Yesterday (Sept. 9) marked a month since the fatal shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown, and the unarmed teen's family has issued a new call for the arrest of Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson.
And while tensions in the suburban St. Louis County neighborhood have since decreased in recent weeks, many are still voicing their various opinions as they pertain to the case’s open investigation.
Earlier this week Grammy Award-winning musician-singer Pharrell Williams shared his feelings and insight on the events following Brown’s death during an interview with CNN’s Don Lemon.
“I’m disappointed in the way that it was handled from the government side. I think that officers should be punished, because that was excessive force,” he said. “All those shots, where those shots were, the idea that, that child was laying on the ground for hours. That kid didn’t ask to get killed, and so I feel that officer should get punished, but at the same time, we gotta start looking at ourselves to, because we are feeling hunted. And we need to be able to avoid these things. And sometimes it’s unavoidable.”
The “Happy” and “Get Lucky” crooner also expressed his frustration over the media’s concerted coverage in previous weeks surrounding looting and rioting in Ferguson.
“We gotta spend more time on the people that were doing nonviolent protesting, which is allowed in this country,” Williams said. “We didn’t spend enough time on that. That’s why I feel like the president needs to come down there. Because when your parents come in the room, whether it’s you or your cousin that knocked the vase down, both of y’all sit up at attention, and everybody, as my dad would say, ‘tighten up’…This is a deeper laceration in this country. If you think that this is going to blow over, this is going to be the longest hangover in race relations, ever.”
Check out more of Pharrell’s thoughts surrounding Ferguson in the clip above.
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