August 15, 2014

This is the full uncut public video posted by Facebook user Ace Johnson one day after Michael Brown was shot by Ferguson police. Be forewarned: It is a real time, 10-minute look at a shocked community reaction to the dead young man in the street, and strong language is a part of the narrative.

CNN posted a short snippet with a much longer description:

Authorities would later claim Brown attacked the officer in his car and tried to take his gun.

But in the minutes after the shooting, the irate crowd on the Ferguson street comes to a different consensus, summed up by the video's narrator: "They just killed this (man) for no reason."

As Brown's body lay prone -- for minutes with no one, not even a police officer, in the camera's sight -- onlookers quickly establish one key fact amongst themselves: He wasn't armed.

"There is nothing!" a woman yells out on the video. "Do you see a gun? Do you see a knife? Do you see anything that would have caused a threat to these (expletive) police officers?"

"They shot that boy because they wanted to shoot that boy."

If the moments leading up to Brown's shooting were frenetic, the moments afterward -- at least right around his body -- are eerily calm as captured on the continuing video.

There are two key moments for me in the video. One, where a speaker says they put more bullets into him after he fell. And the other, where someone shouts out in an angry voice, asking where the ambulance is, where the paramedics are. This is shortly after a man crosses the police tape to view the body and is pushed back by police. Some reports have identified that man as Michael Brown's father.

I am posting this because it is documentary, real time commentary and reaction to an event with dualing narratives about what exactly took place. If you listen to the discussion on the video, it tracks much more closely with what other eyewitnesses have related than what the police claim happened.

Discussion

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