Q: Even if the struggle between Darren Wilson and Mike Brown did occur, why couldn’t Officer Wilson use a stun gun or some other nonlethal weapon Why do cops, in general, have to resort to lethal force when the perpetrators are deemed as threats, even if they are unarmed
A: Police don’t typically use lethal force on white people illegally, without severe repercussions. However, Google “Michael Brown thug” and see what the Koch-inspired bigot-sphere press has to say.There’s been a steady stream ofcommentary aboutMike’s character and how somebody would’ve had to shoot him eventually anyway.All of the Black male stereotypes have come into play in this case, my favorite being that Mike Brown was a 6’4″thug. As it turns out, former Police Officer Wilson is also 6’4″, and only one of them killed anyone, but even that didn’t even sink in and interrupt the inner thoughts of the bigots who come here to post their nonsense.
Wilson testified that he could’ve brought a stun gun with him, but it was too uncomfortable to carry.
But this is beside the pointWilson never should’ve put himself in a position where Mike Brown could bum-rush him. (By the way, because of the incredibly sloppy police work, I don’t believe most of the facts presented to the grand jury. Most of them would not stand up in a trial, which is why the prosecutor used the grand jury the way he didthe rules of evidence are more lax in a grand-jury situation.)
The problem for Mike Brown, and for every other Black and Latino citizen of the United States, is thatminority life is discounted, and standards regarding how Black and Latino people are treated in the justice system, the public-school system and every other aspect of American life are much lower than how wealthy, Anglo, white people are treated. It’s not entirely race or ethnicitya lot of it is economic discriminationbut in this country race and economics are linked with a steel rod.
So in a leafywhite suburb, parents do not worry about their teenagers being shot by police officers like Wilson.The police officers in those towns knowthat if they shoot a teenager, it will be assumed the cop was wrong.As it should be.
A properly trained police officer, with the right leadership, will err on the side of discretion when confronting peopleas it should be.
Unfortunately, we’ve traded our liberty for an appearance of security because of the double whammy of the bogus War on Drugs and War on Terror. We’vemeekly accepted the Department of Defense’stransferringbillions of dollars in military weaponry to local police forcesbecause we’ve been propagandized to believe we’re fighting two domestic “wars.”You never know when a suburban police force might need an armored vehicle and automatic weaponshowfoolish. Let’s be realistic, automatic weapons in the hands of police would not stop planes from flying into the World Trade Center, nor a MIRVwarhead “stolen” from Ukraine from detonating in Manhattan. And all of the weapons on the planet will not prevent people from getting high.However,automatic weapons are really effective on civilian protesters.
In order to keep this charade going, there has to be a bogeyman. Black and brown people fill the bill. Mike Brown’s turn was last summer. Wilson testified that he “felt like a 5-year-old child in the arms of Hulk Hogan”a complete load of crap (anyone who’s seen a picture of Mike Brown knows that most of his 300 pounds wasn’tfrom lifting weights, it was from lifting McDonald’s)but his handlers knew language like that would play well with cowardly, bigoted white people.
Mind you, Iwould not have wanted to be grabbed by an angry Mike Brown, but if I were the cop,I might have started the interactionwith less confrontation than “Get the f— out of the street!”If I was concerned that I couldn’t handle it on my own, I would have waited for the backup that was already on the way. It’s not like the theft of less than $10 of cigarillos was a crime that needed to be resolved immediately, and it wasn’t like a 6’4”, 300-poundteenager wasn’t identifiable elsewhere. But as we’ve all seen, there are no repercussions for shooting down Black teenagersand law enforcement and Ferguson was designed to unfairly prey on Black people, so Wilson had no hesitation to wade in.
