Ferguson Officer Darren Wilson speaks, through a third party

I had been waiting on a report that tells us what happened through the eyes of the police officer who was actually involved.  A portion of the officer’s story can be found here but it is imperative that you read the rest of what we could not or did not write here.  In this article, I've decided to do something a little different.  Normally I would not interrupt and article that I am quoting but this time I am mainly because you need to see both sides at the same time in order to even begin to understand the complexity of this issue.  My interruptions will appear in parenthesis the excerpts from the article in quotation marks. You can find it in an article written by Eliott C. McLaughlin, Dana Ford and Holly Yan for CNN titled “Caller says she has the officer's side of the Ferguson shooting”.  This was updated at 1:54 AM EDT, Tue August 19, 2014 under the subtitle “Dueling narratives”. 

The article reports that “the officer who killed Brown says the teenager rushed at him full speed in the moments before the shooting, according to an account phoned in to a St. Louis radio station and confirmed by a source with detailed knowledge of the investigation.” (When they say confirmed, they mean that the caller’s recount is exactly the account that Officer Wilson gave.  It does not mean that it is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.)

“According to the version on KFTK, phoned in by a woman who identified herself as "Josie," the altercation on August 9 began after Officer Darren Wilson rolled down his window to tell Brown and a friend to stop walking in the street.  When Wilson tried to get out of his cruiser, Brown first tried to push the officer back into the car, then punched him in the face and grabbed for his gun before breaking free after the gun went off once, the caller said.”  (It was later said by this same caller that Officer Wilson reached for his weapon first then Michael Brown grabbed his hand that held the gun.)

“Wilson pursued Brown and his friend, ordering them to freeze, according to the account. When they turned around, Brown began taunting Wilson, saying he would not arrest them, then ran at the officer at full speed, the caller said.  Wilson then began shooting. The final shot was to Brown's forehead, and the teenager fell two or three feet in front of Wilson, said the caller, who identified herself as the officer's friend.  (When asked by interviewer how she came about this information, the caller informed the interviewer that she had come upon this information from Officer Wilson’s significant other.  This is worth knowing because you can now attribute it to as close to first-hand knowledge as you can get without hearing from the officer himself or you can assume that the story was pretty well rehearsed to stay consistent.  Either way, it is his story and he deserves the opportunity to tell his side.  This is justice; this is what we fought for.) 


The caller mentioned that after he had confronted Michael and his friend the officer pulled ahead of them to watch them then got notification of the strong arm robbery at the convenient store but according to reports first released, the Chief said that the officer was not aware of the strong-arm robbery.  Either way a life has been lost or the person’s color matters not.  What matters most is that we are losing many lives and much of them for no good reason.  This will continue to happen until we all say enough and began to educate our children and hold accountable our leaders and communities.  If we want this type of tragedy to stop, we are the only ones who can do it.

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