Prosecutor: Man held in wounding of two officers at Ferguson may have been shooting at someone else

[brooklynite]

This discussion thread was locked as off-topic by NancyBlueINOklahoma (a host of the Latest Breaking News forum).

Source: St. Louis Post-Dispatch

CLAYTON • A man who participated in a protest outside the Ferguson police station Wednesday night returned to the area and fired shots — possibly at someone other than police — that wounded two officers, authorities said Sunday.

Jeffrey Williams, 20, was charged with two counts each of first-degree assault and armed criminal action, and one count of firing a weapon from a vehicle. He was in custody, with cash-only bail set at $300,000.

“It is possible that he was firing at someone other than the police,” St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Robert P. McCulloch said at a news conference Sunday. He said civilians had been situated between Williams, who fired from a car, and the officers who were wounded.

McCulloch said Williams may have acted after a dispute with people over something that had nothing to do with the demonstration, but added, “I’m not sure we’re completely buying that part of it.”

Read more: http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/prosecutor-man-held-in-wounding-of-two-officers-at-ferguson/article_a25d4fc3-5889-5f15-a8fe-2995af5962ac.html

[forest444]

1. What were they called again?

Ah, yes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_provocateur

[GGJohn]

6. And I'm guessing you have proof of this? eom.

[Oktober]

12. What would the powers that be offer to a young 20 year old Ferguson man...

... to make him willing to take the fall, which will likely result in decades of incarceration?

[XemaSab]

2. Oh, well that makes it so much better

[rpannier]

5. Yep

Episode of the series 'Homicide: Life on the Street'

Kid shot and killed the wrong person.
Couldn't figure out what the big deal was because he didn't kill the person he was intending
He was sorry the woman got shot, but hey...

The reporting of the story reminded me of that episode

[bravenak]

3. Bail should be higher.

There were alot of people that could have been hit.

[Lil Missy]

4. Now that's an interesting defense.

[christx30]

8. Well, attempted murder of

law enforcement carries higher penalties than attempted murder of anyone else.kind of like "I was shooting at that picture if Adolf Hitler. Not that propane tank."

[NutmegYankee]

9. That needs to change.

The penalty should be the same for all people. No one is special or more important.

[DallasNE]

7. That Story Makes Sense, Actually

Nobody is going to use a .40 caliber handgun to target someone 125 yards away.

Was this then a drive-by shooting and the police officers were collateral damage? It opens up a new line of questioning.

[Backwoodsrider]

10. maybe, but lets hear from the folks he was shooting at

Need some corroboration but my first thought was how did he hit both targets at 125 yards with a 40?

[greyl]

11. You're assuming the bullets hit their intended target.

This situation(and the conclusions people have been jumping to) reminds me of the Texas sharpshooter fallacy:

The Texas sharpshooter fallacy is using the same data to both construct and test a hypothesis. Its name comes from a parable where a Texan fires his gun at the side of a barn, then paints a target around the bullet holes and claims to be a sharpshooter. A hypothesis must be constructed before data is collected based on that hypothesis. If one data set is used to construct a hypothesis, then a new data set must be generated (ideally, in a different way, based on predictions made by the hypothesis) to test it.

Much of young earth creationism relies on this form of post hoc reasoning. This is most clearly demonstrated in fundamentalist Christians' discussions of how the flood created geologic structures. Their ideas rely on finding data and constructing a hypothesis around that data, with no further testing of these ideas after this construction. This is a clear example of this particular fallacy.

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Texas_sharpshooter_fallacy

[ColesCountyDem]

13. And the folks he intended to shoot would corroborate that why and how?

[OKNancy]

14. Locking as a duplicate topic

All this information can be found in a previous thread on the same subject here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10141040157