Ferguson to take down makeshift Michael Brown memorial

The makeshift midstreet memorial that marked where Michael Brown was fatally shot by a police officer last summer was cleared out Wednesday — on what would have been his 19th birthday — amid plans to install a permanent plaque in his memory nearby.

Braving chilly rain, volunteers wearing white latex gloves put stuffed animals, candles and other remembrances into trash bags destined for temporary storage, within minutes dismantling the shrine, to many a symbol of a new civil rights movement over race and policing.

"There's not a day that goes by that I don't think about my son," Michael Brown Sr. said earlier Wednesday as he joined Ferguson Mayor James Knowles III in announcing the temporary memorial's imminent removal. "We're just really trying to move forward. It just needs to be moved."

Similar memorials to people killed in violent ways are commonplace in cities across the United States, but Brown's brought with it uniquely potent politics. Other memorials have been vandalized or burned down. 

The homage surfaced within hours after Brown, who was black and unarmed, was killed by white Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson on Aug. 9. That event touched off protests and the Black Lives Matter movement, which has only gained momentum with subsequent police killings of unarmed black men in other U.S. cities.

A St. Louis County grand jury and the U.S. Department of Justice declined to prosecute Wilson, who resigned in November. But a separate Justice Department report found racial profiling among Ferguson officers and a municipal court system driven by profit. The release of the report in March led to the resignation of the city manager, municipal court judge and police chief. Ferguson, a suburb of St. Louis, has 21,000 residents, two-thirds of whom are black.

Before Wednesday, the shrine stretched for several yards on a two-lane road that bisects a housing complex. The removal of the shrine and another with stuffed animals on the nearby curb didn't come without agitation. After a prayer and moment of silence in Brown's honor, a young man who was passing by objected to the timing of the effort on Brown's birthday, shouting, "I hope that weighs on your conscience when you go home." He later returned and exchanged profanities with volunteers, including a woman who struck him in the face before security wrestled him to the ground, briefly handcuffed him and later let him go.

Knowles, while appreciative of the memorial's symbolism, recently said it has become a public safety issue, and Brown's father echoed that on Wednesday.

Brown's parents have filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against the city, Wilson and the former police chief. Dorian Johnson, who was with Brown at the time of the shooting, is suing the same parties, accusing Wilson of being the aggressor, using excessive force and acting "with deliberate indifference or with reckless disregard" for Johnson's rights.

But on Wednesday, as the dismantling neared completion, Michael Brown Sr. walked up, carrying the heavy metal plaque, which features an inscription borrowed from a popular memorial prayer. He earlier said the plaque would be placed in the street, but Knowles later told The Associated Press it would be installed on private property near a sidewalk in the area.

"I would like the memory of Michael Brown to be a happy one," the marker reads, bearing a likeness of Brown in a graduation cap and gown. "He left an afterglow of smiles when life was done. He leaves an echo whispering softly down the ways, of happy and loving times and bright and sunny days."

"He'd like the tears of those who grieve to dry before the sun of happy memories that he left behind when life was done."

The Associated Press