What Really Happened in Ferguson

[MachineGhost]

This movie drama is taken verbatim from Grand Jury eyewitness testimony, many who were black.  Reub was right.  "HANDS UP, DON'T SHOOT!" never happened.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBVNATEyF_g

[jafs]

That whole line of argument seems very flawed to me.

It doesn't matter to me whether or not he said those exact words at all.

I carefully followed that story at the time, and early witnesses (before the autopsy results were public) and physical evidence supported that Brown was surrendering when he was shot/killed.  Witnesses who came forward later are less credible to me, since they can tailor their evidence to match what's already known - there was one who clearly was a friend of the officer.

The officer didn't give a statement until very late in the process, which is unusual, and the grand jury prosecutor ran the grand jury very oddly, as if it were a trial, which it wasn't.

Brown wasn't a saint, and there seems to clearly have been an altercation at the car, but that's not a justification for shooting/killing him later if he's surrendering.

[dualstow]

Well, I'm glad you weren't on the jury, jafs.

I followed the story, too, and wikipedia gives a good summary on the evidence and witness accounts.

The Department of Justice investigation into the shooting determined that witnesses who corroborated Wilson's account were credible while those who incriminated him were not. The witnesses that claimed Brown was surrendering or did not move toward Wilson were not credible; the report stated that their claims were inconsistent with the physical evidence, other witness statements, and in some cases prior statements from the same witness. No witness statements that pointed to Wilson's guilt were determined to be credible. Twenty-four statements were determined to lack any credibility, while eight which were found credible corroborated Wilson's account. Nine did not completely contradict nor corroborate Wilson's account.[50] Several witnesses reported fear of reprisals from the community for providing evidence that corroborated Wilson's account.[50]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Michael_Brown

[Pointedstick]

The fact that the DOJ looked into it and didn't find any wrongdoing is enough for me, since the DOJ in this case had every reason to take the officer to the cleaners; the DOJ at the time being an agency run by a black man, whose boss is a black president, both of whom are very sensitive to police misconduct and eager to insert themselves into local affairs where potential racism is concerned. If even they couldn't find anything that Wilson did wrong--the people most interested in finding it and the most resources to do so--that speaks volumes to me.

Doubting the DOJ's analysis despite their every incentive to conclude the opposite of what they found veers off into conspiracy theory territory to me. Same thing with Trayvon Martin. The DOJ investigated and the results of their investigation supported the shooter, not the dead kid. It's hard to argue that he DOJ is biased or racist when they got involved in the first place because their African-American boss and his African-American boss specifically directed them to suss out whether or not there was any racism or misconduct on the part of the shooters.

[MWKXJ]

Every group in America would seem to need their own "Anti Defamation League" to get ahead of the media's near-endless libels.  As it stands, a tenth or a hundredth of the people who were lied to about Ferguson will ever hear the truth in arrears, the police and this nation's institutions will remain impugned, and Blacks will still feel entitled to resentment.

[jafs]

I stand by my recollection.

Early witnesses and physical evidence (the autopsy) corroborate Brown surrendering when shot.  Also, the legal standard for an indictment is "some evidence of guilt" - that's a lower bar than even a civil trial, and a much lower bar than a criminal trial.  Clearly two early witness statements plus the autopsy results meet that standard.

If I remember right, the officer's statement was inconsistent with autopsy results and physical evidence, and the prosecutor said he didn't put much stake in his testimony.

It's important for people to realize that this wasn't a criminal trial, and that indictments are generally easy to get, given the low legal standards involved, and that this prosecutor acted very oddly in presenting his case.  I'm not saying that Wilson would have been found guilty in a criminal trial, just that there was certainly enough evidence to indict him.

Police officers are rarely indicted/charged, and even more rarely convicted.  And we know from body and dash cams that there are plenty of times that they behave badly.

In order for the DOJ to do something, they have to find a civil rights violation, and that's a high bar.  According to their own investigation, they have to believe that a federal crime occurred, and also that they will be able to prove that beyond reasonable doubt in a trial.

Also, the DOJ found a "pattern or practice of unlawful conduct" by the police department, in routinely violating the constitutional rights of residents, by discriminating against black folks in a separate investigation of the Ferguson police department.

[Pointedstick]

Your recollection of what, though? You weren't there. None of us were. What you are recalling would be the early news reports, not the facts. Those news reports may have been factual, maybe not. Oftentimes they are not in the wake of big stories like this, but maybe they were.

Generally my strategy for determining truth in cases like this is to give heavy weight to any party that reaches any conclusion that their bias means they might ordinarily not reach. For example if you can get the NRA to admit that a form of gun control is effective and acceptable, it probably is. If you can get PETA to admit that some type of animal treatment is humane, then it probably is. If you can get Greenpeace to admit that some technology or process isn't bad for the environment, that it probably isn't. Etc.

And in that same vein, if you can get a justice department run by African-American Democrats to admit that there was no police misconduct in this case (even if they did find misconduct in other cases, as they did), then it was probably a clean shoot.

This isn't an infallible approach of course, but it seems like a saner plan than believing the easiest thing for you to believe. I started out very critical of Darren Wilson when this story first broke, but as more information came out I had to revise my views because the most official and widely examined version of events clashed very notably with the original reports.

Sometimes it really is just a clean shoot where the perp did everything wrong.

[Greg]

Generally my strategy for determining truth in cases like this is to give heavy weight to any party that reaches any conclusion that their bias means they might ordinarily not reach. For example if you can get the NRA to admit that a form of gun control is effective and acceptable, it probably is. If you can get PETA to admit that some type of animal treatment is humane, then it probably is. If you can get Greenpeace to admit that some technology or process isn't bad for the environment, that it probably isn't. Etc.

This is along the lines of this Criterion of Embarrassment that an author wouldn't write something that would embarrass them or discredit them or their ideas. Normally used for assessing historical texts but could be used for this I believe as well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criterion ... arrassment

[Pointedstick]

Also notable:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_ ... #Autopsies

Multiple witnesses saw part or all of the event and have given interviews to the media, testified to the grand jury, and were interviewed by the U.S. Department of Justice. The witness accounts were conflicting on various points.[87][114][115][116][117][118] David A. Klinger, a criminologist at the University of Missouri–St. Louis, said that eyewitness testimony often differs from witness to witness, a phenomenon commonly known as the Rashomon effect.[119]

An Associated Press review of the grand jury found that there were numerous problems in the witness testimony, including statements that were "inconsistent, fabricated, or provably wrong". Several of the witnesses admitted changing their testimony to fit released evidence, or other witness statements.[120]

This is why the initial reports are so often wrong: they're relying entirely on witness stories that in many cases are later revealed to be wrong.

As for the DOJ:

The Department of Justice investigation into the shooting determined that witnesses who corroborated Wilson's account were credible while those who incriminated him were not. The witnesses that claimed Brown was surrendering or did not move toward Wilson were not credible; the report stated that their claims were inconsistent with the physical evidence, other witness statements, and in some cases prior statements from the same witness. No witness statements that pointed to Wilson's guilt were determined to be credible. Twenty-four statements were determined to lack any credibility, while eight which were found credible corroborated Wilson's account.

They weren't just looking for civil rights violations; they were also passing judgement on the facts of the case. Accordingly, they didn't just find that there was no civil rights violation; they also found that Wilson didn't do anything wrong and that it was a clean shoot.

Again, if you still disagree, jafs, you're disagreeing with a DOJ that was run by people with every incentive to throw the book at Wilson.

[Pointedstick]

Indeed.  Quite often, the early news reports of an event are not particularly accurate.

FWIW, my participation in this forum has helped make me more cognizant of the fact that the news media cares more about creating buzz than reporting facts.  Quite frequently, getting the facts takes much more time than creating buzz.

All people (me included) have strong biases around what they are pre-disposed to believe, as well as what they are skeptical about.  However, I think I'm much more aware my own biases than I used to be.

It's the very same thing that Donald Trump has ruthlessly exploited. The media wants content to fill up the 24-hour news cycle. The facts really aren't that important. Sucks, but it's true. Everything they say should be taken with many grains of salt and corroborated with other sources.

I fell into the trap and succumbed to the temptation to feel the righteous outrage that they were peddling in the wake of the Ferguson shooting. Check out some of my old posts in those threads when it was still unfolding, like this one:

I too fail to see the point of destroying your town to register outrage. But the fact of the matter was that this was a riot that the police created when a suspect who had surrendered was murdered. I don't care how it started and I don't care if he was guilty of whatever petty crime he was suspected of; if a suspect has surrendered, the police are not permitted to execute him, as multiple witnesses have indicated. Who can know what will happen when a mob forms? But this was a mob that didn't just spontaneously form out of nothing. The police were directly responsible for instigating it, in my way of looking at things.

But I was wrong. Brown hadn't surrendered. He had attacked Wilson, who was defending himself. The witnesses who said Brown had surrendered were judged by the DOJ to have been not credible, while the forensic evidence and the witness accounts deemed credible by the DOJ supported Wilson's story.

I got caught up in the media frenzy. It was a humbling experience to be so totally wrong about, well, nearly everything once more information from more reputable sources came out. But I changed my view when it was obvious that I was wrong. Can you do the same, Jafs? I know you like you think of yourself as an open-minded kind of person. Consider this an opportunity to test your self-image. What you have said you believe is something that all reasonable information shows is wrong. Can you change your view and demonstrate your open-mindedness? Or will you ignore the evidence and stubbornly cling to a view that is wrong, but pleasingly so?

[dualstow]

Police officers  ... we know from body and dash cams that there are plenty of times that they behave badly.
...
Also, the DOJ found a "pattern or practice of unlawful conduct" by the police department, in routinely violating the constitutional rights of residents, by discriminating against black folks in a separate investigation of the Ferguson police department.

It almost seems like you want to convict Wilson based on bad actors within the police department. What if an African American was on trial for a robbery, and a juror replaced police in your lines above with "black people" instead of focusing on specific evidence relating to the alleged crime?

[curlew]

Police officers  ... we know from body and dash cams that there are plenty of times that they behave badly.
...
Also, the DOJ found a "pattern or practice of unlawful conduct" by the police department, in routinely violating the constitutional rights of residents, by discriminating against black folks in a separate investigation of the Ferguson police department.

It almost seems like you want to convict Wilson based on bad actors within the police department. What if an African American was on trial for a robbery, and a juror replaced police in your lines above with "black people" instead of focusing on specific evidence relating to the alleged crime?

With enough black people on the jury (which wouldn't have been that hard to do in Ferguson, I presume) and a prosecutor as skillful as Johnny Cochran, an indictment of Wilson could very well have been a replay of the O.J. Simpson trial in reverse.

[dualstow]

Every group in America would seem to need their own "Anti Defamation League" to get ahead of the media's near-endless libels. 

They could use something better than Jackson and Sharpton, that's for sure.

[jafs]

Your recollection of what, though? You weren't there. None of us were. What you are recalling would be the early news reports, not the facts. Those news reports may have been factual, maybe not. Oftentimes they are not in the wake of big stories like this, but maybe they were.

Generally my strategy for determining truth in cases like this is to give heavy weight to any party that reaches any conclusion that their bias means they might ordinarily not reach. For example if you can get the NRA to admit that a form of gun control is effective and acceptable, it probably is. If you can get PETA to admit that some type of animal treatment is humane, then it probably is. If you can get Greenpeace to admit that some technology or process isn't bad for the environment, that it probably isn't. Etc.

And in that same vein, if you can get a justice department run by African-American Democrats to admit that there was no police misconduct in this case (even if they did find misconduct in other cases, as they did), then it was probably a clean shoot.

This isn't an infallible approach of course, but it seems like a saner plan than believing the easiest thing for you to believe. I started out very critical of Darren Wilson when this story first broke, but as more information came out I had to revise my views because the most official and widely examined version of events clashed very notably with the original reports.

Sometimes it really is just a clean shoot where the perp did everything wrong.

Of course, I wasn't there.

My recollection is of the two early witness statements and the autopsy results, which were made public.  Taken together, they paint a picture that Brown was surrendering when shot/killed.

It's important for people to understand our system, and how it works.  Indictments are easy to get, given the grand jury structure - a prosecutor has complete control over the information given to them, and the legal standard for indicting is very low.  Generally, a prosecutor will present their best evidence to the grand jury, and ask for an indictment.  Instead of doing that, the prosecutor in this case threw tons of evidence at the grand jury, allowed the officer to testify (not required) even though the prosecutor didn't put much stock in his testimony, etc.

He acted as if this were a criminal trail and he was both the prosecution/defense attorney or something.

Having been a juror, it's completely clear to me that our system is far from ideal in many ways, and that even if everything's done as it's supposed to be done, there can still be wrong outcomes.  But, at the very least, all of the people involved should do what they're supposed to do, ie. prosecutors should prosecute.

[jafs]

Police officers  ... we know from body and dash cams that there are plenty of times that they behave badly.
...
Also, the DOJ found a "pattern or practice of unlawful conduct" by the police department, in routinely violating the constitutional rights of residents, by discriminating against black folks in a separate investigation of the Ferguson police department.

It almost seems like you want to convict Wilson based on bad actors within the police department. What if an African American was on trial for a robbery, and a juror replaced police in your lines above with "black people" instead of focusing on specific evidence relating to the alleged crime?

Not at all - I've said all along that he should have been indicted, that's all.  Whether nor not he would/should have been convicted in a criminal trial is a separate issue.

I just added that part to show that there are and have been plenty of racial issues with the Ferguson PD - it's not like the DOJ gave them a pass.  It looks like they'd reached an agreement to overhaul their system, but the city backed out of it, and the DOJ filed a civil rights lawsuit against them in February.

[Mountaineer]

Your recollection of what, though? You weren't there. None of us were. What you are recalling would be the early news reports, not the facts. Those news reports may have been factual, maybe not. Oftentimes they are not in the wake of big stories like this, but maybe they were.
......
Sometimes it really is just a clean shoot where the perp did everything wrong.

Indeed.  Quite often, the early news reports of an event are not particularly accurate.

FWIW, my participation in this forum has helped make me more cognizant of the fact that the news media cares more about creating buzz than reporting facts.  Quite frequently, getting the facts takes much more time than creating buzz.

All people (me included) have strong biases around what they are pre-disposed to believe, as well as what they are skeptical about.  However, I think I'm much more aware my own biases than I used to be.

Indeed + 1

FWIW, I now just feel sad when I see intelligent people, for whatever reason, stick to some sort of party line instead of independently trying to discover the facts of a case based on all the evidence and not just going along with the talking heads of radio/TV.  All of us are gullible in some fashion; I guess the "I have blinders on and I don't even realize it" factor is a stronger influence than we realize.  I do agree with you on the benefits of this forum - it has helped me to be more objective - not perfect by a long shot, but at least the trend line is in a favorable direction. 

... Mountaineer

[dualstow]

I just added that part to show that there are and have been plenty of racial issues with the Ferguson PD

Definitely.
Sorry, yes, indicted not convicted.

[MachineGhost]

This is along the lines of this Criterion of Embarrassment that an author wouldn't write something that would embarrass them or discredit them or their ideas. Normally used for assessing historical texts but could be used for this I believe as well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criterion ... arrassment

The problem with this is under game theory you can exploit people's cognitive biases via propaganda to convince them to believe in lies, especially a big lie.  The prototypical "Black Lives Matter" movement would say and do anything they can to malign the pigs.