So the Ferguson Police Chief, Thomas Jackson, has spent over 10 days now hedging and fidgeting and doing everything in the world except tell the truth.
The reason that no Incident Report filed by Officer Darren Wilson has been produced for the public to view or at least acknowledged as existing, by Chief Jackson?
Because Officer Darren Wilson never filed one.
Because the Ferguson PD turned the investigation over to the St Louis County Police, the day of or the day after the incident, it's not yet clear.
What is clear?
The FOIA the ACLU of Missouri filed to obtain that "missing" Incident Report?
They finally received the report, read carefully.
The file is available by the ACLU of Missouri online in original format here
Follows is a .jpg version of the file. It is not altered in any fashion other than conversion from .pdf online to a .jpg via screenshot grab
UPDATE: Comments indicate that the charge of Homicide is a normal case of any death brought about at the hands of another person. Only when a specific charge of Murder, Manslaughter or any other variation of a killing which is not justified should this be of any note.
The first thing which should grab your eye is the charge, right up top of page 1:
Offense: HOMICIDE
The reporting Officer? 3403 Wilson
The Victim? Michael Brown
The ONLY other information entered on this "Incident Report" on the Homicide of the victim, Michael Brown? The date, time and location of his homicide death.
UPDATE
It also notes that:
Unit #4412 from SLCPD (St Louis County PD) in COGIS (geographic location) 2160 was dispatched at 12:43 and arrived at the scene at 13:30.
But the reporting Officer is listed as 3403-Wilson. If the Incident Report was made by the SLCPD and SOMEONE was dispatched and arrived, why is Wilson listed as the Reporting Officer? Unless this is not Darren Wilson, the officer involved, but some other Officer Wilson at the SLCPD?
THAT is the sum total of the information contained on the report.
Other than the report notes that it was filed on August 19, 2014 at 9:46.
10 days after the death of Michael Brown.
10 days in which the Ferguson PD Chief COULD have told the nation that St. Louis County was doing the investigation and that Officer Wilson had filed a report, but that it was up to St Louis County PD to release that Incident Report, as they were the investigating police department.
No information as to why a serving Officer in his department was involved in an incident in which he discharged his firearm in the line of Duty and then failed to report the details of the event to anyone.
UPDATE - as noted above, this is likely a standard notation when a death occurs at the hand of another person.
But if you just read the thinly populated form itself, it's rather apparent why the Ferguson PD hasn't said anything.
Offense: HOMICIDE.
UPDATE
I still think that the release of the Incident Report, the keeping of the information about the change of venue of the investigating Police force and the fact that there is to date no information being provided about the manner in which Michael Brown died and that the officer involved in the shooting is reported as "in hiding" will make the balance of the diary still true.
I thought that the small town of Ferguson was about to get the normal brushoff by the Media, after all it's been nearly two weeks.
I don't think that anymore, not after finding this in my Twitter timeline tonight just after 10 pm PST.
I think it's maybe just begun.
Pg 1 of Incident report obtained by ACLU of Missouri
re: killing of Michael Brown on August 9, 2014 in Ferguson, Missouri.
Pg 2 of Incident report obtained by ACLU of Missouri
re: killing of Michael Brown on August 9, 2014 in Ferguson, Missouri.