The Alton Musteriling Case Study

Media spiked many thoughts that police brutality is a big deal in today’s times, which then lead to the huge riots throughout the city of Ferguson where Darren Wilson and his family had to be protected from thousands of protestors who threatened his life as well as the entire city. The real story as well as the autopsy reports later came out to show that officer Wilson did not shoot him numerous times as he was running

With all of the technology that we currently have in this day and age, photographs, videotapes, and news articles are showing up all around about biases not only in the courtroom, but outside as well. One such case is the Michael Brown incident at Ferguson. After Michael had been caught on camera stealing at a local liquor store, an officer known as Darren Wilson had noticed Mr. Brown walking on the road. Mr. Brown had matched the description and Mr. Wilson had decided to stop Michael and question him. According to Darren, Michael had reached

Rodney King was a black motorist who was beaten and arrested by four white police officers in Los Angeles on March 3, 1991. The policemen were unaware of being filmed until, George Holliday, captured the beating on videotape from his apartment window and released it to the press (Alexander, Jacobs, and Seidman, 2000). This incident was not a shock to individuals living in the Los Angeles County as it was common to be victimized by policemen. The difference in Rodney King’s case with other

They might assume someone was shot or killed by a police officer becauses of racism. Many times that is not the case. On August 9, 2014, eighteen year old Michael Brown was shot and killed by Officer Wilson a white Ferguson Police officer (“Ferguson Protests: What we know about...”). This caused many riots throughout the country. The problem though is that some people were protesting because they thought that there was racism involved in the shooting (The 2014 Ferguson protests over the Michael Brown …”). There has been many different eyewitness accounts of the shooting. Some people think the Officer Wilson shooting an unarmed teenager is an example of police brutality, but what some people don’t know is what happened leading up to shooting. Brown and a friend of his were caught on camera stealing alcohol from a local liquor store. They were then walking down the middle of the street at midnight with the stolen goods when Officer Wilson showed up and asked them to move out of the middle of the road. Wilson sees that the two men looked like the suspects for the store robbery and stops his car to block the road. When Wilson starts talking to the men, Brown tries to take Wilson’s gun from him and fires two shots into the police vehicle. Then Brown starts running the other direction, taunting the officer, as Wilson pursues him. When Brown stops running he turns around and starts charging Officer Wilson. Wilson fired multiple fatal shots at Brown, killing him. The events from the shooting prove that there was no racism involved at all in Officer Wilson’s decision to fire his gun at

In August of 2014 in Ferguson, Missouri, an 18-year-old African American boy by the name of Michael Brown, was shot and killed by an on-duty police officer during the investigation of an alleged, strong-arm robbery (Clarke & Lefte, 2014). The incident ignited protests and violent riots that continued for several weeks throughout the United States. Similar high profile deaths of Eric Garner in New York City, Tamir Rice in Cleveland, and Freddy Gray in Baltimore, have resulted in mass protests against law enforcement. For many, a deep divide was forged in the relations between law enforcement and the public; trust was lost on both sides. “Normally, official accounts of police fatally shooting black teenagers rest largely on the words of

There has always been a common assumption from the police and society that minorities, primarily African Americans, are associated with criminal activity, in turn causing police brutality today. When the news report shows a police officer hitting a black man who was suspected of a crime, there are many people quick to point out police officers as racists. Usually, the police officers would say something along the lines of, “He attacked first and would not comply,” or “I thought he had a gun.” Now in some scenarios, this may be true as the suspect might have tried to fight back but most of the time, it is not. Many police officers in these cases try to make up lies to get out being known as a racist. Thankfully, there are many witnesses and

The summer of 2014 in Ferguson M.O. there was a black teenager by the name of Michael Brown. Brown was shot by a white police officer at the end of that summer. When Brown was shot this caused a worldwide debate between a person's race and the policing that is done in America. After the occurrence of this shooting tensions ran high in Ferguson when it comes to race. According to BBC News, from the time that officer Darren Wilson confronted Brown, it only took three minutes from the confrontation to when backup came and found Brown dead. At the time of the shooting Dorian Johnson who was a friend of Brown’s and was there. Johnson said that everything started at the window of the police car. An unnamed witness said that officer Wilson tried to get out of his car but was pushed back in and punched. Wilson reached for his gun, and Brown grabbed it from him. This is what caused the gun to go off inside the car. She said that when Brown ran off he turned around to taunt Wilson when he was told to freeze. Brown then started to run at full speed toward Wilson, and that was when he was shot dead. The unnamed witness’s story matches the one that officer Wilson gave in front of the St. Louis grand

People communicate to the world through social media. Maybe if the footage was released to families of victims or to the world to remember a certain someone it will give people closure. There are fights daily about practically nothing so imagine a murder that happened in the area. People will talk for days about what supposedly happened and everyone will explain their opinion without actual proof. If the police with permission from the family release the tape, people will realize they were wrong or right about the situation and people will stop talking about it. Some situations just need to be put to rest. Once there is stone cold proof of things, there is no reason to argue about it. To bring up the shooting of Beal once again, what if the police had cameras at the time? There would be no he said she said. There would be a visual and audio of what really happened. Both stories do not make a lot of sense. There are questions from people in the neighborhood and family but all they get is “we’re investigating”. I am sure that the Beal and Boxely family would approve the footage of the incident if there were cameras because they believe he was just another victim brutally murdered. Police officer or not, you cannot always believe what they say because they obviously do not want to lose their job. And innocent victim or not, you cannot always believe what they have to say or what their family says because they could be

For example, witness ten saw the incident happen almost from the beginning. He started watching the scene once he heard the first gun shot; this is when he claims he seen Brown’s body partially in Wilson’s vehicle. Although, witness ten does explain that he didn’t see what had occurred inside the vehicle but after the second shot he seen Brown run east in which officer Wilson later followed. After a short while he had seen Brown turn around and charge at Wilson, he states, “Mr. Brown was quite a distance and he stopped and when he stopped, he didn’t get down on the ground or anything. He turned around and did some type of movement.” This now proving more of Wilson’s statement and his self defense against Brown. Another witness that has about the same story as officer Wilson is witness 30. Witness 30 was watching the incident occur from a great distance but his statement was that Brown turned around and seem to have grabbed a weapon and pointed it towards the officer. Witness 30 stated, “He walked back toward the officer. Now I’ve heard lots of people talking about how he had his hands up. He did not have his hands up.” Witness 30 explained that Brown in no way tried surrendering. A third witness, 32 had cleared the officer's story in the beginning explaining that Brown and Johnson were walking in the middle of the street and that is when officer Wilson parked slant

The more that I look at this Sandra Bland case, the more saddened and frustrated I become. The truth is, black people, we have some culpability in this as well. We don’t want to face the possibility of the darkness that may very well be at the core of this tragic situation. Yes, I fervently question the overzealous behavior of the trooper that decided to escalate the situation instead of deescalate it, as he was trained to do. Yes, I am aware that there are some questions concerning the initial release of the dash-cam video, which illuminates the willingness of law enforcement to cover its ass, at all costs. Yes, I know that the

Firstly, Michael Brown is not just an innocent victim as the African American community portrays. Shortly before Brown’s encounter with Officer Wilson, a 911 call had been placed from the Ferguson Market and Liquor store on 9101 Florissant Avenue reporting a robbery. Unfortunately, it is unknown whether or not he had a juvenile record. Brown’s record was not released because Cynthia Harcourt, the St. Louis County juvenile office’s attorney, said the “court of public opinion does not require the release of juvenile records” and that “simple curiosity was not an adequate reason to violate the privacy of Brown and his family” (“Broken Record”). Not releasing Brown’s records creates bias in favor of Brown, leading people to assume that the shooting was racially motivated.

The recent shooting of Michael Brown has stirred anger and bitterness in the mostly African American community of Ferguson. Protestors are claiming that Officer Darren Wilson, the police officer who killed Brown on August 9th, illegally killed the young, 18 year old boy. Police officers should not be shooting anyone unless they feel as if their life or anyone else’s life is in danger. Currently, the stories of witnesses and police are different. According to the St. Louis County police, Wilson stepped out of his car, but Brown pushed him. Short after, a struggle ensued in the car, and Brown attempted to take the

The Article that caught my attention was “The police hunting and killing of black males stops today” by Trey Ellis of The Huffington Post. This article discusses how through racial profiling police have turned their trust to proctect and surive into a way to demoralize and incrimnate Black males. The reason this article stood out to me is the events that are viral on social media such as “ Anton Sterling and Philando Castile”, these young males had altercations of some type (not exactly the same), but both ended tragically from being shot by an officer on duty.These tragities were recorded during or after the event and streamed live or posted on Facebook, giving users/views a first persons veiw of the moment. The authur decribes how many current events have involove officers who have used their power to pull over these males for no reason, but to “assume the black citizen is in some way criminalized, the officer uses an excuse to make an arrest and is then praised and possibly promoted by his supervisor.” I believe that this reading is sort of one sided, I am not condoning or in any way supporting the officers actions, but I believe in any situation there is two sides of the story( I am mearly stating my opinion on the matter).

There have many cases dealing with racial profiling from officers and the law enforcement. Individual such as Sandra Bland, Mike Brown, Trayvon Martin and many more have all been victims of a crime and killed for no reason at all. Sadly, no one truly knows the real story behind these cases because there was no proof whether or not Mike Brown has his hands up, or if Sandra bland killed herself, or if Treyvon Martin was attacking someone. No one has evidence to back up their claims but the citizens of the U.S know and we believe that our system is tricky, sneaky, and does not care about us. Many cases have brought up questions of the police officers true motives leading to this distraught controversy. Some say there was a time when we could believe everything that was said in the court of law, especially once someone was under oath. Those times are long gone but I feel those times weren’t based off truths either. Today, we live in a society where we often end up resulting to he said, she said or laying the blame on others rather than taking full responsibility for what you’ve

For example, recently in North Carolina, a deaf man was fatally shot by police. The brother of the man told news that the man was scared of the police. The reason he was in the situation, to begin with, was because he was speeding on the highway, the police officer was following him with his sirens on for 10 miles before he stopped. No further information about why the man was shot has been released.