Ferguson, Missouri

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A thread to discuss the shooting of Michael Brown by a Ferguson, Missouri police officer.

Grand Jury May Get Ferguson Case Wednesday

We want answers, but I think this is being rushed because St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Bob McCulloch wants to have as much affect on this case as he can before he is removed. And of course, Grand Jury testimony is secret.

Michael Brown was left lying in the street for hours while a traumatized community stood behind police tape in frustration, grief, and shock: an immobile metaphor for everything that was wrong in Ferguson, Missouri.

From here: http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-d...

As a note for those joining us late, there are twelves pages or so of comments in the other thread.

The president's remarks from today, starting at 1:00:25.

Jayhawker wrote:

There are issues in this call. For one, many of the details she revealed were things that have been floating around in the press. The 35 feet and the shot in the car. Some came in just last night, such as the shot in the forehead and the idea that he was rushing the cop.

The caller didn't even hear this from Wilson, she heard it 2nd hand, from Wilson's GF.

She says that Brown finally fell to the ground "2 to 3 feet" from Wilson. The last and fatal shots are believed to be the one to the eye and the one to the top of the head. At such a close distance, it's reasonable to think there could be residue and stippling on the body itself and the private coroner would have had no need for the clothes. In addition, none of the photos or videos of the aftermath show the body anywhere near the officer's vehicle. To fit Wilson's account, the vehicle would have to have been moved afterwards, or Wilson chased Brown a bit of a distance from it.

Edwin wrote:

I'm taking issues with only the bolded part as all modern service weapons have at least 15 round magazines these days. If he was using a Glock 17 like most departments used, he had 17 rounds in each magazine meaning he was at about less than half used.

Right now, we only know how many shots hit Brown, plus at least one more the police have reported as being shot from inside the car "during a struggle".

Quintin_Stone wrote:
Jayhawker wrote:

There are issues in this call. For one, many of the details she revealed were things that have been floating around in the press. The 35 feet and the shot in the car. Some came in just last night, such as the shot in the forehead and the idea that he was rushing the cop.

The caller didn't even hear this from Wilson, she heard it 2nd hand, from Wilson's GF.

She says that Brown finally fell to the ground "2 to 3 feet" from Wilson. The last and fatal shots are believed to be the one to the eye and the one to the top of the head. At such a close distance, it's reasonable to think there could be residue and stippling on the body itself and the private coroner would have had no need for the clothes. In addition, none of the photos or videos of the aftermath show the body anywhere near the officer's vehicle. To fit Wilson's account, the vehicle would have to have been moved afterwards, or Wilson chased Brown a bit of a distance from it.

Second-hand from the officer's girlfriend is about as close to official information that's been released. Every P.R. department ever created will be able to use the actions of the Ferguson P.D. as the "What Not To Do" part of their training.

They're currently arresting peaceful protesters who had a sit in outside the state office building.

And it is known that Wilson's girlfriend is a police officer. I think she is also FPD, but I can't say for sure.

Reposting my impressions of the call from the other thread:

There are issues in this call. For one, many of the details she revealed were things that have been floating around in the press. The 35 feet and the shot in the car. Some came in just last night, such as the shot in the forehead and the idea that he was rushing the cop.

But one was debunked by the belief chief, who said that Wilson did not have the information about the robbery. Also, she said that no one has heard from him or his significant other (a female officer he began living with after his divorce) since Tuesday, which is before the robbery stuff came out. So if he heard about it then, who told the chief he wasn't aware of it?

The deal is, cops are human, and they are a close knit fraternity for obvious reasons. Rumors are flying among officers all over town, and they are being spread. The problem is, all of them have a vested interest in one side of the story, and their information is third or fourth hand interpretations.

I was in a convenience store when the guy in front of me was talking to the clerk about how Thursday night was quiet and things were looking up. I interjected, not knowing him, but having had many conversations with the clerk, that after listening to the radio that morning, things look much worse. At the point he started talking to me about "deal" and such and seemed pretty angry. I let it go, because I didn't feel like arguing. When he left, the clerk asked if he would be on duty that night. After he was out the door, I told the clerk, "So, I didn't realize he was a cop." She confined that he was a St. Louis City cop.

We don't need this kind of information, we need actual facts, or at least actual witness testimony. But the police are holding that back, but leaking anything they can to make Michael Brown look bad. And calls like that are not uncommon. Most don't claim to be as close as she, but it is still third hand at this point, through his girlfriend, who is also a cop.

SixteenBlue wrote:

They're currently arresting peaceful protesters who had a sit in outside the state office building.

Photos on this feed, from Alison Dreith.

This is the story, also from Rembert Browne like the quote I posted above, that made me think the racial overtones were a bit buried in the police state thread and a separate thread might serve us better.

Just saw on Twitter they're arresting protestors who are sitting peacefully outside a government building in Ferguson. One of the women they arrested survived a Nazi concentration camp. I am going to suggest this is probably not really the kind of thing that is going to give me a significant deal of warm fuzzy feelings about the current state of things.

garion333 wrote:

This is the story, also from Rembert Browne like the quote I posted above, that made me think the racial overtones were a bit buried in the police state thread and a separate thread might serve us better.

So far, of all the links that have been posted, that was the one that struck me the most strongly.

MilkmanDanimal wrote:

Second-hand from the officer's girlfriend is about as close to official information that's been released. Every P.R. department ever created will be able to use the actions of the Ferguson P.D. as the "What Not To Do" part of their training.

No, this is not an Onion story.

Ferguson Hires PR Firm That Appears To Be Staffed Only By White People

The city of Ferguson has retained the public relations firm Common Ground Public Relations to help its communications department in light of the ongoing turmoil in the St. Louis, Mo., suburb and the firm appears to be staffed entirely by white people, according to the photographs of staff members on its website.

Common Ground is "assisting the city of Ferguson's media relations department with the large volume of media queries," Common Ground's Nina Kult told TPM. "We're just assisting in handling the large volume of queries."

The "Meet The Team" page on Common Ground's website seemed to only display Caucasian employees. When asked how the apparent lack of diversity on their team might factor into Common Ground's work for Ferguson, given the heightened racial tensions there over the death of 18-year old Michael Brown, Kult declined to comment directly on that aspect of their work.

IMAGE(http://a5.img.talkingpointsmemo.com/image/upload/w_652/zd0lof9jn6dcwui0emnn.jpg)

Jayhawker wrote:
When asked how the apparent lack of diversity on their team might factor into Common Ground's work for Ferguson, given the heightened racial tensions there over the death of 18-year old Michael Brown, Kult declined to comment directly on that aspect of their work.

They don't even realize that answering that question is effectively the job they are hired to do.

SixteenBlue wrote:
Jayhawker wrote:
When asked how the apparent lack of diversity on their team might factor into Common Ground's work for Ferguson, given the heightened racial tensions there over the death of 18-year old Michael Brown, Kult declined to comment directly on that aspect of their work.

They don't even realize that answering that question is effectively the job they are hired to do.

I don't know. PR isn't just about answering question, its the way you answer them and if you should answer them. Maybe the only answer to that question was worse than not answering it even if they went into spin city. If they can't spin it to their favor wouldn't it be best to avoid the question.

Baron Of Hell wrote:
SixteenBlue wrote:
Jayhawker wrote:
When asked how the apparent lack of diversity on their team might factor into Common Ground's work for Ferguson, given the heightened racial tensions there over the death of 18-year old Michael Brown, Kult declined to comment directly on that aspect of their work.

They don't even realize that answering that question is effectively the job they are hired to do.

I don't know. PR isn't just about answering question, its the way you answer them and if you should answer them. Maybe the only answer to that question was worse than not answering it even if they went into spin city. If they can't spin it to their favor wouldn't it be best to avoid the question.

Right. The job is impossible, especially by them.

Baron Of Hell wrote:
SixteenBlue wrote:
Jayhawker wrote:
When asked how the apparent lack of diversity on their team might factor into Common Ground's work for Ferguson, given the heightened racial tensions there over the death of 18-year old Michael Brown, Kult declined to comment directly on that aspect of their work.

They don't even realize that answering that question is effectively the job they are hired to do.

I don't know. PR isn't just about answering question, its the way you answer them and if you should answer them. Maybe the only answer to that question was worse than not answering it even if they went into spin city. If they can't spin it to their favor wouldn't it be best to avoid the question.

They say they're only "providing short-term assistance" to Ferguson's media relations department and that is limited to fielding media inquiries for the city. That means they're just acting as a middleman between all the media who want comments, interviews, etc. and members of the Ferguson city government. They are literally just coordinating interviews and making sure members of the media get the information they need in a somewhat timely fashion.

If the firm would begin to provide more crisis management services for the city then the Wonder Bread and Miracle Whip composition of their team would most definitely become an issue. That's because they would be involved in crafting key messages for an audience they know nothing about.

But frankly this whole thing has reached the point where it's beyond crisis management. The city is in communication triage. Any PR firm, regardless of its ethnic composition, wouldn't be crafting the messages and spin. We're in lawyer territory now. Any communications will be crafted by lawyers who are mostly concerned with what's said and how it will play out in court for the inevitable wrongful death and other civil lawsuits. They're purely looking to limit the city's liability exposure at this point.

On Recognizing My White Privilege As a Parent In the Face of Ferguson
Black America holds up a mirror for us. And white America is terrified to look.
(Elizabeth Broadbent, xoJane, 2014-08-18)

The conclusion, especially.

Dear White people: We have a duty [em]not[/em] to retreat from racial injustice. Those who live with it have no choice, but we do. If we do not choose to stand with our fellow human beings against the tide of hems and haws and I-don't-have-times... the world stops listening. We need to get them to keep listening.

If we want people to not feel the need to act out with outrage over real injustice, the solution is not to make them quiet down. It is for us as a society to [em]stop being unjust[/em].

+infinity for that dude.

Hypatian wrote:

On Recognizing My White Privilege As a Parent In the Face of Ferguson
Black America holds up a mirror for us. And white America is terrified to look.
(Elizabeth Broadbent, xoJane, 2014-08-18)

The conclusion, especially.

Dear White people: We have a duty [em]not[/em] to retreat from racial injustice. Those who live with it have no choice, but we do. If we do not choose to stand with our fellow human beings against the tide of hems and haws and I-don't-have-times... the world stops listening. We need to get them to keep listening.

If we want people to not feel the need to act out with outrage over real injustice, the solution is not to make them quiet down. It is for us as a society to [em]stop being unjust[/em].

The more I think of the situation in Ferguson, the more I am convinced that, though there is certainly a racial component, the conflict is really, essentially one of how the powerful treat the powerless. And in that sense, the African Americans being so poorly treated here are the proverbial canaries in the coalmine.

As income continues to stratify and the very real possibility of 45% chronic unemployment in our near future, I see this sort of response being used with increasing frequency to not just scary black folks, but to all of us.

Paleocon wrote:
Hypatian wrote:

On Recognizing My White Privilege As a Parent In the Face of Ferguson
Black America holds up a mirror for us. And white America is terrified to look.
(Elizabeth Broadbent, xoJane, 2014-08-18)

The conclusion, especially.

Dear White people: We have a duty [em]not[/em] to retreat from racial injustice. Those who live with it have no choice, but we do. If we do not choose to stand with our fellow human beings against the tide of hems and haws and I-don't-have-times... the world stops listening. We need to get them to keep listening.

If we want people to not feel the need to act out with outrage over real injustice, the solution is not to make them quiet down. It is for us as a society to [em]stop being unjust[/em].

The more I think of the situation in Ferguson, the more I am convinced that, though there is certainly a racial component, the conflict is really, essentially one of how the powerful treat the powerless. And in that sense, the African Americans being so poorly treated here are the proverbial canaries in the coalmine.

As income continues to stratify and the very real possibility of 45% chronic unemployment in our near future, I see this sort of response being used with increasing frequency to not just scary black folks, but to all of us.

Thanks Obama!

Spoiler:

Thanks Obama, Coral.

Before I turned on scripting for that site, this is what I saw:

IMAGE(http://www.malor.com/gamerswithjobs/mike_brown_live.png)

which was both mordantly funny and so, so depressing.

Whats even the point of police presence for this type of protest.

I relate or understand when its political fueled WTO etc type protests that could have lots of public property damage. Even then I'd almost argue the cops are better staying in the peripheral until something actually happens.

In this situation it just seems to serve to antagonize the protesters into doing something to 'justify' force. I'm pretty surprised there hasn't been a situation where the police suddenly felt in danger, used force and more people ended up dead.

It looks like stuff's about to get real messy again. Dammit to Hell.

Nomad wrote:
Paleocon wrote:
Hypatian wrote:

On Recognizing My White Privilege As a Parent In the Face of Ferguson
Black America holds up a mirror for us. And white America is terrified to look.
(Elizabeth Broadbent, xoJane, 2014-08-18)

The conclusion, especially.

Dear White people: We have a duty [em]not[/em] to retreat from racial injustice. Those who live with it have no choice, but we do. If we do not choose to stand with our fellow human beings against the tide of hems and haws and I-don't-have-times... the world stops listening. We need to get them to keep listening.

If we want people to not feel the need to act out with outrage over real injustice, the solution is not to make them quiet down. It is for us as a society to [em]stop being unjust[/em].

The more I think of the situation in Ferguson, the more I am convinced that, though there is certainly a racial component, the conflict is really, essentially one of how the powerful treat the powerless. And in that sense, the African Americans being so poorly treated here are the proverbial canaries in the coalmine.

As income continues to stratify and the very real possibility of 45% chronic unemployment in our near future, I see this sort of response being used with increasing frequency to not just scary black folks, but to all of us.

Thanks Obama!

Spoiler:

Thanks Obama, Coral.

On a slightly more serious note, this situation in Ferguson really does strike me as the first stage in the forging of a new reality defined by a post-scarcity economy, systemic unemployment, income/capital/resource stratification. More importantly, it seems to be accelerated by choices we have made as a society (e.g.: corporate personhood, the elimination of meaningful restrictions on campaign finance, corporate control over media....).

As the pace of this new reality accelerates, this will likely become the reality of more and more of us.

Paleocon wrote:
Nomad wrote:
Paleocon wrote:
Hypatian wrote:

On Recognizing My White Privilege As a Parent In the Face of Ferguson
Black America holds up a mirror for us. And white America is terrified to look.
(Elizabeth Broadbent, xoJane, 2014-08-18)

The conclusion, especially.

Dear White people: We have a duty [em]not[/em] to retreat from racial injustice. Those who live with it have no choice, but we do. If we do not choose to stand with our fellow human beings against the tide of hems and haws and I-don't-have-times... the world stops listening. We need to get them to keep listening.

If we want people to not feel the need to act out with outrage over real injustice, the solution is not to make them quiet down. It is for us as a society to [em]stop being unjust[/em].

The more I think of the situation in Ferguson, the more I am convinced that, though there is certainly a racial component, the conflict is really, essentially one of how the powerful treat the powerless. And in that sense, the African Americans being so poorly treated here are the proverbial canaries in the coalmine.

As income continues to stratify and the very real possibility of 45% chronic unemployment in our near future, I see this sort of response being used with increasing frequency to not just scary black folks, but to all of us.

Thanks Obama!

Spoiler:

Thanks Obama, Coral.

On a slightly more serious note, this situation in Ferguson really does strike me as the first stage in the forging of a new reality defined by a post-scarcity economy, systemic unemployment, income/capital/resource stratification. More importantly, it seems to be accelerated by choices we have made as a society (e.g.: corporate personhood, the elimination of meaningful restrictions on campaign finance, corporate control over media....).

As the pace of this new reality accelerates, this will likely become the reality of more and more of us.

I agree. Of course, I'm always in the police state threads, so of course I do. The recent Ted Talk on plutocrats and pitchforks is enlightening in this vein. Anyway, back OT.

Yeah, Mr. French, they do want to be over there because it's their job.

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