A Ferguson police officer was put on unpaid leave after calling the Mike Brown street memorial a “pile of trash.”
The street memorial on Canfield Drive in Ferguson was run over by a car this past weekend.
Only skid marks and ashes remained.
The Canfield Drive memorial has seen better days.
The street memorial was set up after Michael Brown was shot dead in August after robbing a store and wrestling with a police officer for his gun.
The New York Daily News reported:
A Ferguson Police Department spokesman has been put on unpaid leave after calling a destroyed Michael Brown memorial “a pile of trash.”
Timothy Zoll faces disciplinary proceedings for his comments following a car plowing into a makeshift memorial to the slain black teen Dec. 19, city officials said Saturday.
Zoll told the Washington Post, “I don’t know that a crime has occurred…But a pile of trash in the middle of the street? The Washington Post is making a call over this?”
Zoll initially said he had been misquoted, prompting the department to defend him in interviews. He later admitted to the remarks, according to city officials.
“The City of Ferguson wants to emphasize that negative remarks about the Michael Brown memorial do not reflect the feelings of the Ferguson Police Department and are in direct contradiction to the efforts of City officials to relocate the memorial to a more secure location,” the city said in a statement.
In September the memorial caught on fire and burned to the ground.