General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: What You Can Do if You're a 17-Year-Old White Male without Getting Shot by Police [View all]thesquanderer
(12,034 posts)...and be skeptical of the ones that don't. It's called confirmation bias. And liberals are as susceptible to it as conservatives.
The point you are making is basically a good one. There are two statements that cannot both be true (Wilson knew about the robbery, Wilson did not know about the robbery). Without evidence, there's no reason to believe one over the other... except that people tend to believe the statements that fit their preconceived ideas.
That said, your post centers on whether or not there was a 911 call, and you're right, it should be easy to prove there was one. However--and I could be wrong--I don't think that's actually in dispute. My understanding was that there definitely was a 911 call, and the question is whether or not Wilson knew about it. Nobody--not even Wilson--suggests that Wilson had been dispatched to address that 911 call. He claims he heard chatter on the radio about others being dispatched for it. Maybe he did, maybe he didn't, and that's not something so easy to provide clear evidence of. (Of course, even if he did, that doesn't mean his actions were justified.) The most that could be provided to support his story would be a tape of the precinct dispatching *someone* to address that 911 call. And if that were recorded, I would think they would want to release it, though I'm not sure dispatch broadcasts are necessarily recorded (911 calls are). But assuming they are recorded, even if they produce such a recording, it doesn't prove that he heard it, but it would at least add some support.