Friday, November 21, 2014, my eighty-first birthday, was to have been a happy occasion, featuring a great dinner with friends at Tulsa\u2019s finest German restaurant and many cards and letters from far-flung children and grandchildren.\u00a0 But a late email printout detailing events in Geneva, Switzerland, took a bit of the luster off the day.<\/p>\n
The email I received was a copy of a thirteen-page document filed with the 53rd<\/sup> Session of the United Nations Committee against Torture, meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, from November 3-28, 2014.\u00a0 The title of the complaint was: \u201cUnited States Compliance with the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment.\u201d\u00a0 <\/em>It was subtitled, \u201cWritten Statement on the Police Shooting of Michael Brown and Ensuing Police Violence Against Protesters in Ferguson, Missouri.\u201d\u00a0 <\/em>It was hand delivered to Geneva by Michael Brown\u2019s parents: Michael Brown, Sr. and Lesley McSpadden.\u00a0 .<\/p>\n The cover page of the complaint asserts that the complaint was submitted by the Brown family, who hand-delivered it to Geneva, as well as organizations called HandsUpUnited, Organization for Black Struggle (OBS), and Missourians Organized for Reform and Empowerment (MORE).<\/p>\n In a CNN interview, Brown\u2019s mother insisted that, \u201cWe need the world to know what\u2019s going on in Ferguson and we need justice\u2026\u00a0 We need answers and we need action. \u00a0And we have to bring it to the U.N. so they can expose it to the rest of the world, what\u2019s going on in small town Ferguson.\u201d<\/p>\n But, all emotion aside, what are the facts?\u00a0 We know that, on August 9, 2014, Michael Brown, Jr. a 6 ft. 4 in. 292 lb. black teenager, was identified on videotape as the individual who engaged in the robbery of a convenience store in Ferguson, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis.\u00a0 In the video, Brown is seen taking a box of Swisher Sweet cigars (valued at approximately $49.00) from the checkout counter of the convenience store, a 2nd<\/sup> degree theft under Missouri law.<\/p>\n As he and a friend prepared to exit the store, Brown is challenged by a store employee who attempted to lock the door before the two could leave the premises.\u00a0 However, Brown prevented the clerk from locking the door and as he and his accomplice walked out the door, he grabbed the store clerk by the lapels and shoved him backward into a display rack.\u00a0 And when the store clerk continued to protest, Brown turned and approached him in a threatening manner.<\/p>\n Minutes later, Brown and his friend, Dorian Johnson, a fugitive from justice on a theft charge from Jefferson City, Missouri, were seen walking defiantly down the middle of a street near the convenience store they\u2019d just robbed.\u00a0 Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson, on routine patrol, arrived on the scene and instructed Brown and Johnson to \u201cget the [expletive] off the street.\u201d<\/p>\n At that point one must assume that Brown, having just robbed a convenience store and assaulted a store clerk, feared that he was about to be taken into custody in connection with the robbery he\u2019d committed just minutes before.\u00a0 With that thought in mind, he decided that he would not allow himself to be arrested and taken into custody, with a potential jail term to follow.\u00a0 Instead, when Officer Wilson prepared to exit his police cruiser, Brown attacked him and forced him back into the vehicle.\u00a0 Having been physically assaulted by a young man, much younger and stronger than himself, Officer Wilson was then justified in the use of deadly force.\u00a0 However, as the officer prepared to unholster his sidearm while seated inside his vehicle, Brown reached through the open window and attempted to wrest the weapon from the officer\u2019s hand.\u00a0 A struggle ensured during which two shots were fired, one of them striking Brown in the wrist.<\/p>\n According to Officer Wilson and several eye witnesses, Wilson then exited his vehicle and attempted to take Brown into custody.\u00a0 At which time Brown, who had been walking away from the scene, turned and charged the officer.\u00a0 Certain that he could not survive an attack by a man 6 ft. 4 in. tall and weighing nearly 300 lb., the officer fired four additional shots before Brown dropped to the pavement.<\/p>\n But this is not the story that Brown\u2019s fugitive friend told police and the media.\u00a0 According to his version, Brown was walking toward the officer with his hands in the air, attempting to surrender.\u00a0 An autopsy showed that Brown had been shot six times in the front of his body.\u00a0 What is not clear is the source of the unsubstantiated charge that Brown was shot in the back.<\/p>\n Nor is it the story that Brown\u2019s parents told in their testimony before the U.N. committee in Geneva.\u00a0 According to their account, \u201cMidday on August 9, 2014, Michael Brown, an 18-year-old black male, was walking down a small street in the middle of an apartment complex with a friend when they were approached by a white police officer.\u00a0 According to his friend, the closest witness to the afternoon\u2019s events, the officer approached them in his SUV police vehicle, told them to \u2018get the [expletive] off the sidewalk,\u2019 which then escalated into a confrontation.\u00a0 After a struggle, the officer began to shoot the teen.\u00a0 Brown ran away, as he was hit by the officer\u2019s bullets.\u00a0 The officer chased the teen on foot, and according to multiple witnesses, even after Michael Brown raised his hands to surrender and begged the officer not to shoot, the officer continued to fire.\u00a0 No witness reported any orders given to Brown as these shots were fired.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/em>Nowhere in their testimony is there a hint that Brown and his friend had just committed a strong-arm robbery of a business establishment.\u00a0 Nowhere in their testimony do they speculate about their son\u2019s state of mind\u2026 how he may have concluded that he and his friend were about to be arrested as suspects in a felony crime and, in an effort to avoid arrest, attacked and wounded a police officer.\u00a0 Nowhere in their testimony do they mention that their son was first shot in a struggle over the police officer\u2019s handgun.\u00a0 Nowhere in their testimony do they mention that their son\u2019s friend, Dorian Johnson, himself a fugitive from justice, may not be a credible witness.\u00a0 And nowhere in their testimony do they suggest that the officer told the boys to \u201cget the [expletive] off the street<\/em>.\u201d\u00a0 Instead, they testified that the officer told the boys to \u201cget the [expletive] off the sidewalk<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n The Browns testified that, \u201cThe teenager was hit by at least six shots, according to an autopsy performed by a pathologist not affiliated with the government.\u00a0 The autopsy further revealed that the final shots included one that entered his eye, and another at the top of the head, which may have indicated his head was lowered as he collapsed or kneeled to surrender.\u00a0 The intentional, arbitrary killing of Michael Brown, shot to death by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson, amounts to torture under Article I of the Convention.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n Was the pathologist \u201cnot affiliated with the government,\u201d an expert hired by the Brown family, a credible witness?\u00a0 And is it even within the realm of possibility that an experienced police officer would \u201cexecute\u201d a teenager, in cold-blood, in broad daylight, as he knelt to surrender?\u00a0 Is it not more reasonable to conclude that Brown was shot in the top of his head at close range as he lowered his head to charge the officer?<\/p>\n But now the nation is threatened with a massive outbreak of violence if the St. Louis County grand jury refuses to indict Officer Wilson.\u00a0 The demonstrations and rioting that have followed the shooting are a blot on the black community.\u00a0 And if the grand jury concludes that Officer Wilson acted in self-defense, which they likely will, we can expect unprecedented violence in the streets where the black community in and around St. Louis will loot neighborhood business establishments and burn many homes to the ground.<\/p>\n Brown\u2019s mother told a CNN reporter in an interview, \u201cWe need the world to know what\u2019s going on in Ferguson and we need justice\u2026\u00a0 We need answers and we need action.\u201d<\/p>\n Justice?\u00a0 Answers?\u00a0 Action?\u00a0 These are not what the professional race hustlers want.\u00a0 What they want is revenge, not justice.\u00a0 Nor are they going to like the answers they\u2019re likely to get from the St. Louis County grand jury.\u00a0 And while the \u201caction\u201d they want is the indictment of Officer Wilson, the only \u201caction\u201d they will get is a lot of grief raining down on the heads of black people across the country as they loot and burn many of the businesses where they work, and burn their own neighborhoods to the ground.<\/p>\n And while we can all empathize with the Brown family for the loss of a son, Brown\u2019s parents should be ashamed of themselves for allowing themselves to be so blatantly used and taken advantage of by professional race agitators, the attorney general of the United States included.\u00a0 But then, it\u2019s not every day they\u2019re treated to an all-expense-paid trip to Geneva.<\/p>\n If black people across the country are looking for something on which they can vent their anger and outrage, the killing of Michael Brown is a very poor choice.\u00a0 They would be better advised to take a closer look at Barack Obama\u2019s Chicago, where black-on-black murders spiked to 516 in 2012, the second time homicides have surpassed 500 since 2003.\u00a0 And they might want to take a closer look at white liberals and Democrats who have raised their expectations to the skies and then did nothing of substance to help them achieve the promised social and economic progress.<\/p>\n At this writing, the St. Louis County grand jury has not handed down either an indictment of Officer Wilson, or a finding of self-defense.\u00a0 And while it is understandable that members of the grand jury, whose names and home addresses are almost certainly known throughout the black community, are afraid to hand down a ruling that would exonerate Officer Wilson, the obvious jury nullification debacle of the O.J. Simpson trial and the violence that occurred in South Los Angeles in the wake of the Rodney King police beating is still far too fresh in the minds of the American people.\u00a0 We are at a tipping point in race relations and we should all be very afraid.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Friday, November 21, 2014, my eighty-first birthday, was to have been a happy occasion, featuring a great dinner with friends at Tulsa\u2019s finest German restaurant and many cards and letters from far-flung children and grandchildren.\u00a0 But a late email printout … Continue reading