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Heavily Armed Oath Keepers Showed Up to Ferguson Last Night

by FrankMcCready Posted on August 11, 2015

Mother Jones

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As demonstrators gathered in Ferguson to continue commemorating the one-year anniversary of the fatal shooting of Michael Brown on Monday, five heavily armed men belonging to a vigilante group called the Oath Keepers were spotted patrolling the streets. According to reports, the Oath Keepers said they were on the scene to provide voluntary protection to a journalist working for the site InfoWars, the conspiracy mill run by noted lunatic Alex Jones.

St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar called the group’s presence on Monday both “unnecessary and inflammatory.”

Their arrival came amid 23 arrests last night. The police said those arrested in the largely peaceful protests were throwing bottles at law enforcement officials and “unlawfully assembled.”

During the same time last year, Oath Keeper members took it upon themselves to guard the city’s rooftops with assault rifles. Police officials eventually ordered the group to leave, saying their presence was inciting fear and suspicion in an already tense situation. However, no members were arrested.

The mysterious group, who called themselves voluntary “patriots,” primarily consists of heavily armed white men dressed in military uniforms. Many of them are former soldiers and police officials. For more on who they are, read our in-depth investigation, “Oath Keepers and the Age of Treason.”

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Heavily Armed Oath Keepers Showed Up to Ferguson Last Night

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What Do We Know So Far From Mike Brown’s Autopsies?

by DamienVxmvkqoot Posted on August 18, 2014

Mother Jones

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Normally, it takes weeks to get the results of an autopsy. But today, St. Louis County medical examiner Mary Case announced that Michael Brown, the unarmed teenager who was killed by a policeman last weekend in Ferguson, Missouri, was shot in the head and chest multiple times. Here’s the information we know about Michael Brown’s death, and a little background on why autopsies usually take so much longer.

What have the autopsies found so far?

Three separate autopsies are in various stages of completion. The St. Louis County medical examiner’s office announced on Monday that Brown was killed by multiple bullets to the chest and head. The office has not yet released information about the number or location of the bullets or their toxicology report. According to a confidential source reporting to the Washington Post, Brown’s toxicology test found that he tested positive for marijuana.

The preliminary results of an independent autopsy arranged by the Brown family and performed on Sunday by former New York City medical examiner Michael Baden found that Brown was shot six times: four times in his right arm, and twice in the head. One of the bullets entered the top of Brown’s skull, indicating that his head was tilted forward when the bullet struck him and caused a fatal injury. According to Benjamin Crump, the attorney representing the Browns, the family wanted “an autopsy done by somebody who is objective and who does not have a relationship with the Ferguson police.”

Attorney General announced on Sunday that the Justice Department would conduct a third autopsy, because of “the extraordinary circumstances involved in this case and at the request of the Brown family.” A department representative said the autopsy would take place “as soon as possible.”

Why does it usually take so long to get autopsy results?

An autopsy itself usually doesn’t take too long, but often, medical examiners will wait to release the results until toxicology tests, which analyze the presence of drugs, are also complete. Toxicology tests usually take several weeks, in part due to the chemistry involved and in part because there’s often a backlog of tests. Coupling the release of the toxicology and autopsy results is standard practice because it gives a more complete picture of what may have happened during the shooting, says Judy Melinek, a forensic pathologist and the author of Working Stiff: The Making of a Medical Examiner. Determining whether or not a person was under the influence of drugs “may help interpret a person’s behavior and reaction time,” she says.

What do toxicology tests entail?

A basic screening often involves using immunoassays to test blood and urine (from inside the body) for drugs, including alcohol, marijuana, and opiates. If a test comes back positive, then a lab will run more complex tests, like mass spectrometry, to determine the exact concentration of the drug. Melinek says that “negative results come back faster,” and “the more drugs found in a person’s system, the longer it takes because each has to be verified and quantitated.” If Brown only tested positive for marijuana, the tests would only take a few days.

Was Brown’s case slowed down by an autopsy backlog?

Autopsy backlogs do exist—last year in Massachusetts, for example, there were nearly 1,000 unfinished death certificates due to lack of qualified pathologists and state funding for toxicology testing. According to Suzanne Picayune, a representative of the St. Louis County medical examiner’s office, Brown’s case was expedited through the system, as often happens for cases involving officers.

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What Do We Know So Far From Mike Brown’s Autopsies?

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