St Louis police murder scandal (PLUS: riots, idiotic press conferences, etc.)

[Beet]

If guns weren't so prevalent, I would completely advocate that street cops should not be armed with lethal weapons. As long as they are, you are going to get tragedies like this.

[Beet]

From what I gather, the story is that the police officer, tipped off to a nearby robbery, drove up to Brown and his friend, shouted obscenities, and attempted to open the door. Brown pushed back on the door and stopped the officer from exiting his vehicle. Brown and the officer then got into a physical confrontation with the officer inside the car and Brown outside of it. During which time, they tussled over the officer's gun until the gun went off. At that point, Brown breaks away and tries running from the vehicle. The officer fires his gun and grazes Brown. Brown, realizing he is caught, stops and puts his hands up, but the officer at this point continues to shoot, killing Brown. Brown is in the wrong until the very end, at which point the officer is in the wrong.

It is only what happens at the very end that disturbs me. An unarmed guy standing 10 or 20 feet away, who is surrendering, should not be shot execution style. There is still a lot of unreleased information out there, but this is the element the police haven't explained.

[Beet]

I just saw a video where a guy supposedly says that Brown "kept coming" towards the officer at the end, and the officer "missed" more than once before finally shooting him. That would certainly be very different from him having his hands up. So it seems to be conflicting witness accounts at this point.

[Beet]

I assume there's a toxicology report in the works.

[Beet]

I thought they were gonna say he had PCP or something.