| HN Mirror

But it's not an execution when you attack a police officer. The word "execution" has been brought into the debate solely to rile people up and make them forget that fact.

Let's put it this way. Now, I'm not saying this version of events happened. I'm saying, please bear with me and seriously consider the question: You're a cop. You have a gun and nothing else. Someone has just leaned through the window of your cruiser and tried to grab your gun while beating your face. Adrenaline is pumping through you as a natural consequence of this. You defend yourself. He runs. You run after him to apprehend him, because it's your job and your duty to the community to apprehend someone brazen enough to attack a police officer. If they're willing to attack you, an officer, then obviously they're willing to attack anyone else in the community.

As you run after him and catch up, he turns around and charges towards you. The gun is in play, now. You know it, he knows it. You've seen videos of how this has ended for other officers, where other criminals have grabbed the officer's gun and murdered them with it. You have two seconds to decide what to do.

How would you react? What would you do? I don't know what I would do. I wouldn't want to be in that situation. But the officer certainly didn't either.

Would you run away? Would you let him come up to you and try to punch him, and risk him wrestling the gun from you? Would you try to aim for his legs, even though every hour of gun range training in your life has always hammered into your instincts to aim for the center of mass, and never to point your gun at anything you're not willing to kill? What do you do in that scenario?

My only point here is that the above scenario is the one which physical evidence has most closely corroborated. In particular, the bullets did not enter Brown from behind.

Obviously, it was a huge failure of the police department on two counts. One, that every officer wasn't armed with a taser and pepper spray. Two, that every cruiser wasn't equipped with an audio and video recording system which was turned on at all times. That happened because the Ferguson police department is seriously under-funded. Other police incidents have experienced intentional coverups or other malicious intent, like destroying evidence or erasing video/audio tapes, but this wasn't one of them. The lack of equipment was a factor of funding. No one wanted a video more than that officer, whose life as he knew it is now essentially over. He has to live in secrecy the rest of his life, along with his family, friends, everyone he knew. He has to either cut ties with them or swear them to secrecy about his new identity and location.