Addressing Brandon Tate-Brown rumors
[Original post - January 15, 2015]
[Latest update June 12, 2015]
(Scroll to the subheadings for latest updates)
When police and/or government choose to go completely silent on subjects that interest the public, wild public rumors fly for a variety of obvious reasons.
Brandon Tate-Brown of Philadelphia was shot by Philadelphia Police on December 15, 2014. Since then, the police have not said a single word about the case, leaving room for many rumors — a lot of them baseless.
The human brain naturally seeks to make sense of everything that enters it. If it doesn’t have the extra information (expertise in the specific necessary fields) to make sense of things, it uses what information it has and pieces together a story that makes sense to you, individually. Then that’s what you personally latch onto and believe.
While speculation can be healthy and helpful when it’s based on the right things, conversely, it can be very harmful when it’s wild and baseless.
What this post will aim to do, is produce healthy speculation taken from the pieces we have, and come as close to fact as we can using the soundest reason and resources available.
The residents of Philadelphia have good reason to question the Philadelphia Police Department at this point, but we want to be sure we’re asking the right questions and not wasting our time on erroneous rumors. That’s not very conducive to an efficient justice-quest.
With that being said, here are the rumors against what we know to be true right now: This post will update regularly:
1. Brandon Tate-Brown was “reaching for his gun.”
This comes from the police statement. A lot of folks who have read about this case state this as if it’s hardcore stone-cold fact. When, the truth is, we can only assume this based on what the police say happened and nothing else. We can not be sure this fact is true, at all.
I’ve spoken to Dr. Judy Melinek, M.D., a San Francisco forensic pathologist and author. She is in no way affiliated with the case, but she has lent her expertise to the situation based on what she knows from news reports and all the current updates.
I’ve showed Brandon’s postmortem injuries to her in a photo. Here’s what she said:
“The left-sided facial abrasions are consistent with an impact against an abrasive, broad, flat surface, like the concrete sidewalk, but a small abrasion on the right forehead is likely from a separate impact. What doesn’t make sense is how he would collapse against the concrete if the top of his body is leaning inside the vehicle, allegedly reaching for the gun."
There were a couple news reports whose language makes it seem as if police investigators said that Brandon had made it back into the car before being shot.
As an example, here’s NBC 10’s wording:
If that’s, in fact, what investigators told NBC writer Dan Stamm, then it doesn’t seem to jive with Dr. Melinek’s expert thoughts. If he made it far enough to open the door and reach inside for it, then how did his face fall so hard onto the pavement?
On the other hand, if Brown hadn’t made it back to the car, as his injuries seem to suggest, then how would police know that he was reaching for his gun? Just assuming? Is that enough to be a justifiable homicide?
There was a scuffle before the fatal shot. Terrell Tate, Brandon’s father, says Brandon had a fear of police. And in a phone interview, a woman who grew up with Brandon, Angelica Manzano, told me he was never a fighter. So, maybe one can wonder if Brandon was running for refuge. Not “reaching for a gun.”
It turns out, there was no evidence that Brandon Tate Brown ever reached for a gun. In fact, despite the police’s narrative staying the same, he never made it to the passenger side of his vehicle, at all.
On June 9, Brown’s family attorney, Brian Mildenberg, alerted me to a file dump issued by Mayor Nutter. Despite having 5 files of videos, only one works. And it’s a 30 minute video which shows the scuffle in the street, and the time Brandon was shot in the back of his head at the trunk of his vehicle.
He never made it even to the back door of the car before he was struck down beside his vehicle.
2. Shell casing over 100 inches to the left of Brandon’s body.
Now this makes me incredibly curious. So incredibly curious that I went and found a study on shell casings. In fact, I dedicate a whole post to it, here. From what I read, there’s a very low chance that if the police officer was standing facing (the presumed direction) southwest down Frankford Ave., that the bullet casing would land in the position it did.
The study by Investigative Sciences Journal indicate that in order for that shell casing to have the best chances of landing in that particular end position, as seen in the above photo, the pistol would have had to been canted to the side and in a sweeping-left motion.
And even with that being the case, only one shot was fired, and it hit Tate-Brown on target.
Something isn’t adding up.
It’s not impossible, it’s just HIGHLY unlikely. Unless we hit the lottery of scenarios in that case.
In a similar comparison, I’ve spoken to Michael Bell Sr., whose son was also gunned down by police in 2004. In studying his case, I found that he was able to unearth law-enforcement inconsistencies of the same variety using this same science.
A theory that is very realistic, is that in the skirmish of things, the shell-casing could have been kicked by someone. The markings on the shell-casing would have to be examined to come to a full conclusion.
In connection with subheading one, we now know that the officer was standing in the street, and Brandon running behind the trunk, towards the sidewalk, when he was fatally shot. The position of the bullet shell-casing makes much more sense under this narrative.
3. Investigators moved Brandon’s vehicle a few times after they arrived to the scene.
This rumor stems from the above photos that surfaced taken from a variety of angles.
If the car moved, these photos are not the proof. Simply put, this is the result of a photographer’s change in point of views.
4. Brandon Tate-Brown’s automatic headlights were on in a screenshot of Fox 29’s live broadcast.
Citing the above photo, some argue against the police’s story that Brandon’s headlights were off with the fact that there appears to be light coming from his car in this photo.
The newer model Chargers all have automatic lights that can be manually switched from automatic, to off, to parking, to fully on, if need be. Here’s a video demonstrating how the new-model Charger lights work:
It does appear in the Fox photo above that there are lights on, but it seems to be only the parking lights, not the headlights. The car lights appear to be this position:
If you want an argument on whether the lights were off or on, however, you could look towards comments from the Brown family’s private investigator who viewed 7-Eleven surveillance video from minutes before Brandon was pulled over.
Brandon was en-route to dropping a young lady off at her brother’s house, as I detail in my report on The Declaration. The private investigator tells me he viewed the headlights on at the time in the video.
"He went into the store, she stayed in the car, and the lights were on.” the P.I. told me in a phone interview.
UPDATE: The mother of Brandon and her attorney viewed footage of the incident. The lawyer, Mildenberg said the footage shows that the lights were on, along with the car’s turn signal.
While, in the above photo, the lights don’t appear to be on, there’s new evidence that surfaces to suggest that Brandon’s lights were, in fact, on while he was pulled over.
This evidence comes by way of video footage from the bank across the street. You can see stills from that video here in the family attorney’s tweets.
5. His feet crossed at the ankles are like Trayvon Martin’s. (Insert any variety of police/government conspiracy.)
I asked Dr. Melinek about this, as well. Here’s what she said to me:
“The feet being crossed at the ankles in the scene photo may be from an unstable position prior to his collapse (for instance, if he was turning or running away) or from being rolled over by first responders after his collapse.”
6. Brandon Tate-Brown was a “hardened criminal”.
Brandon Tate-Brown was 18 years and 6 months old when he was charged and convicted with aggravated assault, firearms not to be carried without license, and possession of instrument of crime with intent.
These were the only three things he’s ever been convicted of. It happened when he was 18.5-years-old.
As his friends and family recall the incident, the teenager was retaliating against someone who had beat his girlfriend in the face with a pipe. He served five and a half years in prison for the above charges.
He was released when he was 23, and had been free for 3 years before his death nearly one month after his 26th birthday.
The summer of 2014, as a 25-year-old, he was connected to another incident that he was swiftly cleared of a couple months later.
By my count that’s, at the most, two run-ins with the law over a period of 26 years.
When initially reporting this, Philadelphia media associated Brandon with having a “lengthy” rap sheet. Which, by my standards, at least, is a bit sensationalized.
George Zimmerman has had brushes with the law that are more severe than these, and he’s considered an upstanding American citizen to a lot of Americans.
Hardened criminal? I wouldn’t say that. With the facts I have on hand — the court dockets I’ve looked at — personally, I’d call him a man who miscalculated to his own detriment.
But, maybe I’m just a merciful man.
7. There’s surveillance video that the police have not mentioned yet.
There has been a rumor out since the first week of Brandon Tate-Brown’s death that there’s video of the incident.
This rumor was confirmed to me by the Brown family’s P.I. Greg Brinkley.
Furthermore, the gunshop whose camera captured the footage, Lock’s Philadelphia Gun Exchange, has told me via email:
Our footage has been taken by Philadelphia Police Homicide Unit and Internal Affairs. We are no longer able to retrieve the footage.
Needless to say, we can officially chalk this “rumor” up as true.
We’ve already determined this was true. But, what we’ve learned is that there are at least four other videos. One of which the Brown family and their attorney believes we should all see.
Mildenberg tweeted out on June 9,
“#BrandonTateBrown Videos released today by Philly police are a fraction of the videos. We have a court hearing 6/16 to get the rest.”
8. Brandon was shot in the side of his head.
This was mentioned in a quote from Philadelphia Police spokesman, Lt. John Stanford, in a series of interviews he went on in the first two weeks of February 2015.
This is a matter of wording, that if you’re asking me, was used to reshape the narrative to justify the PPD’s killing of Brandon.
Prior to this small media tour, the PPD had mentioned that the fatal shot had entered Brandon in the back of his head. Now, according to the spokesman, it was “the side”.
I’ve seen the bullet wound, myself. It’s just above and behind his left ear.
Feel just above and behind your left ear, and tell me if you think that’s the side, or the back of your head.
Check back regularly for updates as I’m continuing to gather as much info on Brandon Tate-Brown’s death.
