ACLU says heavily redacted Michael Brown death report is deceptive, illegal

A police report on the death of Michael Brown is missing key information and violates Missouri open records laws, an ACLU attorney told Yahoo News on Friday.

The two-page document, which the Ferguson Police Department released only after pressure from journalists and civil liberties advocates, is largely redacted or left blank. The most egregious omissions are the victim’s name and a description of the offense – the fatal shooting of Brown.

“They are breaking the law,” said Tony Rothert, legal director of the ACLU of Missouri.

The report, obtained by Yahoo News through the Missouri Sunshine Law, lists only the date, time and location. Fields for the type of incident, name of the complainant, and a summary of the circumstances are redacted.

“I’ve never seen an incident report that didn’t contain a description of the incident, at least on some basic level,” said Don Tittle, a veteran Texas civil and criminal attorney. “It makes you wonder if they don’t want to commit to a story.”

Lone Wolf wrote:
   IT never surprises me in the least any more,  when any police department, military arm, government bureaucracy or political party comes out with these all-too-familiar illegal, fallacious and deliberately misleading false "reports", misrepresentations and denials...

WHAT does surprise me is just how many silly, gullible and non-thinking people there are out there who stubbornly claim "I will always have the utmost faith in our police, courts, guvm'nt... blah, blah, mutter !", and then act so utterly shattered and unbelievingly betrayed when they hear these stories..