The recent events in Ferguson Missouri are displaying all of the hallmarks of the race-baiting grievance industry. For background (and in case this is being read well after the fact), an unarmed (black) teenager was shot by a (white) cop. These are the bald facts and the races of the involved are in parentheses because I personally don't think they were the driving force of events. Details are trickling out, the most recent (autopsy) that all shots to the victim were in the front, the wound pattern contradicting the "eye-witness" account of Mr. Brown's friend who was with him at the time.
There is pervasive racism in the USA, like there is everywhere else. Naturally, given the afore-mentioned racism grievance industry, any shooting involving an unarmed black man by anyone other than another black man, the vultures will descend. What follows is what I think the facts will eventually bear out in this case.
Michael Brown may have been 18 years old, but he was a hulking 18-yr-old who was captured on video only minutes before the shooting roughing up a shopkeeper and stealing a box of cigarillos. Petty theft and standard assault so far; definitely not capital crimes. Problem is, the cop who shot him didn't even know about this at the time; the initial stop was apparently for walking in the middle of the road blocking traffic.
Last I checked that type of behavior constitutes Probable Cause for a police stop, being at least a misdemeanor. What happened next is speculative, but based on the limited sample of Brown's (anti-social) behavior available it is probable that he threatened the cop in some fashion, and at 6'4" & 290lbs and not alone, that is a clear and present danger to anyone. The friend (accomplice) claimed that the officer shot Brown in the back and that Brown's hands were up and he was running away, which is disproved by the autopsy results. What is consistent with the physical evidence is that Brown was charging at the officer.
At this point however, most of the damage has been done. Days of rioting and looting have resulted in the National Guard being called out and a curfew imposed. In the process leading up to this there have been many discussions of militarized police forces which is also a problem, albeit not the one which precipitated the violence.
The problem is thugs, specifically black ones. Treyvon Martin was a teenager too, but again a big one with an aggressive attitude. Big guys who are "unarmed" are still capable of deadly or crippling physical violence and I have no doubt that if Zimmerman hadn't shot him Zimmerman would be dead or brain-damaged today. Big thugs of any other complexion are of course just as dangerous, only no-one would riot if Brown were white, even if a black cop shot him.
It comes down in situations like this to "Better tried by 12 than carried by 6", optics be damned. I will yell as loud as anyone about police abusing their power, and there is a lot of that, just not in this specific situation as far as I can tell. Cops in assaulter gear shooting dogs, SWAT teams hitting the wrong houses, reporters and the public being intimidated and arrested for filming police in public areas; these are real problems requiring a vigorous public response. Said response should constitute political action, possibly civil disobedience, but smashing burning and looting is merely opportunistic crime.
This will be investigated, and is being so already. As long as the Attorney General can be kept from interfering (it's happening again) something as close as we can get to the truth will eventually come out.
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