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posted by CoolHand on Monday August 10 2015, @04:22PM   Printer-friendly
from the nothing-funny-about-it dept.

From Yahoo News:

A man was gravely wounded in a gun battle with police in Ferguson, Missouri on Sunday night after a day of peaceful rallies to mark the fatal shooting of an unarmed black teenager by a white officer one year ago. Several volleys of gunshots rang out as police in riot gear tried to disperse demonstrators blocking traffic and smashing storefront windows along a street that was a flashpoint of last year's unrest in the St. Louis suburb after Michael Brown, 18, was slain. Police later said the gunfire began with two groups of agitators apparently shooting at each other.

http://news.yahoo.com/ferguson-protests-mostly-peaceful-anniversary-brown-shooting-015555407.html

...

Anniversary commemorations had begun hours earlier with a peaceful march through the St. Louis suburb. The scene changed dramatically after dark. Dozens of protesters converged on West Florissant Avenue, which bore the brunt of last summer's rioting, and chanted: "Shut it down" in the midst of a severe thunderstorm.


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Anal Pumpernickel on Monday August 10 2015, @08:49PM

    by Anal Pumpernickel (776) on Monday August 10 2015, @08:49PM (#220894)

    They made the right call with Tamir Rice, he was holding an illegal toy gun that couldn't be readily distinguished from the real thing.

    If there is such a thing as an illegal toy gun, then that is simply insane. I could get a real gun if I wanted to. I don't care how real it looks.

    Furthermore, no, they didn't do the right thing. They pulled up right next to someone who they believed possibly had a real gun, surprised him, and then shot him dead immediately, giving him no chance to surrender. They did this instead of doing something like pulling farther away, getting behind their cars (if they thought the gun was real), and ordering him to drop it. There are any number of ways this could have been handled besides shooting him dead immediately. The cops, which are supposed to be trained, screw up and put themselves in scenarios where they believe they need to shoot people. And that's being generous; they are often outright malicious, in addition to being utterly incompetent.

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  • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 10 2015, @09:23PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 10 2015, @09:23PM (#220915)

    The stupid kid was waving a toy gun around in public, acting like his future thug life. The cops probably saved several lives that day.

  • (Score: 0, Troll) by Francis on Monday August 10 2015, @09:52PM

    by Francis (5544) on Monday August 10 2015, @09:52PM (#220927)

    It's not stupid, the law says that toy guns have to have that orange tip specifically because they had problems with toys being mistaken for real guns and people being shot.

    They shot him because he had what appeared to be a gun and he was moving it in the direction of aiming at them. Now, we'll never know what it was that he was intending to do, probably hold it up so that the cops could see it, but this wasn't a case of racist cops, this was a case of somebody making some incredibly poor decisions. I wouldn't go around with a prop gun and then get upset when people assume that it's a real one, but that's just me.

    • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anal Pumpernickel on Tuesday August 11 2015, @12:47AM

      by Anal Pumpernickel (776) on Tuesday August 11 2015, @12:47AM (#221009)

      It's not stupid

      Banning something entirely simply because it could be abused or mistaken for something else for reasons of physical safety is pure cowardice. Not that I expect anything else from you.

      They shot him because he had what appeared to be a gun and he was moving it in the direction of aiming at them.

      Nice job ignoring most of my comment. Specifically, the entire last paragraph (out of a very short post) where I explained that the whole situation could have been avoided if they hadn't been completely incompetent. You believe someone has a gun? Pull up right next to them with your car, surprise them, and then act completely baffled when the situation turns bad due to your own actions. Do you honestly believe that was the correct course of action?