re: #2 palomino

You’re conveniently forgetting the role of the prosecutor here. The no bill grand jury decision was a result of being guided by a prosecutor who didn’t really want a grand jury indictment in the first place. By introducing so much exculpatory evidence at a grand jury proceeding, he turned the process upside down. That would typically be the job of the defense attorney at trail. Conversely, if the prosecutor found no legitimate reason to even pursue an indictment, he should have explained that, rather than going through a sham grand jury proceeding.

You’re right: some of us may have overreacted. We may have lost sight of the details here. Probably because we’ve seen this movie so many times before—and since—Brown’s death.

But there’s a much larger issue you’re not addressing—the use of deadly force by police against unarmed people. If you’re not pissed off about the number of (primarily minority) unarmed people being shot by our police officers, you’re either not paying attention or you’ve just got a very different sense of what constitutes justice, morality, and equal protection.

There are other shootings that have been in the news. Take, for example, the one in Cleveland, where this kid was shot and he hadn’t done anything at all—-that’s a lot different from the Ferguson case.

The 911 dispatcher left out crucial detail when relaying the account of the original caller. Caller said the kid was brandishing what was either a real gun or a toy gun—-she couldn’t be sure. Dispatcher told the responding officers that she had said it was a gun. That’s inexcusable.

Then, the responding officers get there, and they don’t spend any time at all sizing things up. Just—-bang. Again, inexcusable. And finally, we learn that the cop who shot the kid had a record at another department that got him booted for bad judgment and a tendency to overreact. To put it nicely.

Three inexcusable failures or wrong actions in one story. Wow! But why should I bring it up? You know about it, I know about it, and we are surely agreed on the matter. Plus, it’s off topic.

If the new topic is instances of police shooting and killing people when the evidence clearly shows they had no excuse to have done so, then yeah, I deplore that. There are too many such stories, and police departments need to be using more body cameras, for starters. As I have said before.

I wouldn’t want to be misquoted as having said they should kill more whites, but yes, the victims are too often minorities. The cure is going to be a slow one, though. Cameras can be expensive. Cultural resistance needs to be turned around. And in all of this, a meticulous respect for the truth will be essential. Which brings us back to where we came in.