Summations Only

Really? What if the protocols themselves are wrong? Besides that, choke holds are against protocol, yet killing someone with a choke hold does not seem to result in an indictment. How can the Grand Jury show that anyone has lied? All the grand jury can do is indict or not indict. Even a not guilty verdict after a trial does not mean that the prosecutions witnesses were liars. Generally speaking, that is not the law. If you harm someone with an eggshell skull, then you are liable regardless of the fact that such a thing was unknown to you. The choke hold applied had been outlawed in New York after someone else was killed. The city is probably going to lose a civil suit based on this case. True. However a much less odious set of motivations is required to produce bad outcomes. All that's required is a mindset under which the police department is under siege by a criminal element and a mutual distrust between the police and the policed. There is no question in my mind that having a police department that does not mirror the community racially plays a part in developing that situation. Pretty odious comment. Since it wasn't made to me I'll let it pass.

All NY officers have been instructed not to used choke holds. Teaching officers to apply choke holds to stop the selling of untaxed cigarettes is a miscarriage of justice.

I believe that you are making up stuff to reflect what you want to believe. The grand jury can accept or reject any witnesses statement. Such rejection is not proof of lying. Most likely the grand jury accepted the policeman's version of events as true. Or they might have concluded that even if the eye witnesses accounts were accurate that Brown was still a threat. Did he say that? Has anyone said any such thing? Most of the commentary I've seen has been careful to say that despite being outlawed, choke holds are not actually illegal.As for not knowing police regulations. Yes a policeman should be held responsible for that. Would not knowing the law be an excuse for you? We are going to have to disagree about that. Perhaps such conduct does not rise to the level of murder, but there is the option to indict a policeman for criminal negligence. See Oscar Grant's death at the hands of the BART police.

Thrashing about, Jon? The dude was dying because some dude tried a maneuver he was not physically able to pull off. And then he was irresponsible enough not to verify that the suspect was actually having trouble breathing. Is it really that unlikely that the suspect was suffocating when a choke hold was being applied.Yes, he was thrashing around.

He looks like the proto-typical pre-teen to me. That's what he looked like to the citizen who called 911.In hindsight we know that police intervention was not needed. Pointing a toy gun at someone does not even rise to the level of assault.

There are limits on the power to use lethal force, even by police. That's why the choke hold was outlawed in the first place. Police power should not include provoking a confrontation by applying a lethal hold and then calling the resulting "thrashing about" while dying "resisting arrest".Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

To be specific, there was no need for Pb (flying lead) intervention. The policeman who said that the kid was about twenty was a blooming idiot. He probably had no ability whatsoever to judge the age of the kid. Didn't say he was a good kid. I'm suggesting that absent a criminally negligent police response, he wouldn't be a dead kid.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Really, Jon?

To be negligent is to act without regard for the legal standard of care. Acting against regulations, and in particular, regulations intended to prevent exactly the kind of harm that occurred is all just about all that's required to established negligence.

Denying the charges is not resisting arrest. Refusing to allow handcuffing would be. That's completely stupid Jon. The suspect is the size that he is. At best, the police officer chose or was directed to apply a tactic that the police office could not pull off because of the suspects size. Selecting the wrong tactic is the fault of the person or persons who selected the tactic.We aren't talking about a situation in which the perp was a threat to the police or the public which needed to be stopped. Instead the situation involved one where the police had a range of options and elected to use a discredited and disallowed tactic, and then refused to remove it despite the distress that the perp was placed in.No excuse for applying a choke hold in such a situation. Totally unacceptable by any reasonable standard. Everything is simple when simpleton's reasoning is used to gloss over what actually happened.

You apparently have zero appreciation for your rights under the US Constitution. Protesting your innocence through speech is not an escalation in any legal sense. If the police took it as such, that's just goonish behavior. The police failed to chose a reasonable option. According to you, the man's size was the reason that the applied hold became a choke hold. Well the man did not change size during the altercation. On the other hand, they might just as well have started shooting as pick the option that they did pick. The police were in no danger whatsoever, and there was no danger to the public. So what was the urgency that limited the police from picking a reasonable option?Jumping on that huge dude's back with a choke hold was a pretty ridiculous looking move. Had the defendant not had health problems, the likely outcome was ensuring an escalation rather than preventing one. None of which is an excuse for justifying lethal force in a non-lethal, non urgent situation. The police are justified in being the aggressors to get an arrest, but they are not automatically entitled to use lethal force. Nobody should have been using a choke hold, or allowing their chosen hold, through negligence to become a choke hold.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

What do you call negligence that is the proximate cause of the death of a human being? You call it criminal negligence, Jon.Remember the Oscar Grant case when the policeman shot Grant with his revolver while thinking he had his taser in his hand. Do you see the analogy between that and failing to avoid a choke hold, and then not noticing that you are actual killing the arrestee? I certainly do.It may well be that struggles and confrontations with police are prone to be deadly, but that is partially because the police will operate unlawfully. Not every confrontation justifies lethal force.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

I certainly haven't done that. I haven't raised the issue of race even once. What I have done is dispute details of your accounts of events and your statements regarding the law. There is no point in even counting events if you are going to sweep them under the rug by saying the police can do whatever the heck they want.Looks like I'm actually agreeing with Faith.Never mind. I misread her comment.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.Edited by NoNukes, : correct mistaken impression.

Not true. Surely there can be more than one reason for mistreating people. and we know that the police are utterly unequipped to handle people with severe mental issues.We don't hesitate to call the Klan racist just because they hate Jews and Hispanics too.Someone, Jon, I believe, asked why use 'dirt bags' as our examples. Well it turns out that your rights versus the state are mostly proven by court cases based on dirt bags. Cops cannot rubber hose confessions out of you at the police station because the Supreme Court said so in some case involving a no good criminal who probably needed locking up.The Supreme Court also said that the police cannot shoot unarmed, non-dangerous criminals, even if they are felons, just to prevent their escape (See Tennessee v Garner). There is no police authority use lethal force to arrest someone for selling 50 cent cigarettes. If you want to arrest in that situation, find a non-lethal method.Plenty of people don't give a crap about what happens to criminals because they cannot imagine the local police turning on them. They are perfectly okay with verbal protests or even verbal abuse being part of a reason for the police to jump on your back and apply a choke hold. On the other hand, sane people don't want thugs patrolling their neighborhood to keep them safe.

What do you think would be clear evidence of racism? I would not expect any one incident to provide evidence of racism. I think that was Dr. Adequate's point. I've never seen any reason to call you a racist. I'm pretty sure I didn't make such an accusation. I do think you have some naive ideas about race, and I did address one of those in my post. Again, the way to make that case is to talk about lots of incidents and to review the viability of the excuses offered for why lethal force was used and for why those incidents don't result in punishment for the police.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.