Today is the two year anniversary of the death of Michael Brown, Jr., who was shot and killed by then-Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson. State Representative Courtney Allen Curtis (D-Ferguson) says his community could be tense Tuesday.
Representative Courtney Allen Curtis (photo courtesy; Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)
“This is the place that everybody is always going to come back to with these types of occurrences. I fully expect something to happen, but how tense it is just depends on I guess the attitudes of law enforcement,” says Curtis.
Several peaceful events have been held in Ferguson since the weekend to remember Brown, including a walk and scholarship and benefit dinner.
Curtis hopes Ferguson’s new elected officials and police chief will improve the community. He says Ferguson has made progress since Brown’s death, but not enough.
“The impact of Ferguson and Michael Brown’s death is still being felt and it is still reverberated across the country. It shows that we have a whole lot of work to do because it’s still happening,” says Curtis. “Every time it happens in another community, that an unarmed person is shot, the wounds are almost reopened because when that happens, they still mention Ferguson. We can’t get past that until there’s true change and it stops happening across the country.”
Two black men were shot and killed by police earlier this summer – one in St. Paul, Minnesota and one in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Those incidents sparked anti-police shootings in Dallas, Baton Rouge, and the St. Louis area.
