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Comment by icantthinkofone | Hacker News Reader

Interesting but it doesn't matter. Attacking a police officer is never a good idea and bad things will happen to you. No decent, moral, law-abiding citizen or society would ever defend the actions of Brown or think Wilson did anything wrong in defending himself.

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As a german, who in 33 years, has only one single police ticket to his name (riding a bicycle with earphones in on both sides), your comment has a distinctly 1984ish quality to me and everything about this situation feels incredibly wrong.

I don't defend any of Brown's actions for obvious reasons, and don't blame Wilson since he acted the best standard that can be expected of him. As a specific criticism of the situation however i have to offer that your country's judicial system has massively failed in setting up better expectations of police officers by failing to create a less dangerous social climate, by failing to provide adequate training in diffusing situations and by being entirely too lenient and accepting of casual homicide.

This is typical of what I read every day from the minority opinion that wants to place blame on the police for the violent actions of a criminal in the act of committing a crime while, at the same time, stating the officer is correct and the criminal is wrong. How can you talk out of both sides of your mouth at the same time?

That would be true if the actions presented accurately represent those which actually occurred. Normally such determination is left for a jury to decide, not a grand jury.

The actions are verified and true, both with forensics and consistencies in witness accounts. The documentation and interviews are all there and a multitude of news organizations have repeated the same thing; Michael Brown attacked a police officer who rightly defended himself. End of discussion.

I thought everyone knew that by now.

I don't. Unless you were there, you don't either. The Washing ton post describes witness testimony as mixed and differing.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2014/11/29/b99ef7a8-7...

Boing Boing says "Analysis of Michael Brown shooting witnesses: 16 out of 18 say hands up when shot".

http://boingboing.net/2014/11/28/analysis-of-michael-brown-s...

Smugness isn't an argument.

You are counting people who are making claims without considering credibility. If you read any of the documentation, or comments by the news organization who actually analyzed the statements, you would find almost all of them also admitted they had never seen the event and were only repeating what others told them or what they heard on the radio. Some of these accounts also did not line up with each other or match the forensics.

So you might be interested in this from the AP (and not Boing Boing): http://bigstory.ap.org/article/078c82ad45ff4ec6aa1c7744dfa7d...

And also this from the Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2014...

fwiw, CNN had a one hour back pedaling with two criminal defense attorneys, today, stating the same things.

It's one thing to collect a bunch of people who tell you things. It's another for those accounts to be accurate, consistent among each other, and match the physical evidence.

My point was more that it is highly unusual for GRAND juries to make these determinations.

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