Ferguson / Staten Island Decisions -- No Indictments

Just World fallacy drives a lot of opinions.

 

For not pulling over right away instead of eight miles and not putting their lives and many others in danger.

These cases remind me of that scene from "The Fugitive", when Gerrard is on the phone with the mayor or some official after he had shot and killed the guy who had escaped with Dr. Kimble. "Well, he wasn't a very nice man, and he was going to kill one of my kids," before Gerrard hangs up.

Maybe if King, and Garner, and Brown, weren't commiting crimes, and maybe, if they would obey the officers' commands, they'd be alive today, or in King's case, he wouldn't have been beaten.

 

They needed to beat him to prevent what, exactly?

 

I'll be interested in how the South Carolina case comes out. You would think there would be no way the cop avoids prison, but I think "sudden movement" and "feared for my life" are going to play big.

 

I think you're right in that almost no one was "on the cops' side" w.r.t. King. But I don't think it's because the majority have turned against big black men. It's because there was very clear and compelling evidence that the police had long gone 'round the bend on the authority with which they'd been entrusted. Most of us believe the police should have the authority and wherewithal to subdue someone behaving as King had up to his being stopped. Almost none of us believe that, a potential defendant having been subdued, police should have unfettered authority beyond that.

We don't see it in these latest stories because these things either happen very quickly (as in the Wilson-Brown case) or they're simply murkier (as in this Garner case, as I understand it).

 

They have the authority to subdue, but that doesn't mean they have (or should have) the authority to do any act toward the goal of subdueing.

 

A fair point ...

 

From having a drunken guy on drugs who had just led them on an eight-mile high-speed chase attack one of them outside the vehicle.

 

OK Baron. This is worse than a business thread with you.

 

Imagine if King had killed someone that night. Quite frankly, beating aside, he should have spent 10 years in prison for what he did.