Tuesday, November 25, 2014

Size matters ?

When I first read excerpts from the grand jury testimony of Officer Darren Wilson, I thought -- "Yeah, this guy really felt intimidated and was afraid."    He described Brown as being enraged and "looking like a demon."   He also described Brown as being so big that he himself felt like "a five-year old holding onto Hulk Hogan."

Now that sounds like something a defense strategist would tell him to say, and he's had months to prepare for this testimony.   But let's give him the benefit of doubt:   maybe he really did feel intimidated and afraid.   Did he have good reason to?

Brown was 6'4" and weighted 292 pounds.  A Big Angry Guy.  And then someone, supposedly one of the grand jurors, asked Wilson about his own size.   He is also 6'4" and weights about 210 and was a trained police officer.

So it was hardly a shrimp against Goliath.   And besides, Officer Wilson had a gun.

OK.  Let's say Wilson was confronted with an enraged, perhaps stoned, big teenager -- who he knew by now was unarmed and who ran away from him.    Why was lethal force necessary?    Where was the officer's MACE?    He doesn't carry it;  "it's uncomfortable to carry," he said.   And for that, an unarmed young man is dead.

Ralph

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