I held off on writing a whole lot about Ferguson for the reason that I had no idea what happened and for many days there was no way to determine anything. But now it is beginning to look like the cop is innocent of “murder,” that teenager Michael Brown was a thug, and that the protesters are all 100% in the wrong.
New reports are finally making their way out of the morass in Ferguson and revealing that police officer Darren Wilson was attacked through his cruiser window by the hulking, thuggish Michael Brown who may have struggled with the smaller officer for control of his service pistol.
There is also new evidence that the police have upwards to a dozen witnesses who substantiate the officer’s version of events.
Today evidence was reported that officer Wilson suffered a broken eye socket in the incident which substantiates that Brown did attack him.
Also today the young man who was with Brown during the confrontation with the Ferguson officer has now changed his story a bit and has admitted that Brown was trying to take Wilson’s gun away from him.
Finally, multiple autopsies show that Brown was not shot as he ran away and all the entry wounds are from the front consistent with the teen charging at the officer.
On top of all that we also now know that Michael Brown had committed a strongarm robbery only a short time before he encountered officer Wilson. So, even if the officer was unaware that Brown was connected to the robbery, the teenager himself had the state of mind of knowing he was guilty and was desperate enough to go for Wilson’s gun because of it.
Then there is the other tangential stuff like the video of bystanders talking in the background of a video and saying that they saw Brown charging officer Wilson, not standing there quiescent and with his hands up in surrender as so many protesters claimed.
While much of this is circumstantial at this time, the fact is there is almost no evidence supporting the initial “gentle giant” claim that Michael Brown was an innocent kid walking in his neighborhood and a racist cop stopped him for no reason then “executed” him in cold blood and without cause.
This all pretty much cements in my mind that Brown was a thug who brought on his own death by acting like a thug and that the cop is innocent and was just doing his job. This also confirms that the “protesters” are 100% in the wrong.
This does not absolve that police in Ferguson for their handling of this crisis, though. They did a terrible job. The video of the robbery and the injuries of the officer should have been put out immediately, not a week later. If people were told that Michael Brown was most likely guilty right at the beginning, it is doubtful this would have grown to national proportions.
Oh, there may have still been unrest, but it would never have grown to the mess it became. It would never have become a national media circus if the media understood from the beginning that the kid was a criminal.
Instead, the police let the narrative that officer Wilson was a racist who was hunting and executing black kids become the main theme for an entire week before they let slip some of the facts.
Another reason I didn’t write anything about this mess is because I am sympathetic with the excoriation of our militarized police. I was emotionally on the side of the protesters on Sunday and Monday after the Saturday shooting. Of course I could no longer support the citizens when they began to allow outside agitators to begin to control the streets and their protest certainly went on far too long and became mere pointless stupidity. Nor could I abide the looting and arson. There’s no reason for any of that.
Still, I could not jump to the side of police immediately because I no longer view the police as the side that should be supported first and foremost. We’ve seen far, far too many cases of the police being the bad guys to make the assumption that the cops should be given the first benefit of the doubt. Also, I am 100% against police having armored cars, ubiquitous SWAT teams and military hardware. They just don’t need all that stuff. Period.
But ultimately, there was no way to officially pick a side early until some of the results of the police investigation started to leak out. Now that they have, we can safely say that officer Wilson is innocent of undue force and Michael Brown was a criminal that caused his own death.
Finally, the media needs to be criticized for its coverage, here. The media fueled these protests. The live feeds were telling over the last few days, especially in that it was obvious that there were two to three media folks for every protester!
The media made this worse, there is no doubt.
