This again, only different. Kind of. Follow

If the defense is resting on "Brown was a kind and gentle soul who would never assault anyone, so the cop must have fired for no reason at all"... then Brown's family needs to find a better lawyer.

(Why is Brown/Family having the Defense lawyer, in this hypothetical?)

Sorry. Prosecution. At least some portion of the case will involve the character of the people involved. I mention it because this case *should* "rest" on the physical evidence and the witness accounts. But, if the historical record of cases like this holds true, the physical evidence will not support a murder charge, and also refute the witness accounts (which has already happened to some degree), but the mob will demand a trial anyway, and, just as in the Martin trial last year, the prosecution will be almost forced to make a case based heavily on character rather than facts and evidence. When you can't win on the evidence, you attempt to win by painting the other guy in the most negative light possible and your guy in the most positive one. This *shouldn't* win a case (and didn't in the Martin case), but once a prosecuting attorney finds themselves in a case like this, there's no harm in trying it.

I think when cops are being shot at during these protests that the military-grade weaponry stops being such a bad idea.

At this point my opinion on this area is the same as my opinion of the Middle East: Napalm Air Strike everything and start over.

So there is apparently a twitter account called Officer Go***yourself, based on a filmed encounter with a cop who was brandishing his weapon and threatening to kill people while telling them to .... go **** themselves.

When you can't tell reality from The Onion, the situation is out of control.

Edit: Filters won't put in the link to the twitter account. Awwww.

Edited, Aug 20th 2014 10:33am by Catwho

The timeline of the escalation isn't shots > militarization, though. It's militarization > shots, from what I can tell. They said that there were isolated incidents of people throwing debris, which is why they responded with tear gas. But they were loaded to the teeth long before things started actually getting violent, which was the past few nights.

Did anyone mention they gassed a protest their Senator was at, back on Monday? And she's ****

Really filter? Really? **** is filtered? And it breaks html tags? Really?

[i]Edited, Aug 20th 2014 10:55am by idiggory

But, if the historical record of cases like this holds true, the physical evidence will not support a murder charge

Wow. We knew you didn't understand law much, but murder? There's no universe where this is a murder case. It's probably an exception to the idea of every decision creating a new universe. "There are endless parallel universes, except one where it's plausible this guy gets charged with murder because that's batspit insane"

I guess it's a monumentally stupid attempt at a straw-man so you can argue against people claiming it should be murder? Maybe? Makes as much sense as arguing brown was actually a mannequin.

Look, the bad guys are the rioters and the looters.

Yes, absolutely. The ruling class' property is wildly more important than the life of nobody. Spare no expense.

The guy that owns the rinky dink 7/11 and his minimum wage employees who aren't getting paid right now because the store was destroyed are part of the elite ruling class?

The guy that owns the rinky dink 7/11 and his minimum wage employees who aren't getting paid right now because the store was destroyed are part of the elite ruling class?


If only there was insurance he's basically required to have that compensates for all of his losses. Oh. You're right about the employees, though, they might lose some wages. They aren't who the police with tear gas are there for, however. In point of fact, they're probably in the mob.

Yeah, I'm not really buying the "OMG! They're wearing/carrying military equipment!" argument. Police departments have been maintaining riot/swat type gear and vehicles for a couple decades now. Why on earth *not* use it? And what I find strange is how many people seem to be offended by the imagery alone (ie: they're wearing body armor, carrying heavy weapons, and have large armored vehicles). To me, it's what they are *doing* that matters, and once you dig through all the rhetoric, it actually looks like the Ferguson police are showing amazing restraint.

A few days ago, a co-worker of mine was talking about all the horrible things the police were doing to the protesters, and I pointed out that while there's a lot of people talking about tear gas, rubber bullets, and abuse, there's very little video to show this. In this day and age, if a single cop were beating someone with a club, or shooting at a crowd of people, you'll see a video of it somewhere. So I challenged him to find video of the worst violence the police were using on the protestors. And what he could find was video of police basically sitting at an intersection, giving people milling around tons of warning to clear out, then launching some smoke bombs (maybe tear gas? Didn't look like it was doing more than making people cough though), waiting for folks to move down the street, then repeating the process. The result was a gradually clearing group with zero injuries and no direct physical clashes with police.

At that time he could not find a single video of a police officer doing anything that could be viewed as "abuse" of a protester. And in fact, the number of injuries suffered by protesters have been incredibly low, most of then incurred by other protesters who got violent and not the police. I just think this is a whole lot of media wanting this to be about police over response, so that's what they're reporting. Tail wagging the dog and all that.

Sandy Hook was the ******* case of a GUNMAN SHOOTING UP AN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL WITH AN AUTOMATIC WEAPON.

Is that really your argument? Really?

Are you really that ******* stup- oh nevermind. Right.

Yes. This is the gear that police wear/use when there is a chance they might be involved in violence. Period. They do this out of an abundance of caution. My point is that no one blinked when officers wearing the same gear were hanging out at a school hours after the scene was cleared and any danger of shooting was ended. Meanwhile, people are freaking out when police who are actively engaged in dealing with riot conditions are wearing the same exact gear.



Maybe ask yourself the same question.

It is now. It didn't used to be. SWAT raids have skyrocketed in recent past and the plethora of new "toys" may be a part of it.

The funny thing is that this is apparently news to you and just about only you. From the left wingers at the Huffington Post to the right wingers at friggin' World News Daily, everyone seems to recognize this but you.