I would have to guess by the article that she is a first year journalism major and it is in the second year that they teach things like correctly quoting sources, giving facts no matter which side they enhance and journalistic integrity. I am confused at how a large number of people are able to dismiss a person's criminal history and dive on the "unarmed black teen" wagon. He was unarmed but some of the testimony clearly states that his actions were to disarm the officer and arm himself. Next he was a teen that could legally vote, purchase tobacco products (not take them) live on his own, be solely accountable for his actions and would always be tried as an adult in any court hearing. He is only a teen because 18 and 19 have teen at the end, for all intents and purposes he was a fully accountable adult.
Lets get to the shredding shall we.
-The most common misconception I’m hearing is that Mike Brown was significantly larger than Officer Wilson. This is incorrect. On page 198 of the official grand jury transcript, you can see that Officer Wilson testifies he is 6 ft 4 and weighs 210 lbs,
the same size as Mike Brown.
(source)
I include her source link but as with her blog you have to find the exact page she refers to. In this case it is page 198. As you will also notice she has struck out the same size comment, apparently too many have already debunked that claim and she edited it. The weight difference and stature is relevant and just from viewing pictures of both men, assuming they are roughly the same height, there is a big size/build difference (and from the report it was at least a 50 pound difference in weight), that IS significant so her first sentence doesn't fit either. She should have used the strike out on the entire paragraph when editing or better yet dropped the paragraph completely.
-Mike Brown was NOT stopped because he was a suspect in crime. He and his friend Dorian Johnson were stopped for jaywalking, as Darren Wilson testifies to on page 208 of his grand jury testimony.
Here she says he was stopped for jaywalking but in the source she quoted the officer neither stopped them or made a claim that there was the crime of jaywalking taking place. From his testimony he made a suggestion that they should walk on the sidewalk. This is significant because using the term stopped seems like he had flagged them down, pointed out an infraction and was detaining them. That doesn't appear to be the case with her "source" material.
-Mike Brown WAS fleeing from Officer Wilson when he was fatally shot. Wilson confirms this on page 281 of his grand jury testimony.
This one really goes into the area of having absolutely no ability for reading comprehension. I would guess that most major universities would require English classes that at least touch on reading comprehension, but she just went on and added in the parts she feels they forgot. See the actual testimony just has Officer Wilson explaining why he pursued the suspect once the suspect started to run away. It says nothing about shooting but that didn't stop our little future reporter from just making up whatever she wanted to give the story some pizzazz.
-Officer Wilson broke police self-defense protocol, which teaches to disarm and incapacitate rather than kill and teaches officers to go for body shots. Officer Wilson shot Mike Brown twice in the head, after he shot him four times in his arm and torso.
So he broke police self defense protocol which teaches him to disarm and incapacitate rather than kill. Let me just leave off the rest of that for a moment, I will get back to that, but for now I will focus on that first part. The suspect, by the testimony, backed up by other witnesses was charging the officer, his weapon was his body. How do you disarm that weapon? Was he supposed to stand there and take the hit, hope for the best? Maybe charge back at him? Or maybe, like some assume, since Brown didn't have a weapon and apparently wanted to fight he (Officer Wilson) had some street obligation to be part of that fisticuffs. No protocol was broken, the situation had escalated in a split second beyond the disarm and incapacitate stage.
Now for the second part, teaches officers to go for body shots. This is probably accurate. They don't spend hours on the range trying to shot guns and knives out of moving hands because that is Hollywood not real life. The reason they teach that is two fold, one, it hits vital organs, at the point they are using their weapon the suspect dying is a real possibility and two, being a few inches or even a foot off your mark means you still hit the person you are aiming for not some innocent by-stander. The two head shots she thinks might show a break in protocol were most likely because he had his head down while charging which would put his head in front of his body. The cool use of 4 times in his arm and TORSO... wait, isn't the torso basically the body? Thought so.
-Ferguson Police ignored protocol and refused to interview or take a statement from the eyewitness present from Officer Wilson’s initial contact with Mike Brown until his death.
(source)
Here we go again throwing around protocol. She slept through reading comprehension but stayed awake and got an A in Ferguson Police Protocol 101. Oddly enough she calls the guy and eyewitness, but actually his title that day was accomplice and criminal. The inflaming, lack of facts article she sourced was amusing but she might want to note for later in her dismal career that just because it is on the internet doesn't mean it is true or reputable. All you have to do is look down the right side of the page at the headlines of the teaser articles and you can see, they have an agenda.
-The forensic examiner broke protocol by failing to take crime scene photos. On page 95 of the grand jury transcript, she claims that this was because her camera had died, however, she goes on to describe how she immediately followed Wilson to the hospital in order to photograph his “injuries.”
This is getting deep. The forensic examiner (or St. Louis County detective as the rest of the world knows her) that is being interviewed was just one of the members of the detective squad. She was not the case officer and if you go all the way back to page 83 you find out that she was tasked by the case officer to contact Officer Wilson, not take pictures of the body. When it gets to the discussion about taking pictures at the hospital the name of the officer that met her at the hospital to take those pictures is blanked out so how an assumption was made that this person with a camera was the same one (not) taking photos of the body is beyond me. The material 10 pages prior and 10 pages after make no mention of the photos of the body, a camera that had died or any of the claims she is making. Why would you even link a source that gives no credit to the statement you are making let alone it seems that it actually "shreds" her statement. Had to throw that little pun in there.
-Forensic investigators broke protocol by failing to test Officer Wilson’s gun for fingerprints, since Wilson claims that Brown grabbed his gun and caused it to misfire. Page 39, grand jury transcript.
Oh boy, more broken protocol, glad she stayed awake in that class, to bad she slept through "How to accurately use source tags to keep from looking like a fool" class. No where on page 39 does it even remotely discuss this. Back to the testimony in the last failed claim she made the female officer that was being interviewed did discuss the gun being placed in a sealed evidence bag which was not St. Louis County protocol but she was unsure what the Ferguson police protocol was. Considering that St. Louis County was ASSISTING Ferguson then it would be safe to say that Ferguson protocol would be the protocol to follow. If it was place in an evidence bag and sealed I would have to assume it would be to go to the lab where if they deemed necessary then it would be tested for finger prints.
-Darren Wilson was then allowed to break protocol by washing the blood off of himself before it could be photographed, making it impossible to analyze blood spatter patterns and determine what position Mike Brown was in when Wilson first shot him. Wilson recounts this on page 10 of his official police interview.
(source)
So I am to believe that "Police Protocol" is to walk around with the blood of possibly another person, not knowing what there medical history is for hours until someone can swab it? Considering there were only two people involved in the altercation I am not seeing the relevance of blood on the officer. What could be determined? She says blood splatter patterns, I say stop watching CSI and thinking that is real life. And please, stop using the word protocol with broke or break in front of it when you have no clue and no reference to this supposed protocol.
-While Officer Wilson’s story of what happened that day has changed at least three times, six separate eyewitnesses, four of whom have never met each other, all have identical accounts of what happened. They were never interviewed by police.
(source)
Well the source she uses with this one wouldn't be my first pick if I wanted to be taken seriously but it actually discredits her entire claim. The only credit it gives to her claim is the six witnesses that have identical accounts (I didn't listen to them so I have no idea if they are really identical) but the second paragraph of the article says,
There are plenty of rumors floating around about Wilson's side of the story, but no verified source has given the officer's detailed account of the fatal shooting.
She leaves out any source of her own about these three changed statements. I would assume that "protocol" when there is an active investigation of the officer is to give no statements so I am guessing her at least three times argument is some of those rumors she has heard and Vox spoke of.
-These eyewitnesses all agree that Darren Wilson was the aggressor and that Mike Brown was shot while surrendering, with his hands in the air and that his last words were “I don’t have a gun. Stop shooting.”
Considering in the evidence is a blood trail at the scene that shows Brown traveled at least 20 feet back in the direction of the officer prove the statements to be at least partially false since they all say Brown was standing still with his hands in the air. Another questionable point of these six witnesses statements is they claim that Officer Wilson fired at Brown when he was running away but the area the shell casing are found don't support that and support that Officer Wilson didn't start shooting until Brown started back at him.
-This is backed up by Mike Brown’s autopsy, which suggests that Mike Brown would have had to be in the hands-up position for the bullets to enter his hand and arm the way they did.
(source)
No it isn't backed up and no the autopsy doesn't suggests it, the Daily KOS suggests that because it fit their narrative. The wounds on the arm could also suggest that he was charging the officer with his arms outstretched. The wounds on the arm could also suggest he was doing cartwheels and Officer Wilson was shooting for his leg to "subdue" him. Man this journalism, make your own story up stuff is easy.
-Furthermore, in a press conference, the coroner who performed Mike Brown’s autopsy relays that there was no trace of gun shot residue anywhere on his body, proving that Wilson’s claim that Mike Brown grabbed his gun, causing it to misfire, is impossible and untrue.
(source)
Did you even read the private autopsy report? Here you go Private Autopsy report. Check out page 2 under Gun Shot Wounds second paragraph. Spoiler alert, it confirms one of the wounds was at the police vehicle. This being the independent or private autopsy.
-Ferguson Police lied about the distance Mike Brown was from Officer Wilson when he was killed. They reported it was 35 ft. but it was in fact 148 ft.
(source)
At least read and comprehend the titles of the articles you are citing as proof. The entire title says "Video: Police lied. Mike Brown was killed 148 feet away from Darren Wilson's SUV". It doesn't say anything about officer Wilson being 148 feet away it say the SUV was 148 feet away and considering Officer Wilson chased after Brown it would be safe to say that he wasn't standing next to the SUV at the time he shot him.
-Owner of Ferguson Market states that he did not call police to report a theft of cigars, that the theft had nothing to do with Mike Brown, and that the man on the security footage is not Mike Brown.
(source)
Daily KOS again, nice, guess you are shooting for employment there, you will probably fit in. But as with all your other statements the attorney did not say the theft had nothing to do with Mike Brown and the that the man on the security footage is not Mike Brown. What he actually said was "any alleged theft of cigars had nothing to do with Michael Brown being shot to death by Ferguson police". The attorneys statement is actually true, Mike Brown was shot to death for attempting to harm, disarm and potentially murder a police office.
-The prosecuting attorney for the case against Darren Wilson has helped raise $600,000 in donations for Darren Wilson, creating a clear conflict of interest.
(source)
Snopes didn't see it that way and $600,000 for 19 shirts? The 19 shirts is pointed out in the last paragraph.
-The police department that Officer Wilson worked for prior to coming to Ferguson was disbanded after multiple instances of racial profiling.”
(source)
Again, you misquote the article. There was nothing in the article about racial profiling. It claims the police force was disbanded because of tensions between the police force and the predominantly black residents. I have not been able to confirm either the disbanding of an entire police force or the reason and at this stage it would be the only thread you would be hanging by after I "shredded" all your other talking points.
With this many gaping holes in person's long list of misconceptions I truly have to wonder if this is real or if someone made it up to wind people up. If it is true I really hope that she is working harder on her second major because I have a feeling the journalism major probably isn't going to work out.
If you want to read the entire article it is here but I quoted most of it. The site that is hoisting this article up is here and if you go there you will see that they have some sort of beef with police mainly in Wichita so I guess this article makes sense to them. Can't say the same for me.
