They were four words that became the national rallying cry of a new civil-rights movement: "Hands up, don't shoot."
Protesters chanted it, arms raised, in cities across the country in solidarity for Michael Brown, the black 18-year-old who some witnesses said was surrendering when he was shot and killed by white police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Mo.
The slogan was embraced by members of Congress, recording artists and sports stars. It inspired posters and songs, T-shirts and advocacy groups, a powerful distillation of simmering anger over police violence and racial injustice in Ferguson and beyond.
But in its final report last week clearing Wilson of civil-rights violations in Brown's death, the Justice Department said the events may not have happened the way those witnesses described. Attorney General Eric Holder cast doubt on the "hands up" account even as he described Ferguson as having a racially biased Police Department and justice system.
"It remains not only valid -- but essential -- to question how such a strong alternative version of events was able to take hold so swiftly and be accepted so readily," Holder said Wednesday.
For many, the answer to that question was contained in a second Justice Department report released Wednesday that described in detail how Ferguson had used its Police Department and court system as moneymaking ventures that disproportionately targeted blacks and routinely violated their constitutional rights.
As the nation digested the two federal investigations into Ferguson, police groups that are often sharp critics of Holder found vindication in the report on Brown's death, seeing in it a rebuttal to a narrative that demonized Wilson. They called the shooting a tragedy but said it had never been a crime fueled by racial bias.
"The lie got repeated over and over again," said Ron Hosko, president of the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund, which supports officers accused of crimes in the course of duty. "It was the headline in major newspapers and other major media publications all summer, all fall. And the subtext was: Racist rogue cop kills innocent black teen. And it was a lie."
But protest leaders who marched through streets around the country with their arms raised and founded groups such as Hands Up United or the Don't Shoot Coalition said the report did not undercut their efforts to push for police policy changes and advocate for victims of law enforcement violence.
They, too, found vindication for their protests in the second Justice Department report on Ferguson's criminal justice system, which Holder described as having created "a highly toxic environment, defined by mistrust and resentment, stoked by years of bad feelings, and spurred by illegal and misguided practices."
"While there is an issue as to whether his hands were up, the bigger question is whether we as a nation are going to step up to try to bridge this gap of distrust between police and those who they are sworn to protect and serve," said Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., who appeared on the steps of the Capitol with other black members of Congress, all posing with their hands up.
Others rejected the Justice Department's conclusions entirely and said they still believed Brown was trying to surrender when he was killed.
They said they did not trust an earlier state grand jury process that had cleared Wilson, who left the Ferguson police force late last year, of state criminal charges in November, and had no faith in the federal investigation or the high bar set to find a law enforcement officer responsible for civil-rights violations.
Protest organizers said that no matter what Brown had been doing with his hands when he was shot, he had still been shot at least six times, and his body had been allowed to lie in the street for hours.
They said that "hands up, don't shoot" had taken on a power of its own, becoming a broader evocation of anger and injustice that stood with other protest calls like "I can't breathe," one of the last things said by Eric Garner, a black man who was killed in a chokehold by a white New York police officer.
But many law enforcement officials and supporters of Wilson said they had long disliked the slogan and its implicit assumptions about what had happened.
Sheriff David Clarke of Milwaukee, who has been an outspoken critic of Holder and the demonstrators in Ferguson, said the talk swirling around Ferguson had veered away into irresponsible hyperbole long before investigators had offered a full accounting of the shooting.
"Let's let the standard be facts, evidence, the rules of law," said Clarke, who is black. "Not hype, emotion and mob rule."
Information for this article was contributed by Timothy Williams and Samantha Storey of The New York Times.
A Section on 03/08/2015