No powder burns. I am curious about the hand shot. A finger or two blown off would have indicated a struggle for the gun. That's what typically earns the shooter a trip out of jail, assailant has bad damage to a hand with powder burns or even a bullet injection wound. An injection wound is when the muzzle is right up against the body, so most of the spent gas also gets injected into the wound cavity. That's what can make a .32 ACP do the damage of a 12ga.

I am still on the theory the cop just went nuts. It is manslaughter and end of career turf and they might as well start being realistic about it. Suspension with a trip to a psych facility, a finding that he needs to be on happy pills, and if he decides to cash in his retirement fund and leave the country, let him go, but they are being entirely unrealistic to have that guy patrolling any streets any time after this.

I know a white guy (cough) who shot a black guy who tried a king fu gun snatch on him while illegally carrying concealed in California. They struggled over the gun, guy got mostly in control of the gun and shot homie a few times, but forensics showed powder burns, contact wounds, odd angles of bullet travel which indicated a pistol in the middle of a wrestling match.

The guy stood for trial and a fully informed mixed jury knew the score, the streets knew the score, the media knew the score, and the guy was acquitted, no riots but a few malcontents did some revenge actions which of course drew minimal police response. The government? They never let it go and pursued the guy for the rest of his life, even went after his family.

Sapper, were you referring to JJ Thompson or JJ Johnson originally of Cleveland?

I was reading through that new BPP guy's facebook (it is mostly open). He wants to do the soup kitchen and kindergarten thing again, but I don't think it will get much traction. Those things were all put up as ideas to the original BPP by the social scientists of the early 1960s to alleviate poverty, the white college kids who were students of the "new Deal" who helped form and organize what were eventually going to devolve into the street gangs of the late 1970s through early 1990s.

The thing right now, Blacks are just not that poor. Poverty does not ride in a custom Escalade with $3500 in tires and rims while wearing $350 pairs of shoes and carrying up to date automatic pistols. Poverty is not using a $600 smart phone to tweet pictures of teenagers holding wads of cash which are equal to what a cop makes in a week or a soldier makes in a month.

What I think is showing on this though, is class conflict among the blacks running parallel to some of these other issues. Around here, the Blacks are mostly on the gravy train and will do nothing to upset that action. Any BPP or NOI stuff showing up get attention strictly for nostalgia purposes. They might mistake that for "following" until they talk about doing something which would screw up the gravy train and then it gets shut down real quick.

That's where I see the police there in Ferguson just must have been out of touch for a couple decades.