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Amid Protests in Missouri, Officer's Name Is Still Withheld - New York Times

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U.S. |Amid Protests in Missouri, Officer’s Name Is Still Withheld



http://nyti.ms/1vJkqQ6






U.S. |​​NYT Now





The police before a rally Wednesday in Ferguson, Mo., where a teenager was shot by an officer last week. Whitney Curtis for The New York Times




FERGUSON, Mo. — In the five days since an unarmed young black man was fatally shot by a police officer here, the selective release of information about the shooting, and especially the anonymity granted to the officer, has stoked frustrations in this largely African-American community north of St. Louis, where residents describe increasingly tense relations with the police.


The police chief, Thomas Jackson, has repeatedly declined to identify the officer, who has been put on administrative leave. But on Wednesday, the chief did offer a new detail about the shooting, which has kindled nights of racial unrest and an unyielding police response with tear gas, rubber bullets and arrests.



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Chief Jackson said that the officer who shot Michael Brown, 18, on Saturday was struck in the face during the encounter and treated at a hospital. Touching his own cheek, the chief said that a side of the officer’s face was swollen from what the police have described as a struggle in which Mr. Brown assaulted the officer and tried to take his gun — an account disputed by a witness, a friend of Mr. Brown’s who said his hands were raised when the last of several shots was fired.




Demonstrators and journalists ran from tear gas fired by the police in Ferguson, Mo., on Wednesday. Whitney Curtis for The New York Times

Despite persistent and increasingly angry calls from the public to release the officer’s name, Chief Jackson said the officer required protection after numerous death threats had been made. Computer hackers, saying they were outraged by police conduct, now have also joined the fray.


Anonymous, the loosely organized group of international hackers, said on Twitter that it had broken into Ferguson’s municipal computer system. It released details about city workers and posted photos of Jon Belmar, the chief of the St. Louis County police who is conducting the investigation into the shooting, as well as his wife, son and daughter. It also posted his address and phone number. The group threatened to bring down city, county and federal networks if the police overreacted to rallies and protests.


On Wednesday night, scores of police officers in riot gear and in armored trucks showed up to disperse protesters who had gathered on the streets near the scene of the shooting. Some officers perched atop the vehicles with their guns trained on the crowds while protesters chanted, “Hands up, don’t shoot.” A police spokesman said that some demonstrators had thrown Molotov cocktails at officers and that some had tried to set fires. The police used tear gas on demonstrators, and some protesters said rubber bullets had been fired at them. Police said one officer appeared to have suffered a broken ankle after being hit by a brick.




Slide Show|7 Photos

Anger Simmers in Ferguson After Shooting



Anger Simmers in Ferguson After Shooting


Whitney Curtis for The New York Times


The police made more than 10 arrests. Among those arrested was Antonio French, a St. Louis alderman, who had been documenting the protests on social media, his wife said on Twitter.


Two reporters covering the protests also said they had been arrested inside a McDonald’s for trespassing and later released without charges or an explanation. The reporters, Wesley Lowery of The Washington Post and Ryan J. Reilly of The Huffington Post, both said they had been handled roughly by the police.


Chief Jackson and the St. Louis County prosecutor, Robert P. McCulloch, held news conferences on Wednesday to try to allay concerns without divulging the officer’s name or details of the investigation. Neither would say how many times Mr. Brown had been shot.




Police walked through a cloud of smoke during a clash with protesters on Wednesday in Ferguson, Mo. Jeff Roberson/Associated Press

Mr. McCulloch promised a thorough investigation but refused to say how long it would take. “There is no timeline,” he said. But he added that all the evidence would be made public, whether or not there was an indictment.


Whether to identify an officer in a charged situation like a shooting has been a continual tug of war around the country, pitting the desire of police departments to protect their own against the demands of victims’ relatives and the public for accountability.


“I get why they want to protect him,” said Meko Taylor, 36, of Ferguson, who was at a protest on Wednesday. “But the people want answers. When we get answers, things will calm down.”




The city’s police chief, Thomas Jackson, has declined to release the name of the officer who shot Michael Brown. Whitney Curtis for The New York Times

David A. Harris, an expert on police misconduct and accountability at the University of Pittsburgh Law School, said: “Police departments do not welcome disclosure or the input of outsiders. So when you have a problem like this, it’s hardly surprising to see that they are very reluctant to give out information.”


That reflexive, insular stance is increasingly being questioned in the courts, said Merrick J. Bobb, a Los Angeles-based consultant on police oversight. “What is happening is that in a number of jurisdictions, voluntarily or as a result of a lawsuit, the ability of police to keep the name of the officer secret has been constrained,” he said.


In Missouri, legal groups citing the state’s sunshine law, which requires government agencies to release most documents to the public, have joined with community leaders to press for information about the officer who shot Mr. Brown.




Play Video|0:47

Missouri Community Mourns Slain Teenager



Missouri Community Mourns Slain Teenager



A cousin of Michael Brown, a lawyer representing the Brown family and the Rev. Al Sharpton spoke at St. Mark’s family church in Jennings, Mo., days after the teenager was killed in nearby Ferguson.


By Brent McDonald on August 13, 2014. Brent McDonald/The New York Times

On Tuesday, the Missouri office of the American Civil Liberties Union wrote to the Ferguson and St. Louis County Police Departments requesting unredacted copies of the “incident reports” describing the death of Mr. Brown. The A.C.L.U. said it had been told by the St. Louis County police that it would not release an incident report because the investigation was continuing. Adding to the pressure, the National Bar Association, an organization of African-American lawyers and judges, also filed a records request on Wednesday with the Ferguson Police Department.


By law, police departments have three days to comply, but if they choose to withhold an officer’s name, they could argue that circumstances warrant an exception. Then the petitioning groups would have to file lawsuits.


There is no federal constitutional right, under the First Amendment, to information about government activities, including internal police reports, said Erwin Chemerinsky, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine. Rather, individual states have disclosure laws with varying degrees of bite, and the country’s thousands of law enforcement agencies have their own rules and subcultures regarding disclosures.



Graphic



Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, was shot and killed Saturday by a police officer in Ferguson, Mo. The Times examines the demographics of the town and its police force, as well as crime rates.




OPEN Graphic



The inconsistency in policies, even when a freedom of information law is on the books, is illustrated in New York City. In most cases, the New York Police Department refuses to release the names of officers who have shot people, at least in the days immediately afterward. If a shooting attracts widespread attention, however, the officer’s name rarely remains a secret for long.


In the July 17 case of Eric Garner, who died after being wrestled down by the police, including one officer who apparently used a forbidden chokehold, the department did reveal the name of the officer — but after two days, and only after wide public viewing of a videotape of the fatal confrontation. By that time, the news media had already reported the officer’s name based on unnamed sources.


Mr. Harris said that while it was understandable that police officials would try to protect their officers from threats and unfair accusations, silence also had its risks. “This case is not being tried yet, but the narrative is being forged in the public arena,” he said of the Ferguson shooting. “When that goes on, information is put out selectively and withheld selectively.”



Timeline



The sequence of events after the shooting of Michael Brown, an 18-year-old unarmed teenager, by a police officer in Ferguson, Mo., on Aug. 10.




OPEN Timeline



“There is real danger in that,” he said, “because ultimately law enforcement depends on the trust of the people they serve.”


On Wednesday, the St. Louis County medical examiner’s office said it would take two to three weeks to complete the autopsy of Mr. Brown, including a toxicology report, which is standard procedure in such deaths.


Suzanne McCune, a forensic administrator at the office, said that a preliminary autopsy was completed Monday and found that Mr. Brown had died of gunshot wounds, but she gave no other details. She added that Mr. Brown’s body had been released to his family. Ms. McCune said the police department would decide whether to approve the release of the report once it was complete.


Benjamin L. Crump, a lawyer representing the Brown family, said that arrangements were being made for a private autopsy to be performed in the next week or so. “The family wants an autopsy done by somebody who is objective and who does not have a relationship with the Ferguson police,” Mr. Crump said.


Trying to control protests that have sprouted up daily in Ferguson and intensified after dark, the mayor and the City Council posted a letter on Wednesday on the city website asking protesters to limit their demonstrations to daylight hours.


The police have made over 50 arrests since Sunday.


“We ask that any groups wishing to assemble in prayer or in protest do so only during daylight hours in an organized and respectful manner,” the letter said. “Unfortunately, those who wish to co-opt peaceful protests and turn them into violent demonstrations have been able to do so over the past several days during the evening hours.”


Chief Jackson said the request did not amount to a curfew.


As to the actions of Anonymous in releasing the names of department personnel, Chief Jackson said protection had been assigned to some and others had taken vacation.


Anonymous also released on Wednesday what it said were county 911 tapes from the time of the shooting on Saturday. Most initial calls seemed to be about crowd control, but the tapes also suggested that dispatchers learned from an early call that a police officer was involved. Chief Jackson said he had not heard the tapes.


Correction: August 14, 2014

An earlier version of this article misidentified the university at which Erwin Chemerinsky is a law professor. It is the University of California, Irvine, not the University of California, Los Angeles.





Julie Bosman reported from Ferguson, and Erik Eckholm from New York. Reporting was contributed by Timothy Williams, Joseph Goldstein and Serge F. Kovaleski from New York, and John Schwartz from St. Louis.



A version of this article appears in print on August 14, 2014, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Anonymity in Police Shooting Fuels Frustration.




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