Police trampled the makeshift memorial built by Michael Brown’s mom

Mother Jones’s Mark Follman provides new insight into the tense relationship between the black community in Ferguson, Missouri, and local law enforcement following the shooting of Michael Brown. He reports that shortly after Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson shot and killed the 18-year-old on August 9, Brown’s grieving mother helped set up a makeshift memorial at the site of the shooting. Police then reportedly ran over the memorial with their cars, and at least one officer let his police dog urinate on the memorial site.

From Mother Jones:

[Missouri state Rep. Sharon Pace] purchased some tea lights for the family, and around 7 p.m. she joined Brown’s mother, Lesley McSpadden, and others as they placed the candles and sprinkled flowers on the ground where Brown had died. “They spelled out his initials with rose petals over the bloodstains,” Pace recalled.

By then, police had prohibited all vehicles from entering Canfield Drive except for their own. Soon the candles and flowers had been smashed, after police drove over them.

“That made people in the crowd mad,” Pace said, “and it made me mad.” Some residents began walking in front of police vehicles at the end of the block to prevent them from driving in.