St. Louis TV station KSDK is reporting that 90 minutes in advance of another midnight curfew, police have swiftly moved through another line of protesters who were throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails. Once of the KSDK reporters is quoting one police officer that multiple shots were fired by rioters, though there are no reports of injuries. This as nytimes.com has just reported that an autopsy performed by Dr. Michael M. Baden, New York City’s former medical examiner at the request of Michael Brown’s parents, shows that he was shot “at least six times” . . .
One of the bullets entered the top of Mr. Brown’s skull, suggesting his head was bent forward when it struck him and caused a fatal injury, according to Dr. Michael M. Baden, the former chief medical examiner for the City of New York, who flew to Missouri on Sunday at the family’s request to conduct the separate autopsy. It was likely the last of bullets to hit him, he said.
Mr. Brown, 18, was also shot four times in the right arm, he said, adding that all the bullets were fired into his front.
Tonight’s continued rioting occurred before the autopsy results were reported. How the reports will affect activity in the streets is anyone’s guess, but it’s hard to believe the still indeterminate results will calm the situation at all.
Dr. Baden provided a diagram of the entry wounds, and noted that the six shots produced numerous wounds. Some of the bullets entered and exited several times, including one that left at least five different wounds.
“This one here looks like his head was bent downward,” he said, indicating the wound at the very top of Mr. Brown’s head. “It can be because he’s giving up, or because he’s charging forward at the officer.”
He stressed that his information does not assign blame or justify the shooting.
[h/t Dirk Diggler]
What I really want to know is whether or not the trajectory of any of these wounds matches up to the testimony of Michael’s friend, who said the man was shot while surrendering.
Given the eyewitness testimony posted here:
http://www.ijreview.com/2014/08/168698-eyewitness-recalls-important-detail-background-video-mins-ferguson-shooting/
I rightly doubt it. But, we shall see.
IANAD, but if his arms were raised, the entry wounds would be to the back of the arm not the front of the arm. I don’t think this report clears the officer, but it certainly provides reasonable doubt. Not that this is surprising.
No. the chart is drawn in standard anatomical position. The wounds are to the anterior aspect of his arms. The same side that would be facing the officer if his hands were up surrendering. But since these were described as entry and exit wounds on the anterior aspect of the arms it is much more likely that he was reaching forward with his arms somewhat parallel to the ground.
kinda how i read it, but as donny said above, not a doctor.
IAAD and paid attention in forensic pathology and I agree with excedrine. The forearm might be pronated during surrender position, but not upper arm. Those same aspects of the fore arms could catch lead in a charge.
I’ve seen a few multiple GSW acquired in retreat and other rapid motion. the entry wounds are all over the place.
This actually matches the eyewitness testimony.
His friend has said that the first shot was fired when the officer was holing Brown’s neck and they were fighting with Brown’s hand near his shirt trying to pull free. He also said blood was coming from his left side. That matches the wound with downward trajectory. His friend testimony is then Brown ran away and officer continue firing. Brown then stopped and raised his hand saying I don’t have a gun. Gun shuts to his hand seems to match has are up. I don’t know where the exist wound are on the hand, but bullet may have been in his body stuck to the bone.
If the bullets that are recovered were in his arm, then his hands were up.
Actually, it doesn’t. There are no gun shot wounds to his left-hand side at all. Plus, all of the bullets entered through the front side of his body. So, no, he wasn’t shot while running away. The eyewitness in the video plus the ballistics actually make the story of Brown charging the officer more likely than the contrived and largely unsupported testimony to the contrary.
Given by felons who participated in the robbery and clearly lied about him being shot in the back. Has anything found so far contradicted the story by the officer? We may have a pattern coming out, here.
If the evidence shows that the witnesses were lying when they said he was shot while surrendering, will the witnesses be arrested for inciting a riot?
Or the eyewitness testimony in that video cnn was running all weekend where you see his body lying in the street and the person commenting on the video alleging that the officer shot him down and then can over and shot him again while he was on the ground.
I share your level of skepticism on that point.
I forgot that one! Clearly a lie, do not believe anything else said by that person, consider charges of lying to the police and obstruction of justice.
Are you a cop?
Well, that discredits his friend. He said that he was shoot twice while running away.
All the shots entered from the front… I smell lies.
What was the likely hood this thug was surrendering? Not likely.
Do you have evidence he was a thug? Or do you just assume that about all black teens?
If we can’t assume the cop is a racist murderer, then we also can’t just assume the kid was a thug.
If it proven that he is the same person in the video assaulting the store clerk, that would be evidence that he was a thug.
Boom!
You are correct.
Yup.
But that doesn’t mean he was the aggressor either.
I am not making /any/ judgement calls on this one until the facts come out. I think anyone who does looks like fool.
JasonM must have missed Saint Michael’s actions at the convenience store just prior to his death.
Saint Bully.
No assumption, we saw the video. Now, I’d like to know why Eric Holder and the Gov., and apparently the police chief as well, wanted that video to disappear, saying it should have NEVER been released.
Yes, I myself witnessed the surveillance video where the perp robbed a convenience store and assaulted the store owner just before his confrontation with police….definite thug. NO ONE is disputing whether or not it was him on the video. The world is a better place without him.
How likely is somebody who JUST GOT SHOT to surrender? Pretty freaking likely. His history is immaterial to the event. The cop had no way of knowing about the incident as it was not reported to the police.
Please, let’s be real here: the immediate history of the newest numinous thug in the progressive pantheon, aka. St. Bully, makes it *far* more likely that the cop’s version of events, i.e., that he was fighting off an aggressive thug, true and that it was, in fact, a good shoot. Your assertion that St. Bully would have surrendered because “he was shot” evinces your profound ignorance of how effective *actually* handguns are. To be effective you need to either: 1) shut down the CNS, i.e., a 230 grn. kick to the head; or 2) score a good COM shot so that enough of the bodies go juice to leaks out. And guess what? When you are counting on the latter, it can take a while. Guys have taken shotgun hits to the chest and kept going. Read up on the FBI’s Miami shoot out.
What you are saying, really, is that if you were shot than you would just curl up and die. Know thyself, I guess. But it does not follow that a guy like St. Bully, consumed with rage, with god knows what chemicals coursing through his veins, would roll over like some chastised puppy just because a few lead hornets bit him. It’s NOT like the movies, which is something every person of the gun knows. A handgun, at the end of the day, is a compromise, not a death ray.
Exactly.
The shot to the top of the head was the only one able to “effectively stop the threat”. None of the others would have even slowed down him down immediately.
Based on the convince store video (of him stealing the cigars and shoving the owner of the store) he appeared to have no physical impairments to his mobility.
Also saw today that St Bully had scrape marks on his face (right side), without comment. I’m wondering if coroner could tell if he slid forward on his face after dying, as in, he was shot while charging, head down and arms outstretched. Sort of like the officer said.
Maybe, but it could factor into Brown’s actions. He just robbed a convenience store, and minutes later he gets yelled at by a cop? Maybe he didn’t want to go jail this time. The wounds, without knowing more details, are consistent with both him surrendering, and with him charging the cop and getting plugged in transit. We just don’t know.
What I wanna know is, in this day and age why does any police cruiser not have camera coverage?
Or, in the alternative, perhaps he realized that his real calling in life was to be a Bronie and that what he really craved was attention from an absent father. Possible, too, but highly improbable. St. Bully died the way he lived. I do not feel the need to go through all sorts of mental contortions to create excuses for a criminal, even though, as a general rule, I despise the doughnut eating, tax sponging, bureaucrats with guns class, i.e., cops
It is more likely that St. Bully’s wounds indicate the cop was either pushing the gun or focusing on his assailant’s hands, which happens a lot in gun fights. And it certainly does not fit with the initially progressive narrative of poor, misunderstood, St. Bully shot in the back of the head by evil Whitey McRacist – no doubt while twirling his mustache and laughing, “Bwhahahahha.”
Add to that the fact that the initial reporting of “White Crimes”, e.g. the Duke Lacrosse Rape Case, Zimmerman, Jena 6, randomly appearing nooses on college campuses, end up 100% opposite of what actually happened, I really can’t take some sort of he was willingly complying fantasy all that seriously.
Attention whore Dr. Michael Baden?
sean says:
August 17, 2014 at 23:03
Attention whore Dr. Michael Baden?
Michael Baden was at the request of the dead 18yr olds parents. Al Sharpton is the attention whore.
Agreed
Does Baden OC?
http://armypubs.army.mil/doctrine/DR_pubs/dr_a/pdf/atp3_39x33.pdf
1-36. Riots vary considerably in targets and players. A communal riot, for instance, deals with deep-seated ethnic, religious, and language differences. Commodity riots involve an attack on property by acts of vandalism, looting, and arson. Protest riots (such as the riot around the World Trade Organization Assembly in Seattle, Washington in 1999), illustrated individuals and groups that aggressively and sometimes violently acted out or voiced their opposition to the assembly. The Democratic Convention in Chicago, Illinois, in 1968 reflects a riot that directly targeted police and authority in general. Celebration riots occur across the United States as a result of home team victories in sporting events, among other reasons. Celebrating crowds look to make the moment more memorable through raucous acts that demonstrate their joy or happiness; for example, the riots that took place in Chicago in 1992 as a result of the Chicago Bulls winning the National Basketball Association Championship.
Looks like they will need to add another to the list in their operational manual.
No, they won’t. The riots in Ferguson are Communal primarily and Commodity in the secondary. In fact, I would be doubtful of how organized the latter of the two would be, as opposed to the former. With the introduction of outsiders from the community and even the state, protesting the use of force, would place them in the Protest riot category.
those wounds could be consistent with a large person reaching into the window/door of a police cruiser.
Multiple wounds up the arm and into the top of the head.
I’m roughly the same size as Brown. Older. But if I was grappling with the average sized person I could do a lot of damage just bare handed. I’ve done it. Not in recent years but I have hospitalised one person bare handed.
Hands raised, shot fired strikes top of head? He was in the act of throwing sonething. Likely a left hand throw since he had 4 in his right arm.
More likely he was advancing, took fire in the right arm (if the cop is right-handed and jerked the trigger, he will pull shots to the left — the right of someone facing him), bent down and around the injury and took the final round in the head.
My read is that the first group went into the arm, Brown bent over from pain but did not stop, second group went into the face & head, leading to the downward angle of the round that went from the cheek to the collarbone, and the shot into the top of the forehead. Notable that Baden did not make a call as to whether the deceased was surrendering.
Only the CNS shot was a fight-stopper. My guess is that the entire gunfire incident lasted less that three seconds. First four shots without apparent effect, then the last two more carefully aimed.
Off the wound ballistics and encounter-reconstruction topic but worth noting is that the Ferguson PD statement said that the *initial* contact between the police officer and Brown & Friend was not related to the robbery. Did NOT say that the police officer did not know about or was not informed about the reported robbery between the time of the initial contact and the conflict. I agree with the folks that say this robbery/shoplifiting may have changed the mindset of Michael Brown.
Could be ‘consistent’ with lots of positions… except running away “with his hands in the air” as one ‘witness’ reported.
So much for being shot in the back like many early reports.
Pretty well puts the lie to the “shot in the back while running away and/or surrendering” narrative, doesn’t it.
But then nothing that has happened in this clusterfvck of a situation so far has had anything to do with facts, truth, or justice.
But then nothing that has happened in this clusterfvck of a situation so far has had anything to do with facts, truth, or justice.
And that, @Ing, is perhaps the most disturbing development of all. I don’t believe anyone could say it better than you did.
The only evidence I have seen that the shooting officer was not telling the truth is the testimony of persons who have been proven to be liars by physical evidence, and at least some of them felons by store video. I’m going with the cop, until further evidence. Which is very disturbing to me in light of continuing calls to hang him without a trial, to burn the city to the ground, and for free stuff.
Exactly.
The “shot in the back” line was always suspect to me. It is a claim deliberately chosen to inflame and incite the local black population.
I was suspect of that to. Reason being, it is unlikely that an LEO would shoot someone in the back with witnesses in close proximity.
Maybe Eric Holder will find something everyone else missed.
Like his butt?
Considering this riot is being choreographed by Obama/holder and the WH Dept of Propaganda (yes it exists) is at work I expect these findngs of a righteous shoot to matte not a whit
When people make these absolutely ridiculous claims, it just helps the Obama supporters. They associate your paranoid ramblings with the legitimate criticism. And there’s plenty of reasonable stuff to complain about with Obama.
Esitue, citations needed.
It’s going to be a long time before the whole truth comes out about this incident. Because it is now so high profile and in the media spotlight, there will be inevitable grandstanding (aka, the autopsy doctor) and tons of lies told just to cater to different agendas….
Great.
Meanwhile, the only clear case of laws being broken are the violent rioters…
Cops intimidating and unlawfully arresting journalists and seizing people’s cell phones also broke the law. Firing rubber bullets and tear gas grenades into people who are lawfully assembled (also at journalists) is also almost certainly breaking the law.
Foam ear plugs are not rubber bullets.
That was a truly epic, hilarious photo tweet.
Could be Nerf bullets…….
doesn’t matter one way or another. we will never really truly know the whole truth. people will believe what they want to reguardless of the outcome.
Rodney king, Travon Martin etc.. etc..
The comments section accompanying the linked NYT article reveals how shockingly little NYT readers seem to know about pistols or police tactics. Many are expressing outrage over the number of shots fired, although none of them have noted that the arm shots would be unlikely to stop an assailant. The current too-voted reader comment proposes that a well-trained marksman could have stopped an assault in progress with a well-placed leg shot.
Where do people get these ideas — from watching Yosemite Sam?
Obviously the facts are not all in. Meanwhile, and perhaps I’m naive for thinking otherwise, people should acknowledge that the physical evidence released to date could fit several scenarios, albeit not the popular allegations that Brown was shot in the back while raising his arms in surrender.
You really need to live among and talk with NYT readers to get a sense of who and what they are.
They’re typically highly educated – in utterly superfluous subjects.
They’re often quite boastful about their experiences – which are nothing of substantive value or import.
They sneer at people who aren’t “well travelled,” yet they’ve rarely been outside their comfortable little urban enclaves.
Most of them claim to “work hard,” – but they never break a sweat on the job, much less get a blister on their hands or anything more than a paper cut or carpal tunnel for a job related injury.
Another impossibility I haven’t seen addressed is the testimony that the cop (I don’t even care about his physical characteristics) could reach out the window of his patrol cruiser and grasp a 6’4″ man standing on a raised sidewalk around his neck. Try that for yourself!
I dunno… but four to the torso and two (intended) to the cranio-ocular box sounds like a stop-failure-to-stop shoot. Would not to be Brown or his parent and it could be the cop panicked, but….
Hmm, none of this makes sense. He was shot at least 6 times, including 4 in the right arm? If that is the case, then there should be more than 3 bullets inside him. Now the one on his right thumb looks like it could be a graze, so there wouldn’t be a bullet associated with that wound. But if the other 3 are also entrance wounds, those plus the two shots in the head would be 5 bullets.
Now it was also mentioned that one of the shots caused 5 wounds, which, from the diagram, would have to be his right arm and upper right chest. That makes more sense. The bullet entering the base of the right thumb, exiting the forearm, re-entering the lower bicep, re-exiting the upper bicep, then finally re-entering the upper right chest. But that would mean he was shot a total of 3 times, not 6. And that would correspond with the 3 bullets they found in him. And if that is the case, it would indicate that, at the time he received the gunshot wound to his right arm, it was extended toward the shooter. Of course there is no way to determine exactly what he was doing at the time.
So if he was shot 3 times, why is it being reported that he was shot 6 times? Or, if was shot 6 times, those wounds on his arms would have to be from separate shots, which would contradict his statement that one shot caused 5 injuries.
I can only guess that something got lost in translation. It is possible that Dr. Baden was talking about gunshot wounds, and the reporter misinterpreted that as being shots fired. Maybe. It will be interesting to see the final report, if it ever gets published.
Never underestimate the ability of re-entrant wounds to confound the scenario….
Charles Lee,
I think your analysis is correct … especially the part about one shot to the right hand/arm extended toward the police officer.
It will be interesting indeed to see the final report.
I think that whatever the findings are, Ferguson residence are gonna demand retribution . Even if the kid ends up being a thieving thug, I doubt protesters are going to accept anything less then the cops badge and some kind of punishment.. This seems to go a lot deeper then a black kid getting shot by a white cop… this to me sounds like the $hit storm has been brewing for a while, and all it needed was a catalyst to spark it…
That is an apt description of the entire United States of America.
Its been said before, but imagine how miuch money would be saved, avoiding most of this $hitstorm, by the simple purcase and use of body cams, and a dash cam. Save a lot of gas and maintenance money not having to roll the MRAP and pay the civil suit for illegal arrest and detention on the reporters, too.
I’ll bet a nice new $100 bill that Ferguson PD already started shopping for body/dash cams.
They’re so inexpensive, and for a well equipped metro PD, the only reason they wouldn’t have cruiser cams and lapel cams is conscious choice.
Maybe. Or maybe not. As we have found out, dash cams are prone to “malfunctioning” at just the right moment.
Forgive me for asking the obvious, but being an ofwg, this new use of cheap seegars is news to me.
http://www.theweedblog.com/how-to-roll-a-swisher-sweet-blunt/
Can’t imagine why “the gentle giant” would be one-handedly choking out what looked lke an elderly lady of color half his size, for some cheap two-fer-a-buck smokes, even a hundred at a time, unless he was already high, and out-of-anger-management control…needed more.
puts a different and believable spin on the tale that he rushed the cop.
Michael Brown was in a party state of mind and he was playing fast and loose. He died like so many other young men before him of every race. He fought, he stole, he got gunned down resisting arrest. It is a sad pattern that ignorant young men are doomed to repeat in some form for eternity.
Seriously though, he was stealing them to smoke weed with. I’m surprised more folks don’t know, I think more people use those cheap cigars like Swishers to smoke weed than smoke tobacco through them.
Ban Swisher Sweets! Ban Dutch Masters! Think of the 6’4, 300lb CHILDREN!
“Michael Brown was in a party state of mind and he was playing fast and loose. He died like so many other young men before him of every race. He fought, he stole, he got gunned down resisting arrest. It is a sad pattern that ignorant young men are doomed to repeat in some form for eternity.”
You know, this is exactly what I thought it was: a young thug punching his ticket. But, combine this understandable incident with famously inaccurate first-hand witnesses, and ridiculously incompetent police leadership and you have a recipe for one giant $hitstorm.
I’m not going to say that there would be no violence, but the theme might have changed some if the security tape would not have been suppressed by Holder and the DOJ. Holder/DOJ requested The Ferguson police chief sit on the tape, all while the DOJ did likewise with their copy, which they had from day one. Had the tape of the robbery been available from the start, it would have negated some of the “gentle giant” story line. Simply the Obama/Holder group continuing to manipulate the race card to inflame and increase the class/race division.
Media reports say that the store did not file charges and did not want to give up the security tape, the Ferguson PD had to go to court to get it subpoenaed from the store. Why? Because after businesses are looted and burnt down in your town, the cost of a box of Swisher Sweets, even a case of Swisher Sweets, is a lot less that making your store the epicenter of reprisals — which happened the night after the videotape was released. The Ferguson PD sat on the tape for one day at the request of the DOJ, according to other reports, with speculation that the tape would inflame tension in Ferguson. The tape actually did inflame tensions, partially I believe because it punctured the developing narrative of angelic child shot down by racist police. Now all they have is the ‘racist police’ thing to hang on to.
ok im going to guess based on this picture.
assuming Brown was right handed (most likely)
he would shove, punch, push with said right arm exposing this right side of his body to the cop inside the car.
considering the bullet wounds are higher than the chest this would suggest Brown was in a position where the cop wouldnt be able to get a shot clean to center mass, where they’re trained to aim for
if the eye witness testimony was right however, the arm would not have been shot up as bad and we would see more wounds to the center.
however this does make the officers testimony more plausible seeing as when diving in to a car and being right handed your upper body and arm is the exposed area.
especially since it looks like he was shot through the hand and the upper arm has an in and out hitting the chest area as well.
so judging form this pic Brown was shot while reaching forward with his right arm at close yet obstructed range.
So the officers story about being assaulted and struggling for the weapon is as of now, the most plausible.
I also read in that article that there was no gunpowder residue found. That’s hard to reconcile both with the claim he was grappling with the officer at the time, and with the claim the officer “stood over him”as he fired the fatal shots.
I believe I read the same article. I have yet to see where Brown had a weapon. Absent that, I see no reason to shoot him.
Really? You are a reader of this website and you cant conceive of a situation where attacker(s) can be unarmed but still create disparity of force (via numbers, size, training, handicap of the victim, etc.) and meet AOJ even without a weapon and be justified for lethal force?
Sounds like something you’d hear from the left…those people who act like a gun is the only thing that kills people. I dont know about you, but I could kill with my hands.
Being unarmed has almost nothing to do with it.
Very well said.
I’ve been harping on the constant references to “unarmed” for exactly these reasons.
Not saying the scenario is fact in this case, not enough info yet but…
Remember, if a 6’4″ 290# guy is comming at you when you have a gun drawn,
1. He has bad intent to attack a gun
2. He is in some weird red zone head space to keep comming with gun pointed at him.
3. Cop knows with a guy this big, he can’t let him get close.
4. If he is not stopped, he will take your gun and then, he is armed.
5. He doesn’t need a gun to kill you. (there again is the “unarmed teen” myth)
Many people are shot when they try to go for a gun. That gun may be theirs, it may be the cops. If I were a cop, I wouldn’t differentiate. Why does CNN.
Disparity of force. 6’4″ 290 pounds can do a lot of damage, and there’s evidence that big mike was no stranger to the use of force.
Officer’s version of the encounter is that there was a fight in the vehicle over the gun, with one accidental discharge that did no apparent damage to anyone. Brown gets off of Wilson and starts walking away, officer yells ‘Freeze!’, Brown is now ~35 feet away, turns to face officer and responds with taunts (“You aren’t going to shoot me!”, etc.) and starts back at the officer. At this point gunfire commences, with Brown finally down on the ground within a few feet of the officer. As far as reason to shoot, Brown had overpowered the police officer once and gone for his gun. The officer is now in an 2-on-1 situation and one of the opponents a) is the size of an NFL lineman and b) nearly got his gun away from him the first time.
Also, Baden got a body, not the crime scene. He notes in his report that while he saw no gunpowder residue, the clothing Brown was wearing at the time was not available to him.
Has anyone said there are bullet holes in the officer’s car?
If these wounds were the shuts when Brown were leaning in the officer’s car, with many exit wounds, bullets should also hit somewhere in the car.
There is no scenario that bullet could hit anterior aspects of Brown’s arm without hitting the car itself. Where are the rest of bullets?
One of the most important evidence is always where the bullets are found, and police standard procedure for crime scene is to search until all bullets are found. The answer to the question of where he was can simple be answered based on where they found the rest of bullets. Three were in Brown’s body, there should have been somewhere.
Given that Police released the fact that officer was injured, why didn’t they say the car was damaged if in fact it was?
Damaged, hell. How about “was Brown’s BLOOD found in the car?”
Brown’s friends and supporters are liars: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2727321/Conversation-recorded-bystander-just-moments-Michael-Brown-shooting-casts-doubt-claims-teen-surrendered-Officer-Darren-Wilson.html
He did not surrender, he tried to pull the same tough guy shit he did when he was stealing the cigars. Watch the video and they start to explain how it really happened six minutes in. You will hear a muffled/whispered conversation in the background where they state that he was fighting with the policeman despite everyone screaming about there was no reason for him to get shot.
It is really sad that people today hate the police so much that they are willing to turn on a young officer like this who was defending his life. This cop is a year younger than me. People need to open their eyes and stop bowing down to thuggery.
Begins at 6:28/6:29 of video
Man 1: ‘How’d he get from there to there?’
Eyewitness: ‘Because he ran, the police was still in the truck – cause he was like over the truck’
Eyewitness: ‘But him and the police was both in the truck, then he ran – the police got out and ran after him’
Eyewitness: ‘Then the next thing I know he doubled back toward him cus – the police had his gun drawn already on him’
Man 1: ‘Oh, the police got his gun’
Eyewitness: ‘The police kept dumpin on him, and I’m thinking the police kept missing – he like – be like – but he kept coming toward him
(crosstalk)’
Eyewitness: ‘Police fired shots – the next thing I know – the police was missing’
Man 1: ‘The Police?’
Eyewitness: ‘The Police shot him’
Man 1: ‘Police?’
Eyewitness: ‘The next thing I know … I’m thinking … the dude started running … then something about he took it from him’
What caliber ammo was used for the shooting? Shouldn’t the first few shots have disabled Brown or at least knocked him to the ground?
He was 6’4, 300 lbs… and it appears the initial hits were non-lethal wounds. To drop someone you have to hit the central nervous system or the legs/pelvis. The officer had been clobbered about the head in some fashion and might not have been able to fire accurately.
One can’t assume police officers can fire accurately in the first place. Many don’t train at all.
And truthfully, even those (people in general, not just cops) don’t always shoot all that accurately when in a life and death struggle.
20% or so hit rates, not just fatal hits, is the norm for analysis of real gunfights. That means lower rates happen as well.
20% hit rate = 1 hit in 5 shots.
THIS is why capacity matters to me personally. In the real test, six, eight or even ten shots may not ‘be enough.’
It’s also a very good argument against magazine limits, especially for handguns with nominal incapacitation capability anyway.
You need to learn about handgun effectiveness. In short, they aren’t. Unless you get a central-nervous-system hit to the brain or spine (which is what eventually stopped brown) someone can keep fighting even after multiple shots to the chest. Some even after being shot in the heart.
That only works in the movies. Bullets fired from a gun simply cannot knock someone down.
Bullets also don’t incapacitate either.
Bullets are effective stopping a human being only in 3 ways.
First, bullets may stop a human being by destroying or damaging the central nervous system.
Second, bullets cause enough loss of blood pressure that the human being colapses.
Third, a bullet wound may frighten the target into stopping VOLUNTARILY.
I guess this hasn’t been about out of control police or police militarization after all. If the police were so militarized they would have put down the disturbance much faster. Thugs and gangbangers will challenge police but not infantry.
It would probably be wise to keep a supply of good old fashion wood stocked M-14 for the National Guard for riot control. Getting bashed in the head by a wooden buttstock is a very effective deterrent for rioting thugs.
It appears that’s where this is going. The folks there don’t want to see militarized police, now they’re getting the military.
I consider TTAG’s coverage of Ferguson an epic Fail. The editorial staff failed to follow three common sense guidelines that anybody familiar with crisis management understands.
The first rule of thumb is the first reports from the scene are always wrong. The principle eyewitness lied.
The second rule is understand the environment so you can get a sense of what is possible and what is plausible. The “i want to shoot an angelic black kid for jaywalking” was not a plausible scenario.
The third rule is find credible sources of evidence before rendering judgement and deciding on a course of action. By the third day it was pretty clear that officer Warren had a good shoot.
I spend nearly 30 years in a business where not getting it right could cost billions of dollars and many lives. You learn quickly that it is far more important to get things vaguely right than precisely wrong. There was a lot of precisely wrong at all levels in this event.
Sadly, all to often these days, it seems there is no cost, no consequence, to getting it wrong.
In your business there is; in reporting or posting in the comment section of blog? Not really.
Folks can say whatever they want and not even an apology when they are wrong about it.
I will be the first to say that I have posted some stupid things on occasion. (No Paul and Sammy, not the things that you think are stupid) but since I retired I kind of like being able to do that.
There are three typed of people who post here. Some trigger pullers, by which I mean LEOS and combat infantry. A few more REMFs, i.e., those who engaged in support to combat operations or law enforcement and by far the largest group, the keyboard commandos and range cowboys, you know those who can field strip and reassemble an M-1 blindfolded but have only a vague notion who Roosevelt and Churchill were.
Especially if first punched by a few .308s to slow them down.
That’s be a wooden buttstock with a steel buttplate. The steel buttplate adds that little extra bit of panache’, that extra-special “We care to give you our very best in ass-kicking service” touch.
The reason why the NG is being called in is blatantly political. After his shambolic performance at the last press conference, Gov. Nixon wants to re-cast himself in a better light to the voters and “look decisive.”
Then there was this bit:
http://politics.blog.ajc.com/2014/08/14/hank-johnson-pushes-to-limit-military-surplus-for-local-cops-as-ferguson-unrest-continues/
This is what happens when people elect those who don’t read the law or Constitution to office. They get nonsensical ravings like this.
Look, from what I’ve read and tracked of some law agencies in MO, they’ve not covered themselves in glory before this shooting happened. You could say that part of the animosity against the police has a karmic aspect to it.
But putting all that aside, their handling of the riots has left much to be desired. They failed to stop the looting, because they were being too soft on the looters, and they pulled out enough hardware to alarm the law abiding. From what we learned in the Rodney King riots in LA, once the police allow the rioters to get 12 hours of mayhem going, it starts to snowball. Law enforcement agencies seem far too timid in protests to go after those who are the instigators, the few people that incite and encourage riot. This is true here, it was true in LA in the early 90’s, and it has been true at the red diaper baby be-in’s called “Occupy XXX.”
This is a fast-forwarded version of Wilson’s “Broken Windows” hypothesis.
What I want to know is “where is the local FD in all of this?” Because a couple of trucks that have a foam system on them and a water cannon could have done a lot of good in some of these situations requiring non-lethal crowd control, as well as fire suppression for molotovs. Class B foam is wonderful stuff. Slippery, hangs around long enough to make the molotovs basically useless… you don’t have to bludgeon a crowd with it to be effective. Just foam down the crowd and the street, and I think a whole lot of the fire goes out of their belly, so to speak.
Need to see the exit points to determine exactly what happened. Just listing the entry points does not clear up much. As for recovered bullets, where they are found is another important fact. Are they in the pavement? In the vehicle frame/body? Well away from the scene and impacted into structures/trees/utility poles? This crime scene appears to have been hopelessly compromised from the start so it is very likely much of the most important evidence is already lost.
Heck, where was the BODY in relation to the cruiser?
OJ trial had all of the evidence lined up.
Those that want to believe a scenario will believe what they want.
The robbery photos were photo shopped
The cop shot him in the back, the autopsy was fake.
I know. Just a bit of wistful thinking on my part.
Do we know how many rounds were actually FIRED? Seems to me that would be know this moments after the officer was relieved of his gun by command…
O2
Don’t be a white guy shooting a black man. That is my take away.
If I understand the diagram correctly, this tells me the police officer thought he had a gun. It shows me he fixated on the gun hand with his initial rounds, and then move to a failure to stop shot placement when it didn’t work.
I might add that regardless of what this proves, they will still continue to riot. Even if this guy rose from the dead and admitted he attacked the officer, I think the riots would continue.
Well, maybe not ‘gun’ so much as ‘threat.’
It does seem suggestive that he was focused on, and firing at, what he perceived as a threat. Suggestive but not “proof,” of course.
Getting shot in the hands and arms is very common in real fights.
Still a LOT of information missing for us, on the sidelines, to draw ANY conclusions. This release of information piecemeal, giving people too much opportunity to speculate, is for the birds.
I agree. I want more facts too. Having studied Criminal Justice in college, I find the subject extremely fascinating. If working law enforcement paid enough for all my expensive hobbies, I probably would have continued down that career path after my days in the USAF. Anyhow, it will be interesting to see the final report. Unless it turns more political, my prediction is that the shooting will be ruled justifiable, the family will get a large settlement from the city, and the friend who helped rob that store will be charged with murder assuming a prosecutor successfully argues that the shooting and the robbery are connected.
Hmm… all shots to the front, with most to the right arm, and one at an angle that suggest his head was bent forward.
Sounds like what happens when someone charges forward, leading with their dominant arm, such as in football when trying to slam someone… or charging a cop.
It’s also what happens when someone is shot with their hands raised while facing away from the cop and ends up on their knees for the final two head shots. Just sayin’…
Can’t tell if sarcastic…
…or just being dense.
Hard to be shot from the front when you’re shot from behind, don’t you think?
Are you nuts? Or just kidding around?
I’ve been involved in homicide investigations, including shootings the autopsy examinations that go with them.
There is NO WAY the situation you describe is consistent with that picture above and the doctor’s description. None. Not even close.
I’m not saying the picture alone fits the cop’s version of events, but it sure as HELL does not fit yours.
Yes…don’t shoot large black men if you’re a white cop. This same s##t would play out if the cop was black. I’m no expert but it seems to back up the cops account…and NOT the buddy accomplise in the cigar robbery.
Well, seems the comments here kinda concur with the doctors……all speculation.
So now that we have the autopsy report, we still know precisely d1ck.
This case has a long way to go before it’s resolved. And if the cops, military, looters and racial arsonists continue to have their way, by the time the situation is all figured out, Ferguson will be a dead town.
I disagree, Ralph.
We know at least two things:
1. That Brown was not “shot in the back.”
2. We now know his friend(s) who have been fanning the flames of riots with claims that Brown was shot more than once in the back are liars, plain and simple.
3. The prior two points mean that this autopsy report is a very large inconvenience to “the narrative” that was being built by the press at this point last week.
That’s quite a bit more than we knew for certain last week.
We also now know that he had THC in his system. So to review, he grabbed some Swisher’s and beat up a clerk, ran into a cop and thought he could knock him down, probably because his judgement was impaired from weed. So I don’t think there are any mysteries left to solve. The shoot was justified. Should have been and end to the story but Al, Jessie and Rand stuck their nose in.
Um….does anyone else see the wrong date on the report? The pathologist appears to have written “8/19/14” on the report and then signed it at least two days before the 19th.
It’s most likely simple human error, but … it’s a pretty important document in a legal sense. You’d think a pathologist, especially such a prominent one, and working on such a powder keg of a case, would be more careful.
That says “8-17-14”. The ‘7’ just sort of looks like a ‘9’ because of the way he writes them. Look closer. It is a ‘7’.
My bad. It still looks like a 9 in the image on TTAG, but the 7 is perfectly clear in the full-size NYT image — he simply writes his 7s with the cross-hatch.
Sorry about that and thanks to @Mr. K for the clarification.
I think that the policeman what’s probably using a 9mm when should have used a 40 smith or a 45 to stop the large man, before he had to be killed with 6 shots.
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