St Louis shooting: protesters clash with police at scene of teenager's death

What cause?

 

Stltoday reports that the police were responding to a shoplifting complaint. That has been referenced in many reports and I believe the Mayor's comments.

Cheers
Labour

 

The government didn't meet it's burden, that's what a Grand Jury is for. To protect citizens from government charges when there isn't the evidence necessary.

I find it incredible that you want to give the government more power to bring charges against individuals when it's your claim that government is oppressing a specific class.

The Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, adopted in 1791, includes a grand jury clause that reads, “No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury.” All federal capital crimes and federal crimes punishable by imprisonment for more than one year must therefore be presented to a federal grand jury, unless the accused waives this right. The federal grand jury does not determine whether the accused is guilty; rather, it decides if there is “probable cause” to believe that the accused has committed a crime. By codifying the grand jury in the Fifth Amendment, the framers intended to protect people “against hasty, malicious and oppressive prosecution.”

MOD EDIT>>>Rule 2<<<

Cheers
Labour

 

Please. Don't ask. We don't want to know.

lol.

 

There is the concept and then there is the reality. The grand jury is not so grand apparently. Maybe we need to rethink this grand idea.

MOD EDIT>>>Rule 3<<<

 

Well, the purpose of a trial is to determine whether or not someone is guilty. Are you SURE you want to advocate only trying guilty people? How do you KNOW they're guilty unless there is a trial, complete with all the evidence, and with lawyers representing both sides, and with cross examination?

An indictment is NOT NOT NOT a finding of guilt. It's a determination that a case deserves a full investigation and fair contest. It may very well be the case that nobody did anything illegal or improper in any of these cases. That's what trials exist to determine. Not grand juries.

 

Trials are expensive. If the grand jury did not see the need to prosecute after seeing all the evidence, then why have a trial. If the grand jury had found cause for a trial then their would be one.

If they had allowed this to go to trial it would have become a circus side show, with guilt or innocence determined by the press and other destructive parties. Grand juries do not allow a lot of cases to go to trial because of a lack of evidence and a whole host of reasons and circumstances and that benefits everyone. Justice was served? A criminal loser is sadly dead, a police officer is wrongly denied a career, and a racist political machine is denied grease for its destructive racist designs.

 

A grand jury does not consider all the evidence, and isn't supposed to consider all the evidence. That's what a trial is for. Was Brown represented at the grand jury?

The mob wanted accountability. They did NOT want a whitewash.

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ARRRRGH! Can't you read. I already told you it didn't penetrate. A grand jury decision whether or not to indict is NOT a trial, and an indictment is NOT a finding of guilty. Everyone saw the video, and clearly this thing was done very wrong. And someone died. And the grand jury couldn't find any reason to try anyone? Come on, man!

But in fact nobody ended up being charged with anything. How does that work?

[quotie]As far as the cop himself he did what he had to do with the information he had at the time and he reacted accordingly. Its sad that a 12 year old had to die but in this day and age 12 year old gangbangers are certainly not unheard of.[/quote]But surely a good policeman knows better than to open fire just in case, and then later determine that he gunned down an unarmed child. In the Kalamazoo case, where the genuinely armed man was very angry, dangerous, and WHITE, the police spent 40 minutes talking him down. Nobody was arrested, and the man got his gun back the next day. So you think it's fine to give a child 2 seconds and open fire? Seriously? And nobody did anything wrong? And the cop who did it had already lost a police job due to incompetence? But no indictment? Come on, man!

A man (22 years old, black) was wandering around in the sporting goods department. He had picked up an air gun. Another person named Richie called the cops and gave them a hair-raising account of a madman loading a gun, aiming it at children, etc. It was possible later to sync the call with the video, and sure enough, Crawford never pointed at anyone, never loaded the gun, which was just a Daisy pellet rifle. But based on Richie's account over the phone, the cops came in firing, and Crawford was dead before he even knew there were policement in the store. But hey, normal mistake, no indictments. Crawford was black, don't you know. And blacks are unpredictable and violent criminal types, don't you know?

As far as I can tell, Brown went out of his way to be as dangerous and threatening as he could, and deserved what he got. But "as far as I can tell" would be a LOT farther if there had been a trial, full evidence, cross-examination of conflicting witnesses, etc. Instead, we had another of those "internal police investigations" which invariably determine that the police did nothing wrong.

YES! Maybe you get it after all. Information comes in, during the trial. So wait for the trial before blaming the cops. Uh, wait, there is no trial. The DA couldn't get an indictment. Isn't that amazing? Looks like we wait forever. The police department says the cop did nothing wrong, after an "internal investigation", but no information is released. Waiting for information takes a lot of patience.

But if the police, alongside the DA, decide not to investigate and not to hold a trial, then you are innocent forever, no matter how guilty you might be, because there is never a trial to find out.

Statistics do not commit crimes. The argument that Timor Rice must have been guilty because blacks commit more than their share of crimes is not logical. Rice was a child playing games in a park. He shouldn't be gunned down because Brown tried to take some other cop's gun in some other city.

 

Are you kidding? Of COURSE we want to know - the answer will be pure comedy GOLD!

 

If it weren't a policemen, any DA with a room-temperature IQ could have got an indictment within seconds, from any grand jury. Grand juries do not see "all the evidence", and aren't supposed to. That's not how the system works. Grand juries are supposed to determine if there is enough of a chance of someone doing something wrong to justify a full trial. When armed people shoot unarmed people, such a chance exists prima facie. The shooting may have been fully legal and jusified, in which case the trial will find him innocent. But that's what trials are for.

And we know all that without any trial that is the mechanism for determining all that. Righto. We certainly don't want the victim having legal representation, now do we? That would be a circus! We certainly don't want the victim's lawers cross-examining witnesses, do we? Another circus, for sure. So let's just close ranks, protect the cops, and carry on. After all, we KNOW the victim was a criminal, right? The trial determined this, or at least would have if we'd bothered with one. Right?

 

And isn't it interesting that when white cops shoot unarmed black males, somehow there is NEVER the evidence necessary. Could this possibly have something to do with the necessary close working relationship between the DA and the police?

What I would like to see is actual trials of policemen who shoot unarmed people. Such trials are extremely rare. Why? Because DA's don't bring indictments against policemen - even with videotape showing the cop doing it! And why not? Could it have something to do with the necessary close working relationship between the DA and the police?

Only if you think no policeman EVER commits a crime. Yes, I will agree there is a balance here, between finding probable cause where there is none, and finding no probable cause when the killing is right there on video! If a policeman can kill an unarmed and nonthreatening person, complete with a video and audio record, and STILL the grand jury can't find probable cause, what you have is a police department above the law and out of control. And that is one of the things the grand jury system is also meant to prevent.

 

I told them during ferguson that this would embolden more thugs and get them killed. They didnt listen and still wont thus proving my other statement correct. They dont really care about " really" saving the lives of black inner city youths. They only care about giving the illusion as if they do while at the same time exploiting these deaths purely for political gains. If inner city youth really wanted to get even they should vote against their silent enemy the democratic party.

 

Do you think we should do away with the grand jury system altogether, or only when it doesn't arrive at decisions you want?

 

This is simplistic. For the most part, the grand jury system works very well. About the only cases I can think of where it breaks down, is where the legal establishment is faced with the prospect of indicting itself - that is, bringing an indictment against a policeman, a district attorney, a sheriff (or member of those departments), a city councilman or other important politician, etc. For some baffling reason, the establishment has real problems finding anything they did wrong.

So maybe in such cases, we need some independent people from outside to select and direct the grand jury. In Ferguson, the district attorney came from a long family of policemen, his wife had worked for the police department for 20 years, no DA under ANY circumstances can afford to alienate the police. And we notice that despite Ferguson being 75% black, the grand jury was 75% white. Something is very wrong, not with the grand jury system, but with apparent misuse of the system.

 

There is certainly no doubt that the justice system overall is flawed. However, in this particular case (and I did not jump on board day one with an opiniont based on nothing like so many others did), I agree with the grand jury.

And I'll certainly bash the cops when they are in the wrong. I called for all six officers in the Kelly Thomas beating death to be sentenced to life in the general population (which would have been 5-10 minutes). Needless to say, it didn't go down that way.

 

But surely a good policeman knows better than to open fire just in case, and then later determine that he gunned down an unarmed child. In the Kalamazoo case, where the genuinely armed man was very angry, dangerous, and WHITE, the police spent 40 minutes talking him down. Nobody was arrested, and the man got his gun back the next day. So you think it's fine to give a child 2 seconds and open fire? Seriously? And nobody did anything wrong? And the cop who did it had already lost a police job due to incompetence? But no indictment? Come on, man!

A man (22 years old, black) was wandering around in the sporting goods department. He had picked up an air gun. Another person named Richie called the cops and gave them a hair-raising account of a madman loading a gun, aiming it at children, etc. It was possible later to sync the call with the video, and sure enough, Crawford never pointed at anyone, never loaded the gun, which was just a Daisy pellet rifle. But based on Richie's account over the phone, the cops came in firing, and Crawford was dead before he even knew there were policement in the store. But hey, normal mistake, no indictments. Crawford was black, don't you know. And blacks are unpredictable and violent criminal types, don't you know?

As far as I can tell, Brown went out of his way to be as dangerous and threatening as he could, and deserved what he got. But "as far as I can tell" would be a LOT farther if there had been a trial, full evidence, cross-examination of conflicting witnesses, etc. Instead, we had another of those "internal police investigations" which invariably determine that the police did nothing wrong.

YES! Maybe you get it after all. Information comes in, during the trial. So wait for the trial before blaming the cops. Uh, wait, there is no trial. The DA couldn't get an indictment. Isn't that amazing? Looks like we wait forever. The police department says the cop did nothing wrong, after an "internal investigation", but no information is released. Waiting for information takes a lot of patience.

But if the police, alongside the DA, decide not to investigate and not to hold a trial, then you are innocent forever, no matter how guilty you might be, because there is never a trial to find out.

Statistics do not commit crimes. The argument that Timor Rice must have been guilty because blacks commit more than their share of crimes is not logical. Rice was a child playing games in a park. He shouldn't be gunned down because Brown tried to take some other cop's gun in some other city.[/QUOTE]

You completely missed the last point. There has been a narrative from the left about how black men are being slaughtered by cops nationwide. That is just factually not true.

Your defense of blaming the cops right away is because they might never have an investigation. They were investigated.......ALL OF THE CASES. There is a difference between an investigation and and actually indicting someone.

Two seconds is plenty of time considering the kid was supposedly reaching under his shirt for the gun. The cop did what he was trained to do. The only one at fault was the dispatcher yet all I hear is how the cop was the murderer.

The Walmart case was clearly on the shoulders of the person that made the 911 call. Cops came into what they thought was a hostile situation with a armed criminal making threats. You don't get much time to react and you have to deal with the information you have. Hopefully the family can sue the person that made the 911 call into bankruptcy and that person should have charges brought up against them for misusing emergencies services, inciting violence and whatever else they can make stick.

 

I almost but perhaps not quite agree with you. The Ferguson case was clearly highly political. The place was a tinderbox. And as such, I think the grand jury should have brought an indictment solely for the purpose of having a real genuine trial, where Brown's lawyer could cross examine people and everyone could see justice at work. I'm pretty sure the evidence would have exonerated Wilson quite easily. Sweeping it under the rug was at least a political blunder.

 

It's doubly not true. It's not true that the police are slaughtering black men, and it's not true that that's the narrative. The narrative as I read it, once again, is that the police are not accountable.

But let's say I shoot someone, then I investigate myself, then I "discover" after "investigation" that I did nothing wrong, and henceforth I face no further legal difficulties. Would you be satisfied that my self-investigation was objective and comprehensive? Wanna buy a bridge?

Spare me. The white man with the real gun got a 40-minute talkdown, no arrest made, and he got his gun back. The black kid with the toy got 2 seconds and boom, he's dead. And you are saying this is competent police work? Here, we are never going to agree. If the cop had waited for FIVE SECONDS, nothing would have come of it at all.

So why didn't the cop wait? Inadvertently, you provide the answer yourself. The kid was BLACK. Black kids are, you know, potential murderers. All of them. And of course the cops know this. They live in the real world, they know black kids are born killers. They HAVE to shoot first. GREAT police attitude.

Sigh. So you should be able to call the police yourself, feed them some BS about your neighbor, and have the cops show up and blast him away before he even knows they're there? And since the cops believed you, they are not responsible for anything they did?

Oh, and there were no charges against the caller either. After all, making crank calls to the police is not a crime. So are you saying nobody really did anything wrong, it was just one of those situations where, you know, the cops had no control over killing the guy so nobody was a fault? Really?

Seriously, you make it sound like anytime a white cop shoots an unarmed black man or boy, it is NEVER the fault of the cops. Blame the dispatcher, blame the 911 caller, blame the victim's medical condition. But never the cops.

You illustrate exactly what's wrong with the system. When the cops can do no wrong, we get exactly what we've been getting.

 

Did the white guy go into his shirt to grab a gun? I am not defending the cop specifically regarding the 12 year old as the video was atrocious and I couldn't tell what was going on in it. But to say that cops have to wait 5 seconds while someone is reaching for a gun (which the 12 year old was, it was unfortunately just a toy gun) is insane. The kid might have been reaching for his gun to give to the officer but how the hell is the officer supposed to know that. Do they read minds now?

Regarding Walmart...........yes, if I saw a guy walking around with a realistic pellet gun and called the cops on him knowing that he wasn't a danger then yes I would expect to be held accountable. How is that any different than someone accusing someone of rape but discovered to be lying about it. They are both criminally liable for false accusations. As I said the man should be sued into bankruptcy and charges should be brought against him. If the cops at Walmart violated any procedures then they should be as well. I don't know if they told him to drop the rifle and he refused or if they just popped around the corner and shot him without warning.

Now I know you are deliberately misconstruing what I said. You are (*)(*)(*)(*)ing lying now. I said just before this that the caller should be charged. Knock it the (*)(*)(*)(*)ing off. If you can't argue without putting words in people's mouths and lyign about stuff then get off this forum.

I also said that the cop should have been indicted in regards to Garner. Now you claim that I blamed that on his medical condition. Is there any point where you aren't a (*)(*)(*)(*)ing pathetic liar and fraud?

 

One of the wide differences I find on occasion debating with you fine left of center folks is that we often can't even agree on the most basic of definitions, such as accountability.

A mob demanding a trial and trying to intimidate a grand jury to make a decision "the right way" is not accountability. You guys seem to think mob action is a more pure accord of democracy than the pre-established rules that govern criminal justice. There is nothing accountable about ramrodding an indictment not because the evidence supports it, but because the mob howls for it. I suspect we'll have more dead cops and more dead young men because people like yourself are legitimizing the idea that all the rules are biased and racist, and if every cop is gunning for you, why shouldn't you fire first?

 

i do not understand how shooting someone pointing a gun at you is a whitewash

 

So grand juries dont look at evidence they just "suck up to the DA" as you put it? So all DA's are racist now? All grand juries are tainted? Why all because one idiot attacks a cop?

Progressives and racism when will you ever let go?

 

There was looting before the "lack of any indictment". I guess since they were not "riots" they dont count to you?

 

First there was no video now that there is a video but you want proof of a "snitch".. Move the goal posts much? If there is a 911 call you will just claim they are racist.

Dodging the main point that this idiot pulled a gun on a cop.

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Yes lets pretend the Grand Jury was not presented with forensic evidence /rolls eyes.

 

This just makes me laugh and shake my head:

His mother said:
"He was a good young man...trying to get his life back together. We was trying to get him back in school and stuff".