St Louis, MO – Ferguson Video Shows Witness Raising Hands In Air

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    St Louis, MO – Cellphone video that shows a witness raising his hands in the air immediately after the fatal shooting of a black 18-year-old by a white police officer in Ferguson appears to support previous accounts and could bolster arguments that Michael Brown was surrendering when he was shot, legal experts said Friday.

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    The video obtained by The Associated Press and first aired by CNN shows two landscapers who were working near the street where Brown was shot by officer Darren Wilson on Aug. 9. In the video, a man can be heard saying, “He had his (expletive) hands in the air,” while one of the workers raises his own hands up.

    The man who took the cellphone video, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he feared for his safety, said the voice is that of the worker raising his hands, but that isn’t clear on the video.

    The workers are not from Ferguson and were employed by a business from Jefferson County, south of St. Louis. They have not come forward publicly and the AP has been unable to reach them.

    The comment on the video largely matches those of residents of the apartment complex where the shooting occurred, who said Brown was surrendering when he was killed. The shooting spurred several days of sometimes violent protests in Ferguson. A state grand jury and the Justice Department are investigating, but no decision on whether Wilson will face charges is expected until next month.

    Benjamin Crump, the attorney for Brown’s family, said both workers came forward and told the family their account of the shooting. He described the video as “of paramount significance.”

    “Not because they were not residents of Ferguson, and not because the construction workers were Caucasian, but because it is a contemporaneous recording of their immediate actions of what they had just witnessed,” Crump said. “It’s the best evidence you can have other than a video of the actual shooting itself.”

    Ed Magee, spokesman for St. Louis County prosecutor Bob McCulloch, said the workers are among witnesses who have been interviewed by authorities and are “part of the investigation.”

    The video likely would be admissible evidence before the grand jury along with the workers’ testimony, said Peter Joy, a professor at Washington University School of Law in St. Louis.

    “The thing that strikes me is we actually have a film of what’s going on and while it’s hard to hear the construction workers say what they’re saying, you have one construction worker putting his hands up in the air, which appears to be him demonstrating what he’s seeing,” Joy said.

    Lori Lightfoot, an attorney who previously worked as chief administrator for the Chicago Police division that oversaw officer-involved shootings, said the video could be significant but many questions remain: What was the vantage point of the workers? How far away were they from the shooting?

    “Given the stakes, it’s essential that all of these issues be tied down,” she said.


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    7 Comments
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    chosen-nation
    chosen-nation
    9 years ago

    How does a video showing a witness holding his hands up prove anything about Michael Brown?!?

    Realistic
    Realistic
    9 years ago

    What’s so difficult to understand. They are seen showing what the story was right after the incident.

    What evidence would be enough for you?

    9 years ago

    Even Bill O’Reilly, of Fox News, is of the opinion that the cop, Darren Wilson went overboard. Officer Wilson will probably be indicted by a county grand jury for manslaughter. Hopefully, he will be convicted, and will be sentenced to prison. Even if Brown and his friend defied Wilson regarding jaywalking, and even if Brown became initially involved in some sort of a scuffle, it still did not justify Wilson using deadly force against Brown. In fact, witnesses stated that they heard Brown telling his friend to run.The U.S. Supreme Court cleared ruled in 1988, that deadly force cannot be used against a fleeing felon, when they are no longer a danger to law enforcement. Even, if by some technicality, Wilson is not indicted, he will still face civil rights violation charges by a federal grand jury. I would not want to be in Mr. Wilson’s shoes right now. At the end of the Pledge of Allegiance, it states “With Liberty and Justice for ALL”. This case should be looked at as a individual incident, and Brown should not be condemned because of his background. Of the approximately 430 fatal shootings by police every year in the USA, not all of them are legally
    justified.

    Lodzker
    Lodzker
    9 years ago

    who cares about this story? the kid was a thug.

    9 years ago

    To #6 - What is your definition of a “thug”. Even if he was one, does that mean that he should have received the death penalty? You should be concerned about this matter, as it could happen to any one. Yidden have been roughed up by overzealous cops, even when they were not violating the law. A case in point was the “crowd control” techniques, employed by the NYPD in 2006, when they were sent into Borough Park, to quell a disturbance. They grabbed civilians at random, include men and women, and manhandled them. There is no doubt in my mind that they would not have acted with such contempt, had they been in Bay Ridge. If we choose to ignore what happened in Ferguson, we should not wring our hands, when it occurs again, elsewhere. For example, in 1999, Gideon Busch was gunned down in Borough Park, by trigger happy cops. There were eyewitness statements confirming that he was not advancing on the cops with his hammer, and couldn’t see, because he had been maced. Yet, the cops shot him down like a dog anyway, and got away with it. By your definition of “thug”, would you also refer to Gideon Busch as one?