Killing of Michael Brown

Michael Orlandus Darrion Brown (May 20, 1996 He was two days from starting a training program for heating and air conditioning repair at Vatterott College technical school. Darren Dean Wilson In February 2013, Wilson won a commendation from the Ferguson Police Department after he apprehended a suspect who was later charged with possession of marijuana with intent to distribute and resisting arrest. Following this, on March 13, 2017, unedited footage from the store was released by the St. Louis County prosecutor to try to settle questions. == Incident ==

At , Officer Wilson responded to a call about a baby with breathing problems and drove to Glenark Drive in Ferguson, east of Canfield Drive. At , Wilson reported he was back in service and radioed units 25 and 22 to ask if they needed his assistance in searching for the suspects. Seven seconds later, an unidentified officer said the suspects had disappeared. Wilson called for backup at 12:02, saying "[Unit] 21. Put me on Canfield with two. And send me another car." Initial reports of what happened next differed widely among sources and witnesses, particularly with regard to whether Brown was moving towards Wilson when the shots were fired. At noon on , Wilson drove up to Brown and Johnson as they were walking in the middle of Canfield Drive and ordered them to move off the street. Wilson continued driving past the two men, but then backed up and stopped close to them. A struggle took place between Brown and Wilson after Brown reached through the window of Wilson's police SUV, a Chevrolet Tahoe. Wilson was armed with a SIG Sauer P229 pistol, which was fired twice during the struggle from inside the vehicle, with one bullet hitting Brown's right hand. Brown and Johnson fled and Johnson hid behind a car. Wilson got out of the vehicle and pursued Brown. At some point, Wilson fired his pistol again, while facing Brown, and hit him with at least six shots, all in the front of his body. Brown was unarmed and died on the street. Less than 90 seconds passed from the time Wilson encountered Brown to the time of Brown's death. An unidentified officer arrived on the scene and, 73 seconds after Wilson's call, asked where the second suspect was. Thirty-one seconds later, a supervisor was requested by Unit 25. At , an officer on scene radioed to dispatch for more units. Also at 12:07, the County police were notified and county officers began arriving on scene at around The County detectives were notified at and arrived about , with the forensic investigator arriving at about Police dispatched 12 units to the scene by with another 12, including two canine units, by Gunshots were recorded in Ferguson police logs at , and by the ambulance dispatch again at , which led to the response of 20 more units from eight different municipal forces in the next 20 minutes. As the situation deteriorated, the police commanders had investigators seek cover and detectives assisted in crowd control. At , four canine units arrived on scene, and the SWAT team arrived at The medical examiner began his examination of Brown at approximately and concluded about half an hour later, with Brown's body being cleared to be taken to the morgue. At , Brown's body was signed in at the morgue by workers. == Investigations ==

Police Michael Brown was fatally shot by Officer Wilson at about 12:02 p.m. The Ferguson Police Department was on the scene within minutes, as were crowds of residents, some expressing hostility toward the police. Paramedics covered the body with sheets. About after the shooting, the Ferguson police chief turned over the homicide investigation to the St. Louis County Police Department (SLCPD). The arrival of SLCPD detectives took about , as they were occupied with another crime scene away. On arrival at 1:30 p.m., they put up privacy screens around the body. Their investigation was slowed due to safety concerns regarding the sound of gunfire in the area and some hostile members of the crowd encroaching on the crime scene. An investigator from the St. Louis County Medical Examiner's office arrived at 2:30 p.m. Brown's body was removed at 4:00 p.m. Local residents criticized authorities for leaving Brown's body in the street for four hours in an action seen as demeaning and disrespectful. In July, Bell announced he would not charge Wilson with any crime; Bell said he didn't "have the evidence to ethically bring a charge against Darren Wilson." == Grand jury hearing ==

The grand jury was made up of members who had been impaneled in May 2014 for a regularly scheduled term, to hear all cases put forward by the prosecuting attorney's office. There were three black jury members (one man and two women) and nine white jury members (six men and three women), an ethnic breakdown that roughly reflects the racial makeup of County, which is about 30% black, and 70% white. On , 2014, the grand jury started hearing evidence in the case State of Missouri v. Darren Wilson, in order to decide whether a crime was committed and if there was probable cause to believe Wilson committed it. There was intense interest focused on the grand jury. Robert P. McCulloch, the elected prosecuting attorney for County, was in charge of the prosecution but did not participate in the direct handling of the grand jury hearing. It was handled by two Assistant Prosecuting Attorneys of McCulloch's office: Kathi Alizadeh and Sheila Whirley. McCulloch announced an unusual process: the grand jury would hear all the evidence, the proceedings would be transcribed, and the materials would be made public if the grand jury did not indict. The grand jury took 25 days, over the span of three months, to hear more than 5,000 pages of testimony from 60 witnesses and then deliberate on whether or not to indict Wilson. Most grand juries complete their work in a matter of days. The grand jury was not sequestered during the process. On the night of , Prosecutor McCulloch reported in a 20-minute press conference that the grand jury had reached a decision in the case and would not indict Wilson. Following his announcement, McCulloch released thousands of pages of grand jury documents, with materials published on the internet for public perusal. The documents include transcripts of the proceedings, expert statements, and the testimony of some witnesses. On , more witness interviews and more than 50 brief audio recordings between the police dispatchers and responding police officers were released. On , a third release included the transcripts of witness interviews, including one with Dorian Johnson. A video of the two-hour interview of Johnson by FBI and county police was withheld. Robert P. McCulloch was the main focus of much of the criticism throughout the process and well into its aftermath. An attorney named Raul Reyes writing an article for CNN characterized McCulloch as not being impartial, as his father was a police officer killed in an incident with a black suspect and other members of his family served with the Police Department. A petition calling for McCulloch to recuse himself gained 70,000 signatures. Governor Jay Nixon declined to remove McCulloch and said doing so would potentially jeopardize the prosecution. McCulloch dismissed the claims of bias, and later said he regretted not speaking publicly about his background at the time. Legal analysts raised concerns over McCulloch's unorthodox approach, saying this process could have influenced the grand jury to decide against indictment and that they were given too much material to assess. The analysts highlighted the significant differences between a typical grand jury proceeding in Missouri and how Wilson's case was handled. == Evidence ==

Shooting scene Evidence presented to the grand jury showed that the shooting scene extended approximately along Canfield Drive, near where it intersects Copper Creek Court. The two-lane street runs east to west, and has sidewalks and curbs on both sides. Immediately prior to the incident, Brown was walking eastbound on Canfield and Officer Wilson was driving westbound. Evidence at the scene was generally clustered around Wilson's patrol SUV on the western side of the scene and near Brown's body, which was in the eastern part of the area. The western area included Wilson's SUV, which was angled slightly toward the right curb with its left-rear corner on the center line. Evidence included two bracelets, a baseball cap, and two .40 caliber spent casings. One of these casings was found at the western edge of the scene and the other was located near the rear driver's side of the police vehicle. There were two groups of red stains near the driver's side of the vehicle and a left sandal was also located in the vicinity. The right sandal was approximately east of the western area. The eastern area, which was approximately east of the western area, was about wide. Brown's body was situated along the center-line of the road with his head oriented in a westerly direction. The distance from the driver's door of Wilson's SUV to Brown's head was about . Two groups of red stains were located at the extreme eastern edge of the scene, with the furthest under from Brown's feet. One apparent projectile was found near the body. There were ten spent casings scattered on the south side of the road near Brown's body. The distribution of the casings, combined with most of the casings being east of the body, was consistent with Officer Wilson moving backward while firing. In 2022, Parcells was convicted in federal court, also in Kansas, of wire fraud related to performing an autopsy in 2016 based on false credentials. Federal Attorney General Eric Holder ordered a third autopsy of Brown's body. Its findings matched the other two autopsies, but its detailed findings were initially withheld from the public due to the ongoing investigation. The federal autopsy report was among a group of documents released by the County Prosecutor's Office on , two weeks after the grand jury chose not to indict Wilson. Audio recording of gunshots On , CNN released an audio recording purported to contain the sounds of the shooting. The recording was made by an anonymous third-party who happened to be recording a video-text message at the time of the incident. Glide, a video messaging service, confirmed the audio had been recorded on their site at on the day of the shooting. The twelve-second recording contains a series of shots, a short pause, and then a second series of shots. Forensic audio expert Paul Ginsberg says he heard six shots, a pause, and then four additional shots. Ginsberg said, "I was very concerned about that pause ... because it's not just the number of gunshots, it's how they're fired. And that has a huge relevance on how this case might finally end up." CNN's law enforcement analyst Tom Fuentes noted most accounts of the shooting say there was a single shot earlier in the incident near the vehicle that is not audible in the recording. The recording was also analyzed by SST, Inc., a company specializing in gunfire locator technology. That analysis found the sound of ten gunshots and seven gunshot echoes within seven seconds, with a three-second pause after the sixth shot. The company's analysis also said all ten rounds were fired from within a radius of , indicating the shooter was not moving. Handling The Washington Post said there were unorthodox forensic practices shown in the published testimony of Officer Wilson and other law enforcement officials. The article said Wilson washed blood off of his hands without photographing them first. It also said Wilson submitted his gun to evidence by himself, and that initial interviews of Wilson were conducted with other personnel present and were not taped. It described Wilson's face injuries after the shooting as photographed by a local detective at the Fraternal Order of Police building, instead of at Ferguson Police headquarters. An investigator with the County Medical Examiner's office testified he decided not to take measurements at the crime scene nor did he photograph the scene, instead relying on photographs taken by the County Police Department. == Witness accounts ==

Multiple witnesses saw part or all of the event and have given interviews to the media, testified to the grand jury, and were interviewed by the U.S. Department of Justice. The witness accounts were conflicting on various points. Other witness accounts Nine witness testimonies were judged by the Department of Justice as neither fully supportive nor inculpating of Wilson. One, that of witness 107, who was seated in the same minivan as witness 104, reported that Wilson was standing outside the passenger side of his vehicle at the time that Brown started to run away. Unlike witness 104, witness 107 was uncertain whether Brown subsequently charged at Wilson. Witness 107 reported that Wilson shot Brown while Brown was running away, and that the last shots were fired while Wilson was 10 to 15 feet away from Brown. The investigators reported that witness 107 was visibly shaken at what she had witnessed, which may have contributed to inconsistencies in her testimony. Witness 106, the driver of the minivan, disagreed with witness 107 that Brown had put his hands up before moving toward Wilson. Brown's gesture was instead characterized by this witness as Brown having "briefly flung" out his arms. However, the view witness 106 had of Brown was partially obstructed by Wilson's body. Witnesses 110 and 111 were interviewed on the evening of the incident and were shaken; witness 111 was crying. Witnesses 110 and 111 both witnessed the shooting, first from a driveway and then a balcony. They had passed Brown and Johnson walking on the street while in a vehicle en route to the house. They saw Wilson backing his vehicle up to block Brown and Johnson, but could not see what went on in the vehicle because they were watching from the passenger side. Johnson disappeared at the first shot, and Brown and Wilson continued to grapple until a second shot was fired and Brown ran away. Witness 110 observed Brown stopping, looking at his bloodied left hand, putting his arms out to his sides in a "what the heck" gesture and turning and going toward Wilson with his hands in the same posture. Witness 110 initially stated that Brown moved "quickly" back toward Wilson, though witness 110 later denied that Brown had been charging or running at Wilson to the grand jury and could not provide a characterization of Brown's movement. According to witness 111, it seemed that Brown was moving "in slow motion" toward Wilson. Witness 115 recorded on their cell phone video of the incident that "dude [Brown] was all up in his [Wilson's] car, dude [Brown] was punching on him." Witness 115 believed that Brown was winning in the fight, and from the vantage point of witness 115, was likely striking Wilson. There was a gap in witness 115's testimony as the shooting stopped, witness 115 went out onto their balcony, then went back inside to retrieve the phone, which they inadvertently left on their dresser, called out to family members and reemerged on the balcony. At this point, they saw Brown, whose arms were folded on his stomach, walking back toward Wilson. Brown was reportedly not surrendering and did not have his hands up, but was falling to the ground as he approached Wilson. Wilson fired a series of shots, and Brown fell to the ground over one arm, with the other at his side. Wilson did not touch Brown's body and was speaking on a radio with his gun drawn. Witness 114 saw Wilson stop his vehicle and lean out of the driver's window, perhaps to say something to Brown. Brown made a hand gesture. Wilson's vehicle continued on initially, but then was jerked back and parked at an angle. Witness 129 stated that this was to cut off Brown and Johnson. Witness 116 looked out their blinds in response to screams. They saw Brown with his hands inside Wilson's vehicle. Witness 116 reported seeing Wilson use what they thought was a taser, but miss. They then heard or saw Wilson fire a gun once or twice. Witness 116 saw Brown run away, and assumed that he had been apprehended. However, after hearing five or six additional gunshots, they looked out again to see Brown dead on the ground. Witness 110 and 141 reported that Wilson only shot at Brown while Brown moved toward him, not while Brown was fleeing. The DOJ concluded that they had identified no testimony that could inculpate Wilson that was consistent with other inculpating witness testimony, consistent with the prior statements of the witness and with the physical evidence. == Early reaction and analysis ==

August 9–14 Peaceful protests and civil disorder broke out the day following Brown's shooting and lasted for several days. This was in part due to the belief among many that Brown was surrendering, as well as longstanding racial tensions between the minority-black population and the majority-white city government and police. On , St. Louis held their annual Peace Fest, which had a particular focus on Mike Brown. In attendance was Mike Brown's father, Mike Brown Sr., as well as the parents of Trayvon Martin (an unarmed black teen who was shot and killed in Florida in 2012). International reactions Various heads of state and foreign news organizations have commented on the shooting and subsequent protests including the Chinese Xinhua News Agency, Germany's Der Spiegel, Egypt's Ministry of Foreign affairs, the Iranian Islamic Republic News Agency, protesters throughout the Middle East, the Russian Foreign Ministry, Spain's El Mundo, the British Metro, and others. Amnesty International (AI) sent a team of human rights observers, trainers, and researchers to Ferguson. It was the first time the organization deployed such a team in the United States. In a press release, AI USA director Steven W. Hawkins said, "The U.S. cannot continue to allow those obligated and duty-bound to protect to become those who their community fears most." On , AI published a report declaring human rights abuses in Ferguson. The report cited the use of lethal force in Brown's death, racial discrimination and excessive use of police force, imposition of restrictions on the rights to protest, intimidation of protesters, the use of tear gas, rubber bullets, and long range acoustic devices, restrictions imposed on the media covering the protests, and lack of accountability for law enforcement policing protests. == Reactions to grand jury decision ==

in New York City. The grand jury process was atypical because of significant and numerous departures from other normal grand jury proceedings. The American grand jury process operates in secret, with the proceedings, evidence and testimony rarely being released to the public in cases of no indictment. From the beginning, McCulloch desired to provide transparency to the process and had the proceeding transcribed with the intention of releasing the materials to the public if there was no indictment. Paul Cassell, former U.S. federal judge, said the investigative grand jury was unique because they were investigating with no assurance that any criminal conduct was present, in contrast to normal grand jury proceedings which have been screened for probable cause by a prosecutor. McCulloch's intentions to present all the evidence resulted in the proceedings which took far longer than regular grand juries which decide within days. ''MSNBC's'' Lawrence O'Donnell argued that this change amounted to a deliberate attempt by the prosecution to make it impossible to indict Wilson. Andrew F. Branca, a Massachusetts lawyer focusing on self-defense law, attributed O'Donnell's comments as a straw man because self-defense is a completely independent and sufficient justification for the use of deadly force. The Public Radio later clarified that even if Wilson was indicted and convicted at trial based on the Garner ruling, the conviction could be challenged on the basis that Missouri law permitted the use of deadly force. The prosecution's handling of the case received particular attention. Roger Parloff said prosecutors do not usually exclude truly exculpatory evidence and that prosecutors do not typically indict if they believe the accused is not guilty, disagreeing with the notion that McCulloch should have presented evidence with the purpose of obtaining an indictment. Jay Sterling Silver said the grand jury case indicated a conflict of interest between local prosecutors and police, as the former needs to maintain a good relationship with law enforcement. Mark O'Mara said the unusual process was to avoid arguments that the presentation was to effect a particular result, yet despite this McCulloch was still criticized for the decision. Paul Callan, former deputy chief of homicide in the Brooklyn District Attorney's Office, gave a layered response which asserted the choice to present all the evidence was unusual, but not unprecedented in controversial cases. Callan said some prosecutors use the grand jury process as political cover in cases which would not succeed at trial, and in cases in which subsequent investigations and civil lawsuits would raise further criticism. William Fitzpatrick, of the National District Attorneys Association, said it was not strange for prosecutors in police-involved cases to provide all available evidence and not ask for a specific charge and defended McCulloch's inclusion of evidence. Jeffrey Toobin agreed the exoneration may have been well-justified because a conviction would have been very unlikely at a trial, but the process that was used does not inspire confidence in the legal system. In a later interview, McCulloch defended the choice to include all evidence and not skew the presentation just for the sake of getting an indictment. The New York Times described prosecutors' questioning of Wilson as "gentle" and said it contrasted with the sharp challenges to witnesses whose accounts seemed to contradict Wilson's, and reported this had led some to question whether the process was as objective as McCulloch had claimed. The Times reported prosecutors asked witness after witness if Brown appeared to be reaching for a weapon when confronting Wilson, though few of them said this. Furthermore, contradictions in testimony by Wilson and other law-enforcement officers were left unchallenged by prosecutors. CNN legal analyst Sunny Hostin criticized the prosecutors for asking softball questions during the cross examination of Wilson's testimony, and referred particularly to the fact that no witness could corroborate Wilson's story that he had warned Brown twice to lie down on the ground, and when asked, witnesses said they did not hear him say that. After the grand jury's decision was announced, Brown's stepfather, Louis Head, turned to a crowd of demonstrators who had gathered, and yelled "Burn this motherfucker down" and "Burn this bitch down", according to a New York Times video. Moments before, he had said "If I get up [on the platform] I'm gonna start a riot." He later apologized for the outburst. ==Aftermath==

By September 24, Ferguson Police Chief Thomas Jackson publicly apologized to the family of Michael Brown. Destruction of QuikTrip The QuikTrip where Michael Brown had a confrontation with a clerk (which led to the police call) was looted and burned the next day, along with other stores in the neighborhood. Rather than rebuilding, the corporation donated the site to the Urban League of Metropolitan St. Louis and the Salvation Army. The organizations built the Ferguson Community Empowerment Center on the site, which opened in 2017. The Ferguson effect was first proposed after police saw an increase in violence following the shooting of Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. The term was coined by Doyle Sam Dotson III, the chief of the St. Louis police, to account for an increased murder rate in some U.S. cities following the Ferguson unrest. "Hands up, don't shoot" " sign displayed at a Ferguson protest "Hands up, don't shoot", or simply "hands up", is a slogan and gesture originating from the incident and was seen in demonstrations in Ferguson and throughout the United States. However, this shooting was determined to have happened after Harris shot at four St Louis County police officers who were in a police vehicle, with Harris also surviving after only being critically wounded and afterwards charged with four counts of assault on law enforcement in the first degree, five counts of armed criminal action, and one count of discharging or shooting a firearm at a motor vehicle. That same day, the Columbia (Missouri) Police Officers' Association (CPOA) proclaimed "Darren Wilson Day", calling Wilson an "innocent, but persecuted, officer" and insisted his ethnicity had nothing to do with their support of him. An ABC affiliate reported the post was shared nearly 60 times on the site before being removed. The CPOA then posted its support for Wilson and "all law enforcement officers who endure similar situations." Task force on policing In December 2014, president Barack Obama created a commission to make recommendations for broad police reform in the United States. The commission created by Obama released an interim report on , 2015, with numerous recommendations, including the recommendation that policy be created mandating "external and independent criminal investigations in cases of police use of force resulting in death, officer-involved shootings resulting in injury or death, or in-custody deaths". Brown family lawsuit On , 2015, the Brown family filed a wrongful death lawsuit in state court against Wilson, Jackson, and the City of Ferguson, asking for damages in excess of $75,000 as well as attorney's fees. A Ferguson city attorney revealed the city's insurance company paid $1.5 million. Dorian Johnson lawsuit On , 2015, Johnson filed a lawsuit in state court against Wilson, Jackson, and the City of Ferguson for being stopped by Wilson without probable cause, reasonable suspicion or legal justification to detain him. The lawsuit claimed that, according to the findings of the , law enforcement efforts focused on generating revenue rather than protecting the town's citizens. Johnson sought 25,000 in damages. allowing the lawsuit to go forward. The en banc Eighth Circuit reviewed and reversed the panel's decision on June 17, 2019, directing the district court to dismiss the case. Appointment of African-American police chiefs On May 9, 2016, Delrish Moss, a Miami law enforcement veteran and expert in community relations, was sworn in as the first permanent African American chief in Ferguson. He said his challenges would include diversifying the police force and dramatically improving community relations. Moss resigned and returned to Miami in October 2018. In 2023, Troy Doyle became the new police chief. According to Doyle, as a teenager growing up in northern St. Louis County, he was pulled over so many times on his commute that he bought a radar detector to avoid police. He says while he was stopped in a parking lot, a police officer pulled up and demanded identification for no apparent reason, noticed the radar detector, and took it without compensation after falsely stating it had shown up as stolen. Doyle says the incident is what inspired him to public service. == In popular culture ==

The same month Brown was shot dead, American rappers The Game, Rick Ross, 2 Chainz, Diddy, Fabolous, Wale, DJ Khaled, Swizz Beatz, Yo Gotti, Curren$y, Problem, King and recording group TGT released the song "Don't Shoot" as a tribute to Brown. On ''De L'Amour'' — his final studio album released before his death in 2017 — the French rock and roll singer Johnny Hallyday sings "Dans la peau de Mike Brown", a song against racial crimes and in memory of Mike Brown. On November 28, 2014, musician and filmmaker Richard Rossi was in the news regarding the controversy over the shooting of Michael Brown. Rossi wrote and recorded a protest song expressing his feelings about a grand jury's decision not to charge a white police officer in the death of the unarmed black teen in Ferguson, Missouri. "I wrote the song in five minutes as a way to express my emotions about the danger of trigger-happy police," Rossi said. "I filmed it on my laptop at my kitchen table and uploaded it to YouTube." Rossi uploaded the video on November 26, and provided the song's lyrics in the video description. Here is a sample from the song's beginning, printed in the Los Angeles Daily News: "Down at the courthouse on a Monday afternoon/Justice was thrown right out the window when a young white cop entered the room." In Prince's song about the 2015 Baltimore protests, "Baltimore", he sings "does anybody hear us pray for Michael Brown or Freddie Gray?". In 2015, actor Ezra Miller directed a short film titled The Truth According to Darren Wilson. In the film, Wilson recounts his version of events, ending in him being called into a room to tell it to investigators, implying that Wilson murdered Brown, and that he later lied about the events of that day. Brown's death is the subject of the song "What It Means" by Drive-By Truckers on their 2016 album American Band. Iconographer Mark Dukes created the icon Our Lady of Ferguson in response to the shooting. Poet Danez Smith published a poem entitled "not an Elegy for Mike Brown", written the night of the incident. Seattle based rapper Macklemore mentions Wilson in the song "White Privilege II" from his second collaborative effort with producer Ryan Lewis, 2016's ''This Unruly Mess I've Made'': "My success is the product of the same system that let off Darren Wilson – guilty" In 2016, a chapter about Black Lives Matter memorials to Brown and others was included in the book, "The Sustainers: Being, Building and Doing Good through the Sacred Spaces of Civil Rights, Human Rights and Social Movements," by preservationist Catherine Fleming Bruce. The book won the 2017 University of Mary Washington Historic Preservation Book Prize. English folk singer Reg Meuross included a song called "The Lonesome Death of Michael Brown" on his 2017 album Faraway People. The song's title acknowledges Bob Dylan's song against racism in the 1960s, "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll", which describes the death in Baltimore of a bartender at the hands of a drunk patron, who struck her with a cane causing her to die of a brain hemorrhage. Poet Nicole Sealey wrote The Ferguson Report: An Erasure, a book length erasure of the Ferguson Report which comments on the Killing of Michael Brown and the subsequent Ferguson unrest. Her poem "Pages 22–29", an excerpt from the book, won a Forward Prize for Poetry in October 2021. == See also ==