SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by kurenai.tsubasa on Monday August 10 2015, @10:42PM
Tamir Rice: judge finds cause for murder charge over police killing of 12-year-old [theguardian.com]
In a 10-page order, Judge Adrine wrote that after viewing surveillance video, which shows Tamir being shot dead within two seconds of Loehmann’s arrival, he was “still thunderstruck by how quickly this event turned deadly”.
The judge said Tamir was given “little if any time” to respond to any commands from the officers, that his arms were not raised, and that he made no “furtive movement”. Adrine wrote: “Literally, the entire encounter is over in an instant.”
Holy fucking shit! [youtube.com] The judge was not kidding! A fully trained Amazon warrior would have been able to escape or attempt de-escalation, but not a 12 year old kid! We can argue about the semantics and nature of the wibbly-wobbly information we have about the other killings (murders? self-defense?), but this here is pretty unambiguous.
Rather than be outraged at the idiots that gave him that gun, you're outraged at the police who had a perfectly reasonable justification for shooting him.
I would have expected the police to do a more thorough assessment of the situation before bringing lethal force to bear. What if it were a situation that required lethal force? What if Tamir really was a big, bad black man hopped up on meth and cocaine with a real weapon? Well, congratulations, officer, you just put yourself in a tactically stupid position by even getting that close to him. Honestly, what was the officer's next move going to be if the shot wasn't fatal or otherwise didn't immediately drop Tamir?
(Presumably the officer will be a better marksman than your run-of-the-mill suspect, but screw that advantage by zooming right into point-blank range!)
Isn't it much more normal procedure for the very first thing to be drawing one's weapon, taking aim, and ordering the suspect to drop their weapon? We don't have audio, and the kid does seem to be acting quite stupid, and as much as I wish stupidity were a capital offense some days, it isn't and shouldn't be. AND HE'S A KID FFS!
(Yes, I know, all guns are always loaded [wikipedia.org], which is why I would recommend keeping distance. I was not aware of the color code system just above the linked section, but it makes sense. The officer should have been at orange at maximum, but flew straight into red. In fact, reinterpreting what happened, the officer was fucking lucky the kid's firearm was nonlethal and the kid was apparently at white.)
I'll take your word for it you're not racist, but you seem to have quite the authoritarian interpretation of that event in particular.