Public Reacts with Skepticism to Ferguson Police Announcement
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iStock/Thinkstock(FERGUSON, Mo.) — The announcement by Ferguson, Missouri police on Friday that an officer named Darren Wilson was the one who shot unarmed teen Michael Brown and that the shooting happened after a nearby robbery were met overwhelmingly with anger and skepticism.
Ferguson Police Chief Tom Jackson announced the name in a news conference Friday morning, nearly a week after the officer shot Brown on Saturday afternoon.
Jackson prefaced the name announcement by describing a “strong-arm” robbery that had occurred a few minutes before the shooting at a nearby convenience store. A police report released to members of the media at the news conference described Brown as the suspect involved in the robbery, in which he allegedly took a box of cigars and grabbed and shoved a store clerk before leaving.
“This is the first reference we’ve heard that this was a strong-arm robbery,” Laura Keys, who had come to the news conference to listen to the announcement, told ABC News. “Not a theft, but a strong-arm robbery. When I hear ‘strong-arm robbery’ I think that you went in and attacked people, ran off, used a weapon of some sort. So was Michael Brown’s weapon his height? Was it his race, his skin tone?”
Others gathered at the news conference began yelling “No justice, no peace,” a rallying cry of the protesters demanding justice from the Ferguson police since Brown was fatally shot.
Online, Internet users expressed widespread skepticism about the Ferguson Police Department’s announcement about Wilson and the circumstance surrounding the robbery.
The witnesses have yet to change their story but the police been all over the place! #Ferguson #JusticeForMikeBrown
— J. Sims (@JRocc205) August 15, 2014
I don’t believe that Darren Wilson ish one bit.
— Derail (@CainMcCoy) August 15, 2014
“That whole group needs to be gone,” Keys, the bystander at the news conference, told ABC News. “The police chief, the mayor, they all need to be gone and that is what I’m calling for.”
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