Ferguson hype doesn't live up to reality
- By Mitchell Blatt
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E-mail China.org.cn, March 12, 2015
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This August 13, 2014 file photo shows Ferguson, Missouri Police Chief Thomas Jackson fielding questions related to the shooting death of teenager Michael Brown during a press conference in Ferguson, Missouri. The embattled police chief in Ferguson, Missouri resigned March 11, 2015, a week after a scathing US Justice Department report into the fatal shooting of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown by one of his officers. [Xinhua photo] |
A young black man was shot and killed by police officers in Madison, Wisconsin, on the night of March 6. About 2,000 people took to the streets to protest. Sound familiar?
It's the same story that was broadcast nationally from Ferguson, Missouri in 2014 and so many other places over the years. The press emphasizes how the suspect was "unarmed." The mother states, "My son has never been a violent person." Before the facts are out, much of the public has already jumped to a conclusion.
In Ferguson, we were told by Michael Brown's lawyer and by a state senator that Brown was shot "execution-style" after having done nothing wrong. Protesters put their hands up, under the assumption that Brown was surrendering when he was shot.
Now a report issued by the Department of Justice has found that there was no evidence to support any of those assertions. The report states: "Although there are several individuals who have stated that Brown held his hands up in an unambiguous sign of surrender prior to Wilson shooting him dead, their accounts do not support a prosecution of Wilson. As detailed throughout this report, some of those accounts are inaccurate because they are inconsistent with the physical and forensic evidence; some of those accounts are materially inconsistent with that witness's own prior statements with no explanation, credible or otherwise, as to why those accounts changed over time."
This is consistent with the evidence presented at the Grand Jury, which failed to indict Officer Wilson. The evidence suggests that Brown was walking down the middle of the road with his friend, who presented inaccurate accounts to the media, after getting into an altercation with a convenience store clerk, and then punched the officer through the open window. Brown was approaching the officer again before the fatal shots were fired.
Yet the passions stirred by so much inaccurate reporting caused the city of Ferguson to erupt in flames, as a dozen businesses were burned down on the night it was announced that Wilson wouldn't be indicted.
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