Case Study 2: Michael Brown

Case Study 2: Michael Brown

CRJ 331: Forensic Psychology

Officer-involved shootings have been on the rise in recent years, but one of the most famous is the shooting of Michael Brown. Michael Brown’s case made waves when it aired due to it being an officer-involved shooting as well as a case that involved race. The officer that killed Michael Brown, a Black American, was Officer Darren Wilson, a Caucasian police officer. Officer Wilson’s conduct has been questioned ever since the case was first aired five years ago in 2014. Race played a big part in why this case became so widely broadcast and why so many protests broke out all over the United States.

On August 9th, 2014, in Ferguson, Missouri, eighteen-year-old Michael Brown was shot and killed by police officer Darren Wilson. Michael Brown was a Black American male who encountered Officer Wilson, a Caucasian male while walking down the street with a friend. Officer Wilson had been alerted to a sick person needing medical attention and then alerted to a robbery at a convenience store an given a physical description. Officer Wilson spotted Michael Brown and his friend walking in the direction the robber was said to be heading in. He stopped to talk with Brown, and within the next moments, he shot and killed Brown. Another officer and a supervisor arrived on the scene minutes later in which Officer Wilson claimed that Brown had attacked him and that he was defending himself. Brown was pronounced dead, and the case sparked outrage in Ferguson as well as the rest of the country (Brown, 2015).

The response from the people was violent, protests were organized, and some even attacked others as well as looted businesses in the wake of Brown’s death. Death threats were made against the police department, and school was canceled for the schools closest to Ferguson as fear of children being hurt rose. Michael Brown’s family called for an end to the violence while Officer Wilson’s conduct was reviewed, and the case was investigated. Arrests were made, and more protests were organized as well as the chant “Hands up, don’t shoot.” Police officers were injured while responding to the violent outbursts and things only escalate. This case sparked more violence than any other case that year, and it was in part due to the fact that it was considered a racist killing. Office Wilson was not charged with Brown’s death; it was justified by the fact that it was in self-defense, or that is how the grand jury and judge ruled the case. This sparked even more protests and violence with Officer Wilson speaking publically for the first time before having to be placed in protective custody (Brown, 2015).

Officer Wilson, even though he was not charge in the death of Brown, would need to undergo a psychological assessment before being returned to active duty. He needs to undergo these assessments in order to make sure he is not a danger to the public as well as other officers within the force. He would also need to undergo an assessment to determine if he is racist or if race matters to him when it comes to upholding the law. Without a psychological assessment, the police department would not be able to determine if Officer Wilson is dangerous to the public or other police officers. Pychological assessments are there to make sure police officers do no exhibit any violent, unethical, or superiority behaviors. Officer Wilson should have to undergo not only the psychological assessment, but he should have to undergo retraining as well to give him a refresher on police policies and how to handle confrontation with a suspect.

Deductive analytic techniques are case-focused or idiographic in nature: they attempt to infer characteristics of a perpetrator from review of the evidence surrounding a particular offense or series of offenses, without explicit consideration of or reference to more general knowledge about other perpetrators or other offenses (Hart, Roesch, & Zapf, 2010, P.253). Inductive analytic techniques, in contrast, are comparative or statistical (also referred to as nomothetic) in nature: they infer a perpetrator’s characteristics from knowledge of general patterns of criminal behavior, as reflected in scientific theory and research (Hart, Roesch, & Zapf, 2010, P.254). Officer Wilson made his decision to confront Brown by the deductive analytic techniques. He did not have Brown’s background or any information that told him Brown had committed crimes in the past; rather he went off of the fact that Brown was walking away from the scene of a crime. He also profiled Brown as the type to commit a robbery, which is considered racial profiling in this case. Officer Wilson should have looked into Brown’s background as well as approached the situation with a level, clear head.

There is a theory that states that police officers should have the following characteristics: agreeableness, empathy, listening comprehension, and sociability, and I agree with that. If police officers are more social, more involved in their community then they are not seen as just police officers, they are seen as members of the community. It is crucial for police officers to be involved with their community, and they also need to display that they are not aggressive in situations that do not call for aggression. Being calm, collected, and empathetic can show the public that the police are there to help, not to harm. In my own community, the police are very involved in the community, to the point that the public is not fearful of the police and are more willing to help the police when crime occurs. Having these characteristics is crucial because it shows that the police officers are human and do not believe that they are better than the rest of us.

When it comes to Officer Wilson, I do not believe he showed any of the characteristics above. If he had been agreeable, he would have approached the situation in a manner that was calm as well as showed that he did not want to harm either Brown or his friend. He also did not display his willingness to listen to what Brown or his friend had to say, and he had little to no empathy. He was not very social or approachable, which could have been the reason things escalated so quickly. If Officer Wilson had approached the situation calmly and showed even a small amount of willingness to listen to what Brown and his friend had to say, the outcome might have been different. The problem is that Officer Wilson cannot have a do-over at that moment, a life was taken, and even with the fact that he was not charged with Brown’s death, he is still the one that took the young man’s life.

Given the circumstance involving the case of Michael Brown, we can surmise that there were other options besides confronting Brown the way that Officer Wilson did. The two ways that stick out the most are waiting for backup and engaging Brown without a weapon. If Wilson had waited for backup, then he would have been able to approach Brown without any fear of being attacked due to having another officer there. In retrospect, no officer should ever approach a suspect by themselves; they should always have another officer there just in case something goes wrong or the suspect becomes violent. Engaging a suspect without a weapon is risky, but it also shows that no harm is intended. Police officers have more than one way of defending themselves, having mase and tasers on their person which are not life-threatening unless misused. So, even if Wilson had approached Brown without his gun, which would have signified that he did not wish to hurt Brown, he still should have been able to defend himself if Brown did, in fact, turn violent.

The Michael Brown case is still a highly talked about case, even five years later. Many questions were left unanswered in this case due to the lack of video or even picture evidence. The public began to question their civil rights, if police-involved shootings were justified, and when police can use deadly force (Shoichet, 2014). These questions still loom even with the case being closed as far as the state charging Officer Wilson with the murder of Michael Brown. Since 2014, Officer Wilson has been removed from the police force and has not been able to find a job within the police force. His family, as well as Wilson himself, have had to live in seclusion due to the threats against his life from those in society that believe he should have been charged with Brown’s murder (Garofalo, 2016). The Michael Brown case affected more than just the Brown family and the Wilson family; it affected the nation as a whole.

There was so much violence during and after the Michael Brown case that it still affects many in Ferguson as well as those in other states and cities. There have been instances where people attack police officers who were doing their jobs and not even bothering those people or bothering anyone at all. Being an officer of the law has always been a dangerous profession, but after the Michael Brown case, it became even more dangerous. There are so many factors in this case that I cannot agree or disagree with Officer Wilson not being charged with Brown’s murder. Officer Wilson should not be allowed back into a position as a police officer because his conduct was not professional, and he should have waited for backup to arrive before he ever approached Brown. The list of should of, could of, would of, what might have been if this did not happen, will continue to grow, but there is nothing that can be changed, and that is a sad fact we will all just have to live with.

References:

Brown, E. (2015). Timeline: Michael Brown Shooting in Ferguson, Mo. Retrieved from: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/08/14/michael-brown-ferguson-missouri-timeline/14051827/

Garofalo, A. (2016). Where Is Darren Wilson Now? Update on Ferguson Police Officer Who Shot Michael Brown. Retrieved from: https://www.ibtimes.com/where-darren-wilson-now-update-ferguson-police-officer-who-shot-michael-brown-2398658

Hart, S. D., Roesch, R., and Zapf, P. A. (2010). Forensic Psychology and Law. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Shoichet, C. E. (2014). Michael Brown Shooting: Legal Questions Loom. Retrieved from: https://www.cnn.com/2014/08/26/us/michael-brown-shooting-legal-questions/