I Can't Help But Hear You

The Doctor in the cube next to mine is talking again.
He's talking to Another Doctor and a Colleague who is not a doctor.
They are always too loud for an open-office environment.
And I wear headphones to keep their noise from distracting me.
Today, however, they are louder than normal.
So I turned up my music, so that I might not hear them.
But I still heard them, far too clearly, over Prince's Diamonds & Pearls album.

ANOTHER DOCTOR: ...millions of 'em.  They all want to see the ball drop.
DOCTOR: It's just a sparkly ball.
AD: Well, I heard on Fox this morning that they've upped security.  You know... so that... nothing happens.
D: Well, you know, it's just horrible.  You know, all these people who have been killed by police officers recently... it's conveniently been covered up that they are all convicted felons.
AD: Yeah, when the truth comes out, the story is... and you know Michael Brown?  After his trial, they released a video of him beating up an old man.
(everybody is silent, giving respect to the old man)
D: So much for your Gentle Giant.
COLLEAGUE: They have football players, even, believing the hands up thing.  But that isn't true.  He was charging.  You can't charge with your hands up.  And when somebody that big is charging you...
D: Yeah, what do they expect...
AD: You shouldn't use force...?
D: They want the police to just stand there and go, okay, you can run over me and murder me.  I don't think so!
C: Cops need to protect themselves.
AD: And when somebody's charging you, you don't know what to do.  You just need to be safe.
D: But, apparently, it's a crime to be safe in this country now, according to all these people.
C: What are they protesting for, anyways?
D: Well, it's all a lie, and it's too bad for those the people of New York.
AD: What a horrible way to ring in the New Year.


So here are a few things to note.

Michael Brown never had a trial.  He was shot and killed by a police officer, Darren Wilson.  Darren Wilson did not have a trial for shooting Michael Brown.  There was a grand jury that did not indict Darren Wilson.  A grand jury's job is to determine if charges should be brought against an individual(s) based on evidence they are presented, and if there is probable cause or enough evidence to suggest that a crime might have been committed, it takes a simple majority to indict the defendant.  Sometimes this amounts to 12 of 23 jurors, sometimes its 2/3, or 3/4, but not every juror needs to agree to indict (http://criminal.findlaw.com/criminal-procedure/how-does-a-grand-jury-work.html).  Pbs.org has a great chart showing some of the different things witnesses testified to before the grand jury in the Michael Brown/Darren Wilson case (http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/newly-released-witness-testimony-tell-us-michael-brown-shooting/).  According to this chart, 50% of the witnesses said that they saw Michael Brown hold up his hands before being shot by Darren Wilson, only 5 of 64 witnesses said Michael Brown reached for his waistband (where Darren Wilson claimed he thought Michael Brown was carrying a gun, and was the reason why Wilson said he used deadly force), and there was an even split in witnesses who said Michael Brown had collapsed when Darren Wilson opened fire.  After being presented with, at best, conflicting pieces of evidence, the grand jury decided not to bring charges against Darren Wilson.  In legal speak, they declined to indict.  There was no trial.
 
The doctors and colleague watch Fox.  According to politifact.com (http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/tv/fox/), Fox News rates the lowest of their rated networks in regards to telling the truth.  Given the ratings of True, Mostly True, Half True, Mostly False, False, and Pants On Fire, Fox News statements rate Mostly False, False, and Pants On Fire 60% of the time.  One small example of a Half True rated statement is "The Democratic leader in the Senate, Harry Reid, has blocked any vote on the Keystone pipeline for years."  It is rated as Half True because, in summary, "Reid's allowed a few votes", which, to me, makes this statement mostly false, unless they're including the statement "The Democratic leader in the Senate, Harry Reid..." as being the truthful part of the statement.  Based on this last little piece of information, I'd like to include Half True statements made by Fox News in their overall truthfulness rating.  If you include the statements rated as Half True, then, according to politifact.con, a fact-checking website, Fox News reports false statements 78% of the time, and reports True or Mostly True only 21% of the time.  According to the website, they only report purely True stories 9% of the time.  The doctors are quoting a source which reports falshoods almost 80% of the time, and truthful statements 9% of the time.

Michael Brown was 18 years and 3 months old when he was killed by police officer Darren Wilson.  According to snopes.com, a website devoted to proving or disproving rumors (http://www.snopes.com/politics/crime/brown.asp), Brown wasn't at the age of majority long enough to have a public record of felony charges.  And according to the New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/04/us/michael-brown-never-faced-serious-felony-charge-st-louis-officials-lawyer-says.html?_r=0), Michael Brown was never charged with felony.  Meaning that Michael Brown was not a convicted felon.

Besides all those silly little facts that were incorrect, it's troubling that these doctors and one normal dude appear to be justifying murder.  Michael Brown and Eric Garner were nobodies prior to the time they were killed by police officers in St. Louis and New York City, respectively.  When they were killed, their names became familiar to us because they had been killed by police.  AFTER being killed, their pasts were brought into the story, which lead to conversations like the one I overheard, which include arguments along the lines of He Was A Convicted Felon So It Was A Justified Killing By Police.

I understand why it might be a justified killing to hunt down Osama bin Laden and kill him without trial or any proof other than who he is. 

But then, he was responsible for huge acts of terror on American soil, resulting in thousands of American deaths and a country living with PTSD for the next several years over the incident. 

Michael Brown was walking in the street.  That's what Darren Wilson said  was the reason he took note of Michael Brown in the first place -- he was walking in the street (http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/11/25/366519644/ferguson-docs-officer-darren-wilsons-testimony).

Eric Garner had just broken up a fight, according to msnbc.com (http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/what-killed-eric-garner), an editorial on cnn.com (http://www.cnn.com/2014/12/03/opinion/robbins-eric-garner/), and time.com, who included a video of the event at this link (http://time.com/3016326/eric-garner-video-police-chokehold-death/#3016326/eric-garner-video-police-chokehold-death/).  That's what brought his attention to the police.  After they observed him breaking up a fight, they attempted to take him into custody for selling loose cigarettes which included putting him in a choke hold.  Selling loose cigarettes without a tobacco tax stamp would be considered a felony, and Eric Garner might have been convicted of that felony had he been able to make a case before a court.  However, he was killed before he could do that, so he wasn't a convicted felon, either.

So the doctor's argument, again, is He Was A Convicted Felon So It Was A Justified Killing By Police.  And many others share this sentiment.

Here, by the way, are some other felonies, as reported by felonyguide.com (http://felonyguide.com/List-of-felony-crimes.php) as being one of the twenty most common felonies committed in America:
Disorderly conduct
Drunkenness
Fraud
Offenses against family and children
Curfew and loitering

If you are convicted of loitering, these doctors would say the police have justification for killing you, even if you've served your sentence and/or paid your fine.  Same with being drunk, or cursing in front of a family such to create offense.  These doctors argument covers these things, as well.

I loathe these men, these doctors, these healers.
These hypocrites.
I absolutely loathe them.
Loathe.

And even with all my loathing, they don't deserve to actually be killed for breaking up a fight or walking in the street.  They deserve to be killed for the things they've said out loud.  But since nobody came and killed them, that moment has passed, and I'm far too busy to stand poised with a weapon readied for their next act of hatred and ignorance.  So they walk free and judge others with the parroted words of a lying faux-news report(s).  They justify murder from somebody's past deeds or pure imagination and fantasy.  Eric Garner was not a convicted felon, but because we imagine he is, it was completely okay that police killed him.  Michael Brown didn't beat up an old man, and he wasn't convicted of a felony, but because we make up things about him, it's okay that he was killed.

Maybe it's more complex than that.
Maybe cops have a really hard job and they have to be trained to use deadly force.
Are you trained to use deadly force at your job?  Yeah, me neither.
I can't imagine how I would handle that.  It would be something I would have to work up to a lot.  And I imagine it is a very, very stressful position to be in knowing you might have to use lethal force and end somebody's life today.

And maybe Michael Brown didn't deserve to be shot dead in the street and have his character smeared after he was murdered so that his family and mother would have to deal with supreme ugliness after their child was killed.

And maybe Eric Garner's six children deserved to have more empathy shown to them after their father was killed, rather than having people say that he was a convicted felon so it was okay that he was choked to death by police using a tactic that had been banned for more than 20 years.

I don't know how to handle these doctors.  These idiots.
I suppose there's really nothing I can do that makes me feel comfortable.  That makes me feel like I've done the right thing.
I can tell them to keep it down.
But they've been told several times to keep it down, and from several different people, and that hasn't worked so far.  I have no reason to believe it would make any difference if I said anything to them.
After all, they don't value something as big as the lives of Eric Garner or Michael Brown, why would they value my request for workplace silence?
Maybe they would value my words more than the life of two men because I'm white.