A young man, Michael Brown was killed by a police office. We don't know why at the time of this post why he is dead. There is no dispute that his body was in the street for hours.
There is no dispute that citizens were angry, frustrated and used their profoundly American right to protest. The majority of the those people were peaceful protesters.
There is also no dispute that there were some people that looted and destroyed property.
As time went on the police became an attack force toward citizens, citizen journalists and mainstream media. And despite the intentions of the police in Ferguson there were people that documented the story using social media and mobile devices.
Alderman Antonio French was using Vine to record what he was seeing in his community. Mr. French was arrested and held in jail for a few hours before being released.
Six second tells much; in this clip there are young men and reporters with cameras who are being tear gassed by the police. There was no Marshal law or curfew.
This is more of his videos on the police excessive use of tea gas:
So yeah, it is real. As a reminder:
As U.S. citizens we have the right to record police officers as affirmed by the 1st Amendment. The ACLU has a couple of pages about photography and video recording. this is the one from the Pennsylvania chapter on Know Your Rights.
Read Reason's 7 Rules for Recording Police Officers which would have still gotten you f-up in Ferguson.
I need to update with new sources but also check out Jesse Halfon's post on Cop Block. I gotta go but please, please be safe and be careful.
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