You should know about what's happening in Ferguson.

This entire situation is truly terrible.

For what it's worth, I live in Missouri, and watching my local news this morning, there was not a word about this on there whatsoever. They did show video of a moose that stumbled onto someones yard and lay down on a sprinkler, so they are covering the real shit, at least!

"Taking sides" is not the right way to go about this. There are probably policemen doing their jobs as well as policemen using this opportunity for violence (whether it's fueled by racial tension or just by a desire to hurt someone, I can't say). And there are probably protesters using this opportunity to peacefully protest police brutality and calling for better handling of the situation, while other "protesters" are using this opportunity to incite violence, start riots, and go looting. I seriously doubt that either side is, in full, guilty or not guilty, and pointing at one as "the ones to blame" just makes your prejudices more clear.

I do, however, agree that the press should be allowed closer inspection of this. Granted, the press would probably just use it to get more people to watch their show, but at least we could have a better picture of what's going on if we monitored different news sites.

In any case, it's an ugly situation all around.

Those police look like fucking Helghast. This whole thing is outrageous. They need to release the tapes so there can be a clearer examination of what really happened instead of just he-said police-said.

Honestly I think the press is largely irrelevant at this point. Usually when things like this happen you tend to learn more from people on the ground via Twitter, Facebook and Reddit. The press can be very deceiving sometimes, but it's hard to do that when you have video and photos of it live as it was happening. Keep an eye out online and at local levels. Don't worry about with that national/mainstream news is doing until everything can be verified locally.

But yeah, that stuff is getting nasty. I hope cooler head can prevail and end the situation before more people get hurt, or even worse someone gets killed. Comparing this to what happened in LA during the Rodney King riots, what's happening in Ferguson right now isn't too far off.

That's kind of the problem here... Ferguson PD doesn't have dash cams in their cruisers so there is no video. Until the FBI can investigate, there isn't much information out there. It's gonna take a while until we know something solid.

What the shit kinda opposition were the cops expecting with that kind of gear?

It's seriously insane.

@believer258 said:

Holding the police — who are supposed to be trained to handle these kinds of situations with restraint — to a higher standard than grieving and emotional protestors is not taking a side.

Yeah, they've got more gear and weapons than most of our Soldiers and Marines do overseas in a warzone, as EpicSteve mentioned. It's crazy. I understand having a SWAT team or something like that, but this is just fucking insane.

@jesus_phish: From what I hear, they are interested in covering it, the (I hesitate to call them) law enforcement are making that extremely difficult.

There's a difference between "grieving and emotional protestors" and "fuckers who just want to use the opportunity to loot and riot". As I said, it seems like both kinds of people are involved. In any case, throwing molotov cocktails is inexcusable, police brutality or not.

On this note, however, things like being enslaved for a few centuries tend to have effects that also last for a few centuries. When slaves were freed, most of them remained poor, extremely poor, and they were uneducated. Things like that tend to be cyclical - poor, uneducated parents often leads to poor, uneducated children who grow up to be poor, uneducated parents. On top of that, remember that for most of the twentieth century, there were still "Whites only" signs on everything and the KKK still committed violent acts against African Americans, making it that much more difficult to break out of the same cycle. These things have scaled down but still happen. Yeah, I'd say that racial tension in America has everything to do with this country's former practice of slavery.

I hope that you are considering never watching that news outlet again. They need viewers to make money and if you don't watch their bullshit then they won't produce such bullshit.

This seems like a story where two sides behaving incredibly stupidly and the internet mobs are rushing to snap decisions, largely on the lines of preexisting political biases. Generally liberal and don't like cops? You are probably siding with protesters. Generally conservative and believe in "strong law enforcement"? You probably think the guy had it coming, and the cops have behaved appropriately.

For all we know at this point, the police officer may have shot the man in a perfectly legal manner, right? If he is in fact telling the truth and the guy reached for his gun the cop can't be expected to do anything else. However, the protesters surrendered the moral high ground when all the riots began. When convenience stores are being burned to the ground or otherwise completely vandalized, what kind of gear do you expect the cops to come out in the next day? They dressed appropriately for the job. That doesn't excuse their behavior. It's totally fucked how the cops are behaving like the Gestapo and arresting journalists.

I just had to delete a bunch of posts that had some off topic arguing, racism, personal attacks, and more. I'm too exhausted to worry about issuing about 6 or 7 separate warnings, but if this trend continues the next step is going to be to simply close the topic.

If you can't keep the discussion on topic and be civil to one another, then don't even bother posting. There are plenty of other places on the internet where people are free to be shitty to one another, and this isn't one of them. Thanks.

Cops are effectively above the law and equipped with military hardware. DAs protect the cops and generally refuse or avoid prosecuting them. Judges project the DAs.

Cops get military hardware and trained in an Us vs. Them patrol mentality.

Cops murder innocent bystanders and unarmed, fleeing suspects regularly. I guess people are finally getting a little upset over it?

It's just insane what's happening there. I have no other words to describe it.

Also, apparently Anonymous has leaked the name of the officer that shot Mike Brown. I won't state it here, as I'm sure it'll spread like fire on its own. Suffice it to say, I would not want to be him right now.

I saw this being talked about a lot on twitter. I'm really not the biggest fan if protests though I don't hate them either. And this one sounds justified. But it always leads to violence because there's always some people there who just want to see shit destroyed and could care less for any cause. Case and point, on the BBC I saw a protester holding a Molotov Cocktail with the caption 'reports of multiple protesters throwing Molotov Cocktails at police'.

Could the police be handling this better? Absolutely. Their aggressive posturing and actions are just increasing tension. But it's not that black and white either. So when I see people on Twitter or elsewhere condemning police or protesters I just want to shake my head and remove myself from the conversation altogether.

If that photo is the same one I'm thinking of that I saw on Twitter last night, that wasn't a molotov cocktail. That was apparently a tear gas grenade that the police fired at him, and that he was throwing back.

Wrong. This is people trying to prevent mistakes from the past from rearing their heads. Namely, discrimination. If a white guy died, I doubt the riots would have been so significant, but we were assholes to minorities in the past, and rightfully they are concerned about that happeneing again.

@hailinel:

Here's the article; m.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-28781440

Sorry, I'm on my phone so you'll have to copy/paste. It's a Molotov Cocktail.

@jasonr86: Ah. Well, it's shitty either way.

The victim's friend says that the officer shot him eight times, front and back, including the head. If that turns out to be accurate "he was trying to take my gun" isn't much of an excuse at that point, even if it were true. The police are there to stop criminals, not to execute them. And I say that as a "generally conservative" individual.

I'm not automatically siding with the police regarding the aftermath, either. While I'm sure many are just following orders and trying to keep the peace, it's extremely debatable how appropriate--or effective--their actions have been as a whole.

@giantlizardking said:

You're lumping the protestors into one homogenous group, when it's pretty clear to me that the vast majority of them are acting peacefully.

I'm not saying that's my opinion, I'm saying that that is the pretense for the cops coming back in paramilitary gear. Personally I obviously think those individuals who burned the Quik Trip to the gound obviously surrendered the moral high ground.

That's total BS. You wouldn't be saying the same thing. Nobody says stuff like G20 protests or Occupy were (white) race riots. Come on.

Seeing how terrifyingly well equipped the militar...the police look I can understand why Visceral is making Battlefield Hardline about the US milita.....police.

Uh yeah that's a plastic bottle. There's no flame, you can see it clearly when he winds up to throw it. Nothing is lit. It's not a molotov.

http://i.imgur.com/PwDaxKc.jpg

Both of the protests you mentioned had nothing to do with race or civil rights at all. Both were about poverty, income inequality and anti-capitalism. Hardly comparable to the shooting of a black teenager.

I'm comparing them on the basis of racial composition.

@defaultprophet: Racial composition? It seems like during the G20 and Occupy protests everybody of every race was pissed off equally. I don't see how you could compare the two.

The fucking school buses where I live have cameras on them. Why in the hell are dashcams on police vehicles not mandatory? This is a top to bottom shit fest. We have so much useful technology and we utilize all of it until it becomes inconvenient for us (meaning: when it can be used against people who do bad things).

@rongalaxy: Yeah I know! Total bullshit. Why cops aren't required to have cameras on them at all times is bullshit. They can monitor us, but we can't monitor them.

It's not unheard of for witnesses to lie, especially if they want to get the cops in trouble. All we as the general public have right now as evidence are two sides saying different things, right? The autopsy will reveal a lot of information so there is no need to rely on heresy and speculation. I'm a big opponent of police brutality, but if somebody is on the verge of overpowering a police officer and attempting to take their gun I expect that police officer to shoot that individual as a matter of protecting themselves and the public. That doesn't have anything to do with execution. Now if the police officer fills their body full of bullets that is excessive for sure, and should be treated as such.