Police name officer, say teenager a robber

Police Chief Thomas Jackson, at a news conference Friday, releases the name of the Ferguson, Mo., police officer who killed Michael Brown.
Police Chief Thomas Jackson, at a news conference Friday, releases the name of the Ferguson, Mo., police officer who killed Michael Brown.

Correction: Darren Wilson, identified as the police officer who shot an unarmed 18-year-old, Michael Brown, last month in Ferguson, Mo., had served almost two years as an officer in Jennings, Mo., and just less than three years on the force in Ferguson before the shooting, according to records. Several articles by The Associated Press, relying on information from authorities, erroneously reported the duration of his law enforcement experience in the two cities.

FERGUSON, Mo. -- Police on Friday identified the officer who fatally shot an unarmed black teenager and released documents saying the young man had been suspected of stealing a $48.99 box of cigars from a convenience store in a "strong-arm" robbery shortly before he was killed.

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Police Chief Thomas Jackson said Darren Wilson, a 28-year-old white officer, has patrolled suburban St. Louis for six years and had no previous complaints filed against him.

Jackson said Wilson did not know Michael Brown was a robbery suspect at the time of the shooting, and he stopped the 18-year-old and a companion "because they were walking down the middle of the street blocking traffic." Earlier Friday, Jackson suggested that Wilson had been alerted to the robbery shortly before the encounter.

The police chief described Wilson as "a gentle, quiet man" who had been "an excellent officer." He has been on the Ferguson force for four years and worked previously in the neighboring community of Jennings.

Wilson, who was placed on administrative leave after the Aug. 9 shooting, "never intended for any of this to happen," Jackson said.

Brown's relatives said no robbery would justify shooting the teen after he put his hands up, as witnesses have claimed. Family attorneys said Brown's parents were blindsided by the allegations and the release of a surveillance video from the convenience store.

"It appears to be him," attorney Daryl Parks said, referring to the footage, which he said was released without any advance notice from police.

According to police reports released Friday, authorities received a 911 call at 11:51 a.m. last Saturday reporting a robbery at the Ferguson Market. An unidentified officer was dispatched to the store, arriving within three minutes. The officer interviewed an employee and customer, who gave a description of a man who stole the cigars and walked off with another man toward a QuikTrip store.

Descriptions of the suspects were broadcast over the police radio. The officer did not find the suspects either on the street or at the QuikTrip, the reports said.

The robber took a box of Swisher Sweets, a brand of small, inexpensive cigars. The suspects were identified as Brown and Dorian Johnson, 22, according to the reports.

The store's attorney, Jay Kanzler, said the store workers know many customers by name. But he said a customer, not store workers, called police.

Meanwhile, Wilson had been responding to a nearby call involving a sick child from 11:48 a.m. until noon. A minute after he left that site, he encountered Brown walking down Canfield Drive. The documents contained no description of what happened between Brown and Wilson.

Police have said Brown was shot after an officer encountered him and another man on the street during a routine patrol. They say one of the men pushed the officer into his squad car, then physically assaulted him in the vehicle and struggled with the officer over the officer's weapon. At least one shot was fired inside the car before the struggle spilled onto the street, where Brown was shot multiple times, according to police.

Dorian Johnson has said the officer ordered him and Brown onto the sidewalk, then grabbed his friend's neck and tried to pull him into the car before brandishing his weapon and firing. He said Brown started to run and the officer pursued him, firing multiple times.

Another family attorney, Benjamin Crump, said police "are choosing to disseminate information that is very strategic to try to help them justify the execution-style" killing.

Crump also represented the family of Trayvon Martin, the teenager fatally shot in Florida by a neighborhood-watch organizer who was later acquitted of murder.

The Aug. 9 video shows a man wearing a ball cap, shorts and white T-shirt grabbing a much shorter man by his shirt near the store's door. A police report says Brown grabbed the man who had stepped from behind the store counter and "forcefully pushed him back" into a display rack.

Dorian Johnson told investigators that Brown took cigarillos, said Johnson's attorney, Freeman Bosley. Bosley said he was aware of the video but had not seen it.

Police said they found evidence of the stolen merchandise on Brown's body. Authorities determined that Dorian Johnson was not involved in the robbery and will not seek charges against him, Jackson said.

Brown's uncle, Bernard Ewing, said that even if his nephew was involved, a robbery "still doesn't justify shooting him when he puts his hands up. You still don't shoot him in the face."

The Justice Department said Friday that FBI agents had conducted several interviews with witnesses as part of a civil-rights investigation into Brown's death. In the days ahead, the agents planned to canvass the neighborhood where the shooting happened, seeking more information, the statement said.

The St. Louis County Police Department also is investigating. The St. Louis County prosecutor said it will probably be weeks before a decision is made on whether to charge Wilson with a crime.

On Friday, St. Louis County Executive Charlie Dooley asked the Missouri attorney general's office to take over the case, but Attorney General Chris Koster said he has no plans to do so.

Dooley spokesman Pat Washington said Dooley believes the county's prosecutor, Bob McCulloch, is "biased and shouldn't handle the case."

Koster said he has received requests not only from Dooley but also from some community leaders to take over prosecution.

"However, prosecutors in our state derive their power directly from the people," Koster wrote in an email to The Associated Press. "State law provides no authority for the Attorney General or the Governor to remove or transfer a criminal case from an elected county prosecutor."

Ed Magee, a spokesman for McCulloch, said, "We will be proceeding with our duties."

disbelief, anger

On Friday night, the Rev. Jesse Jackson linked arms with protesters as they marched to the site where Brown was killed. Jackson bent over in front of a memorial cross and candle and sighed deeply. He urged people to "turn pain into power" and to "fight back, but not self-destruct" through violence.

The scene was eclectic Friday night as hundreds gathered for a sixth-straight evening. A man on a bullhorn called for a revolution. A young man waved a Bible while citing Scripture. Some took selfies in front of a convenience store that had been burned by looters Sunday. Boys tossed a football, and horns and loud music blared.

To Vida Weekly, 51, it was still a somber occasion. She walked through the crowd holding high a sign that read: "The police killed Michael Brown and now they are trying to kill his character."

Brown's death had ignited four days of clashes with furious protesters, But the tension eased Thursday after the governor turned oversight of the protests over to the Missouri Highway Patrol.

Gone Friday were the police in riot gear and armored vehicles, pointing assault rifles at protesters and firing tear gas into crowds.

However, Friday's announcement by the police chief was met with disbelief and anger by several dozen Ferguson residents who also attended the news conference, which was hastily held at a QuikTrip store that was burned during a night of looting earlier in the week.

"It took them too long to say what [the officer's] name was," said Tatinisha Wheeler, 30, of St. Louis. "Why are we just now knowing there was a robbery?

"It's the first time everybody heard about it because there wasn't no damn robbery," she added.

Jessica Holmes, 26, of Ferguson, said "I think it's a cover-up, basically."

A couple of dozen protesters began marching, chanting "Hands up, don't shoot" and "What do we want? Justice! When do we want it? Now!"

Most in the mainly black crowd said that even vaguely linking Brown to a robbery was evidence of racial bias in Ferguson's overwhelmingly white Police Department.

"If it had been the other way around and a black man had killed a white kid, we'd have known in 15 minutes," said a woman who did not give her name. "It wouldn't have taken six or seven days."

Missouri Highway Patrol Capt. Ron Johnson, whom Gov. Jay Nixon has assigned to take over security in Ferguson, expressed concern that even as police released the robbery information and photographs, they refused to take reporters' questions.

"These are two separate issues," Ron Johnson, speaking to reporters on the street immediately after Jackson's announcement, said of the reported robbery and Brown's death. "I'm not going to say one justifies the other. I think if we're going to give answers, we need not give hints. We need to say it."

Later, Nixon appeared before the media and a crowd for a news conference that also gave residents a chance to unload on the officials.

"We have children and families that we love. If we cannot trust our police officers, who can we trust?" one woman in the crowd lamented.

Nixon, when asked if he thought Ferguson police had mishandled the situation after Brown's shooting, said, "No." But he described the community reaction as "an appropriate outpouring of angst" and said the focus should be on how and why Brown died.

He also said that the investigation would take time and would not be easy.

"I think there are going to be some bumps along this road to justice," Nixon said. "I think there are going to be some moments of angst between now and the finish line."

Pleading for calm from the protesters, Ron Johnson said, "In our anger, we have to make sure that we don't burn down our own house." He added, "That does not prove a point."

Johnson said he had not been told how the authorities planned to release the information, but said, "I would have liked to have been consulted."

Later, Jackson said he had released material related to the robbery simultaneously with the long-awaited disclosure of the officer's name because news media organizations had requested both pieces of information.

"We didn't have good cause not to release it," Jackson said. "We've had this tape for a while."

Kanzler, the convenience store's attorney, said a court issued a warrant for the video Friday.

Crump said he and the Brown family were "flabbergasted" that the police would release security camera photos from the store, which the police say show Brown, but none of Wilson.

"The police are playing games here, and the parents are beyond incensed with the way that the police are handling the distribution of information," Crump said. "The police are not being transparent."

But Jackson said he would have been criticized if he had made the robbery video public before revealing the identity of Wilson.

"If I had released that tape but not the officer's name, there would have been similar questions," he said.

Information for this article was contributed by David A. Lieb, Alan Scher Zagier, Jim Salter, Jim Suhr and staff members of The Associated Press; by Molly Hennessy-Fiske, Matt Pearce and Tina Susman of the Los Angeles Times; and by Alan Binder, Timothy Williams and Serge Kovaleski of The New York Times.

A Section on 08/16/2014

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