Shortly after the fatal shooting of teenager Michael Brown on Aug. 9th in Ferguson Missouri, the internet exploded with a firestorm people who criticized both the activists protesting his death and the victim himself. This outrage was based partly on a photo that has now been proven fake.
The photo supposedly features the young teen posing behind bottles of Hawaiian Punch and vodka with a stack of folded bills in his mouth and a gun in his hand. Most of those who re-posted the photo with comments like “Brown was a thug and deserved what he got” did not know that this was not a picture of Michael Brown at all.
It is in fact a picture of a murder defendant from Oregon. A Kansas City based police officer named Marc Catron is now under internal review after posting this photo on Facebook with disparaging comments about the victim.
Those who saw the attempted slander of the deceased teen alerted Catron’s superiors in the department, who now say that they are “handling this case internally.”
Many angry citizens do not feel that this matter should be “handled internally” and have decided to take matters into their own hands by creating their own Facebook page.
While the page is set to private and can’t be seen unless it is joined, its description draws attention to officer Catron’s misconduct and racially divisive remarks and demands that Mr. Catron be fired, saying that “a suspension isn’t enough & we don’t want a BS apology.”
