Wilson had been publicly silent since the events of August 9, when he shot and killed 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. And, even as the grand jury announced its decision not to indict him, he remained silent. He had his attorneys release a statement on his behalf.
But on Monday night, St. Louis County prosecutor Robert McCulloch released the evidence given to the grand jury, including the interview police did with Wilson in the immediate aftermath of the shooting. And so we got to read, for the first time, Wilson's full, immediate account of his altercation with Brown.
And it is unbelievable.
I mean that in the literal sense of the term: "difficult or impossible to believe." But I want to be clear here. I'm not saying Wilson is lying. I'm not saying his testimony is false. I am saying that the events, as he describes them, are simply bizarre. His story is difficult to believe.
The story Wilson tells goes like this:
At about noon on August 9th, Wilson hears on the radio that there's a theft in progress at the Ferguson Market. The suspect is a black male in a black shirt.
Moments later, Wilson sees two young black men walking down the yellow stripe in the center of the street. He pulls over. "Hey guys, why don't you walk on the sidewalk?" They refuse. "We're almost at our destination," one of them replies. Wilson tries again. "But what's wrong with the sidewalk?" he asks.
And then things get weird.
Brown's response to "what's wrong with the sidewalk?", as recorded by Wilson, is "**** what you have to say." Remember, Wilson is a uniformed police officer, in a police car, and Brown is an 18-year-old kid who just committed a robbery. And when asked to use the sidewalk, Wilson says Brown replied, "**** what you have to say."
Wilson says Brown replied, "**** what you have to say."
Wilson backs his car up and begins to open the door. "Hey, come here," he said to the kid who just cursed at him. He says Brown replied, "What the **** you gonna do?" And then Brown, in Wilson's telling, slams the car door closed. Wilson tries to open the door again, tells Brown to get back, and then Brown leans into the vehicle and begins punching him.
michael brown casket
Photos surround Michael Brown's casket in Ferguson, MO. (Richard Perry-Pool/Getty Images)
Let's take a breath and recap. Wilson sees two young black men walking in the middle of the street. He pulls over and politely asks them to use the sidewalk. They refuse. He asks again, still polite. Brown tells Wilson — again, a uniformed police officer in a police car — "**** what you have to say." Wilson stops his car, tries to get out, and Brown slams the car door on him and then begins punching him through the open window.
What happens next is the most unbelievable moment in the narrative. And so it's probably best that I just quote Wilson's account at length on it.
I was doing the, just scrambling, trying to get his arms out of my face and him from grabbing me and everything else. He turned to his...if he's at my vehicle, he turned to his left and handed the first subject. He said, "here, take these." He was holding a pack of — several packs of cigarillos which was just, what was stolen from the Market Store was several packs of cigarillos. He said, "here, hold these" and when he did that I grabbed his right arm trying just to control something at that point. Um, as I was holding it, and he came around, he came around with his arm extended, fist made, and went like that straight at my face with his...a full swing from his left hand.
So Brown is punching inside the car. Wilson is scrambling to deflect the blows, to protect his face, to regain control of the situation. And then Brown stops, turns to his left, says to his friend, "Here, hold these," and hands him the cigarillos stolen from Ferguson Market. Then he turns back to Wilson and, with his left hand now freed from holding the contraband goods, throws a haymaker at Wilson.
Every bullshit detector in me went off when I read that passage. Which doesn't mean that it didn't happen exactly the way Wilson describes. But it is, again, hard to imagine. Brown, an 18-year-old kid holding stolen goods, decides to attack a cop and, while attacking him, stops, hands his stolen goods to his friend, and then returns to the beatdown. It reads less like something a human would do and more like a moment meant to connect Brown to the robbery.
Wilson next recounts his thought process as he reached for a weapon. He considered using his mace, but at such close range, the mace might get in his eyes, too. He doesn't carry a taser with a fireable cartridge, but even if he did, "it probably wouldn't have hit [Brown] anywhere". Wilson couldn't reach his baton or his flashlight. So he went for his gun.
Brown sees him go for the gun. And he replies: "You're too much of a fucking pussy to shoot me."
"You're too much of a fucking pussy to shoot me."
Again, stop for a moment and think about that. Brown is punching Wilson, sees the terrified cop reaching for his gun, and says "You're too much of a fucking pussy to shoot me." He dares him to shoot.
And then Brown grabs Wilson's gun, twists it, and points it at Wilson's "pelvic area". Wilson regains control of the firearm and gets off a shot, shattering the glass. Brown backs up a half step and, realizing he's unharmed, dives back into the car to attack Wilson. Wilson fires again, and then Brown takes off running. (You can see the injuries Wilson sustained from the fight in these photographs.)
Wilson exits the car to give chase. He yells at Brown to get down on the ground. Here, I'm going to go back to Wilson's words:
"When he stopped, he turned, looked at me, made like a grunting noise and had the most intense, aggressive face I've ever seen on a person. When he looked at me, he then did like the hop...you know, like people do to start running. And, he started running at me. During his first stride, he took his right hand put it under his shirt into his waistband. And I ordered him to stop and get on the ground again. He didn't. I fired multiple shots. After I fired the multiple shots, I paused a second, yelled at him to get on the ground again, he was still in the same state. Still charging, hand still in his waistband, hadn't slowed down."
The stuff about Brown putting his hand in his waistband is meant to suggest that Wilson had reason to believe Brown might pull a gun. But it's strange. We know Brown didn't have a gun. And that's an odd fact to obscure while charging a police officer.
Either way, at that point, Wilson shoots again, and kills Brown. There are inconsistencies in Wilson's story. He estimates that Brown ran 20-30 feet away from the car and then charged another 10 feet back towards Wilson. But we know Brown died 150 feet away from the car.
There are also consistencies. St Louis prosecutor Robert McCulloch said that Brown's DNA was found inside Wilson's car, suggesting there was a physical altercation inside the vehicle. We know shots were fired from inside the car. We know Brown's bullet wounds show he was only hit from the front, never from the back.
But the larger question is, in a sense, simpler: Why? Why did Michael Brown, an 18-year-old kid headed to college, refuse to move from the middle of the street to the sidewalk? Why would he curse out a police officer? Why would he attack a police officer? Why would he dare a police officer to shoot him? Why would he charge a police officer holding a gun? Why would he put his hand in his waistband while charging, even though he was unarmed?
None of this fits with what we know of Michael Brown None of this fits with what we know of Michael Brown. Brown wasn't a hardened felon. He didn't have a death wish. And while he might have been stoned, this isn't how stoned people act. The toxicology report did not indicate he was on PCP or something that would've led to suicidal aggression.
Which doesn't mean Wilson is a liar. Unbelievable things happen every day. The fact that his story raises more questions than it answers doesn't mean it isn't true.
But the point of a trial would have been to try to answer these questions. We would have either found out if everything we thought we knew about Brown was wrong, or if Wilson's story was flawed in important ways. But now we're not going to get that chance. We're just left with Wilson's unbelievable story.
Posts: 13012 | From: Chicago | Registered: Jan 2006
| IP: Logged |
posted
My advise to people is that if a person in a car you know has a gun pulls up to you and tells you not to do something don't try to get into the car unless you are asked to. My sympathy for people that stupid is limited
My second advice is if you are going to riot, riot about something where the victim was blatantly innocent like Amadou Diallo or Abner Louima
People are not choosing the right cases these days to protest. They jump to conclusions very quickly and burn their own neigborhood down Then more evidence comes out and we realize it may or may not have gone down like we first thought, this keeps happening over and over What happened here, I don't know, there is 3 months of Grand Jury documents that just got released to the public or soon to be Problem is we dont want to read first, just break stuff Dont like the complexion of Ferguson police?? Should have protested that before this happened
Posts: 42930 | From: , | Registered: Jan 2010
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by the lioness,: My advise to people is that if a person in a car you know has a gun pulls up to you and tells you not to do something don't try to get into the car unless you are asked to. My sympathy for people that stupid is limited
My second advice is if you are going to riot, riot about something where the victim was blatantly innocent like Amadou Diallo or Abner Louima
People are not choosing the right cases these days to protest. They jump to conclusions very quickly and burn their own neigborhood down Then more evidence comes out and we realize it may or may not have gone down like we first thought, this keeps happening over and over What happened here, I don't know, there is 3 months of Grand Jury documents that just got released to the public or soon to be Problem is we dont want to read first, just break stuff Dont like the complexion of Ferguson police?? Should have protested that before this happened
I don't think you get it. Many of the protesters are white. It appears that the people are upset because they feel people are lacking justice and opportunity. The Brown case supports their conclusion.
Many white youth in the Nation are upset because they feel the American dream is an illusion. In the past young whites could feel that affirmative action was the reason they were unemployed. The high AA unemployment rate has caused this idea to no longer have currency among many young whites.
Young people are going to College spending tens of thousands of dollars --graduating with no jobs. They are angry and want to express their anger and discomfront.
In relation to Blacks, yea, there may be a business in the community, but the workers are usually non-AA. I am old today.
But back in the 1960's I didn't care what happened--anything was better than living in tenements of the ghetto. Then, me , and my wife were ready to die to fight for our freedom. I will always believe that if not for our riots after Martin Kings' murder I would never have attended College.
If not for the riots, I might be living on the Westside of Chicago--the most depressed, dilapidated part of Chicago. (I would not be living on 47th,because white people now live in the neighborhood I grew up in, and the apartments around the University of Chicago, where my Grandmother had lived for 30 years.)
Young people don't understand that marching was just one of Martin King's strategy. If that didn't work they boycotted businesses. The riots in Ferguson is good for local Blacks.
Racist only change their racism when you hit them in the pocket book. Whites save money. Blacks spend money. Business people need AAs to keep money flowing.
During the 1960's millons of dollars were spent supporting police and Nationalguardmen in the big cities to maintain order when AAs rioted. The government was suppose to be broke. But they found money to provide jobs and education for AAs to pacify us. The Vietcong based the Tet Offensive in 1968 on AA riots which tied down hundreds of troops in the big cities. In January 1968, 80,000 communist troops striking more than 100 towns and cities, including 36 of 44 provincial capitals, five of the six autonomous cities, 72 of 245 district towns, and the southern capital, this caused so much trouble for the U.S.,that it was easy to predict that the U.S., could not keep this mobilization up and win the war.
Government officials also knew that they could not subdue an AA population that was rebelling in the large urban centers of the U.S., so they sent us to school or provided job training for many Blacks who felt it was in their interest to maintain the status quo. Granted, many people would have died, but I, and many of the teenanagers, I knew didn't care.
The Topographical Institute had provided us in 1967 and 1968, urban warfare books and trained us in making "zip guns" (gun made out of wood, nail , a pipe and strong rubberbands. You could shoot 22cal. bullets.) and Molotov cocktails. Plus most of us who lived with our fathers', had a shot gun and 22 rifle around the house because they went hunting.
The Topographical Institute taught us that the book, The Man Who Cried I am, was about the King Alfred plan. The King Alfred plan was the government's plan to take AAs to death camps.
As a result, many teens like myself, felt we had to fight if we were to avoid genocide. So we were preparing for the coming race war.
Once we went to college or got jobs we believed things were going to get better. But alas, the good times lasted a short time for most AAs. Today many AAs are back in the same economic conditions or worst than I experienced.
The City, and State governments are spending $100,000 each evening to pay overtime for the county, city, and state police in addition to National Guardsmen in Ferguson.
It is just a matter of time when they will invest money to train and educate AAs in the area, and some will get jobs. They won't want to make the investment but they will realize that it is more cost effective to train and educate a few people in the St Louis area, than pay overtime for public service personnel.
They will educate this small cadre of AAs so they can have more reliable negroes to encourage AAs to have hope that if they stay the course and be good docile negroes success is just around the corner.
But you can bet this investment will be for less than five (5) years. Then things will return to the way they are today.
Sure, the businesses may not reopen. So many of the Black people in Ferguson and the surrounding area will expand into white areas, fearing future unrest. This will upset most racist whites, like Doxie, living in the regions where these Blacks move.
I remember the 1960's well. The most radical elements around the world were white and Japanese College grads. In Europe and Japan these youth were responsible for bombings and other violence.
This is the group--young whites--that the Government should be concerned about. In Ferguson, a white kid from the Chicago area had been arrested 5 times for protesting in Ferguson. What I am trying to say is, that as more and more young whites are estranged from the Government, we can expect more violence and discord in the cities in the future.
Look at the protesters around the nation and in Ferguson. Many of these protesters are white.
Pleae explain exactly how these riots are going to help local black folk more than the relatively peaceful Trayvon Martin protests (and what about black people nationally?) this aint the 60s you know with it's legsislation issues, more like the aftermath of Rodney King without the video proof
Posts: 42930 | From: , | Registered: Jan 2010
| IP: Logged |
posted
You have some gall to call me racist Clyde, when you are as racist as they come, you even went as far as to state that Whites are inferior & non-human, how's that for racist Clyde. Young Whites are joining in because they are being brainwashed to hate themselves, to think they must betray & destroy their own people for the sake of non-Whites or else they are racist in the Anti-White brainwashing establishments you call colleges & universities. Whites have the right to our own self determination, White children have the right to be safe in their own neighborhoods, Whites have the right to feel safe walking down the streets in our own neighborhoods.
Posts: 3257 | From: Madisonville, KY USA | Registered: Nov 2011
| IP: Logged |
posted
After the Watts riots in 1965 what happened? The Bloods and Crips got a foot hold and have been shooting up the place since, those riots resulted in little posiitve change, Watts isstill struggling 50 years later
Posts: 42930 | From: , | Registered: Jan 2010
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by the lioness,: After the Watts riots in 1965 what happened? The Bloods and Crips got a foot hold and have been shooting up the place since, those riots resulted in little posiitve change, Watts isstill struggling 50 years later
LOL. You don't know what you're talking about. These gangs were founded by Gangbangers from Chicago, in the 1970's.
Riots had nothing to do with empowering the gangs--it was the drug business.
They became strong probably by selling drugs provided by the CIA and/or mafia in the 1980's.We know they got the drugs from somebody. .
Posts: 13012 | From: Chicago | Registered: Jan 2006
| IP: Logged |
You can thank Ronald Reagan & his CIA Director George Bush Sr. for the Iran-Contra drug connection that secured and distributed cheap cocaine throughout the United States to black communities. The only reason the plan worked so well is due to Negroes having very little social awareness, self respect or solidarity.
Today's rap industry featuring fake drug dealers like Rick Ross and their minstrel performances are directly a side effect of this massive drug injection to Negro communities.
-------------------- Selenium gives real life and true reality Posts: 4693 | From: Saturn | Registered: Apr 2012
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by the lioness,: After the Watts riots in 1965 what happened? The Bloods and Crips got a foot hold and have been shooting up the place since, those riots resulted in little positve change, Watts is still struggling 50 years later]
LOL. You don't know what you're talking about. These gangs were founded by Gangbangers from Chicago, in the 1970's.
Wrong Clyde. It is indisputed fact that the Bloods and Crips originated in South Central LA, 1969, Crips, 1972-Bloods
quote:Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
Riots had nothing to do with empowering the gangs--it was the drug business.
They became strong probably by selling drugs provided by the CIA and/or mafia in the 1980's.We know they got the drugs from somebody. . [/qb]
I never said the riots empowered the gangs my point was your theory is that violent riots lead to positive change in the community but if you look at Watts, post riots, you don't see a lot of positive change as a result.
Posts: 42930 | From: , | Registered: Jan 2010
| IP: Logged |
posted
^ You don't know anything about black life.
It's no coincidence that Reagan's flooding black communities with crack started in Cali and spread east from there. It's also no coincidence that the first targeted black communities and cities were those with the most proactive blacks such as Oakland, Baltimore, New York, D.C., Philly, Detroit, etc.
As the Iran-Contra trial transcripts showed, Bush's CIA flew the coke into Florida using Army C130s, then shipped it to Cali using Army planes and trucks. As the real Rick Ross said in his autobio, he never wanted to sell cocaine. He really just wanted to sell reefer, but the albinos wouldn't give him large quantities of weed but as much cocaine as he wanted.
-------------------- Selenium gives real life and true reality Posts: 4693 | From: Saturn | Registered: Apr 2012
| IP: Logged |
posted
Narmer can't you make one dang post without using racist epithets?
Posts: 3257 | From: Madisonville, KY USA | Registered: Nov 2011
| IP: Logged |
posted
^ Sorry Bacon-bits, but white and albino are identical. If albino is derogatory then so is white. They are two words to describe the same physical defect.
-------------------- Selenium gives real life and true reality Posts: 4693 | From: Saturn | Registered: Apr 2012
| IP: Logged |
UBBFriend: Email this page to someone!
Printer-friendly view of this topic