Michael Brown: robbery suspect
The Ferguson police have released this video of a convenience store robbery in which Michael Brown was suspected to have been the perpetrator. It occurred shortly before the fatal shooting.
Dorian Johnson, the young man who was with Brown when he was killed, has admitted “that he and Brown went to the store and ‘that he did take cigarillos,'” according to his lawyer. The video shows a large man, alleged to have been Brown, “forcefully” pushing away a smaller man who had gotten in his way:
Brown’s uncle, Bernard Ewing, questioned whether Wilson [the officer who fired the fatal shot] really believed Brown was a suspect. He noted Johnson’s account that the officer told the two young men to get out of the street and onto the sidewalk, and that Brown had his hands up when he was shot.
“If he’s a robbery suspect, they would have had the lights on,” Ewing said. “If you rob somebody, you would tell them, ‘Get on the ground’ or something, not, ‘Get off the sidewalk.'”
“It still doesn’t justify shooting him when he puts his hands up,” he added. “You still don’t shoot him in the face.”
And that last sentence, by the way, is true—if that’s what actually happened. We really don’t know.
As I’ve thought from the start, the forensic evidence of how Brown was shot (from front or back, close or far) will be telling.
The officer who shot him sustained facial injuries from the scuffle, according to the police department.
If the video of the store robbery was actually of Brown, it could certainly explain why he might have been forcibly resisting arrest when stopped by the police. It doesn’t prove that was the case, of course, but it would provide a motive for his alleged aggressiveness.
All along I thought it was strange that we knew nothing about the young man who was killed. You’d think he was a choir boy. The media dug up nothing about his school record or activities. I smell a rat.
Compare this to the black one that died in Walmart with an airsoft gun.
Why aren’t they highlighting that? Bad optics? Not black enough?
Obviously there are differences between what a citizen had been historically considered as justified in doing while or in the immediate wake of suffering an assault and battery, and what a peace officer is considered as justified in doing during the course of his duties.
And as you say, we still do not know the facts. Just the apparent admissions.
But I think that as with the admissions, and eventually the photographic evidence in the Martin-Zimmerman case, if all the negative evidence mooted as potentially applying to Brown does indeed fall at his feet, there will still be those who will say it was an “assassination”.
The fact is that the Zimmerman case has shown us that people – for whatever reasons, be they cultural or innately psychological – have profoundly differing notions of personal boundaries.
And although some argument can be made for demanding a peace officer resist the impulse to kill someone who has been actively battering him moments before, the more profoundly disturbing, and for me infuriatingly alienating expectation, is that private citizens submit to the same self-destructive and defeating standard.
There is a deep strain of contemptible masochism in some portions of our political population.
As usual the msm narrative is starting to smell of a driven agenda and orchestrated sensationalism. Promoting racial war will not end well for anyone.
DNW, it’s interesting that you mention the Zimmerman case, because what we have seen so far is that Michael Brown is being portrayed as Trayvon Martin 2.0. We even have the same BGI shill on the scene directing the remixed narrative in the person of Ben Crump, who is angling to become Al Sharpton’s successor.
So far we have the not-exhaustive list of similarities.
Both were initially reported as younger than they were.
Neither was a resident of the community where they died.
Both were involved in criminal activity immediately prior to being killed.
Both have had their social media scrubbed clean, ex post facto.
Both have been juvenile records sealed, also ex post facto, to better sell the narrative of future astronaut-in-training.
Both were from broken families, yet the media portrayed the exact opposite.
In both cases, the media sold a false narrative of how long their bodies were unattended (left in the street for hours vs. in the morgue for 3 days).
In both cases, t-shirts had been printed up almost immediately, and the Black Panthers were on the scene within a day,
The list goes on, but I’ll leave it there.
Inkraven: Please stop looking at the Facts in both cases. We both know that Facts to the MSM and race baiters is like sunlight to vampires.
What I find amazing is that there is a certain portion of the population that seems unable to comprehend facts. No matter what the facts are, they will think Travon was innocent; Brown had his character assassinated after he was dead; and OJ was framed.
I simply don’t understand the emotion about these cases unless I view it through the mentality of always a victim mentality. I guess when everyday many more young Blacks are killed by other young Blacks and the attitude is Ho-Hum in the community I simply don’t understand. 🙁
I imagine Darin Johnson would need to testify at any trial if the state choses to prosecute the LEO. If so, I expect Johnson’s eyewitness testamony will have to be a prosecuting attorney’s nightmare upon cross examination by the defense.
A police officer has every right to defend his life against a thug. In doing so, he defends the public as well.
This is the MSM’s Trevon Martin playbook all over again.
The MSM sifts through the available information and picks and chooses what it reports and what it doesn’t report, and how it reports it, to establish the immediate and therefore dominant “narrative” that fits its preconceived leftist ideology.
So, we see pictures of a cherubic Michael Brown that show him as much less of the hulking heavy weight that he apparently was. In the early critical days, no mention is made of his connection of a possible robbery, nor are the pictures of him found on the Internet, flashing gang symbols reported, and it is not mentioned that Mr. Dorian Johnson, the “eyewitness” who was with him at the time of the shooting who is being quoted in stories about a defenseless Brown being gunned down by the cops for no reason, was suspected by the police to be the second man with Brown at the convenience store.
The initial narrative about Brown now established, anything coming after will first have the burden of having to change that initial narrative that has already been fixed in everyone’s minds.
P.S. More news is breaking by the hour.
Take a look at these articles from today, in which it is stated that the lawyer for”eyewitness” Johnson, has admitted that Brown and Johnson robbed the convenience store (http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2014/08/15/swisher-sweets-theft-may-be-key-detail-in-brown-shooting-case/ and http://www.ksdk.com/story/news/local/2014/08/15/attorney-dorian-johnson-michael-brown-robbery/14118769/), plus information about the importance of the cheap “Swisher sweets” cigars that were stolen, and could be hollowed out, filled with pot and then smoked.
The parallels with the Treyvon Martin case are startling.
Brown was 6 ft 4 and 290 lbs. And clearly aggressive, if you’ve seen the security frames. He was no kid – his nickname was Big Mike. A very intimidating character, who walks down the middle of the road like he owned it.
And on the other side, cops who look and act like special forces, but with less restrictive ROE and a lot less training.
A 8mm from a mauser is my solution to dead end problems. It is so sad that it will all come down to blood in the dust. It didn’t have to be this way, but the 50+% never understood the beauty of the Republic.
The Left is essentially playing both sides. Unions with blacks are coordinated with the con artists like Jackosn and Sharpson. Unions with police officers involved, need loyalty from the Nazis in training, or else Democrats don’t get funding.
Coincidentally, Democrats get funded from Jackson and Sharpton too, although only in an ancillary fashion. Those two serve as the Overseers, in effect, collecting the taxes from blacks heightened with the Passion of rhetoric (Jackson rhetoric mind you). This is in return for certain privileges and immunities, which are Not extended to the black commoners being used as cannonfodder to keep the police forces in line.
In the South, if you ever spoke out against Democrat antics in Civil War I or various other issues, you were considered an outsider, an alien, or invader, someone that cannot be trusted. This prevented people from even admitting they were voting for people like Reagan, until Reagan at least. The same psychological conditioning method is used to keep the police and other National Park Ranger do gooders in line. They either sit down and shut up, Obeying Authority. Or they quit. Either way is fine for maintaining control of a Death Star type organizational factor.
One State. One Loyalty. Nothing outside the State. One Death Star. One Life. One Death. One for all, and all for the Messiah.
(re printed comment on the same topic)
The latest buzz on the Internet is that the officer who shot the perp is also BLACK.
This is not the narrative that the MSM wants.
It, this fact, may entirely explain Al Sharpton’s commentary and the President’s quiescence.
Both figure to have been informed of this politically salient fact early on.
The perp also, apparently, beat the Hell out of the arresting officer. His side arm was, apparently, a last resort.
So the narrative is not following the agitprop script, no, not at all.
As for the Black on Black riots: is it any wonder that retail businesses flee the darker part of town?