@CoastalRat,
You don't seem to understand CR, Officer Wilson was supposed to incapacitate the "charging" Mr. Wilson by winging him in crucial places on his body. You know, the way the Lone Ranger used to do.
Some people are, regardless of whatever facts are presented to them, just going to cling to their belief that Brown's death had very little to do with Brown and a whole lot to do with a racist cop who got some twisted pleasure out of pumping an
unarmed black teen full of bullets.
Fortunately cooler and more fair-minded heads were in the Grand Jury who considered all of the evidence presented to them and determined there was no crime with which to charge Wilson. Proof, no doubt, to these same folks that we have a "broken" legal system and that young black males throughout the country, leave their homes everyday in great peril of being slaughtered by the police.
There are no photos or autopsy reports that you can show them or recorded statements of witnesses that you can play for them that will dislodge them from a belief that formed the minute they heard a young black man was shot and killed by a police officer.
Of course it never dawned on them that the accounts that were surfacing immediately after the shooting; that Brown was on his knees with his hands raised in the air when he was repeatedly drilled by the savage Wilson, might not be accurate. Why would Brown's friend lie about such a thing? Why would people who hate white cops lie about such a thing? Nope, the only account that gave rise to doubt was the one was supported by a video tape, that Brown, just before the shooting, had strong-armed a a grocery store owner of Indian or Pakistani descent and left with a unpaid fist-full of cigarillos. And when they couldn't deny what their own eyes were seeing, they shifted to decrying the release of the video as disparaging
the victim, the Gentle Giant of Ferguson. Hell, his mother just told us on Good Morning America that Wilson didn't do what he had to do; he did want he wanted to do, and that her son could never do what the police officer was claiming. A mother can't be wrong about her son after all.
Wilson's life is in shambles now because he did what cops do (pulled over a guy who fit the description of a wanted man walking down the middle of the road) and what anyone would do when a man the size of Brown assaulted him and tried to take his gun. (I guess Brown went for the gun out of concern that the trigger happy cop might start firing and kill some innocent bystander).
These same folks also ask
"Why did Wilson have to follow Brown when he ran away?" "If he had just waited in his car for back-up, Brown would still be alive," they tell us, as if it's Wilson's fault that Brown went after him again when he caught up to him, because if he had waited for back-up and then the whole group of cops caught up with Brown, the young man would have realized he couldn't overcome all of them and would have given up. That what good cops would have done.
Trying to convince any of these people that they are wrong is a futile gesture, and so I'm glad the GJ did the right thing, because imagine what might have happened if Wilson had gone to trial and these were the folks who made up the jury.
But they really shouldn't worry. Now that the civic minded NY Times has published the address of Officer Wilson and his pregnant wife, and Salon published a photograph of his house, those not content with setting fire to the town and looting neighborhood stores (including the grocery store of that poor little Indian immigrant who got pushed around by Brown at the beginning of the story) will be able to pay Wilson and his family a visit and see that justice is done.
