REPORTER: Aaron Lewis
In that great baptist tradition, Michael Brown's funeral was both a celebration and deeply sombre, it was also one more rallying cry for change.
REV CHARLES EWING, MIKE BROWN'S GREAT UNCLE: There is a cry being made from the ground - not just from Michael Brown, but for Trayvon Martin, for those children at Sandy Hook elementary school, for the Columbine massacre, for the black-on-black crime. There is a cry being made from the ground and God is hearing the vengeance of His slain.
A few days earlier in Ferguson, and the rain is all that's holding back the riots. The rain seems a welcome reprieve from the chaotic nightly protesting over the death of teenager Michael Brown.
REV STEVE LAWLER, ST STEPHEN'S CHURCH, FERGUSON: I first heard late in the day, I guess the middle of Saturday afternoon. I don't know what the police officer did except I know that he shot an unarmed guy and I know that all that I heard about was that Michael Brown was walking in the street. There was no other stuff going on that I heard about.
PHILIP AGNEW, DREAM DEFENDERS: I don't care what the cops say. I don't care what the cops say. And I don't think anybody should be afraid to say that. They murdered him.
CROWD: Don't shoot! Don't shoot! Don't shoot!
The power of the story of Michael Brown's death is that it can be told in a single sentence - an unarmed black kid shot dead by a white police officer for just walking down the street. Literally, Officer Darren Wilson intended to charge Brown for jaywalking.
MAE QUINN, WULS JUVENILE JUSTICE CLINIC: There was a stop of a youth being in the street for being in the street - just for being in the street. And, from there, a shooting took place. It appears to be undisputed that six - at least six - bullets were fired by the officer.
PHILIP AGNEW: The bullet came from the gun of a police officer, doesn't mean the bullet did not kill. The autopsy showed they murdered him and he was unarmed. We have a culture in this country that only certain people are allowed to live and only certain people are allowed to kill. And those people that can kill are above reproach by anybody.
MAE QUINN: We have one autopsy report, not the government autopsy report, but the family's autopsy report that shows that there were multiple blows to the body, including two to the head. I think we have to go back to the basic question of, how should an officer respond to a jaywalking situation? How did things get like this?
Brown was shot on Kenfield Drive where he grew up and his body was left in the afternoon sun for four and a half hours by the police.
WOMAN: Police shot this man for no reason.
While neighbours gathered the crowd that included his friends.
KORDAN, MIKE BROWN'S FRIEND: We see him all the time, he liked almost everybody around this complex. There's not person that I know that says "I don't know him".
Big Mike Brown has since been accused of being the man in this video of a strongarm robbery earlier that day, walking out with a box of Cigarillos from a nearby convenience store. But Brown was not charged with shoplifting when he met Officer Wilson hours later.
MIKE OWEN, POLICE VETERAN, CIVIL DISORDER SPECIALIST: There is a feeling on the side of law enforcement saying we've got a job to do and this is where some of the problems we are having, we have the minority community saying, it's not fair, we know we're being picked on, and, to be honest with you, I don't know what the answer is.
The question remains - how did a jaywalking stop turn so quickly into a state of emergency? The first step was right after the shooting, when Mike's friends and neighbours took to social media. Protesters then took to the streets.
PROTESTERS: They're telling the media to turn off their cameras because they don't want no fucking witnesses.
The protesters were angry right from the start, but they were essentially peaceful. The police responded with force the locals had never seen - things just spiralled. Looting began.
PHILIP AGNEW: People talk about the looting that happened in a few places, right, and the people who couldn't control their anger sometimes, right? But the fact of the matter is, that is a very visceral, a human reaction that you have when you see a child murdered in cold blood. What would you do? What would you do if the body sat there for four to five hours and the people that murdered him hovered over him? And treated him like nothing.
Municipal police quickly called in state police. Who soon enough handed over crowd control to the National Guard.
THOMAS HARVEY, LAWYER, ARCHCITY DEFENDER: To me, it is an example of just a complete overreaction to the potential of violence from people of colour. I'm not going to dismiss the fact that there was some criminal actions that occurred that night, right, there were real criminal actions that happened that night. But the military and the snipers - they were there. And it was - I thought it was awful. I don't want to see it in - I'm not just talking about in St Louis, I don't want to see it in America. It's at odds with what I believe our justice system and system of government is supposed to be about. The police - I mean, this is the difference, right, between a totalitarian regime and a democracy, is the police are supposed to be here to protect and serve us and the military are supposed to defend us against foreign threats. They shouldn't be here on the streets of Ferguson.
With all levels of policing now wearing camouflage fatigues or driving armoured personnel carriers like Bear Cats, it was hard for the public to tell the military from the cops.
MIKE OWEN: One of the things I heard many folks here in the media say is, military equipment, military, military. And in my observations I have not seen one piece of military equipment. I'm not saying they're not there. I didn't see hand-me-down weapons, or hand-me-down gear - these are being paid for with public funds.
So who were all these rioters from Ferguson on the road for a showdown like this? Well, many weren't from Ferguson at all. Police arrest logs show that only a few dozen of the more than 200 people arrested were from there. Most were from other areas in St Louis. But many were from so far away as Brooklyn, New York, part of a kind of increasingly common social media-driven protest tourism.
PROTESTERS: The whole damn system!
Philip Agnew is from Miami. He is angry, but he is not local.
PHILIP AGNEW: As somebody who is politicised and somebody who is "Conscious" as they say, you think every day about what it would be really like to rebel and fight against the police force. Other people may give way more political answers and some may be genuine, but I wanted to support and I always wanted to be a part of a resistance moment.
JORDAN: As friends and everybody around his community know him, you know, it's kind of messed up how people are just using his name for other things. It's kind of messed up.
Thousands came to Ferguson to protest America's growing injustice. For most of the crowd, Mike Brown was just the latest casualty of the worst kind of racism. But for the people who live in Ferguson, it is more complicated. A few will tell you they've experienced outright police brutality, like Germain, a friend of Mike Brown's.
GERMAIN: I got charged for attempted robbery that I didn't do. It was a vacant house.
REPORTER: How did they treat you?
GERMAIN: They beat me with their night stick and Tasered me. That's about it.
REPORTER: You got beat with a night stick and tasered?
GERMAIN: Yeah.
REPORTER: How old are you?
GERMAIN: 18.
REPORTER: And when was this?
GERMAIN: Last year.
You would think that stories like a 17-year-old saying he was beaten by the police would be the kind of thing the people here would be most angry about. But it's not. Almost everyone in Ferguson will tell you that their biggest problem with the police is traffic tickets. And they stand by the road in the sweltering heat to make their point.
RICK CANAMORE, FERGUSON RESIDENT: I've worked every day - I've worked two jobs to put my kids through school and I keep my insurance, my car maintained. But every time, it's like a police car gets in behind me, even though I know I haven't done anything wrong, I always feel like they're running my plates, I feel like I'm going to be harassed. You just get tired of feeling like that and I think a lot of the young people that's rioting over there, I don't think that a lot of it has to do with Mike Brown at all.
Rioting over traffic violations may sound crazy, but consider this - in Ferguson, every encounter with a police officer can cost you money that you don't have, even if you haven't done anything. The municipal court here can charge you court fees - often around $50 - just to show up, and fine you if you don't show. And, even if you win, you still owe the court fee. The local government's number two source of revenue is ticketing. It's an almost $3 million line item. And Ferguson has a 90% poverty rate.
MAE QUINN: It is almost a rite of passage in this community for young kids to have contact with law enforcement. They must, almost, pass through the municipal courts. Many, many kids will say they have warrants out of our municipal courts for the most benign and ordinary behaviour.
So, when a 17-year-old in Ferguson tells you that they have $3,000 of paper out on them, that's the running total of the fines they owe. And, Ferguson is only one of 91 different municipalities in St Louis - each with their own police agency. You can cross eight jurisdictions in one three-mile stretch of road and be fined each time for the same broken taillight. Unpaid fines lead to warrants.
MIKE OWEN: They're not showing up because they are running from their obligation to the law, so we must issue a warrant for the arrest.
Avoiding a warrant can lead to jail time and this all too often starts with an ordnance violation like a broken taillight - or jaywalking. And because this is all civil law, you won't get a court-appointed lawyer to clue you into the fact that much of this may actually be unconstitutional.
THOMAS HARVEY: I would say that the courts believe that these charters are so low level and so low level and so trivial that you don't even get a lawyer. You are getting a traffic ticket, right? But then three steps later people are in jail and I don't think the courts, the people who are in the courts, have a good understanding of the havoc that they're wreaking on people's lives when they're ticketing them and then trying to collect this revenue.
None of this changes the fact that a white police officer shot an unarmed black kid on a jaywalking stop. Nor does it change the fact that the officer in question has yet to have his day in court. But it might help to explain why so many people in Ferguson use the same word to describe the last two weeks. They say something like this was 'inevitable'.
REV AL SHARPTON, CIVIL RIGHTS LEADER: Michael Brown does not want to be remembered for a riot. He wants to be remembered as the one that made America deal with how we're going to police in the United States.
ANJALI RAO: Aaron Lewis and the legal trap that ensnares the poor in St Louis.
Reporter/Producer
AARON LEWIS
Music composed by Vicki Hansen
26th August 2014