Young black man shot dead by cops for shopping in Wal-Mart

A young black man wanders into Wal-Mart, walking up and down the aisles while chatting on a cell phone. He finds an air rifle left out on a counter top and picks it up. He continues shopping – or doing the Wal-Mart version of window shopping, eventually wandering into the pet department.

There, still holding the rifle – perhaps he’s on his way, eventually, to the checkout counter – and still chatting on the phone, he seems to be looking at merchandise on a dog food rack.

Meanwhile, a vigilante do-gooder calls 911 and reports he sees a man with a rifle loading the weapon in the store and pointing it at people. None of which is corrrect, store surveillance videos and later investigation show.

The cops arrive. They have real weapons that really are loaded. They dash into the store. Later they claim they told  the young man, who was still talking on his cell phone, to drop the gun. Even assuming that they are telling the truth, he clearly doesn’t hear them. His head doesn’t appear to  turn their way. He still continues chatting on the phone. About one second later, they blow him to kingdom come.

Cops, desperate to justify the shooting, bully the dead man’s girlfriend, still in shock from learning of his death, first trying to get her say that her boyfriend had the gun when he arrived at Wal-Mart, then accusing her of drug use, and also threatening her, “You lie to me and you might be on your way to jail.” You can watch a small piece of this disgusting interrogation here:

A grand jury convenes. Need I tell you the outcome? Right. The grand jury decides the police were “justified” in ending the young man’s life. 

If you’re from Ohio, you already know this story. It’s been in local papers, including the Dayton Daily News, and others for weeks. But although the shooting has had some television airtime and some play in The Guardian and The Huffington Post, similar events in Missouri and New York, with bigger media presence, have drowned out the story for most of the rest of the nation.

So here’s another dead body to add to the growing mound of young black corpses, on top of the second corpse within a few miles of Ferguson.

The rage in America is growing. Keep it up, cops. Get just a little more trigger happy and we all might get stuck with a full blown revolution on our hands. The American revolution started with a “justified shooting” by British troops and created a massacre in Boston. Study the history or repeat it, as the police and prosecutors seem hellbent on making sure happens.

And with that said, Merry Christmas. I suppose.

Cross-posted at No More Mister Niceblog

The great Missouri police homicide whitewash

I generally loathe the Nancy Graces and Jeanine Pirros of this world – former prosecutors who begin their own one-sided prosecutions on TV, often before any jury has had an opportunity to begin weighing evidence against accused individuals. The Graces and Pirros stir up public sentiments that may not be justified. They poison the atmosphere, thwarting the likelihood of a fair trial – all for the sake of television ratings and their own enrichment and self aggrandizement.

That said, the investigating of the shooting of young Michael Brown by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, is beginning to stink of coverup. 

I’m not yet critical of the refusal of the local police to release the name and picture of the cop who evidently fired more than once at the unarmed young man, killing him while, according to witnesses, his empty hands were raised in the air and he begged the cop not to shoot.

(On the other hand, while the police concern for the well-being of the cop and his family may be justifiable, why doesn’t the same concern apply to all other persons who are arrested or simply declared “persons of interest” with their photographs and names published – before any jury has established their guilt or innocence, and in some cases before police have even enough evidence for an arrest?)

No details released – unless they favor accused cop

What bugs me in the Ferguson case is the growing appearance of a coverup that only begins with the hiding of the accused police officer’s name and likeness. Although the county police have admitted the autopsy shows Brown died “of gunshot wounds” (what a surprise!) they’re not releasing “any further details.”

Well, actually both Ferguson and St. Louis County police have released details. Those would be details prejudicial against the dead shooting victim. 

The cops claim the victim reached into the police car and tried to grab the officer’s gun. Nice trick of you can do that. He’d have to reach deep and low into the car, across the torso of the police officer, find the gun in a holster  by feeling around for it, and yank the pistol out of a holster fastened to the officer’s right hip. 

That unlikely series of events, had they actually happened, could have been thwarted simply by the police officer raising the window on Michael Brown’s arm, or bending back Brown’s fingers – had Brown’s arm actually been in the car.

And even if Brown had reached into the cop car, why did that justify shooting Brown multiple times? Clearly, the gun was in the possession and under the control of the cop. Otherwise he couldn’t have shot Brown.

How many bullets? And why is that a secret?

Among  the further details that would interest me is the question of how many bullets struck Brown. If it was more than one or two, or if the cop emptied his gun into Brown’s body, that would call for some seriously detailed explaining, don’tcha think?

I’d also like to know whether the nature of the wounds indicated that the unnamed cop was close enough to be struggling with Brown, as the cops are claiming (evidently based on the unnamed officer’s say-so) or whether the young man was some distance away where presumably he would have posed little or no threat.

This matters because at least two witnesses, (see here, here, and here) watching the event from at at least two different vantage points, reported that the shooting victim raised his hands and called out, “I don’t have a gun,” a declaration that the civilian witnesses say was  answered with a hail of bullets.

As of nine a.m. this morning, the cops hadn’t even spoken to one of the witnesses, Dorian Johnson, who was with Brown when he was gunned down.  The Huffington Post reports that Johnson’s attorney, a former St. Louis mayor is declaring, “They didn’t even want to talk to him [Johnson]. They don’t want the facts. What they want is to justify what happened.” The cops claim they can’t find Johnson, which is odd considering that he has appeared in television interviews on several media outlets.

A desperate attempt to blame the victim?

As for more details of the autopsy report, such as how many times Brown was shot, cops say the delay is because they are waiting for blood toxicology reports. Why the delay in details not related to toxicology? Well, it smells like – pardon me, stinks like – the cops, desperate to exonerate one of their own, are hoping and praying that somebody will find traces of alcohol or marijuana, or some pharmaceutical in Brown’s blood. And that meanwhile, news attention will turn to something else and the furor will quiet down.

But even if the toxicologist does find evidence that Brown had alcohol in his blood, that finding would not justify shooting Brown to death. All it could do is help besmirch the victim.

I do hope that Brown family will obtain an outside medical examiner to do an independent autopsy. The stench of police and prosecutorial collusion is so thick, and the “blue wall” of silence, appears to be built so high, I’m not sure even the local medical examiner and toxicology lab can be trusted.

I fear this may turn out to be yet another case where a rogue cop, aided and abetted by the entire police establishment, gets away with murder.