Edward Conlon: The Racial Reality Of Policing

Edward Conlon, a former NYPD detective and the author of two outstanding books, Blue Blood Red and Red On Red, offers his interesting and insightful take on race and the police in the Wall Street Journal.

... Since last August, when a cop shot and killed Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., accounts of the deaths of African-American men at the hands of police have dominated the news. The names of the dead—Brown, Garner, Crawford, Rice, Harris, Scott, Gray—have an Everyman quality about them. The cases have provoked outrage. Rep. Hank Johnson, an African-American member of Congress from Georgia, took to the floor of the House to say that “It feels like open season on black men in America.”

Others have compared the incidents to an epidemic, even to genocide. Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei has tweeted about Ferguson. Michael Brown’s parents were flown to Switzerland to address the U.N. Committee Against Torture, and many see the activism that has emerged since Brown’s death as the onset of a great moral awakening.

It’s not up to me to decide what activists should protest, but after years of dealing with the realities of street violence, I don’t understand how a movement called “Black Lives Matter” can ignore the leading cause of death among young black men in the U.S., which is homicide by their peers.

In 2011, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention counted 129 instances of black men killed by “legal intervention”—that is to say, by cops. The figure is incomplete because of a lack of national reporting requirements, and it says nothing about the circumstances of the killings or the race of the officers involved. But it gives a sense of the scope of the problem.

By contrast, in that same year, 6,739 black men were murdered, overwhelmingly by young men like themselves. Since 2001, even as rates of violent crime have dropped dramatically, more than 90,000 black men in the U.S. have been killed by other black men. With fatalities on this scale, the term epidemic is not a metaphor. Every year, the casualty count of black-on-black crime is twice that of the death toll of 9/11. 

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-racial-reality-of-policing-1441390980

The Ferguson Shooting: The Inconvenient (And Tragic) Truths

Rich Lowry offers a column in the New York Post on the facts concerning the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.

The bitter irony of the Michael Brown case is that if he had actually put his hands up and said don’t shoot, he would almost certainly be alive today.

His family would have been spared an unspeakable loss, and Ferguson, Mo., wouldn’t have experienced multiple bouts of rioting, including the torching of at least a dozen businesses the night it was announced that Officer Darren Wilson wouldn’t be charged with a crime.

Instead, the credible evidence suggests that Michael Brown — after a petty act of robbery at a local business — attacked Wilson when the officer stopped him on the street. Brown punched Wilson when the officer was still in his patrol car and attempted to take his gun from him.

You can read the rest of the column via the below link:

http://nypost.com/2014/11/26/the-inconvenient-and-tragic-truths/

'You're Too Much Of A Pussy To Shoot Me': Grand Jury Evidence Reveals How An 'Aggresive' Michael Brown Taunted Cop Darren Wilson Before He Was Shot Dead

The British newspaper the Daily Mail offers a piece on the Grand Jury decision not to indict Police Officer Darren Wilson for the shooting death of Michael Brown. The Daily Mail's  web site also offers some good photos and videos.

Explosive evidence heard by the grand jury in the Michael Brown case has been released following the panel's decision not to indict Fergusion police officer Darren Wilson. 

The evidence, unveiled by St Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Robert McCulloch, includes the testimony of 28-year-old Wilson after he fatally shot the unarmed black 18-year-old on August 9.

It also features never-before seen photos of the white officer's injuries, clothing and car - from which he fired two rounds at Brown - witness statements and more then 1,000 other legal documents.  

It comes just hours after after McCulloch announced the jury of seven men and five women found 'no probable cause exisits' to indict Wilson in the shooting in Ferguson, Missouri.

In his testimony, the officer described the moment he shot Brown - minutes after the 'aggressive' teenager taunted him by saying 'You're too much of a f****** p***y to shoot me'.

 

You can read the rest of the piece and view the photos and videos via the below link:

 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2848366/You-p-y-shoot-Explosive-grand-jury-evidence-reveals-aggressive-Michael-Brown-taunted-cop-Darren-Wilson-shot-dead.html 

Thriller Writer And Gun Expert Stephen Hunter Looks At Ferguson Shooting

Stephen Hunter, author of the thriller series that features former Marine sniper Bob Lee Swagger,  offers his take on the shooting of Michael Brown by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri at powerlineblog.com.

So much has been written about the incident at Ferguson, Missouri, that it’s remarkable none of it is of any use. So let’s try something new.

My idea is to look at the shooting as a shooting, not as an avatar of social malaise, a tragedy or an inevitability. Instead, let’s determine what can be learned from the few facts known and considered incontrovertible. I am no expert but I do know a little about this stuff.  

The four shots that hit Michael Brown in the right arm, according to autopsy drawing provided by Dr. Michael Baden at the insistence of Brown’s own parents, penetrated the outside, leading edge of that limb, just inside the bone. Thus it seems unlikely that those shots, assuming they came directly from in front, could have penetrated the arm at those locations while maintaining a front-to-rear angle.

Try this simple test. Raise your arms. In that position, examine which surface of your arm is vulnerable to frontally incoming gunshots. Clearly, it is the inside, unless you torque your arms inward in order to make the outsides vulnerable to incoming shots, an inconceivable notion.

As I see it, Brown’s arms were not up when he was shot, at least four of the six times.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2014/08/stephen-hunter-thoughts-on-ferguson.php?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+powerlineblog%2Flivefeed+(Power+Line)