The city of Ferguson, Missouri announced this weekend that the spokesman for its police department had been suspended without pay after referring to a memorial to Michael Brown as a “pile of trash.”
Officer Timothy Zoll made the remark in a Friday interview with the Washington Post about reports that a car intentionally ran through the memorial to Brown, the unarmed black teenager who was fatally shot by a white police officer in August.
“I don’t know that a crime has occurred,” Zoll said, as quoted by the Post. “But a pile of trash in the middle of the street? The Washington Post is making a call over this?”
A statement from the city said that Zoll initially denied making the comment and later admitted that he misled his bosses, according to Reuters. The city said Zoll was put on unpaid leave and now faces “disciplinary proceedings.”
“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,” the statement read, as quoted by Reuters. “and are in direct contradiction to the efforts of City officials to relocate the memorial to a more secure location.”