- AP Photos
- Protesters in Saint Louis call for reforms after police shot and killed Michael Brown and, ten days later, Kajieme Powell.
As you may remember, the August 9 death of Michael Brown after he was shot by a police officer in the Saint Louis suburb of Ferguson was followed—ten days of nationally covered civil protests later—by another police shooting in Saint Louis proper. Our understanding of Brown’s death is at best translucent—police saying one thing, witnesses another. But Kajieme Powell, 25, was videotaped by an amused bystander who’d noticed him on the sidewalk acting “crazy.” We could watch Powell die for ourselves.
The two shootings took place about four miles apart, and as anyone in Chicago can tell you, four urban miles are roughly equivalent to halfway across the country. Brown and Powell weren’t shot in the same municipality or even in adjacent municipalities, and my first thought was that Powell’s death was getting dragged into the media spotlight because, after all, what better tenth-day angle than a fresh shooting to chew over?
I asked a couple of the smartest people I know in my hometown why the death of Kajieme Powell was a one-day news story. Win Gifford, an old friend, said the chief of police smartly got in front of the story: he “quickly released the video of the shooting and he was immediately hailed for being ‘transparent,’ somehow thus exonerating him and his officers from scrutiny and criticism.”
“Maybe a long block, two short blocks,” McClellan said. “Mostly one side of the street, but some on the other.”
