Cops Criminalize Michael Brown After His Death At the Hands of the Police
Saturday, August 16, 2014
By Owen Boss
The police chief in Ferguson, Mo., yesterday identified the cop who shot and killed an unarmed black teenager and released a report alleging that the young man committed a “strong-arm” robbery shortly before he was killed, a bungled response that local black leaders say appeared aimed at making the shooting look justified.
“Unfortunately, there is a tendency by police to release information that they think will cast them in a better light and that is clearly what is playing out in Ferguson,” said Michael Curry, president of the Boston chapter of the NAACP.
Ferguson police Chief Thomas Jackson said officer Darren Wilson, a 28-year-old white officer who patrolled suburban St. Louis for six years and had no previous complaints filed against him, didn’t know 18-year-old Michael Brown was a robbery suspect at the time of the shooting and stopped him and a companion “because they were walking down the middle of the street blocking traffic.”
Family attorneys said Brown’s parents were blindsided by the allegations and the release of a surveillance video from the convenience store.
“Even if this kid wasn’t perfect, the bottom line is whether he put his hands up and whether the police fired on an unarmed man,” Curry said. “That should be the focus of this conversation — not what took place beforehand.”
Darnell L. Williams, director of Urban League of Eastern Massachusetts, said the simultaneous release of surveillance images that appear to show Brown robbing a store and the identity of the officer who fired the fatal shots was just another example of police trying to control the conversation.
“The last thing that the police need to be doing in Ferguson or anyplace else is to not be transparent with the public and then to try to manufacture data, which is repulsive,” Williams said. “When you have the BBC covering something that happened in Missouri, that shows that the eyes of the world are on this incident and this is not the time for the police to be less than transparent.”
Horace Small, executive director of the Union of Minority Neighborhoods, said the mantra “police are our friends” often isn’t true when it comes to dealing with the black community.
“A white kid can go to a movie theater in Colorado and kill 18 people and be put in the back of a police car alive, but a black kid walking down the middle of the street in Ferguson, Missouri, totally unarmed, can be shot dead,” he said. “If there is any lesson to be learned here it is that police departments across the country have to go out of their way to build relationships with minority communities and go out of their way to make that relationship real.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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| Michael Brown is being criminalized after being killed by police. |
By Owen Boss
The police chief in Ferguson, Mo., yesterday identified the cop who shot and killed an unarmed black teenager and released a report alleging that the young man committed a “strong-arm” robbery shortly before he was killed, a bungled response that local black leaders say appeared aimed at making the shooting look justified.
“Unfortunately, there is a tendency by police to release information that they think will cast them in a better light and that is clearly what is playing out in Ferguson,” said Michael Curry, president of the Boston chapter of the NAACP.
Ferguson police Chief Thomas Jackson said officer Darren Wilson, a 28-year-old white officer who patrolled suburban St. Louis for six years and had no previous complaints filed against him, didn’t know 18-year-old Michael Brown was a robbery suspect at the time of the shooting and stopped him and a companion “because they were walking down the middle of the street blocking traffic.”
Family attorneys said Brown’s parents were blindsided by the allegations and the release of a surveillance video from the convenience store.
“Even if this kid wasn’t perfect, the bottom line is whether he put his hands up and whether the police fired on an unarmed man,” Curry said. “That should be the focus of this conversation — not what took place beforehand.”
Darnell L. Williams, director of Urban League of Eastern Massachusetts, said the simultaneous release of surveillance images that appear to show Brown robbing a store and the identity of the officer who fired the fatal shots was just another example of police trying to control the conversation.
“The last thing that the police need to be doing in Ferguson or anyplace else is to not be transparent with the public and then to try to manufacture data, which is repulsive,” Williams said. “When you have the BBC covering something that happened in Missouri, that shows that the eyes of the world are on this incident and this is not the time for the police to be less than transparent.”
Horace Small, executive director of the Union of Minority Neighborhoods, said the mantra “police are our friends” often isn’t true when it comes to dealing with the black community.
“A white kid can go to a movie theater in Colorado and kill 18 people and be put in the back of a police car alive, but a black kid walking down the middle of the street in Ferguson, Missouri, totally unarmed, can be shot dead,” he said. “If there is any lesson to be learned here it is that police departments across the country have to go out of their way to build relationships with minority communities and go out of their way to make that relationship real.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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