In the mind of a murderer
Commentary by Black Kos Editor JoanMar
Darren Wilson first set eyes on Michael Brown at or around 12:00 midday on Saturday, August 9, 2014. By 12:05 pm that same day - that same hour - Michael Brown lay dead or dying on the street in Ferguson, Missouri. Five minutes, that's all it took.
We know the strands of history that became entangled to produce the results we saw that afternoon. Those of us whose DNA tell the story of oppression and brutality in the not too distant past knew with absolute certainty the story behind what went down and we did not need Darren Wilson’s concocted, self-serving testimony, or George Stephanopoulos's gentle prodding, to confirm it. I guess the only good out of what we have learned about the killer is that now there is a record for future generations to see just what their forebears had to contend with. For years to come, people will be analyzing Wilson’s account of what happened; we’ll leave them to that. I want to focus on just a few of his statements that caught my attention.
“Can I shoot this guy? Legally, can I? And the question I answer myself is, I have to…”
ABC News - Officer Darren Wilson Acted Differently
We have been saying for months now that a significant percentage of law-enforcement officers do not see black people as fully human. We have been saying that Michael Brown was shot down like one would a rabid animal, and left to rot like a roadkill. Darren Wilson looked at Michael Brown and saw someone whose life was of no value, not worth protecting, not worth cherishing. In fairness to the murderer, he would have needed more than five minutes to learn the teen's life story and that of the woman from whom he came. He could not have seen the young mother blossoming with child in womb, what she went through at labor and delivery, the pride of giving birth to her first child, her watching him growing up, fighting with him to do the right things, loving his big tall beautiful imperfect self. Her “Mike Mike.” He could not have seen her pride in knowing that her son would be off to college soon, and how eagerly she’d be looking forward to that graduation so that the whole family could pose for that all important photo. No, he could not have known all of that, and he didn’t want to know. He didn’t have time to know as he only had five minutes.
"Can I legally shoot him?"
Darren Wilson did not seek to find ways to diffuse a volatile situation that he had created. Even if one were to accept his version of what happened, nowhere in his testimony or interview did he seem to understand that serving the community meant that you may need to be patient, be calmer than the resident, and call upon the professionalism you should have learned at the police academy. When asked by the very friendly defense attorney prosecutor why he didn’t wait for backup, the murderer replied:
"my comfort zone is not to be sitting in the car talking to someone else."
Sitting in a car waiting for backup takes time, and Officer Wilson only had five minutes to spare and not one second more.
At that moment I decided that I could.
And so ends the life of Michael “Mike Mike” Brown.
Officer Darren Wilson murdered an 18-year-old unarmed youth, because he decided that he could legally do it and not get indicted, not get arrested, not get charged, not go to prison. He would do the exact same thing again, he said.
"I don't think it's haunting," Wilson told ABC News on Tuesday. "It's always going to be something that happened. The reason I have a clean conscience is that I know I did my job right."
CNN - Darren Wilson Interview
But he didn't do his job right. Experts interviewed by the New York Times, pointed out so many steps that the cop could have followed if he really wanted to do his job right.
But for some experts, the shooting and the events that preceded it raised broader policy questions, particularly about how officers engage with communities they patrol. In his initial encounter with Mr. Brown and his friend in the street, Officer Wilson never exited his vehicle, voicing commands through the window of his cruiser instead.
New York Times - Ferguson experts weigh Darren Wilsons decisions leading to fatal shooting of Michael Brown
After the deed was done, the five minutes all spent, the murderer reported on his immediate interaction with his supervisor:
I said, I have to tell you what happened. And he goes, what happened. I said, I had to kill him.
RIP, Michael Brown.
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News by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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Did the legal system fail to deliver justice for Michael Brown when a St. Louis grand jury declined to indict Darren Wilson, the police officer who killed him? Or, was it working exactly as it’s designed? Color Lines: Why Courts Can’t Solve the Problem of Cops Who Kill.
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Accountability for police violence is so rarely found in the courts that many are urging for a more expansive definition of that elusive justice. What’s more, individual prosecutions of police officers are ill-suited, activists say, to deal with the root of the real problem: racism, and an irrational fear of black people.
“We work to hold individual police [officers] accountable,” says Monifa Bandele, a member of the New York City chapter of the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement (MXGM), “But if we don’t really dissect the cancer that is racism in the U.S. it’s just going pop up in other parts of the body.”
There’s an undeniable emotional allure, and even a public mandate, to turn to the courts for accountability for the black boys and girls and men and women whom police kill. “It is the only outlet that’s available right now. It is the only venue we have as a community,” says Sheila Bedi, a professor at Northwestern University’s School of Law, describing the bind that black people and their allies are in. “Where else are communities supposed to look for justice?”
Yet Bedi, herself a practicing civil rights attorney, minces no words about the legal system. “In terms of a social good, the criminal justice system was an accomplice to Michael Brown’s murder.”
Demonstrators lie down in the street in Wilshire Boulevard and Rodeo Dr. in Beverly Hills to protest the Ferguson grand jury decision on November 24, 2014. Photo: David McNew/Getty Images
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The former New York City mayor doesn’t know the first thing about the intersection of race and crime. Slate: Rudy Giuliani Doesn’t Understand Crime As Well As He Thinks.
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In Sunday, during a Meet the Press panel on the unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, Rudy Giuliani reminded the world that he is an unserious person. Responding to a question from host Chuck Todd on diversity and policing (“How do you make a police force look like the communities they serve?”), the former New York City mayor—whose police department was embroiled in racial controversies throughout his tenure—raised the specter of black crime. “I find it very disappointing that you’re not discussing the fact that 93 percent of blacks in America are killed by other blacks,” said Giuliani, challenging the whole discussion of police violence. “I would like the attention paid to that, paid to this.”
His co-panelist, Georgetown professor Michael Eric Dyson, shot back. “[F]irst of all, black people who commit crimes against other black people go to jail. No. 2, they are not sworn by the police department as an agent of the state to uphold the law,” he said, calling Giuliani’s claim a “false equivalency.” He’s right; most black people who commit crimes are arrested and convicted. Most cops who kill innocent people aren’t charged, much less criminally liable, as the world was reminded on Monday night as it watched a grand jury fail to decide that officer Darren Wilson should stand trial for killing Michael Brown.
But Giuliani stuck to his guns, and later in the segment, he argued that white police are only in black neighborhoods because of crime. “It is the reason for the heavy police presence in the black community,” he said. “White police officers won’t be there if you weren’t killing each other 70 percent of the time.” And on Monday morning, he went to Fox News to defend his take and tout his record as mayor.
“The danger to a black child in America is not a white police officer. That’s going to happen less than 1 percent of the time,” he said. “The danger to a black child—if it was my child—the danger is another black.” He later added, “The reason we reduced homicide by 65 percent is because we reduced it in the black community, because there is virtually no homicide in the white community.”
What makes this—and Giuliani—unserious? First are the facts of the matter. To start, homicide exists among whites—the third leading cause of death for white men (and fourth for white women) age 19 to 24 is homicide. As for “black-on-black crime,” while 90 percent of black Americans are killed by other black Americans, it’s also true that this high intragroup crime rate isn’t unique—83 percent of white Americans are killed by other white Americans. This is easy to understand. People don’t go across town to steal or kill—they commit crime against their neighbors.
Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani in 2011.
Photo by Benoit Tessier/Reuters
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Duality may be the takeaway from a grand jury’s decision not to indict officer Darren Wilson of Ferguson, Mo in the fatal shooting of Michael Brown. Much has changed, and nothing has changed. New York Times: Reaction to Ferguson Decision Shows Racial Divide Remains Over Views of Justice.
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A nation with an African-American president and a significant, if struggling, black middle class remains as deeply divided about the justice system as it was decades ago. A Huffington Post-YouGov poll of 1,000 adults released this week found that 62 percent of African-Americans believed Officer Wilson was at fault in the shooting of Mr. Brown, while only 22 percent of whites took that position.
In 1992, a Washington Post-ABC News poll found that 92 percent of blacks — and 64 percent of whites — disagreed with the acquittal of the Los Angeles police officers involved in the videotaped beating of a black man, Rodney King.
“What’s striking is just how constant these attitudes have been,” said Carroll Doherty, the director of political research for the nonpartisan Pew Research Center in Washington.
In Pew polls, black mistrust of the police and courts is far more pervasive than it is toward other institutions. However, a Pew poll taken earlier this year suggests that African-Americans under age 40 — the demographic that made up most of the people who took to the streets in Ferguson in August — are much less likely than their elders to believe that racism is the main force blocking blacks’ advancement.
A protester in Ferguson, Mo., on Tuesday night.
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Capoeira - a Brazilian martial art form combining dance - has been given a special protected status by Unesco, the UN's cultural arm. BBC: Brazil's capoeira gains UN cultural heritage status.
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A Unesco representative said defining capoeira as "intangible cultural heritage" would help Brazil preserve the tradition.
Capoeira was originally created by African slaves to keep their fighting skills alive, disguising it a dance. A combination of martial art, dance and sport, capoeira is performed to percussion and chanting.
It requires great physical strength and flexibility and is regarded as being of immense acrobatic beauty.
"It is one of the most important symbols of Brazilian identity and is present throughout our national territory as well as being practiced in more than 160 countries," the Brazilian culture ministry said in a statement.
Capoeira was born in the 17th Century and is usually performed in a circle of players and musicians
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