Time for Truth

[Richard Smith]

Should the police have responded to the report of a person, who didn't plausibly match the clothing description of the suspect, acting suspiciously in the vicinity of the crime scene?

Fair question! To which the answer is: Yes, absolutely, they should have sent a couple of officers to check it out. There was a chance the man in the brown shirt might be somehow involved.

That would have been a rational and proportional response to a report that was interesting, but not nearly as promising as the library report.

 

We are making snail-like progress.  No one could have thought it possible!  So the police SHOULD have responded to the TT.  We have cleared that up.  Now grasshopper ask yourself the next question.  Who are the police looking for in that area?  A cop murdering killer.   Is such a person potentially dangerous?  Yes!  This guy could turn out to be that person.  He could turn out not to be that person like the guy in the library where a heavy police response was sent.  What should they do?  Send a light response and potentially get more officers killed or send a heavy response to ensure the safety of the responding officers?

[Alan Ford]

We are making snail-like progress.  No one could have thought it possible!  So the police SHOULD have responded to the TT.  We have cleared that up.  Now grasshopper ask yourself the next question.  Who are the police looking for in that area?  A cop murdering killer.

Wearing a white shirt.

A man in a brown shirt is highly unlikely to be the cop-murdering killer.

You lose! 

[Martin Weidmann]

What mind boggling logic.  You claimed that Roberts was the "only" person to see Oswald was wearing a jacket.  When it is pointed out that this is false because other witnesses also reported him wearing a jacket you somehow twist this to mean he wasn't wearing a jacket!  Astounding in its lunacy.

So, you don't understand how circular "logic" works? And still you use it far too often.

I'm not twisting anything. That's your departement!

Now pay attention and at least try to understand this; If Oswald did not leave the roominghouse wearing a jacket (as you assume he did) and the other witnesses saw a man wearing a jacket, Oswald couldn't have been the man they saw.

We know from Marina that Oswald only had two jackets, a light grey and a blue/grey one. Both are now in the National Archives. Buell Wesley Frasier saw Oswald wearing a light grey jacket to Irving on Thursday evening and we know that Oswald was wearing the blue/grey jacket on Friday morning, as it was found at the TSBD after the assassination. So, genius, how can Oswald put on a light grey jacket at the rooming house when Frazier places that same jacket in fact in Irving?

[Richard Smith]

So, you don't understand how circular "logic" works? And still you use it far too often.

I'm not twisting anything. That's your departement!

Now pay attention and at least try to understand this; If Oswald did not leave the roominghouse wearing a jacket (as you assume he did) and the other witnesses saw a man wearing a jacket, Oswald couldn't have been the man they saw.

We know from Marina that Oswald only had two jackets, a light grey and a blue/grey one. Both are now in the National Archives. Buell Wesley Frasier saw Oswald wearing a light grey jacket to Irving on Thursday evening and we know that Oswald was wearing the blue/grey jacket on Friday morning, as it was found at the TSBD after the assassination. So, genius, how can Oswald put on a light grey jacket at the rooming house when Frazier places that same jacket in fact in Irving?

Good grief.  I don't "assume" anything.  It's the witness at the boardinghouse who testified that Oswald was wearing a jacket when he left.  Other witnesses who saw him before he reached the TT confirm he was wearing a jacket.  They didn't just identify a "man" wearing a jacket.  They identified Oswald as the "man" and the man (Oswald) as wearing a jacket.  So multiple witnesses put Oswald in a jacket before reaching the TT.   

[Richard Smith]

Wearing a white shirt.

A man in a brown shirt is highly unlikely to be the cop-murdering killer.

You lose! 

That is not the question.  You already agreed that the police had cause to go to the TT because they had received a report of a suspicious man entering that theatre that was in the vicinity of the crime.  The question then becomes how they should respond.  Now who are they looking for?  A cop killing murderer who is armed and dangerous.  Right?  Maybe it turns out he is not the guy in the TT.  Maybe he is.   What level of force should they use to sort this out?  At the library, they sent a heavy response because their suspect is obviously dangerous.  What should they do at the TT?  The same thing.  There is nothing lost by having too many officers responding to a potentially dangerous situation.  There is a risk of harm coming to send too few.

[Martin Weidmann]

Good grief.  I don't "assume" anything.  It's the witness at the boardinghouse who testified that Oswald was wearing a jacket when he left.  Other witnesses who saw him before he reached the TT confirm he was wearing a jacket.  They didn't just identify a "man" wearing a jacket.  They identified Oswald as the "man" and the man (Oswald) as wearing a jacket.  So multiple witnesses put Oswald in a jacket before reaching the TT.   

Oh boy.... The whole thing is a multitude of assumptions.

Why do you assume that Roberts is correct, when Buell Wesley Frazier places the light grey jacket in Irving on Thursday evening?

And why are you assuming that eyewitness testimony (which in fact is the most unreliable evidence there is) is always correct?

[John Iacoletti]

That's all I've been getting at - that there is a general trustworthiness regarding Brewer's account as it is corroborated by multiple witness accounts.

I disagree. Literally nothing and nobody corroborates the early radio broadcast of the police shooting, the man in front of the shoe shop looking “funny”, or anybody turning the corner into the recessed area of the theater. Maybe if the mysterious “IBM men” could be found…

There can also be little doubt that the man Brewer pointed out to various officers was Lee Harvey Oswald.

I have no problem with that.

It appears Oswald had indeed bought shoes from that particular shoestore and was remembered by Brewer as an awkward customer. So it is safe to assume, because Brewer recognised Oswald as a previous customer, that the man he saw ducking into his store, the man he believed went into the Texas Theater and the man he pointed out to multiple police officers in the cinema, were one and the same man.

An assumption, nonetheless. By the way, like the Burroughs account being belated, the story about having sold Oswald shoes doesn’t appear in Brewer’s affidavit or testimony.

What is very hard to deny is that the sole reason the police descended on the Texas Theater was the phone call from Postal.

Despite the fact that the description that Postal said she gave the dispatcher was nothing like the description of the guy at the Tippit scene that was broadcast. Go figure.

And that the reason for this phone call was Brewer's intervention due to the suspicious activity of his ex-customer at a time when sirens were blaring up and down Jefferson and it had just been reported on the radio that there had been a shooting in Oak Cliff.

Postal didn’t mention any of this to the police dispatcher either.

It is also safe to say that, if it hadn't been for Brewer's intervention, Oswald would not have been arrested in the Texas Theater.

Perhaps and perhaps not. Either way, there was no probable cause to arrest Oswald for murder. The police overstepped. Not Brewer’s or Postal’s fault, but even Brewer admitted that he thought “what am I doing here?” as he approached the theater.