Analyst: Video Proves Police Lied About Where Mike Brown Was Killed

By Jia Tolentino | November 21, 2014 | 4:30pm

In a detailed investigation complete with the above video, the Daily Kos reports that the distance between Darren Wilson’s SUV and the point on Canfield Drive where Michael Brown collapsed was not 35 feet, as Ferguson police have been saying for over 100 days: rather, it was 148 feet.

Shaun King then goes patiently and excruciatingly through why this lie is so egregious:

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Six different witnesses on the scene claimed that Mike Brown was shot at repeatedly from behind before he turned around, faced Darren Wilson, verbally surrendered, and put his hands in the air. Wilson, having already shot at Mike Brown at least six times while he fled, then fired off a barrage of four quick shots at the surrendered Brown he was looking at face to face, killing him on the spot. With his lifeless body face down on the road, Mike Brown’s blood literally flowed down Canfield Drive for more than four hours. The shooting and the aftermath that evening, which included bringing police dogs to the scene, infuriated residents as never before, and the anger was spreading rapidly across St. Louis and into the nation.

When Chief Belmar sat down the next day to brief the press on his summary of the facts, he stated at 1:13 (and then even more emphatically at 6:01) in the video below, “The entire scene, from approximately the car door (of Officer Wilson) to the shooting, is, uh, about 35 feet.”

King states, “While the initial reporting of this distance from the chief could have been an error, albeit an egregious one, it seems clear now, after over 100 days of requests for the police to clarify this discrepancy have only produced silence, that it wasn’t an oversight, but a deliberate misrepresentation of the facts.”

More day-of photos, diagrams, maps and measurements of Canfield Drive are up at the Daily Kos: in particular, there’s a chilling panorama of the scene.

Meanwhile, Jeff Roorda, the business manager for the St. Louis Police Officers’ Organization, talked to CBS about shooter Darren Wilson, who has been on paid administrative leave since he killed unarmed teenager Michael Brown. Though a 12-person grand jury has been investigating the incident for months now, Roorda said, “It’s fair to say that neither [Wilson] nor his defense team expect an indictment.”