On Christmas Day, the memorial — consisting of flowers, stuffed animals and notes — was destroyed when a vehicle plowed through it, in what was believed to be an intentional act.  Ferguson officer placed on leave after referring to Mike Brown memorial as ‘trash’ 
 
 FERGUSON, Mo (KMOV.com) – The Ferguson Public Information Officer for the City of Ferguson Police Department has been placed on unpaid leave after referring to the Michael Brown memorial as ‘trash.’ 
 
 According to the Washington Post, Officer Timothy Zoll, the Ferguson Police Department’s public relations officer said no crime had been reported in connection to the memorial’s destruction early Friday morning. Zoll suggested the department would look at any video of the incident, but did not specify whether the department would investigate after a vehicle allegedly ran over the memorial on Canfield Drive. “I don’t know that a crime has occurred,” Zoll said to a Washington Post reporter on Friday.  A spokesman for the Ferguson, Mo., police department has been placed on unpaid leave after he admitted that he referred to a memorial for the black teenager fatally shot by a white officer as “a pile of trash in the middle of the street,” and then falsely claimed that he had been misquoted by The Washington Post, city officials said. Mr. Brown was shot and killed on Aug. 9, and his death has made Ferguson, a mostly black St. Louis suburb with a mostly white police force, the site of repeated protests and the center of a national discussion about race and the use of force in policing. The memorial sits in the middle of a street near the Canfield Green apartment complex, where Brown was shot and died. The memorial was quickly rebuilt Friday morning, and in a story that day about the destruction of the memorial, The Post interviewed Officer Zoll, who said that no complaint had been reported to the police in connection with the incident.
– More bad public relations for the Ferguson police department, this time from its PR officer: The force's chief spokesman has been suspended indefinitely without pay after calling a memorial to slain teenager Michael Brown "trash," reports KMOV. The memorial, in the middle of the street where Brown was shot and killed by Officer Darren Wilson, was destroyed by a driver on Friday night, apparently intentionally. When the Washington Post asked Officer Timothy Zoll about the destruction, he said, "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?" City officials initially backed Zoll, a 12-year veteran of the force, but they changed their position after determining he had falsely claimed to have been misquoted by the Post, reports the New York Times. Zoll "misled his superiors when asked about the contents of the interview," the city said in a statement, adding that it 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 memorial, including flowers, notes, and stuffed animals, was quickly rebuilt after Friday's destruction.