Tag: aaron

Nearly a year ago, in Northern Virginia, a young man named Aaron Brown was shot and killed by a police officer. He was a close friend of my brother, and at the time, I wrote a lot of stuff about it. It was a bad scene all around, with many mistakes made.

Recently, the washington post reported that the wheels of justice have twitched another notch forward. The officer has been suspended from duty, and the police chief has clarified the rules of engagement under which an officer may place themselves in harms way, and when they may open fire on a moving vehicle. It seems like an ever so slight acknowledgment that there is serious circular reasoning going on when the justification for shooting was “imminent danger to the officer,” who had just stepped out in front of a moving jeep.

Still, this stirred up all those year-old feelings again.

I feel ill:

A few months ago, a close friend of my family was shot and killed in a totally unfortunate and completely avoidable situation at an IHOP. Today, the county released its report which states that the officer won’t be charged with any crime.

What I wrote about it, before.

Here’s my take on it

In the case where Aaron Brown was shot and killed. The prosecutor is reviewing whether to press charges.

Sengel will decide whether charges are warranted against Carl Stowe, the officer who fired at a vehicle in which Aaron Brown, 18, and four of his friends were riding. For his review, Sengel said his office will interview witnesses and conduct follow-ups to the police investigation. He said he will not make a decision for at least two months.

I took the tickets from my aborted attempt to go visit my brother on Thursday (all praise Southwest air) and flew down for Aaron’s funeral yesterday. My parents drove up from central VA. It was a long and brutal day, but cathartic. I’m going to write all about it here and then move on.

Media

This thing has been at the front of the Metro section for the past week. The coverage has sort of converged and seems to be looking for somewhere to go:

March 4: The driver talks to the press
March 4: A retrospective article
March 5: Article about Aaron’s funeral

my long version of the day

The Post has weighed in with this editorial which sums up pretty nicely the facts and opinions presented so far. This guy has an opinion that meshes well with mine … though he’s a bit more direct in his choice of words.

I’m fixated on this. I know I shouldn’t be, that I should worry about other things, concentrate on work, or something … but my mind is captured, captivated, unable to look away from the horrible meaninglessness of the whole situation.

The fact is, it’s so close to home. I’m okay living day to day in a country that is killing off 5 to 10 of it’s young men and women every day in service to our low oil prices … where dozens per day die in the inner cities for even less reason than Aaron. I can wake up, go about my business, and not be bothered except in short doses of irritation, polemic, or rage. Those deaths are distant from me. Somehow, this one death is opening up quite a bit of suppressed rage and disappointment … and I’m left looking for something to do with the energy. But for a few trivial details, my brother would have been in that car … though his presence would have deflected the situation just enough to change the entire dynamic. But for a few years of distance, I might have been in that back seat myself.

The appropriate question is “what could we change to prevent this happening again?” The answer, sadly, is not much. It seems that laws are already in place to try to ensure that this sort of thing doesn’t happen. Hopefully the police department will do the right thing and dismiss this officer, who through his own choices endangered himself and wound up killing the wrong person. Hopefully people will wake up just a bit to the disturbingly high level of violence in our day to day life. However, I think that at root the answer remains that this is part of the cost of having armed men protect us from each other, that they sometimes kill the wrong person.

Hopefully after the funeral, after the coverage dies down, after my family returns to its usual patterns, my mind will settle back to its normal placid state of happiness. For now, I’m off to the gym to try to tire myself out a bit.

What’s new with your brother’s friend, shot in the head, you may ask?

The coverage in the Post continues, one article per day:

Feb 28: There’s a policy debate
Mar 1: People who were there dispute the officer’s account
Mar 2: The cop who shot my brother’s friend has a lawyer.

Even the DC chief of police has weighed in: “We put the emphasis on better training. Striking at a moving vehicle doesn’t do you any good. If you think you had a problem before, try adding a corpse behind the wheel,” D.C. Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey said last night. “We feel better tactics, better approaches . . . is the way to go.”

The funeral is on Saturday. There’s not going to be a dry eye in the house. My brother has been asked to perform a guitar piece at the funeral, to sing in the mens chorale at the memorial service (they’re doing the Biebel Ave Maria), and the three surviving members of the band that Aaron played in will try to put together a song or two without him. It’s going to be one hella’ rough Saturday. He’s also been contacted by the Post reporter who is apparently doing a piece on Aaron’s life.

What else to say? I tried to get down to Baltimore to see him today, but failed due to the unexpected blizzard. More whining on that later, most likely.

The Washington Post had another article this morning about Aaron Brown. Word is, the bullets hit the drivers side rear door and the left rear panel.

What an awful situation. It makes me feel sick. We’re left with piles of teddy bears and flowers in the IHOP parking lot.

Said the father: “If their policy in a situation like this is to throw themselves in front of a moving vehicle and then use deadly force, maybe that policy needs to be reviewed,”

–UPDATE–

The parents have asked that if you’re moved to send flowers, you instead make a donation in his name to a charity, Guitars Not Guns. They provide music lessons to at-risk kids. Be warned that the web site plays a little song for you, it creeped me out.

Interesting. I linked to the Washington Post in my last update. They apparently track referrals, and link back to “bloggers who have written about this article”. So now I’m getting anonymous people who read the Post article and followed a link here.

Have no illusions of privacy on your livejournal, folks, it just ain’t private unless you protect it with a “friends only” or similar.

One of my brother’s best friends from high school, Aaron Brown, was shot and killed on Friday night. Here’s the Washington Post article. Aaron was 18 years old.

My thoughts