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This morning, I saw a headline that read Mike Brown Never Reached For Darren Wilson’s Gun. Seeing as how I never believed that anyone would reach for a gun out of a police officer’s hand, I believed the story immediately. When I read further down into the story, it said that Mike Brown never initiated contact between Wilson and never struck him. But the headline, and the facts asserted in them, aren’t entirely true. And they’re the cause of quite a bit of debate, with one news organization saying Brown never reached for the gun, struck Wilson or initiated contact between the two of them.
The information, which is being interpreted in a couple of ways comes from an interrogatory court document in which Wilson did admit some things that completely contradict that narrative that the media and the police department presented about Mike Brown.
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In the document, Wilson admits that Brown never reached for the gun while it was in his holster. Not that he never reached for it, the entire time he was interacting with Wilson. And no where in Wilson’s testimony does he acknowledge that he was the one who initiated contact. What he does say is “at some point” Brown reached into his car through the window.
Still, that doesn’t mean that the documents don’t reveal anything new. They reveal that what we had been led to believe about Mike Brown was not the case.
We had been led to believe he robbed a store. That was false.
We had been led to believe that Wilson pulled Brown over because he suspected him of that robbery. That was false.
We were led to believe Mike Brown assaulted Darren Wilson. We still don’t know the truth about that. But we all saw the images of Wilson during his medical examination. He was blushing, not bruised.
I mean, these theories were reported as facts from the right, including from Rudy Guilani on Fox News when he said,
“What happened in Ferguson is that a man committed a robbery, attempted to assault a police officer, and the police officer—to save his life—shot him. The police officer did his duty. The officer should be commended for what he did.” —Rudy Giuliani on Fox News, March 12, 2015
And none of it is true.
We can’t ignore the fact that the entire Ferguson police department was found racially biased and completely overhauled. We can’t ignore the fact that before Mike Brown Officer Wilson had been formally accused of using excessive force as a police officer and racial discrimination.
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We do know that Wilson was questioned by prosecutors who as The Root puts it, “were his co-workers weeks before.” When Wilson testified it was in secret while Brown’s character was assassinated on an international stage.
We’ll probably never have the full details of what happened that day. But personally, I don’t need all of them to know without a shadow of a doubt that what happened to Mike Brown was excessive and unnecessary. It was murder.
Veronica Wells is the culture editor at MadameNoire.com. She is also the author of “Bettah Days.” You can follow her on Facebook and Twitter @VDubShrug.
The post We’ll Never Know Exactly What Happened With Mike Brown & Darren Wilson. But I Don’t Need To appeared first on MadameNoire.