Ferguson Grand Jury Evidence Reveals Mistakes, Holes In Investigation

Racism and racial discrimination has been a major issue in the U.S. since the colonial periods, where people have been treated differently only based upon their race. Although the civil rights movement opposed racial discrimination, the act of stereotyping individuals still continues till this day. Racial profiling by law enforcement is commonly defined as a practice that targets people for suspicion of crime based on their race, religion or national origin. A recent case, involving a young black man named Michael Brown is an example of how a police officer may act differently when facing an African American. “Ferguson Grand Jury Evidence Reveals Mistakes, Holes In Investigation” is an article written by Jason Cherkis’s and published on November

The shooting occurred on August 9, 2014, in Ferguson, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis. Brown was caught on surveillance stealing Cigarillos from a convenience store and then shoved the store’s clerk out of his way. After the incident took place Darren Wilson was informed by a police dispatch of the robbery and the criminal’s physical descriptions. Wilson encountered the suspect walking in the middle of the street hindering traffic. He then recognized Brown, because he matched the dispatch description. Wilson backed up his vehicle to block them and that led to a grapple between Brown and Wilson through the window of the police vehicle until Wilson's gun was fired. Brown fled a couple of miles then turned and faced the police officer, hands in the air, supposedly surrendering or attacking the officer, but was surprisingly shot several times until he fell on the ground

Some of the witnesses said that Brown turned around to attack the officer or to take his gun and shoot him. Cherkis’s suggests that the investigators failed to measure the distance between Brown and Wilson. The legal examiner testified that she thought the distance was irrelevant and she couldn’t take any pictures, because her camera’s batteries were dead. The examiner later testified that she escorted investigators from the St. Louis County Police Department as they photographed Brown’s body, which totally contradicts her first testimony. However, according to the article “Ferguson protests: What we know about Michael Brown's last minutes” published in The BBC that the autopsy commissioned by his family that a shot on Brown’s arm was likely sustained while his hand were in the air, which presumably indicates that he was shot while surrendering. In addition, the medical examiner proved that the bullet couldn’t been shot during a struggle, because there wasn’t any gunpowder residue on Brown’s skin which means the shot was fired from a distance of at least 2ft. Thus, making the struggle argument completely