Talk:Killing of Michael Brown

POV Issues Regarding Controversy Section

The "shooting" section is way too difficult to follow. WHEN was the first shot fired? I mean, is there an actual time that Wilson says he first fired at Brown> Also, it says "an unidentified officer" arrived at the scene? How is this possible that after the grand jury proceedings this officer is STILL unidentified?

I pretty much agree with everything that TParis wrote at ani. This article has NPOV issues. The article relies too heavily on the opinions of non-notable commentators and their criticism. The article is also littered with weasel words and phrases like "some legal experts" and terms like "asserted" and "claimed", which are all discouraged by MOS. The controversy section for the grand jury hearing is a prime example of undue weight with the amount of criticism in that section. That table really needs to go too, what is the significance of having that, it's not even true. These jurors were a typical grand jury that were conducting typical grand jury business, doing exactly everything listed in the first column, before Wilson's case was given to them, there's no mention of that in the table. The criticism in Wilson's section has weasel phrases like "sources reported" and "other discrepancies" without defining who the sources are or what the other discrepancies are. It also provides no context at all either, like the fact that the grand jury was made aware of these inconsistencies before Wilson even testified. There just seems to be a lot of cherry-picking sources to negatively portray Wilson, law-enforcement officers, prosecutors and the grand jurors. Isaidnoway (talk) 02:10, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

I think the reason for at least one occurrence of "some legal experts" is that the source says "some legal experts". Obviously we can't say it in Wikipedia's voice, so are you suggesting it should be left out of the article because the source declined to identify the legal experts? I would disagree. As for "other discrepancies", if those were elaborated it would be attacked as undue weight, so it appears there's no way to include such material at all. It's either undue weight or weasel words. I'll abstain from discussion about the table for lack of competence in that area. ‑‑Mandruss ☎ 02:28, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

First, this has almost nothing to do with Gaijin42's post in #More terse summaries in the witness accounts and I've refactored it into a new section (if not, go ahead and undo it). I disagree that this article has NPOV issues. Notability does not apply to content, and we should instead be looking at due weight. In this case, it seems that the majority of opinions are biased against Wilson, the prosecution team and the grand jury, which is why it's reported so heavily in the article; unless it's out of proportion, there shouldn't be anything wrong with this. Sources that argue to the contrary are present; if there are others, they should be included to keep due weight. The "some legal experts" phrase is a leftover from the LA Times article, which provided a number of legal opinions. While out of context it may seem like a weasel phrase, the rest of the section references by legal experts mentioned in the source by name, so it really isn't a weasel phrase. Assertions and claims are only weasel words when implying a point is inaccurate, which is hardly the case here. The table is sourced to NYT, which is why we have it. I don't see what's the problem with having it here, maybe you could clarify? The other two instances are poorly paraphrased: the "sources reported" is actually the Huffington Post's analysis, but the analysis that went into their article was cut out of ours so that'll have to be reworked; there's only one discrepancy reported in the CNN article, so I went ahead and reworded that phrase. At any rate, there doesn't seem to be blatant cherry-picking of POVs as far as I can tell. --RAN1 (talk) 03:01, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

Once you have summarized and presented information to the reader in an encyclopedic tone - following that up with an endless stream of cherry-picked opinions of non-notable commentators is undue piling on. I completely agree that the majority of the reporting is negative against Wilson and the other entities involved in this case, but that doesn't mean we pack as many negative opinions that we can into a section, or the article, and still claim it's NPOV, because that's not neutral. We should be summarizing and including the most notable opinions or academic opinions, instead of being a depository for negative opinions that don't really impart any encyclopedic information to the reader. The weasel phrases "some legal experts" and "sources reported" is exactly that - weasel phrasing - and should never be used in this article, especially when there are more than enough legal experts identified by name offering legal opinions. Isaidnoway (talk) 17:36, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

I really don't think the opinions are cherry-picked unless we're missing pro-Wilson/prosecutor references, and notability really doesn't matter for sources. I took a closer look at the article though, and I noticed that we're quoting a lot of the opinions directly, which is probably compromising impartial tone. We should neutrally summarize the arguments instead of quoting them, and I think that should fix the POV problem. Btw, "some legal experts" isn't a weasel phrase when used in the header or (especially) when the legal experts are clarified after the fact. Using that phrase should be ok. "Sources reported" is weasel phrasing, and I'll take the time to reword that sentence later today. --RAN1 (talk) 19:33, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

P.S. And now my refactoring's a moot point. Whoops. --RAN1 (talk) 19:37, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

I don't think there was blatant cherry-picking of POVs, but I think there was a desire to represent a greater variety of opinions than was necessary. There are so many opinions from so many sources that it would be much more helpful to avoid arguing why a given source is acceptable despite having issues like weasel words and unnamed sources. We could simply choose sources that don't do that.

In general, I objected to the inclusion of journalists' opinions about the legal issues because there were also several published opinions from real lawyers about the legal issues. In the point where there was a formal statement from the ACLU and an analysis by the Huffington Post, the first source was a much better choice than the other. Roches (talk) 16:11, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

RFC

Since the above discussion keeps running around in circles :

The grand jury Controversy section currently* consists of 18 quotes/opinions plus the table.

• Should we keep quotes, or move to a more prose style summary
  • If kept as quotes, should the number of quotes be reduced
  • Or a summary plus a small number of representative quotes
• Should the table be kept, or moved into prose

* The current version may differ from the version when this RFC started.

Survey

• Move most quotes to summary style keeping only most 2-3 most notable/important voices as quotes. Keep table. IF WP:ATTRIBUTEPOV is controlling, reduce number of quotes/opinions as currently WP:UNDUE Gaijin42 (talk) 16:09, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

Convert table to prose per Bob's excellent point that doing so allows us to avoid the WP:SYNTH issue while presenting more accurate information. Gaijin42 (talk) 17:22, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

See the subsection Proposal to replace table, which is below. --Bob K31416 (talk) 06:50, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

• This section needs an opening paragraph that gives a clear and concise overview of the nature of the controversy, convert table to text and summarize salient points, reduce amount of legal/academic opinions, remove all weasel phrasing. Isaidnoway (talk) 18:30, 11 December 2014 (UTC)
• Summary with representative quotes, keep table without charges row - Not most notable quotes, just representative of author opinions that can be included in as neutrally-worded as possible. We have people to attribute to, so undue doesn't apply. Table should be kept with charges row removed since it isn't consistent with grand jury transcript. --RAN1 (talk) 23:35, 11 December 2014 (UTC)
  • Keep charges row, I interpreted it wrong. --RAN1 (talk) 07:27, 12 December 2014 (UTC)
• Summary with representative quotes, keep table as is Convert to prose - The summary does not need to represent a false balance as, if the prevalent opinion as repressed in its reporting is negative, we should not hide that fact per NPOV. - Cwobeel (talk) 23:44, 11 December 2014 (UTC)
• Use minimal quotes and emend the table to accurately state that the charges were presented to the grand jury. Collect (talk) 17:06, 12 December 2014 (UTC)
• Use minimal quotes and emend table as per Collect. Quotes in this case should not be "representative." Summarize material included in quotes instead wherever the exact word-for-word nature of the quote does not make such summary difficult. If there is clear reason for doing so, it would certainly be possible to include any quotations deemed truly necessary in the individual citations for the summarized material. John Carter (talk) 17:14, 12 December 2014 (UTC)
• Summarize the quotes and replace the table with text — See the subsection Proposal to replace table, which is below. --Bob K31416 (talk) 06:55, 14 December 2014 (UTC)
• Summarize the quotes and replace table with text - Per: WP:QUOTEFARM and removing table fixes WP:UNDUE issue of the display. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 07:06, 14 December 2014 (UTC)
• Summarize the quotes and replace table with text - It will make things much easier for the reader to parse the text and understand the issues if we do these things. Titanium Dragon (talk) 07:37, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
• Replace with prose. Use as source material only quotes from notable people who have specific knowledge of the field, with an emphasis on those from MO. Clearly explain why this is different than the majority of grand jury hearings. Do not criticize the system by criticizing the way this case was handled, because it was not handled in an unusual way according to the legal practices in that jurisdiction. Roches (talk) 15:51, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

Threaded discussion — POV Issues Regarding Controversy Section

Table Charges Row

• Here's the charges row of the table.[1]

	Typical grand jury	Wilson's case
Charges	Prosecutors presents a range of charges and ask grand jury to indict.	No recommendation to charge Wilson.

It has the false implication that the Wilson prosecutor didn't present a range of charges. The NYTimes article [2] made the same false implication in its table. If it was intentional on the part of the NYT author, it would be a lie by omission. [Note added 16:45, 12 Dec:] If we intentionally keep it, it would be a lie by omission on our part. --Bob K31416 (talk) 16:26, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

red herring. The sentence needs to be read in toto: "Prosecutors presents a range of charges and ask grand jury to indict". McCullough did the former, but not the latter, which is the point that NYT is making. - Cwobeel (talk) 16:42, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

Then say that more explicitly, as the table reads as if they did neither. Gaijin42 (talk) 17:00, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Actually, as is we can't say it explicitly because the NYT article didn't. WP:NOR We would have to change the in-text attribution from "According to the The New York Times" to "According to the The New York Times" except as indicated", then give an inline citation at the item, for the source that said he presented a range of charges. --Bob K31416 (talk) 17:14, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

BTW, we wouldn't have to go through these contortions if we summarized the table in text instead of using the table form, which takes up an excessive amount of space compared to a text summary. --Bob K31416 (talk) 17:20, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

Excellent point that moving to prose lets us avoid the WP:SYNTH issue. I have changed my !vote accordingly. Gaijin42 (talk) 17:23, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

Table must state "Range of charges presented to grand jury which did not decide to charge Wilson" as being accurate here. Else we imply in Wikipedia's voice that the charges were not presented to the grand jury. The table currently inaptly implies that the Wilson grand jury was not typical, and by not mentioning that the charges were presented, implies that charges were not presented. Collect (talk) 17:06, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

I've modified the charges row so that it puts the emphasis on the word "ask". Here is a copy below [3]:

	Typical grand jury	Wilson's case
Charges	Prosecutors ask grand jury to indict based on a range of charges.	McCulloch did not recommend any of the charges against Wilson.

I'm thinking this should clarify the wording, looking for other opinions. --RAN1 (talk) 20:09, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

Good for me. Thanks for the effort. - Cwobeel (talk) 20:28, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

It still leaves out that the prosecutor provided the grand jury with charges, which the source also left out. In any case, I don't think you can fix it because it's not in the source, WP:NOR. Here's the charges part of the source's table for reference.[4]

	Typical	Wilson's case
Specific charge	A prosecutor usually provides a charge or range of charges, then asks the grand jury to indict based on those options.	The St. Louis County prosecutor, Robert P. McCulloch, did not recommend a charge or charges against Officer Wilson.

--Bob K31416 (talk) 04:38, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

I've replaced it with "McCulloch did not recommend any of the presented charges against Wilson." That should resolve the issue. --RAN1 (talk) 06:53, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

Btw, I'm going to source vox as a matter of sourcing the charges presented. If this still looks like NOR, go ahead and suggest alternatives. --RAN1 (talk) 07:03, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

RAN1, It suggests that the charges were presented by someone else, or may be confusing because "recommend" and "present" are similar. That's one of the reasons why the source was a problem. Also, it's OR because the Vox article wasn't making a comparison with a typical grand jury. A possible improvement that is clearer for comparison in various ways is, "The prosecutor provided a range of charges for the jury to consider but didn't ask the jury to indict." However, without a source that uses this in a comparison with a typical grand jury, it would be OR too, although there is WP:IAR. In any case, note how this was easily handled in the Proposal to replace table, which is below. --Bob K31416 (talk) 07:35, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

Hmm, you're probably right on the OR part. That said, writing it in prose form would also be OR as it's mainly the synthesis of information that's violating OR, so ultimately this doesn't work out. --RAN1 (talk) 17:42, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

RAN1, No, the proposed version wouldn't be synth because it would only use the NYT article, not the Vox article. The proposed prose handles it by mentioning the differences, not the similarities. The differences between a typical grand jury and the Wilson grand jury was the point of the NYT's table. --Bob K31416 (talk) 18:00, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

There is no mention of the prosecutor asking for an indictment in the NYT article, so it's OR as far as I know. I've made my best effort to focus on the difference in the table as well. Still, I decided to move the Vox sourcing to outside of the table since you were right about the synth. Let me know what you think. --RAN1 (talk) 18:07, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

• Could you clarify your comment, "There is no mention of the prosecutor asking for an indictment in the NYT article, so it's OR as far as I know."? Quoting the excerpt from NYT that you're referring to might help.
• In your latest version, "McCulloch did not recommend any charges against Wilson.", what is that supposed to mean? Does it mean that he didn't ask for an indictment, or that he didn't present any charges for the jury to consider, or what?
• BTW there were 5 charges, not 4. --Bob K31416 (talk) 18:35, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

The only mentions of the prosecutor in the NYT is comments about the grand jury not indicting and which witnesses were "most credible", as well as his release of evidence and the grand jury leeway on evidence. Then it's the table. There's no mention of him not asking for an indictment, which makes that prose (if sourced to the NYT) OR in that regard. What I put in the table means he didn't ask the grand jury to indict on any charges, which seems to correspond to the implications provided in the article. The Vox statement clarifies that charges were presented. I've only seen four charges in media and in the released grand jury transcript, what was the 5th charge? --RAN1 (talk) 18:53, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

• Re "There's no mention of him not asking for an indictment, which makes that prose (if sourced to the NYT) OR in that regard. What I put in the table means he didn't ask the grand jury to indict on any charges.” — What’s the difference between “not asking for an indictment” and "didn’t ask the grand jury to indict on any charges”?

• Re "I've only seen four charges in media and in the released grand jury transcript, what was the 5th charge?" — ABC and USAToday reported there were five charges. In the grand jury transcripts, Vol. 24, p133–134, there was 1) Murder in the first degree, 2) murder in the second degree, 3) voluntary manslaughter , 4) involuntary manslaughter in the first degree, 5) involuntary manslaughter in the second degree.

--Bob K31416 (talk) 04:31, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

You're correct about the charge count. There was a page break in the grand jury documents that...um...disrupted my ability to count to 5. As for the other part, there is no difference, you're correct. If the survey keeps shifting toward text, your prose version should be ok policy-wise. There is a formatting issue I want to bring up: Can we drop the parentheses and rework the data into the sentence? Dropping in (A vs B) 3 times into a sentence makes for a really awkward display of data. --RAN1 (talk) 07:50, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

Proposal to replace table

Replace this table that is currently in the article:[5]

According to the The New York Times, differences between typical grand jury proceedings in Missouri and Wilson's<ref name=NYTimes.Happened/>

	Typical grand jury	Wilson's case
Length of proceedings	One day or less.	Twenty-five days over three months.
Charges	Prosecutors ask grand jury to indict based on a range of charges.	McCulloch did not recommend any of the charges against Wilson.
Witnesses	Testimony by a few people, usually investigators who interviewed key witnesses.	Sixty witnesses called to testify, including extensive testimony from investigators.
Defendant Testimony	Not usual for defendants to testify.	Wilson testified for four hours to the grand jury.
Secrecy of proceedings	Grand jury activity is secret. Transcripts may be released at a court's discretion.	McCulloch released all grand jury transcripts, photographs and other evidence.

with the following text:

According to The New York Times, the grand jury proceedings differed from typical ones in Missouri. For the Wilson case, they lasted much longer (25 days over 3 months vs 1 day), the prosecutor did not ask for an indictment, there were many more witnesses (60 vs a few), the defendant testified, and all of the evidence and testimony was released to the public after the defendant was not indicted, where in typical grand juries it is usually kept secret.[6]

--Bob K31416 (talk) 05:30, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

Survey consensus seems to be to keep the table. If it changes though, this looks like a decent draft replacement. --RAN1 (talk) 06:46, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

• Replace the distracting table. There is much wrong with the assumptions being advanced, but we do not need a giant table drawing really inappropriate and WP:UNDUE attention. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 06:49, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

#Survey is up there. --RAN1 (talk) 07:00, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

Investigatory Grand Jury

If there is consensus to keep the table, then the header titled "Wilson's case" should be re-titled to accurately reflect that this was an "Investigatory grand jury", which is obviously why there are differences. We shouldn't be implying that Wilson's case was handled any differently than other investigatory grand jury proceeding. Isaidnoway (talk) 18:29, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

For all intents and purposes, there is no such thing as a investigatory grand jury under Missouri Statutes. Also, Missouri grand juries are usually kept secret and aren't described in that way. Because of both of these issues, the label "investigatory" is simply contentious and contributes nothing of value. --RAN1 (talk) 02:23, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

There is no such thing as a typical grand jury under Missouri statutes either. In Missouri, the citizens that are empaneled to serve are simply called a "grand jury".period. My comment is in relation to the labels describing the different tasks they were assigned. The source used for this table described it as a "grand jury investigation", so did other sources USA Today, WaPo. Sources are what we use on WP and that is what my comment was based on. Isaidnoway (talk) 10:01, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

I used the wording typical because you used the wording typical, but if you're willing to discard it, I'm all for it. Also, the wording "grand jury investigation" is not synonymous with the wording "investigatory grand jury". One refers to the investigation of the grand jury, the other implies that the grand jury was of a different type. The latter is contentious wording (implying that the grand jury operated differently because it was of a different type) and should not be used. --RAN1 (talk) 20:09, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

Actually, I never used the wording typical, so that doesn't even matter. --RAN1 (talk) 21:02, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

Investigatory is nothing more than an adjective used to describe the conduct of the proceedings, which in this case was a "grand jury investigation" - per the sources. The table under discussion here is used to highlight how the grand jury operated differently in Wilson's case, which was an investigatory case vs. a typical case, so obviously there is nothing contentious about using an adjective to accurately describe their conduct of a "grand jury investigation". Isaidnoway (talk) 21:47, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

As noted below, investigatory isn't language that is rooted in Missouri state law or comparisons of grand juries there, since most proceedings are kept secret. Therefore, there's no way to use this language to compare Wilson's case with other grand jury cases in Missouri. Also, describing the grand jury as "investigatory" might be interpreted based on the laws of other states, so it's pretty contentious. This isn't even mentioned in any other survey opinions, so unless an RfC is made specifically for this, there is no consensus for this. --RAN1 (talk) 00:35, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

I never asserted that investigatory was rooted in MO state law or any other law, but rather it was an adjective in the English language used as a descriptor for purposes of labeling the differences in this table - based on reliable sourcing. So there is nothing contentious or inapppropriate about using a simple adjective in the English language as a term to label the differences in the table under discussion. Don't really care if it's mentioned in other survey opinions, everyone is entitled to their own opinion, and I'm certainly not going to open a RfC, and whatever the outcome of the survey is and the consensus is for the table, I'm OK with that as well. Isaidnoway (talk) 01:30, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

Not to be a pain in the ass, but it was a sitting grand jury. Debating over this part of the fact seems a bit odd when they sit for terms and it was extended for this case, but no context illuminates this fact in the article. Also, that table is being used to support a major impropriety of all conventional comparisons. I'll not distract the point here, but comparing the mundane to the extraordinary and holding it up as evidence of wrong doing is hilarious when grand juries can take years. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 06:54, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

V for verifiability

Pulled from directly above. The discussion is progressing well, so I will make just this comment, Chris assertion that Our job as editors is not to blindly put up material which we see sourced because it is "there" - it is our job to scrutinize and check it against facts and logic -or in absentsia, remove it. is at the core of the dispute. While I'd agree that our role is not to blindly add sources, our role is also not to be the judges for what is "factual" or "logical", in particular in contentious subjects when there are polarized opinions. In these cases there is not "truth" or "logical", other than what any one of us could believe it to be. That is why we have the core policy of NPOV for, which tell us that as editors we should represent fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without bias, all of the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic. That is the narrow confine in which we edit, and getting into the weeds with discussions of "false", "factual", and "logical", will take us nowhere. Follow the sources and report what the sources say without bias and in proportion. That's what we do. - Cwobeel (talk)

Verifiability does not end at the source. It extends to WP:EXCEPTIONAL or disputed claims. Verifiable, but not false is important and too frequently these are false statements are being defended. Jimbo Wales agrees, "Everyone who thinks it is better to have an error in Wikipedia rather than correct information is always wrong at all times. There is nothing more important than getting it right. I'm glad that we're finally rid of the "verifiability, not truth" nonsense - but it's going to take a while before people really fully grasp what that means." As long as you defend statements which are proven false you are wrong and by arguing to include it - have damaged Wikipedia. So much of this contemporary, breaking news garbage is useless fluff that will not matter to anyone a year from now. Is anyone aware that McCulloch decided just recently (and in a completely different matter) to not bring charges before a white officer who killed another unarmed black man? Is that of interest to you? What if the decision happened during the Michal Brown case, would it matter then? ChrisGualtieri (talk) 15:59, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

Here's the thing, Chris: you're not verifying the veracity of statements, you're trying to rebut the opinions offered by pointing to what you think are factual discrepancies. That's problematic, and it's way beyond ensuring that misstatements of fact are not reported in Wikipedia. You're effectively setting yourself up as the gatekeeper of which opinions are "correct" opinions. Dyrnych (talk) 19:03, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Your statement that WP:V applies to WP:EXCEPTIONAL claims does not apply to the not-fringe-theory that this case's premise and implications are not in the public interest. Also, as noted time and time again, what Jimbo said isn't fact. Stop claiming that people are 'damaging' Wikipedia when all they're doing is disagreeing with your opinion and providing valid logic as to rebut your opinion, because nobody's buying that bullshit. --RAN1 (talk) 19:11, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

Agreed. Chris needs to take a look at what makes a claim exceptional. Dyrnych (talk) 19:16, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

WP:FALSE is an essay, and so is WP:NOTTRUTH. As for WP:EXCEPTIONAL the threshold is pretty high, and not applicable here whatsoever. - Cwobeel (talk) 23:26, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

Maybe this would help Chris, from an essay: Wikipedia editors are not indifferent to truth, but as a collaborative project, its editors are not making judgments as to what is true and what is false, but what can be verified in a reliable source and otherwise belongs in Wikipedia. - Cwobeel (talk) 23:32, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

Specific case

Resolved

Editorial decisions based on well-sourced arguments are not under "Truthfinders" and that is where you fail. You seem to forget WP:BREAKING news is not a secondary source, it is a primary source. These things change and I cannot be tasked to find every example of blatantly wrong notions that have long since been discarded, but it is a perennial problem for this article because this material is wrong. Here is an ABC source which still being used to say the incident report does not exist, this occurred even after the document was released. On August 21, an NBC News article reported that according to county prosecutors, local Ferguson police did not file an incident report because the case was almost immediately turned over to the St. Louis County Police and reported a statement by McCulloch's office that the incident report did not exist. It conflicts with Time's source which gives the details and the actual report records. Clearly, NBC News did not have the facts because the document was already approved for release the day prior to the news story. Why does the article still state that the incident report does not exist? Do you still intend to tell me that the incident report does not exist because the "reliable source" says so? Editorial discretion defines Wikipedia's best content and what makes article's on complex and controversial subjects be encyclopedic. "It is the reader that we should consider on each and every edit we make to Wikipedia." ChrisGualtieri (talk) 06:11, 25 December 2014 (UTC) They were leaks, they were conflicting statements, some actors said significant things only to say later that they meant something else. All of is part of the narrative and some of it very consequential. That is why there is something called historical revisionism. - Cwobeel (talk) 15:37, 25 December 2014 (UTC) I cannot believe what I am reading... historical revisionism?! Historical revisionism? I am removing it and if you insert the material I will report you immediately for reinsertion and defense of misstatements of fact because it is to further the perpetuation of a hoax. You can be indefinitely blocked or topic banned for continuing to insert or defend hoaxes. Do not continue to deliberately mislead readers or editors because this type of material has no place on Wikipedia. Do you also continue to defend the claim that Wilson "came up with" the cigar and identification of Brown and Johnson after the Jackson interview? Specifically on August 15 and that Huffington Post source is a reliable source for such an exceptional and flagrantly wrong claim? ChrisGualtieri (talk) 21:49, 25 December 2014 (UTC) How it can be a hoax when it was the prosecutor's office that said that? Read the source. And please tone down the rhetoric.- Cwobeel (talk) 22:07, 25 December 2014 (UTC) Police in Ferguson, Missouri, did not file an “incident report” on the fatal shooting of 19-year-old Michael Brown because they turned the case over to St. Louis County police almost immediately, the county prosecutor’s office tells NBC News. [...] The reason, according to the office of St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Robert P. McCulloch, is that it doesn’t exist. [...] The St. Louis County police department presumably did file an incident report, but any such documents will not be made public until a grand jury investigating the officer-involved shooting concludes its investigation, according to officials from the office who briefed NBC News on the case. Michael Brown Shooting: Why Ferguson Police Never Filed 'Incident Report' If you can summarize the source better, please do. - Cwobeel (talk) 22:12, 25 December 2014 (UTC) What you seem to keep missing is that the report filed on August 19, was a report by the St. Louis County police. The text you are arguing about speaks of a non-existing incident report by Ferguson Police Department. WP:DROPTHESTICK?- Cwobeel (talk) 22:27, 25 December 2014 (UTC)

@Cwobeel: I stand corrected and I apologize for being an ass. I'll fix the issue because it runs the two together. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 22:50, 25 December 2014 (UTC)

I corrected the Time source which was referring to Ferguson by error and fixed the flow. This got it to one paragraph and well within GA and FA standards for due weight. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 23:02, 25 December 2014 (UTC)

Apology accepted, we all make mistakes. I have further improved it by segregating text related to the FPD and the County police. - Cwobeel (talk) 23:13, 25 December 2014 (UTC)

There is some duplication in the section now. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 23:25, 25 December 2014 (UTC)

Since the issue is out... Ferguson Police's Incident Report exists and the ACLU received it on Thursday August 21, but it was announced August 22. It was also noted as existing in the source. I still can't believe I crossed the references to yell at you.... both reports exist as previously noted, but I need to double check my arguments better still. Can we still correct the fact that it does exist and that the source was wrong? The document was recorded as being filed and printed on August 9, but more importantly - it exists. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 04:36, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

Bad, Bad Michael Brown

Chris, this was a wholly unnecessary watering down of the paragraph. – JBarta (talk) 20:46, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

I re-inserted most of it, though I did end up removing the "horrific racist song" bit. Readers can decide for themselves if it was "horrific", just bad taste or a harmless amusement. – JBarta (talk) 21:05, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

Is this really getting enough press to warrant inclusion? Thargor Orlando (talk) 22:19, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

You tell me [7] – JBarta (talk) 22:21, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

If you're asking me based solely on these Google results, no. Of the reliable sources listed (and our use of TMZ is horrible here, by the way), they're almost uniformly local in nature to Los Angeles. I don't see, at first glance, where the real noteworthiness of this is. Thargor Orlando (talk) 22:41, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

I agree that it adds very little to the article and I'm generally in favor of removal. That said, if it's included the current version is fine. Dyrnych (talk) 22:51, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

I am OK with current version as well. - Cwobeel (talk) 23:23, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

The noteworthiness of TMZ is that they broke the story first (AFAIK). They break a lot of this sort of thing first. All part of the narrative. – JBarta (talk) 23:31, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

I do not see why we need to quote anything or give this much attention at all - much sound and fury over something foolish. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 05:42, 25 December 2014 (UTC)

It's one small paragraph... not much sound and fury at all. – JBarta (talk) 06:33, 25 December 2014 (UTC)

It's been covered locally and nationally, and I agree with those papers in deeming this incident to be significant. -Darouet (talk) 06:54, 25 December 2014 (UTC)

@JBarta: The attention in the media is sound and fury over something foolish, but whatever sells the papers these days. I didn't say that there is an issue with inclusion - but this will blow over quickly. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 07:12, 25 December 2014 (UTC)

@Darouet:: Well, in all fairness, significant largely because this general topic is a hot news item and anything that can conceivably be balled up and hurled at a wall is gonna stick. If this were to happen when the country's collective outrage were focused on something else, this video, along with half the crap connected to the Michael Brown shooting wouldn't even hit the radar. I'll give all those protesters and rioters credit for one thing... they sure managed to whip up some attention. – JBarta (talk) 07:15, 25 December 2014 (UTC)

Where has it been covered nationally in reliable sources? The only national coverage has been via Gawker as of the link from yesterday. Thargor Orlando (talk) 16:13, 25 December 2014 (UTC)

LA Times [8], ABC news [9] - Cwobeel (talk) 17:41, 25 December 2014 (UTC)

Local newspaper, local ABC affiliate. Thargor Orlando (talk) 17:44, 25 December 2014 (UTC)

Both of which are reliable sources. - Cwobeel (talk) 18:06, 25 December 2014 (UTC)

While the sources are certainly reliable, I too doubt the appropriate weight of this item. This song is in exceptionally poor taste, but did not in any way affect the shooting, was not done or attended by anyone involved in the shooting, and has not had a substantial impact after the shooting. Based on the lack of substantial coverage outside the area it happened, it has not become a part of the overall narrative, and we should not make it so on our own. Its only value in the article appears to be "some racists with bad taste don't like Michael Brown" - and that is not really information anyone didn't already know. Gaijin42 (talk) 21:11, 25 December 2014 (UTC)

I disagree that the video bit doesn't have anything to do with anyone involved in the shooting. While no specific persons share a connection, the fact that it was an event for and attended by cops is a significant connection. Part of the narrative here is the relationship between police in general and the black community in general. This event speaks to the notion that (white?)cops simply don't care about black lives. It may be a correct notion or it may be incorrect depending on who you ask. But there doesn't need to be a material connection between the two events given that there's such a functional and philosophical connection. – JBarta (talk) 22:17, 25 December 2014 (UTC)

You might be right, but the point remains is that this is basically a footnote of local interest, not at all noteworthy in the Brown situation. Not that the sources aren't reliable or that the issues might be relevant philosophically. Thargor Orlando (talk) 00:11, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

While I disagree that it's merely a "local interest" story, if it helps, here are a few national items on it... [10], [11], [12]... and one from half way around the world... [13]. That said, unless something major comes of it, I would agree with your characterization of "footnote" and agree it deserves no more than brief mention... maybe a small paragraph... like it does at the moment. – JBarta (talk) 00:38, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

While a couple of those aren't reliable, CBS certainly is and I have no further protest about the section anymore. Thargor Orlando (talk) 02:22, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

Seems to me that the question to be asked should be, "Is a mention of the video encyclopedic in nature and does it help the reader in better understanding the article subject"? Just because something is found via reliable sources that doesn't automatically make it inclusion-worthy. I find its inclusion problematic on a number of levels, with being tabloid-like (rather than encyclopedic) in nature only one. -- WV ● ✉ ✓ 00:54, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

You say "problematic on a number of levels". What are the other levels? – JBarta (talk) 01:16, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

One of the problems, in my view, is that in showcasing a relatively obscure racist portrayal of Brown by (presumably) a Wilson supporter, it ties support of Wilson to racism in a way that's far out of proportion to the significance of the event. Dyrnych (talk) 01:25, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

In answer to your question, JBarta, everything already brought up by others in this thread when questioning whether this actually warrants inclusion. It's not directly related, it's undue weight, it's barely a footnote, etc. If it's to be mentioned in this article at all, it should be in the external links, but nothing more than that. This is supposed to be an encyclopedia, not a collection of trivia and sort-of-related knick-knacks. -- WV ● ✉ ✓ 01:44, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

Mentioned in the external links exactly how? – JBarta (talk) 02:03, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

Well, that would be putting in a link to it. But, I honestly don't think it should be there. Mentioning it as an alternative was a weak suggestion to compromise. -- WV ● ✉ ✓ 02:10, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

Putting a link to what? And what would the link text be? Though, if you're backing off that idea, I understand. – JBarta (talk) 02:46, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

I'm not backing off of anything. I speak my mind and don't hedge nor do I try to back away from things to save face (which is what you seem to be implying). The content is about a video. The link I'm referring to is to the video in the two references and at the TMZ website (which, by the way, TMZ is not considered a reliable source in Wikipedia). If any content regarding the video must be included in the article (and I don't believe it should be) then it should be a link to the video, period. Even then, I don't think it should even be included there. I think it's completely unencyclopedic, has no relation to the case, doesn't involve the characters surrounding the case, and has no relevance or encyclopedic value. Clear enough for you? -- WV ● ✉ ✓ 02:55, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

@Winkelvi: makes a good argument that if this article was up for FA review it would almost certainly be a questionable inclusion. It has nothing to do with the case or any of the parties involved. Instead it is a private function by a completely different group of people that was organized and attended by former (and maybe active) police officers that had a singer perform an offensive song. Considering Michael Brown's raps or desire for further education is so unnecessary are we really going to justify this insertion? A sentence, tops, is all that I can really see for this. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 05:33, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

This is not an FA or GA article, so I don;t understand why this is being brought up. The incident is notable to have a short mention, given the racial;y charged aspects that permeated this incident from the beginning. - Cwobeel (talk) 05:47, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

On the way to GA, FA, or no-A -- it really doesn't matter. The content is cheap and cheesy and isn't worthy of mention in an encyclopedia article. It has nothing to do with the article subject (or those directly involved), it doesn't enhance the reader's understanding of the subject, it comes from a tabloid source, and just isn't encyclopedic in nature. Essentially, it's akin to what you'd find in a "In popular culture" section. A section that would not belong in this type of article, by the way. -- WV ● ✉ ✓ 05:58, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

I have to agree, this has little to no place on Wikipedia, especially since this is the kind of scandal-mongering that's explicitly not allowed. I'm for cutting it down to a sentence, something like:

On December 23, the Los Angeles Police Department opened a preliminary investigation of a parody of Bad, Bad Leroy Brown, mocking the death of Michael Brown, performed at an event organized by a retired police officer.

That's all that needs to be mentioned. Either way this doesn't deserve its own paragraph. --RAN1 (talk) 06:55, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

That is basically what I cut it down to and it is also what touched this section off. Though your wording is better than mine here. So I recommend yours. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 15:35, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

Does no one think that the guy's apology deserves mention? We just pretend that part doesn't exist? – JBarta (talk) 15:42, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

The event is very tangental, and I think any coverage of it is undue. These are people completely unrelated to the event. If this is is included, then certainly we should be including the parking lot robbery/fight by Brown's family, or the arson by a high profile Ferguson protester [14] (or many other issues where one side or the other did something that reflects poorly on them) basically the door is wide open and going to be a huge NPOV problem. I am going to remove it. If it is restored, i will open an RFC asking for input on all of the tangental issues to get a better guideline for what type of incidents should be included in this article Gaijin42 (talk) 18:43, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Atypical jury

I want to add a good section on why the grand jury process was different, but this needs to be non-judgmental per NPOV. Each draft I make comes out very negatively and poorly worded. In reviewing the situation, the unusual length stemmed from the unusual decision to review all the evidence. This includes exonerating evidence which is not typically presented. The original intention of McCulloch was to submit all the evidence and present charges - without advocating for a particular charge, which was unusual. After that, the matter of Wilson testifying is unusual. The choice to record, document and release the documents and evidence was also unusual. Side issues of whether or not McCulloch should have recused himself should be handled near the top of the article under a section dealing with the key persons. Issues relating to blunders and such should be outside the overview of the grand jury details. Anyone want to draft a section up? ChrisGualtieri (talk) 07:52, 25 December 2014 (UTC)

Could you post a draft under your userspace, maybe something to start this off? It'd be nice to know what you've come up with to try to see how we can improve it. --RAN1 (talk) 06:58, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

User:ChrisGualtieri/sandbox for now. Several key pieces from the other text sections are going to be moved up and around. So think of this as "grand jury and grand jury response", but not aftermath or anything else. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 07:10, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

I think I did a better job summarizing the criticism, but the jury section is still weak. Public reactions to the grand jury is definitely moving in the right direction, but is incoherent as the analysis of the forensic issues should be placed in the proper section. The draft is missing Witness 40 issues, but that is something not handled in the article either. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 07:23, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

McCulloch interview

Cwobeel added this content consisting of: {{talkquote|In an interview on December 19, his first after the announcement of no bill, McCulloch firmly defended his handling of the grand jury – such as presenting all evidence including witness testimony that was discredited, instead of a narrow thesis of the case – and said that "[m]y job is not to get an indictment, my job is to seek the truth, and seek justice and do what is right and what’s appropriate in there, and that’s what we did in this case and all other cases."] Can anyone honestly say this is a neutral presentation of a half-hour long discussion? There is some uncredited editorializing from the source with "such as presenting all evidence including witness testimony that was discredited, instead of a narrow thesis of the case" The source is very poor for a NYT source has typos like "Mr. McCullough". McCulloch says he could have presented it in such a skewed fashion to get a murder charge based on Johnson alone. McCulloch also said that Brown's father cannot be charged with inciting a riot - the charge does not exist in the state - and that nobody burned anything down. (15:30) McCulloch acknowledges Witness 40 (not explicitly), but wanted the jury to hear everything by witnesses and assess the credibility of the witnesses. More interestingly is that McCulloch points to the Justice Dept as the source of the leaks. The NYT source is really poor and let's just use a transcript or directly for citing McCulloch's words. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 08:13, 25 December 2014 (UTC)

Can anyone honestly say this is a neutral presentation of a half-hour long discussion. It may, or may not be a neutral presentation of the subject, but our role is not to pass judgement on the neutrality of sources such as The New Your Times (what may be neutral to you may be not neutral to me and vice-versa). That is not what NPOV or BLP tells us. You will have a really hard time convincing anyone that the New York Times is a "poor" source. Again, our role is not to report "facts", but to present significat viewpoints about a subject, in particular on controversial subjects on which there is no binary "true" or "false". - Cwobeel (talk)

I'm working on that but it will take me some time. My draft is based on putting the basic issue on how the grand jury was different and what the results were. Then saving the criticism for a section to it which goes through the problems since the quotes are not really an ideal situation. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 23:31, 25 December 2014 (UTC)

I don't think it is a good idea to segregate criticism to its own section. Also, please be careful with WP:OR. It is best to let the sources speak for themselves and avoid synthesizing to an extreme. It is a narrow path, you know. - Cwobeel (talk) 23:53, 25 December 2014 (UTC)

It would not be helpful to have the criticism of process in the grand jury section. Here is the section I am working on

The grand jury proceedings were atypical because there was a departure from normal proceedings on many aspects.<ref name=WashPost.Fair/> From the beginning of the process, McCulloch announced that the grand jury would hear all the evidence, that proceedings would be transcribed and the materials would be made public if there was no indictment. The American grand jury process operates in secret to collect evidence and to test the memory of witnesses against that evidence; this is done to prevent witnesses from altering their testimony to match statements made by previous witnesses. These secret proceedings are not normally made public in cases of no indictment, but in this case it was to provide transparency to the process.<ref name=WashPost.Fair/>

The grand jury process deviated from normal course by investigating with no assurance that any criminal conduct was present.<ref name=WashPost.Fair/> Typically, prosecutors come before a grand jury having already screened for probable cause and present a recommended charge. In this case, the prosecution presented the full range of charges with none being specifically endorsed. These deviations also included the length of time for which the grand jury investigation.<ref name=WashPost.Fair/> It would take the grand jury 25 days over the span of three months to hear more than 5,000 pages of testimony from 60 witnesses and then deliberate on whether or not to indict Wilson.<ref name=USAToday.Charges/><ref name=WashPost.Fair/><!-- Ref bundle -->

The members of the grand jury were impaneled in May 2014, prior to the shooting, and consisted of three blacks (one man and two women) and nine whites (six men and three women), which roughly corresponded to the "[[Race (human classification)|racial]] makeup" of {{nowrap|St. Louis}} County.<ref name=STLToday.Jury/> The racial make up of {{nowrap|St. Louis}} County is 70% white and the {{nowrap|St. Louis}} suburb of Ferguson was about 66% black.<ref name=CSM.Deliberations/> <!-- Requests for more information about the jurors were denied by the judge.<ref name=STLToday.Judge/> --> On {{nowrap|August 20}}, the [[Grand juries in the United States|grand jury]] started hearing evidence in the shooting of Brown in order to decide whether a crime was committed and if there is probable cause to believe Wilson committed it.<ref name=LATimes.Grand/> The grand jury was instructed that they could not return an indictment unless they found probable cause that Wilson did not act in self defense and did not act lawfully in the use of deadly force by law enforcement agents.<ref name=NYT.Inst>{{cite web | url=http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/15/us/ferguson-shooting-michael-brown-grand-jury.html | title=For Ferguson Grand Jury, Details and Responsibilities Are Abundant | publisher=New York Times | date=November 14, 2014 | accessdate=December 20, 2014 | author=Erick Eckholm and Julie Bosman}}</ref> Throughout the process the grand jury was not [[Jury sequestration|sequestered]] during the proceedings.<ref name=NPR.Examining/>

On the night of {{nowrap|November 24}}, Prosecutor McCulloch reported in a 20-minute press conference that the grand jury reached a decision in the case and elected not to indict Wilson.<ref name=CNN.Fires/> McCulloch released a large number of documents, including testimony from the proceedings, selected photographs, investigative reports, video and audio recordings, and interview transcripts considered as evidence, the following day.<ref name=STLToday.Release/><ref name=CNN.Documents/> McCulloch's office acknowledged that it kept some records secret at the request of the FBI, due to the ongoing civil rights investigation. Only 24 of the 64 witness testimonies were made public. More than half of the witness interviews that were released were conducted by FBI agents or federal prosecutors. Interviews conducted by county officials were not released. Seven video clips of Dorian Johnson's media interviews, along with a transcript of his testimony to the grand jury, were released. Video of the two-hour interview by FBI and county police were withheld.<ref name=DFP.Withheld/><ref name=ABC.Federal/>

I think it is stronger than our current version in the article and am working on dealing with the portrayal of the issues raised by sources. The matter of McCulloch, who did not actually take part in the actual jury case takes a lot of flak because it was his office and he guided the actions. This becomes a delicate issue. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 00:05, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

Good attempt, but is lacking many aspects that were challenged by legal analysts. The summary misses several crucial points, and it seems to be quite apologetic, almost clearing the prosecution from all the criticism leveled at them for their handling of the case. Not a go from my perspective. - Cwobeel (talk) 05:44, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

As mentioned, handling the criticism is the next section which I spent a few hours going over. There is absolutely no reason to go through all the criticism and counterpoints and other facts. I did rewrite the beginning to include the fact that McCulloch did not take part in any of the proceedings. It is appropriate to discern that the grand jury result and proceedings were different and to state why - it is not "apologetic". Sources like Reyes has no legal foundation or competency to rest mere opinion on - the unsupported allegations of conspiracy and manipulation are unsupported. We do not rewrite moon landing page to include "counterpoints" of how they were faked and interleave them with those which say they are true. The presence of controversy does not justify mere inclusion or a deference of fact to controversy. Remember WP:OTTO - sources do not always fact check can sometimes embellish or just plain lie about a non-existent dog and its life. Do not believe everything that is written. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 06:34, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

We have hashed this over several threats already, and the emerging consensus is that you can't dismiss sources because you believe the sources are "wrong". So, if you want your effort not to be wasted, then make sure that your summary represents fairly and without bias all significant viewpoints, per NPOV. - Cwobeel (talk) 15:36, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

Per policy - this source is an opinion piece which should not be used. Wikipedia is not a soapbox to spin your personal views on the subject. Tennessee v. Garner was a red herring and it still is. The August 15 "robbery conspiracy" is false. We had two sections and a RFC to confirm that the large wall of text about opinions should be summarized. And that is what I am doing. In the course of reviewing these so-called legal experts, many fail WP:LAWSOURCES and are just talking heads with base entire arguments on nonsense. They are not reliable so they are replaced or removed in accordance with policy. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 15:52, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

Per policy, opinion pieces can be included if attributed. What you refer as "so called legal expert" are indeed legal experts,. You are not one, and therefore unqualified to asses their competence. And even if you were a legal expert, then your opinion could only be included if reported in an RS. Removing material that is well sourced and which contains opinions of experts is vandalism, pure and simple. - Cwobeel (talk) 17:20, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

the RFC may conclude with a need to summarize, but that does not mean that you can dismiss the sources and summarize just what you want included. No way that that will happen, so make a better effort to summarize. - Cwobeel (talk) 17:23, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

This source does not meet the requirements. Jeff Roorda's supporting comments are weak. And the Eric Holder supposedly not liking his name referenced in the announcement is not even relevant. Everything else is summarized properly - its just that the kind of source bickering is not necessary in the grand jury. And I decided to not play telephone tag with NYT opinion pieces and cut out the middleman. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 17:51, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

You have missed many of the opinions, which are relevant. If you are unwilling to properly group and summarize the criticism, maybe let others take a stab at it. But this version is no go. - Cwobeel (talk) 17:55, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

I'll take it to mediation if need be - but complaining that something is done because the article is not at GA/FA/A-class is not a reason to include content which is unacceptable at GA/FA/A-Class. There was a consensus to reduce the number of opinions from 16 down to something more manageable. I made a draft for two sections and I am not going to argue with you over this anymore. Wikipedia is not a place to argue opinions of a tangential nature and I think the 6 pages of content on "reactions" is completely WP:Undue. I will collapse this off if you continue with WP:IDHT and more accusations of a personal bias. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 18:16, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

Just wait a few days as many people are enjoying the holiday season, as mediation will require the agreement of all active editors. Happy holidays. - Cwobeel (talk) 20:27, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

Legal analysis by editors

Please note that editors should not engage in their own independent legal analysis when evaluating the conclusions drawn by reliable sources. "This source comes to an incorrect conclusion of law" is not an appropriate criticism for a Wikipedia editor to make when determining whether or not to use a source. Dyrnych (talk) 21:42, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

@Dyrnych: Please provide a single case in which this occurs in the article. Those should be removed. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 21:46, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

I'm not referring to independent analysis by an editor in the article, as I thought I made clear. I'm referring to the vetting process used to determine which sources are suitable for inclusion in the article. Dyrnych (talk) 21:49, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

@Dyrnych: I do not see where this occurs either. Please provide an example. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 21:53, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

Example provided. Dyrnych (talk) 22:42, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

many other examples in this talk page: [15], [16]. ChrisGualtieri you are doing this all the time, questioning legal analysts opinions when you believe they got it wrong. - Cwobeel (talk) 23:04, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

Really? As explained at Cwobeel's page. Transcripts from the August 10 interview contains the information. On August 15, Jackson who was questioned responded with, "I don't know. I don't know what came out in his interview. I know his initial contact was not related to the robbery. It was related to... blocking road." To which another reporter asked, " You're telling us... You're telling us that when the officer stopped Michael Brown for the first time... he was not aware Brown was a suspect in the robbery?" This time Jackson restated, "No. He was just coming off of a sick case, which is why the ambulance was there so quickly." The problem was the Q&A section was pulled out of context and it was spun despite Jackson having given an answer that he did not know. However, Huffington Post which contains the link to the video ignores that part of the context. Despite using the video source it makes a logical fallacy along with others to creat:

"The initial contact between Darren Wilson and Mike Brown was not related to the alleged theft of cigars," Jackson said, indicating Wilson did not know Brown was a suspect in the robbery.

This creation was false and it was referred to in different sources as the police changing their story. It is not a legal question or original research, its very obvious from the Q&A and the records that Wilson specifically stated that after the initial stop he identified Brown and Johnson as possible suspects. It is hard to question this when it was five days prior and if you watch the Q&A of what happened and why it was clarified in the following hours. Jackson did not have all the information and the media went a bit wild without checking for context. This is part of WP:BREAKING and it is why such sources have faults. It is only common sense that we not indulge in misstatements of facts. This is a poor accusation @Dyrnych: because it not a legal analysis at all. I ask you retract it. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 23:16, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

@ChrisGualtieri:: These are your words, from the diff I provided: "And that is what I am doing. In the course of reviewing these so-called legal experts, many fail WP:LAWSOURCES and are just talking heads with base entire arguments on nonsense." If I've misconstrued what you intend in making this statement, I apologize. However, on several prior occasions you have done precisely what I'm concerned about here—often by invoking the Smerconish piece.

I'd also note that WP:LAWSOURCES explicitly limits itself to "sources that attempt mainly to state the law itself, and not about sources that attempt mainly to state the effect of the law." The latter are what we're dealing with here: legal analyses of particular events. Dyrnych (talk) 23:25, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

See also your argument against Toobin (CNN and The New Yorker's legal analyst) #More issues. Misrepresentation and misstatements of facts. By law McCulloch cannot be present during testimony and the matter was handled by two case assistants without McCulloch being present. - Cwobeel (talk) 23:39, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

For a more detailed overview of ChrisGualtieri questioning of legal sources, see Talk:Robert_P._McCulloch_(prosecutor)#Parloff, Talk:Robert_P._McCulloch_(prosecutor)#Sullivan_and_Toobin, and Talk:Robert_P._McCulloch_(prosecutor)#Cintron Which refer to the same sources used in this article, and in which he makes the same case: that the legal experts are wrong or that they provide false information, as the basis for advocating for their removal from the article. - Cwobeel (talk) 23:47, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

I would think that after hearing the same comments from a number of editors, including an uninvolved and well respected editor: [17], you would accept that your way of thinking about this may not be the best way forward. - Cwobeel (talk)

Cwobeel is going off on another page - Sullivan isn't even used on this page because it is a BLP violation. Parloff is poor and Cintron is arguing something we got in spades. Why do we need 3 more sources making the same argument? I like Toobin's article and it offers new aspects. @Dyrnych: Thanks for clarifying, but that is not an example. Please read WP:IRS - specifically WP:CONTEXTMATTERS which contains the statement, "Each source must be carefully weighed to judge whether it is reliable for the statement being made in the Wikipedia article and is an appropriate source for that content." We are encouraged to evaluate sources to see if they are reliable for the statements they make - it is a key part of identifying reliable sources. If it is not an appropriate source then it is on the person to restore it to immediately explain why it is an appropriate source under WP:BURDEN. Quite a few of the sources make accusations which violate BLP and Sullivan was removed. Parloff was rightfully toned down to remove the problematic quote and Cintron is fine. Cwobeel, you have repeatedly inserted WP:BLP violations and that is never acceptable. You should not be editing this topic. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 00:01, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

Evaluating sources to determine whether they are reliable for the claims that they make does not mean conducting your own analysis of their claims to see whether you personally believe that those claims are correct or well-founded. What it means is determining whether the sources themselves (rather than the claims that they make) are such that they would satisfy WP:IRS. So if you're unable to impeach the author, the work itself, or the publisher, you really don't have any grounds to determine that the source is not a reliable one. Dyrnych (talk) 16:36, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

You are confusing WP:IRS contains WP:CONTEXTMATTERS which specifically states, "Each source must be carefully weighed to judge whether it is reliable for the statement being made in the Wikipedia article and is an appropriate source for that content." - We are to judge and by evaluate the source for its claims. This applies to scientific articles like this to entire authors. Misstatements of fact are indefensible and that is when the source should be removed and replaced. In order to make your hypothetical case, bring something before me and debate that - I am not unreasonable. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 17:34, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

Original research

Please note that the RFCs have not closed yet, and there is no consensus for [this edit]. There were no BLP violations whatsoever, as the material is impeccably sourced. - Cwobeel (talk) 00:17, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

Here are some examples of OR in the last edit I reverted (my highlights):

• McCulloch was the subject of much complaints was focal point in the media before, during and after the grand jury reached its conclusion, acted as a supervisor to the process, but was not present
• The American grand jury process operates in secret to collect evidence and to test the memory of witnesses against that evidence; this is done to prevent witnesses from altering their testimony to match statements made by previous witnesses. These secret proceedings are not normally made public in cases of no indictment, but in this case it was to provide transparency to the process.
• Typically, prosecutors come before a grand jury having already screened for probable cause and present a recommended charge. In this case the grand jury process deviated from normal course by acting in an investigative role, with no assurance that any criminal conduct was present

This is not the way to summarize the controversy. We need to do way better than that. - Cwobeel (talk) 00:24, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

The material was sourced. It is not original research by definition. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 00:39, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

Can someone review User:ChrisGualtieri/sandbox and decide whether or not they should replace the "Grand Jury" section and the "To grand jury process and result" section. They are not perfect, but I believe they are an improvement over what currently exists. Some data in the current article version will need to be moved and kept elsewhere. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 05:10, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

It is not a bad effort, I must admit, but I have several concerns that could be addressed to receive my support:

• The first long sentence on the Grand Jury hearing contains unneeded editorializing and OR, as explained in the thread above. Some of the issues were already discussed before, including the "investigative jury" that is a made up classification, and it reads as an apologetic piece for McChulloch. Also, it is too long of a paragraph and could be split into two.
• The Public reactions section is pretty good, but the way it is constructed, with the criticism first and ending on the supporting statements is not NPOV as it seem to be written to undermine the former. Given that the preponderance of commentary was negative, this presents a false balance. It would be much better if the few "pro" statements are interspersed in the text rather than at the end as of to indicate a conclusion.
• Dan Abrahams and Toobin's are both quited for the same content. Leave Abrahams as is, and choose a differet summary from Toobin highlighting other commentary he made beyond the "personal invested"

- Cwobeel (talk) 15:58, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

• "McCulloch was the subject of much complaints was focal point in the media before, during and after the grand jury reached its conclusion"....? It should be its own sentence, but is very true and the section deals with that. It is not editorializing it is providing context. Big difference.
• Criticism -> Rebuttal -> Neutrality holds for McCulloch's section but not each and every. Like the analysis of the material, the third paragraph, which is not "pro" statements. Same with the fifth paragraph with does not end with a positive one - with the complaint which is not addressed at all with a "pro" side as claimed. The final does go with Criticism -> Rebuttal -> Neutrality as explained.
• Toobin's argument was the COI - this should not be duplicated in response to grand jury, this is clearly an aftermath section because it gives rise to the argument of the way in which it operates. This means that Toobin's section is not complete, it will be further detailed in another paragraph titled "Calls for Reform" or something similar.

I'm not saying it is perfect, I do not intend to rewrite the entire article from scratch and balance everything all at once, but this is two major steps and each part needs to be done in piecemeal. I can gladly change parts, but it seems the text is not of major dispute and can be handled by normal editing when it is in the article. The structure seem fine right? That's more important than the argument presentations to me. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 16:12, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

Investigative jury is not a "made up classification". Please refer to our article on grand juries if you are unfamiliar with the role of an investigatory grand jury. Isaidnoway (talk) 19:20, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

It is OR in the context of this article. The text above is 100% OR as previously discussed extensively. - Cwobeel (talk) 21:03, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

It is not OR as this has been explained to you several times:

WaPo - Michael Brown investigative grand jury

StL P-D - The grand jury investigating the Aug. 9 shooting

CNN - The grand jury investigation into Michael Brown's killing

USA Today - The local grand jury that investigated the shooting

TIME - The Ferguson case and grand jury investigation

Considering the length of time you have been editing this article, you would think you'd be at least aware of the basic facts of this case. The prosecution did not ask for an indictment, the prosecution asked for an investigation. Maybe this is why some of your edits are so problematic. Isaidnoway (talk) 22:29, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

Your interpretation is wrong. We have discussed this previously quite extensively. Check the archives. [18] You have been pushing for that interpretation for weeks now. - Cwobeel (talk) 02:32, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

And this text is OR: Typically, prosecutors come before a grand jury having already screened for probable cause and present a recommended charge. In this case the grand jury process deviated from normal course by acting in an investigative role, with no assurance that any criminal conduct was present. 100% OR - Cwobeel (talk) 02:35, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

It is OR because it presumes that Grand Juries act on their own. The grand jury did not deviate from anything. The grand jury was acting on the instructions of the prosecutors. - Cwobeel (talk) 02:41, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

....[This is] a situation where a grand jury is investigating with no assurance that any criminal conduct is present. Obviously an investigation into a possible crime is never a sure thing — particularly in the area of police shootings, where the law gives officers some leeway for making split second decisions. The difference in the outcome with the Michael Brown investigative grand jury from a routine federal prosecution is hardly surprising.

It is not OR. The grand jury was investigative and the case was not pre-screened by the prosecution. Investigative grand jury is a term to define an investigation into probable cause for an indictment, which is different from the routine assertion of probable cause and a charge by the prosecution. Please read more on grand juries since you do not understand them. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 05:08, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Still 100% OR. There are no sources that make the arguments you are making. and there are many sources that describe the grand jury differently. - Cwobeel (talk) 16:14, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

@Cwobeel: - Read WP:OR This is not OR because it comes right from the source. Hence it is not OR. You are the one reading numerous false accounts and sensationalist blogs that greatly misrepresent fact. They are removed by misstatements of fact because they are not reliable for even the use of transcripts. See below, above, all over the place. Ferguson Incident Report exists - NBC was wrong. The Sarge's conversation, six days later. No cover-up on August 15, Jackson's words cherrypicked out of context. Time after time, basic things are being advanced which is out of alignment with the facts. @Isaidnoway: explained this already - you need to figure out what a grand jury can and does do. Some grand jury investigations take years. They are not just rubber stamps on the way to the courthouse. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 16:22, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

More OR from the "legal expert" amongst us. - Cwobeel (talk) 17:29, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

I would like to see those sources that say this grand jury was not investigating this case to determine probable cause. I would like to see those sources that say McCulloch specifically asked the grand jury for an indictment. Isaidnoway (talk) 18:03, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

@Isaidnoway and ChrisGualtieri: There is no mention or implication in any of those sources that there is a special type of grand jury called an investigative grand jury in Missouri. They simply refer to the investigation of the grand jury, which is what grand juries normally do in Missouri in every single grand jury case. As I mentioned before, there is no legal distinction, and such a distinction isn't useful in this context. Since none of the sources explicitly make reference that the grand jury was of any special type, this is probably OR anyways. --RAN1 (talk) 20:34, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Btw, this investigative grand jury stuff falls under WP:FRINGE, given the lack of mainstream support for this idea, so unless you have some really strong sources to back this up, this shouldn't even be mentioned. --RAN1 (talk) 20:41, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

RAN1 - Based on these reliable sources (certainly not fringe sourcing), please explain to me what is original research or a misinterpretaion of the sources in "describing" this as an investigative grand jury.

WaPo - Michael Brown investigative grand jury

StL P-D - The grand jury investigating the Aug. 9 shooting

CNN - The grand jury investigation into Michael Brown's killing

USA Today - The local grand jury that investigated the shooting

TIME - The Ferguson case and grand jury investigation

Additionally we have a definition from Oxford Dictionary for investigative - of or concerned with investigating something; and a defintion from Merriam-Webster - to make a systematic examination; especially: to conduct an official inquiry.

I'm not arguing or implying that there is a legal distinction. I'm just trying to get someone to explain how these reliable sources are considered Original Research or a Fringe View or Unreliable or that they are being Misinterpreted. Because from what I see so far is a failure from anyone to provide a reliable source saying that this was not an investigative grand jury, or in other words, a grand jury that was "concerned with investigating something". So, it looks like to me that you are the one who will have to provide some "really strong sources" to dispute that this grand jury was investigating this case, and it can't be described as such. Isaidnoway (talk) 22:19, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

All grand juries investigate. It's a function of the grand jury. I think that the only source that explicitly describes it as an "investigative grand jury" is The Volokh Conspiracy, and it's an opinion source that isn't reliable for statements of fact. I don't think it's original research to call it an "investigative grand jury," I just think it's misleading in light of the fact that there are things that are actually called "investigative grand juries" and it isn't one of those. Dyrnych (talk) 23:06, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

@Isaidnoway: Tl;dr what Dyrnych said. It implies that, given other US states that actually do make the distinction of investigative grand juries, this grand jury was different. The current hypothesis here is it's no different in what it was supposed to do than any other grand jury operating in Missouri. Mind you, I did read the sources posted at 22:29, 27 December (aka the same list you posted at 22:19, 28 December). The context provided in them is that the grand jury was investigating Wilson's case, but there is no mention that they were operating any differently than normal. None of them support the claim you're making. The idea that it was supposed to act differently because it was a different type is a fringe theory, given the lack of supporting sources and evidence to the contrary in Missouri statute. --RAN1 (talk) 23:34, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

You say that "there is no mention that they are operating any differently than normal", but yet this article, and those sources, goes to great lengths to say just that, and then criticizes McCulloch for it. Then you say, "the idea that it was supposed to act differently because it was a different type is a fringe theory", again, I refer you to this article where it says that they did act differently, because it was a different type - not a "typical grand jury". And then we have McCulloch telling the jurors in his opening statement that; Obviously, it is going to be different from a lot of the other cases that you've heard, which obviously it was because he didn't ask for an indictment, he asked them to investigate every single piece of evidence that was available - which a typical grand jury does not do. I have provided sources that say McCulloch did not ask for an indictment, as he would normally do of a "typical grand jury", but rather he asked them to investigate every single piece of evidence, which obviously means - they were "operating differently than normal". You have provided no sourcing whatsoever that disputes this grand jury was investigating this case or that it is somehow wrong or misleading to describe it as an investigative grand jury. Isaidnoway (talk) 00:34, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

None of the sources provided in the article mention a different type of grand jury. The closest we have is Casselman discussing the "investigative nature" of the grand jury, but makes no mention of the grand jury being of a different type. I based my reasoning on current Missouri statute pointing to the fact that the prosecutor or grand jury may subpoena for evidence and witnesses at will, there is no such thing as a different type of grand jury and all grand juries in MO are intended to be a mechanism of indictment. Ergo, this is a fringe theory that is not supported by sources. It's also worth mentioning that your logic is circular - it assumes that because the grand jury was subject to a different process, it must be of a different type, an assumption that you haven't proven to be true. --RAN1 (talk) 01:36, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

I'm simply saying that the sources support describing this grand jury as an investigative grand jury, based on the fact that they did indeed investigate this case, which was obviously different than the previous cases they handled. Isaidnoway (talk) 03:41, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

No, it isn't supported by any of those sources. Investigative grand juries are a separate process encountered in states other than MO, and representing the grand jury in MO as an investigative grand jury is an editorial spin that should be avoided. --RAN1 (talk) 07:43, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Quite frankly, judging by your comments in this thread and previous threads, I have reached the conclusion that you must not be from the USA. Otherwise, you would be familiar with the history and the origin of the grand jury process and the powers and functions of the investigative grand jury that are deeply rooted in the history of this country and has been for over 200 years. I really don't know what else to say, it's been proven that this terminology is not made up, nor is it original research, nor is it a fringe view. Multiple sources support this terminology and it is synonymous with a "grand jury investigation" as well. And furthermore, Missouri does have this separate process, as outlined in the Missouri Constitution, but the Ferguson grand jury was not one of these, as it was convened in May as a regular grand jury and they just simply transitioned to an investigative grand jury in August when the Wilson case was given to them. Isaidnoway (talk) 23:08, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Missouri does have this separate process, as outlined in the Missouri Constitution, but the Ferguson grand jury was not one of these, as it was convened in May as a regular grand jury and they just simply transitioned to an investigative grand jury in August when the Wilson case was given to them. A great example of original research. - Cwobeel (talk) 23:34, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, I thought so too. Apparently you still have not read or comprehend the policy on original research which explicitly and specifically states - (This policy of no original research does not apply to talk pages.) And guess what, this talk page is exactly where this OR is located. But thanks anyway for the compliment. Isaidnoway (talk) 00:47, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

Actually, I am a United States citizen, though your ad hominem would be just as relevant if I hadn't been. I'm also aware of the difference between federal and state law: grand juries are guaranteed by the federal constitution but implemented on the state level. Speaking of state level, I decided to look up the Missouri Constitution to see if what you said was relevant. The Missouri Constitution has a section on its grand juries, but said section says that grand juries have the ability to investigate and return indictments on crimes of all grades and character. This has nothing to do with the idea that grand juries in MO have a separate process for investigating, but instead suggests that both responsibilities to investigate and indict are held against it. If you have any real evidence you'd like to link to support your as-of-now completely-unsupported fringe theory, I don't think anybody would mind. --RAN1 (talk) 04:28, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

• Not every state gives its grand jury both functions; Indicting and Investigating, Missouri does give the grand jury both functions - specifically for investigating non-criminal activity.
• Grand juries may be of two types: an indicting grand jury...or an investigative grand jury.
• Contemporary grand juries are generally classified as being either “investigative” or “indicting.”
• Grand juries...function largely as the "investigative" and "indicting" arms of prosecutorial officials. (Encyclopedia of the American Constitution, Volume 2, ISBN 0028648803, 9780028648804)
• See also: Debates of the Missouri Constitutional Convention, April 18, 19, 1944, at pp. 1143-1157; Specific discussions pertaining to the investigative function of the grand jury.
• Missouri statute authorizing an investigative grand jury to be convened to examine lists of tangible personal property for correctness
• Missouri statute authorizing an investigative grand jury to be convened to examine public buildings and report on their conditions Isaidnoway (talk) 15:42, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Some states have grand juries that don't have the power to indict but do have the power to investigate. Those might properly be termed "investigative grand juries." Some states also allow grand juries to investigate independent of prosecutors, and those special grand juries might also be termed "investigative grand juries." But a Missouri grand jury has the power to indict in addition to just investigating things and is always under the control of prosecutors, so calling it an "investigative grand jury" is something of a misnomer that brings even more confusion to an already confusing topic. Here's some good reading on grand juries. Dyrnych (talk) 20:48, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

• Oi... this is a reoccurring issue? Hate to tell you all, but the difference between a regular grand jury and an investigative grand jury is that the investigative grand jury is the decision maker on the charge. It is not a separate type of grand jury, it is a separate procedure. This is pretty basic stuff. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 05:37, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Before anyone starts hollering that Chris didn't provide any sources for his comment, I will gladly oblige.

“It was a very atypical proceeding,” acknowledged Peter Joy, a Washington University law professor. “But when you have an investigative grand jury they typically do consume a lot more evidence.”

"The difference between a regular grand jury and an investigative grand jury is that the investigative grand jury is the decision maker on the charge." Isaidnoway (talk) 05:57, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

It's a different procedure that doesn't exist in MO. Grand juries already have this power as I noted is mentioned in MO statute. What you're describing is a phenomenon that cannot occur in this context. --RAN1 (talk) 07:43, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

@Isaidnoway: - Is Ran1 really arguing personal reasoning against a law professor, a prosecutor, and half a dozen other legal professionals? ChrisGualtieri (talk) 08:00, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

I think two Law Professors from Missouri and the Jackson County, Missouri Prosecutor are more than qualified to give an opinion on how grand juries operate in Missouri. And this "different procedure" being bandied about in this thread, does exist in Missouri, as the power of grand juries to investigate is entrenched in the Missouri Constitution. Isaidnoway (talk) 19:52, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Red herring. No one is arguing that the grand jury did not have the power to investigate. What is being argued is the attempt to make a distinction that does not exist. This was not an "investigative grand jury" more than any other grand jury in MO. - Cwobeel (talk) 23:37, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Well, there are multiple sources (hundreds, if not thousands) that say there was a distinction, so I think I'll go with the sourcing rather than your mis-guided opinion. Isaidnoway (talk) 00:38, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

There are hundreds of sources that describe the grand jury investigation, but what we are discussing is the fallacious argument that this grand jury was different than any other grand jury in MO, and had some kind of special status as an "investigative grand jury". It was not. What was different was the approach taken by the prosecutor's office. - Cwobeel (talk) 02:00, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

If I recall correctly, you inserted a table into this article a while ago that specifically highlighted how "this grand jury was different than any other grand jury in MO", and now you say it is a fallacious argument. What made this grand jury distinct from other grand juries in MO is in fact - "the approach taken by the prosecutor's office", which resulted in them investigating every piece of evidence in this case. I presume you know that investigative is synonymous with investigation? Using the term investigative in front of "grand jury" does not imply some special status, it implies that the function of the grand jury in this case was to investigate it. Isaidnoway (talk) 04:23, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

FPD sergeant

The first interview with Wilson conducted needs to be included, as it provides key insights into the evolving testimony from Wilson.

Volume 5 of the grand jury transcripts (dated September 16) Accounts from the Ferguson sergeant who spoke to Wilson right after the shooting [19]:

Question: "Has he ever told you, yeah, I didn't know anything about what happened up at the Ferguson Market?"

Sergeant: "Yes, he has told me that in subsequent conversations."

Question: "He [Wilson] told you he didn't know about there being a stealing at the Ferguson Market?"

Sergeant: "Correct."

Question: "At that point does he [Wilson] say that he investigates these two for stealing Cigarillos, does he mention anything to them about the theft."

Detective: "He doesn't say anything like that to me."

Detective: [Wilson] "states that subject [Brown] reaches backwards with his left hand, and basically removes his left hand and arm from the vehicle and hands something to the other subject [Dorian Johnson] and says, 'here, take this,' is what Officer Wilson says that he hears the larger subject say. He did not, nor did I ask, describe what he thought was handed off, but he said that he handed something."

- Cwobeel (talk) 21:16, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

Daily Kos is deliberately misleading because this was a conversation between Wilson and the Sarge six days after the incident. Check Page 52. August 10, Wilson's interview contained the information and the account which I referenced to you before. Page 14 top paragraph. Wilson could not have known about it being Ferguson Market because the name of the business was not broadcast in any of these. 19 seconds after the call is a follow up which is repeated. Then four minutes later is another, more detailed, description. But here's proof of knowledge, "At noon, Wilson reports that he's back in service from the sick-baby call. He then asks the officers searching for the thieves – units 25 and 22 – if they need him."[20] He is aware. Now seriously... cherry picking text from conversations six days later and claiming it was the day of? Dailykos is unreliable and terrible for this stuff. Also - Wilson continued to state in the Grand Jury documents this same account, including the black t-shirt. (Page 202) Now, I am getting bored of these really warped and twisted coverup claims. I am sure that if something this big was an issue the mainstream media would have picked up on it - especially on ones which compare how his testimony changed. WP:EXCEPTIONAL seems to apply here. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 06:12, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Before you get in trouble again in confusing sources, I encourage you to dive into the sources and read through it. - August 10 was the second interview. That is the first instance in which Wilson said he made an ID. Cwobeel (talk) 16:17, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Where is the first interview? How do you know the content of the first interview? And are you sure of that? Also, I pointed to the wrong source to yell at you - The insertion was still false and you reinserted something false in the article after I told you it was false. I just pointed to time instead of MLM which was right next to it. Get your facts straight. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 16:21, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

What precisely is any of this serving? You guys have retrenched to analysis of primary sources to debunk/support secondary sources, forgetting perhaps that we're not journalists. We rely on reliable sources to do fact-checking; in fact, one of the hallmarks of a reliable source is that it has mechanisms for fact-checking. So let's let them fact-check and stop pretending that we're better at doing so than they are, which is just leading to the same idiotic squabbles over whose version is The Truth. Dyrnych (talk) 16:41, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Yes, you are right. This is getting close to a forum discussion. I will dig for secondary sources. - Cwobeel (talk) 16:46, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Do not collapse this because it concerns an actual source that was used in the article. That source was wrong and so this stands as clear discussion of a removed and problem source in line with WP:IRS. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 17:58, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

In the opening sentence, Cwobeel wrote, "The first interview with Wilson conducted needs to be included,...", but Cwobeel doesn't discuss the first interview. This is evident from the quote that Cwobeel took from the Daily Kos article, specifically the part that says, "Yes, he has told me that in subsequent conversations." --Bob K31416 (talk) 18:06, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

True or not, Kos is absolutely not a reliable source for this, full stop. This shouldn't be collapsed, but including it without an actual reliable source should be a nonstarter here. Thargor Orlando (talk) 18:54, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

I agree and should have stated this above. Dyrnych (talk) 20:36, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Agreed. I will look for other sources on this subject. 18:38, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

I have carefully read the transcript of the sergeant that arrived to the scene and questioned Wilson, and it seems quite clear what he is saying there regarding the robbery. I have found one source that describes the fact of that initial interview, and added it to the article. I am still looking for additional sources on this very key aspect. - Cwobeel (talk) 05:07, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

Just so I have your idea correct, just when was this interview? Because I do not see what you claim you see. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 05:40, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

@Bob K31416: Why deleting this? [21]. There is testimony from this sergeant that could be included, and it was reported by CNN. - Cwobeel (talk) 16:41, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

Re "Why deleting this?", as I said in my edit summary, "because no notes, no record, no substance of interview given (I'm the 2nd editor that has reverted this recent addition.)". Where are you heading with this? So far you only seem to be giving prominence to criticism of a sergeant in a section about Wilson's statements. --Bob K31416 (talk) 17:26, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

@ChrisGualtieri: To your question. This was the sergeant that arrived to the scene and was the first to interview Wilson. Even the prosecutor highlighted the importance of his testimony, being the first person to talk to Wilson. - Cwobeel (talk) 16:43, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

Sergeant testimony to grand jury starts on page 12 [22]. - Cwobeel (talk) 16:51, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

False material again

In this edit, Cwobeel makes the edit summary "we had discussed this extensively. There was no FPD report, only County Police report." Cwobeel removes the source ACLU Receives Ferguson Police Department's Incident Report on Fatal Michael Brown Shooting which contains the Ferguson Police Department's Incident Report. Cwobeel replaces this with the text "NBC News reported that according to county prosecutors, Ferguson police did not file an incident report because the case was almost immediately turned over to the St. Louis County Police and reported a statement by McCulloch's office that the incident report did not exist." - Clearly both cannot be correct and given that I linked the ACLU source and the document, Cwobeel is again reinserting false material, and now removing sources which prove the existence of the document in order to reinsert this false material. In short... can someone undo this reinsertion of false information. I do not want to be the sole person to deal with this. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 17:07, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

• Oh good, Cwobeel sees it exists, but now makes the edit summary "adding chronology. For whatever reason, prosecutor's office give erroneous information." - NBC News got it wrong, the report existed from the beginning. This error means you remove it because the entire foundation of the source's integrity is compromised. Remember WP:OTTO? We do not keep misstatements of fact in the article when they are proven to be misstatements of fact. Kindly remove that false information because it is false - because you are saying that the prosecutor's office somehow lied about something that was already released. That does not even make sense. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 17:14, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

It is part of the chronology, why not to to have it? We are not making any judgements by reciting facts. - Cwobeel (talk) 17:23, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

If you're putting something in the article that's demonstrably false and unsupported by the evidence, you're not reciting facts at all. Thargor Orlando (talk) 17:24, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

(edit conflict)I'm transcluding this from my talk page:

Both can certainly be true: it can be the case that county prosecutors stated that no incident report was filed and that an incident report was in fact filed. That supposes one of several events: that the prosecutor's office was lying, or mistaken, or that the reporter got it wrong. However, the source that Cwobeel cited is absolutely reliable for the statement that he inserted. So including the statement could lead a reader to conclude that the statement is (1) valueless in light of the fact that an incident report exists, (2) illustrative of the level of confusion surrounding the Brown shooting in its immediate aftermath, or (3) demonstrative of a prosecutor's office desire to obfuscate matters. I'm fine with letting the reader draw whatever conclusion that he or she wishes with respect to the statement, as that's really what the enterprise of Wikipedia is about.

To put it another way, the statement by the prosecutor's office is valuable even if the prosecutor's statement (not the source) is responsible for the misstatement of fact. You cannot on your own conclude that a source that reports a misstatement of fact is making a misstatement of fact itself in reporting that misstatement of fact. Dyrnych (talk) 17:26, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

It is also demonstrably false the issue of the X Rays and broken eye socket, which later was found to be false, and we are reporting it. This specific material is not "false" information. What we are asserting is that the prosecutors office said that there was no FPD incident report, and that is what is verifiable. - Cwobeel (talk) 17:27, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

The source is demonstrably false - it exists and Dyrnych is avoiding the fact that WP:BREAKING news is under WP:PRIMARY. We defer to the existence and not try and portray some reported statement of non-existence and hold it up as a possibility the prosecutor's office lied. That's disruptive. If a source is wrong, the source is wrong and it should not be used. We do not attempt to slip some justification that the origin of the bad source is somehow at fault and is deliberately lying, confusing or trying to conceal the release of something which was already released. That's against WP:SYNTH and WP:OR to even imply something like that, it advances an agenda and becomes a BLP violation because it advances an unsupported wrongdoing. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 17:41, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Chris, it's getting really frustrating dealing with your extremely expansive notion of what constitutes a BLP violation. There are any number of implications that one can take from the prosecutor's office's statement (as I've listed above), and just because one of them is a negative one doesn't mean that there's a BLP violation. There's no agenda being advanced there.

Also, there is no sense in which this is a primary source. It's very obviously a secondary source reporting on a statement from the prosecutor's office. I don't even know how to argue with this claim because it's so puzzling. Dyrnych (talk) 17:46, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

The problem is you do not understand policy and have no respect for those whom the false source affects. Breaking news in situations like this is WP:PRIMARY because it degrades to worse than tabloid journalism. When the source was wrong, you are defending it and highlighting three possible ways in which the prosecutor's office committing a wrongdoing by supposedly claiming something which existed - didn't. It is a BLP issue when you accuse a very small group of people - almost always put to McCulloch - as having lied because a source which could not check its facts somehow must be infallible if not for the some deliberate action of a source which could not even be named. You don't know how to argue about the claim because you think its secondary when its primary and it says something does not exist when it was already known (weeks back) that it existed. That does not make sense. What makes sense is that something got jumbled up and pushed onto publication from something that was misheard, misinterpreted or just plain thought up. We do not imply wrongdoing when there is no proof of wrongdoing when a source gets its entire premise wrong. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 17:55, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

actually, CG is probably correct that these should be considered primary sources WP:PRIMARYNEWS. That doesn't mean they are unusable, but they also aren't the gold standard. Where initial reports were wrong we should not be relying on those wrong reports to describe the event or aftermath. The initial wrong reports are only valuable for meta-events such as documenting the confusion regarding the event itself. such analysis of that confusion must be done by secondary sources,us compiling the primaries to document the confusion is in fact WP:OR Gaijin42 (talk) 18:01, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

That being said, the ACLU source is also not a gold standard since it is a WP:SPS WP:PRIMARY documenting an activity the ACLU itself took. Gaijin42 (talk) 18:03, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Okay, I guess I'm using "primary source" in much more of a layman's sense than a technical one. That said (and as you've stated) it's not self-disqualifying to the source that it's possibly a primary source for the prosecutor's office's statement and it's certainly not the case that it's "worse than tabloid journalism."

To the notion that there's any BLP violation here, I will again point out that the mere fact that a claim could lead a reader to—among other conclusions—a negative conclusion does not suggest a BLP violation, and in any event WP:BLP has a much weaker application to a non-natural-person such as a prosecutor's office. And the conclusion that a misstatement must necessarily be a lie or the product of wrongdoing is at odds with the law and with human experience in general. Dyrnych (talk) 18:44, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

I think the hypothetical BLP is not that the prosecutor said something or not, but that the police did not file a required report. Gaijin42 (talk) 18:58, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

That and it can be traced back to a particular person for the office with a little digging, but the usage bears "McCulloch's office" in the article. Dyrnych makes two of three possible implications which suggest deliberate wrongdoing traced to a living person and aimed at a specific person. The Ferguson PD is a larger group, less likely under BLP - but let's not put out wording that implies wrongdoing when a source confuses the fact Wilson did not make an incident report with the entire department - as was done in this case. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 19:04, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Sure, there's a "deliberate wrongdoing" possibility. There's also a "miscommunication between departments" possibility, a "spokesperson with the wrong information" possibility, and a "transcription error" possibility, among others. I don't see how you're getting that the "deliberate wrongdoing" possibility dominates over the others to the extent that it's a BLP violation (and, attempts at clarification aside, I'm not convinced that it could be a BLP violation in any event). Dyrnych (talk) 19:11, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

The claim that we're discussing

(edit conflict)Let's not argue past each other. Here, as I see it (paraphrased), is the claim that we're actually discussing:

The county prosecutor's office stated that the Ferguson police department had not filed an incident report.

Here, as I see it, is the claim that several editors seem to believe that we're discussing:

The Ferguson police department did not file an incident report.

The latter is demonstrably false, because the ACLU actually obtained the report. However, the former is not demonstrably false, because to my knowledge no source exists that refutes that the prosecutor's office made that statement. Do any editors know of a source that refutes that claim? Dyrnych (talk) 17:42, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

That's irrelevant when the source is reporting something that is false. WP:OTTO it does not matter what a source states when something is already false. This sort of embellishment and outright advance of a fake story was picked up and advanced by different sources - becoming more authoritative and complex despite it being completely false. Simply put, we do not need a source to prove a negative (about not making a statement) to disprove a deeply wrong source. You are making a logical fallacy here to defend a source which is demonstrably false. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 17:47, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

You are not listening to what I'm saying. Which of the two sentences above is false? Only the second. Dyrnych (talk) 17:49, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Also, refuting the claim doesn't mean proving the non-existence of the claim. It could be the prosecutor's office disputing that it had made the statement or issuing a clarification. Dyrnych (talk) 17:50, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

You are correct that the statements are not the same, and one can be true while the other is not. but It is also true that one statement strongly implies the other and in the absence of contradiction will be read as just attribution for the fact. If we have strong evidence to the contrary, then we must determine the value of the wrong info - the only value would be to explain confusion. Thats not a lot of value, but it is some. if we include the first statement, we must immediately contradict it with the updated statement so as not to leave a false impression. Unless we have a source making that correction (refering to the initial wrong report) for us, that risks SYNTH, but Wikipedia:What_SYNTH_is_not#SYNTH_is_not_mere_juxtaposition. so we can do something like "On date X, the prosecutors office stated that the Ferguson police department had not filed a report. The report was filed on date X and released by the ACLU on date Y. " Gaijin42 (talk) 17:51, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

I strongly support this approach. Dyrnych (talk) 17:53, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

@Gaijin42: The date of the statement is unknown. The report was filed on August 9 (the day of) and printed on the day of. Records show it was released on August 20 and obtained by the ACLU on August 21. The NBC news report was made on August 21. Furthermore expressions of doubt exist because both incident reports were released by that day and NBC news does not even acknowledge the existence of either nor of the release. Whatever "briefing" NBC news got on the matter, it was out of date by August 21 and they did not include the acknowledged existence of either report at that time. Which is strange - considering an earlier statement which was publicly released which did not deny, but did not confirm their existence either. I do not know if its the same statement, but if it is - NBC misinterpreted it. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 18:06, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

That is good additional information. That certainly reduces the value of the wrong information, as it is no longer "chronology" or "correction of outdated info" but conflicting reports. That does still have some value, but much less imo, and value that should be determined by actual secondary sources discussing the conflicting reports. Gaijin42 (talk) 18:15, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

The date of the statement is known August 21st 2014, NBC is reporting that day, what they heard from prosecutor's office. the county prosecutor’s office tells NBC News. See the use of "tells", which implies that day or close. - Cwobeel (talk) 18:29, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

(edit conflict) The ACLU report is dated August 22. While the ACLU may have received the incident report on August 21 (and its report indicates that it received it "late Thursday afternoon," Thursday being the 21st) , I have seen no information that indicates that anyone else knew that they had received the report. So that certainly contradicts the notion that NBC's information was out of date and/or wrong on the 21st. From where do we know that the incident report was released (and to whom was it released?) on August 20? Dyrnych (talk) 18:34, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

See also: - Cwobeel (talk) 18:42, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Wilson never filed a report on the incident, according to the office of the St. Louis County prosecutor. The case was quickly turned over to the county at the request of local police. According to the document, the St. Louis County police entered the incident report on Aug. 19, 10 days after the shooting. It was approved for release the following morning. [23] - September 25

And:

The St. Louis County Prosecutor’s Office revealed that the Ferguson Police Department never filled out an incident report on the shooting death. The Prosecutor's Office said the case was turned over to county police almost immediately, and no details will be released while the grand jury reviews the case and decides whether or not to indict the officer, MSNBC reported Thursday.

After the police department withheld the report, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit to obtain the records. Late Wednesday, the ACLU of Missouri released what they said was the report, which lists only the date, time and location of the shooting.[24] - August 22

That is what we need to summarize. - Cwobeel (talk) 18:42, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Well, there's a statement that there was no incident report and there was an incident report released that had little substance. I think that's essentially the same thing.

In general, the incident report is being given too much weight in the article. It was of interest when there was little info from the police about the incident because there was a pending investigation. The release of info after the grand jury included Wilson's Aug 10 police interview about the incident, recorded and transcribed in 18 pages IIRC. This interview was essentially the info that would have gone into an incident report. For historical reasons, criticisms of the handling of the formal incident report could be mentioned in a sentence or two, but it doesn't deserve a whole section, which is a digression from the topic of the article, i.e. the shooting of Michael Brown. (BTW, I think this is an example of POV pushing because it gives excessive attention to criticism of the authorities.) --Bob K31416 (talk) 18:45, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Agreed. Just to be clear my record show that the statement that was made concerned whether Wilson filed a report. The response was that he did not and the case was quickly turned over to the county at the request of local police. Time references this, but NBC news seemed to have taken it as "the police never filed it". The root cause seems to be the question about whether or not Wilson ever filed one and it looks like it got attributed to the Ferguson PD. And if you want to read the lawsuits, here are the numbers. For the ACLU lawsuit it is 14SL-CC02743. For the National Bar Association it is 14SL-CC02787. As much as I revel in the ad hom attacks on me, over this notion that I am a legal expert, I'm not. I'm just a scholar with a handy skill set. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 18:55, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Whatever it is, this is not too much information, on the contrary. No use of force report, no report filed immediately after the incident, no recording Wilson's first interview with a detective, the passing of the case to county police, the confusion during Chief Jackson's press conference and the Q&A follow up. All these are significant aspects of the incident and we have to cover them in detail. - Cwobeel (talk) 20:41, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

You are making issues and rooting them in Huffington Post and Daily Kos coverup theories. Especially since Jackson's Q&A did not have an issue until it was cherry-picked out of context. They merit a note at best. They do not merit any detailed breakdown what so ever. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 05:34, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

• Cwobeel is still inserting false material into the article despite it having been handled by a note. @Isaidnoway:, @Gaijin42:, @Bob K31416: - is the note currently being used acceptable to everyone? The note covers the clarification by Time and I cited it making clear it was an error because Cwobeel keeps trying to insert a clear error into the article, one that has been explained four times now. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 17:24, 29 December 2014 (UTC)
  • At this point, Cwobeel, it doesn't even look like you have consensus for this addition, regardless of whether you think it's really a noteworthy part of the timeline. Thargor Orlando (talk) 17:29, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

I agree with BobK that a historical perspective should be retained, but we don't need the excessive detail. I'm fine with the note highlighting this aspect, and I wouldn't object if the note was removed either. Isaidnoway (talk) 18:22, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

It should be obvious by now after this lengthy discussion that we are in disagreement about this some of us for and some of us against, so next step should be to attempt to find a compromise as edit warring is not an option. Isaidnoway: could you propose text for a note that highlights this aspect to see if both sides could live with it? - Cwobeel (talk) 18:32, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

I don't foresee an argument that would persuade me to include a falsehood into the article. Thargor Orlando (talk) 18:44, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

I agree with Thargor Orlando here. The false statements and material that was not valid or relevant for even 24 hours. Not only that, but other sources did not make the same mistake. Complaining and stating "let's make a compromise" after knowing both of these facts is not helpful. More directly though, how does this insertion of a false statement improve the article for the reader? ChrisGualtieri (talk) 18:58, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

I urge you to go to the top of this section and compare the two statements again before you continue claiming that the article contains a false statement. I've tried to explain to you that there is a qualitative difference between the statement you are insisting is false and the statement that is in the article.

Look, maybe this will help. If we have a reliable source for the claim "A spokesman for the Flat Earth Society stated that the Earth is flat," we're not stating the falsehood that the Earth is flat. We're simply stating that someone said that the Earth was flat. It's a precise analogue. Dyrnych (talk) 19:07, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

This is key reporting, and attempt to suppress it is not acceptable:

Critics and news media outlets have questioned why Ferguson police released an incident report from a robbery in which Brown was a suspect, as well as security video showing the stick-up, but not the report on the shooting of the unarmed 18-year-old a short time later by Officer Darren Wilson.

The reason, according to the office of St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Robert P. McCulloch, is that it doesn’t exist.[25]

and

The Ferguson Police Department never generated an incident report on the shooting death of Michael Brown, the St. Louis County Prosecutor’s Office revealed Thursday. The case was turned over to county police almost immediately after the unarmed 18-year-old was shot and killed by Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson, the prosecutor’s office said, and no additional details or narrative will be forthcoming while a grand jury is empaneled to review the case and decide whether to indict the officer.

The absence of an incident report on the altercation that led to Brown’s death is just one of several key pieces of information that have remained withheld from the public, leading to anonymously-sourced speculation as to the details of the case and fueling ongoing unrest in the city of Ferguson, a majority-black suburb of St. Louis, Missouri.[26]

Here we have a critical issue in the context of the release of the robbery report, which was widely criticized. The response from Jackson was that he was responding to FOIA requests in his release of the robbery report, and the response from the prosecutor's office was that there was no incident report. I am not arguing that this was a "coverup", but is is crucial and factual information that our readers deserve to understand the handling of the events, and regardless if a report was eventually released by the FPD. - Cwobeel (talk) 04:31, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

Please stop Cwobeel, you are making a lengthy distraction and ranting now. It is WP:UNDUE to give a source which erred such great detail and to instead argue that NBC News must be infallible and that fault must lie instead with the prosecutor's office or some spokesman. This is a tangled ball of logical fallacies. I proved that the report existed and that the source was wrong. This is special pleading because instead of correcting the error you are trying to find way to justify its inclusion after it was false. It is your burden to prove that the prosecutor's office (or someone else) mislead NBC News and that it was not NBC News which made the mistake. There are other aspects in this tangled little ball which basically show forms of composition and circular logic flaws because you seem to not understand that the article could be wrong entirely independent of what it was told. I am not here to lecture you, but no part of your argument even makes sense. This is a waste of time because it wasn't even relevant for a single day and only one other source picked it up - and corrected it. This is why WP:RSBREAKING and WP:UNDUE exist. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 06:04, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

Reactions to the grand jury process and result section

I have tagged this section with {{undue}}, as after the last re-write the section presents an unbalanced overview of the reactions. The vast majority of the reactions were critical, but the section is now in a state that presents a false balance. I have started adding sources that were deleted, starting with Citron. - Cwobeel (talk) 04:21, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

One good example of UNDUE is the use of Cassel's piece published in Volokh Conspiracy blog, being used to support text in seven different occasions, Ref #156. We originally had a very large number of different legal analysts represented in the article, but these have been "summarized" and suppressed. I suggest reducing Cassel's comments to a single instance, giving it the same weight as to other sources. - Cwobeel (talk) 04:28, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

The number of non-opinion citations are not undue and they describe a process you do not understand much about. You do not even know how the jury system works and you made a bunch of disruptive "whom" tags when this is not an opinion - it is fact and law. Please stop wasting my time with your arguments over whether or not a source is UNDUE if it is cited inline more than once. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 05:32, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

When arguments cannot be won on its merit, pulling an ad hominem is not a replacement. Please respond to the concern and don't make this personal. It does not help, it is disruptive, and always ends us in the wrong place. - Cwobeel (talk) 15:37, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Ad hominem would be something like "Foreigners wouldn't understand..." or "You are just an art major what would you know....". Saying you don't know what you are talking about when you consistently demonstrate it is not a personal attack. You removed sourced material and made the Original Research section when the material was sourced to an expert. Perhaps you haven't read much about Grand juries in the United States, but saying you do not know when you then add "The prosecution presented the full range of charges with none being specifically endorsed, as it is usually the case in most grand jury proceedings." is ambiguous and results in it also being factually inaccurate. So yes, you do not understand much about grand juries because I have grown tired of explaining basic things over and over again and so have others. You complained about Roches's edit, but before that you indicated you had trouble believing his edits were in good faith and called sourced insertions OR. Now, you are claiming more than one citation is undue... this is more naked than your argument of "BRD" when you insert false material and it is promptly removed. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 16:06, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Please explain this edit [27]. Your edit summary: Strengthen by removing verbose and irrelevant opinion and duplicative [sic] and false opinion of Toobin (misstatement of fact)). - Cwobeel (talk) 15:52, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

You do not need a [sic] template because that's the correct word. Cintron does not have the appropriate background and duplicates the stance cited previously, but worse still is that it is a pretext to use Justice Stevens's opinion from 20 years ago in the article. The detail "criticized McCulloch's efforts to represent the process as an independent evaluation of the evidence, while McCulloch remained in control of the process" is a misstatement of fact. McCulloch was not present or apart of the grand jury proceedings. He was not in control of the process, two other prosecutors handled it and the grand jury got to ask questions and decide what charges (if any) to indict. It is a misstatement of fact. Does that clear it up for you? ChrisGualtieri (talk) 16:51, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Again, you are going on a limb trying to dismiss expert opinions. That is not your role or mine. - Cwobeel (talk) 18:18, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Cintron is not an expert. Cintron is an associate, not a practicing D.A., MO law professor or prosecutor. I take the word of two prosecutors in the state over Cintron on what role of a prosecutor is. Those statements are backed by the Criminal Justice Section Standards, specifically 3-3.5 and 3-3.6. Though again, I'll take Missouri's Jackson County Prosecuting Attorney Jean Peters Baker's word over Cintron on the role of a prosecutor. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 18:44, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

SCOTUSblog is one of the most reliable sources as it relates to the Supreme Court. We can, and should present alternative viewpoints per NPOV. That is why we have that policy. - Cwobeel (talk) 18:53, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Also tagged the Grand Jury section as unbalanced, as it is based mostly on a single opinion piece, while there is a substantial number of sources that comment on the GJ proceedings. - Cwobeel (talk) 18:53, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

SCOTUSblog is written by a non-expert in the field. Thus it is not reliable source for the opinion it advances. The source should not be included because requires misstatements of fact and corrupted intentions to draw a conclusion. Exhibits logical fallacy type - circular logic. Burden of evidence to prove reliability is on Cwobeel. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 05:32, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

Reference bundling

Some of the sources being used in the article are really weak or are only piling up on claims in a very dubious manner as if to conceal some weakness or great claim. This type of sourcing is an indicator of problems and attempting to add weight to arguments without making any distinction or rationale for why they need so many citations. Key issues are as follows:

• The DOJ Civil Rights Division's probe will review the department's policies and determine whether any violation of federal or state civil rights laws occurred. - 4 sources with no other use other than this.
• On August 27, CNN released an audio recording which purportedly contains the sounds of the shooting. - 4 sources with no other use other than this.
• The witness accounts have been widely described as conflicting on various points. - 6 references. Includes 4 different sources are used only for this claim and nothing else.
• Johnson stated that Brown "did not reach for the officer's weapon at all", and was attempting to get free, when Wilson drew his weapon and said, "I'll shoot you" or "I'm going to shoot", and fired his weapon hitting Brown. - 5 sources - 3 with no other use.

The weak sources should be removed. If they support key information, reference bundling should be done. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 07:15, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Id support bundling for the "widely described" one, but since we are supporting widely described by just citing a large number of RS that say "conflicting", removing the refs actually does cause a problem for that one. For the others, I think I'm fine with picking the most reliable of the sources and removing the rest, as long as that does not result in text changes. (If there are needed text changes, those should be discussed as a separate item)Gaijin42 (talk) 04:44, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

We can't say "widely described" unless a source says words to that effect. WP:NOR --Bob K31416 (talk) 16:24, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

Update: re this item, I made the following edits [28] [29]. --Bob K31416 (talk) 11:18, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

LEAD and the shooting

The article is roughly 10,000 words. Of which 150 describe the shooting events. The lead which was 420 words is now 250. It makes little sense to spend 170 words of a 420 word lead on giving a generic and contested copy of the same 150ish words the reader will get within 2 pages beneath it. That violates WP:LEAD. This may seem odd, but it is not how he died, but the disputed details and controversy surrounding his death that inflamed a nation. Our lead should not be beyond four paragraphs and given balance and form. For now, it is stronger without the copied details and easier to parse - let the strength of the first paragraph stand as that most important introduction. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 07:52, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Undone, per WP:BRD. We are still working of\n the article, including two RFCs that are still ope, and multiple content disputes ongoing. This is not the time IMO to attempt a re-write of the lede. As for your arguments about what is important and what is not, I fully disagree with your assessment. - Cwobeel (talk) 15:43, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

You are arguing that something cannot be improved while we are working on something unrelated? Really? WP:LEAD is pretty clear, we get 170 words to something with 420 words in total. That is 40% of the lead and the content it comes from is 1.5% of the article - is heavily disputed and it is already mentioned in the first paragraph.

Original / restored lead	Revised lead
The shooting of Michael Brown occurred on August 9, 2014, in Ferguson, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis. Brown, an 18-year-old black man, was fatally shot by Darren Wilson, 28, a white Ferguson police officer. The disputed circumstances of the shooting and the resultant protests and civil unrest received considerable attention in the U.S. and abroad, and sparked a vigorous debate about law enforcement's relationship with African-Americans, and police use of force doctrine in Missouri and nationwide. Shortly before the shooting, Brown robbed a nearby convenience store, stole several cigarillos, and shoved the store clerk. Wilson had been notified by police dispatch of the robbery and the suspect's description. He encountered Brown and Dorian Johnson as they were walking down the middle of the street blocking traffic. Although Wilson's initial contact with Brown and Johnson was unrelated to the robbery, Wilson said that he recognized that the two men matched the robbery suspect descriptions.[2][3] Wilson backed up his cruiser and blocked them. An altercation ensued with Brown and Wilson struggling through the window of the police vehicle until Wilson's gun was fired. Brown and Johnson then fled, with Wilson in pursuit of Brown, eventually firing at him several more times. In the entire altercation, Wilson fired a total of twelve rounds;[4] the last was probably the fatal shot.[5][6][7] Brown was unarmed. Witness reports differed as to whether and when Brown had his hands raised, and whether he was moving toward Wilson when the final shots were fired. The shooting sparked unrest in Ferguson, in part due to the belief among many that Brown was surrendering, as well as longstanding racial tensions between the majority-black population and the majority-white city government and police.[8] Protests, both peaceful and violent, along with vandalism and looting, continued for more than a week, resulting in night curfews. The response of area police agencies in dealing with the protests received significant criticism from the media and politicians. There were concerns over insensitivity, tactics and a militarized response. Missouri Governor Jay Nixon ordered local police organizations to cede much of their authority to the Missouri State Highway Patrol. Mainly peaceful protests continued for several weeks. McCulloch decided to bring the case in front of a grand jury to determine whether there was probable cause to indict Wilson for his actions. On November 24, McCulloch announced that the jury had decided not to indict Wilson.[9] Legal analysts raised concerns over McCulloch's unorthodox approach, asserting that this process could have influenced the grand jury to decide not to indict,[10][11] and highlighted significant differences between a typical grand jury proceeding in Missouri and Wilson's case.[12] In September, Eric Holder, the U.S. Attorney General, launched a federal investigation of the Missouri city's police force to examine whether officers routinely engaged in racial profiling or showed a pattern of excessive force.[13] On December 1, U.S. President Barack Obama announced that the federal government will spend $75 million on body cameras for law enforcement officers, as one of the measures taken in response to the shooting.[14][15]	The shooting of Michael Brown occurred on August 9, 2014, in Ferguson, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis. Brown, an 18-year-old black man, was fatally shot by Darren Wilson, 28, a white Ferguson police officer. The disputed circumstances of the shooting and the resultant protests and civil unrest received considerable attention in the U.S. and abroad, and sparked a vigorous debate about law enforcement's relationship with African-Americans, and police use of force doctrine in Missouri and nationwide. The shooting sparked unrest in Ferguson, which included peaceful and violent protests, along with vandalism and looting, that continued for more than a week, resulting in night curfews. The police tactics and militarized response drew criticism. In September, Eric Holder, the U.S. Attorney General, launched a federal investigation of the Missouri city's police force to examine whether officers routinely engaged in racial profiling or showed a pattern of excessive force. Robert P. McCulloch, the Prosecuting Attorney for St. Louis County, Missouri, decided to employ a grand jury to find probable cause that Wilson committed a crime. On August 20, a grand jury began hearing evidence and the decision to not indict was announced by McCulloch on November 24. The grand jury process and its results were the subject of widespread criticism in the media and by legal experts as atypical. Accusations included the unorthodox handling of the grand jury to bias and manipulation of the jury to prevent the indictment of Wilson. On November 29, Wilson resigned from the Ferguson police force.

Which looks better? Given that the lead should not be more than 4 paragraphs and it is longer than the detailing in the body, something is amiss. I've submitted several different versions for review and only Cwobeel seems to be vehemently opposed to changes because other things are going on. Does anyone else agree that it needs to be changed and updated to comply with WP:LEAD? ChrisGualtieri (talk) 16:30, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Honestly, neither of them is approaching perfect, but the lead on the left does seem to provide a better synopsis while not giving undue credence to some of the less accurate details. I'd probably prefer a tweaked version of the left hand side with the Holder/Obama paragraph removed, as it's really barely relevant on a whole to the broader topic. Thargor Orlando (talk) 17:35, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

I think I agree that the one on the left is better. per WP:LEAD "The lead should be able to stand alone as a concise overview.[...]The lead is the first part of the article most people read, and many only read the lead. Consideration should be given to creating interest in reading more of the article, but the lead should not "tease" the reader by hinting at content that follows" The details of the shooting are the most important part of this incident, and deserve coverage in the lede. Gaijin42 (talk) 17:38, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Also agree that the one on the left is better. Brevity is certainly a good thing, but we shouldn't eliminate crucial information in its service. Dyrnych (talk) 18:31, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

The current lead is way superior to your reduce version which does not properly summarizes the article, the incident, and the controversies [per WP:LEAD. As I said before, it is too early to attempt a re-write as there are still a substantial number of content disputes that are still open. - Cwobeel (talk) 17:37, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

I think this para should remain, with the robbery removed as it is not relevant to Wilson's claim of self-defense. Isaidnoway (talk) 17:58, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Several minutes before the shooting, Brown robbed a nearby convenience store, stole several cigarillos, and shoved the store clerk. Wilson had been notified by police dispatch of the robbery and the suspect's description.and shortly thereafter, Wilson encountered Brown and Dorian Johnson as they were walking down the middle of the street blocking traffic. Although Wilson's initial contact with Brown and Johnson was unrelated to the robbery, Wilson said that he recognized that the two men matched the robbery suspect descriptions.[2][3] Wilson backed up his cruiser and blocked them. An altercation ensued with Brown and Wilson struggling through the window of the police vehicle until Wilson's gun was fired. Brown and Johnson then fled, with Wilson in pursuit of Brown, eventually firing at him several more times. In the entire altercation, Wilson fired a total of twelve rounds;[4] the last was probably the fatal shot.[5][6][7] Brown was unarmed. Witness reports differed as to whether and when Brown had his hands raised, and whether he was moving toward Wilson when the final shots were fired. In November, after a lengthy grand jury investigation into the shooting, Wilson was not indicted on any charges.

• Good suggestion Isaidnoway. It does remove context, but it is better. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 18:02, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

the robbery does not afect the self defense claim, but it is certainly important context. The robbery needs to be mentioned somwehere in the lead, and it has been there from almost the start. Removing it would require clear consensus. Gaijin42 (talk) 18:08, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

I agree. The robbery certainly is part of the overall tale in ways other aspects are not. Thargor Orlando (talk) 18:08, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

This was also recently discussed here Talk:Shooting_of_Michael_Brown/Archive_23#lede_narrative where the robbery was merged into the existing paragraph, instead of just being a paragraph talking about the video release. The existing paragraph was build with consensus and input from multiple editors and should not be changed unilaterally. Gaijin42 (talk) 18:10, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Well, can we have a consensus that the robbery and Wilson's identification needs to be included as both parts are intrinsically connected to the events. This should be in a sentence or two because while it is not connected to the initial stop, the reason to back up and confront Brown and Johnson was because of the description and response. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 18:22, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

In addition to the shooting description, we also need to have in the lede the pending investigations, and the aftermath. Once you add that, there is not such a big difference between the current version, and your proposal. - Cwobeel (talk) 18:56, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Regardless of what the reason was for the stop, Wilson had legal justification for the stop, so the reason for the stop is not relevant to his central claim of self-defense, as evidenced by the subsequent questioning of him by the jurors. This case was always about Wilson's justification for use of deadly force, and I just believe that the primary focus of that para should be in relation to that aspect of the case, and if the robbery is included, keep it to a minimum, imo (revised above para). Isaidnoway (talk) 19:12, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

May I remind you that this is not an article on [[Darren Wilson]? This article is by no means an article on the justifiability of use of force by a police officer. It is about the shooting, the aftermath, the confusing handling by FPD, the militarized police response to protests, the prosecutor's handling of the case, the grand jury decision not to indict, the debate it stirred nationally and internationally, and all the rest. - Cwobeel (talk) 19:32, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Sure you can. But I was talking about this specific paragraph, which I thought this section pertained to, and wasn't referring to the article in general. Isaidnoway (talk) 20:15, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Photo

As discussed a few weeks ago, I uploaded yesterday a photo of Brown per the non-free-use rationale. Please see deletion discussion initiated by ChrisGualtieri today: Wikipedia:Files_for_deletion/2014_December_29#File:Michael_Brown_Jr.jpg - Cwobeel (talk) 15:58, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Do we know his age in this photo? The use of it here feels misleading. Thargor Orlando (talk) 17:37, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

It does violate the image use policy because it is of unknown author and date. The graduation photo or a handful of others make better candidates. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 17:58, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Undated photos are OK, and we have a source, so criteria #10 is met. - Cwobeel (talk) 18:33, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

The issue is not that it's undated, but that the image may be giving a misleading impression of Brown's age. Thargor Orlando (talk) 18:42, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

We say he was 18 years old, and that image seems to be representative as it is the most commonly used in media reports. - Cwobeel (talk) 18:54, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

This is not an issue like the trayvon martin "football kid" photo was. It seems that this is a reasonably representative photo. I would not oppose a different photo if there is a good reason to use it, but I see no reason to object to this one either. Gaijin42 (talk) 19:18, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

I guess I'm saying that we need more proof that this is "reasonably representative." I'm not saying we need to find some angry-looking photo of him, either, but if we're going to have a photo of him, I'd like some evidence that this is representative and not misleading in terms of his age at the incident. Thargor Orlando (talk) 20:17, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Since we know when he graduated from HS, the graduation photo is recent, and to my eyes looks the same. There are numerous sites that crawled his FB and other social media sites looking for other photos. Most of them are unusable for NPOV/BLP reasons, but they do confirm the rough age appropriateness of the headphone video. However, as I said above, I am not opposed to a different photo if one finds another one that is also acceptable. (Note, the following sites are full of BLP issues, linked to them based just off of a google search for "Michael Brown photos"

• http://www.ijreview.com/2014/08/168106-controversy-rages-images-media-presents-ferguson-shooting-victim-mike-brown/
• http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/10/28/anonymous-unveils-explosive-leaks-on-michael-brown-grand-jury-and-ferguson-officer-darren-wilson-report/
• http://www.mediaite.com/online/conservative-blogger-tries-to-prove-violent-streak-with-michael-browns-instagram-photos/
• http://www.youngcons.com/new-photos-of-michael-brown-leaked-paint-a-different-picture-than-what-weve-seen/

Gaijin42 (talk) 20:28, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Just do a search on Google Images: [30]. As you would see the headphones photo is the most widely used. The one from the graduation may also work.- Cwobeel (talk) 21:07, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

I don't especially care what a Google image search says, I'm more concerned about what the image we're using portrays, and if we're simply "assuming" it's representative or making a comparison based on other nonfree photos, I don't see how we can use it within policy. Thargor Orlando (talk) 23:03, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

What policy are you referring to? - Cwobeel (talk) 23:38, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Regarding the use of nonfree images, not to mention the issues of POV and verifiability inherent in the use of the photo. Thargor Orlando (talk) 23:56, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Check the file page, and you will find the source, which provides verifiability. And regarding POV, what is the issue with the photo that will have an NPOV concern? Can you clarify? - Cwobeel (talk) 02:02, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

The source does not verify Brown's age, only that it's Brown. Using a photo that's two, three, maybe even four years younger than he was at the time of the incident gives a false idea of who he was and what Wilson would have seen. It's sort of like the Trayvon Martin issue where media outlets used his young football photo. If were going to use a photo of Brown (and I'm hardly convinced we need one), we should be able to verify that it's accurate to the situation it is describing, both for NPOV situations and for the use of the nonfree image. Thargor Orlando (talk) 13:51, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

I support the use of this picture, I don't see any issues with it. Isaidnoway (talk) 04:03, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

NPOV

I fixed a WP:NPOV issue which was created by Cwobeel with this attribution edit and then self-tagged as unbalanced in this edit. Next time Cwobeel, could you please follow NPOV and remove your inappropriate attributions instead of just tagging them? I have also restored the stable format of the article which follows the prevailing conventions. It does not improve readability by shuffling reactions into the article under the guise of chronology. Please read WP:NPOV again. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 06:16, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

Changes on 12/30

I moved a bunch of stuff around, made a few new sections, removed a few old ones. Public reaction is no longer three sections based on chronology. I started a section to detail the evidence and witness evaluations via sources, each. In the reorganizing and work, it is becoming apparent that a distinct gaps in coverage exists from December onwards in relation to document releases and reliable sources. I know some of the edits will probably piss off a certain someone, but before you go reverting and putting all the claims of who said what into the criticism - or thinking it is suddenly nonexistent, remember WP:ATTRIBUTEPOV and WP:STRUCTURE. The "what the fuck did you do" edit is here. It shows the splitting off of the evidence and witness evaluations. It also shows the legal issue with the jury instructions returning to the grand jury section. The biggest removal is a lot of authority boasting, which most of it was not really an authority per previous discussions, and the attribution like it was is an issue per NPOV. The criticism of McCulloch's announcement of the grand jury is now up in the grand jury section - where it belongs. I cut down on the supportive opinions and went more basic to keep balance in the "controversy". Additions include some sources and detailing of the leaks and the restoration of the international coverage section... which is weak right now. Still so much work to do.... ugh.... maybe 10% complete now? ChrisGualtieri (talk) 09:02, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

Corrected some mis-information in the grand jury document release section. It was released November 24, not November 26. The sources used did not match the details which were released, so I removed those and added new citations to correct it. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 17:04, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

While I appreciate the good faith effort to improve the article, I don't think that the process you have chosen is conducive to achieving consensus. Move than twenty-five consecutive edits [31], making substantial changes to text and organization, with mass deletions and new additions. makes it extremely difficult to assess. May I suggest that you take a different approach? Do a few edits at a time, provide rationale for the edits, wait a while to see if there is consensus and then rinse and repeat. I am trying to evaluate your edits, but you made it very difficult due to the magnitude of your changes. I may need to revert everything, so you can start again one step at a time. There is no deadline, and we are in the holiday season with reduced activity from editors. - Cwobeel (talk) 18:27, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

@Cwobeel:, you are actually considering revert everything done because you do not understand the changes? The number of edits is irrelevant, but the fact you cannot comprehend something and cite it as a reason to undo everything is perhaps one of the worst you can do. It also goes against quite a few policies. Considering I've added sources, removed a bunch of misinformation and improper citations, fixed a bunch of NPOV issues and actually fixed the sectional forking, what specifically is the problem? ChrisGualtieri (talk) 18:35, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

After reading through your restructuring of the article and the deletions and additions, this is my view:

1. The chronology is completely lost and by doing so the presentation does not reflect the nature of the incident. The chronology is important because it is an intrinsic part of the narrative.
2. One of the main advantages of maintaining a chronological narrative is that is shows the magnitude of the incident as it spilled from being just another police shooting, to a nationally and internationally covered incident, not only on the shooting itself, but also on the police response, the controversial release of information, the changes in managing the incident by law enforcement, and the response from public, the media, and politicians
3. You added a section on McCulloch to the "Investigation" section , in which you state that "McCulloch was not directly involved in instructing the grand jury; it was handled by two prosecutors in his office", while we already covered that in the first Sentence of the Grand Jury hearing section
4. The legal analysts comments on the grand jury has been completely decimated, leaving almost none of it in the article.

- Cwobeel (talk) 18:39, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

My suggestion still stands: Make a few edits, and explain them in talk, wait a little to see if there is consensus, and then repeat the process. - Cwobeel (talk) 18:41, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

And if there were some NPOV issues that all of us missed, please indicate them and discuss in talk. What may be an NPOV issue for you, may not be for others: that is what collaborative editing is about. Do some edits, and gauge consensus. - Cwobeel (talk) 18:43, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

Your intention to review and analyze every edit while attacking the editors with claims of "OR" is not helpful and represents several points on WP:OWN. The claim that you have a right to review and oppose any changes you do not agree with is one of these issues. You've personally attacked with disparaging remarks and labels, this is unproductive. You have called sourced attributions to the article "original research" despite being sourced. You have violated WP:NPOV and self-tagged your own creation instead of fixing it. You continually assert changes that run counter to WP:NPOVT. The chronology is handled in another article and it is plain confusing to the reader - if you want to write about the evolution of the public response to the shooting of Michael Brown be my guest. Please stop thinking this is a battleground - I do not want to waste my time arguing basic policies anymore. It results in lengthy discussions that violate WP:FORUM. From now on, I will point out the problem and just move on, because many of the conversations are unnecessary when a reading of WP:OR, WP:NPOV and WP:BLP should have made it perfectly clear that a wall of "controversy" was never acceptable for a multitude of reasons. Lastly, editors seem to be agreeing and working well together, the discussion into WP:LEAD is helpful and productive. Please recognize their contributions as well and notice I am quick to agree with any improvement - it need not be my own doing. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 19:08, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

If we have a disagreement on the structure of the article, and we can't resolve it in, we may need to follow WP:DR and start an RFC. Please note that I have not attacked you or disparage you in any way or manner, all I have done is criticize your edits and suggest a better way to go about it. Take a deep breath and work with me and others to continue improving the article and finding common ground. - Cwobeel (talk) 19:25, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

Others disagree about personal attacks and characterizations, but let's stay on focus. Invoking BRD as if its some absolute right to halt anything you personally do not like is not acceptable. A locus of dispute is this chronology aspect, which strangles reader comprehension as if the article's very purpose is to conifer the nature of the information releases. There is no specific topical analysis dedicated to conferring this and if it were so needed it should be independent and not interleaved into the presentation. Common ground exists, but I must be firm when you call sourced information original research. Then when that is dispelled create a NPOV issue and then self-tag it in another edit. Only to ignore the relevant section when I correct it and link you to the policy. Only for you to create another section about it, which I must repeat myself again. This is not helpful because you have misrepresented the edits, fought against reason and then created a new issue to re-argue the same insertion. Every edit should enhance the article and the reader's understanding of the subject - for it is the reader who matters most. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 06:26, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

We are in agreement about thinking of the reader. The current presentation, IMO, detracts from comprehension as you force readers to jump back and forth between events when reading. It is a mess. - Cwobeel (talk) 16:26, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

Please be more specific - the public response was chronological, evidence releases should not be in chronological order as per standard. I need examples, because these vague and ambiguous statement does not provide clarification. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 16:53, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

One example may help clarify. See for example the section on the robbery report release, which I have just expanded. It contains information about the release, as well as the reaction to the release from public officials, Brown's family, and protesters. That is the way to present information to readers, rather than segregate the public, media, and analysts reactions into its own section. This is the order of key events: Shooting, response; robbery report release, response; grand jury proceedings, evidence, witnesses, grand jury result, response; aftermath. - Cwobeel (talk) 17:01, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia voice - lack of attribution

This material is rendered in Wikipedia's voice and without attribution. That is a violation of NPOV.

The grand jury process was atypical because of significant and numerous departures from other normal grand jury proceedings.[139] The American grand jury process operates in secret to collect evidence and to test the memory of witnesses against that evidence; this is done to prevent witnesses from altering their testimony to match statements made by previous witnesses.[139] These secret proceedings are not normally made public in cases of no indictment, but according to McCulloch, in this case it was to provide transparency to the process.[139] Other differences were in the operation of the grand jury. Typically, prosecutors come before a grand jury having already screened for probable cause and present a recommended charge. In this case the grand jury process deviated from normal course by acting in an investigative role, with no assurance that any criminal conduct was present.[139][note 1]

Ref # 139 is Cassel's piece published on the Volokh Conspiracy blog at the WaPo (Cassell, Paul (November 25, 2014). "The Michael Brown grand jury process was fair". The Washington Post. Retrieved December 17, 2014.)

In addition, the note added there based on this source [32] omits significant information from the source.

- Cwobeel (talk) 19:18, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

Please read WP:NPOV and WP:ASSERT. Statements of fact should not be marked as if they are opinions. Unless you are disputing that the grand jury process was normal and public, it is correct. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 05:59, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

"Normal" is an opinion, and opinions need attribution. - Cwobeel (talk) 15:44, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

The burden is with you to prove that there is a serious and reliable source to disagree with the uncontested "opinion" 2 law professors, 2 Missouri prosecutors, and a U.S. District Court judge and nearly 50 different sources, and Missouri State Law which editors like Ran1 have cited are in dispute about this very fact. It is a fact that grand juries operate in secret. It is a fact grand jury proceedings are not normally released to the public. The burden is on your Cwobeel. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 16:50, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

If there are other sources for these claims of fact, why don't you find a better one than the Cassel piece? We can agree that it's an opinion source and that its opinion is sympathetic to McCulloch, right? So why would we send a reader who's interested in seeing our source for statements about general grand jury procedure to a such a source (or, for that matter, an opinion source that is critical of McCulloch)? Dyrnych (talk) 16:58, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

A law professor who teaches in the specific field and a U.S. District Court judge? It is not an opinion that grand jury proceedings are normally secret - the burden is on you to prove otherwise. And the law - which Ran1 cited is pretty clear of this matter. Do not assert facts as opinions - that is a violation of WP:NPOV. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 17:26, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

Once again you seem not to have read what I actually said. If you're going to respond to me, please do so and answer the questions I posed. Dyrnych (talk) 17:47, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

- I answered your question, @Dyrnych:, the source is directly related to the topic, covers the exact aspects and is by an authority who has written extensively on this case. Please provide this "better source" you refer to. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 18:07, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

Actually in this instance the burden is on you to prove it is a reliable opinion. As I mentioned above, neither Missouri statute nor the Missouri constitution provide a legal basis for "investigate-only" grand juries; all MO grand juries have the ability to indict on all crimes, including misdemeanors. In that case, the source you have provided is actually propagating a fringe theory, based on the opinion of a judge who only has experience in federal, D.C. and Utah jurisdictions (see Paul G. Cassell). As such, you're going to need a much more reliable source to include this in the article. Per BLPREMOVE, I'm removing this tidbit as poorly-sourced. --RAN1 (talk) 06:14, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

Here's the item that RAN1 removed.[33]

"Cassel asserted that, typically, prosecutors come before a grand jury having already screened for probable cause and present a recommended charge, but that in this case the grand jury process deviated from normal course by acting in an investigative role, with no assurance that any criminal conduct was present.

I don't see the problem. This looks like a reasonable explanation of what happened and not a fringe theory, it has an in-text attribution as requested by the OP, its source is an article in the Washington Post, and it's not a BLP issue. --Bob K31416 (talk) 15:31, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

Update: Here's an excerpt from another source, supplied in a previous message of Cwobeel's, that also supports the comment about the "investigative" aspect of the grand jury.[34]

"In this case, however, the prosecutor allowed the grand jury to examine the evidence 'in more of an investigative capacity,' McGraugh said."

--Bob K31416 (talk) 15:58, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

Image Use

Numerous images were used in the article without much concern for whether or not they improved the article's presentation of the information. Just because we have a bunch of images related to the protests does not mean that we need to use each one and have them through sections. We should be selective and use images sparingly and for proper effect. Images should be relevant and directly related to the text which encompasses them. Some of these images offer little more than a distraction from the text. I've placed several images next to their appropriate sections and it seems much less chaotic. I think a few more will be good, but let's decide on their usage for additional protest photos. They are commented out in a section in the article, but Commons has many more images to consider. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 05:48, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

The images are very useful to illustrate the article. You have removed almost all photos from the protests and the police response, as well as other relevant photos. This detracts from the article. - Cwobeel (talk) 16:24, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

You've not provided a reason. You instead made a a statement about liking the edit, but not nothing about image relevancy and use which is important for the image use policy. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 17:12, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

The reason is simple: Images are excellent to illustrate the events, in particular when we have an abundance of them. - Cwobeel (talk) 17:14, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

Commented out issues for UNDUE/Relevancy

I commented a couple of details out after viewing similiar articles and I would like a discussion on how they improve the article.

• The Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity paid the entire costs for the memorial and funeral services.
• At a rally held the day before, Brown's family asked that supporters suspend their protests for one day out of respect for the funeral proceedings.
• ....including three White House officials: Broderick Johnson, head of the White House's "My Brother's Keeper Task Force"; Marlon Marshall, who attended high school with Brown's mother; and Heather Foster, who works in the Office of Public Engagement.
• On October 18, an altercation between Michael Brown's relatives over the sale of merchandise bearing Brown's likeness resulted in Michael Brown's cousin being beaten with a metal pipe or pole and taken to the hospital for treatment. A witness reported that merchandise and about $1,400 in cash were taken in the course of the incident.

I do not see how these details improve the understanding of the topic, the first is almost like an advertisement. The second does not contain any follow up or any indication the request was recognized. The third adds nothing of context to the article. The final is tangentially related, but not essential or followed up by subsequent reports even by the media, but might have the thinnest of reasons to be included. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 06:35, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

The first and last may go, but the second one should remain. - Cwobeel (talk) 15:30, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

Please provide a reason. You have not provided a reason. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 16:51, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

The presence of White House officials is significant to merit inclusion. - Cwobeel (talk) 17:02, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

Then why do you need their names and titles if they do nothing else. At least Al Sharpton actually did something, but he gets no introduction. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 17:09, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

Grand jury quotes redux

The RFC that was a part of the "POV Issues Regarding Controversy Section" talk page section is clear, and while not formerly closed - the consensus is clear that minimal quotes and the summary style presentation of quotes. Despite Cwobeel's claim of false balance, Cwobeel has repeatedly failed to bring up a major disparity in reliable sources - in fact, the opposite seems to be true amongst actual experts within the fields of criminal prosecution and criminal rights, and criminal law. Of the views on December 11, many were out of context and relied on cherry-picked quotes from sources which made other arguments or poor sources which never should have been included at all, like Tom Nolan. In the fairness of balance and placement, most of the text was integrated and moved with four "accusations" being condensed and without the attribution requirement because the existence of the accusation does not merit such detailed singling out when the focus was not even on the specific accusation itself. This was misleading and I personally think that changing the entirety of an argument to single out some tiny single sentence is not helping. By cutting down on this, the supporting context could also be further condensed - but two attributions still exist because they are opinions that are not undisputed and yet the core of the counter. In the grand scheme, WP:UNDUE guides us more on this matter than usual because of the 2014 Ferguson unrest page. The inclusion is not perfect - nor complete - but it is reflecting the balance. Any thoughts on how to improve it better? ChrisGualtieri (talk) 08:06, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

The RFC is not closed but the emerging consensus there was to summarize, not to suppress. What you have done single handled, is to eliminate from the article a substantial number of opinions that you believe them to be "false" or "wrong", the antithesis of NPOV. In addition, you have chosen a single source to provide background on the grand jury, asserting their opinions as fact, while requiring full attribution for other opinions. This is totally unacceptable editing, and contrary to NPOV. - Cwobeel (talk) 15:29, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

I have restored the material and consolidated all viewpoints including Cassell's after the description of the facts related to the Grand jury. The article should not give prominence to Cassell's viewpoint over other viewpoints, and attribution is needed for items about which there are conflicting viewpoints for NPOV. Note that this material has already been summarized and many other opinions removed. - Cwobeel (talk) 15:43, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

The RFC is a clear consensus. WP:ASSERT - fact are not opinions and should not be attributed as if they were opinions. As mentioned before, the burden is on you to dispute the grand jury process against over 50 undisputed sources. Please stop misrepresenting my edits and my statements, the "opinions" you claim were deleted have been present all along. Calling it "deleted material" is a lie when you delete the summary and delete the other summary to restore the full version you preferred in apparent and complete contradiction to consensus. This is not helpful and you have also got @Bob K31416: removing your dubious insertions. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 17:07, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

The RFC is still ongoing and calling for a summary of the opinions . Your edits removed most, if not all, the material without summarizing and grouping the quotes. Also, please pay attention as in your reverts, you are also removing other edits I have made that were unrelated to this content dispute. - Cwobeel (talk) 17:13, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

The RFC should be closed and its decision is clear - you continue to ignore WP:IRS, WP:NPOV and take actions even after your insertions were questioned. Now you have used bad-faith accusations and used the Roll Back Vandalism part of Twinkle to do so. I think you need to disengage because your insertions are questioned. Please stop making accusations and misrepresenting the edits of others. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 17:23, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

This bickering back and forth needs to stop. Focus on the content, not editor conduct. I think this first sentence from Cassell needs to be attributed to him as opinion;

the American grand jury process operates in secret to collect evidence and to test the memory of witnesses against that evidence; this is done to prevent witnesses from altering their testimony to match statements made by previous witnesses.

The part I bolded is a fact, and while the rest of the sentence may arguably be true, it should probably be attributed as his opinion. As far as the last sentence in that para is concerned, it is also a fact, but I also don't see a problem with the way it is presently worded. As for the rest of the disputed content, if you have to, bring them individually to the talk page again and discuss ways for improvement. Isaidnoway (talk) 18:49, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

It is unneccessary, but it is the textbook example. Though it is not an opinion, it is unnecessary, it should be removed and the rest restored. We do not need to go into public preliminary hearing issues since it was not used, but the U.S. District judge is correct. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 19:11, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

I also think the first two paragraphs in that section should be switched around as well, we should start that section out by giving some background on the grand jury. This should be the opening para for that section. The rest can be eliminated or moved elsewhere where it would be apropos.

The members of the grand jury were impaneled in May 2014, prior to the shooting, and consisted of three blacks (one man and two women) and nine whites (six men and three women), which roughly corresponded to the racial makeup of St. Louis County.[142] The racial make up of St. Louis County is 70% white and the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson was about 66% black.[143] On August 20, the grand jury started hearing evidence in the case. The hearing was handled by two prosecutors of McCulloch's office, Assistant District Attorneys Kathi Alizadeh and Sheila Whirley.[49] The grand jury was instructed that they could not return an indictment unless they found probable cause that Wilson did not act in self defense and did not act lawfully in the use of deadly force by law enforcement agents.[144] It would take the grand jury 25 days over the span of three months to hear more than 5,000 pages of testimony from 60 witnesses and then deliberate on whether or not to indict Wilson.[141][11] Throughout the process the grand jury was not sequestered during the proceedings. Isaidnoway (talk) 19:20, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

Cwobeel warring

User conduct problems aren't for this talk page.

Has now used the Roll Back Vandalism part of Twinkle, made accusations of bad faith editing, restored false material into the article and violated consensus from an RFC and three talk page sections. This seems to be edit warring, so I ask @Isaidnoway: or @Bob K31416: or some other editor to review this because Cwobeel is not listening to policy or others. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 17:18, 31 December 2014 (UTC) Chris, if you think that Cwobeel has violated policy there are forums for you to bring that accusation. This is not one of them, and this section is outside the scope of this talk page. Dyrnych (talk) 17:37, 31 December 2014 (UTC) Cwobeel's actions represent a stark escalation which includes accusations of bad faith - I am asking for review. Cwobeel does not follow the source and instead changes the title to "Assistant District Attorneys" for Kathi Alizadeh and Sheila Whirley, which is false. McCulloch is the Prosecuting Attorney, not the District Attorney. An assistant of the Prosecuting Attorney is not an Assistant District Attorney. The change is a misstatement of fact and is not even in the source to which it is cited, making it the 20th false insertion by Cwobeel that I've caught in less then two weeks. You better believe that its relevancy applies to this page - because the insertion was false and Cwobeel is continuing to insert "facts" from Daily Kos and other sources and does not even provide the sourcing, then labels the reversion as vandalism. That is a problem. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 18:28, 31 December 2014 (UTC) Corrected to "Assistant Prosecuting Attorneys", per [35]. If I am warring, so are you. I am now on break until the new year. Happy New year to all of you. - Cwobeel (talk) 18:34, 31 December 2014 (UTC) (edit conflict) TAKE IT TO THE APPROPRIATE FORUM. I understand that you two have issues and I am TIRED of seeing this talk page cluttered with BOTH of you bickering at each other, and this is just another example of that as far as I'm concerned—especially given how small potatoes this allegedly false assertion seems to be, which is absolutely typical of this continued squabbling. Dyrnych (talk) 18:38, 31 December 2014 (UTC) Wikipedia:Requests for mediation/Shooting of Michael brown has been filed for the other issues, but please remain calm. Caps lock and bold is equivalent to yelling. "Small potatoes" does not apply when it comes to information on living people and recognizing the correct profession is a part of that. Providing the source for your insertions is a basic part of policy, something which Cwobeel did not do as well in the correcting edit because the inline does not contain the information. It requires the attribution to this source to be correct. @Cwobeel: please complete the correction. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 18:48, 31 December 2014 (UTC) I am comfortable with having yelled at you there, because this is getting tiresome. Small potatoes absolutely does apply here, because it is absurd to conclude that going on a diatribe about escalation over edits that get someone's title wrong is a proportionate response to the magnitude of whatever BLP violation that represents. Dyrnych (talk) 18:54, 31 December 2014 (UTC) I'm closing this, we've had to listen to this kind of complaint at least three times. This is not a venue for your user related complaints. --RAN1 (talk) 05:11, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

Something happened.

Resolved

Between my edit to add details and Cwobeel's edits, a bunch of things got all crossed. Cwobeel I do not agree with your chronological restructuring so in your "BRD" case - cease it for a moment and let's figure out what the heck happened here. My addition and your additions are now totally tangled up for some reason. We need to figure out how to proceed. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 07:09, 1 January 2015 (UTC) The Daily Caller issues are removed... but I didn't remove them in the edit because my edit was different from Cwobeels.... what happened? ChrisGualtieri (talk) 07:14, 1 January 2015 (UTC) I do not know what the heck happened. But for some reason this edit does not support the 40 of 64 claim so it should not be reinserted until fixed. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 07:25, 1 January 2015 (UTC) Aside from some restructuring and two content issues by Cwobeel and a now moot removal by Ran1 the article is basically fine. I still think the document release section and so many things are totally UNDUE and the actual important documents are not covered properly... but the article is still very confusing in form. In trying to go for Cwobeel's chronology it becomes apparent that this is flawed and it leads to an incoherent jumble of things which are disputed or unknown and only later clarified. This begins with the Investigations extends to the Evidence and gets completely off by the witness accounts. "Document Releases" is not important and only "Reaction and Aftermath" need to exist to cover the events by chronology. The evaluation I just did for Cwobeel's chronology is a really apparent example of why it doesn't work... I'm going to let other people comment because the article structure needs to be defined and moving things about is not working. It needs a defined structure in order to be effective for the reader's comprehension of the subject - chronology will not work. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 07:44, 1 January 2015 (UTC) After consulting - I figured it out. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 12:52, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

Chronology restored

After some consulting it became apparent Cwobeel's intention was not to have an actual chronology in the article, but more the evolution of the story and how it played out. This is the essential function of the Ferguson unrest article, but it is also the story of the story. By flipping the breakdown on its head the details can be presented without resulting in confusion over the timeline or the subject matter. This results in a timeline which is almost entirely duplicated by the 2014 Ferguson unrest page, but that is for another time. Toobin's comments are now reflective while not inflective. A reminder to all, that Either-Or Reasoning, does not exist on complex issues. The snow job-type argument that there was "overwhelming criticism" was instead "discussion" in the media on the topic. The vast majority of reliable sources said the result was expected or justified given the evidence, but the process did not inspire confidence despite being typical and very routine in similar situations. Now hopefully, the structure better reflects the information and the public reaction by time. I did not intend to go full Tomlinson on this and I hope everyone else will agree that this article can be better than that. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 13:55, 1 January 2015 (UTC)