In Defence of Reality

"At first [his thinking] was, 'I want to go back, I'm a cop, I want to still be a cop'." It took some time for him to realize that wasn't exactly going to be what happened."
Danielle Thompson, legal team representing P.O. Darren Wilson

"I think I expressed to him, 'Do you realize your first call [back on the job] will be to a blind alley where you're executed?' He took a pause for a minute, thought about it and said, 'Oh', that is the reality'."
"[Zimmerman] is an idiot, Darren was not. Any criminal defence lawyer that has half a brain says, 'Shut up, don't say a word'."
"Even if he gave the most heartfelt apology, they'd [Michael Brown's parents] still not like it."
James Towey, legal team representing P.O. Darren Wilson

"Taking a life is a horrible thing to have to do."
And yet, the key phrase is, 'to have to do', because that is what he thinks. Is that going to make the Browns feel any less grief?"
Neil Bruntrager, legal team representing P.O. Darren Wilson

Store closed circuit video recording of Michael Brown's encounter with shop owner from whom he stole cigarillos

In the company of a friend, Michael Brown entered a neighbourhood convenience store and decided to take what wasn't his. When the shop owner protested, Mr. Brown used his 300 pound, six-foot-five frame to intimidate and bully the obviously much smaller man confronting him, before he and his companion left the store. The shop owner alerted police to a theft and gave a description of the malefactors.

A short time later Police Officer Wilson in his squad car saw two young men walking down the yellow-striped middle of a road, with cars passing by them. He pulled over to the two and asked them to take to the sidewalk, and the larger of the two men became enraged, informing the officer impolitely to shove off. Officer Wilson again drove up beside the two and repeated his request, then made to exit his vehicle.

The burly Michael Brown slammed the driver's side door back closed when the officer attempted to open it, and the second time this happened, with Michael Brown pressing his body against the door, he reached inside the vehicle and began thumping Officer Wilson about the head. Officer Wilson managed to draw his gun and Michael Brown grasped it from him; when Officer Wilson regained control of it he shot Michael Brown in the hand, causing both Brown and his companion Johnston to run.

When Officer Wilson exited his squad car after radioing for assistance, he pursued the two. Michael Brown turned and began to advance toward the police officer menacingly, at which time Officer Wilson shot him repeatedly, killing him. Witnesses at the scene both corroborate and deny the accuracy of Officer Wilson's account of the incident. Forensic evidence appears to support Officer Wilson's account.

When the grand jury advised their finding that there was no reason to charge Officer Wilson, the tension and anger of the black community in Ferguson was palpable and not readily defused. Looting and arson followed with a number of local businesses set afire and destroyed, along with a local church. The anger is real and it is one representing the anguish of discrimination, a situation that prevails across the nation where blacks are treated differently than their white counterparts in the security and justice establishment.

Reasons are explicable, from a history of exclusion and oppression derived from slavery and inhumane social conditions, to violence and repression, begetting a universal black pathology of defiance and victimhood. Out of this witch's brew of social dysfunction was bred a black underclass of young black men disproportionately involved in crime from the petty to the serious, but mostly violence characterized by black-on-black crimes.

Demonstrators flooded on to the streets of Ferguson after the grand jury verdict, with several buildings set alight

The death of Michael Brown has become symbolic of all of this, a great moral injustice and injury to a large population of Americans that is pervasive and troubling in its extremes of dysfunction for the entire society. Yet while the symbolism is there -- alive and demonstrably with cause, that Michael Brown, a young man with a disturbingly bullying attitude and resentment against authority is the spark that lit the protests -- it has its own troubling aspects.

That, for example, every news report has the obligatory exculpation of 'unarmed teenager' attached to it, rather overlooks the circumstances of the event, the young man's physical bullying of a shop keeper, his resentment toward the fact that his behaviour has consequences, and his willingness to physically confront a police officer and assault him to demonstrate his right to express his dissatisfaction with the prevailing system through violence, speaks volumes about the delicacy of race relations issues.

"For obvious reasons, I wanted to wait until the grand jury made their decision before I officially made my decision to resign.
"It was my hope to continue in police work, but the safety of other police officers and the community are of paramount importance to me. It is my hope that my resignation will allow the community to heal."
"I'm resigning of my own free will. I'm not willing to let someone else get hurt because of me."
[former] Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson, 28