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Mike Brown Open Thread
I will have a post on the Mike Brown convenience store surveillance footage up later today (Fri.) or tomorrow (Sat.) soon. (I’m workin’ on it. You know how these things go… stuff just keeps getting deeper…)
(fyi: the G3 clip above is slightly edited to fit the situation.)
Categories: Uncategorized
whonoze 
Thanks for the new thread, Perfesser whonoze! And this is totally off-topic, but—
Mu-ah-hah-hah! (Rubs hands together with maniacal glee.) I’ll be recording “The PTA Disbands,” among others.
For those who want to see/record specific “The Simpsons” episodes, here’s a schedule:
uproxx dot com
According to Mark Mobley at NPR, August 28th will be an especially “high-brow” day in the marathon.
I have to say that I think the aggregate ‘knowledge base’ of the Simpsons writing staff is both wide and deep.
I recall reading an interview with them, and the interviewer asked whether they were all like Bart when they were children.
“Oh no,” they said, “We were all like Lisa.”
I suspect the truth is that most of them were some kind of terrifying hybrid of the two.
Wow, just getting caught up a bit on the Ferguson, MO situation, courtesy of the contributors at Xena’s blackbutterfly7 wordpress ):
Apparently the National Guard is being withdrawn because things have become calmer, and a grand jury has been convened. Those are good things, but this, courtesy of “towerflower” is disturbing (boldface font my edit for emphasis):
blackbutterly7 at wordpress
This from Xena in response is interesting:
Did LE in St. Louis really think they would get away with something like this? Probably.
Hat tip to “towerflower” for the link to a copy of the ‘bare-bones’ incident report LE filed for Brown’s homicide:
Alex Fitzpatrick at scribd
At FLLB the other day, Prof. Fred speculated that Wilson’s blank report indicates he’s invoked the Fifth on advice of council, though a more recent post seems to speculate he might not have…
MO apparently does not have a ‘Sunshine Law’, so the prosecutors would seem to have no obligation to disclose anything publicly before it’s introduced in court, and discovery materials not used in court will probably never be disclosed.
Does anyone know if Wilson has, in fact, retained council? I would assume he has access to attorneys through the police union, but I doubt they would handle a trial…
@ whonoze,
Yeah, it’ll be a different case from the Trayvon Martin homicide if only because of the ‘Sunshine’ factor (well, actually the ways in which it differs are numerous).
No idea whether Wilson has retained council, but I get a sick, familiar feeling when I read that there has been a defense fund established in his name with multiple thousands of dollars donated already and some of it by obvious hate-mongers.
GZ might be doing a secret dance of relief if not glee because Wilson has diverted some negative attention from the former.
Now all Wilson has to do is prove himself to be an even bigger asshat than GZ…
MSM reporting now that Wilson has a lawyer. See the WashPost story on his BG. It’s lengthy considering no one close to him will go on record. He came to ferguson from a department so racially insensitive and troubled, it was disbanded.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/darren-wilsons-first-job-was-on-a-troubled-police-force-disbanded-by-authorities/2014/08/23/1ac796f0-2a45-11e4-8593-da634b334390_story.html?wpmk=MK0000203
First of a dozen annotated photos. Be sure to read the notes, and stop when you get to a picture of an old bicycle. It’s my initial educated guess that Brown ran 125-130 feet way from the driver’s window of Wilson’s SUV, and that the SUV first passed the teens headed towards the commercial strip while they walked away from it to the SE, the same direction they eventually ran for their lives under fire. Johnson survived, Brown did not. Johnson found cover behind a commuter’s white car. Brown was a target in the open, and when he stopped it seems likely that Wilson continued closing in, firing.
Orange cones were used by investigators to mark places where evidence was found. Other than Brown’s hat, which seems to have been dropped near the SUV I’d guess the rest mark shell casings. Those of you who know me, know I can get some good guesses and ask some good questions from looking at photos and video. I’d like to keep going with this. I was very surprised when I pieced this together to see how FAR the foot chase went.
What I need help with to continue this line of inquiry is shots of the three cones that do not have stripes on them in local news reports and in eyewitness cell phone videos. I’m curious if there are any press stills of the area as well, as I have not seen any. Newspapers don’t send photographers out much anymore.
I’m still trying to make a good guess at the distance from the body of Micheal Brown to where off Wilson fired his fatal shot(s) from. (It wasn’t three feet, I can tell that.)
big sigh. here we go again.
here is a link to the flickr photo album, aka Set i am talking about. 12 photos. You have to enlarge and then click on a cartoon balloon icon to see the very vital notes.
@willisnewton,
Dunno if you’re still looking for photos of the non-striped cones, but here is one (from a twitter resource who lived right there at the homicide scene):
TheePharoah at twitter
Thanks WS. that cone is beyond where the body lay. (behind the screen) Not sure what would have been there, perhaps something that was in the teen’s hand?
(like maybe his cell phone? sad to think about TM’s)
But keep up the good work. somewhere is a photo that we can measure from.
I recall seeing this tweet early on, but before I knew what the cones were there for.
@ willisnewton,
An LA Times piece about TheePharoah’s tweets has the caveat that his tweet times may be in Pacific Time rather than in St. Louis time (CT), and that does appear to be true.
It’s something I noticed back during the GZ homicide trial: even locals tweeting from the court room had PT time stamps on their tweets.
I suspect that Pacific Time is a twitter ‘default’ because it’s an SMS-based environment. (Kinda like all the phone text message time stamps released in the GZ homicide trial.)
When TheePharoah tweets that he’s just seen somebody killed, the time stamp is “10:03 AM,” (12:03 CT) and when he tweets his first picture of the homicide scene, the time is “10:05 AM” (12:05 CT?’).
So when he tweets that photo with the LEO in the foreground, and the orange safety privacy screen around Brown’s body, and an LE SUV in the background at “12:14 PM” (14:14 CT), Brown had already been dead for over two hours, and perhaps some of the LE SUVs had already departed.
The one LE SUV in the left-hand background seems to be a little too neatly parked perpendicular to the road sides to be the one Wilson was driving (and there’s no yellow tape on it).
There are some potentially ‘nice’ stills to be had from witness Piaget Crenshaw’s video:
CNN on YouTube
Anyway, if I come across any more unique pictures of the homicide scene, I’ll post the links.
Mike Brown’s funeral starts at 11 EST.
@willisnewton,
This is a site that seems to have a lot of potentially good links, including the one for TheePharoah’s photo:
occupycorporatism dot com
@ willisnewton,
I don’t know if you’ve already done this, but a half-way decent way of estimating the distance might be using one of the photos you already have in your collection:
Wilson’s SUV and the cone markers at flickr
The three un-striped cones in the background of the picture have two Ferguson Police Department SUVs parked end-to-end in front of them on the right-hand side in the foreground.
I don’t know what exact year/model they are, but FPD SUVs all seem to be Chevy Tahoes, and wikipedia has the specs. If they’re GMT800’s (Chevrolet Tahoe Police Package), that apparently would be somewhere between 196.9 – 198.9 inches apiece.
Getting back to sports analogies, there was an altercation at the plate and Brown was killed after running over the pitcher’s mound to second base, which is 127 feet. What’s unclear is where Wilson ran to. It seems he passed the mound for sure. The male eyewitness who observed out a window and then at his door, and missed the hands up moment says it was 20-25 feet. (Bryant? ) can;t recall his name at this late hour.
Per Stutzman at the Orlando Sentinel:
OS 20140820
GZ’s the ‘real’ GZ twitter account has been silent since Friday, August 1st, 2014 when he tweeted alluding to ‘work’ starting the following Monday.
window dressing. If they can’t get a conclusion on the data they have by now, they never will.
GZ lied to Sanford police and pursued the teen with his car in a stalking manner. We proved it long ago.
@ willisnewton,
You could be right. It shouldn’t be, but the TM homicide is a very divisive political issue, and I tend to agree with those who think that we probably won’t hear anything from the feds before the November mid-term elections.
They know that no matter what their final, official opinion will be, millions will be unhappy with it.
Well, I certainly think so, but there seems to be an exasperatingly large number of people who don’t agree.
How many of them sincerely think it was justifiable self-defense is probably another matter.
I do wonder how many of GZ’s public supporters privately curse him for being such a screw-up.
I heard an explanation for why Pres. So mellow in his comments and it may explain why DOJ may put off any investigation into tubs.
Kansas and North Carolina both have a tight run in November elections. If they elect a conservative, it would be devastating so laying low to not upset the apple cart.
Hat tip to Xena and her blackbutterfly7 wordpress blog for alerting me to the fact that one of the jurors in the Ted Wafer homicide trial spoke to the press about their decision:
Detroit Free Press 20140825
But here was an important difference in prosecution strategy in the Wafer trial as opposed to the GZ trial:
It kinda grinds my guts to think that the prosecution team in the GZ homicide case probably knew this, and some of them might have been cynically laughing behind the scenes at the ignorant laity who didn’t realize that they were deliberately throwing the case.
@willisnewton,
I’m going to post a series of links to photos, one per post so as not to risk getting hung up in moderation.
This first one shows the homicide site after Brown’s body was removed. I post this one because it clearly shows the nearest building number, 2943, unlike the police incident report which lists 2947 Canfield Drive (technically the same building, but Brown’s body was closer to the 2943 end):
riverfronttimes dot com
Here’s a link to floorplans for Canfield Green Apartments, which could be useful in measurements:
Canfield Greens Floorplans
I’m going to have to give up on trying to post links to the Missouri Torch because wordpress just doesn’t seem to ‘like’ it.
Here’s one from CNN showing an LEO getting ready to put a cover over Brown’s body (the image of the body itself is deliberately obscured by CNN):
CNN
Some potentially interesting stills from KPLR:
KPLR dot com
Hat tip to “shannoninmiami” at the blackbutterfly7 wordpress blog for the link to alleged audio of the Brown shooting:
YouTube 20140825
What kind of firearm was Darren Wilson packing that could fire that many bullets in such rapid succession (10-11?!)?
Edward Snowden quote: ” technology is the great equalizer”.
By the video talk picking up the 11 shots per Don Wilson at CNN, this is going to change some opinions. I mean whether he did or did not shoplift cigars, the officer virtually opened unlimited fire on an unarmed citizen.
The FBI has interviewed the person who initially didn’t know what his laptop was picking up. And we all know CNN is not partial to AA.
When Tray was shot, this technology wasn’t so available. In two years, most people own smart phones and people record almost everything.
I am so sad to hear this audio. Also, eternally grateful to you brainiacs for your work.
I guess you’ll know it was 1.5 hrs. before a detective came to the scene and Mike Brown’s corpse was left in the sun, while school was out uncovered for 4.5 hours.
One last thing, the Jasper PD was disbanded due to multiple complaints in 2011. Two were subsequently re-hired. One, Darren Wilson was not but was hired in Ferguson PD. So why the Ferguson put out 6 years with us and no complaints doesn’t add up.
@ 2dogsonly,
Yeah, I think even the Ferguson PD chief expressed dismay over how long Brown’s body was left in the street.
I think the town name in question was actually Jennings, and I think that it was ultimately clarified that Wilson had spent four years with Ferguson PD, and two with ‘another’ PD (presumably Jennings).
When they said “no complaints,” that seems quite possible. That is to say, there were no official, recorded complaints specifically about Wilson.
A long time ago in a far-off galaxy, military personnel used to like to joke about ‘good conduct’ medals, describing them as “[x] years of undetected crime” medals.
I guess I was asking how Ferguson could list 4 years with them but he was fired from another PD which was disbanded in 2011. Just math is off.
@2dogsonly,
Eh, good catch. I must be having one of my own ‘math-challenged’ days. };-)
Here’s a NYT piece on Wilson (apropos of nothing, note the Robles byline by):
NYT 20140825
If Wilson’s first cop gig only started in June 2009, that doesn’t add up to a total of six years. I dunno, I must need way more coffee…
Thank you, WS for posting this just a few comments
Robles article cited above is a big deal. Read from below pretty house pix about the major heavy duty con his mother was. Stole credit cards from neighbors, made key to their home, entered and had their calls forwarded to her (Wilson’s mother). sat across from neighbor who was relaying how the bank had put a hold on her credit cards due to ID theft, saying how terrible that was. Wilson’s mother died at 35 of ” unknown causes” probably drugs. And he was moved around.
Neighbor saw DW in police uniform and wondered how he could become a cop with knowing his mother’s background. He, DW, went thru a ” nasty divorce” one year ago.
Children do not survive what he went thru as first a child and then past around from relative to relative, without psychological issues. Unless, someone really steps up to care and no one has said this. Just general bland statements…I mean most serial killers’s neighbors say ” oh, he was so quiet , never would have suspected him of these types of acts”.
Finally, Frances Robles is with NYT and she was wonderful when she reported on Tray’s case. She moved from Miami Herald to NYT and OS hired Rene Sultzman to report. Not ever the same type of reporting, IMHO.
@ willisnewton,
Do you have a rough sketch of the homicide scene, showing approximately where Brown’s body and Wilson’s SUV were?
I’m still trying to dig up photos for you, preferably ones taken from different angles, but I’m afraid that I’m not totally sure of what it is you’re looking for.
Here is a photo of the homicide scene before Brown’s body was covered (sensitive viewers beware):
The Gateway Pundit
BTW, I try to post images like these, regardless of source, not to shock or dismay, but because they show cracks in pavement or other details that could be useful in making measurements.
Admiring his prey?
http://www.occupycorporatism.com/home/exclusive-michael-brown-shooting-witness-releases-photo-scene/#comments
Yeah, thanks, saw that one. It’s a pity it’s so blurry, as I’d still like to know what kind of firearm Wilson used.
I haven’t found anything conclusive yet, but I found this:
USAToday 20140813
The thing is, whatever Wilson was packing, it would seem like it had to have been something with a capacity of 10-11 cartridges if that audio was accurate. Then again, there was a gap in the shots. Could Wilson have reloaded?? Eh, I need to stop looking at this case for a bit…
that chilling and frightening shot of Wilson, pistol in hand over the body of the unarmed teen shows what I call the round “hot tub sized” hedge behind him that is a good enough landmark to place the body with. Looks like “thee Pharoah” is underneath the wooden staircase at the nearby apartment seen in the other photo perhaps of the later aftermath when a large cone with a singe stripe sits on the bloodstain as residents and community members look on in shock and horror.
The location of cones after the police tape came down and the body was taken from the scene indicate nothing important to the concept of where evidence was tagged. But every photo that shows the scene should be examined. Thanks for the efforts! It’s clear to me that whatever happened tho seas not an altercation that happened all in one instant. Many decisions were made by all parties over a span of time that was longer than you might think.
@ willisnewton,
I was thinking the one taken of Brown’s uncovered body from the other side of the street was good, because you see the regular ‘cracks’ (segments) in the curb, and can draw perspective lines using them.
Poor guy, his father was right. (“My dad told me i would have to step up one day.. just never knew it would be at 19.”) Like it or no, he’s going to have to come forward.
So in that picture with the three cones, and two SUVs on the right, and one on the left: do you feel certain that the SUV on the left is the one that Wilson was driving?
There was a substantial gap from when Wilson fired his gun, and when he finally called it in. While there’s much that the Ferguson PD came out with that I don’t think we can’t trust, I think we can trust that the shots were fired around 12:02, because of TheePharoah’s tweeted picture at 12:05.
2dogsonly,
Yeah, I’d read various pieces about the momma. No doubt that she was a ‘prize.’ It actually made me feel a little sorry for Wilson.
I have to think that while prospective LE’s have to undergo background investigation, they’d take into account that Wilson himself was a minor when his mother did all this stuff. Also, no indication that he was an accomplice, other than a silent witness.
LE is notorious for its divorce rate.
Nope, that’s right. The question is, what effects did it have on Wilson?
Per the WaPo piece, his step-father Tyler Harris became his guardian after his mother’s death, but that ended at age 18. That’s a fairly tender age in this country to be completely on one’s own.
At this point, I’m trying to resist completely vilifying Wilson. He isn’t looking too good right now, but I think some of that is because of spin put out by others. Like that business about a fractured eye-socket (not so much).
I get the impression that Robles thought herself well out of it when she left the Miami Herald. I find Stutzman interesting because her coverage of the Martin homicide seemed to ‘waver’ over time.
To understand his childhood horror is to understand his ability to shoot 11 bullets into an unarmed AA. Not to excuse him but to see abuse during formative years results in a very angry adult. Couple that with the normal male testerone and gun and you have a very bad cop. The end result is a sociopath with no empathy for anyone. No feelings. We have seen it in tubs. It only took 2 mths of being NW for him to feel quite comportable in hunting down and murdering an innocent teen.
Hitler was horribly abused as a child but this doesn’t excuse his extermination of Jews.
The light I see for the Brown family and society is the advanced in smart phones. And, of course, twitter. News is no longer obtained thru tv. Why DW did not realize he was being filmed is un fathomable.
The way this was announced by everyone from Chief on down was almost parody. For the mayor to say, I think 3 days later, Ferguson has no race issue, dear god.
The introduction by military tanks and the 1013 program, which I had never read about , made the world focus in a way they may not have.
You can’t sweep things under the rug, as we saw in Tray’s case. Virtually, everyone is filming everything to post on you tube. If I were a believer, I would say smart phones are the eyes of the moon and stars.
2dogsonly,
Maybe.
It can. The thing is, we know his mother was a grifter, but we don’t know how she actually treated her son.
For all we know, when she wasn’t busy bilking/burgling her neighbors, she might have been baking cookies.
And actually, I was going out on a limb describing Wilson as a “silent witness.”
He might not have had too much of an inkling what she was doing to the neighbors. On the other hand, maybe he did, and maybe he finally ‘turned’ on her.
I’m not ready to go there just yet.
Uh oh, I feel “Simpsons” quotes coming on:
“Homer the Vigilante” at snpp dot com
This some twenty years ago. ‘Prescient,’ huh?
Oh, BTW, snpp dot com was totally right about the Professor Frink quote. I shoulda known…
Not to mention millions of others.
Maybe he did. Then again, maybe he didn’t. Not everybody is so consciously connected to the cyberworld.
Yah, can you say “denial?”
I’m not totally at ease with that myself. I have serious privacy concerns, and it goes way beyond the ‘celebrity’ concept that when you’re in public you should comport yourself as though everybody is watching.
I found that “Why Ferguson Matters to Asian Americans” piece very interesting. I might not be Korean, but I got me some “han” issues.
When did officer friendly become warrior cop. Re logged
http://deafinprison.wordpress.com/2014/08/24/when-officer-friendly-becomes-delta-force/?blogsub=confirmed#blog_subscription-2
You know that fake eye X-Ray was put out by hoff. Erased textbook thingy. There’s a blog ” little green eggs” , a conservative blog intent on keeping other conservative blogs honest debunked it side by side, showing they are exact with numbers, etc. But Wilson’s “X-ray” has textbook copyright missing. All MSM retracted except fox and they may have followed suit also.
Is this what you were talking about?:
LIttle Green Footballs
Frankly, I didn’t even know who Jim Hoft was, but “little green” rang a bell, so I was able to find it. Yeah, Hoft seems like a real ‘prize.’
You need to be a certain height to ride some rides at theme parks but no ht/wt limit to shoot a semi at a gun range? Now the kid has to live w/ that horrible memory and the instructor’s loved ones live w/o him.
America we have a problem. NRA is silent, hoping this will just fade away.
Re blogged I meant good article
@ 2dogsonly,
To some extent, I think the problem of the civilian police force getting too ‘gung-ho’ is a consequence of changing gender roles.
Back in the 1950’s, boys were still being brought up to be “large and in charge.” That started changing in the 1960’s, and I suspect a lot of modern men feel insecure about who they are (or are supposed to be).
That’s not the only problem, but I think it’s one of them.
Cities using military equipment per grants from operation 2013 isn’t gender issue but rather end of Iraq , surplus military equipment, grants given to cities to take it and BOOM. Equipment given cities desperate to keep lights on due to recession, fear engendered to entice cities to please take, grants given to cities to take but no grants on training how to use.
Goes back further to war on drugs, etc. But there was a huge push in 2005 at end of Iraq war. This was a huge surprise for the general public.
Are we in Baghdad or USA?
These tanks will tear up streets and , of course, there is no money for infrastructure.
Those jungle camouflage uniforms worn by Ferguson is disguising police from what? If they really wanted to camouflage themselves in a small poor city, they would have worn fatigues that looked like Walmart, dollar stores. 😉
2dogsonly,
Like I said, gender issues isn’t the only problem, but I still think it’s one of them. I think modern men have a ‘macho tooth’ that needs satisfying.
Hey, don’t even get me started on that ‘war.’ I think the secret squirrel brigade has been using that ‘war’ to fund black programs. And no, I don’t mean African-American programs.
Did it end in 2005? We didn’t finish pulling our troops out until 2011.
.
I mentioned back in the last thread how chilled I was to see one of those armored SUVs (with a sniper up on top) in my neighborhood after a report of an armed robber in the vicinity.
It piqued my curiosity to follow up and try to find out more about the incident, and with a little digging, I was able not only to pinpoint the exact date (it was in 2007, but I’m not going to get more specific than that here), but other particulars about the incident.
The calculated age of the ‘perp’ made me sad. He can’t have been more than 18 at the time. I even wondered, based on the description, whether I hadn’t seen him around the neighborhood on occasion.
The firearm turned out to be something not popular since the 1980s, but it had a high-capacity magazine. Potentially, a lot of people could have been hurt had the robber actually fired it. Perhaps that’s why the local police broke out the ‘heavy artillery.’ Then again, maybe they broke it out because they needed to ‘justify’ its acquisition.
Was it worth it, son? Because you didn’t get more than a couple hundred bucks, and they sent you up for a long, long time.
Well, I gotta get busy in the real world. TTFN.
Typo …Correction operation 2013 should read operation 1013. Grant offered to cities in 2015 due to ending of Iraq war and military wattles w/ surplus military quip met.
Well. The audio of bullets is now being played on my city local news.
Technology is great equalizer ( Snowden) and man has it moved fast since 2012. Are you on twitter. I’m @puffytuffy if you want to follow me.
The difference between what I saw on twitter in 2012 and now is amazing. And the blogs.
It is really the information superhighway and everyone collaborates on almost every subject.
Xena is on twitter too. @xena butterfly, tower-flower, @bcc.list and then some really quick, smart people.
If you need help, I’ll be glad to help. I’m not nearly as knowledgeable on how to as younger folks who have virtually grown up w/ social media.
2dogonly,
Nope.
Thanks, but I don’t think a 140 character medium and I would ‘get along,’ as terse as I can be at times. };-)
If you’re thinking that I’m ‘lonely’ over here on the whonoze blog, know that I am a bit of a loner, although nowhere near to the same degree as this guy:
GQ dot com September 2014
John Oliviers you tube channel..this one is on ferguson.
He is able to explain difficult issues simply with just the right amount of humor.
It’s free too. He even explains net neutrality and other complex usually boring issues.
Sweetheart!:
KSDK 20140826
Very sweet story. Big thanks!
And you don’t have to post at twitter ever. Just sign up and choose who to follow in any area, sports, politics, celebrities, authors, newspapers, funny, animals, how to’s. Well, you get the pix.
Never have to type one character.
@ 2dogsonly,
Thanks, but I can read tweets now without getting (yet another) account. 🙂
Shots picked up by man on his laptop. He’s been interviewed by FBI already and his lawyer
Oh ‘nice.’ A nine-year-old accidentally kills her instructor while firing an Uzi in automatic mode:
nj dot com 20140827
The article does point out a number of things that the instructor did wrong, but I’m getting pretty tight-jawed over analogies between firearms and things that aren’t primarily weapons.
@ 2dogsonly,
Not that I agree with Dan Roberts about the advisability of letting nine-year-olds operate a firearm like that, but he did make some good points about what the deceased instructor did wrong that had nothing to do with the age of the student.
Yup, that little girl has to live with that memory. It wasn’t her fault; she’s a little kid, but she was surrounded by adults who showed poor judgment (the instructor and her parents).
The NRA will probably take the same stance as Roberts.
I’m beginning to wonder if ‘gun love’ isn’t just another form of addiction.
@ willisnewton,
In this still from Tiffany Mitchell’s video, do you think the FPD SUV seen is the one Wilson was driving?:
Still from Mitchell’s video, by way of KMOV, CNN, and Daily Mail
We have not only cracks in the curb, but that pile of tree limbs for reference.
@ willisnewton,
Scratch this question, because if the left-hand SUV in the ‘three cones’ picture is Wilson’s, then the one in the still from Mitchell’s video can’t be. I still have to get a basic understanding of what/who was where fixed in my mind.
If I’m interpreting that ‘three cones’ photo correctly, Wilson’s SUV was faced away from Brown’s body. That would jibe with Johnson’s assertion that Wilson backed up.
So Wilson was on Canfield Drive, headed towards Glen Owen Drive (he’d turned off of West Florissant Avenue), backed up, and the final position of Wilson’s SUV was north-west of Brown’s body. Or do I have that all turned around?
Here’s a link to a video by Tommy Sotomayor. I don’t agree with all of Sotomayor’s opinions (especially not the one about going to cops’ neighborhoods and creating mayhem), but towards the beginning of his piece, he put together a montage of on-scene videos from a variety of sources that could yield some useful stills:
TNN Raw Uncut
Kudos to “towerflower” at the blackbutterfly7 wordpress blog for this information:
blackbutterfly7
No indeed. All information and insights are appreciated.
Hallelujah, sister. Tell it.
I suspect that many LEOs, and gun ‘rights’ advocates are opposed to this because they are mere mortals. Routine toxicology on all principals involved in a homicide might prove to be ‘uncomfortably’ revealing.
Hmmm, I decided to put together a brief timeline of events, using the released incident report,s and twitter (understanding that the times in question are when somebody typed something and hit return). So far, I’ve got this (very) rough draft:
20140809:11:51:57 Customer at Ferguson Market calls 911.
20140809:12:00:?? Wilson leaves site of 2491 St. Cyr Rd. vicinity incident.
20140809:12:01:50 Dispatcher opens incident for homicide.
20140809:12:03:?? Canfield Green resident TheePharoah tweets that he saw it.
20140809:12:04:55 EMS Contacted(?)
20140809:12:05:?? TheePharoaoh tweets picture of homicide scene.
20140809:14:14:33 EMS staging until further notice.
20140809:12:16:23 Dellwood officer reported to be on scene
20140809:12:43:?? Dispatch records homicide incident.
20140809:14:30:30 [A] ride has been notified.to
Then I decided to take a look at the route(s) from the vicinity of the St. Cyr Road child incident (it looks like the location used in the report was a cell tower) to the address used for the homicide (2947 Canfield Drive), and it started to look like Maine (you can’t get there from here):
Google Maps
Well, I messed that up (as I suspected I would). Here’s a revision:
20140809:11:51:57 Customer at Ferguson Market & Liquor calls 911.
20140809:12:00:?? Wilson leaves site of 2491 St. Cyr Rd. vicinity incident.
20140809:12:01:50 Dispatcher opens incident for homicide.
20140809:12:03:?? Local TheePharoah tweets that he witnessed the homicide.
20140809:12:04:55 EMS contacted.
20140809:12:05:?? TheePharoah tweets picture of homicide scene.
20140809:12:16:23 Dellwood officer reported to be on scene
20140809:12:43:?? Dispatch records homicide incident.
20140809:14:14:33 EMS staging until further notice.
20140809:14:30:30 [A] ride has been notified.
Anybody wants to add/revise, here’s the major source I used (with a few entries from the bare-bones homicide incident report, and TheePharoah’s twitter feed):
sbondiolihp’s copy of 16 page PDF at scribd
Thanks to “peni4yothot” at the blackbutterfly7 wordpress blog for this potentially crucial bit of information about the Brown homicide:
blackbutterfly7 20140829
Of course, Wilson fired numerous shots, but we now have as close to a time of death for Brown as we’re likely to get: 12:02:14 CST.
I’m not sure what that 12:01:50 time from the 16 page PDF incidents mash-up represents, so for now I’m going to let the ‘verified’ timeline reflect this:
20140809:12:02:14 Wilson fatally shoots Brown.
20140809:12:03:?? TheePharoah tweets that he witnessed the homicide.
20140809:12:05:?? TheePharoah tweets picture of homicide scene.
I’d like to know more about that ‘sick child’ incident in the St. Cyr Road vicinity.
For instance, exactly where it was, and exactly when did Wilson leave, because right now it looks like it would have been pretty difficult for him to have gotten from that location to Canfield Drive in time for the events at the latter if he did leave the former at high noon.
OK, Daily Mail (among others) reports that 12:02:14 is the time that audio was created:
Daily Mail 20140829
That’s a bit (but not too much) different from it being the time of the gunshots.
If I’ve heard the entire audio, the gunshots start almost immediately, so I suppose we could say 12:02:15.
The statement from Glide is a little ambiguous: “each message is simultaneously recorded and transmitted, so the exact time can be verified to the second. In this case, the video in question was created at 12:02:14 PM (CDT) on Saturday, August 9th.”
It’s not clear what constitutes a ‘message’ or ‘the video in question’ and what defines a ‘creation time’. The released clip is about 7 seconds long, and is obviously part of a conversation that had begun earlier and continued on after the in and out points of the clip. A file might be ‘created’ when the recording starts, or when it ends (only then being a complete file defined). The recording may be one continuous file, or a linked series of sub-files of fixed size (each sub-file with it’s own creation time). Of course, Glide knows how its technology works, and given the markers of file as recorded by the gentleman’s device, they could explain how to pinpoint the beginnings of the shots to the second. However, the company may not have been given all the pertinent info on the file. What Glides statement confirms is that the audio was recorded proximate enough to the shooting as to verify its authenticity as a live recording of the sound.
I’m amused that all the news outlets are repeating the attorney’s claim the gentleman was speaking with “a friend”, when it’s obvious he’s speaking to someone he has never met IRL, probably for the first time, though perhaps after some earlier exchanges of text-only messages. Such has the definition of ‘friend’ been re-written in the age of social media, I guess.
I also immediately noticed on the video 2dogs linked the unmistakable style of LLMPapa. (Play Godfather 3 clip again…)
Hi Whonoze!! So good to see your fonts again. It’s been verified and FBI talked to young man. Even hoff finally conceded it.
I didn’t save entire transcript but I’m sure if you google it, it’s there. And Wilson admiring his prey with gun in right hand is enhanced by 850%
The 850% is what i looked at. No there there.
Hey, Perfesser,
It sounds like the dude is reciting something he’s written for the object of his affection (ahem), but yeah, it’s not crystal clear that when he says, “You are pretty” that this is the 12:02:14 starting point.
I’m still puzzling myself over exactly when did Wilson leave the St. Cyr Road vicinity, and what route did he take to Canfield Drive. Among other things…
This New York Times piece about the good and bad of twitter (with relevance to Ferguson, MO) is good overall:
NYT 20140827
But this simultaneously creeped me out and made me wheeze:
From the still at occupycorporatism.com, it’s not clear that the officer pictured is Wilson, nor that what he is holding is a gun. I don’t know if any of the cell-phone video recordings cover the same moment, but if so they might verify whether that’s Wilson or not, but probably not what’s in his hand. Eyewitnesses to that moment, however, would likely have been able to tell whether it was a gun or not.
The young man didn’t realize the relevance of the shots as gunshots happen in his neighborhood. It was only later he understood what his video chat had picked up and contacted an attorney before going public. Thank goodness he didn’t turn over his laptop to PD.
What’s amazing to me is how acute sound is on newer computers.
Snowden quote: “technology is the great equalizer”.
Imagine if computers were that advanced in 2012.?
friend or acquaintance , flirting is ageless. Man says you’re so fine and girl melts. 😉
Methinks it was phone sex on a 900 number.
Heh! Poor guy. What a nightmare: you call something like that and become a homicide witness while doing so.
Anonymous hacked into police dispatch. Wilson NEVER called it in. Dispatch says she is hearing reports of incident from the NEWS. Says it twice. They’ve typed out the call. I’ll look for it and post it.
I didn’t save it but if you google or look on you tube it’s posted. Also, someone enhanced Wilson” admiring his pray with his gun on right hand.
‘Enhanced’ images are BS.
@ willisnewton,
If you watch this video closely between the 01:30-02:30 timeframe, the video-taker pans from the north-west side to the south-east of the cordoned portion of Canfield Drive (basically from Canfield Court to the driveway on the other end of the building):
Michael Brown Eye Witness Crime Scene Video, FULL HD at Youtube
On the south-east side, there seems to another LE SUV outside the cordon area, facing away from it. Could this be Wilson’s SUV (and shouldn’t his SUV have been inside the cordon area)?
Mike died with his face to the assault and his head pointed towards WiIson and Wilson’s SUV. The SUVs you see in this video closest to the body are not Wilson’s, neither of them are. However, WAY in the background at the 3:50 mark the camera pans to look past the round “hut tub sized hedge” and we get a brief glimpse down Canfied towards where Wilson’s SUV should be, but bystanders are blocking a good view of it.
Unless the camera is in the street on the yellow line, there isn’t a wide enough ante to see the body and Wilson’s SUV. 125 feet is a long way to capture from an apartment or the sidewalk.
face to the asphalt* (and the round hedge to his left side. )
Correction:
And now that I double check that clip at 3:50 does NOT face towards the Wilson SUV position. No wonder I coudnt see it. So confusing!
Once again.
Head faced Wilson’s shooting position and Wilson;s SUV.
SUV 125 feet to the NW from body aprox
Brown ran SE on Canfield.
From Piaget Crenshaw’s balcony, Mike ran from her right to her left away from the SUV and Wilson. You can see the round hedge is on the opposite side of the street from her place.
He died with his head to her right and his feet to her left.
@ willisnewton,
Just to make sure that we don’t resemble a couple of blind people feeling/describing different parts of the same animal:
My impression is that Brown’s body was pointing NW. That is to say, the head was pointing towards the 2947 end of the building (as opposed to the 2943 end where his body was actually located). Or expressed yet another way, toward Piaget Crenshaw’s apartment.
So, yes, you can catch the merest glimpse of the SUV suspected to be Wilson’s at 00:18, and again at 02:18. It looks as though it was parked askew to the curb at that little grassy area between the two driveways for the parking lot NW of building 2947/2943, and it was not in the cordon area.
Sounds right to me. I think it could even be as much as 60 yards (180 feet).
Oh, and your point about the tree house was well taken. };-) I didn’t read all of the text accompanying those photos because I’m familiar with their usual aim, but it did catch my attention that the author singled out the same SUV I’d been eyeballing.
My diagram of the 125 feet is on my flickr page. I could be off, but not by much. The google earth “path” tool is a good way to make these sorts of estimates.
And yes, Mike Brown was walking SE to his grandmothers and encountered Wilson who was driving NW. Wilson said something rude and the boys responded as they passed one another. Wilson backed up but his vehicle still faced NW, and askew to, and straddling the yellow center line of Canfield. This put his door in the path of Johnson and Brown, it seems.
After the action by the door, both Johnson and Brown ran SE. It appears that Wilson did too, passing Johnson who hid behind a white sedan that may have had two people inside it. (confirmation, anyone?)
Brown had nowhere to hide, once he passed the white car, and apparently he told Johnson to run, too from a man giving no orders, but simply firing his gun indiscriminately. Sadly, had there been a tree or a car to hide behind, Brown might have lived, we can’t know. We can see that he was out in the open, and ill shod to run for his life from a man intent on putting more bullets into him for no good reason.
What multiple eyewitnesses saw was that he ran, stopped running, turned to surrender and put his hands up in the air and was killed in a hail of gunfire as Wilson marched in, shooting.
Brown fell face down dead with his head facing NW and his feet to the SE.
There’s not a whole lot of details to obsess over here. Whatever distance Wilson fired from, he murdered the unarmed teenager and then failed to call it in.
Left unknown at this time are the details about the first shot from the SUV, which preceded the moments aired by CNN on an audio chat recording.
Your 2:00 post pretty much nails it. I think the first shot, not picked up on video, is the one that went into building that police dugout .
I don’t know why your post doesn’t show here, it shows on my email.
This Los Angeles Times piece isn’t new, but I thought I’d provide a link for it, because it touches on the accounts of three different eye-witnesses to the Brown homicide:
LAT 20140821
I say “three” because while the article also includes a fourth account, that fourth one is from “Josie,” an anonymous person who called in to a local radio station. She herself wasn’t a witness; she merely parroted a story that she got from somebody else.
Did she get it from Wilson himself? The Ferguson police chief? Yet somebody else? shrug Dunno, but it’s way past time for Wilson to come forward and give his first-hand account.
I know that when I feel I need to consult wikipedia for an overview of a case, it’s either that the case is getting muddy, or my brain is.
One of the tidbits I gleaned is that the police (other than Wilson, that is) didn’t arrive on scene until 13:30 (per the bare-bones St Louis County incident report). That’s almost an hour and a half after Brown was fatally shot.
Allegedly, the reason for the delayed response was that the police were busy attending to other matters.
ACLU copy of St. Louis County Police Department Incident Report (2 Page PDF)
So, anyway, that means that a video like “Michael Brown Eye Witness Crime Scene Video, FULL HD,” with all the LEO’s and yellow tape, was created, at minimum, an hour and a half after the homicide.
Then again, who knows how many lies the St. Louis County PD may have told even in that bare-bones report?
Sure would be good to be a fly on the wall of the grand jury chamber.
@ willsnewton,
I provide this link with some misgivings, because it goes to the (in)famous treehouse, but among the many pictures there are ones in which the author opines that he’s identified Wilson’s SUV:
theconservativetreehouse dot com 20140829
Naturally, many take content there with a grain of salt, but I do think they may indeed have identified Wilson’s SUV.
It’s that same SUV I wondered about last night, parked northwest (not south-east, I apparently was having a bad internal compass day–among other things) of the actual cordon area at approximately a forty-five degree angle to the curb, and faced away from the homicide scene.
Why the tree house author chose a still with a lamp post in front of the SUV is another matter. If you pause the “Michael Brown Eye Witness Crime Scene Video, FULL HD” at 02:18, the lamp post will be just to the left of the suspect SUV.
If that is Wilson’s SUV, google maps makes it look like it was well over one hundred feet from Brown’s body.
Yes, the Wilson SUV is best identified as the one that was briefly wrapped in yellow police tape, sealing the doors presumably. This conspiracy theorist at the treeehouse site is at least correct in placing the Wilson SUV where the one wrapped in yellow tape was.
Again,and I cannot stress this enough, there are almost no photos that are wide enough to show both the body of Mike Brown and Wilson’s SUV. They were 40 yards apart, at least.
and for the record his CT is predicated on the idea that because eyewitness Brady didn’t see Brown with his hands up, it never happened despite all the other eyewitnesses who did see it. Brady himself is clear that he had to move from a bedroom to the front door to see the end of the killing. He likely had to move because the chase went out of his view from inside the bedroom.
The mouth-breathers at the treehouse don’t care about the truth, period. They start with a premise and invent or obfuscate whatever they want to get to a preconceived conclusion.
@ willisnewton,
This video copy is a bit clearer (best shot of suspected Wilson SUV at 02:19):
Michael Brown Eye Witness Crime Scene Video, FULL at YouTube
briefly from 0:18 or so to around 0:22 the camera pans from the body over to a bit of Wilson’s SUV.
And again at 2:19 like you said,
Hat tip to Alderman Antonio Friench who tweeted a link for this New York times article that supplies more timeline tidbits:
NYT 20140824
Reading between the lines, it seems very likely that Wilson NEVER called in the shooting. Nor did he call an ambulance. That means that other officers arriving on the scene were possibly alerted via 911 calls to the police. Incident report type paperwork seems to leave blank the source of the call that references a “disturbance.”
There seems to be some confusion about when Ferguson dispatch knew there was a homicide. The hacker group anonymous released a recording of StLCoPD dispatch that mentions hearing about the killinf from news reports, and this is WHILE they are notifying someone at Ferguson PD that there was a homicide.
In other words, at 12:34 the StLCoPD tells ferguson dispatch that the “disturbance” included a homicide they knew nothing about from ANY of the officers in the field. But word moves up to the chief and somehow some detectives are told to respond.
At least currently that’s my understanding of all this.
Wilson not to call in a shooting, has to be one of the oddest most telling police actions ever. It was compounded from there to the point I thought it was parody. My guess, DW was drunk as a skunk or methed up. Because that never happens. I mean leaving the kid in the street for 1.5 hrs.before a detective comes ranks up there but they were trying to come up with a cover up.
Nobody ever learns from Watergate, the coverup is worse than the incident.
And the group anonymous captured the entire dispatch conversation.
DP:!the news is reporting a shooting
No calls though”
DP: yes,the news is reporting a shooting on …..st
DP| sending car there now
If you haven’t seen VICE news dispatch #7, go see it now.
Emmanuel Freeman, aka Thee Pharaoh, aka the guy who live-tweeted the killing of an unarmed teen Michael Brown at the hands of Ferguson PD officer Darren Wilson is interviewed by VIce News, who had a crew on the scene for the demonstrations put together a compelling feature video report that for me is hands-down the best report from #ferguson so far, even tops Jon Stewart.
Thanks Willis. Love that. Raw
2dosonly,
Yeah, it’s damned odd to say the very least.
Could be, but I’m not ready to go there just yet. I don’t know how their shifts run, but it’s possible that Wilson had already had his lunch, and it could have been liquid.
However, it’s also possible that he was in some kind of heightened emotional state because of that call he’d been on involving a child. Some people who can maintain their cool in a stressful situation involving an adult might lose it in a similar one involving a small child.
Let’s see (some of these times are only estimates):
20140809:11:51 Customer at Ferguson Market & Liquor calls 911
20140809:1?:?? Wilson allegedly leaves site of 2491 St. Cyr Rd. vicinity incident
20140809:12:02 Wilson fatally shoots Brown
20140809:12:03 Freeman tweets that he witnessed the homicide
20140809:12:05 Freeman tweets picture of homicide scene.
20140809:12:07 STL County PD knows about the homicide
20140809:12:10 An EMS who has been nearby on another call shows up
20140809:12:15 Ferguson PD officers begin arriving
20140809:12:15 EMS covers Brown’s body with a sheet from an ambulance
20140809:12:?? A dispatcher hears about the homicide on the news
20140809:12:43 Detectives from STL County are notified of the homicide
20140809:13:30 Detectives from STL County begin arriving on-scene
20140809:16:00 Brown’s body is loaded into a dark SUV
20140809:16:37 Brown’s body arrives at morgue in Berkeley, MO.
Yeah, all of local LE was probably sh-tting proverbial bricks, trying to triage (read: damage control) the situation.
Myself, I wanna more about that child incident that Wilson was allegedly involved in just prior.
What is the source of your timeline bullet point where StLCoPD “knows about a homicide?”
Knows about it from whom/ how? Just curious. There is that .pdf regarding a “disturbance” that I’m serious about as well.
BTW, I was half-expecting a late friday night “document dump” from local authorities since this is a common practice to keep things out of the media spotlight. Has anyone checked?
@ willisnewton,
I pulled that out of the NYT article:
I think at this point, there is a lot more that we don’t know about this case than what we do know. For better or worse, MO isn’t a ‘sunshine’ state.
Not sure what you mean here, nor how to go about checking.
Officer Malice wasn’t responding to any call. He had left, completed, whatever previous call,he responded to and was just driving around when he spotted the two jaywalking and said something rude and they didn’t “”/step n’ fetch” but said we’re close to home. He took off( cop)!, then slammed on brakes and hit reverse and all hell ensued.
There is a real problem that the cop never called in the shooting. And believe me, that would have never been made public but for the anonymous folks hacking into the dispatch.typing it up and making it public.
Remember, there was no call about jaywalking, shoplifting. That was part of their spin and was debunked by anonymous hacking into the dispatch. Just sit with that. Cop shoots someone 10-11 times and does not make a call for backup.
If this were a movie, it would be laughed at as being written for idiots.
Just for grins, I decided to use a utility that came in handy during the GZ case. I plugged in that cell tower address on St. Cyr Road to see how well covered that area is with cell towers (antenna search dot com):
Looks pretty well covered to me. Of course, we don’t know which cell carrier the caller used, etc.
All we have to go on right now is that one particular cell tower, and google maps makes it look like it would take 8 or 9 minutes to get from there to the homicide site because you have to go all the way around the cat’s behind (so to speak):
Google Maps Directions
@ willisnewton,
Thanks. Thus far, I’ve resisted using google earth because it requires an account/login. My high-tech way of doing it involves google maps and a tape measure (LudditesRUs). };-)
@ willisnewton,
Which is interesting all by itself, because it opens in my mind questions about Wilson’s alleged previous call over in the St. Cyr Road vicinity. What was Wilson’s route that caused him to be NW-bound on Canfield Drive?
I do wonder whether Wilson could have rapped himself in the noggin, trying simultaneously to open his SUV door/exit the vehicle, and the door bounced off of Brown/Johnson.
Certainly not to the degree of a fractured eye socket, or possibly not even to the degree of swelling, but it might have smarted and pissed him off (further).
Wow, even more potential witnesses.
Yeah, Brown was wearing some kind of slip-on sandals, wasn’t he?
One of those bullets hit an apartment. LE is ‘lucky’ there aren’t more dead people from that incident.
Agreed.
Assuming (yeah, I know) that Wilson did indeed proceed to the Canfield Drive scene from the St. Cyr Road vicinity, did he maybe come in from Glen Owen Drive? That’s about the only way I can see Wilson having been NW-bound on Canfield Drive when he encountered Brown and Johnson. Unless he pulled a U-y.
Well, unfortunately, I gotta get my behind in gear for personal responsibilities now…
Here the recording from dispatch just normal,stuff until crowd control
This is better
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2724304/Anonymous-hacks-St-Louis-police-dispatch-tapes-releases-calls-surrounding-cop-shooting-Michael-Brown.html
The dispatch recording stops after dispatch calls for cars to respond to crowd control at Canfield.
I’ll look for the typed version tomorrow.
If there is a coherent version of what this dispatch audio reveals happened and when it happened, I’ve not seen it. Sorry to be harsh, but posting out of context snippets with no time stamp isn’t helping me understand this.
From what i can gather, this is one PD asking another PD for help with crowd control on Canfield, site of the killing. But when was this? And what came before and after?
The various RUMORS I have heard include that Ferguson learned of the shooting from another PD dispatch and that THAT dispatch mentioned that they knew about it from the news. I’m trying to source these rumors.
cell phone video from the site of the killing seems to show officers on scene very soon after the shooting. Why and how were they dispatched to the scene?
I tend to think that it’s more likely they responded to calls about a “disturbance” and upon arrival spent a period of time colluding with Wilson about what to do before calling in a homicide. But I can’t prove that. Not without documentation.
So I am seeking the documents to base an opinion on. The press conferences by the Ferguson PD chief are a haze of vague and misleading clues. He’s crafting a narrative to cover the obvious, it seems. Wilson didn’t call in the shooting, and it’s possible the others failed to do so as well for quite some time.
@ willisnewton,
I agree. The NYT article said patrolmen started arriving around 12:15, and that’s also when the EMT guy covered the body; however, those are only estimated times.
That one ten minute citizen video by “BlackCanseco” showed officers, yellow tape, and the EMT guy in the act of covering Brown’s body.
A few more things about that BlackCanseco video (YouTube “Mike Brown EyeWitness Crime Scene Video Ferguson, MO” 10:03 minutes/seconds):
SUV starting at around the 8 minute mark.
Dunno–talking to one another by some means that didn’t necessarily involve dispatch? Or dispatch is in collusion (which seems quite possible, seeing as they’re mere mortals who like having a paycheck as well as anybody else).
Sounds good to me. Well, you know, not ‘good,’ but potentially accurate.
Again with misgivings (this time because the ultimate source is the criminal hacker group Anonymous), I’m posting a link to a website that supplies some time stamps based on the dispatch recordings:
Latino Rebels
Okay, the dispatch tapes released by “hacker group Anonymous” (could be one person) are not real time. The system apparently only records when the dispatch transmits, so any breaks between messages are of indeterminate time. Thus, we have an entire shift’s worth of recordings that fit into a much shorter you tube video. What can be discerned is the rough groupings of time periods. Between 12:05 and 12:35, the StLCo dispatch calls to another dispatch and tells them that there was a call (from a citizen) informing police, probably 911 that there has been an “officer involved shooting” at Canfield. This is then additionally qualified that the dispatcher or else the 911 caller learned of this from “the news” meaning this is not information coming to them from police sources.
This transmission can be heard on the tape as coming around 10:20 into the youtube recording. By that time there have been calls for “crowd control” to assist at the scene butno calls for ambulance, detectives, or anything said about a homicide. Keep in mind this is NOT ferguson PD dispatch, but a recoding generated by St LousCo PD. However, it does seem to be that the StLCoPD dispatcher is speaking with the Ferguson PD dispatcher when she is informing the person who should already know….
At most, it’s 20 minutes into the aftermath and Ferguson dispatch is unaware of a homicide or officer involved shooting. But it could be much less time.
Of course if it was two minutes that’s too long, and a suspicious event is underway. Other officers are seemingly on scene. Why hasn’t one of them called it in yet? Apparently their first calls to anyone are for backup for crowd control?
It might be that officers form another jurisdiction were alerted somehow and arrived on scene and asked or assumed that Wilson had called it in already. Maybe he lied to them, we can’t know.
To me the questions are,when if ever did Wilson call his dispatch?
Why and how did other officers know to arrive on the scene?
Who did these other officers call or alert, and for what purpose, and did they inform THEIR dispatch that a homicide had taken place, or did they call for EMS? (apparently no the the EMS)
How is it that seemingly Ferguson dispatch has to learn that their officer was likely involved in a shooting from another Disptatch, who learned it from a caller who heard it on the news?
When, if ever, did Ferguson dispatch reach out to Wilson to check in on his status?
When did Ferguson dispatch make the call that EMS was NOT needed?
And so on.
Something stinks here.
Eventually we have the Ferguson police Chief making some fancy statements about how they responded, but I have not gone back to parse that yet. I remember seeing it as it happened on cable news and thinking, this guy is spinning like a mad top and carefully crafting many of his words. Whatever happened, it is WAY out bounds from of normal procedure and probably a LOT worse than he’s even cautiously “admitting.”
@willisnewton.
Whew, trying to get caught up here because “real life” (and I hesitate to use that expression because the events in Ferguson, MO are very much real life for its citizens, and by extension for us all) is taking a lot of my time these days.
That’s important information for anybody trying to construct a timeline.
So some citizen did call (as they should).
I get the impression that he didn’t.
The LEO grapevine? (Cue Marvin Gaye, CCR, or Gladys Knight and the Pips, your choice.)
Oh, yeah. I think that if this had been a straight-forward case, Wilson would have called in to dispatch right way telling them about it, and we wouldn’t have seen all the chaos that we haveseen.
One of the details I looked at was the allegation by Johnson that Wilson reached through the window of his SUV, and tried to grab Brown by the neck. That didn’t seem quite feasible to me until I looked at the specs for a Chevrolet/GMC Tahoe, and realized that the vehicle and Brown were about the same height.
Here is the earliest coherent news story about the dispatch tapes I could find, from the UK Daily Mail, not the world’s most respectred newspaper by any means. But it is coherent reporting.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2724304/Anonymous-hacks-St-Louis-police-dispatch-tapes-releases-calls-surrounding-cop-shooting-Michael-Brown.html
The UK post is accurate. Dispatch calls in “woman having panic attack”and the crowd control. DW never called it in.
It’s been transcribed verbatim, I’m just too lazy to look it up but if you tap on the link both you and I posted, it’s there
Pompano Pete crushed in mayoral election. H/t to tower-flower
http://www.news-journalonline.com/article/20140826/NEWS/140829501/1040?p=1&tc=pg
@2dogsonly,
Hmmm, Pompano Pete Johnson sounded a little hot under the collar here:
‘Interesting’ take on the “public figure” concept.
Er, that is to say, Pompano Pat Johson.
Hat tip to “towerflower” at the blackbutterfly7 wordpress blog for the discourse on Johnson. I knew that Johnson had a hard-on for journalist DeFeo, but many may not know all the background on Johnson:
blackbutterfly7
Another ‘prince.’
And on a related front, GZ’s twitter feed is still silent since the first of August 2014. Kinda the way Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead??
From Politico. What is Jay Nixon thinking?
http://www.politico.com/story/2014/09/jay-nixon-ferguson-missouri-110501_Page2.html
@ 2dogsonly,
Thanks, that was a pretty interesting article about Governor Nixon.
This case is another one that’s complex, but not necessarily in all the same ways.
Nixon knows where his bread is buttered and his votes are. He’s a weak governor who is erring on the side of caution IMO. He also knows that if he appointed a special prosecutor then HE would catch the blame if the killer was acquitted or receives a light sentence. Better to leave the hot potato in the lap of a republican local DA, no matter how obviously biased. McCullough spouted off tremendously in an effort to get himself replaced by a political appointee. It didn’t work.
I dont endorse Nixon’s action but I think i see his motive. This is a giant turd in the people’s punchbowl and he wants to to be seen as NOT HIS punchbowl.
I do agree that by replacing the top figure on the streets he’s very likely saved quite a few lives. And it wasn’t going to be the cops who were killed on W Flouisaant street, either.
It’s real time , MO is CMT here is you tube of actual dispatch
Dispatch went to a non-public site when, I think, they realized they had actually been hacked. That’s on the typed out version
Dispatch says :” moving to a xyz thingy” sorry, forget the technical term but they were moving off of a normal radio site that people with CB’s, police dispatch, can hear.
At end of you tube Dispatch says :” moving to riot channel”
Ignore the 3:00pm on you tube. Actually starts recording around 11MT. Just normal stuff until dispatch gets a call about possible shooting but doesn’t know anything about it..then says someone heard it on news..back and forth about has anyone called it in. DP says :
“No someone said they heard about a possible officer shooting on Canfield”
Point is no one called it in. Until call in for possible riot, people gathering
Hat tip to the various contributors at the blackbutterfly7 wordpress blog for alerting me to the fact that Ted Wafer was sentenced today for the shooting death of Renisha McBride:
oralandar brand-wms at twitter
Apparently, Judge Hathaway said that it was a sad case with “one life gone and one life ruined,” but stood firm on sentencing guidelines.
I agree with the judge. It is sad, all the way around. I’m not doing a dance of glee over this, but hopefully Wafer’s sentence will make other people (in Michigan, at least) rethink the advisability of a firearm as a home security ‘system.’
Many thanks to “yahtzeebutterfly” at the blackbutterfly7 wordpress blog for this transcription of Judge Hathaway’s remarks upon sentencing Ted Wafer in the shooting death of Renisha McBride:
blackbutterfly7 at wordpress dot com
I agree with the judge overall, and with this in particular:
I still want to know about those “paint ball” and “drug paraphernalia” incidents. I think that there might have been some habitual ‘problem’ kids in Wafer’s neighborhood, and he was either harboring a grudge against the ones that damaged his car, or was fearful because he thought they were targeting him personally for some reason.
Still, if you’re having problems with trespassing, vandalism, terrorism, etc., you should call the police.
Maybe the police won’t catch the perpetrators right away, but it’ll be on record in case there are further problems.
What you don’t want to do is start answering your door with a shotgun.
Wafer has learned that lesson too late.
scrodriguez at blackbutterfly7
<
blockquote>There is no need to re-file I have won both cases beat his frivolous BS and was granted a permanent restraining order against him…</blockquote.
Good for "scrodriguez," although why the court in Fresno tolerates a habitual offender with regard to frivolous legal actions is an 'interesting' question.
DoJ is officially opening an investigation into FERGUSON PD. And they are “cooperating” with St Louis Co PD.
I’m disappointed that this investigation isn’t wider. Ferguson has 53 cops, period. Do we really think the problem is that small?
Read Holder’s speech over at the DOJ website. There’s nothing in it regarding the aftermath of the killing of Mike Brown and how that was mishandled, either. Maybe this speech isn’t the time or the place to address the incredibly poor response that embarrassed and shocked out nation, but I expected a larger reaction from the DoJ.
Smearing a dead kid and then tear gassing outraged citizens are not the actions of someone you want to work with to improve a department. Those people you just run out of town on a rail.
It’s a civil rights “patterns and practice” investigation like they did in ABQ of Ferguson PD and not (yet) of St Louis County PD or any other nearby places.
Nothing was said in the speech about the tear gas, rubber bullets, sound cannons, MRAPs, etc. I guess that’s another department, which is understandable. But as I’ve said elsewhere, pay close attention to what the Doj says they are doing here. The AREN’T doing more than that which they announce. And what they’ve announced is relatively narrow in scope.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/08/department-justice-civil-rights-violations-investigation-ferguson
good overview of what and how the DoJ works cases like this
H/t to attorney John Phillips for posting this Rolling Stone article about the background of Michael Dunn who killed Jonathan Davis. Very informative.
http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/jordan-davis-stand-your-grounds-latest-victim-20130425
Hum, is there a pattern? (boldface font my edit for emphasis):
Yahoo 20140905
New witnesses emerge. Workers who were not residents, and sad to say this may be significant to a jury, white.
http://instagram.com/p/riPFZ8oeQy/
St Louis paper has a front page story about them. They saw Mike Brown throw his hands up in surrender,and then get gunned down.
http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/workers-who-were-witnesses-provide-new-perspective-on-michael-brown/article_14a3e5f8-6c6a-5deb-92fe-87fcee622c29.html
The potentially disturbing detail is that they describe Brown moving towards Wilson, but looking at the short video they posted, it’s clear they had a “down-the-line” view looking north and distances would be difficult to judge.
I’ll post a map to flickr soon. It seems like the workers couldn’t see the SUV when it reversed and they couldn’t or didn’t see the altercation by the SUV. It’s unclear if they heard the first shot or not, but at least two men saw the end of the foot chase and the unarmed teen throw his hands up and call out ok ok ok ok many times. And get blown away.
@willisnewton,
Thanks for the map with landmarks (hydrant, landscaping), it helps to visualize.
Sad indeed if the only thing about them that might matter to a jury is their race. At this point, I want to hold on to the factoids that the construction worker witnesses were neither local residents nor acquaintances of Brown prior to that fateful day.
There are a number of news pieces about the construction worker witnesses now.
Here’s a link for a Daily Mail article that has footage (distances) details, but is a bit confusing:
Daily Mail 20140906
In some disgusting news, a photograph of somebody with facial injuries who is not Darren Wilson is being disseminated as ‘proof’ that the fatal shooting was justified.
That’s slimy, not so much because it’s propaganda (it is), but because it’s clumsy, easy to disprove propaganda that some people seem so willing to buy.
The UK Daily Mail story is just a rehash of the St Louis Dispatch story. The anonymous worker spoke to the FBI and to the dispatch. It seems his co-worker is the one who spoke to the local FOX affiliate using a voice altering filter. Both give very odd descriptions of distance. In the case of the Dispatch interviewed witness, the idea that they were 50 feet away is refuted by the video. They were 200 feet away from what I can tell. This, plus the idea that both men seem to put for regarding Brown’s alleged forward motion was in the realm of 25 feet, yet the officer was only ten feet away, leave me to think they are pulling these figures out of their imagination and that they are not very good with distances.
If and when it’s ever established the time of the FIRST shot, allegedly from inside the SUV, we might be able to make some guesses about how far Wilson, 6’4″ and 300 lbs could have run away, and how much time he had to turn around and move in the other direction.
It takes time to run 125 feet, and it takes time to “run out” from a sprint. When Brown stopped sprinting, it seems like he was already wounded at least twice. Two bullets account for head shots. Two more were fired after the three second pause,making four shots the deadly grouping.
Did Wilson really run so close as to be ten feet away before he ever hit the teen from a distance? So many questions that don’t seem to fit with the evidence if we take these workers’ accounts regarding distances literally.
The Dispatch interviewee/ worker seems to think that Wilson moved backwards while firing. That seems odd to me, but I wasn’t there.
Again, I don’t think they could have seen the SUV from where they were witnessing the shooting. This account is simply not accurate. I hope the FBI had the common sense to take them to the scene and speak to them there as well. I doubt they did, however.
Here is a link to a map detaining where I think these workers witnessed the killing from.
You are a brainiac!! I am so thrilled to see some of your excellent work.
What we have in a worst case scenario is that Wilson can say some magic words about fearing for his life and he will be acquitted, or possibly never even charged.
What is growing clearer every day is that he ran after the teen, shooting wildly until he hit him, and then executed the kid as he was surrendering, and that no one seems to have heard him telling the kid to DO anything such as stop, freeze, get down, etc.
Whatever happened at the SUV doesn’t in my mind justify chasing the teen 90-125 feet while shooting wildly at his back six times. For a defense lawyer, that’s the part which will be hard to spin as the act of a reasonable person doing his legal duty.
Even if a jury can find some legal justification and /or sympathy for the last four shots, what are they to make of the group of six shots fired at a teen sprinting away from an officer who isn’t giving any commands?
This is an even handed article about the release of the store video
http://www.stlamerican.com/news/local_news/article_17b2b1ec-2573-11e4-8f51-001a4bcf887a.html?mode=jqm
That’s a solid summation of the obvious, and well written.
Thank you willosmewton. Coming from you means alot
@ willisnewton,
I don’t think any of the witnesses said that they heard Wilson say anything while Brown was in retreat, did they?
I would think that a standard part of LE training would be to say something along the lines of, “Halt, or I’ll shoot.” You know, assuming that there’s a reason to shoot at an unarmed person in retreat.
Well, only if Brown had succeeded in wresting a firearm from Wilson, but I don’t think there’s any proof that he even tried, other than Wilson’s say-so.
Are there any witnesses who say that the first series of shots was while Brown was in retreat, and the second after he stopped retreating and turned to face Wilson?
Because if so, that first series of shots would be unconscionable: shooting repeatedly at a retreating, unarmed person in a densely populated area.
The talking heads are saying that pause in between the two series of shots is troubling from a defense standpoint, and I can see how it could be. Why the pause?
Here’s a shot showing the cones in the mid-ground between the SUV and the body of Mike Brown, during the time detectives were present. I have no idea what these cones are marking, but I’d guess his flip flop sandals might be a possibility. I can’t tell the distance from the closet cone to the body, but it looks like a long ways to make accurate shots with a handgun in a tense situation.
I know there are three cones (without white strips) unlike the rest that are near Brown’s body, but from what I can tell these were placed there before detectives arrived, and may just be an attempt to keep people away from the body in general.
Were they markers for shell casings, it would seem very odd to me.
Eye witness statement. Yes, I know it’s hard to read. But it’s legitimate.
https://mobile.twitter.com/unlovedsoul2384/status/508656344627302400/photos
Article from witness taping the event.
http://touch.capitalgazette.com/#section/-1/article/p2p-81098988/
Wow, hat tip to Xena at her blackbutterfly7 wordpress blog for the alert that Fred Leatherman’s blog (frederickleatherman dot com) was highjacked:
blackbutterfly7 at wordpress dot com
This incident illustrates (among other things) that computer security takes a nosedive when somebody intent on breaching it gains physical access to the hardware.
Based on what little I know, the person who burgled the Leatherman home probably did so to create as much havoc in their lives as possible. Fred Leatherman’s wife Crane-Station has been writing about her experiences in the Kentucky penal system in installments (Frog Gravy), and the pieces are not at all flattering, to say the least.
My condolences to the Leathermans and anybody else affected by this terrorism.
And me being an idiot, tapped on xena’s link and noticed leathermans blog only has http: ( not https.) so it’s not secure.:-(
@ 2dogsonly,
I wouldn’t worry too much if all you’re doing is reading. If you’re logging in to post, then you probably do want secure socket.
As to what happened to the Leathermans, their blog(s), and the effect it might have on their guests, the damage is done, I’m afraid. The criminals potentially have the guests’ IP and email addresses.
About all you can do is change your password(s), or get new email username(s)/password(s) to thwart them.
Of course, if they’re really determined ne’er-do-wells, they may have installed keyloggers, or will be monitoring the Leathermans’ blogs with a sniffer. Time will tell…
Thanks wordsalad2009. No, I just tapped xena’s link. I quit following it years ago. I did donate some and never received a thanks but that was sooo long ago. The whole story is odd to me. Why not steal the computers and whatever else of value. The router number used to be on my older router. Don’t know where comcast puts it but just strange story. And by my quick reading, it looks like he left his home. Why would you need to leave your home? Renters have rent insurance, really cheap. And homeowners have homeowner ins., not as cheap but still moving is expensive by it self.
Honestly, he’s like blogging 101 to newer bloggers, meaning younger ones that have appeared in last year or two. One of the best is a conservative blogger who blogs to keep other right wing bloggers truthful. Little green footballs or something similar. When those ” orbital pixs ” were posted showing Darren Wilson injury, he showed where it was a copy from a medical textbook but they forgot to erase the univ. Copy thing. He monitors the right wing bloggers like a hawk and post immediately.
Sure would have been great to have someone like that when tub’s pix was photoshopped and spread via mainstream media.
And one more thing, I can’t give my nude pixs away! 😉
Further, I’m still a size 2!
Target, Walmart, cloud, craigslist, anyone. Nope no takers. Hurts granny’s feelings. Age discrimination is what I say it is. I think I’ll file an age discrimination suit. 😉
@2dogsonly,
That’s too bad, seeing as they like the donations. Live and learn.
I think what could be going on is that the Leathermans have made some fairly powerful enemies who don’t want the L’s worldly goods per se; they want to control them via terrorism.
Sure. And a lot of people have passwords that they keep on a slip of paper taped to the side of a computer CPU, or the bottom of a keyboard, etc. Of course, even if you keep hardcopy information like that locked up, somebody who gains physical access to your computer/network hardware can still hack you, and if they install a hardware keylogger that you don’t detect, even after a clean restore, they could capture your new passwords.
Trying not to be overly dramatic here, but if you have powerful enemies, they’ll keep after you.
I read that entry. I was vaguely familiar with the names littlegreenfootballs, and even gatewaypundit, but never knew the names of the authors thereof because I don’t follow politics closely.
I posted a link to an image here (Brown’s body) that I’d found on the gatewaypundit via a search engine without realizing at the time what a lying alpha-hole the author of that site is. Fortunately, I don’t think he was interested in faking anything about that particular image.
<blockquote.Sure would have been great to have someone like that when tub’s pix was photoshopped and spread via mainstream media.
Yup. Somebody tech-savvy and already high-visibility/credibility on the net.
Again, trying not to be overly dramatic here, but if you have powerful enemies (as the L’s may well have), they may study you to find out your likes/dislikes/fears, the better to eat you with, my dear.
Enemies eat you?
I think those are called friends or from my era, sweet lovers. 😉
@ 2dogsonly,
A figure of speech, my little red-hooded one.
Did you ever see that one (relatively) modern werewolf picture in which the werewolf carefully broke the neck of its victim so they couldn’t get away? That technique kept the meat fresh.
No, missed werewolf eating someone’s neck. Scary movies are too scary for me. But loved Breaking Bad. No werewolves though, just great acting and story lines with perfect ending.
@ 2dogsonly,
I was just trying to refresh my memory about which werewolf movie that was. I think it might have been “The Howling,” or one of the sequels thereof.
Yeah, I don’t watch too many scary movies these days; real life is sufficiently scary for me.
Just in time for the one month anniversary of Michael Brown’s shooting death, some progress. No, not in the investigation, but rather progress in the city of Ferguson, MO:
New York Times 20140909
Hat tip to Xena and her blackbutterfy7 wordpress blog for the update on the Ohio story about the man killed by police at a Walmart because he was carrying a toy gun he obtained on the premises:
Raw Story 20140909
This looks like another ‘perfect storm’ that combined a bad witness with bad police training and bad marketing (manufacturers making toy guns look like the real thing).
The very least bad thing that can be said about witness Ronald Ritchie is that he exemplifies the fallibility of witnesses. OK, I want to say worse things about him, but I’m holding myself back.
This is part of why I have myself on a leash with regard to the Michael Brown homicide: I just don’t feel like I have enough information yet.
While it sure looks to me like the city of Ferguson, MO has some serious, long-standing race problems, and the local authorities have been less than forthcoming and forthright (ahem) about the Brown homicide, I’m not yet ready to characterize LEO Darren Wilson as a monster.
I want to hear what the grand jury (who I read will be given all the available evidence) has to say.
Kudos to “scrodriguez” for his persistence:
blackbutterfly7 at wordpress 20140910
Hopefully, scrodriguez’ harasser will find something positive and productive to do with his time, and everybody else can get on with their lives.
Wow. Oscar Pistorius found not guilty of premeditated murder:
MSNBC
I dunno: he had an argument with his girlfriend, and fatally shot her on Valentine’s Day? Hmmm…
He’s not out of the woods yet, though:
Some interesting points raised by the judge:
New-ish piece from CNN about the construction worker witnesses:
CNN 20140910
Allegedly with no “Halt, or I’ll shoot” warning, Wilson shot at an unarmed person in retreat.
I’m still interested in how Wilson was north-west bound on Canfield Drive just after noon, when he allegedly had only left the scene of his previous dispatch at noon.
We don’t have an exact address for that previous dispatch, only a cell tower location (2491 St. Cyr Road), but Google Maps makes it look like something akin to a “you can’t get there from here” situation. There doesn’t appear to be any ‘express’ route from the St. Cyr Road location to Canfield Drive.
I’m also interested in Wilson’s state of mind when he allegedly left the St. Cyr Road location.
Both Wilson and Brown could have been upset, the former because of the sick child incident, and the latter because of the incident at the convenience store.
However, in Wilson’s case, being both upset and armed is a recipe for disaster.
Are there police procedures in place for something like that? As in, ‘recuse’ oneself from further dispatches when one is in an emotional state?
Eh? (boldface font my edit for emphasis):
Christian Post 20140910
OK, this article explained the grand jury process better to me:
River Front Times 20140909
Although the Christian Post article had these ‘interesting’ tidbits:
Just combing back through the information on the Michael Brown homicide, and found this tragically prescient advice from his uncle (boldface font my edit for emphasis):
New York Times 20140825
Then there was this tragically philosophical observation from Brown himself:
Sure, Brown’s death happened for a “reason,” but what was it? I’d try to put two and two together, but unfortunately, this case is a lot more complex than simple arithmetic and right now I can’t “solve for x.” Maybe I never will be able to do that.
On the thirteenth anniversary of 9/11, Twitter tells a tale of two siblings:
rzimmermanjr at twitter 20140911
For those who don’t want to “go there,” Junior tweeted a photograph taken at one of the sites of terrorist devastation. However, of all the possible photos he could have chosen, the one he used featured then-president George W. Bush with a megaphone.
His brother GZ tweeted, but on the day before after a twitter silence since the first of August, “Don’t ever forget….”
As other tweeters asked him, “Forget what?”
Indeed. Don’t ever forget 9/11, or strangely pathetic lying killer GZ?
Hat tip to “towerflower” at the blackbutterfly7 wordpress blog for this link (boldface font my edit for emphasis):
Click Orlando 20140912
So I guess what we should never forget is that GZ is an armed assholic who’s been enabled by his acquittal in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin.
Is Darren Wilson an armed assholic? Dunno. Stay tuned.
Jaysus, the Click Orlando piece has already been updated since I posted the link and quote (boldface font my edit for emphasis):
‘Somebody’ (if not the Lake Mary police or FBI, the press) had better investigate this. Just for starters, they should find out whether this guy is on the level, and not just an attention-seeking alphahole. If he is, no way should GZ threatening and stalking people be (further) tolerated.
More tidbits (bold face my edit for emphasis):
WSVN 20140912
Throwback Thirsday…walk down memory lane. Email exchange between Santiago and Chief Brackell of Lake Mary concerning tubs
Yet another tidbit:
USATODAY 20140912
So, was it really a road rage incident, or GZ’s inner “Look at me” timer?
And yet more detail:
HLNTV 20140912
Per HLN, the 911 calls were on Tuesday, September 9th (the alleged road rage incident), and Thursday, September 11th (the alleged stalking at work incident).
This tidbit is interesting, however:
The complainant went inside the store because of a perceived “safety in numbers” factor, or because he didn’t have a cell phone and needed to borrow somebody else’s phone–or what?
This is easier for you’ll to read. Emails between Santiago and police Chief of Lake Mary
@ 2dogsonly,
Thanks, I hadn’t forgotten about Lake Mary Police Department Chief Bracknell and his opinions about GZ. It was interesting, however, to read in the press about GZ’s latest brush with LE that Bracknell is still LMPC. Inquiring minds wonder whether Bracknell has become more discreet (read: more PR-savvy) since that time.
Ya know, something just doesn’t smell quite right about this latest GZ ‘incident.’
Some guy, who himself is a concealed-carry license holder, allegedly gets into an inadvertent confrontation with GZ, and runs into a convenience store to use their phone (because for whatever reason, this thirty-something apparently doesn’t have a working cell phone with him). The convenience store conveniently has surveillance footage of GZ and his Honda Ridgeline.
It’s almost like a police training film for “what one should do if one is threatened in a road rage incident.”
Apperson (what an ‘interesting’ surname, but he apparently is a real person) plays the responsible concealed carry license holder who doesn’t immediately whip out his own firearm, because while he’s in a potentially dangerous situation, he still has other options, and he employs some of them (attempt to flee the threatening person, get to a safe place, and call 911). All with convenient witnesses (convenience store clerk(s) and supporting film footage.
GZ, of course, plays the bad guy in this, because what other role could he play?
I dunno, it’s all highly speculative, and I could be reading way too much into this, but there it is. (Let’s recall those dueling 911 calls between GZ and alleged girlfriend Samantha Scheibe. Where is she these days?).
Hopefully, not with tubs. He finds where man works and shows up at his workplace two days later. And the audio where they did stop tubs to question him, said just call us first so we can get your side. Audio is very hard to hear except for last part. Of course, tubs knows that game but he didn’t think of calling cause he was the one who threatened the guy and that’s why he left when guy went into store. The cops are giving him a pass by shaking his hand and telling him what to do next time. Hey cops, he know what to do, exactly how to play it out.
@ 2dogsonly,
Per one of the pieces I read (TMZ, I think), police wouldn’t press charges because there was no “independent witness” (besides the apparent factoid that Apperson declined to press charges, that is).
Yeah, that mashable dot com guy Daileda said that GZ seems to have an “endless supply of get-out-of-jail-free cards,” and that GZ is “building quite a history of run-ins with police that lead to nothing more than an outpouring of news articles.”
I’m not too sure that I wouldn’t have chosen the word “resume” instead of “history” at this point.
Eventually, he will run into whatever it takes for lake Mary police to remove him from his gun. Because from what I see, he is free to harass and threaten anyone he chooses.
Well, thanks so much for posting the mashable thread. Too bad they kept complainant’s email there so now even though he wanted not to report it because he knows it means massive media trucks outside his home, it’s there.;-(
It also sounds much more frightening :”tubs pulls up and blocks man from exiting his car so he has to exit thru passenger side”.
This is what Michael Dunn did in his murder….plenty of parking yet Dunn pulls up next to teen’s car.
I see that “scrodriguez” over at the blackbutterfly7 wordpress blog might also smell a rat (besides the obvious one, that is):
blackbutterfly7 at wordpress dot com
Woo hoo! Links for Apperson’s 911 calls and police reports, courtesy of Colin Daileda at mashable dot com:
Mashable 20140912
@ 2dogsonly,
I just dunno what in Sam Hill is going on in this situation. Is it just me who thinks that the “Do you know who I am?” question has become such a cliche that it’s suspect?
Right now I feel a little sorry for Apperson, because if he’s on the level, he’s not only had a couple of unpleasant encounters with GZ, but now his private information is out there for all to see (I’m a bit dismayed that nobody thought to redact anything from the police report).
That doesn’t necessarily mean ‘just’ that the press will be on Apperson’s door step; it means that any kind of nutcase could go after him.
I can’t make up my mind which is worse: this is real, or this is scripted BS.
It’s not scripted. The video of tubs being stopped doesn’t have him saying : gee I don’t have a clue what the hell you’re talking about. Been tending to those little black kids I mentor, and serving the homeless.” ( tongue in cheek)
But he doesn’t profess any surprise when stopped by Lake Mary’s finest.
I can’t get sound cloud to work for me even tho I joined it. So can’t hear actual 911 calls.
@ 2dogsonly,
There are actually multiple scenarios in which this situation could be at least partially scripted.
One is that Apperson dreamed it up because he has LAMD (Look At Me Disorder–yeah, I totally made up that disease name).
Another is that Apperson (and possibly some unknown other persons) dreamed it up as a way to further discredit GZ.
Yet another is that Apperson and GZ are in collusion (GZ might do something that makes him look bad because he craves attention and isn’t too particular about what kind).
Another possibility ad nauseam is that the LM police are involved because it’s almost some kind of weird public service message: People, this is what you do/don’t do when you find yourself in a road rage situation (yeah, this scenario is pretty cray-cray).
BTW, I’m not the only one who thinks this is hinky:
Natalie Jackson at twitter
New thread for GZ ‘Road Rage’ incident, with a bonus review of Narcissistic Personality Disorder:
Please move GZ commentary to the new thread, and continue to put Mike Brown stuff here.
OK, more factoids for the Brown homicide (boldface font my edit for emphasis):
St. Louis Post-Dispatch 20140913
Google Maps shows Glenark Drive to be a little ‘connector’ road quite close to Canfield Drive, so it seems quite possible for Wilson to have gotten from one to the other in two minutes time.
Still no insight into Wilson’s frame of mind at the time. Not that being upset over a sick child incident would be an excuse. I’m looking for explanations, not excuses.
Actually, the St. Louis Post Dispatch article I linked up above in post 9339 is well worth a read as it provides a lot of hitherto unknown (to me, anyway) details about that day.
Of course, why it’s taken over a month to get this info is another question…
Oh, and we may now have an answer as to whether Wilson ever called in to report the homicide (boldface font my edit for emphasis):
Well, diwataman has resurfaced with a new blog to examine the Brown homicide.
Regardless of one’s opinion of him and his conclusions (I totally disagreed with his conclusions about the Martin homicide), his organization skills are excellent. Here he has a timeline complete with event numbers and some links/documents:
Timeline of Brown Homicide at wordpress 20140913
I see that TalkLeft is also examining the case. So far, the Queen of Clubs (Jeralyn Merritt) seems to be championing Brown. };-)
Even axiom amnesia said he had the first timeline correct in Trayvon’s murder. Then went cocky or taken over by the nutters. But they said his initial investigation was spot on.
Thanks for this. Will read tomorrow.
Talk left would have a hard time even as a defense attorney championing Darren Wilson.
I came across an interesting tidbit while perusing the Brown homicide conversations at Talk Left (boldface font my edit for clarification):
Talk Left
I figure he meant Michael Brady, but is it true that Brady said Johnson was on the opposite side of the SUV during the ‘arm-wrestling’ between Wilson and Brown?
If you’re Wilson, tussling with one of them, having the other one moving around to get behind your back probably wasn’t very re-assuring, and Johnson’s lucky another cop didn’t show up to misinterpret that.
If true, it does raise the question of how that affected what Johnson could or could not have seen of the struggle, and whether it affected his interpretation of it.
@ unitron,
Yeah, if one was in some kind of hostile interaction with somebody who was part of a pair, one would want to know where the other was.
Johnson might have been doing nothing more alarming than getting up on the sidewalk (I believe the police chief said that one of them did get up on the sidewalk), but Wilson wouldn’t necessarily have known that.
As to Johnson being ‘lucky’ that another cop didn’t show up–maybe.
The thought crossed my mind that this whole tragedy could have been avoided had Wilson called for backup. You know, assuming that Wilson had some reason to think he might need to do something other than verbally admonish them about jaywalking.
Well, nobody’s recall is perfect, but I do wonder about a number of things, including Johnson’s allegation that Wilson hit both of them when he opened the door with his SUV.
I don’t see how the door could have hit them both if they were walking side-by-side, but I suppose that when Wilson backed up, one of them could have ‘instinctively’ dropped back behind the other (my money would be on the relatively diminutive Johnson).
Johnson could have ended up on the passenger side of the SUV if he had gone up on the sidewalk.
@ unitron,
Hey, go nuts. Ahem In a manner of speaking.
More factoids about the Brown homicide:
Talk Left
(Oh, and I saw a brief discussion over at Talk Left about the definition of the word “factoid.” Hell, I didn’t even realize factoid was a real word. I use it myself because I just like it, but I do have a sense that the connotation is that what is represented by it is not necessarily a bona-fide fact. So far, we do seem to have a lot of ‘factoids’ in this case rather than hard facts.)
I guess I need to dig up that interview of Johnson by Sharpton, although I don’t have a great deal of patience with video/audio information because the access tends to be “sequential.”
Hat tip to “yahtzeebutterfly” at the blackbutterfly7 wordpress blog for this link:
St. Louis Public Radio dot org
Well, I read that Officer Darren Wilson testified before the grand jury for four hours. That’s very interesting to know, but as Xena pointed out on her blackbutterfly7 wordpress blog, leaked information points to a compromised grand jury process, and that’s very troubling.
Four hours. Oh, to be a fly on the wall.
There’s some interesting information in this New York Times article:
NYT 20140820
Johnson’s lawyer:
LE:
Witness Michael Brady:
No matter the details of who ran and when, and in what direction, one thing can’t be confused or ‘fudged,’ and that’s the distance between Wilson’s SUV, and Brown’s body: over a hundred feet.
Wilson got out of his SUV in pursuit of an unarmed person, fired his gun repeatedly in a densely populated residential area, killed Brown, and for what? Jaywalking? A fifty dollar box of cigarillos? A bruised temple? A bruised ego?
Washington Post 20140918
Hat tip to “yahtzeebutterfly” at the blackbutterfly7 wordpress blog for the link to a recent Daily Kos piece about the Brown homicide:
Daily Kos 20141003
It reinforces an important point about the case (one that I myself was slow to understand, and which many may yet not have grasped) which is the significance of the actual distance between Brown’s body and Wilson’s SUV, versus the distance reported by the police (boldface font my edit for emphasis):
There is a still from Tiffany Mitchell’s video in the DK piece that shows Wilson’s SUV and a nearby fire hydrant used as an ‘anchor’ for barricade tape, so its final ‘resting’ position is not in dispute.
Stills I’ve seen elsewhere of Brown’s body show it to have been in line with that odd little dip in the sidewalk in front of 2943 Canfield Drive. (Apropos of nothing, why did the contractors create that little sidewalk dip? Did there used to be a utility shutoff valve there, or what?)
So it seems beyond dispute that the distance between where Wilson stopped his SUV and exited to pursue Brown and where Brown fatally fell is much greater than the police have reported, and I hope the grand jury notices that.
Of course, the grand jury has other problems, like confidentiality…
Supposedly Michael Brown is fleeing on foot straight down the street. Officer Wilson has a motor vehicle which, as far as we know, runs just fine. Why would he get out and chase Brown on foot when for all he knows that’s an invitation for Dorian Johnson to shoot him in the back or for Johnson or someone else to steal his cop car?
Supposedly Michael Brown is being fired at from behind. Why would he keep running down the street in a straight line instead of trying to put something between himself and the gun, a car, a building, a tree, a bush, a street sign, something that would at least interfere with Wilson’s vision, if not his bullets?
@ unitron,
Insofar as we know.
I don’t know; it doesn’t seem like good judgment, does it? But then, getting into a sufficient tizzy to fire a gun over jaywalking, fifty bucks’ worth of merchandize, or even a physical struggle that’s now over doesn’t seem like good judgment, either. Well, not to mention not calling for backup if Wilson truly thought he had two suspects of some sort that needed apprehending.
Per the DK piece, there are no less than six eyewitnesses who’ve claimed that Wilson was firing at a retreating Brown.
I don’t know; it seems like poor judgment and unfortunately for Brown, fatal.
Local law enforcement and government seem to have been in damage control mode, but it seems impossible for them to spin that distance between Wilson’s SUV and Brown’s body.
Per daily Kos, Federal court ruled forcing protestors to keep moving is unconstitutional
http://m.dailykos.com/story/2014/10/06/1334742/-Outrageous-police-practice-of-making-protestors-stay-in-constant-movement-ruled-unconstitutional
@ 2dogonly,
Good. No reason peaceful protestors should be hassled by LE.
Meanwhile, I’m still puzzling over the little evidence we have available in the Brown homicide.
Per that recent Daily Kos piece, the measured physical distance from Wilson’s SUV to Brown’s body was 108 feet.
Of course, that isn’t quite the same thing as the distance between Wilson and Brown at any given time during those few critical minutes.
Per the contruction workers, they were as close at some point as 10 or 15 feet apart:
St Louis Post-Dispatch 20140907
I suspect that Wilson’s defense may try to argue that Brown reversed his direction of travel and came close enough that the former felt threatened.
That might work, except Wilson is still going to have to explain why he exited his SUV to pursue on foot an unarmed…jaywalker?
Ferguson ruling!!, above is about police forcing protestors in Ferguson to keep moving.!!!
I read some interesting speculation about the ejected shell casings by diwataman (yeah, that is the name of the blog):
whiteskinnedman at wordpress 20140916
It’s too complicated for me to summarize properly, however, even if the ejected shell casings do indicate a shooting scene span of 36 feet, that doesn’t include Wilson’s SUV. Not by a long shot (no terrible pun intended).
This is starting to feel ‘familiar.’
St. Louis Post-Dispatch 20141009
Nothing I’ve read so far explains what it was the “three males” were doing that might have warranted being followed by the off-duty police officer in the first place.
St. Louis is starting to look like a nightmarish place to live. Don’t meet me in St. Louis.
This St. Louis Post-Dispatch piece about the Vonderrit Myers Jr killing muddies the waters:
St. Louis Post-Dispatch 20141009
There’s too much information in it for me to summarize, and while I’m not given to praying, this quote from a prayer at a local parochial school seems apt:
Much better than “Make me an instrument of your piece.”
Love affairs aren’t always healthy and our national one with firearms is killing us.
Hmmm:
NYT 20141018
So says Wilson, apparently.
Wilson might well have believed himself to be in “imminent danger” when he was struggling with Brown at the SUV and Wilson might also arguably have believed himself to be in imminent danger when Brown turned around and started walking back towards him.
However, a belief of “imminent danger” doesn’t explain Wilson exiting his SUV and chasing an unarmed Brown for over a hundred feet.
Lisa Bloom called for an investigation into who is leaking comments from the grand jury. If this is legitimate, it is highly illegal. Twitters suspect it was leaked due to a return of no indictment.
But there was no blood as the Ferguson PD would have announced that with glee. Also, no injuries to Darren Wilson as we saw from his viewing at the crime scene.
@2dogsonly,
Yeah, while many of us would like to be a fly on the wall of the grand jury meetings, it doesn’t bode well for the integrity of the process that there’s been a leak.
They haven’t announced a decision yet, have they? (Although I get a bad feeling there will be no indictment.)
He didn’t appear injured in those (distant) photos taken at the scene, but we haven’t seen any pictures taken at the hospital or an actual medical report. You’d think the pro-Wilson leakers would want to leak those–if they supported Wilson’s story, that is.
Eh, is pumpkin a gateway drug for something? Or is it maybe some genetic frailty that is part of the “iceman inheritance?” Just kidding:
Philly dot com 20141019
Oh well, just as in Ferguson, there were some civic-minded citizens:
The most recent leaks in the Brown homicide, as reported by the New York Times, superficially would seem to support Ferguson LEO Darren Wilson’s story (two shots fired during a struggle while still in/at the SUV), but to me, the grand jury should be acting a bit like the father confessor in “Moonstruck” (boldface font my edit for emphasis):
IMDB dot com
Acting alone, Wilson put his SUV in reverse to confront two pedestrians, got into a physical altercation with one of them and fired two shots, wounding his opponent. Then Wilson got out of his SUV and pursued his unarmed opponent on foot for over one hundred feet, firing eight more shots, six of which hit the latter and one of which was fatal.
Is jaywalking a crime? Sure, but it’s a penny-ante one. If it was a killing offense, we’d be so busy burying people we wouldn’t have time to do anything else.
A St. Louis Post-Dispatch article has new alleged details of the Brown homicide, along with a link to the autopsy:
St. Louis Post Dispatch 20141022
Wilson allegedly said that “Johnson’s clothing matched a recent radio alert about a suspect in a robbery at a nearby market where cigarillos had been taken,” and radioed for assistance before backing up his SUV to confront Johnson and Brown.
‘Funny’ how this these details have taken over two months to be made public.
I’m getting a little tight-lipped about coverage of the Brown homicide by media outlets from whom I expect better:
Washington Post 20141012
I can’t say that I see anything in the latest round of leaked evidence that supports Wilson’s account over that of witness Dorian Johnson.
What we still have is a he said/he said situation about which party started the physical altercation at the SUV. What they do seem to agree on is that Wilson backed up his SUV to confront Johnson and Brown.
The authorities’ story now>/i> is that Wilson realized Johnson’s attire matched the description of a suspect in a “strong-arm” convenience store robbery, called for LE backup, and then reversed his SUV to confront Johnson and Brown. So, by their new account, Wilson didn’t wait until backup arrived.
That seems like a ‘protocol’ error, to say the least. What was the urgency? Wilson’s newly-minted reputation as an officer who can make a ‘collar’ unaided?
Then there is this (boldface font my edit for emphasis):
Twelve nanograms of tetrahydrocannabinol (TCH). Reefer madness. Did I just step out of a time machine, or what?
Who are these ‘sources,’ inquiring minds want to know?
Well, I really muffed the HTML on that last one. Oh well.
Here’s a piece from the Los Angeles Times:
LAT 20141022
Boldface font my edit for emphasis:
The pertinent editorial from the St. Louis American:
St. Louis American 20141022
San Francisco-based forensic pathologist Dr. Judith Melinek says that she had been quoted out of context, and posts the full text of emails she exchanged with reporter Blythe Bernhard of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:
pathologyexpert at blogspot dot com 20141023
The particulars of the quoting-out-of-context aside, this amused me (boldface font my edit for emphasis):
Melinek doesn’t agree with her mentor on this particular thing, and explains her own reasoning:
Sound right to me.
I’m starting to like this lady.
Yeah, she seems a’ight.
So let’s look at the points on which all principals in the Brown homicide seem to agree:
Michael Brown and Dorian Johnson were walking down Canfield Drive.
Ferguson LEO Darren Wilson was driving down Canfield Drive.
Wilson pulled up alongside Brown and Johnson and admonished them to get out of the street/up on the sidewalk.
After Wilson had passed Brown and Johnson, he stopped, put his SUV in reverse, and once again came up alongside them.
There was a physical struggle between Wilson and Brown, culminating in Wilson firing at least one shot and Brown/Johnson running away from the SUV.
Wilson exited his SUV to give pursuit on foot and fired multiple shots at Brown, killing the latter.
Not much, is it?
Hat tip to Xena at her blackbutterfly7 wordpress blog for the post about Gil Scott Heron. I’ve been riffing on his “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” meme for years without knowing the name of the creator. Talented, gorgeous and gone too soon.
Hard to believe I first heard that over 40 years ago back in ’70 or ’71 in Chapel Hill at the on-campus station (about the same time I was reading Malcom X’s autobiography). Who stole all that time from me, and whatever became of that poor lost little freshman?
@ unitron,
That old thief Cronos. However, that poor lost little freshman is still alive if you can remember him. It’s a little like Tinkerbell.
And hey, don’t forget to play Arlo Guthrie’s “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree” this year on Turkey Day.
Oh, and here’s the link for the Gil Scott Heron post which I so cleverly forgot in my last post (D’oh!):
blackbutterfly7 at wordpress dot com 20141025
Hat tip to Xena at her blackbutterfly7 wordpress blog for the link to this article about the Brown autopsy and how its results may have been widely misinterpreted:
addictinginfo dot com 20141027
This makes ‘sense’ to me. That is, it makes sense if I lend credence to the allegation that officer Darren Wilson realized Dorian Johnson matched a description for a suspect in a nearby strong-arm robbery, radioed for backup LE support and reversed his SUV in order to confront Johnson and Brown.
Total speculation on my part here:
Wilson didn’t wait for that backup support to arrive, perhaps because he wanted to add to his ‘resume’ as an officer who can make collars unaided (see award in February 2014).
So Wilson backed up his SUV in a hurry. He was too close to Johnson and Brown to open his door and exit properly (the door rebounded) and feeling thwarted and irritated, he pulled his firearm.
Michael Brown tried to stop Wilson from shooting him, to no avail.
The thing is, why should Wilson have been such a hurry to apprehend a couple of suspects in a fifty dollar strong-arm robbery (called in, not by the store clerk, but a customer)?
Johnson and Brown were walking down a suburban street in broad daylight and had even announced their intended destination.
What was the urgency that Wilson felt he couldn’t wait for backup to arrive? (I think I may have already answered that question.)
Did Johnson and Brown show poor judgment that day? Sure, but so did Wilson, and Wilson was supposedly trained to do better.
It seems quite possible to me that both Johnson and Wilson were correct in a Rashomon kind of way about the SUV door business.
Johnson alleges that Wilson backed up rapidly, almost hitting them (Johnson and Brown), and indeed was so close that when he tried to open the door of his SUV, it bounced off of them.
Wilson alleges (by way of various leakers) that Brown shoved him back into the SUV.
Total speculation again:
If a vehicle door suddenly opened right in front of me, I probably would instinctively put out my hands.
Brown may have done just that and being a large, solid young male, he not only stopped the door, but caused it to reverse its direction. Wilson was in the process of trying to emerge and might have lost his balance.
I wonder if Wilson wasn’t pissed off in a cumulative kind of way. That doesn’t justify killing, of course.
I realized too late yesterday that there was yet something else wrong with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s reportage of the Brown homicide. In an article published on October 22:
That’s not what the police report says:
document cloud, 18 page PDF
The police report describes Brown, but not Johnson.
Between Brown’s size, his quite out of the ordinary actions in the store where the clerk was concerned, and the stripedy things on his feet, I’m amazed anyone even realized that Johnson was there.
@ unitron,
Hmm, can’t say I remember stripedy things on Brown’s feet. Wasn’t he wearing socks and slip-on sandals? At any rate, yeah, Johnson doesn’t figure prominently in that scene, except that he put the merchandise handed to him by Brown on the counter before he left.
But doesn’t that make the Post-Dispatch’s ‘error’ all the more curious?
Is that police report a transcript of what actually went out over the police radio?
(I hate having to load PDFs)
Newspapers and other news media make mistakes all the time. I doubt there’s some hidden agenda behind this one. More likely a rush to make deadline.
Hat tip to “butterflydreamer2” at the blackbutterfly7 wordpress blog for this link to an article about Wilson missing court dates because of being in hiding:
The Atlantic 20141028
[B]utterflydreamer2 quotes the article:
And says:
Um, er, that is, what Magee meant to say is that they don’t get people in trouble for not showing up for court any more.
In the glare of adverse publicity following the Brown homicide, the city of Ferguson began reforming their court system which had been described as a modern-day version of debtor’s prison (quote from September 9, 2014 NYT piece):
Yeah, how ‘ironic’ that one of the cases Wilson didn’t show up for was the one for which he received an award in February 2014, huh?
@ unitron,
Nope, it’s just (yet another copy of) the police report.
I don’t mind too much, so long as they do actually load. What I don’t like is the inability to quote them easily.
That could be in this particular case; however, I don’t think I want to let the STL Post-Dispatch off the hook with that excuse for all of their less-than-immaculate coverage of the Brown homicide.
Well, I gotta get my behind in gear now, so TTFN.
Thanks to the various contributors at the blackbutterfly7 wordpress blog for the heads up that Ferguson Chief of Police Thomas Jackson might be resigning. He denies it, however:
STL Post-Dispatch 20141029
‘Interesting’ language.
Why does this strike me as something akin to a ‘Hollywood’ maneuver? (When there are rumors that a famous Hollywood couple is going to get a divorce, both parties and their representatives will deny it’s true–right up to the day the paperwork is filed.)
Kudos to “shaunking” at Daily Kos for giving a second-by-second text breakdown of the action seen in the Ferguson Market & Liquor surveillance videos:
Daily Kos 20141028
In addition to Shaun King’s second-by-second text description of the action (in which he explains that Brown and Johnson both returned boxes of cigarillos before exiting the store):
News One 20140827
The police report listed as stolen an entire box of cigarillos worth $48.99.
Insofar as I know, the Ferguson PD has never corrected this error.
Frank Serpico speaks about police corruption and what to do about it (he also touches briefly on the Brown homicide):
Politico 20141023
Blackbutterfly7 contributor “crustyolemothman” asks whether it’s true that Michael Brown’s mother Leslie McSpadden might be facing charges over an incident in a parking lot.
I haven’t seen an actual police report yet, but this Washington Post piece touches on an issue that comes up repeatedly (well, on the Internet, anyway) in the Trayvon Martin homicide case:
WaPo 20141106
Critics of Trayvon Martin’s family have harped on the fact that they’ve trademarked his name/image, alleging that they’re motivated by greed.
Aside from the general ugliness of the alleged Brown family incident, I think this illustrates what can happen if you don’t trademark a deceased loved one’s name/image.
Part of the problem is that once a person is dead, the deceased has absolutely no protection under U.S. law against libel or slander.
About the only recourse the family has is to trademark.
Well, I think I was about as clear as mud in that last post, so here’s an attempt to clarify:
If a family doesn’t trademark the name/image of a deceased family member who attracts a lot of controversial press attention, there’s a danger that some ‘enterprising’ (cough) person could conceivably cause even more heartache.
I’m thinking of the person who tried to sell targets with a silhouette of somebody wearing a hoodie.
Had Trayvon Martin’s family not trademarked his name/image, there would have been nothing to prevent hatemongers from selling actual photographs of him as a target.
And that’s only one ugly scenario.
This should have read “actual images” rather than “actual photographs” to be more inclusive. Given the enormous outpouring of racist hate in the Martin homicide case, I can easily envision some ‘entrepreneur’ making a drawing of Trayvon Martin and turning it into a target. It’s also possible that they could use an actual photograph, but that seems less likely.
It’s also possible that people are doing these things, but at least Martin’s family has some legal recourse because of the trademark.
Completely off topic…I just saw the pix of the kidnapper of the girl and why she reached her hand out to him. He is movie star handsome, think Ted Bundy. So, kudos to LE and the car dealership for installing a GPS on his car due to poor credit and fears car may need to be I pounded. Apparently, he is a serial killer and showed her pixs of previously kidnapped women.
As to above, the haters showed their lack of compassion. They need to look at Darren Wilson’s upbringing if they are going to make hateful comments like I read. I thought Mr. Crump was in Ferguson for a while after Mike Brown’s murder so I am surprised he would not assist the family in trademarking his name. He arranged for the famous pathologist, Dr. Biden ( I think is his name) to preform an autopsy and waive his normal 10k fee so copy writing Mike Brown’s name is a no brainer for an attorney. Hopefully, they have been able to copyright his name, image, and his logo.
The Smoking Gun has obtained a copy of the police report about the Brown family incident on October 18, 2014 (caveats: the order of the pages in the three page PDF police report seems to be jumbled and the report is rife with typographical and spelling errors):
TSG 20141106
@ 2dogsonly,
Jaysus. Yeah, I remember reading the book “The Stranger Beside Me” by a former coworker of Bundy’s. It’s a terrible (and terrifying) truth that not all violent criminals are ugly and/or stupid, and Bundy in particular was neither.
Yup. I can hardly read anything online now without stumbling across hateful (and frequently impertinent to the topic at hand) comments.
Hindsight is a ‘wonderful’ thing. That business in the parking lot sounds like bad blood between current and ex-spouses could be at the core. That kind of bad blood is only too common, but unfortunately, Brown’s family is under a microscope right now.
P.S. As to the name of the pathologist, you’re close. It’s actually Baden.
FT’s DOJ has been moved to Wed.
Here is OS article
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/trayvon-martin-george-zimmerman/os-george-zimmerman-civil-rights-grand-jury-20141030-story.html
@ 2dogsonly,
Thanks, I knew that the GJ session had been moved to this coming Wednesday.
What I learned from Xena: because of the deliberately labyrinthine design of many courthouses, one might not see somebody who is in fact there.
Actually, I think one of the press pieces from last Wednesday kind of alluded to that because they used the word “public.”
It makes sense in a twisted, Venetian kind of way that a courthouse might have secret rooms and passageways.
It’s the Sanford courthouse.;-)
Not even the Jax. New over 1 million dollar has secret passages.
I am friends with marinade Dave ( FB that is) and he said he didn’t expect anything to come out of it. No, I didn’t question why he felt that…but at least tubs is mighty quiet on twitter ville.
I want to thank you word salad and Whonoze but I am signing off. The person’s blog you quote is not a legal anything.. I don’t out people but I don’t follow her and so I wish you the very best in life and thank you and Whonoze. I am forever grateful for all your work but quoting her is off base. That’s all I want to say, you can fill in the rest and ask yourself why she was so rude to me because she knew I had an idea she was not what she put out. Many people let me know months and months ago.
“Private pass way” for Taffe, right because that is a very old courthouse in a financially devastated city with no interest now, over 16 mths. later. Further, Taffe can certainly handle any hostile shouts that people may want to holler. That’s is just her spinning that she has knowledge when she has never been a legal researcher and quit her job to become an airline stewardess but didn’t get hired.
So, I’m out.
@ 2dogsonly,
Wow. Still, a million clams doesn’t go as far as it used to. };-)
Marinade Dave is not only local, but has his ear to the ground, so he may be right.
As to GZ, yep, his ‘real’ twitter feed has been silent since the end of September. Junior’s been kind of quiet as well.
@ 2dogsonly,
Could you do me one last favor and clarify who you’re talking about here? Is it that Pate gal, or somebody else?
No not talking about VP. Here is Frank’s today conversation.
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/trayvon-martin-george-zimmerman/os-george-zimmerman-grand-jury-testimony-20141112-story.html
@ 2dogsonly,
I’m sorry, but if it isn’t her, then I’m totally clueless as to whom you’re alluding.
Not to mention that Taaffe’s brother died even more recently. Allegedly, Uncle Frank had some serious sibling rivalry going on with his brother, so somehow I suspect that particular death affected him even more than those of his sons.
I hope he’s truly on the level now, because he has one hell of a hole to dig himself out of (hmmm, was that an especially bad mixed metaphor or what?).
Well, I must away, as duty calls (again).
I think Xena’s credentials as “someone who worked with lawyers in a lawyer’s office, and therefore knows something about the law and legal matters and court procedures” are what’s being called into question by the previous poster.
@ unitron,
Dear, oh dear. In this case, I hope you’re wrong, because I don’t like to think that 2dogsonly has had some kind of falling out with Xena.
Insofar as I know, Xena has never tried to present herself as a lawyer, merely as somebody who has some insights through working with lawyers.
I hope this little storm will blow over.
Well, duty calls again. TTFN
Darren Wilson resigned today!
@ 2dogsonly,
Thanks, I’ve been busy and am behind the times.
Wilson’s resignation wasn’t too terribly surprising. I couldn’t see him returning to the Ferguson force (alliteration–heh).
His new wife still has a job and benefits, although I have to wonder how that will work now that her identity and appearance are known.
The ones in that new little family I feel sympathy for are the children, because they are truly blameless in all this.
I know you don’t care for The Guardian, but they had an interesting piece on the case recently.
In addition to pointing out the possibility that the grand jury was ‘rigged’ to ensure Wilson wouldn’t be indicted, it suggests that the policing of post-Brown-homicide Ferguson hasn’t been exactly even-handed, to say the least:
The Guardian 20141128
Hmmm:
The Guardian 20141115
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch article referenced by the Guardian article:
STLPD 20141114
Almost too many ‘interesting’ things in there to quote.
An interesting observation from Captain Ron Johnson:
MSNBC 20141114
Philip Ross of the International Business Times opines about he thinks are the five possible outcomes after the grand jury decision:
IBT 20141114
Ha! Thanks to Xena for these reminiscences:
blackbutterfly7
I definitely remember when phone numbers began with a name.
As to fast food, I can remember my first visit to a McDonald’s. There was no drive-in. As a matter of fact, there was no walk-in, either. It was a little red-and-white tiled building with a large yellow arch on either end and you walked up to a window to order/receive your food.
For those too young to remember that style, do a Net search for the McDonald’s in Downey, CA.
Yahoo 20141115
I’ve been trying to make sense out of why Brown and Wilson would have been “interacting” through the open window of the driver’s side door. Even in an SUV where you’re higher off the ground than in a sedan, it seems the person sitting in the vehicle would be at a disadvantage, unable to use their entire body for leverage, the steering wheel in the way, etc.
And even if Wilson could pull Brown, or the top half of him, inside, what would be the point?
The only thing I can think of is if he intended to use the power window to trap Brown somehow.
I’ve seen that done on fictional television shows, but that’s no guarantee it works in real life.
Remember, these are the same shows where cars squeal tires on dirt roads.
I tried searching for anything about cops actually using this technique but get swamped with results about police reports of tragic stories of small children injured or killed by power windows of vehicles in which they were riding, supposedly because they themselves leaned on the window switch or something.
Anybody ever seen anything about a real cop in real life trying to pin someone’s upper body with a power window?
@ unitron,
The Tahoe and Brown were within an inch of being the same height, so it seems technically possible, if a terrible idea.
What comes to mind almost unbidden is that Wilson had had a taste of approval back in February 2014 (when he got that award for making an arrest single-handed) and wanted more.
I guess it’s not impossible that Wilson wanted to already be in possession of his “trophy” when the other units rolled up, but it seems such a clumsy way to go about it.
You’d think a real cop would know that real policing doesn’t really work like on TV, where the actors and stunt co-ordinators work together and practice to make a “trap ’em with the power window” scene come off without a hitch, and would go with restraint and arrest techniques which they’ve been taught and on which they’ve trained and practiced.
And I’m having trouble with the idea that a seated Wilson would have the leverage to be able to reach out through the window and grab and pull a big heavy guy like Brown through the window opening into the interior of the vehicle if Brown could plant both feet on the pavement and pull back.
Brown for whatever reason voluntarily reaching through the window seems improbable, but less so than any other explanation just because of the logistics.
Another thing, does anyone know if Wilson was left-handed and wore his holster on the left?
Because otherwise Brown would have to reach across Wilson’s body to grab his gun, but apparently it was Brown’s right hand that got shot, when you’d think he’d be using his left to try for the gun.
Doing it as a mental experiment, assigning “blame” to either one of them still leaves the part just before the first shot just not making sense.
Wilson trying to drag him in through the window is more likely to find himself being pulled out the window, and Brown trying to come through the window at Wilson–what was the end game of that supposed to be that would have worked better than running away behind the buildings?
I hate it when things don’t make sense, and calling Brown a thug or calling Wilson a racist doesn’t do a thing to explain away the logistics.
@ unitron,
One possibility that would ‘make sense’ for Brown to reach into the window would be that Wilson already had his gun drawn and was threatening to use it. Not that threatening to shoot somebody over a box of cigars makes sense.
Dunno, but perhaps looking closely at the pictures of Wilson at the scene might answer that question. The pictures don’t have enough resolution to identify weapon type but perhaps are good enough to make out position.
If Wilson’s gun was still holstered and on his right side.
@ unitron,
I don’t think we should assume that Wilson had had good training.
For one thing, if Wilson had had good training, it would have been ingrained in him to wait for backup, especially on the collar of multiple suspects who weren’t in any apparent danger of getting away (Brown and Johnson were allegedly walking leisurely towards an announced destination). Not to mention the pettiness of the alleged crime in question.
” Not to mention the pettiness of the alleged crime in question.”
If what Wilson heard on the radio call was “be on the lookout for shoplifting suspects”, then perhaps one could consider it “petty”, but if it was strong-arm robbery, i.e., physical assault, that’s on another level.
Assuming you weren’t referring to the usually “mis-characterized as jaywalking” walking in the middle of the street.
(They were apparently walking parallel to the sidewalks and curbs, whereas jaywalking would be at right angles to them)
@ unitron,
I think the original terminology for the alleged crime at the convenience store was “stealing in progress.”
What Brown did to the clerk could be characterized as assault, but the clerk trying to lock the door could be characterized as an attempt at illegal imprisonment–not to mention a safety hazard. How many times have you seen signs forbidding locked doors during business hours?
BTW, I think the original terminology used was “stealing in progress.”
Hmmm, it might be mis-characterization (Merriam Webster defines jaywalking as “to cross a street carelessly or in an illegal manner so as to be endangered by traffic “), but what would one call walking down the middle of the street? If there are no sidewalks (there were sidewalks), a pedestrian is supposed to walk on the shoulder of the road–the shoulder of oncoming motorized traffic.
BTW, I don’t think the pictures taken by Thee Pharoah are clear enough to make out Wilson’s arrangement of equipment at his waist.
You can make out some strappy thing (yeah, I always like to be precise and technical in my language) mounted on his left shoulder, possibly comm gear for ease of access by a right-handed person.
Here are the relatively close-up pictures of Wilson at the award ceremony in February:
Hollywood Life 20140817
An opinion piece from retired Episcopal bishop Gene Robinson:
Daily Beast 20141116
Here are some interesting tidbits (to me, anyway):
NBC News 20141116
So let’s see:
Fergflor dot org 2014-2015 Calendar
Per the current calendar, students will have a half day off on November 21st and full days off 26-28.
Why do I think the grand jury will wait until the kids are out of school to announce a decision they’ve already made?
It would be interesting if they timed the release of the decision so that people had to choose between taking to the streets to show their reaction or hitting the after-Thanksgiving sales.
@ unitron,
Not wanting to be cynical about this, but that might be exactly what they’re banking on: people busy getting ready for the feast or the aftermath.
I hope there won’t be violence because most people are decent and want peace. Check out this picture of a guy offering a rose to an LEO:
NYDN by way of Google
If they return a “no true bill”, then it’s possible we see reaction in the streets similar to what we saw back in August.
If they do go forward with charges against Wilson, it’s not impossible that we see something similar to the “celebration rioting” often seen in communities whose teams have won a big sports victory.
I don’t blame them for trying to schedule the release of the grand jury findings in a way that has a chance of damping down either reaction, just in case one of those reactions happens.
A timeline from “Uncle Chip” at TalkLeft:
Talk Left
In other posts, UC makes the point that Wilson successfully calls dispatch at 12:02PM and makes no indication that he’s in distress of any kind (assault, need to fire weapon).
Also, it doesn’t support the allegation that Wilson’s radio had been knocked off channel earlier by the struggle.
That link goes to the Thursday open thread at TL, but when the subject came up again in the Saturday page I had some thoughts of my own to offer:
http://www.talkleft.com/comments/2014/11/15/134744/79/147#147
and a couple of comments under that leftwig illustrates the problem as well.
@ unitron,
In terms of protests or violence and vandalism?
I certainly hope not.
I don’t blame them for trying to minimize further violence, but I feel like I can blame local authorities for what looks like unscrupulous PR (is that redundant?) that’s turned Ferguson into a powder keg.
@ unitron,
Point taken that We the Little People for the most part don’t have the actual police reports to peruse.
And we won’t–unless the GJ has decided that there isn’t enough evidence to charge Wilson. ‘Nice,’ huh?
If the Grand Jury decides not to indict, we see all the evidence they did.
If they decide to indict, there’s a trial, and we’ll probably see it then.
In the meantime, if the various media obtained those logs via FOIA request, we only have them to blame if they only offer us their interpretations of them.
@ unitron,
Or transcripts thereof. ‘We’ won’t actually get to see Wilson giving his version of events to the GJ. Oh, and we won’t really be able to do jack-squat if we see something in the evidence we think the GJ missed.
“If” and “probably.”
I do wonder why. Well, in the case of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, not so much.
http://www.stltoday.com/news/multimedia/special/darren-wilson-s-radio-calls-show-fatal-encounter-was-brief/html_79c17aed-0dbe-514d-ba32-bad908056790.html
This is a poorly written and misleading article that at least contains some timeline evidence, obtained via FOIA lawsuit by the St Louis Post. The article seems slanted to favor the police.
What’s missing is the obvious fact that ofc Wilson fired his weapon, killed a person and never reported the shooting or the death to dispatch. At all. I’ve not seen ANY credible report that says where or how WIlson spoke about the shooting to his superiors at all, frankly. What we’ve seen are second hand reports of what may or may not have really happened in the wake of the homicide on Canfield street in Ferguson, Mo.
“What we know” is that multiple eyewitnesses saw an unarmed teen running away from the officer under a hail of gunfire, and then turning to surrender, only to be gunned down. It’s inconceivable that Brown turned to “charge” the officer after sprinting as far as he had to get away.
Whatever happened at the car fails to justify what happened so far away on the street. Wilson may have “feared for his life” (the magic words that allow any cop to kill you with impunity, apprently) when he was in his SUV, but he was in no reasonable danger when he unloaded his weapon on a kid who was clearly unarmed, and surrendering.
I think Wilson knows this, but whatever he admitted at the time is hidden from us, replaced by a carefully crafted after the fact narrative that the Ferguson PD is helping him put into the public realm.
Not calling in the shooting speaks volumes about his state of mind at the time, in my opinion.
Not that this would help gain a conviction in court, however.
@ willisnewton,
I agree and I suspect this is why the STLPD doesn’t release the FOIA information they obtained in its entirety.
Wilson might be able to make a credible case for “feared for his life” during the struggle at the SUV and again when Brown turned and started walking back towards him (you understand that I’m talking about what a jury might find credible), but firing repeatedly at an unarmed person in retreat? Nuh uh.
And of course, the struggle at the SUV could have been avoided if Wilson had waited for backup to arrive. Indeed, most of the events, including Brown’s death, probably could have been avoided had Wilson waited for backup to arrive. You know, assuming that they aren’t all gun-crazy.
They probably told him to clam up and let them handle it, and don’t think they haven’t learned to watch the Net. Call it a bad thing learned from the GZ case.
Wilson allegedly spoke to the GJ for four hours, but by then FPD had had plenty of time to coach him. We’ll only get to see transcripts of that GJ chat if he isn’t indicted.
Yup, Wilson knew he’d screwed up in a major way and was already clamming up.
Brown screwed up, too, but he didn’t deserve to die. (If by some miracle Brown were to come back a la Lazarus, I suspect that after his parents cried tears of joy and hugged him, they’d probably give him a slap upside the head.)
No. I get a bad feeling about it.
Washington Post 20141117
This gives me a bad feeling that the grand jury has already made a decision not to indict Wilson and the state is gearing up for violence (which will probably happen if they keep gearing up like a police state).
KMOV dot com 20141118
CNN 20141117
KDSK 20141118
Boldface font my edit for emphasis:
KCCI 20141119
Per the schedule I linked further upstream, area kids have only a half-day of school this Friday.
The Star 20141118
KDSK 20141119
Detroit MLive 20141119
(Malik Shabazz, founder of the New Marcus Garvey Movement in Detroit, formerly known as the New black Panthers):
Well, that is to say Jews are not (routinely) beaten and killed by police like black people in the 21st century United States.
However, Shabazz make an important point: vote.
Maybe your candidate won’t win, but if you don’t vote, not only will you increase the likelihood that your candidate won’t win, you’ll be sending the wrong message to The Powers That Be (the Little People aren’t paying attention, so we can do as we please).
Shaun King on Kos has a photo analysis of the distance between Brown’s body and Wlison’s vehicle. It appears the cops are lying (!) but the exact truth is not necessarily revealed. Check it out:
http://tinyurl.com/pj7guur
@ whonoze,
Yeah, I think that particular lie has already been pretty roundly exposed (although King’s reporting on the case has been excellent overall).
The local authorities are just not going to be able to explain away that discrepancy. Well, not to me or a lot of other people, that is.
I have a feeling that the GJ’s decision will be announced today (because of the GJ members meeting and kids having only a half-day of school today).
Are the local STL authorities going through some version of the Kübler-Ross model? To me, this smacks of ‘bargaining’:
CNN 20141121
Well, still no announcement of a grand jury decision whether to indict Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of Michael Brown.
Maybe the GJ decision will be announced next week, but that could ruin the already damaged and fragile economy in Brown’s neighborhood (nearby Clayton which has a Tiffany & Company store reportedly hasn’t been suffering sales-wise).
Really, any time between now and Christmas could have serious impact on sales (like it or no, U.S. business is heavily dependent on Christmas sales) and the GJ does have until January 7, 2015.
St.Louis Post-Dispatch 20141122
Yahoo 20141123
Oh ‘nice.’
Jaysus. The news this morning is full of reports that Darren Wilson got married October 24, 2014 to girlfriend (and fellow Ferguson police officer) Barbara Lynn Spradling:
New York Times 20141124
Why get married at this time? A cynic might say because a person can’t be forced to testify against a spouse.
Eh, not to mention that the rumored-to-be-resigning Wilson will probably be eligible for City of Ferguson benefits through his wife.
CNN 20141124
USATODAY 20141124
Antonio French at twitter dot come 20141124
Well, I read the grand jury’s decision last night, but didn’t have time to react because of personal responsibilities. I agree with Alderman Antonio French who said that it was a sad day not only for Ferguson but for the entire country.
I haven’t had much of a chance to look at the release evidence, but I have to wonder whether anybody on the GJ asked Wilson why he didn’t wait for the backup he requested.
What was the urgency to detain suspects in a relatively minor incident at a local convenience store?
Market Watch 20141124
Happy Thanksgiving.
I say that with some trepidation because the news lately hasn’t been altogether happy and of a nature to make everybody want to give thanks.
Still, while things could be a whole lot better, they also could be a whole lot worse and I’m sure that before the day is out I’ll remember things for which to be thankful.
Ezra Klein at vox dot com compares Rashomon-style the accounts of Darren Wilson and Dorian Johnson:
vox dot com 20141125
I agree with Klein that the truth is probably somewhere in between.
I also agree with this:
Boston Globe 20141126
The Atlantic 20141126
Mashable 20141126
NPR 20141127
Pharrell Williams on the Brown homicide:
Ebony 20141113
An interview with the director of the Ferguson Public Library, Scott Bonner:
UT San Diego dot com 20141201
The library now has close to $300,000 in donations. 🙂
New thread up. Happy Holidays wordsalad, and anyone else still checking in.