Michael Brown shooting in Missouri, robbery footage and the total loss of credibility for Dorian Johnson’s witness report
I’m back to square one on the whole Michael Brown shooting incident.
I feel now that I jumped to a conclusion about what really happened to Michael Brown based on what seemed like the credible witness report of his friend Dorian Johnson. I believed him.
But after seeing the convenience store robbery footage, where Johnson participated with Brown in the robbery, and after seeing Brown being so casually violent and brutish, taking advantage of his size to shove the clerk trying to stop him from stealing, I no longer believe Johnson’s statement.
What I’m saying here is that Johnson should be in jail.
And with regards to the shooting I can’t believe Johnson’s statement anymore about the chronology of events. He’s lost all credibility.
I feel I jumped to a conclusion about what happened before realizing what Brown’s character was really like and I’m not going to make any more assumptions about the shooting until more facts are in. Brown was not a good person though. That much is clear from the convenience store footage.
And what does it have to do with the shooting? Just that we know more about the nature of Johnson and Brown, that Johnson is not a reliable witness and we need to calmly wait now for a fair and complete investigation. Maybe by the Justice Department.
Not sure what happened. But I think one possible scenario is that Brown attacked the officer because he was scared he was going down for the robbery. People do reckless things when confronted by law enforcement. If Brown attempted to grab the officer’s gun that would justify deadly force during the act of the gun grab. It doesn’t justify shooting the man as he ran away. But it’s possible the gun grab in question had been the officer’s backup gun and maybe the officer thought Brown actually took it. Then the law gets fuzzier. An officer could be justified in shooting and killing an armed suspect who has just attacked that officer and is running away into the community if the officer reasonably believes that suspect presents a deadly threat to other people. Now the reasonable officer standard encoded under Graham v. Connor can justify shooting an unarmed suspect, if the officer has a reasonable belief the person presents a deadly threat. Not sure that’s what happened, but it’s possible. As for multiple shots, officers are trained to keep firing until the threat is eliminated. And yes you can legally shoot someone in the back, if you have a reasonable belief they present a deadly threat to you or the community. Just food for thought.