Heartless: The Mike Brown Murder

We’re between a rock and a hard place
and somethin’s gotta give.

There are no “complexities” involved when a white cop
shoots at an unarmed black kid between six and ten times. This was a street execution according to eyewitnesses.

But instead of arresting the rogue cop, the white Ferguson police chief of a mostly white police force did not even bother to contact Mike Brown’s parents… and he let their son’s body lie in the street for five hours.

The white town mayor in the mostly black town of Ferguson
(with a white school board) told the St. Louis County Police to “investigate,” but they did not even bother to interview eyewitnesses.

(and they have a history of racism and profiling)

Then the white governor called in the highway patrol and the national guard to protect their white cops, instead of protecting everyday black and white people in Ferguson from
a heavily-armed and overwhelmingly white police force.

Something
is seriously
wrong
with this
picture.

tmf

“1. Ferguson and St. Louis County police investigators left Michael Brown’s body to bake in the sweltering sun for over four hours after he was shot to death, destroying useful forensic evidence which could’ve been used to prove or disprove the opposing accounts of what transpired between Brown and the police officer. This evidence has
now been lost forever.

2. Cell phones of eye-witnesses
were confiscated by Ferguson
and St. Louis County police
investigators without a
police warrant.

There’s a very good chance someone captured the altercation between Brown and the police officer on their cell phone camera. Are we to believe police informed the property owners they did not have to comply and hand over their personal property or is it more likely police bullied these witnesses and made them believe compliance was mandatory to avoid being arrested?

3. Rather than immediately turning the investigation over to federal investigators,
upon talking to witnesses on the scene, who all corroborated one another that the shooting was execution style, Ferguson police chose to hand over the case to St. Louis County police department. A police department with a long history of racism, prejudice and discrimination against blacks, and an ongoing operation of racial profiling and targeting blacks for arrest. This decision demonstrates that the “investigators” had no interest in transparency.

4. Ferguson police patrol cars do not have dashboard cameras installed. As a result, the initial contact between Ferguson police and Brown is lost. Very convenient for the police officer who ultimately killed Brown.

When questioned by the press about why dash cams were not installed on patrol cars, Ferguson police chief Thomas Jackson claims the cameras are sitting in boxes at the station. This bespeaks a culture of concealment and corruption. Why would Ferguson Police Department opt out of one of the primary measures to ensure police officers conduct themselves in a manner befitting their sworn oath to protect and serve the community?

5. Why was this officer scurried from the crime scene before news media arrived? Why has he still not been identified when even suspects in some of the most heinous crimes against children are identified immediately, despite death threats against them and their respective families? Police investigators are choosing to protect Brown’s killer in a fashion not afforded those who commit similar offenses. He’s being protected because he’s a police officer. We can be sure he isn’t being treated as a suspect. No interrogation, no isolation, no monitoring.

6. Why in the three days following this incident hasn’t the officer made a statement? Written or oral? If he was simply doing his job and has nothing to hide, why hasn’t he spoken to the public or offered condolences to the families affected by this tragedy? Is he lawyering up? If so, why does a law-abiding cop need representation? Is he manufacturing a story with the assistance of the investigating officers? It’s certainly a possibility. Will his statements, whenever they do come, be thorough or brief, off-the-cuff or from a lawyer? I think we know the answers to these questions already.

The investigators in this case have chosen to leave these questions unanswered. This level of incompetence and inaction doesn’t calm the fears of those in the black community who have witnessed time and again justice botched by police cover-ups and failures to conduct complete investigations.