During his comments to the press on Sunday, San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg Popovich spent three minutes paying tribute to Michael Brown, who was shot six years ago after trying to take a Missouri police officer’s gun from him.
Indeed, during his three-minute harangue, Popovich disgorged many of the lies spread by the Black Lives Matter movement that attempted to turn Brown from assailant, into victim.
Without evidence, Popovich said that police “culture” is to “presume the guilt” of all black people. He even pushed the fiction that Brown was shot down while running away from the police officer with his hands up.
None of this is true.
In fact, it was none other than the Obama Department of Justice, that investigated the Michael Brown shooting and found no credible evidence that the officer had acted in anyway inappropriate.
Despite that, Popovich used the incident as an example of “the racial injustice that we see, and it’s become more obvious because of the killings of so many young black men.”
Popovich cited no statistics to show the “many young black men” being killed by police before going on to criticize people who offer “thoughts and prayers” for the victims of tragedies.
"This was a young man who had just graduated from high school about a week earlier."
Pop used his media availability to talk about Michael Brown, who was killed by police six years ago today 🙏 pic.twitter.com/XsOcJbWSg1
— Bleacher Report (@BleacherReport) August 9, 2020
From there, Popovich segued into a soliloquy about Michael Brown.
“Today is the six-year anniversary for Michael Brown. I don’t know if any of you thought of that today, but six years ago today, he was gunned down and killed,” Popovich sermonized.
“This was a young man who had just graduated from high school about a week earlier, I think. There was some sort of an altercation that everybody has not agreed upon yet. But the fact that is agreed upon is this is a young man with his hands in the air, running away from the officer, running away, and receives six shots in the back that killed him,” the coach insisted.
These claims are false.
Brown was confronted by a Ferguson, Missouri, police officer after the 18-year-old assaulted and robbed a local store owner. After being confronted, Brown attempted to wrestle the officer’s gun from him before running a few yards away. However, then, the nearly 300-pound teen turned and charged the officer. The officer fired in self-defense, killing Brown. An autopsy found that all the bullets hit Brown from the front, so he was not shot “running away.” Further, no credible witnesses say Brown had his hands up in the air at any time.
Popovich then trounced the police, saying, “And it’s just another example of an overall culture, not every policeman, so don’t take it out of context, but an overall culture that sort of presumes guilt, or feels danger because it’s a young black man.”
The coach then again falsely described Brown’s shooting: “And this particular officer even said that that he was in fear of his life. Now, I can’t imagine being in fear of my life if somebody is running away from me with their hands up.”
“That’s not too scary. And, of course, he was he was never charged,” he said without adding that an investigation cleared the officer of wrongdoing.
“To this day, you can count the many more that have happened. And so that’s one of the reasons why the coaches, the owners, the players especially, the staff, everybody here wants to make sure that we sound this out constantly to make sure the momentum does not go away,” he said before concluding, “So just take a minute and think about being in that situation or being in that family and having that loss, for that reason.”
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