Michael Brown was a robbery suspect before he was shot to death, police say
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Ferguson, Missouri, police have released video of a convenience store robbery filmed the day Michael Brown was shot.
Michael Brown was a robbery suspect before he was shot to death, police say
By Michael Pearson and Ana Cabrera, CNN
updated 2:34 PM EDT, Fri August 15, 2014
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STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- NEW: Michael Brown's family is "beyond outraged" about the robbery claim, attorney says
- NEW: Brown's friend, named as a fellow robbery suspect, is cleared, police say
- Police name the officer who shot the teenager as Darren Wilson
- More protests are planned; new police commander urges calm
Have you documented the protests in Ferguson? Share your photos, videos and opinions with CNN iReport. For local coverage of the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown and its aftermath, go to CNN affiliates KMOV, KSDK, KTVI and KPLR.
Ferguson, Missouri (CNN) -- Police named the officer involved in the shooting of Ferguson teenager Michael Brown on Friday, then released documents containing a bombshell: The 18-year-old was the "primary suspect" in the robbery of a convenience store moments before he was killed.
The haul: a $48.99 box of cigars, according to the documents.
Officer Darren Wilson, a six-year veteran of the department, was responding to that call when he encountered Brown, police Chief Thomas Jackson told reporters.
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According to the documents, Brown roughly handled a clerk trying to stop him before walking out of the store with the box of Swisher Sweets.
Read the police documents
The claim immediately was met with skepticism among Brown's family and some in the community, who have accused Ferguson police of attempting a cover-up to protect the officer.
"Michael Brown's family is beyond outraged at the devious way the police chief has chosen to disseminate" incomplete information about what happened, family attorney Benjamin Crump said in a statement.
Police, he said, were acting "in a manner intended to assassinate the character of their son, following such a brutal assassination of his person in broad daylight."
On Twitter, many community members and activists expressed disappointment and outrage.
"How can they not release info on the shooting but link #MikeBrown to robbery. Shame on them," @NafisMWhite tweeted.
Another said that Brown being a suspect should not have led to the use of deadly force.
"When police approached Mike Brown, he was still a suspect, he wasn't guilty of anything, so it shouldn't have come to a shooting," one man told CNN's Don Lemon on Thursday.
A key complaint of protesters has been that witnesses say the officer shot Brown as the teenager stood with his hands in the air. Police have said the shooting occurred during a struggle for the officer's gun.
More protests expected
The release of Wilson's name satisfied a key demand of protesters and critics of the handling of the case by the suburban St. Louis police department and St. Louis County investigators handling the probe.
5 things to know about Michael Brown's shooting
But, especially in light of the robbery allegations, the release of Wilson's name is unlikely to quell protests in the city and elsewhere over the death of an unarmed African-American man at the hands of a police officer.
Missouri State Highway Patrol Capt. Ron Johnson, who took over protest security at Gov. Jay Nixon's direction after days of sometimes violent clashes between police and protesters, said he expected calm to prevail when protesters begin to filter back into the city Friday night.
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"In our anger, we need to make sure we don't burn down our own house," he said.
Complete coverage of the Ferguson shooting
Fatal moments
According to a timeline offered by Jackson, Wilson encountered Brown 10 minutes after the report of a robbery at a nearby convenience store.
According to police documents, video surveillance images from the store show a man said to be Brown manhandling a store employee, towering over him and "appearing to intimidate him" before walking out with the box of cigars.
Neither Jackson nor the documents elaborated on what happened when Wilson and Brown met up on the street. He was looking for suspects in the robbery at the time, but neither Jackson nor the documents explain why he stopped Brown.
However, according to a police report released Friday, the officer investigating the alleged robbery went to the shooting scene and matched Brown's body with images from the surveillance video.
Police have previously said that Brown and the officer wrestled while the officer was still in his cruiser, and that Brown was trying to get the officer's weapon.
Witnesses have told CNN that the two did tussle at the cruiser window, but it didn't look like Brown was trying to get at the officer.
"It looked as if Michael was pushing off and the cop was trying to pull him in," Tiffany Mitchell told CNN on Wednesday night.
Neither Mitchell nor co-worker Piaget Crenshaw say they saw Brown enter the vehicle.
Instead, a shot went off, then the teen broke free, and the officer got out of the vehicle in pursuit, the women said.
"I saw the police chase him ... down the street and shoot him down," Crenshaw said. Brown ran about 20 feet.
Another man, Dorian Johnson, said that he was with Brown at the time of the shooting and that police shot him without provocation.
"We wasn't committing any crime, bringing no harm to nobody, but my friend was murdered in cold blood," he told CNN affiliate KMOV.
The documents released Friday name him as the second suspect in the convenience store robbery, but Jackson said Friday that he will not face any charges.
"We have determined that he committed no crime," Jackson said.
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Questions remain
Not everyone accepted claims of Brown's involvement in a robbery, and some took to social media to question details of the evidence presented by police.
Pointing to images posted online of Brown's body lying in the street, some people said that the body didn't appear to be as heavyset as the man in the surveillance video and that he seemed to be dressed differently, too.
Twitter user @ART_TheGOD wrote, "so #MikeBrown's hat disappeared and he changed into shoes huh.?"
Nixon, addressing reporters, said "New facts are out ... but those are not the full picture."
"I think the focal point here remains to figure out how and why Michael Brown was killed and to get justice as appropriate in that situation," he said.
What we know about Michael Brown's shooting
A new tone
Protests over Brown's killing were peaceful Thursday night after several days of tense encounters between protesters and police.
On Wednesday, police, backed by armored personnel carriers, fired tear gas and rubber bullets at protesters in a widely criticized effort at crowd control.
"Last night was a great night, a great night," Ron Johnson, the Missouri State Highway Patrol captain, said Friday. There were no arrests, he said.
He promised to do his part to keep the calm, using his now signature smile and hugs for protesters.
Nixon and President Barack Obama also have called for peace from all sides and respect for the rights of protesters and the press. Police briefly detained two reporters Wednesday and Al Jazeera America said police fired tear gas and rubber bullets at their camera position.
"There is never an excuse for violence against police or for those who would use this tragedy as a cover for vandalism or looting," Obama said Thursday. "There is also no excuse for police to use excessive force against peaceful protests or to throw protesters in jail for lawfully exercising their First Amendment rights."
Hundreds gathered Thursday in Los Angeles and New York to demand justice for Brown.
The Los Angeles protests included commemoration for Ezell Ford, an African-American youth recently killed there. In New York, police formed a line to halt the march, CNN affiliate WABC reported.
They told the crowd to disperse and arrested a few people.
Opinion: How many unarmed people have to die?
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