Sunday, April 5, 2015

Brown was in the Market for one minute and 11 seconds

The Ferguson Market and Liquor store had a set of closed-circuit cameras that filmed the movements of Brown and Johnson in the store, and each video showed a digital clock in the video's upper-left corner. However, the store's video clock was not synchronized with the police dispatch's clock. 

Therefore, in this and the next couple of articles, I will determine as exactly as possible how far apart in time were the store's video clock and the police dispatch's video clock -- and thus the time when Brown and Johnson exited the store according to the police dispatch clock.



I will determine that the store's video clock was running about 1:45 minutes (one minute and forty-five seconds) ahead of the police dispatch clock.

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The Investigative Report says that Brown and Johnson were inside the Market for about one minute and five seconds. The detectives who studied the store's video clock wrote that Brown and Johnson approached the front door at 11:52:56 a.m. and exited the door at 11:54:01.  

A disc labeled Cam 01 parking lot, identified as footage from an exterior CCTV [closed-circuit television] camera, capturing the apparent front parking lot of the Ferguson Market was reviewed [and] ... can be summarized as follows: 
Still images 1-3, date and time stamp (8/9/2014, 11:52:56 am), Brown and Johnson approaching the front door of the business. 
Still images 4-5, date and time stamp (8/9/2014, 11:54:01 am), Brown and Johnson exiting the business .... 
[Page 170]
If the entrance was precisely at 11:52:56 and and the exit was precisely at 11:54:01, then the interval was precisely 1:05 minutes (one minute and five seconds). If the detectives recorded the exit time right before the clock advanced to 11:54:02, however, then the duration would have been almost 1:06 minutes (one minute and six seconds).

In the following two articles of this blog, I will explain that this 1:06 duration matches the interval between Johnson's entry and exit. Johnson entered after Brown and exited before Brown, so Johnson's time inside the store was the same time that both men were inside the store together. 


Brown entered two seconds before Johnson and exited three seconds after Johnson, so Brown was inside the store five seconds longer -- a total of 1:11.    


The composite video that the Ferguson Police Department provided to the public lasts 1:40 minutes (one minute and 40 seconds). The composite video shows the views from two separate cameras inside the store. One inside camera viewed the store's front door, and the other inside camera viewed the store's interior. When the composite video was made, there obviously was no effort to match precisely the event's actual duration.  




The composite video has its own clock, which lasts 1:40 minutes and which does not match the store's video clock. According to the composite video's clock, the composite video comprises the following sequence of views:


Seconds 0:00 - 0:18 = the camera viewing the front door = 0:18 minutes (18 seconds)


Seconds 0:19 - 1:25 = the camera viewing the interior = 1:06 minutes

Seconds 1:26 - 1:40 = the camera viewing the front door = 0:14 minutes


Keep in mind that the event did not last (0:18 + 1:06 + 0:14 = ) 1:40 minutes. The video released to the public was a composite video, showing a segment of one view, then a segment of another view, and then another segment of the first view. The segments were not joined together in a precise time sequence. 

Also, the video's first two segments each begin with the entrance of the driver of a white Monte Carlo car that parked right in front of the store. This driver enters the first two camera views 14 seconds before Brown. These two inclusions of the driver's movements inside the store add a total of (14 + 14 = ) 28 seconds to the composite video. 


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The composite video shows the following times:


0:14 = Brown enters 


0:16 = Johnson enters (two seconds after Brown)


1:33 = Johnson exits


1:36 = Brown exits (three seconds after Johnson)


All the above four events are seen from the camera viewing the front door. Therefore the two-second difference between the two entrances is precise, and the three-second difference between the two exits is precise. 


On the other hand, the 1:22 minute difference between Brown's entrance and exit is not precise, because the interior-view segment is not inserted into the composite video precisely. 

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