IDENTIDADES 1 ENGLISH IDENTIDADES 5 ENGLISH | Page 54

High Noon
in August
.

Bonita Lee Penn
Journalist
Managing Editor. Soul Pitt Media
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA

S

eems summer brings violence,
more so than the winter months.
Something about the heat brings
out an inhumane thirst for killing. Well
at least that is how it seemed here in
America in the summer of 2014. This is
not to talk about what others say is a
culture of hate crimes that Blacks impose against each other, that’s an entirely different article. This is about the
“justified” killings that happen in our
cities by policemen those who take the
oath to “protect and serve” the public.
Saturday, August 9, 2014, a white Ferguson, Missouri police officer answers a
robbery call at a convenience store. The
dispatcher gives the usual vague description of the Black male suspect and
where he was last seen. The officer
whose identity was kept confidential for
weeks, named later to be Darrin Wilson,
encountered two Black males around
Noon walking down a street; one of
them was Michael Brown. From here it
depends whose version you find creditable to explain how Michael Brown,
an unarmed male was gunned down and
killed by the white police officer. The

story from police-viewpoint was that
Brown physically assaulted Officer
Wilson during a struggle inside the police car, Brown reached for the officer’s
gun and shots were fired and Brown
was killed. Another viewpoint from
several people who were in the area said
Brown was unarmed and was walking
towards the police with his hands in
surrender, when he was shot by Officer
Wilson. During the grand jury hearings
pathologists said the autopsy performed
by the St. Louis County medical examiner and those hired by Brown’s family
could support either version. Again, the
public is left not knowing what happened. All they knew is that another
Black male was killed by a white police
officer.
The body of Michael Brown laid out in
the street for what seemed a long time,
and the crowd grew, and the sun got
hotter and the crowd grew and so did
their anger. The video of his body laid
out on the double yellow line of the
road was shown all over the world.
And the crowds in Ferguson grew. The
citizens came out the next day, Sunday,

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