How Do We Know What We "Know"?

A few of the people I respect most in the world have asked me about my recent characterization of Michael Brown "attacking a cop".  While that was not meant to be the main point of my post about the media treating criminals as representative of "the black community", it is a very important question, the answer to which applies far beyond this case, indeed to any historical event we could ever possibly discuss.

What do we "know" really?  That's heavy stuff.  As a historian and an educator, I try to very careful about saying we "know" things unless there is a certain threshhold of evidence that can be met.  The further we go back in history, the more elusive that evidence is.

For any event more than 150 years ago, for example, there are no photographs, no video, no audio recordings, no living eyewitnesses.  So how do we "know", for example, that George Washington even existed?  From one point of view, we don't.  But from another point of view, we just "know", don't we?

In the 21st century, evidence of historical events is far more prevalent, especially since smartphones have, for better or worse, smashed the barrier between the old guardians of information (the State, the media) and the everyday person.

But despite all of our new ways of recording and collating information, the human element remains.  The issue of bias, the unreliability of eyewitnesses, the tendency for actors in these event to exaggerate or lie outright.

When I wrote that Michael Brown "attacked a cop", I felt comfortable with that phraseology for two reasons; the first is forensic and the second is human.

First, for forensics.  I will quote from the Department of Justice's report on this matter.  Keep in mind that several other agencies investigated this tragedy and substantiated the officer's claims.  Many people refused to accept those findings and demanded a federal investigation.  All quotes below are from that investigation.  My response to each point will be in italics.


Michael Brown likely did reach into Wilson’s vehicle and grab the officer 

So, Wilson had bruises on his jaw, scratches on his neck, and Michael Brown's DNA on his collar, shirt, and pants, where his holstered weapon was.  Wilson's DNA was on Michael Brown's palm.  Two quick questions for the reader:  have you ever heard of this forensic finding?  That Brown's DNA was on the cop's collar and that the cop's DNA was on Brown's hand?  If not, ask yourself why you have never heard this.  

And secondly, can you think of another scenario that would explain Michael Brown having the cop's DNA on his hand other than him slapping, punching, or grabbing that officer?

Michael Brown did double back toward Darren Wilson 

DNA and bloodstain forensics show that Michael Brown retreated after having been shot and then made the fatal mistake of stopping that retreat and advancing back towards the officer.  

 Michael Brown’s hands were probably not up, but it’s impossible to say for sure


The DOJ was very sober and exacting in saying "we can't know for sure" whether Michael Brown had his hands up.  It's worth nothing that several witnesses "remembered" Brown's hands being up after the fact, but not when they were originally interviewed.  And the DOJ hedging its language in "we can't know for sure" makes its other, less ambiguous findings more credible.

Now for the human element.  This is where all the tension around this issue springs from.  The majority of people made up their minds about this issue, and so many others, before they had any specific information.  White cops shoots black man?  The majority of us just run to our pre-assigned corners and stick our fingers in our ears to block out any evidence that may question our assumptions.

 When two people are involved in an altercation and one of them dies, the only living witness obviously has a motive to lie.  The lie would serve to make the survivor seem blameless and the deceased to seem demonic.  We all know this.  And for this reason, nobody should simply believe the police in a case like this.

But we have forensics.  And when we have forensics, we can do controlled experiments.  If the cop says he was punched in the face, we should require evidence.  If we then find that the cop's face is bruised and that victim has the cop's DNA on his hands, we have come as close as we can to "knowing" that the cop was telling the truth.

If the cop says Michael Brown retreated, stopped, and approached the officer again, we should require evidence.  If we then find a blood trail that corresponds with that sequence of events, we are, again, as close as we can reasonably be to verifying the cop's account.

Some people will still not be satisfied, of course.  DNA and bloodtrails can not compete with intractable worldviews, after all.  California v. Simpson, anyone?

The last hope for persuasion lies in Occam's Razor, the idea that the simplest explanation is almost always the correct one.  In this case, there are two possibilities.

Possibility #1:  the cop was largely truthful in his account.

Possibility #2:  the cop decided, for some unknown reason, to murder Michael Brown, but not his friend who witnessed the whole thing.  After killing this man for no reason, the cop, in front of witnesses and before backup arrived (who the cop had called for before the altercation began, went up to Brown's body, slapped himself with Brown's lifeless hands, and used those lifeless hands to grab his own collar and shirt.  He then got some of Brown's blood (from where and with what tools?) and then sprinkled that blood in a pattern that would correspond with some instantly-conceived cover story.

Which is more likely?

I believe the cop's account.  I also believe that Michael Brown's death was a needless tragedy.  Maybe the cop was rude and aggressive with Michael Brown.  Maybe Michael Brown had been unduly harassed by other cops in the recent past.  But the one thing that we know would have saved Michael Brown's life is if he had not decided to assault a cop.

We have to be intellectually and morally honest enough to accept that sometimes our assumptions are wrong and that, even when they are right, they are almost always ambiguous.  Even someone in the right can have elements of wrong in their actions.  But in this case, in this specific sequence of events, we know what happened as much as we can ever really "know" anything.

Hyper-aggressive policing is a problem.  It is a discussion that all Americans need to have with each other.  Since we have more laws than any other country, we are only "free" because we insist on telling ourselves that we are.  Police have enormous power over us, and that power is growing.  Many police are veterans of our recent and current wars and seem not to know or appreciate the world of difference between being a soldier and a cop.

But to have that conversation, we need to be honest.  Symbols matter.  Words matter.  "Hands up, don't shoot" is a powerful, evocative slogan, but the needless tragedy that birthed it is misunderstood by an enormous number of people.  The only time Michael Brown put his hands up is when he used them to reach into Darren Wilson's car.

We have to distinguish between people who are wholly innocent of any wrongdoing and people who make reckless decisions that needlessly put their own lives in danger.  We have to put ourselves in other people's shoes and respect their perspectives while not surrendering our own common sense.  And most importantly, we need to wrestle with a tragic reality:  Michael Brown and Darren Wilson both assumed the worst about each other, and it cost a young man his life.  Evolving past that unfortunate truth is a long and painful process, but it must begin with the truth.