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Post by Admin on Aug 20, 2014 23:45:11 GMT
In documents released by police during a press conference Friday, Michael Brown is named as a suspect in a strong-arm robbery of a box of cigars moments before he was shot to death by Officer Darren Wilson. A police offense incident report dated Aug. 9 that was part of the packet of documents Ferguson, Mo. Police Chief Thomas Jackson released quotes the officer writing, "I was able to confirm that Brown is the primary suspect in this incident." The report does not name the officer or contain an officer's signature. It also does not contain the address where the robbery is said to have happened. But it provides the following description of the robbery: An employee at a Ferguson convenience store saw Brown grab a box of Swisher Sweet cigars and hand them to another young man identified as Dorrian Johnson, who was standing behind him. The employee said he told Brown he had to pay for the cigars and instead, Brown reached across the counter and grabbed numerous packets of cigars and turned to leave the store. The report says according to the employee Brown grabbed his shirt and pushed him into a display rack. Then he and Johnson left the store without paying. The report describes Brown as 6'4, 292 pounds and wearing a white T-shirt, khaki long shorts, yellow socks and a red Cardinals baseball cap. Jackson released dispatch records and video surveillance of the robbery as well. Brown was unarmed when Wilson killed him. Witnesses in the area say Brown had raised his hands to surrender when he was shot. Police have not confirmed that information.
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Post by Admin on Nov 25, 2014 22:31:07 GMT
Anger and despair swept through many parts of America after a Missouri grand jury decided not to indict Darren Wilson for killing Michael Brown. What was behind the wave of emotion? Why do so many refuse to accept the grand jurors' choice not to charge the white cop with a crime in the death of the unarmed black teen? Why is there such disregard for the new evidence released with the decision? Interviews around the U.S. show that these roiling emotions spring as much from America's troubled racial history — which in many eyes has drained the justice system of legitimacy — as from a rational examination of all the evidence. For many people, this history is the inseparable context for the 90 seconds of Brown and Wilson's fatal encounter — and a rationale for the fury that has followed. Since the St. Louis County grand jury decision was released Monday, the anger has manifested itself in various ways across America: raucous protests in several cities; sharp conversations at work and between friends; raging on talk radio; impassioned comments on social media. And, of course, the anger erupted into the burning, looting and gunshots that wracked Ferguson for hours on Monday night. Many took issue with the way Prosecutor Bob McCulloch chose to present and frame the evidence, or with the shifting explanation of why Wilson first stopped Brown. Others were upset that only three of the nine jury members were black in a scenario that did not require unanimity or permit the possibility of a hung jury. Then there were the emotional reactions, and a preexisting lack of confidence, for many, in the fairness and integrity of the U.S. legal system.
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Post by Admin on Nov 26, 2014 22:58:51 GMT
Wilson, after pausing to make sure that the chamber of his gun was loaded (“I racked it”), fired again in Brown’s “general direction.” Brown ran away, conjuring up “a cloud of dust behind him” on the asphalt, but the retreat did not last long. When Wilson pursued him on foot, Brown, who had already been shot at and hit at least once, “turns, and when he looked at me, he made like a grunting, like aggravated sound and he starts, he turns and he’s coming back towards me,” Wilson said. Wilson said that he experienced “tunnel vision,” and that he was looking only at Brown’s right hand, which was “under his shirt in his waistband”—not up in the air, as some witnesses recall. “I remember seeing the smoke from the gun and I kind of looked at him and he’s still coming at me, he hadn’t slowed down,” Wilson said. There was more smoke, and a strangely dark reflection, before the third volley: Brown had now been hit more than once, but somehow couldn’t get enough of the bullets—“he was almost bulking up to run through the shots.” He, Brown, might as well have been a ghost in the swamp: “the face that he had was looking straight through me, like I wasn’t even there, I wasn’t even anything in his way,” Wilson said. Wilson was by then “backing up pretty rapidly,” he said—“because I know if he reaches me, he’ll kill me”—until he was eight to ten feet away. Then Wilson shot the final bullets in Brown’s head. “Is there anything you could have done differently that would have prevented that killing from taking place?” George Stephanopoulos asked. “No,” Wilson replied. He said that he thought that Brown might kill him: “I just felt the immense power that he had.” Wilson told the grand jury that he was just shy of six foot four and weighed two hundred and ten pounds—not small. But Wilson presents himself as having been overwhelmed by Brown’s physicality—when they scuffled through the car window, he said, “the only way I can describe it is I felt like a five-year-old holding onto Hulk Hogan.” Brown comes across as a big, mad genie. The first thing that Wilson did when he returned to the station was to go in the bathroom and scrub Brown’s blood off of his hands. (“I still had it in my cuticles and stuff, so I washed my hands again.”) In his grand-jury testimony, Wilson described Brown’s power as having an almost hypnotic, or totemic aspect: “He was just staring at me, almost like to intimidate me or to overpower me. The intense face he had was just not what I expected from any of this.” “Is there anything you could have done differently that would have prevented that killing from taking place?” George Stephanopoulos asked. “No,” Wilson replied. He said that he thought that Brown might kill him: “I just felt the immense power that he had.” Wilson told the grand jury that he was just shy of six foot four and weighed two hundred and ten pounds—not small. But Wilson presents himself as having been overwhelmed by Brown’s physicality—when they scuffled through the car window, he said, “the only way I can describe it is I felt like a five-year-old holding onto Hulk Hogan.” Brown comes across as a big, mad genie. The first thing that Wilson did when he returned to the station was to go in the bathroom and scrub Brown’s blood off of his hands. (“I still had it in my cuticles and stuff, so I washed my hands again.”) In his grand-jury testimony, Wilson described Brown’s power as having an almost hypnotic, or totemic aspect: “He was just staring at me, almost like to intimidate me or to overpower me. The intense face he had was just not what I expected from any of this.” Michael Brown’s face, almost as much as his body, was what Wilson cited when he talked about control of the situation being taken away from him. Brown kept looking angry—still like “a demon,” as Wilson called him—his discontent making him presumptively dangerous: scary. The legal question, for the grand jury, was whether Wilson reasonably felt that his life was threatened each time that he fired at Brown, not just during the confrontation in the car. In declining to indict him on any charges, the jurors, in effect, deferred to the persistence of his fear.
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Post by Admin on Nov 27, 2014 22:46:11 GMT
Perhaps it was the biting cold, or maybe it was because of Thanksgiving. But Ferguson was much calmer Thursday than it has been the past two days. A few dozen protesters showed up outside police headquarters in Ferguson late Wednesday night. And standing under a "Seasons Greetings" sign stretching over the road, they fired obscenities at National Guard members who stood on watch outside the police department's offices. But there were no incidents, no confrontations between the two sides. Police made two arrests, and no injuries or damages were reported. For his part, Wilson is in talks to leave the Ferguson Police Department and may give up being an officer altogether. "It's not a question of if, it's a question of when," Wilson's attorney, Neil Bruntrager, told CNN's Don Lemon late Wednesday. "Realistically, he can't go back to being a police officer. He knows that. There's no illusion about any of this." Wilson has said he killed the 18-year-old Brown out of fear for his life during their encounter on August 9. He maintains he hasn't done anything wrong. Though he hasn't said much, Wilson sympathizes with Brown's family, his attorney said. Brown's parents don't believe Wilson's version of events, telling CNN's Sunny Hostin their son would never have taunted the officer nor reached for his weapon. "He's a murderer," Brown's father said, referring to Wilson. "He understood his actions. He understood exactly what he was doing. You know, he didn't have a second thought, a pushback thought, or nothing. He was intending to kill someone. That's how I look at it," Brown said. "He was going to kill someone at that point." Michael Brown's mother said hearing that a grand jury had decided not to indict the officer who killed her son felt like getting shot. Back in Ferguson, a one-mile stretch of West Florissant Avenue, the site of previous protests, was closed to cars and pedestrians, with authorities saying the burned-out buildings on the route are crime scenes. One of those buildings is Flood Christian Church, where Michael Brown Sr. is a member. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is leading an investigation into the fire that destroyed the church, a spokesman said. Investigators have found that someone broke into the church, and the fire began in a foyer near the doors that were breached, the ATF spokesman said.
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Post by Admin on Nov 29, 2014 22:47:11 GMT
Sometimes, words simply fail. And so it is a photograph of tender consolement — rather than images of bloody demonstrations — that has touched hearts of more than 150,000 people. Since it went online Tuesday, a photo of 12-year-old Devonte Hart, a black boy with tears streaming down his young face, being embraced by a white, helmeted policeman, who holds him tightly, has gone viral. More than 150,000 people have shared the image on Facebook since the The Oregonian published it online. Johnny Nguyen, a freelance photographer, captured the image during a demonstration over the Ferguson, Mo., grand jury decision to not indict a white officer for shooting to death an unarmed black teenager. Nguyen said he saw Hart in the crowd, carrying sign that said “Free Hugs,” as he wept copious tears. Portland Police Sgt. Bret Barnum approached the boy and asked him why he was crying. And then Hart broke down. As the white man and the black child embraced, mom Jen Hart said she experienced “one of the most emotionally charged experiences I’ve had as a mother,” she wrote on Facebook.
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