Question About The Riots.......

[Dill]

(06-03-2020, 01:59 PM)bfine32 Wrote: I'm surprised you disagree with the findings of AG Holder. 

It has been declared to be a false claim given eyewitness testimony and forensic evidence regardless of Fred's opinion on the matter. There was also a video of Michael Brown robbing a store and assaulting its clerk prior to his shooting.
George Floyd seemed like a good guy and his family has proven to be tremendous people. Why do folks want to associate this tragedy with the Michael Brown case? IMO it cheapens the issues and circumstances of the Floyd case. 

One reason people want to and can make the association is because the Obama DOJ found that the Ferguson police, as a policy of the entire department, used ticketing of black residents to increase their own funding. I.e., the department was corrupt, with paper trails of racist statements and images.

That is why the city of Ferguson was forced into a Consent Degree arrangement, which after two years of progress, was stalled during Sessions last month as DOJ.  And that's one example of how such cases are not handled the same under every president.

So the point of comparison is to indicate a systemic racism in police culture of more than one department (also indicated by attempts to quickly get negative characterizations of the victim before the press). And that pattern of systemic racism is the primary issue, not random, unrelated cases, some robbers and some "nice guys."

I remember when we discussed Ferguson on the old list. And you did not want to actually read the Grand Jury testimony yourself, if I remember correctly.  There were a lot of crazy witness accounts--including one exonerating Wilson from a woman who had not even been at the scene. What the jury finally found was that some "hands up" witnesses had offered testimony inconsistent with the facts (such as claims that Brown had been shot in the back), so their testimony was discredited.  There was credible testimony that he had briefly raised his hands, not that he said "don't shoot." See page 8 on this report (which I have to dig out again).  There is no declaration of a "false claim"--only weeding out of more inconsistent from less inconsistent testimony. Nothing on which to convict Wilson.

https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/opa/press-releases/attachments/2015/03/04/doj_report_on_shooting_of_michael_brown_1.pdf