New footage raises questions about police killing of Michael Brown

Footage has emerged raising new questions about the US police account of the killing of African American teenager Michael Brown.

Obtained by filmmaker Jason Pollock, the footage questions claims by police that Brown had robbed a convenience store ahead of getting shot dead by a white officer named Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri, on August 9, 2014.

“They destroyed Michael’s character with the tape, and they didn’t show us what actually happened,” Pollock told the New York Times. “So this shows their intention to make him look bad. And [it] shows suppression of evidence.”

The video, never previously seen by the public and released in a new documentary by Pollack, apparently shows the 18-year-old black man engaged in an “altercation” rather than a robbery.

It shows the teenager handing a small bag, presumably containing marijuana, over the counter and getting two boxes of cigarillos instead.

He later has the clerk hold the bag with the cigarillos behind the counter.

Ten hours later, he is seen returning to the store to pick the boxes of cigarillos

“There was an understanding, and that’s what you are going to see in that video,” says the teenager’s mother, Lezley McSpadden, in the documentary, called Stranger Fruit. “There was some type of exchange for one thing, for another.”

A lawyer representing the convenience store has challenged the validity of Pollack’s narrative.

“There was no transaction,” Jay Kanzler said. “There was no understanding. No agreement. Those folks didn’t sell him cigarillos for pot. The reason he gave it back is he was walking out the door with unpaid merchandise and they wanted it back.”

In November 2014, a predominantly white grand jury -- of nine white and three black judges -- decided not to indict Wilson for killing Brown, causing months of unrest across the country. 

African-Americans are far more likely to be shot, arrested and imprisoned by police than any other racial group, according to various studies.