New Footage in the Michael Brown Case Raises Questions About Officers’ Claims

Late Sunday night unidentified shots were fired at the market, but no one was reported injured.

The documentary ‘Stranger Fruit’ by filmmaker Jason Pollock premiered Saturday in Austin, Texas.

Following Brown’s death, police released a surveillance video that was captured about 10 hours of the initial incident. A video of this later trip to the store has been shown to the public, and shows Brown grabbing the cigarillos with a friend.

The article doesn’t explicitly mention Brown’s drug dealing, only suggests that he handed “something” to store clerks, adding only that “the filmmakers believe to be a small bag of marijuana”. “(The filmmaker) owes an apology to the store owner, the community of Ferguson, and the police officers who put their lives on the line because of his recklessness”.

Mr. Pollock believes that the Ferguson police force has attempted to smear the late teenager’s reputation by claiming he had robbed a store and releasing footage supporting that to show that to the media. Brown walked away with the cigarillos before the video shows him coming back and giving them to the employees for what Pollock says was safekeeping.

The footage released earlier showed Brown just before he was killed appearing to have a disagreement with a Market employee and pushing them before taking the cigarillos. “The reason he gave it back is he was walking out the door with unpaid merchandise and they wanted it back”, he told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “We are doing this to defend Mike’s honor, to defend his name and to defend the family’s name”, Pollock said in an interview with ABC News’ Good Morning America on Monday.

At a news conference Monday afternoon, Robert McCulloch dismissed the video footage from the documentary “Stranger Fruit.” . The altercation is what police said prompted the store to call 911. At the time, police said that Brown robbed a convenience store of cigarillos prior and officer Wilson confronted him afterward, which led to the deadly shooting. “This shows [the police officers’] intention to make [Brown] look bad”, Pollock said.

As people chanted into the night, Ferguson, and later St. Louis County police arrived on the scene.

In this handout photo provided by the St. Louis Country Prosecutor’s Office, Darren WIlson is shown in an evidence photo at the hospital in Ferguson, Missouri, Aug. 9, 2014.

Video of Brown appearing to rob the shop was released by police to support their claim that he was stopped by police because he was a suspect.

“I was surprised to hear that two years later there was a video”, says Lezley McSpadden, Brown’s mother.

A grand jury found in November 2014 no “probable cause” to charge Wilson with murder, or with voluntary or involuntary manslaughter.