Was Michael Brown, who was shot and killed by Police Officer Darrell Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri, a drug dealer?
Reportedly, there’s evidence to suggest that employees in the establishment in which he was seen just prior to being shot by Officer Wilson had conducted less-than-legitimate business in the past.
There are also suggestions based on security camera footage that Brown may have been trying to obtain cigarillos from the store in exchange for marijuana, rather than money (remember when he was accused of “robbing” the store prior to being shot by Officer Wilson?).
As former NYPD Detective Harry Houck points out in this clip, the specifics of what constitutes a “drug deal” and what allows someone to label another person a “drug dealer” isn’t such a gray area.
There are people in this country who deal drugs regularly not for cash, but for other commodities as part of a barter arrangement. And these people are most definitely still considered drug dealers; the method of payment doesn’t negate the fact that a person is still peddling an illegal substance. When Chris Cuomo tries to claim that Brown was “not a drug dealer,” he’s hiding behind semantics; demonstrators at recent protests in Ferguson should realize this.
Watch as an argument between Houck, Cuomo, Morehouse Professor Marc Hill and documentary filmmaker Jason Pollack (who recently completed the documentary Stranger Fruit that deceptively edits the aforementioned video footage) debates this point.
