Michael Brown Shooting in Ferguson, Missouri

Michael Brown

I have been waiting to write about this until the facts are available, but I think there's been enough brought out so far to form some valid opinions and conclusions.  As you probably already know an 18 year old black man (I hesitate to call anybody 6'4" and nearly 300 lbs. in this situation a boy even though it could very well be appropriate regarding his maturity level) was shot and killed by a 28 yeard old white police officer on Saturday, August 9.  The timeline according to USA Today includes:

Saturday Aug. 9

11:48 a.m. to noon – An officer responds to a call of a sick person.
11:51 a.m. – Another call comes in about a robbery at a convenience store. The dispatcher gives a description of the robber and says the suspect is walking toward the Quick Trip convenience store.
12:01 p.m. – The officer encounters Michael Brown and a friend as they walk down a street. Brown is shot to death as a result of the encounter.
12:04 p.m. – A second officer arrives on the scene followed by a supervisor one minute later. An ambulance responding to the earlier sick person call drives by and responds to assess Brown.

Sunday Aug. 10

10 a.m. – Michael Brown, 18, was unarmed, St. Louis County Police Chief Joe Belmar says in a news conference. Belmar says Brown physically assaulted the officer, and during a struggle between the two, Brown reached for the officer's gun. One shot was fired in the car followed by other gunshots outside of the car.

 
I'm going to leave out a lot of the rhetoric and talking points that you get from the talking heads and focus instead on facts and logical conclusions based on those facts.  First of all, let's deal with the word that makes this story so compelling ..... "unarmed".  Here's a video of a policeman who was shot and killed with his own gun by an "unarmed" suspect.     

Here's another video of an unarmed suspect rushing a police officer with nearly the same results.  Fortunately for him there was another officer nearby who came to his aid. 

This is not to say that this is what happened in the Michael Brown shooting.  It's just a reminder of what cops face on a regular basis.  Policemen have a second or two to make the decision .... "do I shoot an unarmed man or do I allow him the opportunity to overpower me, take my gun, and shoot me with it?"
 

Surveillance camera still frame from the
strongarm cigar box theft

The initial media reports on the shooting in Ferguson had the narrative of "unarmed black teenage boy shot by white policeman ... riots ensue".  When it was revealed that Brown was 6'4" and weighed 290 lbs. the talking points became "he was a gentle giant".  When the police released a video of the "strongarm robbery" of a box of cigars, it was obvious that not only was this no little boy, but he was not exactly gentle either as he tossed aside the convenience store clerk like a rag doll.  At that point the talking points became "they're attacking his character". 

Brown's friend Dorian Johnson initially claimed that Brown was shot once in the back.

Johnson says he was within arm’s reach of both Brown and the officer. He looked over at Brown and saw blood pooling through his shirt on the right side of the body.

“The whole time [the officer] was holding my friend until the gun went off,” Johnson noted.


Brown's friend and accomplice Dorian Johnson

Brown and Johnson took off running together. There were three cars lined up along the side of the street.
Johnson says he ducked behind the first car, whose two passengers were screaming. Crouching down a bit, he watched Brown run past.
“Keep running, bro!,” he said Brown yelled. Then Brown yelled it a second time. Those would be the last words Johnson’s friend, “Big Mike,” would ever say to him.
Brown made it past the third car. Then, “blam!” the officer took his second shot, striking Brown in the back. At that point, Johnson says Brown stopped, turned with his hands up and said “I don’t have a gun, stop shooting!” 

http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/eyewitness-michael-brown-fatal-shooting-missouri


When the autopsy was released a few days later it showed that all of the shots were fired from in front of Brown, and he was not shot from behind as Johnson claimed.

At this point the narrative changed once again from "he was shot in the back" to "the autopsy proves that he was surrendering."  A few days later it was revealed that the policeman suffered a swollen face (some say he had an injury to his eye socket) in the struggle.  It should come as no surprise that Dorian Johnson lied about what happened, as he has previously been charged with filing a false report.  Additionally Johnson changed his original story to include the previously omitted admission of stealing the cigars.

Now for those of you who are wondering what would motivate somebody to steal a box of cigars, these weren't just any cigars.  They were Swisher Sweets, which are known for  being used by weed smokers who replace the tobacco with marijuana. 
 
"Cheap cigars that most people use to roll blunts with. Very easy to split and dump out the tobacco to replace with weed. Popular among rappers."

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=swisher+sweets

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-d9Uxq2iTfM


The New York Times reported that Brown had "no adult arrest record, according to the police, who said they could not speak to whether he had been arrested as a juvenile."  They can't speak to it because juvenile criminal records are usually sealed.  And since he was only 18 years old his adult record would have only gone back a year or so.  It remains to be seen whether his death will allow for his record (if any) to be made public, but it does seem curious to me that they would make a point of using the caveat "adult" in their statement. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/16/us/ferguson-mo-michael-brown-and-darren-wilson-2-paths-to-a-fatal-encounter.html?_r=0

Officer Darren Wilson

The officer who fired the fatal shot was Darren Wilson, a six year veteran policeman who had served four years at Ferguson and two with another St. Louis area police department in Jennings.  By all accounts Wilson had an excellent record with no complaints and at least one commendation.

I think we can all agree that a police officer shooting and killing an unarmed man who has his hands raised in surrender would be guilty of murder. Likewise we can all agree that an officer who is being attacked in an effort to take his gun away would be justified in using deadly force.  I think we can also agree that much of what we're hearing from the parties involved in this story is just meaningless chatter. The race of the officer and the racial composition of the Ferguson community aren't really the issue here. The only thing that matters is what happened, and to determine what happened we have to look at verifiable facts, such as the ones I've listed here.

So to sum up, a 6'4" 290 lb. young man stole a box of cigars that are known for being used to create blunts for smoking weed.  A few minutes later an officer with an admirable record of service confronted him and an altercation followed, resulting in an injury to the face of the officer who ended up firing six shots from the front with the last one striking the subject in the head as the fatal wound.  The key witness who claims that Brown was surrendering at the time that he was shot was with Brown during the theft and has a previous charge of filing a false report, and the subsequent riots in Ferguson are based largely on his account of the events.

We'll be waiting awhile for the toxicology report and any news on Michael Brown's possible juvenile arrest record to add further illumination on the events, but for now these are verifiable facts.  Based on the facts, what do you think is more likely to have occurred?  A racist, white cop shot an unarmed black teenager "execution style" in broad daylight just for jaywalking, or a 6'4" 290 lb. thief was fatally shot by a police officer when a confrontation ended in a violent struggle?