Some of you may have seen this video already. There are at least two versions of what appears to be the complete footage on YouTube. (Video embedded below. H/t: Eagle Rising.)
At Conservative Treehouse, “sundance” has posted a rough transcript of a passage in the video that seems to confirm initial testimony that Michael Brown came back toward the officers who had stopped him. Another YouTube user who posted an excerpted version of the video, linking to sundance’s post (along with a couple of others), leads off with this teaser:
Witness to Michael Brown shooting: “dude kept coming towards the police”
Those who report hearing this put it just after 8:18. I’m not convinced I hear that phrase in the video, or that I can make out all the words in sundance’s transcript here, which starts at the 6:28 mark in the video:
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
#1 How’d he get from there to there?
#2 Because he ran, the police was still in the truck – cause he was like over the truck
{crosstalk}
#2 But him and the police was both in the truck, then he ran – the police got out and ran after him
{crosstalk}
#2 Then the next thing I know he doubled back toward him cus – the police had his gun drawn already on him –
#1. Oh, the police got his gun
#2 The police kept dumpin on him, and I’m thinking the police kept missing – he like – be like – but he kept coming toward him
{crosstalk}
#2 Police fired shots – the next thing I know – the police was missing
#1 The Police?
#2 The Police shot him
#1 Police?
#2 The next thing I know … I’m thinking … the dude started running … (garbled something about “he took it from him”)
But that’s why we report and you decide.
All that said, I have little heart for the junior audio analyst effort at this point. It’s hard not to be overwhelmed with sadness at the sight of Michael Brown lying dead in the street as a crowd gathers and cops wander in and out of the frame bent on business. We need not prejudge who’s to blame in this incident to agree that it is a tragedy, and feel the agony of his parents as our own. We all know young men of 18, or 19 or 20, whom we could not see in this condition without feeling as if our hearts had been ripped out and ground to a pulp.
A small nation’s worth of netizens is busy offering cynical or complacent explanations of what happened and why – and nothing is going to stop that, just as nothing will stop the race-baiters or the racists or the MSM or the mushy “moderates” from saying and doing what they always say and do. I’m not convinced either way at this point: the police may have been right about Brown as a suspect in the mini-mart theft, and he may have reacted wrongly to Officer Darren Wilson, even punching him in the face – and yet Wilson (and/or his fellow officer) still may not have been justified in shooting him dead.
Or perhaps Wilson was justified, even if some other individual facts of the case don’t pan out. On one level, the important thing is that our system of citizen-enabled justice, with its reasonable men and women, its checks and balances and good-faith attempts to guarantee accountability, be allowed to work. No good will come of preempting that system with mob furor.
But at another, deeper level, the sight of Michael Brown is a terrible reminder of the limits of human “justice.” Regardless of who was “right” or “wrong,” there can never be justice for this. There are only mercy and grace.
Be prepared for the language.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdL9dqkyjhM
