Latest: Filmmaker defends use of surveillance video
FERGUSON, Mo. (AP) — The Latest on reaction to footage from a new documentary on the 2014 Michael Brown police shooting in Ferguson, Missouri, (all times local):
5:50 p.m.
A filmmaker is denying that surveillance video in his documentary about the Michael Brown case in Ferguson, Missouri, was edited in a deceptive way.
Jason Pollock's documentary raises new questions about events leading up to the fatal Aug. 9, 2014, encounter in which white Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson fatally shot Brown, who was 18, black and unarmed. Wilson was later cleared of wrongdoing.
The footage shows Brown inside Ferguson Market & Liquor in the early hours of Aug. 9, 2014, leaving behind cigarillos he was later accused of stealing. The filmmakers allege Brown traded marijuana for the cigarillos, left them at the store, then came back before noon to get them.
In surveillance video that had been released soon after Brown's death, authorities pointed to a confrontation the footage shows between Brown and a store worker, saying it was evidence he stole the cigarillos. Pollock says Brown was simply claiming what he had bartered for marijuana.
St. Louis County prosecutor Robert McCulloch says filmmakers heavily edited the footage to distort an incident that occurred several hours before Brown died. McCulloch and the attorney for the store both say there was no bartered deal between Brown and store workers.
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4 p.m.
Unedited early-hours store video footage of Michael Brown on the day he was fatally shot by a white police officer has been released by a lawyer for the store.
The lawyer for the Ferguson, Missouri, convenience store and a prosecutor who handled the case are disputing a new documentary's claim that its footage proves Brown didn't steal from the store before his August 2014 death.
St. Louis County prosecutor Robert McCulloch says the "Stranger Fruit" documentary footage was heavily edited from the original to distort what really happened.
The filmmakers allege Brown while inside Ferguson Market & Liquor in the early hours of Aug. 9, 2014, traded marijuana for cigarillos he was later accused of stealing. They claim he left the cigarillos behind and returned to retrieve them up later that day, just minutes before he was killed in a neighborhood nearby.
The full footage shows the 18-year-old Brown, who was black, about to leave with a bag containing a couple of drinks and two boxes of cigarillos. He talks to the store workers, then gives the bag to a clerk and leaves without it.
The video shows the clerk return the boxes to the shelf, and another worker taking the drinks back toward a cooler.
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1:50 p.m.
St. Louis County prosecutor Robert McCulloch says a documentary film crew heavily edited store surveillance video footage of Michael Brown in the early hours of the day he was fatally shot by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri.
At a news conference Monday, McCulloch dismissed the footage from the documentary "Stranger Fruit." Filmmakers and others say the video suggests Brown, a black 18-year-old, didn't rob a convenience store before a white Ferguson officer, Darren Wilson, shot him on a neighborhood street in August 2014.
The footage shows Brown inside Ferguson Market & Liquor in the early hours of Aug. 9, 2014, leaving behind cigarillos he was later accused of stealing. The filmmakers allege Brown traded marijuana for the cigarillos in the footage shown in the documentary.
McCulloch says there was never an attempt to hide this footage from the public. He says references to this visit by Brown to the store were in the report released in November 2014 when a St. Louis County grand jury declined to charge Wilson in Brown's shooting.
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1:30 p.m.
Prosecutors have charged a St. Louis man who they say tried to set a Ferguson, Missouri, police car on fire after protests broke out at the convenience store that Michael Brown visited minutes before his death in 2014.
Police say 44-year-old Henry Stokes put a napkin in the gas tank opening of the police car Sunday night and tried to use a lighter to set it aflame, but fled when police saw him.
About 100 protesters gathered Sunday night outside the Ferguson Market & Liquor store after the release of footage from a documentary that suggests Brown didn't rob the store before his shooting death.
St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Robert McCulloch planned a Monday afternoon news conference to address video footage in the documentary.
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9:20 a.m.
An attorney says he will release an unedited version of surveillance video showing Michael Brown in a convenience store in Ferguson, Missouri, the same day the black 18-year-old was shot to death by a white police officer.
Jay Kanzler says he wants to disprove claims in a documentary, "Stranger Fruit," that the video, from Aug. 9, 2014, suggests Brown didn't rob the Ferguson Market & Liquor just minutes before his death.
Kanzler says the video used in the documentary was edited. He says he plans to release an unedited version Monday.
About 100 protesters gathered outside the store Sunday night. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports (http://on.ksdk.com/2nfzZ3G ) that seven or eight shots were heard, but no injuries reported. Police arrested some protesters and cleared the scene when the market closed.
