Go.

Is there anything else to do in Ferguson, Missouri?

Well, I'm white and I work for a rich person, so....

I'm white, "middle" class, and I entertain delusions about being rich some day, and that makes me eminently qualified to talk about how the rioters are unclean savages who have things too good. Furthermore,

Ugh, why don't those rioters just understand?? Duhh, the justice system has decided that a white cop killing a black child isn't worth trying in court, don't they understand that judges and prosecutors know more about these things than they do??? All the rioters are doing is hurting local businesses like this one [img looted Fortune 500 retailer].

- The Facebook walls of every white American today, I assume

white people only riot for important things.... like sportsball matches

White people watch Judge Dredd and wish the justice system really worked that way.

only if i can be a street judge

i would totally be an *******... "hey you parked in a handicapped spot... your punishment is the right to park in a handicapped spot" *breaks dude's back*

You forgot to also blow up the car.

true... he'll need a van that can accommodate his wheelchair now

Can you guys, especially you MacJustice, tell me what they actually passed off as a justification for why the case wasn't tried? I mean whatever the actual reason, they're not going to publicly go "Welp, that's just another black kid so whatever!"

I've enjoyed MacJustice's past reports on legal interpretation in various cases.

haha, awesome.



I don't think Jon`C was being literal when he said "isn't worth trying in court". From what little I've read about it, the prosecutor made an unusual move and decided not to indict the defendant, instead leaving the question of punishment up to the jury.

The obvious conclusion is that a jury is less likely to convict when faced with coming up with a sentence itself.

Because all forensic evidence said the kid robbed the convenience store, the police officer pursued a dangerous suspect, was attacked, and then followed his training by firing at the center of mass until he was no longer in danger. All contradictory witness testimony turned out to be fictional. The prosecutor had no reason to file charges.

However, don't make the Internet White Person mistake here. Don't read that and understand it to mean "Ferguson rioters are doing it for no good reason". The American justice system hasn't exactly been working for black people. To them, the reasoning of judges, prosecutors, and police officers doesn't matter, because the system is rigged and the outcome was guaranteed. And even though they'd be wrong in this one case, almost any other time they'd be right to think so.

Sigh.

Sorry? I'm guessing I misinterpreted what I read (because I really have no idea what's going on, apart from what I got by skimming this NY Times article):



As far as I know, I was just paraphrasing that last sentence. Maybe I just bungled the legal terminology?

Jon`C covered everything I would have. This was not going to be a winning case at trial and probably never should have been taken to a grand jury, but the prosecutor was under pressure to do something and made the political calculation that he'd catch less flak if he made the grand jury deliver the bad news. He was almost certainly correct.

Like Jon said, this case was a bad example of a problem that's nevertheless very real. Unfortunately, the Average White Person is treating the fact that this case is a bad example as evidence that the problem isn't real.



I think what you're missing is that this was a grand jury, not a trial (or petit) jury. Without going into too much unnecessary detail, in American criminal justice, a prosecutor is typically required to bring his case to the grand jury to obtain a "true bill of indictment," which is basically a certification that there is enough evidence to justify proceeding to a trial. So the grand jury wasn't deciding on punishment, it was deciding whether there would be a trial.

What's unusual about the situation is that the prosecutor didn't recommend that the grand jury issue an indictment. How much this matters is up for debate. Usually, you can infer from the fact that a prosecutor has brought a case to a grand jury that he thinks the defendant should be indicted, because if he doesn't, what's he doing in front of a grand jury? Here, though, because the prosecutor was under obvious political pressure and seems to have brought the case to the grand jury purely out of a sense of obligation rather than out of any real hope of (or interest in) obtaining a conviction, I'd say it's fair to suspect he may have been soft-pedaling the case by withholding his recommendation.

Faster than a speeding bullet.

I'll go sit in the corner now.

Mike Mac,

Now I understand. Should have looked up grand-jury again. Thanks for un-confusing me with that informative post.

What recourse could you pursue if you feel like the county prosecutor (if you have a case with him) is not acting in your best interest? Possibly like the deal with McCulloch. Basically try to get a special prosecutor involved and go again?

McCulloch recently stated that "The duty of the grand jury is to separate fact from fiction." Unless I'm missing something here, isn't that the point of a trial jury and not so much a grand jury?

We need Franklin & Bash.

Doesn't it.

/me slowly walks away

I knew you'd say that.

This ant...

What's also unusual is that typically prosecutors cherry pick the most damning evidence in order to get probable cause.

I will add that it probably wouldn't have made a difference in the long run. The problem has to do with police training, psychology of police officers, and policies. The net result is excessive force. We've see policemen pepper spray innocent protestors, shoot at mini vans with kids in them, and much much more. This is a real issue that must be addressed as people are feeling much as they did in 1775.

Yeah. I'm gonna follow it home and kill its whole family.

Okay, well. I'll just be here.

I'll be here in the morning if anyone needs me.

I understand that the American justice system has not been impartial for black people and other minorities, but there is a measurable amount of progress being made, however, looting stores (whether they are fortune 500 retailers or not), stealing cars, destroying private property does not help any just cause or advance previously mentioned progress, if anything it hinders it. We all know that this is not a simple matter, and that not everything is black and white (no pun intended) when it comes to such cases. What I find apalling is that a group of the witnesses got together and conspired to lie against a police officer, simply because Michael Brown was black. Shouldn't they be charged with perjury? Isn't this promoting stereotypes? How exactly will black equality be advanced with destruction, theft, perjury and other stereotypical actions?

Yeah, white people never destroy things when they're pissed off about something, right?

Also true.

Taken in isolation, this might honestly be a better way to conduct a grand jury proceeding, if you have to do it. In theory, it should result in a lower likelihood of a bad case going to court (saving taxpayer money, arguably, although of course this would be offset by the greater expense of the GJ proceeding itself) and a lower likelihood of a false conviction (because fewer bad cases in court means fewer bad cases getting shoved across the goal line past overworked, underqualified, or just plain lazy defense attorneys).

Of course, this didn't happen in isolation. The real sign of inequality in our justice system isn't so much that Darren Wilson got this kind of treatment; it's that almost no one else can. The rest of us get charged by information, or by a grand jury after the prosecutor has made an aggressive effort to obtain an indictment. I don't think I have to tell anyone here which groups of people are disproportionately burdened as a result.

"Hmm. The citizens of this community seem to have been abused by law enforcement authorities for hundreds of years. They've been taught that their actions have no reliable effect on their outcomes, and that no matter what choices they make, the consequences will be negative. What could possibly have caused them to become so frustrated that they've resorted to indiscriminate violence?"



There's been a Buzzfeed (I know, I know, bear with me) article going around on social media about a teacher illustrating privilege by asking all the students in the classroom to throw wadded-up papers into a recycling basket at the front of the room, while remaining in their seats. Students in the back of the room, of course, protested that they weren't similarly situated to the students in the front. It's a pretty good illustration. The comments on the article are predictably full of idiots saying they'd just have moved their chairs to the front of the room.

Again, these people are idiots. But they did illuminate a useful point: When a game is rigged, many will feel they have no choice but to break the rules. This is why young black people with no economic prospects choose to deal drugs, and it's why black witnesses in this case fabricated testimony to obtain a measure of accountability that they've learned not to expect to get any other way.

tl;dr *****ing about rioting is just a game of "stop hitting yourself"

Considering the bulk of police militarization has gone into crowd control, including armored vehicles, chemical and area-denial weapons, I'm guessing that our governments sub-human neoliberal tyrants know that we're partying like it's 1775, and don't plan on doing anything healthy about it.

Good, that saves us all some work.

Citation needed.

Are you suggesting that the biggest problem for black people today isn't lack of access to capital?

Yeah, cops might start harassing innocent black people now.

Not all of us, apparently.

Yes, you did intend it. You realized you had written a pun and deliberately left it in your text. Don't do this ****, it isn't cute, it's a ****ing lie.

After all, a white police officer would never lie to a court in order to convict a black person.

What would that accomplish?

," the lazy Mexican said.

How exactly will black equality be advanced by quietly accepting your fate?

N.B. SF_GoldG_01 should read my post, everyone else should read MacFarlane's

Oh I can do this pretty well!

These rioters are nothing more than petty (black) thugs who collect welfare checks from the government and use these checks to buy alcohol, and PS4s. They have no desire to seek a real job and earn a real pay so they have nothing but time on their hands. So when they hear of something like this, they see this as an opportunity to cause havoc and score a big screen TV. Look at the damage wrought by their uncontrolled anger. It's senseless and they all need to be imprisoned and the book thrown at them. You'd NEVER see a white person act this way...except in Vancouver...Denver...San Francisco...Boston...

How'd I do?

It seems to me that unless I count a case that's over twenty years old I can't think of another case where unjustified shooting or excessive force has led to such a publicized event and civil unrest. In these last two high profile cases how is it even remarkable that two young black men with criminal backgrounds assaulting other men that were armed end up dead. It's the same sort of path too many seem to follow and it is tragic.

Just for the record, the above is far more thoughtful than I was really inclined to post. But, hey, now you can make fun of my rational post now too.

I don't know, maybe it's because both of them were minding their business until they were antagonized by gun-toting sociopaths?

Not bad, but in the world of white people looting, sports riots are strictly small-time. The real pros loot entire continents.

Yeah, I don't know. Why do you think our plutocratic media companies would hand-pick the most defensible examples of this happening?

(I'm not making fun of you. I'm actually glad you've made this observation! If you're still interested in having a sincere discussion, I encourage you to think about my question.)

This is exactly the **** I'm talking about. Neither of us were there, neither of us know what happened that led to this guy getting shot. But do you know what we do know? He was a thief and a thug. If he hadn't gotten himself shot he'd be in for aggravated robbery. It's a shame that it went down the way it did, but every damn day all across your country black people are getting the same treatment, and unlike Brown most of them didn't do anything to deserve it.

The only tragic thing about the Brown example is that it's our racist, systematically-disadvantaging, othering, capital-obsessed culture that drives so many poor and ethnic men to become violent, ****ty human beings, simply because the circumstances of their birth dictate that their behaviors and outcomes are wholly uncorrelated. But that doesn't change the fact that Brown was, by all accounts, a violent, ****ty human being. So I'm very glad you're outraged, but I for one wish at least a little of this outrage was focused on something that's an actual problem.

Yeah, too bad that kind of looting doesn't get televised.