Mike Brown vindicated?

By J.A. Salaam -Staff Writer- | Last updated: Mar 24, 2017 - 1:42:35 PM

(L) Ferguson Police Chief Moss at Town Hall meeting. Photo: JA Salaam (R) New footage reveals Michael Brown seen walking out of the store with a bag in his hand, which contains cigarillos that seem to have been given to him by the employees.

FERGUSON, Mo.—A new documentary about the life of Mike Brown and the struggle of his parents to get justice for the untimely killing of their 18-yearold son has sparked renewed controversy.

The video shows the young man at the Ferguson Liquor Market exchanging an unidentified substance for two boxes of cigarillos. Cigarillos are commonly used to smoke marijuana, also known as weed, Kush, Loud, Skunk and a few other names. The film highlights this encounter around 1:10 a.m. on August 9, 2014 approximately 10 hours before he was gunned down by former Ferguson Police officer Darren Wilson. Film writer producer and director Jason Pollock, presented the film “Stranger Fruits” March 11 at the annual South By Southwest film festival in Austin, Texas.

The filmmaker acquired the new tape after two years of searching for the truth in the case of Mike Brown.

“It is without a shadow of doubt that the police department edited the evidence to trick us,” he charged. He insists the footage challenges the police narrative that Mr. Brown committed a strong armed robbery when he returned to the store around noon on Aug. 9.

Mr. Pollock said the new video shows Mr. Brown giving a small bag of marijuana to store employees and receiving cigarillos in return as part of a negotiated deal.

Mr. Pollock said his film reveals evidence he believes was not shown to the grand jury by the St. Louis County prosecutor Robert McCullough. “They are determined to destroy the name and character of ‘Mike Mike’ (as the young man was known by family). Here you have a loving brother, a high school graduate that they want to criminalize,” said Mr. Pollock

“There was some type of exchange, for one thing, for another,” Lezley McSpadden, Mr. Brown’s mother, said in Mr. Pollock’s documentary.

But Jay Kanzler, a lawyer for the convenience store and its employees, strongly disputes that version of events. The new footage is unrelated to Mr. Brown’s later visit to the store, he said.

“There was no transaction, there was no understanding. No agreement. Those folks didn’t sell him cigarillos for pot. The reason he gave it back is he was walking out the door with unpaid merchandise and they wanted it back,” said Attorney Jay Kanzler. The interaction shown in the film was edited down from 4 minutes to 30 seconds, he charged, disputing filmmaker Pollock.

“I can prove that they (police) doctored the video and took information out, but I added to the video to show the truth” countered Mr. Pollock.

He traveled with and shadowed Mike Brown’s mother Lezley McSpadden and the family for the past two years.

Protestors takes to the street in Ferguson Mo. (R) Michael Brown

“I don’t think the video was as big a part of the issues facing the community (racial divide, poverty and crime) as the scar under the video was more the peeling back of a scab. But when you peel a scab back too early and there’s a fresh wound underneath it’s easy to have that pain resurface,” said Ferguson’s new Police Chief Delrish Moss. He is a Black man.

“My thing with the video and I know I have gotten criticism from both sides because I haven’t spoken to the video and I’m not. The reason that I’m not going to speak to the video is the video speaks to things that have been looked at by the St. Louis County Police Department, things that have been looked at by the prosecutor, things that have been looked at by the Department of Justice and the FBI and they’ve all come to conclusions. I think that some of that is still being ferreted out in civil court and so forth so for me to talk about that would be irresponsible when my purpose in being here is to see where we can go from where we are forward,” said Chief Moss.

“So, I can’t get tied up in the emotional part of where we were, but I can respect the emotions that got us there and people’s emotions going forward. What I would like to see as one, I’d like to build a police department that is very responsive to the community that understands all sides of the grievances of the community and works with that community and help it heal. Ultimately, I want the police department to see that with everything else being the fertilizer and the soil around it plants good fruit,” he said

Some expressed anger after the new video came out. Many believe he came back to the store the next day to get something left the night before. “I’m out here because an extra clip of what really happened in the Ferguson Market. Okay, for a whole three years since 2014, we was made to believe that Michael Brown, Jr., robbed and strong armed a convenience store owner. Now we found that was false. He did not strong arm rob anything. Yet this man has lost his life. His name is bashed into the concrete. At least he would have died with dignity. At least, don’t bash his name out like that saying that he was a thug, he robbed them. No, he did not rob them. He was going in to get his purchase that he had already purchased the night before,” said 36-year-old LaLa Moore, who was protesting outside the store.

“We came out here to protest and to boycott to make sure that nobody spends money here ... . And the police retaliated with brutality, they arrested four people. They charged everybody with felonies and the smallest amount of bail available right now is $25,000 and that’s for the pregnant woman that was assaulted and tackled. They had charged her with felony assault even though she had just arrived at the protest here for about five minutes. She wasn’t involved in anything that they had accused her of being involved in,” said protestor Dhoruba Shakur.

Longtime St. Louis activist and organizer Anthony Shahid said what the new video does is continue to erode the already tenuous and rocky relationship between police and Black residents. It also shows a coverup said Mr. Shahid. So they had to paint our brother as a villain, thief and criminal, strong-arm robber, I mean the whole scenario so people can say ‘hey how are you all going to stand with a man that is doing wrong?’”

Mr. Shahid said he is not antipolice and that there are those in the community who do their job the right way but there are others that in their misconduct and the continued policy of the ‘blue wall of silence’ and now with the release of the Mike Brown video make trusting law enforcement difficult. The Ferguson police were not truthful and transparent about what surveillance videos they had available, he explained. The scenario should be that you’re transparent and you show everything and then you let the people decide.

Tory Russell, an activist and community leader, shared his heart felt thoughts about what he called a double standard— and the role Arab business people should play in Black neighborhoods.

“How can we expect solidarity when our Arab brothers come in our community and can sell dope, alcohol and drugs to our people? Hear, you have a Pakistani store and they show a drug deal on camera and the police knew about it and nothing was done. Where is the Arab community, the Muslim community now? Why wasn’t they fined? Why this store is still open after what has happened here?” he asked.

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