Episode 15 - Revisiting the Michael Brown "Hands Up, Don't Shoot" Case

In this week's installment of Fate of the Union, also available on YouTube, we take a look at the case of Michael Brown aka the "Hands Up Don't Shoot" case in the wake of the recent debate between YouTube channels Actual Justice Warrior and The Serfs.

In particular, we focus on the misrepresentations of the case by President Obama and his administration, along with the mainstream media. We also discuss how these misrepresentations impact communities of color and their interaction and relationship with the police.

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe on iTunes and leave a rating/review. You can also find out more about the show and its host on twitter at FranklinFOTU and Fate of the Union, searching Fate of the Union on Medium, and at franklinfotu@gmail.com. 

Transcript

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Welcome to Fate of the Union. I wanted to start off the video by saying thank you to everyone who watched my previous video on the banning of Atheism is Unstoppable’s channel. I was surprised and happy to see it get the attention it got.

Before we get into the topic for this video, we have a quick update on YouTube’s actions against Devon’s channels. Although the chance of success on appeal to YouTube is minimal, AIU pursued this route to perhaps at least get more of an explanation from YT. However, there wasn't much of one put forth by YT.

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In YT’s denial of AIU’s appeal, it states, “Your account has been terminated due to repeated or severe violations of our Community Guidelines on Hate Speech. Although YouTube is a platform for expression of all kinds, our Community Guidelines prohibits speech that promotes hatred or violence towards certain groups or individuals.”

So, the only point of clarification given in this email is that the decision was in fact tied to the Hate Speech policy I talked about in my previous video. However, there continues to be no mention of what content actually violated the terms. There’s been no link to a video, no time stamp, or even a broad mention of the topics worthy of adverse action from YouTube. Moreover, there is also no mention for why the three strikes system was abdicated in this situation. We’ll keep an eye out for more info.

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Today, I wanted to talk about the case of Michael Brown. This idea for the video came primarily as a result of the debate between Actual Justice Warrior and The Serfs channels on YT. AJW describes his channel as “I'm just a random guy talking about news, youtube stuff, SJW's and trying to have a little fun while doing it.” He covers issues surrounding criminal justice in particular. He is from the US.

The Serfs describe their channel as “In a media landscape blemished with uncertainty two indentured plebs bring you their comedic spin on the weekly news.” This channel appears to be more left leaning, politically, and I believe they are from Canada. 

This video is really going to be more about the Michael Brown case itself, along with the long lasting effects that the reckless commentary in the wake of the shooting has had on issues of criminal justice., more than it will be about the debate itself. I encourage everyone watching to go watch at least some of the debate, since it is a long discussion about more topics than simply the Michael Brown case. I’ll sprinkle in some commentary from the debate to the extent it’s relevant to the discussion of this case.

The Michael Brown case is commonly thought of as the “hand up don’t shoot” case. This moniker comes from the narrative spun in the wake of the shooting of Michael Brown by Officer Darren Wilson that Brown was running away with his hands up when he was shot by Officer Wilson. Thus, Brown could not have been a threat if he was running away, unarmed, with his hand up and clearly in sight. However, the public came to realize that the hands up don’t shoot narrative was completely false.

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Here’s an overview of the case and the ensuing media coverage, as told by Heather MacDonald in her book, “The War on Cops.” 

“The August 2014 police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, spawned a narrative as stubborn as it was false: Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson had allegedly shot the 18-year-old “gentle giant” in cold blood while the latter was pleading for his life, hands raised in surrender. The facts were that Brown, a budding criminal who weighed nearly 300 pounds, had punched Wilson in the face, tried to grab Wilson’s gun, and charged at him, leading to Wilson firing in self defense. 

In the months that followed, the lie that Brown had died in a racially motivated police execution was amplified by the media, college presidents, and the left-wing political class. The newly formed Black Lives Matter movement promoted the notion that black males were being hunted down and killed with impunity by renegade white police officers.” Similar commentary supported the initial sentiment of the Serfs when rebranding statements describing Brown’s robbery of cigarillos. This eventually sparked an AJW response, some more responses thereafter, and then finally the two hour plus debate.”

At the outset, we can see that this narrative, even insofar as it is broadly described here, misrepresents the relationship between black communities and police officers, namely white officers. First, we know that a police officer is roughly 18 times more likely to be shot by a black American than the other way around. Second, we know from a review of police shooting data that black Americans, who are unarmed aka the most nonthreatening of suspects, are actually rarely ever shot and killed by police when compared to their total representation of the population. In the last two years, 9 and 23 unarmed black people were shot by the police, respectively, while current census estimates say that blacks make up just under 45 million people in the US.

Nevertheless, riots broke out in Ferguson both in the wake of the shooting, but also after the grand jury declined to indict Wilson for Brown’s death. The persistent lie of hands up dont shoot hindered the initial investigation as the Canfield Green neighborhood of Ferguson posted signs saying things like “snitches get stitches.” While one man in the community called a police tip line after seeing Brown’s friend lie on tv about the events, at least one other man refused to give formal statements on the case due to intense social pressure within the community to support the hands up don’t shoot story.

In reality, all available evidence demonstrated the the prosecution would not have been able to carry the case to a conviction for Brown’s death. Numerous witnesses, including a half dozen black witnesses, all confirmed that Wilson did not shoot Brown in cold blood and Brown was not shot in the back while his hands were up. Witnesses also stated that Brown attacked Wilson and tried to grab Wilson’s gun. Blood and DNA traces found at the scene demonstrated that Brown had initiated the altercation by attacking Officer Wilson while Wilson was still in the cop car. He then tried to grab the officer’s gun. After the physical altercation was broken up for a moment, Brown then charged at Wilson again and was shot.

I believe that much of the rioting and destruction dealt upon the black community in the wake of this shooting, as with many of the police shootings since then, were drastically increased and empowered by the commentary of those on the political left and the mainstream media.

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So, let’s take a look at how the left and the media impacted the reception of these events and how these individuals influenced mass criminality in the very communities they purport to care for.

The first offender was President Obama and his administration. In November 2024, he appeared on national television to deliver remarks on the recent grand jury decision. At one point, he said, “We are a nation built on the rule of law. And so we need to accept that this decision was the grand jury’s to make.” Then-Attorney General Eric Holder prematurely declared the Ferguson PD as needing widespread change of its practices.

President Obama’s statements actually are correct just not in the way many received them. However, they’re also incomplete. Where Obama missed the mark was the plain statement that the grand jury’s decision was not only rightfully within their province to make, but it was also incontrovertibly correct both factually and legally.

Instead, he continued, “There are Americans who are deeply disappointed, even angry. It’s an understandable reaction.” But it’s only understandable when ignoring the evidence presented to the grand jury and when taking notice of the media and politicians advancing false narratives that would clearly result in crime and destruction.

“The situation in Ferguson speaks to broader challenges we still face as a nation. The fact is, in too many parts of this country, a deep distrust exists between law enforcement and communities of color.” This statement is actually correct, but not for the reason that the left and media would believe. To be sure, the common narrative coming from these individuals is that the distrust is the result of intense and unrelenting police brutality unleashed on these communities as a product of so-called institution. But again, this statement is correct, but not complete. There is indeed a distrust between these two groups, but it actually stems from years of indoctrinating and gas lighting communities of color. 

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Compounding the misstatement about the case from the White House, you had outlets like the New York Times running numerous stories, some on the front page, in the wake of the grand jury’s decision justifying the riots in Ferguson as “understandable.” NYT also resurrected the claim that disproportionate representation in certain groups of power is per se discrimination, or institutional racism. For example, at the time, Ferguson’s population was 2/3 black, but five out of six city council members were white, as was the mayor. Now, this is in large part due to the low voter turnout of blacks living in Ferguson and no movement among that community to promote a black candidate. No matter, as NYT summed up this issue in a front page story titled “Mostly Black Cities, Mostly White City Halls.” NYT also claimed racist targeting on the part of the Ferguson PD when stopping and searching a higher number of blacks than other races. Similar arguments were used to summarize the warrants issued resulting from non-payment of traffic tickets disproportionately effecting the black population who received tickets and did not pay them at a higher rate than other groups. The NYT deemed the riots understandable when, as in Ferguson, the police are “justifiably seen as an alien, occupying force that is synonymous with state sponsored abuse.

To the extent a left wing activist gets specific about the real effect of the allegedly racist police force, some have pointed to statistics such as those published by ProPublica in October 2014 that concluded that young black men are 21 times more likely to be shot dead by police than young white men. However, what is left out of this analysis is the astronomically higher number of murders and violent crimes committed by this very demographic. Thus, one could expect the demographic to be more represented in police shootings, not necessarily murder, if they are disproportionately committing acts in which police respond to with deadly force.

When looking at the Washington Post police shootings database, the data as it related to black suspects has been largely consistent since the inception of the database. The data from 2014 and 2015 are interesting here, as it related to the climate across the country in the wake of the Michael Brown shooting. There were 258 black victims of police shootings in 2015, when accounting for justified and unjustified shootings. Most of the suspects were seriously attacking the officer when shot. Meanwhile, there was approximately 6,000 black homicide victims in the country. So, even if the police could somehow eliminate all killings of black suspects, certainly the ones that were unjustified, it would not have a significant impact on reducing the number of black homicide/killing numbers per year.

One point of contention in the AJW Serfs debate was the findings of the Justice Department after the Michael Brown case. In March 2015, the Dept released the official report on the case. The report demolished the “gentle giant” narrative, along with the hands up don’t shoot narrative to the extent it still existed. It also made certain that there would be no civil rights charges brought against Officer Wilson. 

However, Eric Holder made the bewildering decision to commission a second report on the allegedly racist Ferguson PD as a whole, and do so before the first reports findings were completely published. Holder added fuel to the fire by telling Politico that the standard of proof in civil rights cases should be lowered. The clear implication here is that the Justice Department was forced to not bring charges as a product of the unduly high standard of proof in civil rights cases, and not because Officer Wilson did not actually break the law.

NYT and HuffPo ran with this narrative. NYT claimed that the Justice Department “found overwhelming evidence of entrenched racism in Ferguson’s police force.” Huffpo framed the reports’ conclusions as the deciding not to file federal charges in particular, and not as findings showing that Wilson had not broken the law.

Moreover, what many commentators don’t fully realize is that the two reports were produced by two separate sections of the Justice Department. The Criminal Section, along with the FBI and the resident US Attorney's office in Missouri, produced the first report that more specifically focused on the Brown case and found that no civil rights charges would be brought. The second promotes anecdotes, that even if fully true, show incompetent officers lacking knowledge of the Fourth Amendment and instead fashions them as racially motivated only because a black suspect was involved and nothing more. 

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If a young black man grows up hearing from teachers, politicians, so-called community leaders, and those in the media (aka those who have been granted some sort of authority or expertise in these topics) that there are uniformed agents of the state whose covert, if not overt, mission was to hunt people like him for sport without impunity, then you could understand why there exists an intense distrust of those government actors. 

This all results in what Heather MacDonald was termed “The Ferguson Effect.” She states, “This kind of misinformation about the criminal justice system and the police can only increase hatred of the police. This hatred, in turn, will heighten the chances of more Michael Browns attacking officers and getting themselves shot. Police officers in the tensest areas may hold off from assertive policing. Such de-policing will leave thousands of law-abiding minority residence who fervently support the police ever more vulnerable to thugs.”