An interview with Ferguson residents.

[HairOfTheDog]

Not drinking, and not preaching. You can say your opinion is fair and unbiased, but your baseline for unbiased is... "Is this cop justified? Or was he like these three other cops that viewed Brown as vermin worth killing." That is biased baseline.

Maybe if you'd asked, "Is the officer that shot Brown like these three Cops: John Doe who rescued 8 children from a burning building, Jon Smith who stopped a rapist just before he raped a 12 year old, or Jim Johnson who brought down the most violent drug dealer that terrorized the entire city? Or was he like these 3 officers that said these terrible things about people in the community?" Maybe that would be unbiased.

The way you laid out the logical train of thought, it implied the officer that did the shooting was most likely not innocent. As evidenced by the 9 words you said possibly exonerating the cop compared to the 34 words you used to condemn him.

The main topic of that post was news of another officer's removal from service, via resignation. So, yeah, that would account for the largest portion of words in the post.

That ³⁴⁄₉ bit doesn't convert my acknowledging the "maybes" (possibilities) on both sides into "assumptions and implications biased towards one side" as you essentially contended originally. It also doesn't transform what I expressed in my final statements into a logic train. But, thanks so much for counting anyway.

I'm very supportive of LE and believe that most cops are good ones doing a difficult job. That's my opinion which I've posted many times on this board. I don't support corrupt and dishonorable cops, however. And, I know that otherwise good cops can find themselves in a position where they make a fatal mistake in judgment or reaction; it happens. Denying the fact that all of these kinds of officers and situations exist would be ignorant and unrealistic.

I don't feel compelled to feign ignorance or prematurely dismiss one possibility and choose sides in order to suit somebody else's sensitivities. It's possible to me that Officer Wilson was a good cop and the shooting was justified. It's possible to me that he was a dishonorable cop with a mindset similar to the dismissed cops and the shooting was not justified. It's also possible to me that he was an otherwise good cop and the shooting wasn't justified. I don't know what went down, so the possibilities are all open in my mind. It doesn't bother me if you have your personal reasons to be closed to one or more of the possibilities. I'm not interested in attempting to change your mind, just speaking mine.

I've never mentioned anything about any of the dismissed cops saying, feeling, or thinking that "black children deserve to be shot in the street". Not one of the reported remarks made by the dismissed officers about killing what they consider to be undesirable community members included a single word about age or race. Likewise, there are no such reported remarks attributed to Officer Wilson AFAIK and I didn't think or post anything to that effect. You, Cutz, introduced "black children deserve to be shot in the street" into the equation upthread and then compared it to me being labeled a child rapist and murderer. I trust it all made sense in your mind and it doesn't much matter to me.

As for the examples that you suggested would have been better for me to use in my post -- they're not related to the case at hand. I prefer to use what's relevant, as I did. That's me. I have cause to believe that the people posting and reading here are sharp enough to realize that there are good cops who do good things all of the time -- in Ferguson and everywhere else -- without me having to interject specific examples of such and remind them of that fact.

I don't have any problem or hesitance in expressing opinions and biases, popular or not. If you continue to insist that you know better than I how I think and feel and that reporting updates and acknowledging the possibilities in this case -- without having formed an opinion -- amounts to a faulty biased logic train, I can live with that. I've done my best to spell out my position clearly, give you a little background, and address all of your suggestions and responses to me. That's as much as I'll do.