1. They didn't actually say he was a suspect in the earlier incident. They just kind of threw this one out there at the same time that they announced the officer's name, without explicitly declaring that there was a connection. You know...6 days later. This couldn't possibly be aimed at creating distraction, could it?
2. The altercation part is not clearly established. Interestingly, the police version of this did not come out immediately, which struck me as a bit odd, and even then is fairly vague. There's nothing that currently corroborates the "reaching for the gun" part; to me, that sounds a bit boilerplate. It is worth comparing the Ferguson PD account with that account given by the young man who was walking with Brown.
3. The police response to this as a riot situation was pretty quick. I believe there is dispatch recording indicates that the Ferguson PD were calling for riot support at a point when they were still claiming to dispatch contacts to know nothing about the incident (the dispatch was catching this via local news). The QT incident occurred before the response was a major focus of the news narrative. I'd point out that the QT incident was not part of the main group of protesters; as such, I do think it is important the be careful about describing it as "community violence" in a way that suggests that is was consistent with the behavior of the vast majority of the community. In fact, one of the things about this is that those incidents have been a MUCH smaller and more isolated part of the entire story than has been suggested by much media coverage. There have been a lot of people out in Ferguson, and the vast, vast majority of them would easily be described as peaceful protesters.
I say all this living in the city, 20 minutes drive away from there. I didn't go up, but I have a number of friends who have, and their observations don't jive with the portrayal of a citizenry intent on self-destruction. I know a number of people who live or have lived in Ferguson, and they have been at pains to point out that Ferguson was not a war zone before this.
I'm not claiming to have been there.
