Michael Brown Shooting Essay

Two teenagers were walking in the middle of the street just minutes from their homes when a police officer pulled up and scolded them to get on the sidewalk. Explaining that they were approaching their destination shortly, the two teenagers were compliant to the policeman's requests and began their way to the nearby sidewalk. Not satisfied with their obedience, the police officer swerved his car onto the sidewalk, blocking traffic, and swung his door to hit the men. The door, however, did not open fully which left the police officer seething with anger as he then felt compelled to reach out and strangle one of the teenage boys. Pulling away from the officer's unwavering grasp, the teenage boy was unable to get free until the police officer

The teenagers described above are Dorian Johnson and Michael Brown, black residents of Ferguson. Michael Brown was shot and killed by Ferguson ex-police officer Darren Wilson, a white man. The circumstances of this crime are unlike the conventional hero-defeats-villain type as Brown was unarmed and unthreatening. Brown was often referred to as a "gentle giant" by his friends and his family, thus news of his death was particularly shocking as they knew he would never act out aggressively. This situation, involving a non-violent victim, compels the question: was the Michael Brown shooting caused by racial prejudice? The answer, as many journalists and Ferguson community members have decided, is yes: Michael Brown was murdered because he was black and therefore a threat in the eyes of the police officer. A video from the New York Times describes the tragic incident from neighbors' points of view: shortly after Brown was killed, his body was left in the middle of the street for hours while community members, including children, looked on. Without a sheet to protect his identity or maimed body, Michael Brown was not given the respect a human should, rather he was regarded as a crime scene. The police let people watch the blood from Brown's body, as a neighbor put it, turn from "beet red… to

Despite that, the Illinois Crime Survey was published by the Illinois Association for Criminal Justice in 1927 and found that black people made up just five percent of the population but were victim to thirty percent of police killings. Until the mid-twentieth century, racial disparities with regard to police action were largely dismissed by political leaders, including President Herbert Hoover during the Great Depression. Nevertheless, the American public began to recognize the cruelties police have inflicted starting with the Civil Rights Movement of the