During investigating the Ferguson radio transcript file for the day Michael Brown was shot and killed by Officer Darren Wilson on August 9th of 2014, I started noticing some anomalies that require comment and clarification by those involved.
I have transferred a section of the radio communications transcript file into this diary for examination. I have inserted comments of my own where appropriate to help draw attention to some of the oddities I have run across.
I attempted to figure out if the track lengths for these transcripts were a standard time unit. At first glance it appeared that they are asynchronous because it seems you cannot use them to determine the relative time lapse between events. Were they synchronous, that should be possible. One reason a synchronously timed transmission would appear to be asynchronous from all appearances is if some editing has taken place to throw the time synchronization out of whack. We would need more clarification from the Ferguson PD to find out if there is supposed to be equal time units for each track because it certainly appears from the August 9 transcript concerning this event that this is not the case.
Every instance of a time marker entry was always announced by the dispatcher. This would seem odd that no officers would ever report the time they came into service or was away from their vehicle. I once drove a taxi-cab and this was a per-requisite even though there was a dispatcher on duty who could have recorded the time for us.
Within the transcript released to the public, there are three time markers given by the dispatcher very close to the beginning of the transcript. This is, by itself, a little odd in that very few time markers are provided throughout the entire transcript but for any knowledgeable person viewing this transcript that should immediately signal that the time stamps in this file are, for all practical purposes, 1 minute apart as is appropriate. Such a visible indication of time propriety at the very beginning of the file might prevent them from wanting to look any further into time alignments throughout the body of the transcript.
I did a little math of my own on this and I have come to the conclusion that all Ferguson radio communication transcript track entries probably are synchronous and each track probably represents 1 minute of time. Before I talk much more about this, I want to get into the transcript itself.
The following are excerpts from the Ferguson radio communication transcript file released by the Ferguson Police Department. This file was used as evidence in the Darren Wilson Grand Jury convened in relation to the shooting of Michael Brown. It is not in the same format as the actual file and additionally the version I present here contains comments from me. I do skip some tracks that I feel are of no importance.
Any entry identified with UI means that all or part of the transmission was unintelligible.
Darren Wilson is identified as Frank 21 or sometimes just 21.
This is the start of the portion of the transcript file of interest (the actual file starts at track 323).
Track 329 Dispatcher identifies time as 11:34 am.
Track 332 Frank 21 arrived at call at 11:36 am.
Track 333 Dispatcher with call to Frank 27 with 10-81 (prisoner in custody) at 11:37
Track 340 Unidentified officer makes a call to another officer named Darren asking him to wait while he goes in the back way. Darren responds saying “okay, I’ll wait”.
Track 343 Dispatch makes an announcement that two calls are waiting. The first one is multiple parking violations at the Victorian Plaza and the other is a two month old baby having difficulty breathing with statement that ambulance has been dispatched.
Track 344 Unidentified officer announces he will be going 10-8 (back in service) shortly and will take the Glenark call in a second.
Track 346 Officer 21 (Darren Wilson) receives a call and announces he is 10-8 (back in service) and is en route to the Glenark call.
Track 348 Officer 25 calls Dispatch with: Frank 25. Dispatcher acknowledges with: Frank 25. Officer 25 states: I’ll be 10-8 and I’ll head over to Victorian Plaza.
Track 349 Dispatcher says something UI (unintelligible) and follows with; we’re taking a stealing in progress from 9101 W. Florissant. Subject may be leaving the business at the time. Standby for futher.
Track 350 Dispatcher announces to unit 25 that It’s gonna be a black male in a white t-shirt. He’s running toward Quik Trip. He stole a whole box of Swisher cigars (notice the description as a whole box). Officer responds with a question; Black male, white t-shirt? Dispatcher replies with; That’s affirmative. She said he just walked out of the store.
Track 351 Officer states that he does not see anyone out there. Dispatcher responds: She said he is headed up to Quik Trip from 9101.
Track 355 Officer 22 calls dispatch to inform he is 10-8 with a report from the last transmission. He asks if there is any further description of the male. He then informs her he has a male with a white t-shirt and black pants on Sharondale.
Track 358 A response from another unidentified officer (to officer 22) states that; He’s a, he’s with another male. He’s got a red Cardinal’s hat, white t-shirt, yellow socks, and khaki shorts. He’s walking up UI (unintelligible). Notice there is only a description of Mike Brown but no description of Dorian Johnson.
Starting at track 361, it appears there may have been some editing of this transcript.
Track 361 Officer 22 makes a call and identifies himself as 22. Then he says something UI followed by the number 34 (this number does not make sense in the context of the number assignments of all the officer identities involved in this transcript but a 10-34 is the call sign for a riot). The number 34 is followed by: through (at) Sharondale (recall in Track 355 Officer 22 called dispatch to ask about one of the possible robbery suspects being on Sharondale only to find out it was the wrong person) and I’m with 25 (now these two officers are in separate vehicles but wherever they are at this point, they are together). This entire transmission from officer 22 is as follows: 22. (UI) 34 through (at) Sharondale and I’m with 25. The dispatcher responds to 22 by stating: That’s clear. It looks like the number 34 does not really appear to belong in the context of this transmission and could be the remnants of an edit gone wrong and was probably supposed to be taken out of this alleged edit but was overlooked. Optionally, it could have been a short-cut expression for a 10-34 but that would be a strange thing to be reporting from Sharondale. If a riot was truly reported by officer 22 at this point in time, it would mean Michael Brown is already dead and people are gathering and being vociferous.
Track 364 Darren Wilson makes an identifying call by stating: Frank 21. The Dispatcher acknowledges by answering: Frank 21. Wilson responds by saying: 10-8 (back in service) with a report. Dispatcher responds: Clear. Wilson makes another transmission defined as UI 21, to 25 UI. It appears he is calling unit 25 directly but what he says before and after that call is UI (unintelligible). The dispatcher responds by saying: go ahead.
Track 365 is another suspicious track.
Track 365 There is an officer entry on this track of the transcript but its contents are blank and there is not even a UI descriptor either. There is also a dispatcher acknowledgement to that officer of: 10-4 as if the officer did make a statement that simply was deleted (see annotations on track 375 for complete explanation).
Track 366 Darren Wilson transmits directly to other officers stating: 21 to 25 or 22. Do you guys need me? This would appear to be Wilson offering his assistance in finding the convenience store robbers giving the pretext that he had indeed heard the call go out from dispatch concerning this robbery.
Here is another suspicious track.
Track 368 Officer 22 calls dispatch with call sign: Frank22. Dispatch responds with: Frank 22. Officer 22 transmits: 10-8 (back in service) assist. I’ll be en route to Victorian Plaza (so apparently Officer 22 is going to provide an assist to Officer 25 who stated in Track 348 that he was heading to Victorian Plaza – recall in Track 361 Officer 22 stated that he was already with Officer 25 and now he says he is headed to Victorian Plaza where Officer 25 is supposed to be at). The Dispatcher responds with: 10-4. Also, when you get a moment, I have a 21 message for you (or Darren Wilson, Officer 21 has a message for 22 which is a little strange because no message came across from 21 to Dispatch up to this point so that communication would have had to be made from some device other than one of his radios – 21 did make a transmission directly to units 22 and 25 on Track 366 but he made no transmission to dispatch). Officer 22 responds: Clear, do I need to call you? Dispatch responds with 10-4. Officer 22 asking if he needs to call dispatch to get the message from 21 implies that officer 22 already has knowledge that something is going on to even suggest that he needs to call dispatch over a landline (or cell phone). The fact that there is a requirement for such a call means there is something very private that cannot be transmitted over the airways. Given the nature of the very next track, this probability should be very clear. One other related point, witness Tiffany Mitchell testified that immediately after shooting Brown, Wilson got on his portable radio in an apparent attempt to make a call to someone to report the shooting.
Track 369 This is a transmission from Officer 21 that states: 21, put me on Canfield with two and send me another car. Based on some of the previous transcripts it kind of sounds like some incident has already happened at this point and the call for a backup is after the fact and not before it as the entry on this track indicates.
Track 370 Dispatch: 21, you’re out on Canfield? Note that Wilson does not respond because apparently he is involved in a tussle with Mike Brown at this point in time or else he is chasing Mike Brown down the street getting ready to shoot and kill him.
Track 371 Transmission from Officer 24: 24, I’m the closest. Dispatcher responds: Clear. 24’s responding to your location on Canfield.
Track 372 Transmission from 25: 25. I’ll be going out on Canfield (that does not mean he will be going out to Canfield. It means he will be out of his car on Canfield which means he is already there so it looks like 24 is not the closest even though he thought he was).
Track 373 Transmission from Officer 22: 22’s out (meaning he is also out of the car and presumably he is out at Canfield also before 24 is out).
Track 374 Transmission from unidentified officer asking: Where’s the other one?
Track 375 entire track is UI unlike Track 365 which was just blank without a UI (and a dispatcher transmission of 10-4 at the very end of the track). I did not present it here but Track 405 is also totally blank but in parenthesis under the track number is the phrase: (no traffic). This is what a blank track with no traffic should look like and provides some insight that editing probably took place on both tracks 365 and 375.
Track 376 Dispatcher: 10-4 on Canfield.
Track 377 Officer 25 identifies himself: Frank 25. Dispatcher acknowledges: Frank 25. Followed by a UI transmission from an unidentified officer (who is most probably officer 25) that ends with the statement: Copper Creek Court. Next the Dispatcher calls Frank 23. Frank 23 responds with go ahead. The dispatcher asks Frank 23: Did you ever despo…respond to Canfield and Copper Creek court for 25? (This request must have been one of the previous UI requests that could not be identified).
Track 378 Officer responds: 10-4 (apparently this is officer 23 but it was not stated). Dispatcher responds 10-4. Same officer (I believe) responds: If we have a, detective on duty, they need to respond as well. Dispatcher responds: Dispatcher’s clear, I’ll check (Dispatcher saying she is clear probably means she will be away from her station).
Track 379 Dispatcher: Frank 23, I’m unable to get a hold of anyone from that particular agency and United Way cannot recommend anyone else.
Track 380 is a transmission from an unidentified officer which states (but we know from the contents of the message itself that the unidentified officer is officer 23): 23. I’m gonna be 10-8 (back in service) from (UI). 24 (is) remaining and I’ll be en route Canfield, is it? Dispatcher response: Clear, Canfield and Copper Creek. (Notice this is the first we have heard anything about 24 since he said he was the closest to Canfield back at Track 371 and now it looks like he was tied up on a call with this officer to begin with and was unable to respond as opposed to what he stated on that track. At this point he is still tied up and some other unidentified officer – who we just defined as being officer 23 – is responding in his place).
Track 381 Dispatch transmits: EMS is en route.
Track 382 Officer 23 transmits and says: 23 will be (UI). Dispatch responds with: 10-23 at 12:04. The code for 10-23 is arrived at scene (in this case unit 23 arrived at 12:04 PM). Note that this is the first time reference since Track 333 which occurred at 11:37 am.
Track 383 Officer 25 identifies himself: Frank 25
Track 384 Dispatch responds and says: 25. Officer 25 responds and says: Get us several more units over here. There’s gonna be a problem. Dispatcher responds with: Is there any available Ferguson units who can respond to Canfield and Copper Creek advise? (This transmission is the first sign that problems are developing with onlookers to the event).
Track 385 Officer 27 transmits: 27, I’m leaving the station. You need me to go over there? Dispatcher responds: They are requesting more units at Canfield and Copper Creek. I’ll also contact St. Louis County PD. Officer 27 transmits: 27’s clear. An unidentified officer transmits: We’re gonna need crowd control here. Dispatcher responds: I’m contacting St. Louis County.
This ends the portion of the transcript file of interest.
I have more observations about timing issues related to this file but I first want to discuss some of the content within the file.
Note that we have a time stamp at track 382 of 12:04. Track 385 presumably can be no later than 12:07 and Ferguson dispatch is well aware there is a problem big enough to require outside support. Here is a link to an article from Mail Online that references St. Louis dispatch conversations from the time period of 12:05 to 12:35.
The article does not make it clear if this is the dispatcher for St. Louis County or St. Louis City. The track 385 call was to St. Louis County. In the article, the St. Louis dispatcher is made aware of a problem in Ferguson by a news station attempting to call in for more details. Apparently one of the residents on the scene made a call to the news station to report the story but as of the time the St. Louis Dispatcher was informed by the news (and that time is not definitive because all we have is a time range) Ferguson had not yet called the St. Louis dispatcher. The St. Louis dispatcher takes it upon him or herself to call Ferguson directly but on the first try got no answer. Once they finally got an answer the response from Ferguson was that they were unaware of having such a problem. Clearly this transcript indicates that is a fabrication but my guess is that Ferguson needed time to get some records in order before complicating things by bringing in other police forces so they simply lied to the St. Louis dispatcher until they were ready for them to respond to help with the situation.
I ran into this little piece of information when I was attempting to get a concrete definition of the time unit represented by each track in the transcript and to find out if such tracks were even editable. I was unable to confirm this however. Even if it turns out that the tracks are indeed asynchronous and not slaved to some unit of time and they are not editable, as I contend I believe them to be, all signs indicate that some very strange communications took place the morning/afternoon of the shooting of Mike Brown.
On page 209 of Darren Wilson’s Grand Jury Testimony, he stated that he noticed that Brown was carrying some cigarillos in his right hand. In earlier statements he was quoted as saying he was not sure what Brown was carrying for sure but he did notice he was carrying something in his right hand. As we see from the police transcripts, what was stolen is incorrectly identified so the only possible description Wilson could have heard from his dispatcher was that an entire box – and not just a few loose cigars – was the merchandise stolen. In Wilson’s testimony on page 209 he goes on to say that is when it clicked for him because he saw cigarillos in Brown’s right hand and then he looked in his mirror and did a double check and saw Johnson wearing a black t-shirt. Nothing Johnson was wearing was described in any of the radio transmissions so how is it that Darren Wilson could know that Johnson was wearing a black t-shirt?
So we have several things going on here. First, the radio call for the robbery described the merchandise stolen as a whole box of Swisher Sweets when in fact it had only been a few loose cigars. Secondly, there was no description in those transmissions of what Johnson was wearing. Third, it looks like there has been some funny business going on with the radio transcript log in attempting to place units 22 and 25 in places other than where they should have been or where they ended up. There was a secret call from Wilson to dispatch that Wilson did not want recorded or heard over the radio and that supposedly occurred just before the altercation with Mike Brown. A witness account from Tiffany Mitchell stated that Darren Wilson got on his radio first thing immediately after the shooting and she indicated that he used his portable radio. There is no entry into the Ferguson transcript of radio calls for that day which records any post shooting transmission from Wilson to dispatch. I can understand a call to dispatch raising an alarm that shots are fired and the pursuing officer not noticing if a response from dispatch was actually received because of the events he or she is involved in but for any normal call where you expect a response and do not get one, that should be a clear signal that something is not right with the communication and being on the wrong channel would seem to be one thing that would raise such a suspicion and result in a channel check being made by the officer. Further, how often is a different channel used by dispatch or units on the street that would prompt Wilson to turn to that channel (other than channel 1 which we know dispatch was using at least that day) and also what is channel 3 normally used for? These are all questions we should be asking.
Though not reported by any eye witness at the scene that I know of, perhaps Wilson did have to revert to using a cell phone when he discovered at this point that his radio was not communicating. Most frequent users of mobile radios of this sort would normally check to see if their radio was on the correct channel first thing when they discovered their transmissions were not being responded to before resorting to finding an alternate method of communicating. But we have to understand that Wilson had just killed a person and maybe he was a bit flustered and not thinking clearly enough to check if he was on the correct channel. Another officer pulled up almost immediately after Wilson had shot Brown and it might also seem feasible that he would ask that officer to call dispatch for him or, at the very least, ask that officer if he could use his radio. He could also have traipsed 150 feet back to his vehicle and use its radio but that would seem like a last choice decision to make when he had a dead body right in front of him in the middle of the street.
Shaun King wrote an article on October 15 for the Daily Kos titled Since St. Louis has decided against releasing a report, here's the timeline of Mike Brown's death in which he provides a timeline that uses a witnesses glide cell phone app to correlate the timing of the shots. In one paragraph he reveals the following:
12:02:18 PM: Shot eight grazes Brown's right forearm, at which point Brown turns around to surrender. There is a three-second pause after shot eight, as Wilson continues his pursuit of a surrendering Brown, closing the pursuit gap significantly. Brown, with his hands up, says, "Okay, okay, okay. I'm unarmed, don't shoot..." Before Brown can finish his plea, Wilson begins to fire the last four shots that hit Brown.
As a side note, I wrote two past diaries for Daily Kos and in the first one I surmised that the forearm shot to Mike Brown most likely could have come from the back as Brown was running away. In a following diary I changed that based upon a statement made by a medical expert appearing on CNN,
Forensic Pathologist Dr. Cyril Wecht who reported that all six shots that hit Brown came from the front as he was facing Darren Wilson.
Because of that report I was left surmising that the reason Brown turned around was perhaps because of a pulled ham string and that was the pain that witnesses saw him reacting to just before he turned around. Because of the above paragraph in the Shaun King article I now feel vindicated to return to my original assessment and have to believe that the CNN medical expert was simply wrong about his autopsy interpretation. Also, the St. Louis Post Dispatch made a misquote of the autopsy findings of Judy Melinek and that may have been responsible for leading the CNN medical expert astray on this point and this expert, in turn, then led me astray. Melinek corrected this misquote in the following article by Trymaine Lee.
At this point I want to return to the Ferguson radio communication transcript file to discuss some of the timing issues that occur within the file.
Apparent timing issues
Below is a list of each track within the file that contains a dispatcher produced time marker (the only type of time markers available in the file). On the left is the Track number where the time marker was given by the dispatcher. Just to the right of that is the physical time of the marker stated by the dispatcher. To the right of that is a ratio that depicts the number of tracks that have elapsed since the track number representing the first track number where a time marker was provided by the dispatcher (in all instances this would be the time given at track 329 of 11:34 am) divided by the number of minutes that have elapsed from that same time marker.
If we are talking about a time change of between one to three minutes for only a few tracks, for example, we might get a ratio like 1.5 or 2.5 because it depends where the second hand is on the clock when the time was recorded. The fractional value is more pronounced in its deviation from a ratio of 1.0 when only a few tracks or a few minutes have transpired but the more tracks that have elapsed and the more minutes that have been tallied, the lower the value behind the decimal point should be when accounting strictly for this half minute rounding value.
In other words, we could have as much as a half minute error at any one reading but if a lot of time has elapsed this half a minute will get swallowed up as if it almost did not exist and would barely be noticeable so the ratio should almost always come out close to 1.0 if each track represents one minute of time as I am presupposing.
The first few tracks represented provides a good example of this. If each track represents 1 minute of time then if the time is recorded with the second hand at the top of the clock on 12, the ratio should always be 1.0 no matter how many tracks have elapsed. If the time recorded is taken when the second hand of the clock is near the half minute mark at 6, the time might be assigned to the current track or the upcoming track depending on how it is rounded and exactly when it is recorded.
In either case, it will generate a ratio that could deviate from 1.0 as much as .5 but no more. This example relates to an instance where there has only been a change in time of a few minutes and likewise a few tracks within the transcript file. As already stated, a large time differential that would correspond to the track number being incremented by a sizable amount would produce a value behind the decimal point that would be rather insignificant if the time and the track number are tracking one another accurately.
If the transcript has been altered to compress a lot of events into a small differential segment of time, this ratio will grow larger and has the potential to go well above 1.0 and well above 1.5 and stay there unless some type of correction is later provided. If events are stretched out in time the ratio will get smaller and has the potential to go below 1.0 and also stay there unless some type of correction is later provided. We never see this latter instance occurring within the transcript file but the same cannot be said regarding the compression of events into a differential time span to create a ratio well above 1.0.
Here is a table I have created to illustrate all this. The table contains every instance where the dispatcher recorded the time and it also shows the track number the time was assigned to as well as the resulting ratio and it provides a calculation to show how the ratio was determined.
Track 329 at 11:34 (starting point)
Track 332 at 11:36 Ratio 1.5 (332-329 = 3 tracks divided by 2 minutes)
Track 333 at 11:37 Ratio 1.33 (333-329 = 4 tracks divided by 3 minutes)
Track 382 at 12:04 Ratio 1.77 (382-329=53 tracks divided by 30 minutes)
Track 416 at 12:41 Ratio 1.29 (416-329=87 tracks divided by 67 minutes)
Track 417 at 12:44 Ratio 1.26 (417-329=88 tracks divided by 70 minutes)
Track 420 at 12:48 Ratio 1.23 (420-329=91 tracks divided by 74 minutes)
Track 438 at 13:14 Ratio 1.09 (438-329= 109 tracks divided by 100 minutes)
Notice that the track numbers go higher here than the portion of the file I presented previously. I left out the higher entries from my depiction because they did not seem to provide any further useful information.
By the time of the time recording of track 382, Mike Brown was already dead as that occurred at 12:02. Note that a ratio of 1.77 represents the compression of a lot of events into a small amount of time. If these tracks had not been time manipulated, track 382 would represent a time of 12:27 PM. The reality is that the time of 12:04 PM should have occurred back at track 359 but that was not possible because the editor of this transcript felt the need to insert extra events into the narrative of the transcript and that necessarily pushed the transcript track to a higher number.
Because tracks 329 through 333 appeared normal, most investigators of this transcript would have not noticed anything out of the ordinary going on. Just to clarify, I am not saying that Mike Brown was shot at 12:25 PM. We have audio recordings that show the shooting indeed did occur at 12:02 PM. What I am saying is that actual transmissions most likely left incriminating evidence that might have convicted Wilson so the transcript had to be edited to prevent this from happening. This pushed all the real events to a higher track number making them all look like they occurred later in time than they really did.
Notice that after the main event entry at track 382 with a recorded time of 12:04, the ratio was at its highest point of 1.77. It steadily dropped after that as it appears it was slow walked downward to put the time back into synchronization with the track number.
The most glaring example that something is amiss occurs at tracks 416 and 417 which show a total time difference of three minutes between two consecutive tracks. If each track is supposed to be only worth one minute of time this could really stick out to investigators. It is however doubtful that investigators would have looked much beyond track 382 and they most likely would not have even read this far into the transcript.
Leaving these two tracks unattended may not have been as much an oversight by the editor of the transcript as it was a series of two very necessary entries in the order given tied to some other events that were time critical that if not presented together in close succession would have created a glaring controversy that would have easily exposed the editing attempts and caused everything else to unravel. The skewing of track information would be nowhere near as noticeable as the skewing of one or more time related events in relation to other time related events.
The last transcript entry with a time stamp occurred at track438 at 13:14 PM. The ratio was still at 1.09 at this point. Anyone going through this same calculation as I did that wanted to pick the very first and the very last entry in the transcript just to make sure the ratio did calculate to be 1.0 would immediately see that it was not but that is only if track 438 was the last track in the transcript which it was not. The last track was 454 but there were no time stamps recorded anywhere between 438 and 454 so that might actually represent a problem for someone had they attempted to rig this transcript.
However, the transcript released to the public ends at 454 but it most likely extends well past that number in actuality. I am presupposing that by the end of the day when this transcript was retired, the last time entry and track number with events that are not available to the public for viewing will have been manipulated to put everything back in perfect order. This most likely would be the transcript any investigators into this matter would have used and not this shortened version released to the media.
It is only when you scour the transcript for irregularities within and do not rely on just the first and last entry that all this starts becoming evident. I would, however, give good odds that by the end of the transcript, all timing issues and anomalies most likely would have been resolved by the end of the file if examined using the official transcript.
It was perhaps an oversight to release a partial copy of the transcript to the public that did not already have this abnormality already adjusted and taken care of. Perhaps it was just a failure of memory after so many months since the shooting that the public ended up with this version of the transcript.
The reason behind these alleged edits is anybody’s guess. It might have been to delete events or conversations that would be incriminating if investigated. They might have also been to insert events or conversations that never happened to substantiate later testimony of events or to redirect or deflect actual events and provide a type of smokescreen.
Others have realized that this transcript seems to be devoid of a lot of normal type chatter you might see for an officer shooting of a person that resulted in a near riot. This might be the types of statements, for example, that would lead to a lot of incriminating evidence against the officer.
On page 226 of his testimony to the Grand Jury, as Wilson is exiting his vehicle to give chase to Michael Brown, he gets on his radio again to call dispatch to tell them shots were fired and to send him more cars. So this is his second call to dispatch to send backup according to his own testimony. The first call was before he actually made contact with Brown and Johnson (other than telling them to get the fuck out of the street) just before backing up to where they were walking in the middle of the street and that call was recorded in the Ferguson transcript of all radio calls for that morning on track 369.
This second “shots fired” call was made as Wilson was exiting the vehicle to give chase according to Wilson's own testimony. On page 230 of the Grand Jury testimony by Wilson he was asked if he knew that his second call did not go out. He stated that he did not find that out until later when he was driving back to the station that his portable radio was on channel 3 and the main channel for dispatch was channel 1. So it appears what Tiffany Mitchell indicated she saw following the shooting of Michael Brown has one of several possibilities.
First, is that she is mistaken and she could not have seen Wilson on his portable radio. Second, she saw him actually using his cell phone and not his radio. Third, Wilson used his radio but the call did not go through (remember it was not recorded in the transcript) because he had set his radio to the wrong channel and did not notice there was no response from dispatch (this would seem like a really strange possibility given the circumstances because you would think Wilson would be listening for explicit instructions from dispatch). And fourth, he attempted to use his radio and could get no response and rather than doing a little simple troubleshooting to investigate if it might be on the wrong channel, he chose instead to use his cell phone.
Wilson goes on to say on page 231 of his testimony that they did ask him why the microphone for his main radio was laying on the floorboard of his vehicle and asked if he had used that (this was in response to his second call to inform shots fired). He stated that he did not remember but he kind of remembered using the portable radio although he acknowledged that the car radio mike might have been sitting in his lap and he might have used that one to make the call. However, even if that is the case, it was not his car radio that was on the wrong channel according to his testimony. It was his portable radio. A call from his main radio would have gone out to dispatch as it appears his very first call to request sending another car from his vehicle radio went out according to the transcripts but his second call from what should have been his mobile unit, did not. The second call to inform “shots fired” most likely occurred on his portable radio because dispatch did not have a record of receiving that call and that would make sense if that radio was on the wrong channel.
Because it was on the wrong channel Wilson could not possibly have received information of a robbery in progress when he was on the sick infant call because he was out of his vehicle and was on his portable radio at the time that call was dispatched.
If we conclude all this to be true, then when Wilson screeched his tires to back up to the two men walking down the middle of the roadway, it could not have been because of noticing cigarillos (because he could have only noticed them if Brown had an entire box of them which he did not) or he could not have noticed Johnson wearing a black tee shirt because not only did he not receive this call because his portable radio was on the wrong channel but the description provided by his dispatch said nothing of what Johnson was wearing. There is nothing that would have provided him with a clue or a thought that these two were the two suspects from the robbery because nothing he described in his testimony was described to him over his police radio. It was simply because he was angry because he had been disrespected and ignored and this set the tone for everything else that was to follow.
There were other problems with the investigation as called out in the following Huffington Post article. Ferguson Grand Jury Evidence Reveals Mistakes, Holes In Investigation
The following is a paragraph from that article.
Wilson also told the detective that Brown had passed something off to his friend before punching Wilson in the face. At the time, the detective said, Wilson didn’t know what the item was, referring to it only as “something.” In subsequent interviews and testimony, however, Wilson claimed that he knew Brown’s hands were full of cigarillos and that fact eventually led him to believe Brown may have been a suspect in the theft.
The following October 21 Daily Kos report by Shaun King also alludes to a possible cover-up with the use of a cell phone by Wilson to his dispatch to mask pertinent facts. Of note in this article are three salient points that tend to contradict the claim of Prosecuting Attorney Robert McCulloch. Of the fifteen questions Shaun king asked in that diary, question 10 found six witnesses agreed, question 11 found 4 witnesses agreed, and question 12 had six witnesses agreeing. With a track record like that, how is it McCulloch found cause to focus on only one witness (witness #10) that he claims appears to have credible testimony above all the rest?
In the beginning of the Grand Jury, there were many who said McCulloch should recuse himself based on proven past special treatment to police in another shooting of unarmed black men as well as some personal background that might become an obstruction to him making honest and non-biased decisions when dealing with this case.
Moveon.org posted a petition asking for an action to recuse McCulloch and listed all the reasons why. But even more than these reasons which were assigned to McCulloch personally, no prosecuting attorney should ever be allowed to preside over any Grand Jury in a district that involves a possible indictment of a police officer from that same geographical district when the charges represented include a civilian shooting or abusive action taken against a citizen. These police officers quite often are the star witnesses for the same prosecutor in other trials and Grand Juries in that district and this in and of itself should be a reason for a prosecuting attorney to recuse him or herself for any officer involved shooting where a death occurs.
The continued uncovering of potential new evidence can become very important going forward because the findings of McCulloch’s Grand Jury is not the final word as so many presume. Here is a December 2nd ThinkProgress Article that explains all the details of how this might happen but it might take all of us acting together to make it happen.
Too many people that are in support of Wilson really do not understand the culture of the Saint Louis Police Department but we finally have an ex-cop from Saint Louis who is willing to speak out. This is a very important education for those naïve people that always want to give the benefit of the doubt to police in every situation and especially when they are up against people not as highly valued by society. It’s time to set the record straight.