As national attention remained fixed on Ferguson, Missouri, in late 2014, Mobile County law enforcement leaders pushed back on comparisons some national outlets drew between that case and the 2012 shooting of a University of South Alabama student on campus, arguing the two incidents were handled in fundamentally different ways.
The USA student, an 18-year-old, was shot and killed by a campus-area officer after behaving erratically and unclothed, a situation later attributed to his having taken a synthetic drug. The shooting divided the university community and drew scrutiny at the time, but local officials say it never approached the scale of unrest seen in Ferguson following the shooting of Michael Brown.
Mobile County Sheriff Sam Cochran told reporters that communication was the deciding factor in how each case played out. Within about half a day of the USA shooting, the university held a news conference and issued a public statement describing what had happened, while the school’s public relations office sent a mass notification to students and staff. Coverage of the shooting quickly reached national and international news outlets.
About a week after the shooting, Cochran invited members of the media, including student journalists, to view surveillance footage of the incident. He said members of the public, especially parents of prospective students, were anxious for information, and that releasing the video helped ease concerns.
“I think the communication calmed people down,” Cochran said, contrasting that approach with what he described as a much slower release of information in Ferguson, where authorities went roughly two months without disclosing key details about the encounter between the officer and Brown.
A spokeswoman for the sheriff’s office added that keeping media outlets informed directly from official sources helps prevent speculation from filling an information vacuum. She said race, which became a central issue in Ferguson, was never a significant factor in how the Mobile case unfolded or was perceived locally.
Mobile County’s district attorney at the time said the office made a point of keeping media and the public aware of developments as the investigation into the USA shooting proceeded, crediting close working relationships between local law enforcement, prosecutors and journalists for a comparatively calm public response.
The comparisons resurfaced two years after the original shooting as Ferguson dominated national headlines, prompting South Alabama officials to reflect on lessons learned from their own community’s experience with a high-profile police shooting.