Thursday Reads: Police Shootings in Ferguson and Beyond
Posted: August 21, 2014 Filed under: Crime, Criminal Justice System, morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: Bill O'Reilly, Captain Ron Johnson, Charles Johnson, Chief Tom Jackson, Darren Wilson, Dorian Johnson, Eric Holder, Ferguson MO, Fox News, George Zimmerman, Jeffrey Towe, Kajiene Powell, Little Green Footballs, Michael Brown, orbital blowout fracture, Piaget Crenshaw, police involved shootings, Sean Hannity, Trayvon Martin 43 Comments
Good Morning!
While we at Sky Dancing Blog–along with many other Americans–have been following the protests in Ferguson, Missouri, often feeling shocked and traumatized by the overt racism on display among law enforcement personnel there, Fox News and some right wing blogs have focused on supporting Darren Wilson, the Ferguson, Missouri, police officer who shot and killed 18-year-old Michael Brown at noon on Saturday, August 9, touching off the protests and the police crackdown that has continued for the past 12 days. In the process they have also made efforts to smear Brown and undermine witnesses who saw the shooting.
Police initially claimed that Brown had assaulted Wilson in his police car and tried to take the officer’s gun. But there were a number of witnesses who reported seeing Wilson chase after Brown while shooting his weapon after which Brown turned around with his hands up, trying to surrender.
On August 15, without informing Governor Nixon or the Captain Ron Johnson, who was in charge of security during the protests, Ferguson police chief Tom Jackson released a 19-page document naming Michael Brown as a suspect in an alleged robbery of $48 worth of cigarillos at a Ferguson convenience store. The alleged “strong-arm” robbery took place shortly before Brown was killed. The obvious implication was that Brown deserved to die for this. Jackson also appeared on The Sean Hannity Show to push this narrative.
Later Jackson was forced to admit that shooter Darren Wilson didn’t know about the alleged robbery, and therefore it had nothing to the shooting. Recently we learned that police didn’t even have the video showing the convenience story “robbery” until days after the shooting, and the video appeared to show that Brown had actually paid for the box of cigarillos he took with him.
Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs has been documenting the latest right wing efforts to smear Brown and rehabilitate Wilson. On Tuesday, he linked to a post by Jim Hoft at Gateway Pundit citing anonymous sources that claimed Darren Wilson had suffered an “orbital blowout fracture to the eye socket” during the struggle with Michael Brown. Johnson writes:
The entire right wing universe (including Drudge Report) is now screaming about this post by, yes, the Dumbest Man on the Internet again, claiming that anonymous sources told him officer Darren Wilson suffered an “orbital blowout fracture to the eye socket” in a struggle with unarmed teenager Michael Brown [NOTE: I’m not going to link to Gateway Pundit; you can find the link at LGF].
It’s possible that someone did leak this information to Hoft, but I’ll remind my readers that Jim Hoft is probably the single most dishonest right wing blogger on the Internet as well as the dumbest, with a very long history of distorting facts and completely making stuff up to push his far right, often overtly racist agenda.
Johnson looked up the symptoms of an “orbital blowout fracture” and quoted the from description:
The most common symptoms are bruising, tenderness and swelling around the eye; redness of the eye; double vision, ordiplopia (seeing two images at the same time); numbness of the cheek, nose or teeth; nose bleeds (epistaxis) [See figure 1].
Symptoms that typically indicate a more serious injury are pain on eye movement, double vision, air under the skin around the eye, and numbness of the cheek/mouth/nose on the side of the injury. Severe trauma may cause facial bone fractures, injury to the eye itself, and injuries to the skull/brain.
You’d think someone who had just experienced such a serious eye injury would be in terrible pain and would have difficulty accurately shooting a gun. You also think he would need immediate medical attention; yet no ambulance was called for either Brown or Wilson, and Wilson was video taped walking near Brown’s body and show no signs of discomfort. Here’s the cell phone video taken by eyewitness Piaget Crenshaw.
Yesterday this story showed up on Fox News, with Bill O’Reilly reporting the “orbital blowout” claim; and today ABC News is reporting that Wilson suffered “a serious facial injury,” although they aren’t including the “orbital blowout fracture” claim. ABC news also has a video interview with an anonymous friend of Wilson’s. It’s odd that Wilson’s friends and supporters don’t want to give their names or show their faces while the eyewitnesses to the shooting have been upfront and straightforward about what they saw.
As for the facial injury, I guess we’ll have to wait and see if there is trial. At that point Wilson will need to produce medical records to prove he had a serious injury and had it promptly treated. Even then, we still won’t know how it happened. For all we know, he could have hit himself with his gun or on the car door. I can’t help but be reminded of George Zimmerman’s claims of serious injuries caused by Trayvon Martin–the injuries he didn’t bother to have a doctor examine until the next day. The bottom line is that even if Wilson actually was injured, Michael Brown should be alive and in jail now. Instead, Wilson chose to execute him on the spot.
The latest smear from right wing Wilson supporters is that Michael Brown’s friend Dorian Johnson has “recanted” his eyewitness version of the shooting. Once again, Charles Johnson responds, Did Michael Brown’s Friend Dorian Johnson “Recant” His Story? No, He Did Not.
Finally, a right wing site is raising money for Darren Wilson, and they have collected nearly $150,000 in the past three days.
The good news is that Ferguson was fairly calm yesterday after the visit from Attorney General Eric Holder. From The Washington Post, Eric H. Holder Jr., in Ferguson, shares painful memories of racism.
Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. arrived in the St. Louis area Wednesday to tour a community roiled by the police shooting of an unarmed African American teen — nine months after he had visited the same city to tout new initiatives aimed at keeping poor black men out of prison.
Long before the white-hot spotlight of the racially charged protests in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson, Holder had been intent on reforming an American criminal justice system that he said imposed “shameful” disparities on minority communities. The death of 18-year-old Michael Brown on Aug. 9 has thrust Holder, 63, into the heart of a national debate over racial justice that he has aimed to make part of his legacy.
In meetings with residents, Holder shared his own stories of being pulled over and accosted by police while growing up in New York City — and of being skeptical of police even while serving as a federal prosecutor in Washington.
“I understand that mistrust. I am the attorney general of the United States. But I am also a black man,” Holder said during an appearance at Florissant Valley Community College. “I think about my time in Georgetown — a nice neighborhood of Washington — and I am running to a picture movie at about 8 o’clock at night. I am running with my cousin. Police car comes driving up, flashes his lights, yells ‘where you going? Hold it!’ I say, ‘Whoa, I’m going to a movie.’ ”
A man identified as Kajiene Powell, with an object in his right hand, approaches police in north St. Louis. Police say that the object was a knife and that he threatened officers before he was shot to death. (St. Louis Police Department)
Not far from the spot where Michael Brown died, another young black man was killed by St. Louis Metropolitan Police on Tuesday. A video of the shooting was released yesterday. From Huffington Post, St. Louis Police Release Video Of Kajieme Powell Killing That Appears At Odds With Their Story, by Ryan Grimm and Ashley Alman.
A convenience store owner called 911 on Tuesday when he suspected Powell stole drinks and donuts from his shop, according to a recording of the call. Another woman called to report Powell was acting erratically and had a knife in his pocket.
Two officers in a police SUV responded to the calls, the cell phone video shows. When the officers got out of their vehicle, Powell walked in their direction, yelling and telling them to shoot him already.
St. Louis Police Chief Sam Dotson said Tuesday that both of the officers opened fire on Powell when he came within a three or four feet of them holding a knife “in an overhand grip.”
But the newly released cell phone footage undermines the statement, showing Powell approaching the cops, but not coming as close as was reported, with his hands at his side. The officers began shooting within 15 seconds of their arrival, hitting Powell with a barrage of bullets.
Kajieme Powell apparently had long-term psychological problems. I’m not going to watch the video, but even in the still photo from the LA Times above, it looks to me as if police could have disarmed Powell and arrested him without using deadly force. The knife wasn’t raised as police claimed, and he certainly doesn’t appear to be within three feet of the officers.
A mentally disturbed man was killed by police in Sacramento, California on Monday. The Sacramento Bee reports:
Jeffrey Towe lived with delusions and profound mental illness, family members say. On Monday, he became the ninth person in the Sacramento region to die of police gunfire this year.
Towe, 53, fatally shot his own mother in 1990 in an incident that he said was a household accident. Two weeks ago, he delivered a collection of knives to his sister, telling her he couldn’t be trusted around them.
A Woodland police officer shot him dead Monday after authorities said Towe allegedly charged with a knife after officers arrived at his apartment building in response to a call about a disturbed, screaming man.
Towe’s death prompted local activists to converge Monday evening in Woodland, already motivated by the national story of the fatal police shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., and law enforcement response to protests there. They congregated downtown, blocking an intersection, chanting “Hands up! Don’t shoot!” – a slogan popularized in Ferguson.
In that incident, a California Highway Patrol officer shot and wounded a man who allegedly pulled a gun on officers in a drunken-driving stop. The suspect, who was hospitalized in critical but stable condition, was identified as Heath Austin Nunes, 38, of Lincoln.
The four-county Sacramento region, which includes Sacramento, Yolo, Placer and El Dorado counties, this year has nearly doubled the five fatal officer-involved shootings in 2013. In 2012, there were 16 fatal police shootings, including a record 10 by the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department. Statewide, California averaged 100 annual deaths from police shootings from 2006 to 2011.
The United States has no database of police shootings. There is no standardized process by which officers log when they’ve discharged their weapons and why. There is no central infrastructure for handling that information and making it public. Researchers, confronted with the reality that there are over 17,000 law enforcement agencies in the country, aren’t even sure how you’d go about setting one up. No one is keeping track of how many American citizens are shot by their police. This is crazy. This is governmental malpractice on a national scale. We’d like your help in changing this.
Here, we’re going to take a cue from Jim Fisher, who as far as we can tell has compiled the most comprehensive set of data on police shootings in 2011. Fisher’s method was simple: He searched for any police-involved shooting every day for an entire year. By our lights, this is the best way to scrape this information—any time a police officer shoots and hits a citizen, it will almost certainly make a local news report, at least. However, this is a time-intensive process, and our manpower is limited. Having gathered some of the data, we can say it will take the few of us here a very long time to do this on our own. So, we’re setting up a public submission form and asking for help with this project.
Check it out if you’re interested.
So I’ve run out of space and time for this post. There’s plenty of other news, so I’ll post some more links in the comments. I hope you’ll do the same.
peej
Carissa
bostonboomer
ecocatwoman
grayslady
mablue2
NW Luna
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
News about James Foley and ISIS:
NYT: Before Killing James Foley, ISIS Demanded Ransom From U.S.
Seattle Times: Slain journalist was drawn to conflict zones
The Guardian: James Foley: US reveals failed special forces rescue mission within Syria
Daily Beast: Foley Abduction Linked to British Jihadi Kidnapping Ring
NBC News: ‘Small Handful’ of Americans Believed to Be Fighting With ISIS in Iraq
Pres. Obama: There is no place for ISIS in this 21st century. They are like a cancer.
Sorry: http://youtu.be/VPl5qu_eAaQ
Les we forget, James Craig Anderson, was killed by white teenagers in Ms. two years ago. This too should not be happening in this 21st century in our Country. Very graphic video of the murder of Mr. Anderson.
I wrote a few blogs about that.
He was a friend of my family in Ms. Early on he would often visit in their homes. They never called him James, but Craig.
This cancer has been spreading for hundreds of years in Mississippi. The first report that JJ posted says that Ms. Hate Crime laws have seldom been used since 1994 when it was first enacted. You will note that the article says that the sheriff said the district attorney told him that Ms. hate crimes laws could only apply if both the shooter and victim are not of the same race. That right there MUST CHANGE. Of course, in Georgia, you might recall, that the laws defines rape between a woman and man, so it goes to say how much laws need to be changed across this country.
I personally know the stories of these families who are mixed races living in Smith, and Jones Co. Ms. You might recall me telling you my family have beginnings that go back to Ms. as a territory. I had cousins threatened and one killed by KKK, because they were involved in mixing with the races. As a matter of fact those lines cross to make Pres. Obama my distant cousin.
President Obama signed a Federal law that permits prosecution of hate crimes in 2009, it added gender and disabilities in these cases, and asserts federal jurisdiction to prosecute.
It doesn’t take much to see that if Ms. hasn’t prosecuted many hate crimes (notice no one brought up Craig Anderson in the original article), that there is a lack of communication between the sheriff’s and DA’s office, it clearly a problem that lack in investigations.
Just as BB has been showing us how poorly the investigations and reporting of the crimes are now staring us in the face.
The people and families in Ms. and across this country need to speak out, and offer support to black families who are facing police brutality, and unfairness when it comes to laws, when it comes to racism. Local governments, schools, and religious organization, and community organizations need to do a better job in promoting prevention and awareness. I am grateful for Sky Dancers who express their opposition to all this hate, and violence.
I myself don’t trust police officers, I grew up with racism, violence, and most of it unreported and I can tell you that it has spread like the cancer that President Obama talks about, in the Middle east, and in our back yards. It should not be a part of the 21st century.
Ms. hate crimes laws only apply if both are NOT of the same race. In this case, both are white, and so the sheriff said he couldn’t charge them with hate crimes. That doesn’t make any sense what so ever. I can’t say it enough, we need change.
It hasn’t been many years since Mississippi Burning. Rev. Ray Killen, preacher man, was organizer of KKK that ordered the killed those three boys in Ms. It was 41 years later that he was brought to justice. The major of Philadelphia township went before the courts, and said that the KKK were a peaceful organization, and God worshiping. There are people walking free in Mississippi that never served a day in prison for their involvement. They got off free. You can’t help but wonder why those so called family Christians didn’t say or do anything about it for over 40 years. Even to this day, they turn their heads. I don’t know if progress will be made in my lifetime. I do know why a lot of people are angry, including me. We really need to elect people who will make a difference, who will step on a few toes, and fight for wha’t right, for justice and the truth.
Gaza news:
Reuters: Israeli air strike kills three Hamas commanders in Gaza
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/08/21/us-mideast-gaza-idUSKBN0GI12O20140821
Middle East Eye: Israeli strike kills 15, including 3 senior Hamas commanders
http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/hamas-says-israel-deliberately-sabotaged-gaza-truce-efforts-1462874463
Jerusalem Post: IDF mobilizing 10,000 reservists after Israel targets senior Hamas commanders
http://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/IDF-mobilizing-10000-reservists-after-Israel-targets-senior-Hamas-commanders-371848
Texas Gov. Rick Perry Booked On Abuse-of-Power Charges
MySanAntonio.com Perry pleads not guilty, heads out of state (for New Hampshire)
Clarion-Ledger: Rick Perry’s trial lawyer is meaner than McDaniel’s
It’s one thing for Perry to say “I’m not guilty”, instead he comes out with “I’m above the law” and will get those who did this to me.
He is the scum bag he’s been waiting for.
Yes he is, and as of today he plans on using campaign funds to pay for legal fees.
Better than my tax dollars, but not by that much.
What else is happening?
BB thank you for your coverage, you are really super at breaking down the crimes, and showing us the truth about the reporting of the crimes.
Thanks.
Shooting within 15 sec of arriving? Sounds like they had their minds made up beforehand. They could have shot at his feet instead to disable him without killing.
Suicide by cop.
B. K. S. Iyengar, Who Helped Bring Yoga to the West, Dies at 95
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/21/world/asia/bks-iyengar-who-helped-bring-yoga-to-west-dies-at-95.html?_r=0
Thank you for this post BB; you have done another great crime post. I stay up all night now – I cannot believe what the world is seeing. I cannot believe the woman Don Lemon had on last night from Faux – her name was Tara, her only contribution was to smear Obama – she was laughing at times. I do not go the RW hate sites. Only thing worse than outrageous hate spewing are those who make no comment. When will Kajieme Powell’s death be addressed? The Police Chief for that area says he handled this well – actually speaking to that communities’ member at the site?? When do these ppl/police/leaders note there is a pattern to their methods and it is not lawful? May James Foley RIP and his family, loved ones and friends find comfort in his memory, his great accomplishments, courage and strength.
I guess Don Lemon isn’t too popular with the black activists these days from what I’ve seen on Twitter.
For Dak:
To talk to one of them, you probably have to text them. Changed the neighborhood, sure. For the better?
Another Republican asshat…
tpm: GOP Rep.’s Healthcare Cutbacks Mailer Features Deceased Woman
LOL. The Rs want tight Voter ID laws because of alleged concerns that dead people might vote. However, they seem to have no problems using dead people in their ads when it suits them.
Just realized it’s that Rodgers, from an unfortunate conservative district in my state. Why am I not surprised….
She’s not a keeper, should be thrown back.
Yes, I would be thrilled to see her lose her seat! I am all to familiar with the mindset in that district, having been born in Colville and lived in Spokane for 14 years. I still remember seeing the Birch Society billboards at the edge of town when I was a kid. I missed the land when we moved to the Coast, but now I bless my parents for getting us away. The D’s have a very good candidate running against her, Joe Pakootas, CEO of the Colville Confederated Tribes’ businesses. He has actual real business and job creation experience, has a track record of cooperating with others to get things done and understands the needs of people who live there.
Oh, no! How awful.
Breaking . . . Darren Wilson did not have a fractured eye socket.
Wilson went to the hospital and had x-rays, which were negative. He was treated for a “swollen face.” I’d bet anything he hit himself with his own gun.
I saw the video when Mike Brown’s body laid in the road, and Darren Wilson was pacing back and forth, didn’t look like he suffered a broken eye socket then. He’s not holding his eyes or his face. Let me see if I can find that segment.
It’s in my post.
That’s where I saw it. Thanks to you BB.
Wilson doesn’t look injured to me.
Great post! I had the flu yesterday and spent a lot of quality time in the bathroom and trying to deal with car today so been out of it. The racism is appalling. Check this out… http://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/_missouri_newspaper_under_fire_for_publishing_racist_cartoon_about_ferguson_demonstrations
Background of prosecutor in Ferguson case has some questioning probe’s credibility
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/background-of-prosecutor-in-ferguson-case-has-some-suspicious-of-bias/
Cop in Ferguson Tweets Lies to Justify Tear-Gassing Protesters in Their Own Back Yard
http://blogs.riverfronttimes.com/dailyrft/2014/08/cop_working_ferguson_protest_falsely_accuses_protesters_of_firing_guns_leading_to_gas_attack.php?page=2