Ferguson and Michael Brown's autopsy: The rush to judgment is usually wrong

A few excerpts from this article at CNN entitled "What Michael Brown's autopsy tells us":

1. "What you can tell from a second or third autopsy is limited by autopsy artifact -- changes to the evidence caused by the performance of the first autopsy."

2. "..any pathologist hired by the family, regardless of expertise, does not have access to the crime scene and other evidence. Even Baden, in the report he prepared for the Brown family, concluded that without the clothing, evidence or scene information, he had "too little information to forensically reconstruct the shooting."

What about this? Brown family attorneys: Autopsy showed Michael Brown was trying to surrender when he was killed.

3. "Already the results of Baden's limited investigation are being used to support the contention that Brown was surrendering, and that the wounds were distant range, even though Baden himself said neither."

Were Michael Brown hand's in the air?

4. "The wound at the top of the head, the frontal wounds and angled right hand and arm wounds suggest that the victim was facing the officer, leaning forward with his right arm possibly extended in line with the gun's barrel, and not above his head...The image of a person standing upright with his hands in the air when he was shot does not appear compatible with the wounds documented on that diagram." Baden's autopsy couldn't confirm that Brown's hands were in the air, either.

What about the eyewitnesses?

5. "From the perspective of a witness, it could appear that the leaning person is complying with the officer and getting down. From the perspective of the officer, he may appear to be coming at him. Partial evidence yields partial answers, and a rush to conclusions based on one isolated set of data from a second autopsy only raises more questions."

Most importantly: "That is why it is so important to be patient and wait for all the scene information to come to light." This is why you don't rush to judgment.

There are no winners, reconsidered

My last post received a lot of reaction, mostly negative. Friends who I know and trust told me my comparison between Gaza and Ferguson was "ridiculous" and "tone deaf."

I don't regret making the comparison. I do regret that the comparison became the focus of the post. When readers rejected the comparison, my thesis fell flat. That's unfortunate, because I don't think anyone who read the post and rejected my comparison would actually disagree with my thesis. Here it is again, without any reference to Gaza or Ferguson:

People who use innocent civilians to shield violent behavior are cowards...They use the very presence of innocent civilians to blanket their lawlessness. [T]the response is likely to be indiscriminate enough to catch innocent people in the fray. When that happens, we all lose.

I scarcely believe that anyone would disagree with this (do you disagree? If so, please, let me know). Evaluate this statement without my comparison. Then tell me what you think.

I chose Gaza because the conflict is fresh in people's minds, but that obviously backfired. Expecting resistance about my comparison, I tried to allay those concerns:

I'm not suggesting that a violent protester in Ferguson is the same as a Hamas terrorist. As far as we know, the violence done by protesters in Ferguson has not killed anyone. The violence in Gaza is on another scale.

Obviously, that wasn't enough. I'll agree with you that my comparison was absurd. The conflict in Gaza is different by orders of a magnitude from the rioting in Ferguson. I'll go further--I understand if you think no comparison between the two is valid. But that's beside the point. Why I regret the comparison is because my post wasn't about Gaza or Ferguson. The title of my post, There are no winners, is directly in reference to innocent civilians. I intentionally used the word innocent eight times because innocent people are suffering the consequences. Police departments are responding to irregular tactics with force and militarization. Journalists are being arrested and tear-gassed in Ferguson. The police are training sniper rifles on unarmed civilians. The police fired tear-gas on people standing in their own yards.

These are just the immediate results in Ferguson, but we have seen other results from the over-militarization of police forces: a flash bang thrown into the crib of a two-year old boy; SWAT teams invading the wrong homes; Occupy protesters were pepper sprayed as they sat on the ground. Sleepy small towns are acquiring armored vehicles. The capabilities that the feds had at Ruby Ridge or Waco two decades ago are now in the hands of police departments all over the country. Check out Radley Balko's work at the Washington Post  or his book Rise of the Warrior Cop for more on this subject.

This problem won't go away. What's happening in Ferguson right now is happening in small bits and pieces in cities and towns all over the country. It's time we faced the issue head on instead of burying our heads in the sand.

There are no winners

I've been spending a lot of time over the last month or so thinking about the Israel-Gaza conflict. Specifically, I've been wondering how to respond to irregular warfare. When Hamas militants launch rockets from beside a school or hospital, how should Israel respond? Do you expect them to just ignore the threat of rockets? War is a nasty business. No matter how hard they try, Israel's response is unlikely to be considered reasonable or proportionate. If Israel counter-attacks the rocket launch site, they may (and probably will) kill innocent civilians at the hospital or school. Hamas is violating all sorts of international norms here by subjecting their own innocent civilians to the horrible violence of war. Israel, too, seems to have been indiscriminate in some of their attacks. Whether the overreach comes from Hamas or Israel, it is innocent civilians who suffer.

Much can be said about the ongoing violence between protesters and police in and around Ferguson, Missouri. Let's say you have a group of 100 protesters. 95 of these protesters have no violent intent. They're content to wave signs, chant slogans, and yell at the police. But five of those protesters have sinister motives. They're not at the front of the crowd but interspersed among the peaceful protesters. From the perspective of the police, they see rocks, bricks or Molotov cocktails thrown from the crowd. How should the police respond? You can imagine that they're going to try to disperse the demonstration. They may try to break it up and/or respond with teargas. 95 peaceful protesters are going to bear the brunt of the force for the actions of a few bad apples. Whether the overreach comes from the few violent protesters or the police, it is innocent civilians who suffer.

A few obvious points here:

I'm not suggesting that a violent protester in Ferguson is the same as a Hamas terrorist. As far as we know, the violence done by protesters in Ferguson has not killed anyone. The violence in Gaza is on another scale. The analogy here is not a moral equivalence between terrorists and violent protesters but that the irregular tactics are essentially the same.

Neither am I defending the police's tactics. I'm not sure there is a "right way" to do things. I'm no expert, so someone else with actual law enforcement experience can surely weigh in on why I am completely wrong about this. But if I were in a position of authority, I'd regroup and refocus on doing a better job of identifying the few individuals who are instigating violence. If they're already doing this, it's not coming across in any of the news articles I've been reading. Then again, maybe that's the point: finding the few bad apples in Ferguson may be as difficult as finding the few Hamas terrorists among the larger groups of innocent Gaza civilians. 

People who use innocent civilians to shield violent behavior are cowards, whether they are Gaza terrorists or rabble-rousing rock throwers on the streets of Ferguson, Missouri. They use the very presence of innocent civilians to blanket their lawlessness. When Israel responds, or when the police respond, the response is likely to be indiscriminate enough to catch innocent people in the fray. When that happens, we all lose.