Projekte aus dem Unterricht der FOS/BOS Scheyern

Autoren: Fabian Greppmair, Stefan Schober

On 9th August 2014 the Afro-American pupil Michael Brown was shot down in a fight with the police officer Darren Wilson in the town Ferguson in the US-State Missouri.

The incident

Police officer Wilson was alone on patrol in his car when he met Michael Brown and his friend Dorian Johnsen, who were walking in the middle of the street. Officer Wilson wanted to stop Brown and Johnsen, because a radiogram from the police station said that an incident of shoplifting had happened a few minutes ago. Wilson backed up his patrol car and blocked them. After a verbal discussion Brown ran away and Wilson shot one bullet as a warning. Brown stopped and turned around to the officer, but Wilson fired his whole magazine with a total of twelve bullets into Brown´s body. Brown was unarmed and the last bullet hit Michael Brown in his head and might have been the fatal shot.

The reaction after the death and the court decisions

On Sunday thousands of mainly African-American protesters gathered at the scene of crime. The police tried to disperse the demonstrators with dogs and tear gas. During the course of the protests several shops were looted. So after that there were daily disturbances until 24th November 2014 when the demonstrations flared up again. The jury decided that there wouldn´t be any lawsuit against the police officer, although he was to be blamed for the death of Michael Brown; but in the jury’s eyes there wasn´t enough evidence. After this decision there were many peaceful, but also violent protests in which a few houses and cars were burned down.