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VICTIM: Michael Brown

NEW FOOTAGE of late teenager Michael Brown has emerged, which has raised questions on the statements made by Ferguson police.

According to former officer and Brown's killer Darren Wilson, the teenage boy had robbed a convenience store shortly before he was shot dead.

However filmmaker Jason Pollock, who obtained the footage, claims that it shows that the 18-year-old’s altercation with store employees in a later visit to the shop, was tied to a suspected drug transaction with staff in the store.

“There was an understanding, and that’s what you are going to see in that video,” Brown's mother, Lezley McSpadden says in the new documentary Strange Fruit, which premiered at SXSW Festival. “There was some type of exchange for one thing, for another.”

Officials have insisted that Wilson feared for his life and acted appropriately when he shot and killed the teenager.

Wilson, who has since left the police force, was cleared of criminal wrongdoing by a county grand jury and federal civil rights investigators.

Mr. Pollock believes that the Ferguson police force has attempted to smear the late teenager’s reputation by claiming he had robbed a store and releasing footage supporting that to show that to the media.

The filmmaker said the new footage, which had not been seen by the public, puts the “altercation” shown in the police video in a new context.

Speaking to the New York Times Pollock said: “They destroyed Michael’s character with the tape, and they didn’t show us what actually happened. So this shows their intention to make him look bad. And shows suppression of evidence.”

Following the shooting of the unarmed teenager in August 2014, widespread protests took place across the United States, and further sparked the Black Lives Matter movement.

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