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Comment by duncan_bayne | Hacker News Reader

FTA:

"Brown's death, which is now being investigated by the FBI, has generated a great deal of discussion (as well as protests, vigils, and riots) in recent days, with many condemning the police officer for shooting an unarmed young man."

However:

"But authorities say Brown had attacked the officer in his car and tried to take his gun.

"The genesis of this was a physical confrontation," St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar said. His department has been called in to conduct an independent investigation."

Let's not be too quick to call out the lynch mobs here.

On the other hand: if I thought someone was going to shoot me, the resultant headline might well read "unarmed man shot while trying to take the shooters gun".

/me awaits the investigation and / or trial and / or video of the event

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At no point did the kid enter the car. You want us to believe that a teenager, starting college the next day, dove into the drivers side of the car to steal a police officers gun. Picture that for a second and if that doesn't make you laugh then i don't know what will. The eyewitness accounts make the most sense so far.

Secondly, the gunshot to the back doesn't make sense. The gunshots while his hand were up also doesn't make sense. It seems like the cop was wrong on a number of levels.

>Lets not be too quick to call out the lynch mobs here.

Do you really think its a good idea to use the phrase "lynch mobs" when referring to the backlash of an apparently racially charged shooting, where the parent article is specifically about race issues?

Perhaps its just me, but that seems in poor taste.

Also with regards to the article: frankly it doesn't matter what Brown did/didn't. The article is about how media's choices shape narratives in a way that the hash tag users feel creates a bias against Brown and is part of the greater fabric of racism in america.

I repeat that's all regardless of Browns actions.

Yeah, it turns out, witnesses plural, dispute the police's account.

It's too bad the St. Louis police aren't wearing webcams while on duty.

Those tend to fail or be unavailable in cases like this. It's all the rest of the people who need to start lifelogging.

I think that the police are there to protect people. All people, even black teenagers.

I think that every time a police officer fails in that simple duty so badly that they actually kill one of the people they are supposed to protect, that there needs to be an assumption of guilt and failure on the part of the police.

I think that if we don't do that, if it becomes accepted that the police can occasionally kill people as part of their job, that we lose sight of what we have a police force for.

I think that being a police officer is hard because they have to deal with bad people without insulting them, restricting their rights or hurting them. The reward for doing this job right is the respect and co-operation of the community they protect. The penalty for not doing this job right is the loss of that respect and co-operation.

So I think whatever happens at the trial is irrelevant. The police failed here, and have lost the respect of their community. They need to do their jobs better.

of course the officer said he went for his gun. Every other eyewitness says otherwise. This is why we had calls for Police to where cameras - they lie

what has people even more outraged is that the spokesperson said the shooting was justified, BUT there will be an investigation.... This isn't just people going for the lynchmob

It's not a video but:

http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/eyewitness-michael-brown-fatal-sh...

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