FERGUSON, Mo., (Reuters) – Minutes before a police officer shot him dead, Michael Brown had become a suspect in the theft of cigars from a store, according to police reports released yesterday after days of protests in a St. Louis suburb over the unarmed black teenager’s death.
But what, if anything, that had to do with the fatal encounter became less clear as the day went by. Hours after the reports’ release, police said that Officer Darren Wilson, 28, had no idea 18-year-old Brown was a robbery suspect. He simply wanted Brown to move from the road to the sidewalk, Ferguson Police Chief Tom Jackson said at a news conference
“He was walking down the middle of the street blocking traffic. That was it,” Jackson said.
After nearly a week of accusations that the Ferguson Police Department did not know how to communicate with the public, Jackson did little to dispel that image during two appearances on Friday.
He was visibly nervous, stuttering as he fumbled his notes, and made announcements that only sowed more confusion. After releasing the robbery incident report without any attempt to explain its fuller context, he let more than five hours pass before confirming, and only when asked, that Wilson did not know about the robbery when he encountered Brown.
The decision by the police department, which is overwhelmingly white, to release a report on the robbery while keeping details of the shooting secret only served to fuel outrage that has roiled the St. Louis area.
