Absolutely unless the camera showed Wilson executing brown and then Wilson wasn't prosecuted.

If the camera showed that Brown aggressively grabbed for the gun and hit Wilson for only telling Brown to "get off the street" then there would have been no riots.

People would have been talking about how stupid Brown was to behave that way.

at worst some would be upset that wilson kept shooting after Brown was down but the camera would have shown that was a matter of a couple seconds.

Cameras protect the police.
Cameras protect the public.
Cameras protect businesses and cities.

all police should have a camera. all police vehicles should have multiple cameras with wifi-uploaded backup that's resistant to tampering the officers involved.

Correct, Michael Brown's initial offense was that he walking on the street instead of the sidewalk.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11...

"But for some experts, the shooting and the events that preceded it raised broader policy questions, particularly about how officers engage with communities they patrol. In his initial encounter with Mr. Brown and his friend in the street, Officer Wilson never exited his vehicle, voicing commands through the window of his cruiser instead.

âoeThe notion of riding through neighborhoods yelling, âGet up on the curbâ(TM) or âGet out of the street,â(TM) is not where you want your officers to be,â Mr. Bealefeld said. âoeYou want them out of their cars, engaging the public and explaining to people what it is you are trying to do. Drive-by policing is not good for any community.â

Basically the officer drew his gun when Brown wouldn't get off the street.

Nancy Grace (pretty darn conservative and an ex prosecutor) found the officer's story rehearsed and not credible. Basically his testimony was a lie.

A CAMERA would have negated all the ambiguity and saved hundreds of thousands in property damage and perhaps even saved lives.

Cameras protect the public AND cameras protect the police.

They say, 'Wow that kid was stupid. What was he thinking attacking the cop like that? I can see why the cop shot him!"

Or they'll say, "What the hell? Why did the cop shoot that kid who did nothing?"

Or (unfortunately) they'll say, "Man, the cop waited too long and died. I hope the kid gets the chair."

Police lie.

Retired police officer say "Police are legally allowed to lie. Police do lie- frequently. Do not talk to the police without a lawyer."

As it is, just a couple months after the police shot a 7 year old black girl, they shot an 18 year old black boy and then they shot a 12 year old black boy. The video of the 12 year old black boy shows they pulled of way to close way to fast and basically shot him in under 10 seconds while another video of a drunk white guy with an AK 47 officers of a different department shows they stopped at range - negotiated for over 10 minutes and avoided shooting him.

Cameras protect police.
Cameras protect the public.

Cameras protect civilians (and the police are CIVILIANS. They are not MILITARY).

Try reading some old dragnet scripts for a feel of what it used to be like.

I think they used "citizens" sometimes in the bits before the show talking about the city and more often they used "people" but also used "the public" and "man" and "woman".
I don't recall "civilian" being used.

http://www.otrr.org/FILES/Scri...

There's a blog from 2009 about this
http://pl.atyp.us/wordpress/in...

It looks like the international definition of civilians includes police officers. ("A civilian under international humanitarian law (also known as the laws of war) is a person who is not a member of his or her countryâ(TM)s armed forces or other militia. Civilians are distinct from combatants." )

I've been unable to google when the police started using "civilian" widely. Most states still advertise for "civilian police force" jobs. So the police are explicitly civilian in the state's eyes.

They are out protesting in large numbers because the video evidence of the obvious unwarranted and undeserved death motivated them more than simple hearsay.

The police department is changing its training policies as a result. The police department lost a lot of political capital even tho the two police officers were nobilled.

The city and the police department are spending a lot of extra money and going thru a lot of unpleasant times because of the video which will hopefully encourage them to be more careful next time they might want to illegally choke someone to death.

And two officers may have been killed* which is really terrible. But hopefully the police will work on community relations to regain the trust and support of the citizens.

*Or it may have just been a whacko who would have shot the police officers anyway.

Do you realize that american police officers kill united states citizens at over 50x the rate UK and German police officers kill their citizens?

Do you realize that american police officers kill more children each year (including 7 year old girls) than UK and german police officers kill all citizens (including adults) combined? And basically at an infinitely higher rate.

United states police have reported* killing over 400 citizens per year since 9/11. Meanwhile, germany and uk have killed reported killing under 4 citizens per year in the same time period.

*United states police forces are NOT required to report citizens killed and many do not so the actual number of citizens killed in the united states is higher than reported.

Go back a little before that and the average temperature was 12c higher than now for hundreds of millions of years at a time.

http://geology.utah.gov/survey...

http://geology.utah.gov/survey...

Basically, we are still in the middle of an ice age that peaked 20k years ago and started about 65 million years ago.

In farenheit terms- we average 58 degrees globally today (and rising) and we averaged 72 degrees globally from 65 million years ago to 185 million years ago.

The largest place I see ei playing out is in things in limited quantity.

Most the population is being priced out of things which used to be generally free or affordable.

In texas, the beaches were always free but now some stretches are being locked up. On the east coast, large stretches of beach are "private".

Amusement parks are grossly over crowded but if you have money (5x the standard price), you don't have a line.

Collectables that used to be affordable if you saved up are now going for more than your entire life income because when a person has a billion dollars they can afford to drop a million dollars on a comic book.

Likewise, there are private ski resorts, special "extra money" ski privileges in areas that used to be affordable to all and equally open to all.

Likewise for the front rows at concerts, opening nights for shows.

When the wealthiest made 52x what the rest did, their spending was constrained. They could have anything but they couldn't have everything. Now at 350x to 452x, they can pretty much have everything special and unique.

The balance of wealth between the richest and poorest in society determines how we share rare things in our society. Currently, we've reached a point where the richest get everything and even the "non-rich" get a lot less than they did in the past.

It was East India Company tea that the 'founding fathers' dumped in the ocean. And East India Company-related trade restrictions that they suffered under.

I agree completely.

Russia has a long heritage of eating up invaders. I think it is solid and will be stable as a state.

It has a problem with crony capitalism and it's first attempt to throw off fascism failed. But I think it will eventually gain the same corrupted kind of hybrid self government the rest of the world has. Essentially, the people will have some actual say in local, territorial, and national government while the corporations will have too much sway.

But the russian people must become intolerant of corruption. Bribery and graft are tolerable in small doses but they destroy your economy and your government when they become an accepted way of doing business.

I wish russia and the russian people success in getting over this obstacle on their path to being a modern state with relatively free people and less hostility and phobia of other countries.

And seriously- any attempt by china to take over russia would be the largest mistake they ever made.

Don't like Canada? What's wrong with it? Its's beautiful, it's rich, it's got huge... tracts of land.

Most of their products are "nice to haves" not "must haves".

Do I need a new TV when mine isn't broken? Nope.
Do I need a new computer this year instead of two or three years from now? Not really.

Meanwhile, the loss of income would be immediate and lead to social unrest which they really try hard to avoid.

Wish I could mod you up.

Informative, interesting, insightful.

And even more lens flare?

From what I recall, notch splits the 2.5 billion with 2 other people and his share is about 70%. I can't find a citation right now (grr) but pretty sure I read it back in september.

I was also happy to hear that he shared 3 million dollars with the 25 mojang employees. It is nice when a business owner that sales the business shares something with the employees who made the business a success.

From what the articles have said, part of the reason he sold was he couldn't take the stress and fan anger directed at him (as the company figure head for things he didn't personally have a hand in) made him really unhappy.