
September 23, 2016
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"Back in the day, when a slave master would hang a slave, he would leave him there for a long time so people could see it, and strike fear in their hearts. But what they [Ferguson Police] don’t understand is them doing that, it didn’t make us scared. It made us more furious."[caption id="attachment_21714" align="aligncenter" width="579"]

"My first reaction was fight back. It’s the same reaction you have as when someone comes up to you and punches you in your face. You hit 'em back. The way we’ve been raised in life, we’ve been taught from day one we were nothing. We come from slavery. Church tell you you’re nothing but a sinner. Police tell you you’re nothing but a n*****. They don’t got nothing here. That’s why everybody fights back. We don't got nothing to lose. We’ve been teargassed, we’ve been shot, we come back the next day like nothing’s happened. And you know why? Because we don’t got nothing to lose."Two years later, activists in Ferguson are grappling with the meaning of Darren Seals' death. In the early morning of Tuesday September, 6th – around 1:18 a.m. – Seals' black Jeep Wrangler was found engulfed in flames in a parking lot outside a Riverview, Mo. apartment complex, a northern St. Louis suburb about five miles east of Ferguson. Only after extinguishing the flames did authorities discover Seals' body inside the wreckage, dead from an apparent gunshot wound. Was Evidence Left At The Crime Scene? Photographs from the site where Seals' body was found spread quickly across social media. Shared thousands of times on Twitter and Instagram, images show what appears to be the charred door from Seals' Jeep and shell casings that were purportedly left behind by investigators, prompting many to accuse police of conducting a shoddy investigation.
The St. Louis County Police Department, which is leading the Seals homicide investigation, categorically denies that evidence was left behind. Department spokesperson Officer Benjamin Granda told Youth Radio,
"The crime scene was thoroughly processed by seasoned, trained detectives. There were no shell casings left on scene. Those photos were posted to social media days after the original incident. That particular area, unfortunately, sees higher amounts of gunfire and the casings could be from anywhere. Our detectives have viewed the photos and are confident they are not a part of our investigation."However, a group of community members disputes the claim by police. Darnell Singleton, a 46-year-old a freelance videographer from Dellwood, Mo., first visited the crime scene with a group of community leaders, fellow activists, and friends of Darren Seals. Singleton posted the now famous crime scene photos to his Twitter account at 7:30 a.m. Central Time September 7th, only one day after the murder of Seals: not multiple days as claimed by county police. But more to the point, Singleton says that he actually captured those images on the very same day that Seals was murdered. He provided Youth Radio with screenshots (below) which suggest that the original photographs were snapped just after 3 p.m on September 6th, only a few short hours after police completed their crime scene investigation. [caption id="attachment_21888" align="aligncenter" width="614"]

"So you're telling me that in nine hours someone was over there shooting and no one said anything? No one reported it to the police?"Singleton says he came to the crime scene not to play detective, but to pay his respects. He says the group was surprised to find the charred door lying there on the asphalt. Surprised that police had left it behind. Then he claims someone noticed a spent shell casing in the parking lot. And before long, "there's another one, and here's another one, and here's another one."
Of the investigation, Singleton said, "It really kind of communicated to us that they (the police) are not going to investigate."
Vernon J. Geberth, a retired New York City police commander and author of a widely used textbook on homicide investigations, reviewed Darnell Singleton's photographs at Youth Radio's request. He was careful to note that one photograph or even a small series of photographs does not offer enough information to draw categorical conclusions. However, for Geberth the images are extremely troubling.
"You only have one chance to get it right in a murder investigation. Anything and everything is considered evidence until proven otherwise."
Every shell casing is an important piece of evidence, Geberth explained, because they could prove whether there were multiple shooters and what type of weapons were involved.
As for the door to Seals' vehicle which was left behind by investigators, St. Louis County Police Sergeant Shawn McGuire told Youth Radio, "I leave it up to the professionals that have experience with crime scenes on what they determine needs to be seized." McGuire told Youth Radio that detectives with the department's Bureau of Crimes Against Persons and Regional Bomb and Arson Unit, "investigate multiple crime scenes, and have gone to multiple classes and hours of training that specifically train them on how to handle a crime scene. If they didn't seize the evidence, the items were not needed as evidence." [caption id="attachment_21897" align="aligncenter" width="540"]"Preservation of the crime scene is paramount in an investigation. If you do not collect every piece of evidence, you are going to be embarrassed."

"[The suspect] got out the car with some white socks on his hands."He describes that the man didn't know how to drive stick, that he had trouble getting Seals' vehicle into gear, almost landing it in the bushes.
"I was like 'Ah man, how are you going to steal a car when you don't know how to drive it?'"Then, another man emerged from the trees and set the Jeep on fire, says the witness who only later realized that Darren Seals' dead body was inside the Jeep the whole time he watched. Brandy and Singleton say that members of the group took it upon themselves to call the personal cell phone of St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar that night. They say they described the sloppy evidence gathering, and asked that the department send officers immediately to collect both what they found and what they recorded. However, Brandy and Singleton both contend that officers did not return to the crime scene until the following day. "There seemed to be no urgency at all about what we were seeing and saying," said Darnell Singleton. Amir Brandy agrees, and says he's surprised that the county police department isn't investigating Seals' case more aggressively, especially given the brutality of the murder.
"He didn't kill. He over-killed. He killed the guy and then burned him up. I mean, who does that?"Rumors, Suspicions, And Enemies Despite the gruesome manner in which Darren Seals was murdered, he isn't alone. In fact Seals was the sixth St. Louis area man to die in similar circumstances in the last two years. Darnell Robinson (9/4/2014), Antonio Jones (11/10/2014), Terrell Beasley (12/19/2014), and Vincent Cascella (2/15/15) were all found shot to death inside burning vehicles. Even though some of these murders have led to arrests, rumors swirl about the possibility that they are somehow connected. The sixth case has stirred the greatest number of conspiracy theories. On November 25, 2014, the partially burned body of 20-year-old Deandre Joshua was found shot inside a vehicle in Ferguson –not far from where Mike Brown was killed. Joshua was murdered just hours after it was announced that former Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson would not be charged for Michael Brown's death. No arrests have been made in the Dorian Joshua homicide investigation, and like Darren Seals, the St. Louis County Police are also handling that case. [caption id="attachment_21900" align="aligncenter" width="486"]

It's not difficult to find St. Louis area activists who are critical of Black Lives Matter, an organization with no local chapters St. Louis or Ferguson, but Seals was one of the loudest critics. He argued that Black Lives Matter organizers swooped in from across the nation, using resources local activists didn't have access to, in order to sway the agenda – often away from the issues that mattered most to locals. Seals was a prolific voice on Facebook, writing regularly to his nearly 15,000 followers about issues of racial equality and police violence.Today makes two years since Quick Trip got torched ??? and the world started fake caring about #MikeBrown#Fergusonpic.twitter.com/KLHIgxPgei
— King D Seals (@KingDSeals) August 10, 2016

Me and my little brother just got slammed, guns pointed at our faces, and detained by Ferguson PD for being activist against Trump Posted by Darren Seals on Tuesday, June 7, 2016
"The Passion of a Lion" Seals rose to prominence protesting the death of Michael Brown, but two years after Darren Wilson killed the unarmed teen, not much has changed in the St. Louis area when it comes to the issue of trust between community members and police. This past week, new videos were released in another case against a former St. Louis police officer who is facing charges of first-degree murder amid allegations that he planted a gun after shooting a man during a failed drug arrest. [caption id="attachment_21918" align="aligncenter" width="867"]Grew up fatherless, caught cases, shot 7 times, and now I'm here today busting my ass 12 hours a day to show kids from my area better way
— King D Seals (@KingDSeals) January 30, 2015

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