Jon Swaine of The Guardian has begun to ask questions about the official narrative of the Michael Brown shooting in the systematic manner that we should have been using all along.
The official narrative of the death of Michael Brown is that a burly teenager, high on drugs, went on a crime spree, was confronted by law enforcement, became aggressive and violent (making him a felon). He turned and charged at Officer Wilson and was shot lawfully.
The counter-narrative is that Michael Brown was a kid, a promising young man with a bright future ahead of him and no evidence of trouble in his background. He was aggressively confronted by a police officer. The officer was a member of a force known for its racism, and who himself was known to be hyperaggressive. The officer grabbed Michael Brown, shot him, chased him as he fled, and then killed him in cold blood.
It's very easy to give in to emotion, to try to silence anyone who says anything that sounds like it might in the slightest agree with the official narrative or discredit the counternarrative. That might succeed in getting a fellow-Kossack so angry with the sort of invective that people dump on him or her that they take a vacation from blogging. It's also true that emotion is going to be needed to keep this story going. But silencing discussion here isn't going to help Michael Brown and his family, because at this point, it's going to take some pretty dramatic new information to force the media and the justice system to change direction.
What could help Michael Brown and his family is uncovering holes in the narrative McCulloch constructed. To do that, we have to take each element of the official narrative and dispassionately deconstruct it. There are so many talented people on this forum, people with knowledge of law, medicine, and Missouri, who could help to do that. But to do that, we have to let go of pre-judgment and start from the premise that the official narrative is true. Otherwise, we're only speaking to ourselves. And, for the record, I believe that there is plenty in the official narrative that will unravel if only people will tug at those loose ends rather than at one another.
Will Bunch (Attytood) posted a diary mentioning one effort that started that process, tweets compiled by German Lopez by legal analystLisa Bloom. But a much better article was produced by Jon Swaine of The Guardian. An excerpt:
1. Did Wilson know that Brown was a robbery suspect?
Issue: Wilson reportedly confirmed to the grand jury during his four-hour testimony that he first stopped Brown and Brown’s friend, Dorian Johnson, on 9 August because they were jaywalking down Canfield Drive. But he apparently said that as the pair walked away, he realised that Brown matched a description for a suspect in a so-called “strong-arm” robbery at a nearby grocery store minutes earlier, that had been broadcast over police radio. It was this, Wilson reportedly claims, that led him to pull his SUV up to Brown, where a struggle ensued.
Why it matters: If Wilson was explicitly trying to apprehend Brown for a robbery, potentially leading to a criminal record, his claim that Brown reacted aggressively and assaulted him could have been more persuasive to jurors. Johnson has always maintained that Wilson was in fact simply infuriated because the friends had disobeyed him by refusing to get out of the road, and returned to grab Brown. The notion that the 18-year-old responded by assaulting Wilson would make less sense in that scenario. A third possibility is that Brown, who was carrying the cigarillos he had stolen, reacted aggressively because he mistakenly thought that Wilson had realised he was wanted for the robbery.
What we know: Police have repeatedly contradicted themselves over this. While abruptly releasing a police report on Brown’s robbery at the same time as he disclosed Wilson’s name as the shooter, at a press conference on 15 August, Ferguson’s police chief, Thomas Jackson, seemed to imply that the two incidents were linked. He said Wilson left another call after a description of the robbery suspect “was given over the radio”, and had then encountered Brown.
Yet at a second press conference that day, Jackson said Wilson did not, in fact, know that Brown was a robbery suspect when he made the stop. Asked why, then, had Wilson stopped Brown, Jackson said: “Because he was walking down the middle of the street blocking traffic. That was it.” He repeated this in an interview with CNN. However in an interview the same day with the St Louis Post-Dispatch, Jackson said that having first stopped the friends for jaywalking, Wilson then “saw cigars in Brown’s hand and realised he might be the robber”.
In a coded police radio call, which Wilson has reportedly told authorities he made after the initial stop of Brown and Johnson, he told colleagues: “Put me on Canfield with two. And send me another car.” This was apparently a request for backup, indicating that he may indeed have realised that Brown was the robbery suspect and therefore called for support.
But in the most detailed official police account of the confrontation published so far, no mention was made of the robbery or of Brown being identified as a suspect for it.
It's
journalism, and careful research, not histrionics, that are going to produce justice. Swaine has just started the process--and, by the way, he links at least one diary at Daily Kos. (And, for the record, I think that he has missed evidence on the question of whether Michael Brown was surrendering or at least non-threatening to the officer).
It is in this way that one can show that the official narrative is not an explanation, but a rationalization. A rationalization would mean that there is misconduct by the prosecutor. And it could open the door to a real examination of the case. It's easy for officialdom to ignore demonstrations. Not so easy for them to ignore published accounts of their malfeasance and worse.
Update: Briefer links the following article, which is useful.