Ferguson: We've Seen Enough to Know That Mike Brown Was a Thug, Cop Innocent

-By Warner Todd Huston

UPDATED BELOW with final verdict

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.

**UPDATE** 11/25/14

Well, the Ferguson grand jury returned no indictment just as I said it would. I thought I would update this post with the final verdict for the sake of posterity.

Instead of taking the time to re-write everything of Officer Wilson’s testimony, I am going to steal CNN’s coverage–which originally appeared HERE.

But before that, if you want to read for yourself the report released by the Ferguson grand jury, CLICK HERE to download it.

Michael Brown shooting: What Darren Wilson told the Ferguson grand jury
-By Rachel Clarke and Mariano Castillo, CNN

(CNN) — Grand jury proceedings are secret, and when no indictment is handed down — as was the case for Ferguson police Officer Darren Wilson — the files remain locked up.

But in an unusual step after a grand jury deliberation, transcripts of testimony that jurors heard considering Michael Brown’s death have been released to the public.
Late Monday night, officials made available 24 volumes of material, covering 23 meetings that the grand jury held between August 20 and November 21.

A CNN team is going through all of the court documents. Here’s what has emerged so far from that review:

Wilson had never used his weapon on duty before the shooting

Wilson had never fired his gun on duty before shooting Michael Brown, he told the grand jury.

Asked if he had ever used excessive force before, he replied: “I’ve never used my weapon before.”

Wilson testified the area of the shooting was ‘hostile’

Wilson called the area where Brown was shot a “hostile environment.”

“There’s a lot of gangs that reside or associate with that area. There’s a lot of violence in that area, there’s a lot of gun activity, drug activity, it is just not a very well-liked community. That community doesn’t like the police.”

Wilson said he hoped to arrest Brown

Wilson told the grand jury his original goal was to arrest Brown, after identifying him as a possible suspect in a shop theft.

“My main goal was to keep eyes on him and just to keep him contained until I had people coming there,” he testified.

“I knew I had already called for backup and I knew they were already in the area for the stealing that was originally reported. So I thought if I can buy 30 seconds of time, that was my original goal when I tried to get him to come to the car. If I could buy 30 seconds of time, someone else will be here, we can make the arrest, nothing happens, we are all good. And it didn’t happen that way.”

Wilson was carrying mace, not a stun gun

Wilson told the grand jury he didn’t normally carry a stun gun.

“We only have a select amount. Usually there is one available, but I usually elect not to carry one. It is not the most comfortable thing. They are very large. I don’t have a lot of room in the front for it to be positioned,” he told the grand jury.
The officer testified he was carrying mace when he encountered Brown.

Wilson said he feared Brown could beat him to death

Officer Wilson told the grand jury that Brown punched him in the face when the officer drove back to him.

Wilson said he tried to get out of his cruiser but Brown slammed the door shut twice and hit him with his fist.

“I felt that another of those punches in my face could knock me out or worse … I’ve already taken two to the face and I didn’t think I would, the third one could be fatal if he hit me right,” Wilson said.

Wilson fired 12 times

Twelve shots were fired by Wilson. Wilson said two shots were fired during a struggle at his police vehicle and that he then fired three bursts of gunfire as he chased and then backed away from Brown. He testified that his Sig Sauer .40 caliber gun held a maximum of 13 bullets.

Twelve casings were recovered and one bullet remained in the weapon, according to the grand jury documents.

How prosecutor defended grand jury’s decision

Wilson said Brown kept running through shots

Wilson testified he shot at Brown on the street when Brown turned on him.

“As he is coming towards me, I tell, keep telling him to get on the ground, he doesn’t. I shoot a series of shots. I don’t know how many I shot, I just know I shot it,” he said.

“I know I missed a couple, I don’t know how many, but I know I hit him at least once because I saw his body kind of jerk,” he said.

Wilson testified that Brown did not slow down.

“At this point I start backpedaling and again, I tell him get on the ground, get on the ground, he doesn’t. I shoot another round of shots,” he said.

“Again, I don’t recall how many him every time. I know at least once because he flinched again. At this point it looked like he was almost bulking up to run through the shots, like it was making him mad that I’m shooting at him.

“And the face that he had was looking straight through me, like I wasn’t even there, I wasn’t even anything in his way.”

He told the jurors he thought Brown was going to tackle him.

“Just coming straight at me like he was going to run right through me. And when he gets about that 8 to 10 feet away, I look down, I remember looking at my sites and firing, all I see is his head and that’s what I shot.

“I don’t know how many, I know at least once because I saw the last one go into him. And then when it went into him, the demeanor on his face went blank, the aggression was gone, it was gone, I mean, I knew he stopped, the threat was stopped.

“When he fell, he fell on his face.”

Wilson said Brown reached under his shirt

Brown put his hand under his shirt into his waistband when he ran at Wilson, Wilson told the grand jury.

“He turns, and when he looked at me, he made like a grunting, like aggravated sound and he starts, he turns and he’s coming back towards me,” Wilson said.
“His first step is coming towards me, he kind of does like a stutter step to start running. When he does that, his left hand goes in a fist and goes to his side, his right one goes under his shirt in his waistband and he starts running at me.”
Wilson suffered a bruised face

Wilson was diagnosed with a bruised face after his confrontation with Brown, according to a medical report dated the day of the killing, August 9, 2014.
No other injuries were mentioned in the report. He was prescribed Naprosyn, an anti-inflammatory medicine commonly used to treat pain.

The medical investigator took no photos

The medical investigator did not take photographs at the scene of Brown’s killing because the camera battery had died, the grand jury heard.

The investigator, who goes to the crime scene to collect evidence for the pathologist, also did not take measurements of anything at the scene because they “didn’t need to.”

The investigator, whose name was redacted, said: “It was self-explanatory what happened. Somebody shot somebody. There was no question as to any distances or anything of that nature at the time I was there.”

Typically, a medical investigator will take crime scene photos in addition to the ones taken by police investigators.

The investigator testified that they did not see evidence of “stippling” (gunpowder) around the wounds on Brown’s body.

My Other Coverage of the Events in Ferguson

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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson

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Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, Wizbang.com, among many, many others. Huston has also appeared on Fox News, Fox Business Network, CNN, and many local TV shows as well as numerous talk radio shows throughout the country.

For a full bio, please CLICK HERE.

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Ferguson: We’ve Seen Enough to Know That Mike Brown Was a Thug, Cop Innocent

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Warner Todd Huston

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