Ferguson Shooting, The story of Michael Brown Jr.

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Meghan O'Donnell, 29, from St. Louis, prays on Sunday night at the spot where Michael Brown was killed earlier in the weekend. J.B. Forbes / St. Louis Post-Dispatch via AP

On August 9, 2014, Michael Brown Jr., an 18-year-old black man, was fatally shot by 28-year-old white Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson in the city of Ferguson, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis.[1] The shooting of the 18-year-old by white police officer Darren Wilson sparked demonstrations across America. It fuelled a national protest movement against racial bias by the police.[2]

There are many different accounts of the incident, including the testimonies of Wilson and of Brown's friend, Dorian Johnson, who was with Brown at the time. Many details differ, but most accounts agree that Wilson saw Brown and Johnson walking in the street, demanded they get on the sidewalk, then stopped his police SUV in front of them in order to confront them.[3] After the shooting, Brown’s bloodied body remains in the street for four hours in the summer heat. People in the neighborhood later lash out at the police, saying they mistreated the body.[4]

Back Story

Michael Brown [left] and Ferguson Police Officer, Darren Willson [right]

Police version of the events

Wilson has not spoken publicly about what happened, and no direct video of the shooting has surfaced. According to a preliminary police account, which was included in Brown’s official autopsy report, the confrontation began when Wilson, on patrol, spotted Brown and a friend, Dorian Johnson, walking in the street.[5] After stopping his car, Wilson tried to open his door, but Brown blocked his way. According to Wilson and several witnesses deemed credible by the Justice Department, Brown reached into the Tahoe’s open window, grabbed Wilson, and punched him. This narrative, the report says, is supported by bruising on Wilson’s jaw and samples of Brown’s DNA found on Wilson’s collar, shirt, and pants. It’s not known why Brown did this, and many have speculated that Wilson provoked Brown somehow.

At this point, Wilson told investigators, his training kicked in and he reviewed his options. He did not carry a Taser, so the weapons at his disposal were mace, a retractable baton, and his gun. The only one readily accessible, Wilson said, was the gun. He told the grand jury that Brown said to him, “You are too much of a pussy to shoot me.” In the ensuing struggle, Wilson shot Brown in the hand. This sequence of events has factual support. Brown’s DNA was detected on the inside of the driver’s-side door, and soot from the gun’s muzzle was found in Brown’s wound, indicating that his hand was within inches of the weapon when it fired. It was the first time that Wilson had used his gun in the line of duty. Wilson told the grand jury that Brown, upon being shot, had “the most intense, aggressive face,” and looked “like a demon.” Brown retreated, running east. Wilson chased him. Brown ran at least a hundred and eighty feet down Canfield Drive—his blood was found in the roadway—and then headed back toward Wilson. According to the Justice Department, eyewitnesses claiming that Brown raised his hands in surrender proved unreliable. Sometime after the chase began, Wilson shot ten bullets at Brown. A few missed him, but he was hit in the chest, the forehead, and the arm.[6]

Johnson's version of the events

Dorian Johnson, a friend of Michael Brown. An eyewitness.

Johnson says that when the incident began, Wilson used profanity to tell the young men to get out of the street, hit Brown with his car door while trying to open it, then grabbed Brown by the neck. “They’re not wrestling so much as his arm went from his throat to now clenched on his shirt,” Johnson told MSNBC. “It’s like tug of war. He’s trying to pull him in. He’s pulling away, that’s when I heard, ‘I’m gonna shoot you.’”

After the first shot wounded Brown, Johnson said, Brown ran and Wilson chased him. Wilson then shot Brown in the back, and Brown stopped, turned with his hands up, and said, “I don’t have a gun, stop shooting!” according to Johnson’s account to MSNBC. As Wilson stood face-to-face with Brown, the officer shot him several more times, Johnson said.[5]

“He put his hands in the air,” Johnson said of Brown in his final moments. “He started to get down, but the officer still approached with his weapon drawn. And he fired several more shots. And my friend died.”[7]

Johnson’s assertion that Brown was trying to surrender when Wilson killed him spawned that movement’s most powerful rallying cry: “Hands up, don’t shoot!” After a few public statements, Johnson became a ghost, virtually vanishing from the all-consuming narrative he had helped set in motion. Five years later, in a series of interviews with The Washington Post, Johnson provided his fullest accounting of what he believes happened that day on Canfield Drive.

Despite the conclusions of federal and local authorities, Johnson said he stands by his story.

“His hands were definitely up when he turned around,” Johnson said. “Whether his hands were up, or halfway up, or fully down or up, he was killed and he was unarmed. He wasn’t posing a threat.”[7]

Racial Bias

Ferguson, Mo., Police Chief Thomas Jackson speaks with a demonstrator during a protest outside the police station. (Scott Olson / Getty Images)

On August 20, 2014, St. Louis County prosecutor Bob McCulloch convened a grand jury to decide whether charges should be brought against Officer Wilson for the fatal shooting of Michael Brown. The 12-person grand jury, impaneled three months earlier, had three black jurors (one man, two women) and nine white jurors (six men, three women),5 reflecting the county’s racial demographics (24% black, 68% white), but far removed from that of Ferguson (67% black, 29% white). The grand jury’s composition thus raised concerns in light of structural representation issues in municipalities like Ferguson and the county’s stark divide on whether “race had nothing to do with the shooting.”[8]

Power structures in suburbs that transitioned to majority-black populations remain overwhelmingly white. Ferguson, for instance, has a white mayor, a 6-white-1-Hispanic school board that recently suspended a black superintendent, one black City Council member, and a six percent black police force. This is compounded by a municipal revenue scheme over-reliant on traffic citations by mostly white officers against black drivers: 86% of stops, 92% of searches, and 93% arrests in 2013 were of black drivers.[8] The grand jury required nine out of twelve jurors to find that the weight of the evidence showed “probable cause,” or reasonable grounds that the officer could have committed manslaughter or second-degree murder.28 Yet McCulloch’s “avalanche”-like disclosure of conflicting evidence and witness testimony, which rendered the grand jurors trial-level fact finders, was delivered in the absence of an adversarial process that could advocate for Brown. [8] On November 24, 2014, St. Louis County prosecutor Bob McCulloch announces that the grand jury has decided not to indict Wilson. No murder or manslaughter charges against former officer Darren Wilson are warranted. The next year, the U.S. Department of Justice concluded that Wilson did not violate Brown's civil rights and that no federal charges would be filed.[9]

Toward the end of Bell’s announcement, activist Tory Russell, 36, wearing a T-shirt that said “Wesley Bell doesn’t care about Black people” berated Bell for the decision, calling his office corrupt for hiring “dirty cops” and telling him he wouldn’t get reelected.[10] Wilson resigned from the police department in November 2014 with his lawyer saying that Wilson "will never be a police officer again".[11]

References

  1. "Department of Justice Report Regarding the Criminal Investigation Into the Shooting Death of Michael Brown by Ferguson, Missouri Police Officer Darren Wilson" (PDF). United States Department of Justice. March 4, 2015. Archived (PDF) from the original on March 15, 2015. Retrieved March 29, 2015.
  2. Ferguson silence on Michael Brown's shooting anniversary. 10 Aug 2015. bbc.com. Retrieved 15 Jan 2021
  3. Michael Brown is killed by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. 9 Aug 2014. history.com. Retrieved 15 Jan 2021
  4. Timeline of events in the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson. 9 Aug 2019. AP News. Retrieved 15 Jan 2021
  5. 5.0 5.1 Back Story: What happened in Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson, Mo.?. 24 Nov 2014. latimes.come. Retrieved 15 Jan 2021
  6. The Cop. 3 August 2015. newyorker.com. Retrieved 15 Jan 2021
  7. 7.0 7.1 Dorian Johnson, witness to the Ferguson shooting, sticks by his story. 10 August 2019. washingtonpost.com. Retrieved 15 Jan 2021.
  8. 8.0 8.1 8.2 Kaplan, Nickolas. "The Fire (This Time)": Ferguson, Implicit Bias, and the Michael Brown Grand Jury. PDF. Retrieved 15 Jan 2021.
  9. No charges for officer who shot Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, after follow-up probe. July 31, 2020. nbcnews.com. Retrieved 15 Jan 2021
  10. Darren Wilson won’t be charged in Michael Brown’s death, prosecutor announces. 31 July 2020. mercurynews.com. Retrieved 15 Jan 2020
  11. "Ferguson Cop Darren Wilson Will Never Police Again, His Lawyer Says". NBC News. November 27, 2014. Archived from the original on December 7, 2014. Retrieved November 28, 2014.