The Death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri

They let us hang out for a couple of months before they came in with night sticks and tear gas. They don't seem interested in letting people in Ferguson stay the night.

xp

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/14/us/missouri-teenager-and-officer-scuffled-before-shooting-chief-says.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=LargeMediaHeadlineSum&module=photo-spot-region®ion=photo-spot&WT.nav=photo-spot&_r=0

The photo accompanying this article is so fucked

(not graphic, just the level of armament)

https://youtube.com/watch?v=xnSVtW49roE

jesus fucking christ @ that nyt picture

APV with a sniper on the roof - better equipment and coverage than soldiers got for large parts of the Iraq War.

one of the vet tweets I saw tonight commented something like "people who don't want to get shot at don't poke their heads out the top of an armored vehicle" on a similar picture

https://storify.com/AthertonKD/veterans-on-ferguson

https://mobile.twitter.com/AntonioFrench/status/499577829420302336/photo/1

(eugh storify lets you create hipster banner photos now?)

this is spectacularly fucked of course; such a mindfuck to see ongoing reporting

from FB

Sandy Mahady
These are thugs running amuck. I can't blame the officers at this point. This is not about a victim but it has turned into a thug Fest with unruly and tyrant behaviors from immoral thugs!!!

pictures look more like an occupying, hostile army than a police force

Is This How A Dystopia Starts?

Who else is marching today?

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bu9-pU8IcAAjiCt.jpg:large

they could just go home

When things are this messed up, it's not that simple, is it? The police presence is the problem, but the complete absence of a police presence does not sound like a solution, either. Unless you just want every single person here - justifiably angry, scared, tired, a few troublemakers, many peaceful folks - to just get it out of their system. Which I don't think is remotely as simple as that scans, either.

xpost If that photo is real and is what it looks like, that is so messed up.

Why the skepticism?

The police BEHAVIOR is the problem! But if they are absolutely unable to do anything right, they should for starters be removed from the equation because they are going to kill more people if this continues.

Longer clip from yesterday

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GO1SKC6dK7o

xpost Not skeptical, per se, but I've never seen one of those laser gun sight dots in anything but the movies. I know they exist, but I have no idea what they look like irl. Let alone pointed at someone's back in the dark.

The police behavior AND presence is a problem at this point. But if they are removed from the equation, I can't imagine this resolving itself quietly. This is what happens when they lose the public's trust.

According to various tweets, Antonio French was pulled out of his parked car and arrested last night. He was just released.

"Illegal assembly" in a parked car.

Bet you've never seen a police officer in full tactical gear perched on an ATV with a sniper rifle before either but you weren't questioning that photo

Man, those reporters and all the people with cameras in the middle of this ...

http://thatsenuff.com/index.php/2014/08/howard-alum-was-shot-in-the-head-in-ferguson-conflicting-reports-on-what-took-place-photovideo/

what the fuck

Was this posted upthread?

http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/whistleblower-in-st-louis-county-police-racial-profiling-probe-alleges/article_3f52ec44-f9ab-5b06-b1f9-868cd63fc9ba.html

Absolutely damning.

http://i.imgur.com/A8mlmOY.jpg

Apparently the Ferguson police tear-gassed an Al Jazeera media crew

Tom Tomorrow cartoon nails it: https://medium.com/the-nib/officer-friendly-28e8d9399bbb

Kids in Gaza and Egypt are currently giving protesters tips via Twitter on how to cope with tear-gas attacks.

Destroy the mind. Destroy the body. But you can never, EVER destroy the heart.

This is easily our country's darkest hour since 9/11. The enemy is everywhere.

I literally want to punch anyone in the fucking face who mentions looting or Molotov cocktails. This is not a proportional response no matter what was going on.

Also I sure see little evidence that this was happening on a wide level

Also what happened to the police being expected to diffuse situations instead of entering them like combatants?

Walking Ebola virus Joe Scarborough says arrested WP reporters should have just yes-sir'ed their asses out of the McDonalds; arrested reporter Wesley Lowery tells him to get bent.

I would invite Joe Scarborough to come down to Ferguson and get out of 30 Rock where he’s sitting sipping his Starbucks, smugly. I would invite him to come down and talk to the residents of Ferguson where I’ve been since Monday afternoon having tear gas and rubber bullets shot at me, having mothers and daughters crying, a 19-year-old boy crying — he had to run and pull his 21-year-old sister out from a cloud of tear gas, thinking she was going to die. I invite Joe Scarborough down here to do some reporting on the ground. Then maybe we can have an educated conversation about what’s happening here.

[...] Let me be clear about this: I have little patience for talking heads. This is too important. This is a community, a community in the United States of America, where are things on fire. This community is on edge. There’s so much happening here, and instead of putting more reporters on the ground we have people like Joe Scarborough running their mouth and have no idea what they’re talking about.

Has anyone given a source for the potential fact going around that there had been no homicides in 2014 in Ferguson until Michael?

https://storify.com/AthertonKD/veterans-on-ferguson

@Cardozorolled
@AdamWeinstein Also, we contained riots in Baghdad next to mosques with less violence than the police are employing.

@13F2PL7
I leveled my weapon twice overseas. Leveled. Not fired. I had legit threats and went through proper EOF. Stop fucking up, Ferguson PD.

i can't stop thinking about the mystery man who started all this -- the man who shot michael brown. does his family know he's the one who did it? the longer we go without knowing that person's name, the worse it gets.
also, who makes the riot gear? who is a shareholder in that company? i can't stop thinking about how horrible a corporate asshole's worldview has to be to want to arm police officers to the tits like this, and to provide the ammunition. it just kinda blows my mind as much as what's going on at a ground level with the riots and tear gas. i'm not reading minute-by-minute news about this bc it will send me into a tailspin and i need to keep it together for the beginning of the semester but man. titanically heavy shit all the way around.

"riots"

Ferguson PD have already released mugshots of the people they arrested for looting on the first night

Meanwhile they're still keeping the name of the officer who shot Michael Brown under wraps

i know
that's what i find completely bonkers because that guy knows who he is and his partners know who he is but no one else knows? who knows?

fucked up

one of the most enraging things, for me, is seeing how much the police officers seem to be revelling in their disgusting role. revelling in the militarisation, in the villainisation, in the sheer control they're able to exert with impunity.

https://twitter.com/mattdpearce/statuses/499763618146050049

this guy's fucking face.

from New Yorker dispatch:

In the same press conference, Belmar released the name of a nineteen-year-old young man who was shot in the head by a police officer during the previous night, who Belmar said brandished a firearm during a protest. The young man remains in critical condition, but, if he survives, he will be charged with felony assault of a police officer. Belmar stated that he saw no reason to doubt the officer’s version of the events.

Please get this kid a lawyer! We have multiple images and id's of Bundy fucks aiming high-powered rifles at agents. Where are their felony assault charges? It is absolutely stupefying.

http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/saw-ferguson

There will be no witnesses to the above altercation.

i saw some images earlier purporting to be from the killer cop's facebook account, including a few tasteful light quips about how he was trying to anonymize it so people wouldn't find him. won't link to it in case there are legal concerns there but searching twitter for 'scooby' should do the trick

Does not naming him immediately necessarily matter? I understand the resistance against the idea that they're closing ranks to protect him but, on the other hand, he wasn't shot by an individual - he was shot by the police. There's a collective responsibility and if that means the response focuses on collective failure, rather than individual malice / incompetence, that's not always a bad thing.