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| RELEASE OF POLICE KILLER GIVEN |
BREAKING UPDATE: 8/15/14 14:20:
Ferguson police Chief says that the cop that murdered Michael Brown, that this officer was not aware that Brown was a suspect in a strong armed robbery incident - "the officer was addressing Brown because he was in the road blocking traffic".
Stay tuned as this story is ever fluid.
Michael Brown, strong armed robber or innocent slaughtered victim, or both?
Michael Brown's killer has been identified for the press and the public. But in the press conference conducted by Ferguson Police Chief Thomas Jackson, there was scant information about the actual shooting and its immediate aftermath, and an awful lot about Michael Brown being a suspected thug who had allegedly participated in a strong-arm robbery at a convenience store, stealing cigars.
The Washington Post's Wesley Lowery confirms that no information about the shooting was included in the information packets provided to the media:
Info handed out ONLY about alleged robbery. NO info included about interaction with Officer Wilson, the shooting.
— @WesleyLowery
Not handed out: a use of force report, any police report written by Officer Wilson, any narrative of shooting
— @WesleyLowery
The fact that Ferguson cop Darren Wilson was the shooter was almost an afterthought in this press conference. The main point was to say that Brown stole cigars before the shooting, and that Wilson was apparently on the look-out for him. What also should have been communicated to police from the 911 dispatches, however, was that the cigar store robbery was not an armed robbery.
Wilson, who ultimately found and killed Brown, should have known—even if he was apprehending Brown as the robbery suspect—that he was unarmed. He certainly knew he was unarmed when he shot Brown, according to witness accounts. Brown's empty hands were in the air when he was fatally shot.
The alleged robbery is a red herring. At issue is why Brown was fatally shot. Even if he was a robbery suspect, that doesn't mean it was legal for Wilson to shoot him as he was surrendering.
Questions:
The police allege that Dorian Johnson was with Brown in the alleged robbery and participated. Why wasn't Johnson taken into custody at the time of the shooting? He was with Brown then, an immediate eye witness.
Ofc Wilson should have known that the alleged robbery wasn't an armed robbery, but that doesn't necessarily mean that cops knew that the suspect didn't have some kind of weapon on him going into the situation.
Six days later the Ferguson police decide that Brown was a suspect in a robbery - shouldn't they have been required to disclosed this immediately to squelch the masses?
One last question for now, does the robbery justify the shooting of an unarmed teen, multiple times?
