re: Fergusons famed and reliable "witness 40"--

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Bull shite.

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It's not at all. When white people call black people thugs, black people see it as racist and the fact is many people do use it while thinking in a racist manner. Get over it and use another word. Or stop thinking of yourself as a realist.

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Fergusons famed and reliable "witness 40"--
I refuse to call a kid a "thug"


What would you call a 6' 4", 280 pound, 18 year old male who walks into a store, grabs whatever he wants then as he walks out of the store threatens and pushes the store clerk who tries to stop him?

A saint?

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I will afford that kid the same benefit of the doubt or lapse in judgement that was given to everyone that I knew from college that got in brawls at bars, got DWIs, got MIPS, committed vehicular homicide, did truck loads of drugs, got arrested, spent nights in jail, stole from campus cafeterias and from off campus liquor stores, etc.

All those "kids" went on to be successful CFAs, CPAs, JDs, MDs, etc.


I'll call it what it is--a lapse in judgement. I nor you know enough about that kids life to condemn him as a thug. His last moments surely didn show him to be an angel, but that's all we have. I refuse to be as short sighted as those that cast him as a street thug who got what he deserved. If that's the case, then we have many successful street thugs cloaked as business people, lawyers and doctors.

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They are facts that there was a fight in the car, brown slapped boxed with him and

I was unaware that this was a fact of the case.

Is "slapped boxed with him" a euphemism for a violent assault? I'm no attorney.

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A 6'4 300 pound demon would leave little red marks on someone's face..right

I've seen much worse than that from smaller people.

You should read this book.

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I challenge anybody (black, brown, white, yellow, or green) to attack a cop, try to take his gun away, and see what happens.

That action won't end well for ANYBODY.

But, this is indicative of where America is in 2014. The fact that some people are STILL trying to spin the Ferguson situation in a negative way regarding a white policeman, WHO DID NOTHING WRONG, should tell us that it's not about the truth anymore.

SS, you were talking about "non-black racists" earlier. Could you please point out one of those in the Ferguson case?

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You don't know that he tried to take his gun. No one does. All we have is Wilsons testimony and gun that was never fingerprinted. Is that all the information you need to justify the narrative you want to believe ?

Witness 40 clearly is one. And I was more so referring to some segments of the wilson supporters that have spew volatile hate speeches and rhetoric

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Either you believe he tried to get the cop's gun or you don't. If you don't, I understand your sympathy for Mr. Brown, but the evidence doesn't support that position.

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I believe Brown initially attacked Wilson which led to the first shots being fired, but I also believe that Brown tried to give himself up before the last shots were fired.

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I can't be held accountable for how a stupid person interprets a word, especially when its objective definition is precisely what I mean to indicate by using it.

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You should hold yourself accountable for not unnecessarily contributing to a problem you claim to want to solve. Up to a point, it doesn't matter that their standards for what is "racist" are unreasonable. I think that I can avoid the use of the word thug without putting an unreasonable burden on my ability to communicate. For example, in this case, Brown acted like a violent criminal in that convenience store. With no harm to me, I avoided using a term that black people now see as racist. If they deemed "violent criminal" racist when describing exactly that, that would probably be unreasonable. I'll cross that bridge when it gets here. But my point is that we need to be realistic and not so rigidly idealistic (about things that don't really matter, like the webster definition of "thug") if we don't want to be part of the problem.

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don't really think you believe that once someone tries to disarm a cop that person forever loses his right to live

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Of course not.

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even if he broke off that encounter and tried to escape and was no longer threatening the cop or anyone else.

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Well the evidence suggests he broke off the encounter - but instead of continuing to flee or surrender, he doubled back on the cop.

I absolutely don't recommend that. Lie down and put your hands on the back of your head immediately under those circumstances. The risk of misinterpretation and overreaction by the cop (completely your fault up to that point) are too high for any other course of action.

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I don't think Wilson cold bloodily gun the kid down, but there is really nothing for me to believe that he went for the gun besides Wilsons testimony.

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There's no question that he didn't do it "in cold blood".
Whether justified or not, he did it in "hot blood".

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I will afford that kid the same benefit of the doubt or lapse in judgement that was given to everyone that I knew from college that got in brawls at bars, got DWIs, got MIPS, committed vehicular homicide, did truck loads of drugs, got arrested, spent nights in jail, stole from campus cafeterias and from off campus liquor stores, etc.

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Do you know why those kids are alive?

They didn't grab a gun from a fricking cop.