you are saying it is about respect,,, BS..

It is about FEAR.. Fear and abuse. Watch the vids if you want to..

This cops statements have seriously stabbed me in the heart. Who can support this crap???

I am starting to feel bad for folks who have buried their head in the sand regarding the Nazi's that roam our streets with badges and guns... Please wake up...


Jake.

Here's the video. Unbelievable. 190,369 hits since July 16, 2014. That's the good news. There's a fine line between creating fear/control vs. truth. Time now to step up the wake-up calls.

3UXr9mG99JI

Published on Jul 16, 2014

this is how i got treated by Boynton beach police department. officer pulls gun out and threatens to shoot...always record u have the right to do so

[panopticon]

Cop who threatened to ‘kill everybody’ expected to get full pension (http://www.msnbc.com/all/cop-who-shoved-don-lemon-and-threatened-kill-everybody-get-full-pension)
By Collier Meyerson, 29th August 2014

1XA_yW7Z5OM
The St. Louis County police officer who was recently suspended after video surfaced of him threatening to “kill everybody” and who shoved CNN’s Don Lemon on live television in Ferguson has retired. Officer Dan Page, a 35-year veteran of the force, had his last day on August 25th. Sergeant Colby Dolly, aid to the St. Louis County Police Chief, told msnbc by phone that Page is expected to receive his full pension.

Officer Page was suspended from the force on August 22, after an online video surfaced of him threatening violence and criticizing President Obama, Muslims and LGBT people.

The officer’s pension has not yet taken effect.

Source (http://www.msnbc.com/all/cop-who-shoved-don-lemon-and-threatened-kill-everybody-get-full-pension)

[marlowe]

Michael Brown had a substantial juvenile criminal record including second degree murder.....
http://www.westernjournalism.com/second-degree-murder-journalist-sues-release-mike-browns-juvenile-records/

[Jake]

Michael Brown had a substantial juvenile criminal record including second degree murder.....
http://www.westernjournalism.com/second-degree-murder-journalist-sues-release-mike-browns-juvenile-records/

This report is based solely on heresy,, If you have seen his criminal record then by all means,, show it.

"Got News filed a lawsuit against St. Louis County court today to obtain the juvenile arrest records of Michael Brown after the court denied his request. Brown was killed in a controversial altercation with Officer Darren Wilson."


Journalist Charles C. Johnson of Got News confirmed earlier this month that he was told... blah blah blah...



Did you see a report, a record, a document,,, oh, just more he said/she said???

I'd hold out a bit before you continue your demonization of the victim in this case... Just a humble opinion...

Again, if cops are going to kill everyone with a juvenile arrest record,, they have a lot of killing to do!! (arrest record,, no conviction.. ) :)

Jake.

[Snowflower]

I thought you had quit trying to make a killer cop into a good cop, Marlowe.

[marlowe]

Michael Brown's family lawyer makes false claims about autopsy


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qPPsuX4HGo


Best evidence IMO https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mAaJMBxKA4

[marlowe]

Here is a 4 day old article from AOL that says the law suite says Michael Brown was ~ or~ is a murder suspect ...You can read every page of the law suite ...I did & it

looks real to me..

http://www.aol.com/article/2014/08/27/lawsuit-to-release-michael-browns-juvenile-criminal-record/20953546/

[Jake]

Here is a 4 day old article from AOL that says the law suite says Michael Brown was ~ or~ is a murder suspect ...You can read every page of the law suite ...I did & it

looks real to me..

http://www.aol.com/article/2014/08/27/lawsuit-to-release-michael-browns-juvenile-criminal-record/20953546/

Yep, it's a real article... The only thing it says is that there is a lawsuit pending regarding MB's juvenile arrest records. The rest is heresy, Phil. Can you not tell the difference?? Somebody TOLD this reporter that they were TOLD that MB has an ARREST record.. Sorry, I'm calling :bs: again.. So now we are going to dig into the childhood court records of a dead person?? :crazy::crazy::sad::sad::blink:

Second and third person information... We call them rumors,,, and we don't present them as fact,, unless we have run out of REAL facts to bring to the table.. (yawn)

Besides, if someone from law enforcement told a reporter about confidential court records regarding a minor,, then that member of law enforcement has broken the law.. So, again, you have helped to highlight more cops in Ferguson that are breaking the law.
Good onya,, Phil...


Jake.

[Hervé]

Court OKs Barring High IQs for Cops (http://abcnews.go.com/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs-cops/story?id=95836)

N E W L O N D O N, Conn., Sept. 8, 2000

A man whose bid to become a police officer was rejected after he scored too high on an intelligence test has lost an appeal in his federal lawsuit against the city.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York upheld a lower court’s decision that the city did not discriminate against Robert Jordan because the same standards were applied to everyone who took the test.

“This kind of puts an official face on discrimination in America against people of a certain class,” Jordan said today from his Waterford home. “I maintain you have no more control over your basic intelligence than your eye color or your gender or anything else.”

He said he does not plan to take any further legal action.

Jordan, a 49-year-old college graduate, took the exam in 1996 and scored 33 points, the equivalent of an IQ of 125. But New London police interviewed only candidates who scored 20 to 27, on the theory that those who scored too high could get bored with police work and leave soon after undergoing costly training.

Most Cops Just Above Normal The average score nationally for police officers is 21 to 22, the equivalent of an IQ of 104, or just a little above average.

Jordan alleged his rejection from the police force was discrimination. He sued the city, saying his civil rights were violated because he was denied equal protection under the law.

But the U.S. District Court found that New London had “shown a rational basis for the policy.” In a ruling dated Aug. 23, the 2nd Circuit agreed. The court said the policy might be unwise but was a rational way to reduce job turnover.

Jordan has worked as a prison guard since he took the test.


*****************************************

:frusty:

[panopticon]

Not that I personally see this as even a little bit relevant to the shooting of Michael Brown by Officer Darren Wilson...

Update on StL Dispatch's court request for Brown's Juvenile record (if one exists) & Blogger CCJohnson's assertions that Brown was convicted of Second Degree Murder as a minor. Also National Guard has reportedly finally completed their withdrawal (source (http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/metro/nixon-lifts-state-of-emergency-in-ferguson/article_cf236f51-04f9-50ff-80f4-381f7129d969.html)).

If I interpret this correctly then according to the lawyer (for the Family Law Court officer) Brown was not convicted of, nor had been charged with, murder, assault, burglary etc. prior to his death.

Guess the ol' beak will hand down a decision later.

Also, Ferguson police have started wearing "body cameras" (source (http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/ferguson-police-are-using-body-cameras/article_88e0067c-d3e6-5599-a581-a58d0022f1f8.html)).

Beware the ever increasing surveillance State.

###

Juvenile court: Michael Brown had no felony convictions, did not face felony charges (http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/juvenile-court-michael-brown-had-no-felony-convictions-did-not/article_43c9bbbb-356f-5ea6-b9e2-7dde7e3e5c83.html)
By Jeremy Kohler, 3rd September 2014

Michael Brown was never found delinquent of the juvenile equivalents of any Class A or B felony charges, and was not facing any at the time he died, a court official said this morning at a hearing on whether his juvenile records should be released.

The Post-Dispatch had filed a petition in St. Louis County Circuit Court to unseal any records about him in family court, if any existed.

Cynthia Harcourt, a lawyer for St. Louis County Juvenile Officer Kip Seeley, argued against releasing those records, but acknowledged that there were no convictions or active cases for the most serious types of felonies.

Class A felonies include second-degree murder and first-degree robbery; the penalties in adult court range from 10 years in prison to death. Class B felonies include voluntary manslaughter, second-degree robbery and first-degree burglary, with a maximum penalty of five to 15 years.

It is not known whether Brown had ever been accused of lesser offenses; any record of those would be part of a confidential family court file.

In a hearing before St. Louis County Circuit Court Judge Ellen Levy Siwak, Joseph E. Martineau of Lewis Rice & Fingersh, attorney for the Post-Dispatch, acknowledged in the hearing that most juvenile court records are confidential under Missouri law.

But he argued that the primary reason to keep them confidential — to protect a child from entering adulthood with the stigma of a criminal record — expired with Brown's death. He said Siwak had the discretion to open the files, and said there was heavy public interest in the details of Brown's life.

Harcourt derided the claim as pure media curiosity that should not lead the judge to open any confidential records.

The judge took the issue under advisement.

Source (http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/juvenile-court-michael-brown-had-no-felony-convictions-did-not/article_43c9bbbb-356f-5ea6-b9e2-7dde7e3e5c83.html) & Jeremy Kohler twitter (https://twitter.com/jeremykohler)

[panopticon]

For those who might be interested in finding out more about Dorian Johnson and Michael Brown here's a really good article from the Washington Post:
Michael Brown and Dorian Johnson, the friend who witnessed his shooting (http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/michael-brown-and-dorian-johnson-the-friend-who-witnessed-his-shooting/2014/08/31/bb9b47ba-2ee2-11e4-9b98-848790384093_story.html)

I didn't know that just under a year ago Dorian's 16 year old brother died in a car accident (drag racing). I also didn't know that Dorian had recently become a father and works for a local transit authority contractor.

Seems like Dorian Johnson has turned his life around (or is well on the way to doing that) and is trying to provide for his partner and daughter. The death of a family member, especially seeing the scene while they might still be alive, can have a devastating effect.

This matches up fairly well with what we already know. He has the old warrant for stealing a backpack (which is itself a strange story) from 3 years ago and hasn't been in trouble with police since then (though that of course doesn't mean he hasn't been smoking a bit of cooch now and then). We also have him putting the cigars back on the counter when something strange happened in the convenience store (it still looks to me that Brown had a verbal with the clerk and walked out). Dorian putting the cigars back also matches up with what we are coming to know about him. He hid behind a car watching whatever happened between Brown and Wilson. This also makes perfect sense given his history and probably not wanting to get charged by Wilson.

I'm not on the side of anyone in this horrific situation.

I'm looking at the stories as they appear and seeing what matches and what doesn't.

Darren Wilson worked for the Jennings police department which had deep problems and was disbanded before Darren transferred to Ferguson. He was divorced last year and has at least one child. He received a commendation for “extraordinary effort in the line of duty” in February and now lives with his girlfriend Barbara Spradling who is also a police officer. He had a troubled childhood with his mother being found guilty of at least 6 counts of fraud having conned 100's of thousands of dollars out of friends and acquaintances. She died while Darren was in his teens and it appears he looked after himself from the age of 16.

Darren appears to have also moved on from the troubles that surrounded him as a youth. He became a police officer, though as I already pointed out maybe not in the best environment to learn his trade. From what I can gather local police departments in the US are evidently underfunded and continued training is reported as being limited. Never the less, Darren seems to have been trying to make a go of it and the shift to Ferguson PD might have been to escape the Jennings PD environment.

We don't know why Darren and his wife separated. We don't know much about Darren because he was given a week to clear his presence from the internet. Also, Darren and his partner are being protected because of possible threats to them and have made no public statements. This means we have no idea what his story is. The tactician in me says that this is so he is able to alter his story to suit what all the witnesses are saying (ie find the thread that weaves through their narratives). There again, I've never understood people talking to the press anyway. Just makes no sense (how will a jury be formed from the local population anyhow given what has happened?).

We simply don't know that much about Darren Wilson and it would be easy to construct a negative narrative around what we do know (just as many people have done with Michael Brown and Dorian Johnson).

The statistics indicate that Darren Wilson will probably not be convicted of any charges (if he is charged). He is unlikely, if his case is part of the minority against police officers that end in conviction (9.7%), to do jail time (only 3.5% of officers charged end up in jail, that's just over a third of those convicted). Read some interesting statistics on that here (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/08/22/whats-next-for-darren-wilson-these-numbers-could-be-a-clue-2/).

Also of interest:
How municipalities in St. Louis County, Mo., profit from poverty (http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2014/09/03/how-st-louis-county-missouri-profits-from-poverty/)
The Justice Department will open a broad civil rights investigation into police practices in Ferguson (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/04/us/politics/justice-dept-to-investigate-ferguson-police-practices.html).

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch investigative reporter (Kohler (https://twitter.com/jeremykohler)) has related the facts stated in court about Michael Brown's juvenile record (or lack there of) and moved on. The blogger, CCJohnson, who alleges being told by 'two law enforcement contacts' that Brown had a juvenile conviction or charge (maybe questioned as a peripheral witness in relation to?) for 2nd degree murder (source (https://twitter.com/ChuckCJohnson/status/501503438132228096)) is making a mistake at the moment. He is making the story about himself. It isn't.

-- Pan

[panopticon]

This was a surprise for me when I saw it:

T4HUvXOvgkQ
How is it a Judge can say that this is acceptable behaviour from a police officer?

When was it that the "perpetrator" lunged at the officer?

If this is what St Louis police can get away with while being filmed I wonder what they can do when they aren't?

Just because someone repeatedly says "Why did you lung at me?" doesn't make it the truth...

Remember: 'Police videos like these should be used to protect police, not go after them.'

The full video starts ~@3:15 (http://youtu.be/T4HUvXOvgkQ?t=3m15s)

So does this mean that "why did you lung at me" & "stop trying to take my gun" are both pre-existing fall-back phrases to circumvent (ie bring into doubt) police video surveillance?

-- Pan

[Jake]

Just because someone repeatedly says "Why did you lung at me?" doesn't make it the truth...


It's a tactic. Not moral, but apparently, legal. I've been up against a wall,,, kicked in the groin,,, and asked repeatedly,, "Why did your stomach hit my foot? Why did you hit my foot with your gut? Why are you assaulting my foot,,,?" Whilst other cops laughed...

I figured it wasn't just me.. I guess it was!! Nobody can fathom cops behaving like this.

As pointed out in an earlier post... 'Not cowering in fear' is what they are looking for,,, NOT wether or not a law has been broken. Last I checked (and I DID check,,) Not cowering in fear in front of cops is NOT a crime... Whenever a cop dies in the line of duty,, cops EVERYWHERE take the time to reflect (parades, funerals, media chaos,, etc..) on the event. If a citizen is killed in a 'cops' line of duty,,, other citizens are ARRESTED for the same show of support... And cops retaliate!!!

I wouldn't call the cops on my worst enemy!! We had prowlers about a week ago,, did we call the cops? HELL NO!! What happens if they show up, and I am outside with my flashlight,,,??? I will be thrown to the ground, beaten, and maybe shot dead,,, before they will bother to do any actual POLICE WORK.... This has been discussed with my whole family, and our neighbors... And everyone agrees... Cops only make things worse...

Feel free to feel free.. I don't..

Jake.

[seeker/reader]

Bogus Photo Does Not Show Ferguson Cop Darren Wilson's Injuries; It's Not Even Him

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/04/darren-wilson-injury-photo-ferguson_n_5768510.html
Unarmed teen Michael Brown was fatally shot by officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri, on Aug. 9, but the circumstances leading up to his death remain unclear. Though Ferguson police have said that Wilson's face was injured in an altercation with Brown moments before the shooting, Wilson has yet to come forward and speak publicly.

On Tuesday, Chicago firefighter Kevin O'Grady shared a Facebook photo he claimed showed a injured Wilson in the hospital after the incident. As it turned out, the man pictured is not Darren Wilson, but that didn't stop the image from going viral.

http://i.huffpost.com/gen/2024818/thumbs/o-DARREN-WILSON-570.jpg?6
The man in the photo is actually motocross rider Jim McNeil, who died in a crash while practicing at the Texas Motor Speedway in 2011. The photo above was taken in 2006 after a motor accident at a friend’s house.

For the record, this is what the real Wilson looks like:
http://i.huffpost.com/gen/1969873/thumbs/o-DARRENWILSON-570.jpg?6
Despite the fact that these two men share barely a passing resemblance to one another, the bogus image posted by Kevin O'Grady had racked up nearly 50,000 shares by Thursday evening and had been circulated on Twitter and parts of the blogosphere. Some who re-shared the image seemed to take it as proof that Brown had attacked Wilson, thereby justifying the six shots that Wilson fired into Brown's body.


Here's what the sweet, innocent, gentle giant #MichaelBrown did to #DarrenWilson… pic.twitter.com/p75ZVR0JUo

— Mike Liberation (@mikeliberation) September 4, 2014

This isn’t even the first photo misidentification to come out of the Ferguson incident.

In August, Kansas City Police Department Officer Marc Catron posted an image on Facebook of a young man he claimed was Michael Brown. The man in the picture was pointing a gun at the camera and biting down on a wad off cash. Catron's caption for the image read, “I’m sure young Michael Brown is innocent and just misunderstood. I’m sure he is a pillar of the Ferguson community.”

That image ended up being of Joda Cain, a young Oregon man who is currently facing charges for killing his great-grandmother.

¤=[Post Update]=¤ **************Second Article********************************

Ferguson Police Chief Lied About Why He Released Alleged Michael Brown Robbery Tape: Report (UPDATED)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/05/ferguson-chief-lied-about-michael-brown-tape_n_5773420.html

http://i1.huffpost.com/gen/2028146/thumbs/n-THOMAS-JACKSON-FERGUSON-large570.jpg

Ferguson Police Chief Thomas Jackson lied when he said he had received "many" specific requests for the videotape that allegedly shows Michael Brown robbing a convenience store, according to a new report.

"All I did -- what I did was -- was release the videotape to you, because I had to," Jackson told reporters on Aug. 15 when asked why he released the robbery footage. "I’d been sitting on it, but I -- too many people put in a [Freedom of Information Act] request for that thing, and I had to release that tape to you."

Writing for The Blot, Matthew Keys reports that the police department did not receive any specific requests for the videotape.

"A review of open records requests sent to the Ferguson Police Department found that no news organization, reporter or individual specifically sought the release of the surveillance tape before police distributed it on Aug. 15," Keys writes.

There was one reporter, Joel Currier with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, who asked for any and all evidence "leading up to" Brown’s death in a FOIA request. The request could have possibly included the tape, since the incident report on the robbery identifies Brown as a suspect in the crime.

Currier told The Huffington Post's Matt Sledge in a tweet that "I can't recall if I knew of robbery at the time of request. I made it broad in hopes of getting as much material as possible."

In another tweet, he added, "I think I may have been hearing rumors of a robbery but nothing confirmed."

Journalist Andrew Perez also said that he has tried to get the documents to show who sent FOIA requests for the recording.

"I requested all requests for the videotape too, and they produced a ton of docs but no requests for the tape," Perez tweeted.

Perez also tweeted that, when asked, Ferguson Police spokesperson Tim Zoll couldn't think of any specific requests for the tape.

Authorities have still not released the incident report for Brown's killing. The St. Louis County Police Department is in charge of deciding when that report will be released.

UPDATE: Ferguson City Attorney Stephanie Karr released a statement early Saturday morning. She notes that many requests for documents and information were not made in writing because "the City's website and email were down at several points during that week." The release does not say whether any of those requests were for the robbery video.


Within days of the tragic events on August 9, the City of Ferguson began receiving multiple requests for information and documents. While some of these requests were made in writing, many requests were made verbally due to the fact that the City's website and email were down at several points during that week. City personnel cataloged all requests and treated them in the same manner as it would any Sunshine Law request. (The “Sunshine Law” is Missouri’s equivalent of the federal Freedom of Information Act).

Several reporters, news organizations and others asked for documents specifically pertaining to Michael Brown. One such request was made by the St. Louis Post Dispatch. On August 12, 2014, the paper requested “all documentation concerning the events leading up to and including the shooting of Michael Brown" which shall include “incident, arrest and investigative reports, 911 audio, photos and video retained by the police department.” Another request, made on August 14, 2014, by Judicial Watch requested all records relating to Michael Brown and dated between August 1, 2013, and August 9, 2014.

The Sunshine Law dictates that Governmental entities must respond to both general requests and specific requests and release all documents that are responsive to the those requests, unless those documents are otherwise closed.

The Ferguson police department retained the incident and investigative report of the store robbery which occurred less than 10 minutes before the shooting. The reports, which included the surveillance video, concerned Michael Brown. Under the Sunshine Law, the police department had no reason to close these records and withhold them from the public.

By the date of August 15, the City having reached its statutory deadline to respond to the information requests, released the store robbery reports, including the surveillance video.

[panopticon]

Tineye.com (http://tineye.com/) & google reverse image lookup (both have extensions) are good for finding the source of suspect images.

There have been a number of weird images appear over the last month and these tools helped me weed them out easier.

For example I used Tineye on the image supposedly of Wilson with the black eye and found a Czech site with it from 2013 so knew it wasn't Wilson in 2014. I looked because it was the wrong socket (supposedly Wilson had a fracture to his left orbital) and I just do that when I'm trying to understand wtf I'm looking at.

I've been reading some of the right-wing commentators in the US on this and it is amazing how they can twist the narrative to suit themselves.

I thought the "gentle giant" narrative that was being told about Brown was a bit extreme (and having read his twitter feed and listened to many of his songs he seems to really have been just an average teenager in that environment).

He did seem to have some sort of epiphany around the 5th of August and seemed to be looking inwards to explain things (this is where his having "found god" comes into the story -- he really did seem to have some things going on there).

There was girl-friend troubles and he was sending off messages to record labels and magazines to try and get his rap music noticed. It wasn't bad for back yard cut price production. Again, just what I'd expect from a teenager. The lyrics aren't that extreme (for the genre) and most of the metal etc I listen too is a hell of a lot worse. He probably wasn't going to be listening to Beethoven, Bach, Bartok, Enya, Ives or Schoenberg:

VuP0SExoojQ
All in all Brown just seems to have been a normal 18 year old. Smoking a bit, drinking a bit, in a bit of strife and having a bit of life before he went off to college. His rap music appears to have been an attempt to not go to college but wasn't his only plan -- he had college as a plan B.

Appears just like a kid trying to make good.

-- Pan

[panopticon]

Some more witnesses reports (2 workmen nearby saw the shooting and have given their statements to police & FBI):
Workers who were witnesses provide new perspective on Michael Brown shooting (http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/workers-who-were-witnesses-provide-new-perspective-on-michael-brown/article_14a3e5f8-6c6a-5deb-92fe-87fcee622c29.html)

-- Pan

[panopticon]

Change only occurs when inequity is bought into focus.

That is the purpose of protest movements, not to cause change but to bring the inequity they speak of into the light so the discourse that surrounds it can change.

Without this process, little change would occur.

That is the nature of any control process (eg. Money, Control & Power) and any status quo.

Take away from the article (emphasis added):

“The Council believes that this ordinance sends a clear message that the fines imposed as punishment in the municipal court are not to be viewed as a source of revenue for the city,” Ferguson’s Council said in a statement. “We are hopeful that the Council’s clear statement will encourage the municipal judge and prosecutor to explore and utilize alternative methods of sentencing, such as community service, to punish violators and deter similar unlawful conduct.”
[...]
The municipal judge has signed an order establishing a special docket for defendants who are having trouble making monthly payments on outstanding fines, the city said, giving people the opportunity to renegotiate their payment plans.
Weren't we nattering about Community Service as an alternative process just a few pages ago?

At least they've taken the first step and admitted that there's a problem.

-- Pan

###

Ferguson Sets Broad Change For City Courts (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/09/us/ferguson-council-looks-to-improve-community-relations-with-police.html)
By Frances Robles, September 8th, 2014

FERGUSON, Mo. — In the first major sign of change in this small city since last month’s police killing of an unarmed black teenager, the Ferguson City Council on Monday said it would establish a citizen review board to provide guidance for the police department and announced sweeping changes to its court system, which had been criticized as unfairly targeting low-income blacks, who had become trapped in a cycle of unpaid tickets and arrest warrants.

Municipal court fines are the city’s second-highest source of revenue, leading many critics to argue that the authorities had a financial incentive to issue tickets and then impose more fees to those who did not pay.

Young black men in Ferguson and surrounding cities routinely find themselves passed from jail to jail as they are picked up on warrants for unpaid fines, one of the many simmering issues here that helped set off almost two weeks of civil unrest after the teenager, Michael Brown, 18, was killed by a white Ferguson officer on Aug. 9.

http://projectavalon.net/forum4/attachment.php?attachmentid=27067&d=1410227907

Mr. Brown’s killing put a national spotlight on Ferguson, a small city in north St. Louis County. The unrest served to highlight longstanding complaints by a predominantly black community that they were being routinely harassed by the police.

On the eve of what was expected to be a tense City Council meeting on Tuesday, the first meeting since the shooting, the city instead pre-emptively announced many changes activists have long sought.

Among other things, the Council was scheduled to vote on capping how much of the city’s revenue can come from fines. The city also announced a one-month bench warrant recall program, a major victory for the activists and lawyers who had pressed for change and were expected to force the issue at Tuesday’s meeting.

“The overall goal of these changes is to improve trust within the community and increase transparency, particularly within Ferguson’s courts and police department,” one council member, Mark Byrne, said in a statement. “We want to demonstrate to residents that we take their concerns extremely seriously.”

Lawyers and activists cautioned that the change could only be truly meaningful if other municipalities followed suit, because Ferguson is not alone in its predatory tactics, said Julia Ho, a community organizer at Hands Up United.

“The bench warrants and traffic fines were a regressive tax on the poor and criminalization of poverty,” Ms. Ho said. “If people no longer receive these charges, that’s huge: It keeps people from getting stuck in modern debtor’s prisons.”

The Arch City Defenders, a nonprofit legal group, and law professors at the Saint Louis University School of Law recently wrote a letter to the mayor, James Knowles, asking him to waive all pending fines and warrants for nonviolent offenses. Noting that Ferguson currently has more warrants than residents, the letter said the warrants serve as barriers to employment and housing.

“I am really glad they responded to our request,” said Thomas B. Harvey, executive director of the Arch City Defenders. “Although it’s not exactly what we asked for, it’s a substantial step forward.”

Ferguson, a city of just 20,000 people, issued 24,532 warrants for 12,000 cases last year, the group said in a recent report (http://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/1279541/archcity-defenders-report-on-st-louis-county.pdf). That amounts to three warrants per Ferguson household.

About 20 percent of the city’s $12 million budget is paid through fines, Mr. Harvey said. Under the proposal announced Monday, the city will cap that at 15 percent, and spend any excess on special community projects.

“The Council believes that this ordinance sends a clear message that the fines imposed as punishment in the municipal court are not to be viewed as a source of revenue for the city,” Ferguson’s Council said in a statement. “We are hopeful that the Council’s clear statement will encourage the municipal judge and prosecutor to explore and utilize alternative methods of sentencing, such as community service, to punish violators and deter similar unlawful conduct.”

Mr. Harvey said he was concerned about the “wiggle room” the city anticipated. “That’s still $1.7 million in fines collected, but it is a million-dollar drop,” he said.

The city’s traffic fine revenue has increased 44 percent since 2011. When drivers who could not pay failed to show up for court, the city issued warrants and increased the penalties.

The city said it would commit to funding a community improvement program and would hold ward meetings to elicit community input on what other changes should be made.

The city said it would also introduce an ordinance to repeal the “failure to appear” offense in municipal court, eliminating the additional fines imposed on those who do not attend court; abolish administrative fees, such as the $25 fee to cover the cost of police personnel who arrange for the towing of abandoned, nonfunctional or other vehicles, as well as the $50 fee to recall a warrant and the $15 notification fee assessed when someone did not show up.

The municipal judge has signed an order establishing a special docket for defendants who are having trouble making monthly payments on outstanding fines, the city said, giving people the opportunity to renegotiate their payment plans.

At the behest of the City Council, the municipal judge also established a one-month warrant recall program.

Meldon Moffitt, 42, of Ferguson, said Monday that he felt the measures did not go far enough.

Mr. Moffitt said he owed more than $600 in fines for a suspended license, even though he had tried to fight the charge in court. He took paperwork to court that the Department of Motor Vehicles told him would be sufficient, he said, but the judge levied additional fines anyway.

“To be honest, I don’t see how I should have been fined at all since I did what I was told to do,” Mr. Moffitt said.

Even if the city cuts back on certain fines, he said, the city will still find a way to get the money it needs.

“I need to see that if a person misses a court date, there isn’t a warrant out for their arrest,” he said. “The city needs to stop giving people big old fines for a traffic ticket.”

Source (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/09/us/ferguson-council-looks-to-improve-community-relations-with-police.html)

[panopticon]

Good short docu on how US police became militarised (much of it we've already covered in this thread but its a well presented short so worth popping in the mix):
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-- Pan

[panopticon]

Just a quick update.

CNN have released details of an interview with one of the contractors:
New Michael Brown shooting witnesses describe scene (http://edition.cnn.com/2014/09/10/us/ferguson-michael-brown-shooting-witnesses/index.html)

The original phone camera footage used in the CNN report was available a month ago and is here (http://instagram.com/p/riPFZ8oeQy/).

Chucky C Johnson (rightly in my opinion) lost his bid to access Brown's juvenile record as did the STL Post-dispatch.

The footage from the Ferguson City Council Meeting (9th September) is available (for the moment) and while the audio isn't that crash hot the sentiment is fairly obvious (missing opening section):

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kwrzNpO0YMo
Unrelated. There are reports that the shopping store footage of the police shooting of John Crawford III in an Ohio Walmart shows he was not threatening anyone and was shot in the back while talking on the phone with his partner & parents. In addition the 911 caller has changed his story:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/07/ohio-black-man-killed-by-police-walmart-doubts-cast-witnesss-account

BTW there is no reason why Crawford shouldn't have been walking around with a gun in Ohio under the legislation.
03tAbsoCasA
The officers are reported to have not asked if he had a permit (which isn't necessary anyway) and if there was no evidence of threatening behaviour then why was he shot?

The 911 call from a bloke who has changed his story. That's why.

-- Pan

[seeker/reader]

Video Shows Witnesses' Disbelief Following Michael Brown Shooting

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/10/michael-brown-witnesses_n_5801330.html {please go to the link on the left for the video}

A video airing on CNN Wednesday showed witnesses' immediate reactions to the shooting death of Michael Brown, the unarmed black teenager shot and killed by a Ferguson, Missouri police officer last month.

In a cell phone video provided to CNN, two men who were doing construction work on a home near the scene react to seeing Brown shot by Officer Darren Wilson.

"He had his f**king hands up," one man says in the recording.

The men later spoke to CNN about what they saw. One worker said he heard two gunshots about 30 seconds apart:


"The cop didn't say get on the ground. He just kept shooting," the man said.
That same witness described the gruesome scene, saying he saw Brown's "brains come out of his head," again stating, "his hands were up."
...
The other contractor told CNN he saw Brown running away from a police car.
Brown "put his hands up," the construction worker said, and "the officer was chasing him."
The contractor says he saw Wilson fire a shot at Brown while his back was turned.

The two men in the video spoke under the condition of anonymity to CNN. It is not clear if they are the same construction workers who spoke to St. Louis' Fox 2 and the St. Louis Post Dispatch.

“I saw him staggering and running and when he finally caught himself he threw his hands up and started screaming OK OK OK OK OK and then the three officers come through the thing and the one just started shooting," one man told Fox 2 last month.

A friend of Brown's, Dorian Johnson, has also come forward as a witness. Speaking to KSDK in St. Louis last month, Johnson said Brown had not reached for Wilson's weapon.

"It was definitely like being shot like an animal," Johnson said.

Federal investigators stepped in to help probe Brown's death after protests erupted in the St. Louis suburb following the August 9 shooting. The Justice Department is also investigating the conduct of Ferguson's police as well as the county police force.

[Octavusprime]

CNN News:
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