New witnesses to the apparent execution of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, have come forward. CNN has cellphone video of them watching what happened and, oh yeah, they’re two white contractors from out of town. Isn’t it funny how that “white” part makes a big difference (to us white people)? The video and the description of events offered by these witnesses is strong evidence that Michael Brown was indeed executed that afternoon.
Tag Archives: Police
What People Say Happened in Ferguson
The town of Ferguson is near St. Louis, Missouri. It has a population of 21,000, so it’s big enough to have a small police force. Everyone agrees that Darren Wilson, a Ferguson police officer, shot and killed Michael Brown, an unarmed black man, around noon on August 9th. The results of the official autopsy haven’t been released yet, but it’s been reported that it will substantially agree with a second autopsy done at the family’s request: Wilson shot Brown approximately six times.
I spent some time recently trying to find out how many witnesses to the incident there were and what they had to say. It wasn’t easy, but two sites had some details. One was Wikipedia and the other was The Root. The latter is a magazine devoted to African-American news and commentary founded by Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Donald Graham, Chairman and CEO of what used to be the Washington Post.
Here’s a summary based on these two sources and a statement made by the St. Louis County police chief on August 17th:
Officer Wilson ordered Michael Brown and Dorian Johnson to walk on the sidewalk, not the street. Wilson and Brown got into a physical altercation while Wilson was still in his police car. A shot was fired in the car, which may or may not have struck Brown. Wilson’s face was apparently bruised during the struggle. Brown then ran away. Wilson got out of his car, chased Brown and fired again. Apparently, none of these other shots hit Brown until Brown turned around and faced Wilson. At that point, Wilson continued to fire, killing Brown. Overall, Brown was shot four times in his right arm and twice in his head. Brown’s body ended up about 35 feet from Wilson’s car.
Whether or not Brown raised his hands to surrender after he turned around, or fell toward Wilson, or decided to move toward Wilson, is now a matter of dispute. However, the four people who claim to have seen the shooting and who have been identified so far (Dorian Johnson, Piaget Crenshaw, Tiffany Mitchell and James McKnight) all indicate that Brown wasn’t threatening Officer Wilson at that point. They suggest, in fact, that Wilson executed Brown. On the other hand, Officer Wilson, who still hasn’t been directly quoted, is said to have felt threatened. The wounds Brown suffered are consistent with Brown having surrendered and fallen toward the ground, although they don’t rule out Brown having moved toward Wilson with his head down.
If this were the only evidence presented and I was on the jury, I’d have to conclude that Officer Wilson was guilty of second-degree murder. It wouldn’t be first-degree murder, since there’s no evidence of premeditation. Firing his weapon at Brown as Brown was running away indicates Wilson’s willingness to use deadly force. The consistency of the four statements from people who apparently didn’t know each other (except for the two women, one of whom supervises the other at work) implies that Brown had stopped running and was giving up. Is there reason to doubt that this is what happened? Of course, it’s possible that Brown meant to stop Officer Wilson from firing at him by moving toward Wilson. But so far there is no good reason (which is the definition of “reasonable doubt”) to think that Wilson was in danger when he killed Brown.
At some point, it would be helpful to hear a police officer admit that the deadly force he (it always seems to be “he”) applied to some black man or some crazy person wasn’t necessary. He’d explain that he was angry and excited and fearful and his emotions took over. He’d remind us that police officers hate it when their authority is challenged. He’d also remind us that he’s only human and that having the power of life and death over one’s fellow citizens will sometimes inevitably lead to misuse of that power. He’d further admit that, when it comes right down to it, he’s like too many Americans in feeling that some people’s lives just aren’t as valuable as others, especially black people’s.
Update:
The New York Times ran an article two days ago concerning “conflicting accounts” of what happened in Ferguson. To her credit, Margaret Sullivan, the Times‘ Public Editor (which is similar to an ombudsman), points out here that:
The story goes on to quote, by name, two eyewitnesses who say that Mr. Brown had his hands up as he was fired on. As for those who posit that Mr. Brown was advancing on the officer who was afraid the teenager was going to attack him, the primary source on this seems to be what Officer Wilson told his colleagues on the police force. The Times follows this with an unattributed statement: “Some witnesses have backed up that account.” But we never learn any more than that…[The Times story] sets up an apparently equal dichotomy between named eyewitnesses on one hand and ghosts on the other.
L.A. Noir: The Struggle for the Soul of America’s Most Seductive City by John Buntin
Southern California became an interesting, fast-growing place after they started making movies in Hollywood and drilling oil wells wherever possible. The population boomed and so did crime. L.A. Noir tells the story of crime, crime-fighting and police corruption in Los Angeles between 1920 (when L.A. had become bigger than San Francisco) and 1992 (when Rodney King was beaten and 54 people died in a riot).
The book tells this story by focusing on the parallel careers of Mickey Cohen, a well-known local gangster, and William Parker, L.A.’s most famous police chief. They each had their good points, but Mickey Cohen was a thug and Chief Parker was a misguided right-winger. Los Angeles improved after they were both gone. (2/14/13)
What We’re Up Against Regarding Guns
The governor of Arizona has signed a law that requires guns acquired in gun buy-back programs to be sold. If a police department in Arizona buys your gun in order to reduce the likelihood that it will be used to commit a crime (such as shooting a police officer), they can’t destroy it. They have to sell it to a gun dealer, who can then resell it and return it to its rightful place in the community.
Police had argued that they were allowed to destroy guns acquired in such programs, even though an earlier Arizona law required that they sell any guns seized during crimes. The NRA and gun fanatics argued that destroying valuable weaponry is wasteful.
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/ariz-bill-requiring-resale-buyback-guns-signed
Stop Me Before I Write About the Boston Manhunt Again!
(See postscript below — The Boston police commissioner has admitted that Tsarnaev was in the perimeter all along. That’s good enough for me. I can go back to more productive activities, like sleeping and mowing the lawn.)
Ok, I’m going to stop writing about this until someone in the media or someone writing a book explains exactly where the police searched for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev after the gun battle in Watertown. Then I can write that someone has finally offered a better explanation of why they didn’t find him during the manhunt.
But first —
I still think the guy was inside the famous 20-block perimeter all the time (not that it matters, of course, in the grand scheme of things).
Here is a map of Watertown that shows the streets discussed in this post. Point A is near where Tsarnaev abandoned his getaway car. Point B is where he was captured:
The NY Times has published a long article that begins with the murder of the M.I.T. officer and concludes with the capture at 67 Franklin Street. Here’s what they say about the search in the “20-block perimeter”:
“I yelled to the cops, ‘Watch out!’ ” Mr. Doucette said in an interview. But the car hit the wounded brother, he said, and “his body was tumbling underneath.”
As Friday dawned, state officials urged people in the Boston area to stay behind locked doors, and all transit service was shut down — paralyzing the metropolitan area as officials searched for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. That evening they lifted the order, fearing he had escaped.
That’s not terribly informative (maybe the editors cut something), but next to the article, the Times has provided excerpts picked up by police scanners. One selection, labeled “Hunting for the Suspects” is 1 minute and 59 seconds long:
These excerpts confirm that the abandoned getaway car (the hijacked SUV) was found at the corner of Lincoln and Spruce. (Lincoln and Spruce is between points A and B on the map above.)
An officer then refers to someone (possibly himself) being on foot near Dexter and Laurel, where the gun battle occurred earlier that night.
Next, someone advises officers not to investigate around Lincoln Street (in the vicinity of the SUV) without a partner.
Then someone relays an order to set up a perimeter between Mount Auburn and Arsenal Streets, an area that includes 67 Franklin Street (where Tsarnaev was captured) and the SUV, but also extends eastward past Dexter and Laurel (scene of the gun battle) all the way to Arlington Street (at the eastern edge of the map above).
A senior officer then states that he is at 98 Spruce Street, a few houses south of the abandoned SUV. He says that the search perimeter needs to be expanded in 4 directions, centered around 98 Spruce. He wants a perimeter in a 3-block radius from that location (this is a relatively small area within the larger Mount Auburn-Arsenal-Arlington perimeter).
Depending on how you count the blocks, which aren’t consistently shaped, it looks as if a 3-block radius from 98 Spruce would include 67 Franklin Street at its western edge.
This is a map showing the distance between 98 Spruce and 67 Franklin (according to Google, it’s 0.3 miles and a 6-minute walk — less if you cut through people’s backyards).
The same officer then says the perimeter should be “at least 2-blocks deep for now”, which might leave 67 Franklin out of the immediate search, “and then expand it”, presumably putting 67 Franklin back in.
Another officer relays an order to maintain the perimeter at the Mount Auburn and Arsenal boundaries, but to move the boundary on the east side to School Street (which runs parallel to Arlington). This eliminates the area around the gun battle, which happened east of School Street, and tightens the perimeter around the the SUV and Franklin Street.
This officer then goes on to say “2 blocks away [from 98 Spruce] is also Walnut Street, which runs from School to Mount Auburn”. This indicates that the 2-block radius mentioned above (which was supposed to be expanded to 3-blocks later on) was bounded by Walnut Street and did not include Franklin Street.
The senior officer who spoke before then says “O.k. Once we have officers complete that, expand it 2 more blocks [i.e. from 2 to 4] from those areas [meaning 4 blocks from 98 Spruce]… We have plenty of police officers here. Let’s start utilizing them. From 98 Spruce, 2 blocks and then 4 blocks”.
That’s where the audio ends. A 4-block perimeter centered on 98 Spruce Street would have included 67 Franklin Street, which is just 1 block from Walnut Street, and 3 blocks from 98 Spruce.
Unfortunately, there aren’t any timestamps on this recording, so it’s not clear when all this happened. In one press conference, the Watertown police chief said that blood was found at a house after the SUV was abandoned (maybe this was 98 Spruce Street). He also says that Tsarnaev didn’t go directly to 67 Franklin, suggesting that, at some point, the suspect may have crossed one of the smaller perimeters on foot without being detected.
So it still isn’t clear whether the police searched around 67 Franklin, before or after Tsarnaev found his way there.
The police chief has explained that Tsarnaev wasn’t found earlier because he was hiding 1 block outside the search perimeter. If that’s true, the search never went beyond Walnut Street, 2 blocks from 98 Spruce.
Yet there was an order to search 4 blocks away from that address. 67 Franklin is clearly within that 4-block radius.
And, of course, Franklin Street is well-within the larger Mount Auburn-Arsenal-School Street perimeter. That larger perimeter roughly corresponds to a 20-block area of Watertown, and it’s been stated many times that the search in Watertown involved 20 square blocks.
POSTSCRIPT —
I’m surprised and embarrassed (and pleased) to see that this information is on the last page of the Times article cited above:
“Police officials initially said the boat was in the backyard of a house just outside the perimeter of the area where investigators had conducted door-to-door searches all day. But Commissioner Davis, of the Boston police, said this week that the boat had been inside the perimeter.
‘It was an area that should have been checked,’ he said. ‘We are not sure how long he was in the boat. There was a pool of blood near where the car was dumped about four or five blocks away from the boat.’
I confess that I didn’t read the last page of the article, since the reporters skipped over the manhunt so quickly, I assumed they didn’t have anything more to say on the matter.
It’s also kind of interesting that the Times article may have been the first place this news was printed. A Google search just showed that the quote from the police commissioner has only been printed on 4 other sites, all in the past 14 hours.
This, therefore, is another change that should be added to this article from Salon:
http://www.salon.com/2013/04/25/the_changing_facts_in_the_boston_investigation/
Whereof One Can Speak 🇺🇦 
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