[jumpy]

Originally Posted by August

These Riots always seem to happen when it's hot outside. I think such racially charged trials ought to be postponed until the winter.

Related only indirectly to this are my thoughts (partially and with some humour) on why the middle east continues to have such trouble - it's just too damn hot over there for folk to assimilate stressfully charged situations. I know my fuse is shorter when I'm all hot and bothered..

Originally Posted by August

No instead they picked a black man at random, chained him to the bumper of a truck, urinated on him, then dragged him for a few miles until his body came apart in pieces. Feel better?

I remember that, nasty.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_James_Byrd,_Jr.
Google search shows at least one other incident, that is similar in nature, reported this year.

Originally Posted by thorn69

As a cop myself, I have a hard time with this case. Most of us are very familiar with where our weapons and tools are located on our duty belts. This is not just so we know where to go when the time arises in an emergency, it's also a safety issue in case we're being pummeled on the ground and somebody tries to grab our weapon from the holster to use against us.

I can detect the feel of a foreign hand on my weapon and I have to know which self defense maneuver to perform on that individual to get out of that situation. If he's on my left, I've got a specific move for that, if he's on my right, I've got a specific move for that. Same thing for front and back. This cop was either a rookie and very unfamiliar with his own gear or he had a serious brain fart - which can and does happen under high stress situations.

If he was unfamiliar with his own gear then his employer needs to be held responsible. They should not have an officer out there with weapons and tools he's not familiar with. That makes him a liability to the city and you potentially end up with a problem just like this one.

I think you raise some valid points here. Of particular note are the comments on training and who is responsible for that (probably repercussions of this will be felt within the force the officer came from?), and the issue of to what level is the perception of 'race' and 'fairness' applicable to the jurors (in your last post above) and how that public perception implicates opinion of the justice procedure.
A tricky one, with many variables to take into account, certainly. But this ought not to interfere with the facts, which is what the courts are supposed to be about determining.

Without knowing the facts of the case myself, and perhaps wrongly, my initial reaction to reading the article was drawn to highlight the following:

Originally Posted by article

Video footage of Grant lying face down as Mehserle shot him in the back was taken by onlookers and shown over the Web and television. Mehserle was seen holstering his gun immediately afterward and putting his hands on his head as in disbelief.

We can all second guess the policeman's intent, but a rational mind would have to draw a deeply disturbing conclusion that the shooting be considered deliberate; for this to be so, we must assume that his reaction 'putting his hands on his head as in disbelief' was also a deliberate act, of concealment or consciously misleading his intent to those he knew were present and watching.

I find that hard to accept. At least on merit of the reporting in the article and my initial thought to the cop's reaction to what he had just done. I'm sure the court would have explored the evidence and facts of the case much more thoroughly than I.

It doesn't change the fact that one life is ended and one other is irrevocably changed. Under the circumstances, how far do you punish someone for what seems to be a tragic, if negligent, accident? I'm glad I don't have to make a decision on that.