Two Cops Shot in Ferguson
03/12/2015
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From the Associated Press:
St. Louis Post-Dispatch: 2 officers shot in Ferguson Associated Press 10 minutes ago

FERGUSON, Mo. (AP) — Two police officers were shot outside the Ferguson Police Department early Thursday as protesters gathered following the resignation of the city’s embattled police chief, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.

The shots were fired as what had earlier been a crowd of about 150 people had begun to dwindle, the newspaper reported. Some protesters fell to the ground and others ran. A huge police presence, including officers in riot gear, later surrounded the department.

Ferguson Lt. Col. Al Eickhoff told the newspaper that he didn’t think either officer was from his department. Eickhoff said he didn’t know the extent of the officers’ injuries. …

TV station KSDK reported the officers were taken to a local hospital.

With the paucity of info we have so far, this double shooting could be anything (two cops accidentally shooting each other, say). But in outline it sure is reminiscent of what happened in Brooklyn in December.
Jackson was the sixth employee to resign or be fired after a Justice Department report cleared white former Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson of civil rights charges in the shooting of black 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson last summer. A separate Justice Department report found a profit-driven court system and widespread racial bias in the city police department.

Jackson’s resignation becomes effective March 19, at which point Eickhoff will become acting chief while the city searches for a replacement.

Jackson had previously resisted calls by protesters and some of Missouri’s top elected leaders to step down over his handling of Brown’s shooting and the weeks of sometimes-violent protests that followed. He was widely criticized from the outset, both for an aggressive police response to protesters and for his agency’s erratic and infrequent releases of key information.

He took nearly a week to publicly identify Wilson as the shooter and then further heightened tension in the community by releasing Wilson’s name at the same time as store security video that police said showed Brown stealing a box of cigars and shoving a clerk only a short time before his death.

Releasing to the public the security camera footage of Michael Brown setting off on his crime spree appears to be the ex-police chief’s unforgivable sin in the eyes of the national press. Who is in charge of The Narrative here, anyway?
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