15 random thoughts about Ferguson

I wasn’t in the grand jury room. But, like everyone else, that hasn’t prevented me from having opinion, theories and observations.

1. Michael Brown apparently was no candidate for citizen of the year.

2. Darren Wilson apparently is no candidate for police officer of the year.

3. I heard a lot about how big Michael Brown was. I didn’t know Darren Wilson is also a big man — 6-4, 210 pounds.

4. Did these two know each other? From Wilson’s statements, I get the impression they did.

5. If Michael Brown was such a scary guy, why did Wilson let himself get put in a position where Brown could overpower him, or almost overpower him? This seems like a training issue to me, but I’m not in law enforcement and I wasn’t there. This part of Wilson’s story just seems odd to me.

6. Why do you have to shoot someone who’s a distance away and is unarmed. Even if Michael Brown was about to bull rush Darren Wilson, which I understand is what Wilson says he believed, he has pepper spray to bring him down. We had a somewhat similar situation in Tulsa in which police shot and killed a wounded man who was obviously in mental distress and not much of a threat to anyone. The man in the Tulsa case happened to be white, so race did not become an issue, but it seemed it might have been an unnecessary use of deadly force. Again, I’m not a cop and I wasn’t there, but I can’t help wondering.

7. Some people just like to tear up stuff.

8. People get mad for a reason. Usually, it’s a good idea to figure out why they’re mad, even if you think they’re wrong.

9. Not everything is about race.

10. When it is, white folks want to believe it isn’t.

11. The law makes it very difficult to indict a law officer — or anyone else — for homicide in situations involving confrontation.

12. The prosecutor in this case did everything he could to make sure this case did not break the pattern.

13. Guns ought to be a last resort; seems like maybe they’re not anymore.

14. Some people live to stir things up, and not in a good way.

15. Anybody hear about this guy shooting up downtown Austin?