Wednesday, October 15, 2014

Furthering the Police Brutality Narrative

This is a pretty pointless article, and this was the most ridiculous part:

A grand jury, meanwhile, is examining evidence to determine whether Darren Wilson should stand trial for shooting Michael Brown. The grand jury, originally impaneled until this month, has had its term extended to January—a date that not only falls after upcoming elections, but well into the winter, when cold weather might diminish the likelihood of rioting if there is not an indictment. Last week, the Missouri secretary of state’s office announced that more than three thousand people in Ferguson had registered to vote in the aftermath of the shooting. The next day, officials reversed themselves and said that they’d made an error: the actual number was a hundred twenty eight. The revision, in an already tense environment, inspired suspicions that the keepers of the status quo were somehow manipulating the numbers.

Italics mine. A little poking around shows the reason for the initial mistake in the original reported number of 3,287: this number included all name and address changes, marriages plus voters tagged in some kind of recent recount.

The part that cracks me up is the part about the manipulations of the evil "keepers of the status quo". This characterization would make sense if the status quo had under-reported the number and had to correct itself upward. But if their are any suspicions to be taken from the downward correction they would properly be that the agitators are doing the manipulation. And, to my mind, it was probably just a mistake.

However to people determined to create conspiracies and the perception of victimization from an unfortunate event, everything which happens plays into the grand narrative of police brutality and the attempt to cover it up. If there was any violence on the part of Officer Wilson the public has yet to see evidence of it.

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