Or so it would appear. When Ferguson's police chief was questioned about the number of bullets Officer Darren Wilson shot at Michael Brown seemed vague and dismissive. A recording of the event by a bystander hints at several more shots than the original six.
Evidence shows that the officer’s weapon went off inside the car, according to law enforcement officials. The witnesses say that Mr. Brown then fled and that Officer Wilson got out of his car and fired at him as Mr. Brown was running away. At some point, those witnesses said, Mr. Brown turned around and was facing Officer Wilson when the officer fired the final shots.
One of those witnesses, Michael T. Brady, a janitor who lives near the scene of the shooting, said in an interview that Mr. Brown was bent over when one of the shots hit him in the head. “The officer lets out three more shots at him,” Mr. Brady said. “The second one goes into his head as he was bending down.” ...NYT
Times reporters spoke with the lawyer for the unidentified owner of the videocam.
Ms. Blumenthal said she did not know what precisely the new recording would reveal to investigators. “What I do know happened, just from the evidence, is that there was a pause,” Ms. Blumenthal, of Blumenthal & Blumenthal, said in an interview in her small offices in north St. Louis County. “So, at some point, the shooter stopped momentarily and then resumed shooting. What the rationale or reasoning is, I have no way to know.” ...NYT
Whether Darren Wilson is guilty of outright murder or not, the current Supreme Court has made sure he won't be held fully accountable for the crime. In an editorial, the dean of the UC Irvine law school examines recent Supreme Court rulings showing that the Supreme Court "protects bad cops."
In recent years, the court has made it very difficult, and often impossible, to hold police officers and the governments that employ them accountable for civil rights violations. This undermines the ability to deter illegal police behavior and leaves victims without compensation. When the police kill or injure innocent people, the victims rarely have recourse.
The most recent court ruling that favored the police was Plumhoff v. Rickard, decided on May 27, which found that even egregious police conduct is not “excessive force” in violation of the Constitution. ...NYT
Cherminsky examines a series of copsucker (my word, not his) Court decisions and concludes that "taken together, these rulings have a powerful effect. They mean that the officer who shot Michael Brown -- and the City of Ferguson -- will most likely never be held accountable in court.
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One could be forgiven for concluding that the police -- nationwide -- are as corrupt and trigger-happy as they appear to be. Raw Story describes an outright murder by police in Walmart in Dayton.
Surveillance video shows an Ohio man talking on a cell phone, leaning on a toy gun, and facing away from officers moments before police shot and killed him in a Walmart store, according to an attorney for the man’s family.
John Crawford III died Aug. 5 after police were called to Walmart in Beavercreek, near Dayton, by another shopper who reported a man carrying what appeared to be an AR-15 rifle.
The 22-year-old Crawford was instead carrying an unpackaged MK-177 (.177 caliber) BB/pellet rifle he picked up in the store’s toy department.
Police claim Crawford ignored their commands to drop the weapon, and the former Marine who called in the report and witnessed the shooting said Crawford “looked like he was going to go violently.”
But attorney Michael Wright said surveillance video from the incident, which Ohio’s attorney general allowed him to watch with Crawford’s family, contradicted those accounts.
“John was doing nothing wrong in Walmart, nothing more, nothing less than shopping,” Wright said.
The attorney said surveillance video showed Crawford facing away from officers, talking on the phone, and leaning on the pellet gun like a cane when he was “shot on sight” in a “militaristic” response by police. ...RawStory
