Just sayin'...

• Michael Brown's died on 08/09/14.  
• He was killed by a white police officer named Darren Wilson.  

Those two statements seem to be the only undisputed facts about what happened almost two weeks ago in Ferguson, Missouri.

Endless reporting & commentary has appeared in & on mainstream, digital & social media.  African-Americans seem predisposed to think that Officer Wilson acted out of animus toward Brown because he was black.  Many whites seem predisposed to believe the white office felt threatened & acted appropriately when he shot the teenager six times, hitting him four times in the arm & twice in the head.  

It's been tough to express what feels like a great divide between the races on this sensitive, massively unclear incident.  But, as I lay in bed last night, a Facebook posting by a friend kept running through my mind, a posting that seems to sum up the occasionally astonishing response from a host of similar friends, acquaintances & utter strangers.  My friend posted, "Respond to this post any way you want, but, uh,..its not ok to rob a conveinience store and to aggressively intinidate & threaten the clerk with physical violence....just sayin'....."

That short post keeps playing & replaying in my mind.  It felt & feels like it could have been written by a lot of my friends, at least by "traditional Americans" like me. 

Let's say that Officer Wilson knew about the reported robbery, knew that the perpetrators were two young African-Americans answering the description of Michael Brown & his friend.  Let's say that he attempted to question them about their whereabouts at the time of the robbery, rather than ordering them to stop jaywalking in the middle of a Ferguson street.  Let's say that Michael Brown did resist the officer's request, did have an altercation with him where he attempted to reach for the officer's gun.  

I know it pushes credibility, because we know Officer Wilson did not know about the reported robbery, but let's say anyway that all of that actually happened.  Was killing really a reasonable outcome to stealing cigarillos from a convenience story?

My friend's post makes NO mention of Michael Brown disobeying the officer's order to move out of the street & onto the pavement.  NO mention of an altercation at the police vehicle.  NO mention of the victim lunging toward the officer in a threatening manner.  NO mention of any of those possible mitigating circumstances.  

All it mentions as sufficient cause of the tragic outcome is stealing cigarillos from a convenience store & threatening a clerk.  

Just sayin' that one Facebook posting by someone I like & respect is the most chilling thing I've read since Michael Brown died.