Late last night my Twitter feed lit up with reports of looting in Ferguson, Missouri. This was immediately followed by reports of citizens stepping up to protect businesses against looters. It was discouraging and encouraging at the same time. Obviously, looting is the most counterproductive behavior possible, as it sways public opinion against the protesters and tends to justify heavy-handed police tactics. Yet, it was nice to see people rally to stop the looting. The one thing I feel strongly about is that the Ferguson police department is more interested in covering their backsides than with maintaining law and order in their community. Their decision to release video of Michael Brown stealing from a convenience store just incited people who saw it as a distraction and a deliberate slur used to try to justify an execution.
The police department needs to calm things down and start to build some trust, but everything they (and the country police) have been doing seems pointed in the exact opposite direction.
It’s as if looting serves their purposes.
It is not unknown in political protests, and this for the Ferguson Police Chief is very much a political protest judging by the way he sandbagged the Governor and the incident commander yesterday, for police to seed the crowd with provacateurs who will break glass and loot in order to discredit the protests. Of course, there are small minorities of people in any protest so angry and so inclined anyway that it is hard to nail police who engage in this sort of tactic.
Antonio French reports that police (he didn’t say which department) leaving last night laid down a gratuitous tear gas blast — sort of as an FU to the community.
There seems to be a strong determination on the part of the community to shut down the looters and to clean up after damages.
Folks in Ferguson are not blind to the shopping deserts created by crime and rioting. They likely have experienced the desertification as a result of redlining by race already.
Presumably they will have local elections in about six to nine months. I hope there will be an opposition slate so the people can take back their town. IF they bother to vote.
It is the job of all American citizens to support, persuade and guarantee every citizen in every community, every state. to vote and that all the votes will be counted.
And that honest and
According to MSNBC this a.m., last night’s looters in Ferguson were not Ferguson residents. They were from the “outside”. Those who’ve been out demonstrating all along identified them as outsiders. Haven’t seen much mention of this elsewhere. Would be nice to have more first hand reporting of this. Wonder if Chris Hayes is still there? I hope so, even though I know that he’s got 2 young kiddies at home he should be spending some quality time with.
but everything they (and the
countryCounty police)Alderman Antonio French (St. Louis city) Twitter Time Line has the details from last night.
he has been invaluable since this all began. his twitter feed has been fabulous
Even more disgusting to me was they way the national media allowed itself to be played by Chief Jackson’s robbery report. It took all of 15 minutes of reading the report and re-constructing a timeline to conclude that Michael Brown could not have been a suspect at the time of the shooting. Yet outlet after outlet (huffpo, cnn, usa today) ran the headline that he was a suspect in the robbery.
Michael Brown was not even identified on the tape until 2 days after he was dead – it is in the report, which obviously the media did not read.
It was a real eye-opener for me. Our national media cannot be trusted to perform even the basics of an investigation. I guess they’re too busy rushing to get out a tweet to do any real journalism.
Lowery had it right.
They are not in the investigation business – they are in the advertisement sales business, and revenue from ad sales increase with distribution (i.e. ratings). Viewing media actions from this lens will eliminate most surprises when it comes to the actions of the media – they are in it for the money, just like every other business, and sensationalism brings much higher ratings than investigative journalism.
○ Obama, can’t you see black anger in Ferguson?
Every snippet that comes from the local police is just catnip for the media and the right wing wurlitzer. And the police, no doubt, know this. I was very heartened by the initial response of the local populace, once control for security was wrested from the glaringly incompetent local law enforcement. While there are many who would love to just set their desired narrative in stone; that the young man was just another angry black criminal who simply acted out just the same as “we know all those people do”, I don’t think they are going to be able to put this genie back in the bottle.
I’m just not too sure how long this tenuous “calm” can last. I have significant doubts that we there will be any result, short of an arrest and conviction of the officer, that will keep this from eventually exploding into something very ugly.
The one major problem we have is that in the age of instant information gratification, we can all adjudicate the event long before there is anywhere near the proper amount of time given to conduct a truly thorough and impartial investigation. Either side can go to their desired media sources, cherry pick all the information that feels good to them, make a case among their tribe which everyone feels is correct and then spread it far and wide in social media and their selected national media sources until everyone on their side feels that the decision they favor is the only one which could ever be logically and rationally reached. And by the time the judicial system reaches their eventual conclusion, it is either looked on as the greatest legal and moral travesty ever foisted on an innocent man or it is deemed to be the proper meting of justice. Whether you feel, in the end, that it is your ox which has been gored by the eventual decision will all depend on which side of the ideological fence you reside.
This is all very fascinating to watch, but I have a viscerally uneasy feeling way down in the pit of my stomach that this situation is going to turn very, very bad. I hope that is not the case, but I don’t have very much confidence that our country can yet come to terms with horrible injustices that we continue to unleash, particularly in our minority communities. Dealing with this subject requires an openness and desire to understand a very sordid and unflattering part of our history. And I still don’t think we are at the point where we are ready to confront that head-on. The ignorance of our history, and the bigoted stereotypes which are a result of this ignorance, live on. And they still drive the perspectives of wide swaths of our country.
Every snippet that comes from the local police is just catnip for the media and the right wing wurlitzer. And the police, no doubt, know this.
How often has the police chief, or mayor, been on Sean Insanity’s show since last Saturday? Has he appeared anywhere else? Tells you all you need to know, right?
Yes. Because his primary mission is to give those anxious white folk reassurance that their fears of the blah people are well founded, and that they should be prepared to defend their women-folk and their culture from the raging hordes.
Preferably with a new handgun or better yet an assault rifle (brand new from the manufacturer of course).
Got to rev up those sales. Take a look at Sturm Ruger’s stock price since 2008 I wonder what happened in 2008 that sent that stock up 1000%?
P.S. It defaults to one month. Just click the 10 year tab. Even more amazingly, click the “Maximum” tab and see what happened after Reagan was elected.
The fact that more than 400 black men and boys have been killed by white cops every year in America since 2005 should make all of us viscerally sick. (And that is a number from less than 1/2 of the law enforcement agencies because the others don’t report such figures to the FBI.)
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/08/14/police-killings-data/14060357/
But some people are not ignorant, they are intellectually and emotionally incapable of thinking that ethnicity isn’t the defining characteristic that separates humans from humans.
It is, in fact, an intelligence deficit.
Years of capitalist American social customs and laws have validated their racist beliefs.
I’d be interested in seeing how many Whites are killed by Black cops for comparison. I’d then like to see what percentage of cops were reprimanded and/or terminated for the inter-racial killing, pivoted by the race of the cop. I can only imagine what the data will show but I’d like to see that data.
Yes, it is amazing that some statistics that might elucidate the truth are not or cannot be compiled. Just as the Ferguson PD didn’t write Deadly Force Reports until 2 years ago and, even now, only selectively. Or why do only 750 out of 1700 law enforcement agencies report their activities to the FBI database?
It is all By Design.
The Ferguson PD knew exactly what they were doing when they released that video and the robbwry report. And it worked with the media’s help.
“@AngryBlackLady: Oh. RT @Green_Footballs: Ferguson PD Released Michael Brown Robbery Video Against Objections of DOJ http://t.co/yjy1nyyMLD“
Exactly, the Ferguson PD was sandbagging the folks who replaced his “leadership”.
I’m wondering what plea bargains the “looters” last night will be getting when they go to court. This is a case in which I cannot discount embarrassed police units using provacateurs to undermine their successor’s community policing strategy.
Because if community policing works, SWAT teams are history and so are the macho psychology that goes with it. Don’t think that male police won’t resist this “feminization” of their profession.
Their decision to release video of Michael Brown stealing from a convenience store just incited people who saw it as a distraction and a deliberate slur used to try to justify an execution.
Poisoning the jury pool and rat f-cking. From what I read today, they did it against the advice of the DOJ and FBI. Let that sit for a minute.
Going to have to part company with you on this one. At this point it’s a PR war with both sides getting inside their camp and circling the wagons. Neither interested in getting to the more complex truths. I say that with reasonable suspicion that there was no justification for the cop to shoot Brown as he allegedly fled the situation. However, I do find it offensive that Brown’s friend Johnson is paraded around and put on TV making claims that are suspect and little public recognition of how faulty eyewitness testimony is even from unbiased and uninvolved observers which Johnson isn’t.
Marie, what would you have happen? In an ideal world that didn’t need PR, the killing would never have happened.
Ferguson residents and the defense attorneys for the family knew the Ferguson Police Department and the fact that it disregarded the FBI and DOJ indicates it is a rogue enforcement agency. Not to mention, the cruel audacity of their para-military behavior.
Within minutes, shocked Ferguson residents who viewed the shooting and/or the aftermath recognized the cops were not interviewing them as witnesses.
How about an unimpeachable, qualified rapid response panel to investigate every police shooting of unarmed individuals? And no, the FBI is unacceptable as it has cleared every FBI agent that has killed an unarmed individual such as Todashev. Pierce the freaking “blue line” that protects killer cops.
That may be a tall order since as MJ reports:
How about we start there — like yesterday?
Between 2003-2009 there were 4,813 reported arrest related deaths in the US and disproportionately Black but the majority were White. All but 219 were men. How many were unarmed is not reported. Are we as a nation incapable of investigating substantially less than 800 such incidents a year? That would be healthy for both police departments and the public.
In a better world, US cops and robbers wouldn’t be armed — but apparently that’s not acceptable to a majority in this country and I’m overruled on such a suggestion. In a better world, kids wouldn’t be walking around with toy AK-47 replicas.
As it is, a kid gets shot, pro- and anti-cop hysteria ensues and consumes the national dialogue, charges are generally filed against the shooter, a trial takes place, and then what? Often more hysteria because one side or the other (only informed of the minimal facts) freaks out. The convicted killers serve some time. Rinse – repeat — unless we change the system.
Gosh, I’m pretty certain this assertion is dead wrong:
“…a kid gets shot, pro- and anti-cop hysteria ensues and consumes the national dialogue, charges are generally filed against the shooter, a trial takes place, and then what? Often more hysteria because one side or the other (only informed of the minimal facts) freaks out. The convicted killers serve some time…”.
In my experience, very, very few law enforcement officers in the U.S. have faced charges that were taken to trial, and a small fraction of that small number of cases have resulted in the officer doing time.
If it wasn’t clear to you from what I wrote — I well aware of the fact that few police officers are charged with murder and only a small portion of those charged are convicted and do some time, often not much.
There is an institutional bias in this country that when in doubt, killer cops go free. But alleged cop killers aren’t accorded any benefit of doubt. As I mentioned in another comment, that’s why Leonard Peltier and Mumia Abu-Jamal have remained locked up for decades and been denied a new trial or consideration for pardon; a more just system would have released both of them long ago.
Marie, don’t know where you’re gaining your opinion that witness Johnson is “…making claims that are suspect…”. His testimony is remarkably similar to what I have heard nearly every other eyewitness say. Keep in mind that this happened in broad daylight in the middle of a residential neighborhood; Johnson was not the only one who claimed to have seen the incident from the start.
Everyone I have heard saw a physical confrontation between Brown and the officer, they all saw/heard a shot go off at close range which appears to have hit Brown (ballistics will tell), they all saw Brown run away from the office and saw/heard the officer fire off more shots, they all saw Brown raise up his hands, turn around and ask the officer to stop shooting, they all saw/heard the officer fire off the finishing shots.
Then there’s the contemporaneous film, tweets and photos which document the scene in the minutes after the killing. Again, that on-scene evidence shows people hearing/seeing a shot at close range, and the finishing shots taking place as Brown was stopped and compliant a short distance away.
That Johnson has reportedly admitted that Brown stole cigars would act as testimony to his honesty, rather than create reasons to doubt him. It’s understandable that time should be given for a good investigation, but it’s apparent to the community, and appears to me, that City and County law enforcement leaders are slow-walking that investigation and poisoning the jury pool. All these reported facts, along with the long, long history in the U.S. of officers walking free after 99.9% of their killings of black men, outrage is very justified, I’d say.
Eyewitness claims are 1) claims and 2) generally crap. (Would you see the gorilla? Only half do.) Not because most witnesses are trying to mislead authorities but because our perceptual abilities are poor and memories fragile, particularly in an unexpected situation that includes violence.
Johnson originally claimed that he’d met up with Brown in the neighborhood shortly before the cop appeared. He changed his story when informed of the video of him at the store.
Do you find Johnson’s claim that the cop grabbed Brown by the back of the neck to force him into the partrol car credible? Could be true. But how many cops on their own are going to grab the neck of a 6’3″ over 250 pound uncooperative guy?
There are multiple eyewitness claims that back up Johnson’s version of the encounter between Brown and the officer. You’re acting like it all rides on Johnson when that doesn’t appear to be true.
The ballistics will be crucial in determining the validity of those eyewitnesses. Based on the behavior of local law enforcement here, I am prayerful that the Feds will provide the evidence re. those ballistics.
Finally, it doesn’t appear to me that it is completely dispositive to figure out how the encounter started. If Brown ran away from the officer after getting shot the first time, and received multiple killing shots while facing the officer with his hands up, I’d call the officer guilty of a crime even if Brown did try to reach for the gun at close range at first. That would make the case much tougher, but if Brown slowed or stopped with hands up and no weapons, the officer acted improperly, in my view.
Guess you’re unfamiliar with the cases of multiple eyewitnesses that led to the conviction of an innocent person. You’re accepting as credible statements made by individuals not under oath and not pre-determined that they were even in a position to observe the events. Completely discounting the time-lapse between the events and when they reported what they allegedly saw and how peer pressure shapes very basic perceptions as demonstrated by Asch’s experiments.
I make no claims to knowing what happened other than Brown died from one or more bullets fired by the cop. How the encounter started and what took place before the fatal bullet was fired may be irrelevant to the question of guilt on the the part of the cop. However, that information is still important to understand and learn how prevent such seemingly minor incidents from spiraling out of control and killing an innocent person.
But you’re not hearing what I’ve been saying; so let’s agree to give it a rest.
We’re talking past each other a little, but only a little.
I’m aware of false identifications from eyewitness testimonies. I have not seen that lead to any false convictions of police officers, however. I acknowledge that the ballistics will have to match the eyewitness testimonies. But you’re close to asserting that the multiple testimonies are false here; that seems an unjustified conclusion.
If the eyewitness testimony had the actions of the citizen and the officers reversed here, you and I know that the citizen would be in prison right now as the investigation continued, and there would be little to no chance of their release on bail. That speaks to the frame of mind that the demonstrators appear to have right now. Justice delayed is justice denied.
you are talking about false eyewitness identifications, not eyewitness accounts of an event. very different
Yes, eyewitness accounts of an event can also be off. What is being noted here is Marie2’s tone, which comes awfully close to inferring that the eyewitness testimonies from multiple witnesses of the shooting and many others in the neighborhood who heard the pattern of the gunshots are not credible.
I am hearing very well Marie2’s admirable and consistent desire for due process. From what I’m observing, and from hearing the demands from the Ferguson community, the main problem is that there has been little due process happening in the investigation so far. Instead, an unfair process which didn’t get around to interviewing multiple direct eyewitnesses for days and days had been imposed. This is dangerous, because eyewitness testimony can degrade as the days move forward. It’s also dangerous for law enforcement to press a stifling, paramilitary response onto demonstrators during the same days that they are refusing to engage in a good-faith investigation.
Governor Nixon was bone-dumb and highly unresponsive to the circumstances when he said at yesterday’s massive train wreck of a news conference that peace must precede justice. What he got back from the community members, over and over again, is an assertion that bringing to the community the sense that justice will prevail will bring a quicker and more thorough peace than any curfew or use of force.
When a proper investigation of the killing of an unarmed 18-year-old does not move forward at the same time an attack on citizen protesters does move forward, true peace will never be reached.
Thanks.
But a better adjective than stifling to describe the police actions “intimidating”. Intimidation is a clear and frequent tool in this police force history. At some point, an intimated populace can take the intimidation no more.
I pretty much agree with everything you write, but I’d break the event down into two problems – the police issue, police not predominantly from the community, white police with predominantly black neighborhood, etc that constellation of issues and the SWAT teams/ weaponry issue. I read a vet twitter thread [or whatever it would be called] last week where the vets, aghast at the inappropriate use of military weaponry by untrained police depts, posted pictures of themselves patrolling in Iraq – non-threatening poses all, in contrast to the warrior wannabees using inappropriate military vehicles with siege type body language. the vets all pointed out that the police don’t have the training to use the weaponry as well as the fact that it’s not designed for police work. will try to find the vet thread – I was mostly offline last week and don’t recall where I found it.
I hope you can re-locate it…I am interested.
No, I’m not. But a can’t present volumes of high quality research in the areas of perception, cognition, and memory in a blog comment or two. Here’s one experiment. And it’s consistent with other experiments. One being a drawing of several people that includes one person with a gun. Those that recall seeing the gun also recall that it was in the hand of the Black man dressed in coveralls when it was actually in the hand of a white man dressed in a business suit.
You overlook one thing: this is a community that has been under siege from it’s beginning. This is not “an unexpected situation that includes violence.” Of course, everyone was shocked but that is normal human reaction to the realization that their lives are in peril at all times. Standing over a dying or dead man’s body in broad daylight on a residential street in calm indifference is not normal human behavior. Police training or not.
Secondly, there is no video or audio to say that Michael was uncooperative when he went to the police car.
Not overlooking that at all. Nor am I unmindful that there is no video nor audio of the actual event. Thus we don’t know the sequence of actions and reactions that led up to the cop shooting Brown multiple times. The possible narratives that conform to the very limited, publicly available information at this time can range from a violent, racist, nutso cop and a kid doing his best to be properly responsive to him to a cop being attacked and losing it.
Legally, does it matter if Brown was stationary and with his hands up or attempting to flee the situation when the cop fired multiple times from some distance? Not if Brown posed no threat to the cop or others at that point. How many times do I have to state that the preliminary and very limited information doesn’t look good for the cop before others here hear that? And stop accusing me of overlooking this or that? While you and others over-read the information and accept weak and/or potentially wrong information to convict the cop?
Would I have been attacked here a few years ago for urging others to be cautious in assessing the public information and jumping to convict the Duke LaCrosse team of rape? Or the five young men that were wrongly accused and convicted of the Central Park rape and beating? We all should struggle with our own personal biases and limitations in considering all instances of violence regardless of the status of the victim and alleged perpetrator. Reasonable doubt is my friend and reduces the number of times when later I have to say — oops, got that wrong. Hey, so sorry it put a person behind bars for decades or worse.
I’ll speak for myself in saying I’m not interested in attacking, and I regret where we’ve mutually misunderstood each other in this thread. I highly respect your interest in fairness here. I did question what appeared to me to be some of your conclusions and methodologies.
Context matters. Justice was found in the Duke case; the lacrosse players were extraordinarily well-defended legally, and the attacks on their reputations were thoroughly reversed by the highly publicized backlash from the injustices done to them. The Central Park case involved abusive interrogative and prosecutorial conduct by City law enforcement agents. There is a lengthy history of that type of deprivation of due process. There is no meaningful history of a deprivation of legal due process to law enforcement officers who have killed citizens.
Your comment that available evidence does not make the actions of the officer look good is very important here. This leads to what is so maddening to the Ferguson community, and to me. Local officials have seemed entirely interested in attacking their own citizens, while at the same time appearing to protect from a true due process investigation the officer who shot an unarmed 18-year-old dead under highly questionable circumstances.
I agree; due process is greatly needed. That due process seems almost entirely absent here.
You ask: “But how many cops on their own are going to grab the neck of a 6’3″ over 250 pound uncooperative guy?”
Then, on another speculation by others, it should also be ask: Why would some one reach into the car for a cops gun if it was in a holster?
>>The police department needs to calm things down and start to build some trust
this statement is laughably naive. Cops don’t give a shit about being trusted, they want to be feared and obeyed.
The lawyer for the Ferguson Market and Liquors store says that the police told him that they were going to do nothing last night. If that was Jackson who told him that, Jackson was wanting it to be looted. If it was Johnson who told him that, Johnson either had talked with the community or was depending on the community to do what it could to suppress looting.
If the latter, the word for the lawyer is that if it had been the police instead of the community stopping the looting, the store would not just be missing windows and some stock, it would likely have been torched as well.
Whoever advises this Ferguson police chief, they certainly are aware of how to agitate the low-information, look only at the pictures news consumer.
I am always (why?) amazed at the stupidity and vapidness of the masses despite their ability to get all up and crazy.
.
Missouri gov. declares state of emergency, implements curfew in Ferguson
Question: is there a Report of the Shooting Death Incident yet?
With or without Wilson’s signature?
No. None. And Wilson is “out of the area”. The law enforcement and criminal justice system are shielding him.
And the prosecutor will never file charges because the prosecutor’s dad was a cop who was killed by a black guy at Pruett-Igoe.
And when the realization finally sinks in to people on the ground that this whole thing is going to get a massive coat of whitewash, the shit is absolutely going to hit the fan. National Guard in the streets???? I would wager so.
I don’t think so. Too much time has passed. The National Guard in the streets would do what? Be a line of bayoneted soldiers keeping folks out of the streets? Community leaders have shown that they can do that. No matter how hard the Chief has whacked this hornets nest, the community has responded peacefully and enforced its will (however imperfectly) on others to do so as well. That sort of discipline is what is terrifying law enforcement at the moment and why Gov. Nixon is trying to screw it up (although he is too blinded by his political aides to notice it).
My guess is that community doesn’t take the bait.
It will wait for another atrocity and another community to erupt.
Pruett-Igoe was a ghetto that facilitated crime. First occupied in 1954 and demolished in the mid-1970s.
Odds favor the cop being charged for at least one of the shots he fired by local authorities or the Feds.
As they should all murder suspects in a highly charged situation regardless of the status of the suspect. Exactly what they didn’t do in Dallas on 11/24/63.
It is revealing that you cannot name one time when a police officer has been killed by angry citizens. Sure, they shouldn’t be harmed. Sure, they should be given due process.
But reverse the situation: a white cop is shot and killed by a black citizen, under the circumstances described by multiple witnesses in Ferguson. Would the investigation be allowed to drag on so that the shooter remained free and sheltered, whereabouts intentionally hidden from the public, a week later? It’s absurd.
I think the only thing that creates any decent odds at all that the officer in this case will face charges is that it appears to have been such a heinous, unjustified killing, the citizens and the press has been aroused enough to stay on the story, and the paramilitary response to demonstrators exposed such a viciousness in St. Louis law enforcement. The problem is, that arousal is going to have to be maintained for more than a year, because it’s almost certain that if this process goes to trial, it will take that long. It’s hard to maintain sufficient community and press arousal for that long, and if that arousal is not maintained, history shows that cops in the U.S. walk free. Often the cop walks even when the community and press remain aroused.
Revealing that I didn’t answer a question that I didn’t know I’d been asked?
Your question isn’t even a corollary. That would be if a Black cop killed a white citizen, would I expect that Black cop to be protected. Absolutely.
Are you sure that no white cop has ever been killed by angry citizens? Guess these two citizens weren’t angry. How about this one.
Neither of the cases posted here are parallels to the Ferguson situation. Yes, law enforcement officers are sometimes killed. It is a dangerous job, and sometimes they are targeted, and that is wrong. But we’re not just talking generalities; we’re talking about the specifics of what is happening in Ferguson right now.
Would you acknowledge that there is a balance to be struck between defending the rights of the officer who has killed an unarmed citizen and defending the victim, his family and the community’s rights to their lives, safety and property? Many of the citizens of Ferguson feel that the police have taken these rights away for a long time, and now it feels like justice is being denied in a very comprehensive way. It doesn’t appear that denial of the officer’s right to due process is being threatened, but the public’s safety and sense of justice is being obliterated.
Brief Instructions Before Leaving Earth. I know, World wide some police is harmful for the people. The police department needs to calm things down and start to build some belive
this statement is laughably naive. Cops don’t give a shit about being trusted, they want to be feared and obeyed. fundraising ideas for church youth groups
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Wow, what a contrast: the difference between the way the authorities are handling Ferguson and the way they’re handling Bundy Ranch is like the difference between black and white.
http://www.addictinginfo.org/2014/08/15/anonymous-dispatch/
The released dispatch tapes appear to show that Michael Brown’s death was not even relayed to the Department for 2 hours!
Draw your conclusions- whatever they are, it ain’t pretty.
CLARIFICATION for post above:
released by Anonymous from the ether not officially released
The Ferguson police chief has already admitted that the officer who shot Michael Brown dead was not attempting to apprehend Brown in response to a suspect description in the unarmed cigar theft incident.
This morning, Governor Nixon asserted that both the DOJ and other law enforcement agencies were blindsided by the release of the theft videotape. Now that the Ferguson police chief has poisoned public opinion and any prospective future jury pool, the question is what is the Governor going to do about it? A good strong statement doesn’t cut it by itself.