"Hands up, don't shoot" in Ferguson
■ The claim
After Officer Darren Wilson shot Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, in August 2014, coverage widely relayed witness accounts that Brown had his hands raised in surrender when he was killed, which became the rallying cry of the protests.
■ What actually happened
A March 4, 2015 Justice Department investigation concluded the surrender accounts were not credible: some conflicted with physical and forensic evidence, some witnesses recanted, and credible witnesses said Brown was moving toward Wilson. The DOJ declined to charge Wilson. Washington Post columnist Jonathan Capehart, who had embraced the slogan, wrote that it was built on a falsehood. The DOJ separately documented a pattern of racial bias in the Ferguson Police Department.
■ The proof
The Justice Department's March 4, 2015 report on the shooting of Michael Brown.
■ Original reporting
- NPR: An account of the Ferguson shooting from the man beside Brown (Aug. 18, 2014)https://www.npr.org/2014/08/18/341426635/an-account-of-the-ferguson-shooting-from-the-man-standing-beside-brown
■ Corrections, findings & records
- DOJ: Report on the shooting of Michael Brown (March 4, 2015, PDF)https://www.justice.gov/file/406336/download
- St. Louis Public Radio: DOJ clears Wilson, contradicts common beliefshttps://www.stlpr.org/government-politics-issues/2015-03-04/justice-department-clears-wilson-account-of-browns-death-contradicts-some-common-beliefs
- Washington Post (Capehart): Lesson learned from the shooting of Michael Brownhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2015/03/16/lesson-learned-from-the-shooting-of-michael-brown/
■ Wayback Machine copies
Stories sometimes get edited after publication. These links open the Internet Archive's earliest snapshot of each original.
- Archive copy: NPR: An account of the Ferguson shooting from the man beside Brown (Aug. 18, 2014)https://web.archive.org/web/2/https://www.npr.org/2014/08/18/341426635/an-account-of-the-ferguson-shooting-from-the-man-standing-beside-brown
■ Grade
DEBUNKED: Shown false by evidence or official findings, whether or not the outlet corrected it. How we grade →