Apparently the officers did not call dispatch to report the shooting for thirty minutes, at which time they reported only that they needed backup for crowd control. Anonymous has obtained, and released, what they say is the unedited dispatch recording. If the police think it has been edited, they can release the full record, but the dispatcher says several times that she has no more information on why a disturbance might be occurring at this location.
I know: vigilantes, breaking the law. But sometimes -- as at, and after, the O.K. Corral -- the law and the law enforcement are the problem, and citizen resistance to authority is the solution. That the law forbids resisting the government in this way is no defense. Of course it does.
The truth will out.
11 comments:
This video is labeled "St. Louis dispatch".
I thought the officer was a Ferguson police officer? This isn't even the same department as St. Louis county. Why post something like this? We don't even know what to make of it?
This is the same Anonymous that released the wrong officer's name earlier. And the same Anonymous that released information that was wrong in the Steubenville rape case. These folks don't have much credibility.
As you say, the truth will out. Why not give it time?
I'm willing to give it time. But I regard this as part of the process. Citizens must take charge of demanding accountability. We cannot trust the government or any of its member agencies here. If they try to sweep it under the rug or come to an unjust conclusion, we need to be prepared to challenge them.
In any case, it's a good question about why St. Louis County took the call from the policemen on the scene for help. Many times counties run the dispatch services for cities -- or even there's a broader dispatch center covering several counties or a municipal area. If you call 911 in Atlanta, you might need the Atlanta PD or the Fulton County PD or several others. The dispatcher's job includes trying to figure out who you need. If you call 911 here, you'll get a centralized dispatcher for several rural counties that have paid for a common service center.
So it's a question that we ought to ask, and that has now been asked. Apparently the Ferguson Police Chief's answer -- now that there is a demand to know if these tapes are accurate -- is that he'll try to release a copy of the tapes "soon," but has not listened to the ones posted by Anonymous to confirm if they are accurate.
Since Anonymous has no credibility--and they're not good citizens, either--there's no rush to waste bandwidth confirming their stuff.
Eric Hines
They're credible in some circles. Most of my left-leaning friends take them seriously (and regard them as good citizens, too -- citizen activists).
In any case, the interesting question here is not whether they are as a group credible; it's whether they are right about this being the accurate tape (and from the correct dispatch service, as Cass noted).
Raw guessing is right on occasion, too; it confers on the guesser no credibility, and absent that, there's no value in wasting bandwidth on them.
There are lots of sources for the accuracy of the tape.
Eric Hines
Well, this isn't guessing, is it? It's theft. So the questions relative to its credibility are: did they steal the right thing, and if so did they alter it?
If they did and did not, the tape is credible whatever you think of the group. To argue you should ignore it if it proves to be accurate because you don't like Anonymous would be an ad hominem fallacy.
To argue you should ignore it....
That's your strawman, regardless of the name you attach to it.
Eric Hines
What I attach to it is the name of 'not wasting bandwidth.' That's the same, as far as I can see, as ignoring. If you don't intend "ignoring it," I'm glad to hear it -- but it's no strawman, it's my honest understanding of what you are arguing should be done.
Well, strawmen aren't, of necessity, nefarious; honest mistakes/misunderstandings generate strawmen, too.
What I'm not interested in wasting bandwidth on, what I'm ignoring, are Anonymous and its production. The tape may, or may not, exist; it may, or may not, have been doctored; it may, or may not, be associated with events in Ferguson. There are lots of sources for the accuracy of the tape.
I haven't bothered to look into any of those sources because, until I understand more of what actually happened in Ferguson, until I have some context, I'm not sure of the value of a disjointed radio conversation. Right now, there are three separate events that occurred/are occurring, and a mendacious press--our only source until a proper investigation is carried out--is cynically mixing and matching them as though they're parts of the same thing. We have a strong-arm robbery of a nearby store; we have, minutes later, a stop of a young man who may, or may not, be the one who robbed the store and a police shooting of that young man pursuant to the stop and as a result, or not, of a struggle for the cop's gun, which struggle may have occurred partially in his squad car, and maybe the cop knew the young man was a suspect in the robbery, or maybe the cop stopped him for some other reason (and maybe the young man resisted arrest--if he did--because he knew he was a suspect and he thought he was being arrested for that, or maybe he resisted, if he did, because he objected to the arrest for another reason). And we have the rioting and looting.
Until those three things get properly sorted out, and as I said, the press is actively interfering with that, a relevant tape, if it exists in undoctored form, certainly should be squirreled away pending that sorting, but at this point I don't see it adding much investigative value--so I haven't looked into that. Other reports I've seen about the tape's contents imply that the arresting/shooting cop didn't know the young man was a robbery suspect, but not much else.
Eric Hines
Eric Hines
Oh, I see. So it's a matter of analytical priority, then.
The importance of the tape from my perspective is more immediate. If it is real and unedited, it's important for the same reason I was defending the police's decision to refuse a nurse's request to administer CPR. The reason you shouldn't administer CPR is that the more important thing, in the case of a gunshot wound, is to stop the bleeding and get rapid medical attention.
If thirty minutes later they haven't contacted dispatch to inform them of the shooting and request medical attention for the victim, that indicates that they were focused elsewhere for that thirty minutes. They weren't trying to save his life, perhaps because after taking nine rounds he was too clearly dead. So what were they focused on during that period?
That's a question I'd like answered, but only if the tape proves accurate. Thus, the accuracy of the tape is (for me) a question of more immediate analytical interest.
The truth hasn't outed since 6 years ago. It's not going to out any time soon. Why?
Because the clowns in this country seem to think They Know What's Going On.
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