I just finished reading Dorian Johnson's testimony to the Grand Jury concerning the Ferguson Police Shooting, and found myself moved by his account of the day. Dorian comes across as a decent young man, trying to do the right thing, raising his daughter with his girlfriend, and being something of a mentor to a younger Michael Brown:
Q ...you were basically being kind of a mentor to Mike; is that correct?
A ...That's correct. It wasn't just like that with Big Mike, it was other kids his age that would see me and they see how I look and they see me walking up and down the street.
I have a dog, so me and my dog, I walk my dog a lot. I just live a peaceful lifestyle and they see me with my tattoos and my dreadlocks asking questions every day. They see me how did you, what happened, how did you get your job or anything like that.
So...it wasn't random that a person his age would come to me asking me how and the ways to get to work, to be the life to where you be comfortable a little.
Dorian sounds like the kind of person I'd appreciate as a neighbor, someone who takes the time to watch out for the people around him, someone who's trying to live right. After reading his testimony, I believe that Dorian Johnson is the kind of person who is willing to speak truth to power, even if that puts him and his family at risk. I have a lot of respect for that.
In situations like this, where there's a lot of emotion, conflicting accounts, and a frothing media frenzy, I tend to wait for clear data to come out. I'm not saying I'm unbiased, but I try to keep an open mind until I feel I have a sense of where the good data is. In the case of Michael Brown's death in Ferguson, that involved recognizing that the media was primarily compelled to focus on the rioting and other lurid, sensational aspects of the story with a feigned regretful fascination, as if to say, "How unfortunate that these people don't know how to behave respectfully". Every time I hear someone condemning destruction of property and violence in Ferguson, without also acknowledging the problem of police brutality and unjustified violence, I seethe a bit.
I don't watch news, I read it, so I don't necessarily have an understanding of what's going on in Ferguson consistent with that of people who have watched video interviews and footage. I've read very little that provides insight into how people in Ferguson live, what the interracial and sociopolitical dynamics are, what the history is, and so on. There've been some references in the media to work by church and community leaders to focus on peaceful protest, but for the most part, the media has focussed on the rioting and the anger.
Parsing for accurate information involved recognizing that local officials all the way up to the state level were participating in protecting and maintaining a narrative that there wasn't anything wrong but the rioting, that the system had everything under control. The information they released almost always reinforced a narrative that Michael Brown was guilty and Darren Wilson was justified in shooting him. Shaun King's excellent journalism as described in his diary "Why exactly did the police lie for 108 days about how far Mike Brown ran from Darren Wilson?" is an excellent example of this. Ferguson Prosecutor Robert McCulloch's press conference announcing the Grand Jury verdict is another. He describes the various places that Mike Brown's blood and DNA were found, including inside Wilson's vehicle, on his gun and clothes, but it's as if forensic science never evolved beyond swabbing things for DNA and looking for blood.
I haven't given up on eventually reading some good journalism about Ferguson, and eventually getting good forensic data (or at least a good breakdown of all the holes in the "official" narrative), but I have also been interested in learning more about the eyewitness accounts, particularly that of Michael Brown's companion that day. So I read Dorian Johnson's testimony with great interest. I had expected to glean some useful information and perspective from it, but I wasn't expecting to be drawn into the day, the mood, the feel of life in Ferguson. I can't say that I believe that Dorian's account is perfectly accurate in all details, but I am convinced that he's a decent, honest person who did his best to tell the truth of what happened that day.
I volunteer with a program that works with black youth in a low-income housing community in DC. I've been going there for over ten years, long enough to have a sense of the challenges of growing up in a community without the resources, stability, and support that I took for granted as a child. To say nothing of doing so within a culture of institutionalized prejudice and racism. I see how people respond to the kids when we're in whiter parts of the city, how easily youthful exuberance can be interpreted as threatening or dangerous, when the youth are black. I see the difference in the public resources committed in different parts of the city - schools, infrastructure, recreational opportunities.
I don't know much about how Michael and Dorian grew up, but I can imagine two young men a bit older than the youth I work with (18 and 22) ambling lazily through an end-of- summer morning down to the store:
I saw him at 7:00 in the morning, he was helping someone put some kids in the car...for his auntie, I believe it was...So I stopped and spoke to him. He asked me where I was headed to. I told him, I was going to get some rillos and get something to eat for me and my girl, I'm headed back to the house. He was like okay, well, I'll match you. I guess he had his own weed, so he said he would match me one. Matching is, if you don't know, is just someone I will roll the weed, he will roll the blunt, we both exchange blunts...it is just smoking together basically
In Dorian's testimony, when they do get to the store, Mike grabs a bunch of cigarillos from the counter, "thrushed" (I believe this is an incorrect transcription of "thrust"...) the door open, shoves the clerk who tries to grab him on the way out. Dorian is shocked and confused, and as they walk back together:
I was trying to figure it out in my head at the time we were leaving out of the store like, all right, I didn't know this was going to happen. I didn't touch anything, but I did see what just happened and I know there was a crime.
...I asked him, I looked at him, actually, looked at him for a while and stared at him because the times when I did meet him before that day, he didn't strike me as a person who would do anything like that. And prior to that day, it shocked me a lot, it shocked me a lot. So I was asking him, I was like, you know hey, I don't do stuff like that. What's going on.
And so much is giving me an answer as to why he did it was he was basically laughing it off, be cool, be calm, stuff like that laughing it off but in my head I'm like, I can't be calm, I can't be cool because I know what just happened and we were on camera.
FWIW, I think that Michael Brown did a stupid, impulsive thing, in an attempt to impress an older, "tougher" man that he looked up to, and then tried to pass it off as no big thing.
The conversation we was having at this point, we was talking the same, the conversation never changed about what we were talking about future goals and stuff like that, what we were planning on doing.
And basically he was asking me questions on how did I transform to coming from where I was and getting on track and now I have my own apartment and stuff like that, I was just telling him a few things that I went through in my life that made me change and stuff like that.
I knew he wasn't someone like me, I knew he didn't grow up where I grew up from, where there was a bunch of violent gangs and violent stuff occurring all the time. I knew that much about him because I read from his demeanor he didn't come up that way. I'm telling him about my life story and how I come up from a bunch of tragedies. I went to school, I was still able to do things that I need to do in life
(Unfortunately, this diary is taking a lot longer than I intended. I really just wanted to give people a taste of Dorian's testimony, to encourage them to read it themselves. So rather than stay up all night, I'm going to wrap it up here. If there's interest, I'll work through Dorian's account of the shooting).
In my opinion, there's no good reason for Dorian to tell the story the way he did unless he's committed to telling the truth about what he experienced, and committed to doing right by Big Mike and his family. It would have been far simpler, safer, and easier for him to keep his mouth shut, or pretend he didn't see much.
Right after the shooting, once he realizes that the police aren't going to do it, Dorian goes and tells Michael Brown's grandmother:
I went to his grandmother's house…when I see his uncle and all of them standing right there, I immediately all right, (the police) are not going to tell these people anything, I have to tell their family. I was with him last, I saw what happened…I told her exactly what happened. From the start of the morning all the way to the store incident.
The family asks him to tell his story to the press:
They actually wanted me to walk down, that was my first interview…the reason I gave it because the family they asked me if I could do it for them because they wanted to get it out immediately. Their words, so it wouldn't be covered up or misconstrued or any type of way. They wanted me to get it out there quickly.
This is despite his fear of being arrested, despite just having seen a police officer shoot an unarmed black man:
I was so afraid. I didn't know what was going to happen to me. I basically just didn't, really I didn't feel comfortable with Ferguson at the time…there was a lot of Ferguson police officers and I just felt like, you know what, I don't need to be seen right now. I don't want to be detained in any type of way, you know.
Compare Dorian Johnson's behavior after the shooting with Darren Wilson's. Darren walked back to his car and sat in it, talked to an officer and then drove back to the station on his own in another car, went to the hospital, staying in a safe, protected bubble the whole time. Dorian put himself at risk to tell his story almost immediately after the shooting, because "Big Mike"s family asked him to.
I really hope that this diary encourages some people to read Dorian Johnson's testimony - it doesn't answer all the questions that are out there, but I feel that gives a good sense of a day in the life of Dorian Johnson.
I'll close with how Dorian chose to end his testimony:
Regardless of everybody's opinion of me, I know a lot of speculation of my past and criminal record that I have or anything like that, that day I felt like even though the store thing had happened, I didn't feel like someone should have lost their life.
I feel like the incident at the car with both Mike Brown and Officer Darren Wilson could have been resolved without deadly force.
We definitely wasn't posing a threat to his life. I just want, I just pray that everybody sees the evidence for what it really is. Deadly force was really not necessary, everything else, had he knew about the store incident, him stopping us, all of that that[s protocol, i get that. Deadly force was never ever needed and I pray that people really see that we didn't have any weapons on us or anything like that.
He could be in jail right now.