August 26, 2014
Current Events
“Please, please take a day of silence so I can, so we can, lay our son to rest. Please. It’s all I ask,” Michael Brown Sr. said at a rally in St. Louis on Sunday. The city took heed to Brown’s request, as crowds remained controlled and allowed the family to mourn in peace.
President Obama sent a White House contingency to the funeral, including Broderick Johnson, head of the White House’s My Brother’s Keeper Task Force, as well as Marlon Marshall and Heather Foster, who are both part of the White House Office of Public Engagement. Incidentally, Foster is a St. Louis native who attended high school with Brown’s mother.
The service provided a myriad of speakers, including the Rev. Charles Ewing, Mr. Brown’s uncle. “There is a cry being made from the ground, not just for Michael Brown, but for the Trayvon Martins, for those children in Sandy Hook Elementary School, for the Columbine massacre, for black-on-black crime,” Ewing said.
Rev. Al Sharpton also provided a very pointed message. “America, how do you think we look when the world can see you can’t come up with a police report, but you can find a video?” Sharpton said, referring to the Ferguson police department’s failure to release a report about the shooting, but their swiftness in releasing a video that appears to show Michael Brown shoplifting at a convenience store the day of his death. “How do you think we look when young people march nonviolently asking for the land of the free and home of the brave to hear their cry and you put snipers on the roof and pointed guns at them?”
Current Events
In related news, the owner of the store where Michael Brown allegedly stole cigars from is denying any theft and is saying he never reported any crime to the police department.
The store owner has disputed any claim that he or an employee called 911, saying a customer inside the store likely made the call.
According to Jake Kanzler, who is the Ferguson Market attorney, police did not see the surveillance video they eventually released until after Michael Brown was shot dead in the street.
“During the course of Ferguson’s investigation, the police department from Ferguson came to the store and asked for to review the tape,” Kanzler said. “Any alleged theft of cigars had nothing to do with Michael Brown being shot to death by Ferguson police.”
The alleged theft of cigars was so insignificant to the Ferguson Market that they never bothered to call 911. However, the Ferguson Police Chief initially pretended the alleged shoplifting of cigars is what prompted Officer Darren Wilson into shooting and killing Michael Brown. If the Ferguson Market never reported any crime at their store, how could Brown have been a suspect who deserved to be shot on the street?? Hmmm…
So wait. The store owner is claiming that he/she NEVER even reported the stolen cigars incident to the police!?!
And further the police didn't even see the surveillance video "until AFTER Michael Brown was shot dead in the street" like a dog!?! His body left laying in the street, under the blistering sun for 4 HOURS!?!
See THIS right here. THIS (and so much more) is what makes a NON-violent Black woman like Me want to grab a baseball bat, go to the Ferguson police department_and other DIRTY, ROTTEN, RACIST and CORRUPT police departments, around the country…and beat the h*ll out of every DIRTY, ROTTEN, RACIST and CORRUPT cop employed there.
From the very top to the very bottom!!!
Now….regarding some of what I heard expressed at Brown's funeral (via CNN) yesterday:
I think his family and friends would do well to STOP trying to paint Michael as an "angel."
I'm not saying that he wasn't an "angel" or "gentle" to the people he cared for.
But as the video clearly shows, Michael had a NOT-so-gentle side to him too. In fact, in that video he appears to come across as a thuggish bully, intimidating someone much smaller and older.
Does that mean Wilson was justified in shooting Brown down in the street? Of course not.
But for anyone to claim (as was done at his funeral) that Michael died in service to "the Lord," in some form or fashion, I'd say takes mockery and cynicism to a whole new level.
Michael Brown was killed trying to get away from a a cop (a bad cop, but a cop nonetheless) who he may have thought was after him for stealing cigars.
On a related note….
"Darren Wilson’s first job was on a troubled police force disbanded by authorities"
The Washington Post:
The small city of Jennings, Mo., had a police department so troubled, and with so much tension between white officers and black residents, that the city council finally decided to disband it. Everyone in the Jennings police department was fired. New officers were brought in to create a credible department from scratch.
That was three years ago. One of the officers who worked in that department, and lost his job along with everyone else, was a young man named Darren Wilson.
Some of the Jennings officers reapplied for their jobs, but Wilson got a job in the police department in the nearby city of Ferguson. […..]
H/T: TheRoot.com
Yeah that pretty much sums it up. The whole cigar theft was a made up excuse by the police chief, until he realized it would be found out. No wonder people don't trust police nowadays.