Darren Wilson's Side of the Story

[sheltiedave]

Merry, the original investigation found no civil rights violations specific to Brown's case. However, they had no problem whatsoever finding all sorts of violations with regard to the police force practices and debtors' prison civil right violations across the board.

That is the difference between the folks who like to pontificate on these matters from outside the area. They have absolutely no idea what is going on in other cases, how the PDs are being run, how various communities are using their police departments to put the squeeze on folks, and thus they have been totally surprised and caught out by what has transpired.

Those of us who are local are neither surprised nor caught out by the vehemence of the reaction, and we know and understand the depth and breadth of the hatred these practices have sown in our local communities. It is not about entitlement, it is about basic civil rights.

We have not created a social contract with our police departments and judicial systems, only to see our basic civil rights removed, and access to an unconstrained adversarial judicial system abrogated. These unilateral evolutions, undertaken without our informed consent, has altered our preliminary social contract without any ability to engage in any significant and valued societal feedback.

Why have we had building burned, and businesses destroyed, in St. Louis? Why have we had commissions formed to review events in Ferguson? Why is a citizens' police review board being formed in St. Louis city? Why has McCulloch decided that he is not going to run for another term as County Prosecutor. Why did Dee Joyce, the city circuit attorney, have to apologize to a private citizen for being arrested for a burglary he did not commit, and reprimand St. Louis City Police Department, for their FUBAR investigation? Why do St. Louis City police feel comfortable in turning off their car cameras in the middle of an arrest scene? All because the institutions that are supposed to have an open and constructive ongoing dialogue with the citizens they govern, and maintain certain basic standards amongst their employees, though governance, policing, and holding judgement on have FAILED in their mission, both by omission and by deliberate commission.

[Zeke]

Originally Posted by Boreas

Once again caught out by your absurdly pretentious efforts at sounding erudite.

The bolded above means that you wish an injustice had occurred. Somehow, I don't think you meant that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2y8Sx4B2Sk

And yet I do wish actual injustice had occurred, if you call cold dish revenge injustice.

The perpetrators of the idea that Wilson did anything wrong deserve retribution. They are the problem, not his actions.

If they didn't plead from the manufactured metaphorical Mecca of their own entitlement, there'd be no need to foster reality in their midst.

Sum? Get a job or accept your fate. Nobody causes it but you.

As for anyone desperately patting themselves on the back about a DOJ lawsuit? Try winning it. I seem to recall Wilson's actions being reviewed, too... That went nowhere.

[sheltiedave]

You don't understand what "winning" the lawsuit actually is, Zeke.

On some lawsuits, you need to look at the parties that file the lawsuit(s), and the other parties that co-file, or file a separate similar suit. In most civil rights cases, the lawsuits are filed to encourage or gain change as the end result, what normal people call the settlement.

In the case of Ferguson, one of the parties filing suit is a lawyer from St. Louis University School of Law, with the University's permission. Another party to a similar suit is the United States Department of Justice. I can pull out tens of thousands of civil rights decisions with a few google searches. It is not too difficult, Zeke, but we know your previous profession does not allow you to see snowflakes and deduce that it might soon be snowing, nor to see patterns of police behaviour and deduce they are wrongful in part and in whole.

The settlement, if it goes against Ferguson, will radically change the way the Police Department and municipal court do business. If they are forced to incorporate all of the changes(which they will be enjoined to do), it will significantly increase the cost of their policing efforts while at the same time it will significantly reduce their revenues from their municipal courts.

In light of a similar prospectus, their neighboring community of Jennings opted to unilaterally and immediately abolish their police department. You might remember Jennings - that was the only police job that Wilson did not quit in his career. It was one of his two positions where he received a termination letter.

[Zeke]

Actually, I just deduce that "winning" would imply any sort of meaningful progress towards a desired result.

If what you desire is for people who act like animals to not be policed as such? NO CHANCE.

[sheltiedave]

Actually, most of the people in the local communities that are policed by local municipal police would rather be treated like people rather than animals, and also would like to be policed by the St. Louis County Police, a professional organization that for the most part has their shit together.

A few years ago, St. George had their village and police department dissolved, and St. Louis County took over their policing. Since that occurred, traffic tickets issued on their streets have dropped by 75%, while at the same time the number of accidents dropped by 40%. St. George was a notorious speed trap, and their cops were widely reviled in the region.

Why was their force dissolved? A bad cop trying to shake down a teen was caught on camera doing such, and the lawsuit killed them. What a surprise.

http://thenewspaper.com/news/19/1961.asp

This is how most officers are trained to think.

[sheltiedave]

Actually, looking back at St. George, i had forgotten that this officer was dirty, his police chief was filthy, and their mayor was starring in Reefer Madness and being in possession of child pornography. No wonder they voted 3 to 1 to disband!

Missouri Caught-on-Tape Case Draws Controversy

By Jeremy Kohler ST.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri)



St. George - Video of a police sergeant taunting and threatening a motorist put the St. Louis area in the national spotlight, with the footage serving as a symbol of cops gone wild.

But even lifelong St. Louisans might need a map and a magnifying glass to locate the hamlet that's giving law enforcement a black eye.

It's St. George. It's one-fifth of a square mile of small brick homes and condominiums - amid a sea of small brick homes and condominiums - at Interstate 55 and Reavis Barracks Road in south St. Louis County.

Like so many of the county's 91 municipalities, it's a subdivision with police power, and no shortage of it. For a tiny town and police force, St. George has had its share of police controversy.

It has drawn complaints for years that it is a speed trap. A police chief there 26 years ago was convicted of a mob hit.

And this week, a video from Brett Darrow, 20, became an Internet hit. Darrow pulled into a commuter lot off Interstate 55 - outside St. George's city limits - around 2 a.m. Friday, when Sgt. James Kuehnlein approached and asked him what he was doing.

When Darrow asked why, Kuehnlein launched into a series of taunts and threats.

A check of court records shows Kuehnlein himself pleaded guilty of assault and stealing in two different cases, in 1988 and 1990. He successfully petitioned a judge in St. Louis County in 1998 to expunge his criminal record, which was making it hard for him to get work as a cop.The judge ordered those records sealed, as well as records of an acquittal for drunken driving and an assault arrest that did not result in charges.
St. George Police Chief Scott Uhrig earlier this week suspended Kuehnlein without pay while he investigates the case. On Wednesday, Kuehnlein hired attorney Travis L. Noble, a former police officer. He said he would review the unedited video today.

Uhrig said he has worked hard to cleanse the city of its image as a speed trap with a police department staffed by novices. But even he is not untouched by scandal.

Five years ago, an administrative commission upheld an accusation that Uhrig propositioned a 17-year-old girl for sex during a traffic stop in 2000, when he was an Arnold officer. Chrystal Cole's civil rights lawsuit against Uhrig and the city went to mediation; the disposition was not made public. Cole told investigators that Uhrig had her drive to an empty parking lot where he spoke of jail, petted her arm and face, told her she was "beautiful, hot, and tempting," and suggested a "quickie."

At the time, Uhrig denied ever seeing Cole that night, and said that she had fabricated the story out of malice over her previous contact with Arnold police.

The commission upheld Cole's accusation.

On Wednesday, Uhrig reacted angrily to questions about the case and repeatedly denied the accusation.
In an e-mailed statement, he said, "This incident that I was accused of seven years ago does not (have) anything to do with the current situation."

St. George has just under 1,300 people, but its police wrote about 3,000 tickets there in 2005.

To Gary Hardesty, a St. George resident for 39 years, his city is "a speed trap." To little benefit of residents, he said, officers camp out on the main thoroughfare, Reavis Barracks Road, and pull over drivers. "If the officers had a good reputation and were qualified, they wouldn't work for this department," said Hardesty, 65.

Some who have gotten tickets might have wondered why St. George even exists. They can thank moms in two subdivisions, back in 1948, who wanted their kids bused to school. Bayless schools would not send buses. So the subdivisions incorporated as St. George, which allowed them to join Affton schools.

Police misconduct is an old story in St. George. In 1981, Chief Milton Russell Schepp worked with the so-called "Syrian underworld" to plant a bomb in a car driven by mobster Paul J. Leisure. Leisure survived the blast, and Schepp went to prison.

St. George Mayor Harold Goodman said earlier this week that the case of Brett Darrow was "an isolated incident." He did not return a call seeking comment Wednesday.

Paul Keene, a city alderman, said that although Kuehnlein shouldn't have lost his temper with Darrow, the city's police officers act appropriately.

If people think police issue too many tickets, they should slow down, he said. "They go 10 to 15 miles over the speed limit there, and they need to be corrected."

[email protected] | 314-340-8337

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._George,_Missouri
http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/c...9bb30f31a.html

http://blogs.riverfronttimes.com/dai...ce_assault.php officer
http://archive.ksdk.com/news/article...ld-sex-charges chief
http://www.southcountytimes.com/Arti...#axzz3SKnO9616 mayor

[sheltiedave]

I could go through each of the over 80 municipalities here in St. Louis, but most folks here can already figure out that many of these miniscule burgs that have their own fiefdoms and police forces are corrupt to the bone. Heck, Jennings and Velda City are less than two miles apart, but you need to drive through three separate towns with three separate police departments to get there.

[Zeke]

All anyone has to do in order to not be treated like an animal is to not act like one.

[Boreas]

Originally Posted by Zeke

All anyone has to do in order to not be treated like an animal is to not act like one.

This is so patently and demonstrably false that it beggars belief that anyone (but you) would post such nonsense.

Thank God you're not a cop (or whatever you were) any more!

[donquixote99]

Pay no attention. Let's see how far Zeke will go to try to provoke more disapproval.