The Ferguson PD is a Keystone Kops organization, and if Wilson’s freedom had depended on their processing of the scene then he’d be on his way to trial right now. It was the forensic evidence and the autopsy results done by the county that proved he acted properly.
When the paramedic determined Brown was dead, the care of his body legally transferred to the St. Louis County Medical Examiner. By law, police cannot touch the body. But since most medical examiners won’t set foot in the crime scene until it is processed by police, the fate of Brown’s body was back in police hands.
About the same time, miles away, Chief Jackson was driving to visit his kids, who live about 50 minutes from Ferguson, Jackson said. The call from his sergeant came about 12:05 p.m., he said.
St. Louis County detectives on duty that day weren’t close to Ferguson then. They were at St. Anthony’s Medical Center, near Sunset Hills, 30 miles south. Six hours earlier, a man with a gun had entered a hospice house there, taken a clerk into the building to find drugs and then disappeared. The hospital had been on lockdown for hours. County SWAT teams had sent at least 13 cars to the scene.
At 2:11 p.m., Ferguson police logs captured reports of shots fired. At 2:14 p.m., ambulance dispatch noted additional gunshots, then a Code 1000, calling all available jurisdictions to help. Over the next 20 minutes, the first precinct dispatched more than 20 units from at least eight different municipal forces, from Bel-Ridge to St. John to Velda City.
At some point, Chief Jackson said he urged crime scene detectives to hurry up their work. “We’ve got to expedite,” Jackson said he told them. “They said, ‘OK, we’re expediting.’ But then we had a shooting over here, crowd’s coming in, and it’s really not secure there.”
About 2:30 p.m., Calvin Whitaker, the livery service driver, arrived to pick up Brown’s body. One end of Canfield was blocked off by police and emergency vehicles. At the other end, a crowd stood in his way. “They were screaming, ‘Let’s kill the police,’” he said. People flung water bottles at his black SUV, he said, cussed at his wife and called them murderers.
A police officer told them to stay in the car. “You guys do not have vests,” he told them. “The best thing for you to do is get down.” Whitaker and his wife reclined their seats and hunkered down.
Police dogs, newly arrived, pushed the crowd back some, Jackson said. But when the dogs stepped back, the crowd surged forward, he said, even angrier than before. Jackson began to circle the perimeter with Brown’s mother.
McSpadden pleaded with the crowd, Whitaker said. “‘All I want them to do is pick up my baby,’” he remembers her saying. “‘Please respect him. Please move back.’ She would get a crowd moved back, and then another group would move up.”
The scene was so tense, commanders in charge stopped the investigation at points and directed investigators to seek cover. Detectives also were pulled away to help manage the crowd.
At 2:45 p.m., four more canine units arrived. At 3:20 p.m., tactical operations officers — the county SWAT team — began pulling in.
Finally, about 4 p.m., police officers gave the medical examiner investigator, then Whitaker and his wife, the go-ahead to take Brown’s body to the morgue.
Whitaker moved behind the barriers that had eventually been put up around the body. Police stood shoulder to shoulder alongside Whitaker’s cot and lined the path to his vehicle holding up sheets to block the public’s view.
Whitaker, 42, said he has transported hundreds of bodies over the years under contract with the city of St. Louis and St. Louis County. “That is the worst situation I’ve ever been in,” he said.
He estimated it took him no more than 15 minutes to drive Brown’s body the five-mile trip to the morgue. Workers signed the body in at 4:37 p.m. and rolled the gurney into a cooler.