Precisely why the hell did Chief Jackson open his press conference naming the cop who murdered Michael Brown with video of a completely unrelated robbery, when the Chief himself says that the cop who killed Brown was not responding to the robbery?
To smear the victim and blur the lines. That’s why, because I seriously doubt they are going to charge Brown’s corpse with robbery.
I was on the road and out and about all day, and I just came home and watched the presser, and I am just gobsmacked. Beutler is absolutely right:
We now have an answer to question number four, above. According to Police Chief Jackson, “The initial contact between the officer [Darren Wilson] and Mr. Brown was not related to the robbery.” Wilson approached Brown and his companion “because they were walking down the middle of the street, blocking traffic.”
In other words, Wilson didn’t know about the robbery at all when the encounter began. Which calls the incident report’s legal relevance to the circumstance of the shooting into question. If the altercation began under totally different pretenses, why try to connect the two? One reason would be to build a narrative that’s consistent with Wilson’s story. If Brown had just committed a crime, and was willing to tussle, and Wilson thought he was dealing with a couple of harmless jaywalkers, then it’s easier to believe that Brown was combative and Wilson was caught off guard. Both things need to be true if we’re to believe Wilson’s version of events—that Brown assaulted him, lunged for his gun, and was subsequently shot.
It’ll work, too, with a large segment of our population, because OOGITY BOOGITY SCARY NEGRO!
The entire god damned Ferguson police force needs to find new jobs, starting with that Chief. And if you really want to get depressed, read Julia Ioffe interviewing white folks from St. Louis. Wonder how many of the white cops in Ferguson live in neighborhoods like that?