In the Washington Post, Manuel Roig-Franzia, DeNeen Brown and Wesley Lowery have a nice overview of the problems in Ferguson, Missouri that takes into account the perspectives of the black citizens of that town and the towns around it. A common theme is that it isn’t safe to drive, which is interesting because Mike Brown was on foot when he was executed by a police officer in broad daylight on the street.
In interview after interview, black men and women talked about their fears of random stops while driving in the city, as well as in neighboring municipalities.
Marcus White, an acquaintance of Brown who works for a moving company, said he frequently has to spend the night in his employer’s office because he can’t find anyone to drive him home to Ferguson.
“They’ll tell me, ‘I don’t go past Goodfellow,’ ” he said, referencing one of the streets near the line that separates the county of St. Louis from the city of the same name.
Many here have their own catalogue of towns that they dare not drive through. They sketch long, circuitous routes to avoid the small areas where they feel most targeted, a concern buttressed by statistics that show far higher numbers of traffic stops involving African Americans than whites in the St. Louis suburbs.
“More than four people in the car, they’re going to pull you over,” said Earl Lee Jr., a 41-year-old warehouse worker who lives in a nearby suburb. “Tint on your windows, they’re going to pull you over. Too early in the morning, they think you’re up to something. Too late, they think you’re up to something. When are you supposed to drive?”
It’s this presumption of criminality that gnaws away at the black community’s relationship with the police. It’s bad enough to have to always be thinking about how to avoid the suspicion of the police.
“Is it too late to drive to my friend’s house?” “Too early?” “I’m certainly not going to use that car.” “No, you can’t come, we already have four people in the car.”
This is considered good policing in a lot of this country. See a car with tinted windows? Pull them over; tell them their tail light isn’t working; check them out; tell them their tail light is working again; let them go.
They don’t do this to white people in white neighborhoods. They just don’t.
So, things are tense before someone gets gunned down in the street. Sell cigarettes in Staten Island and get put in a fatal chokehold. Steal cigars in Missouri and people will defend a cop who empties his gun into you while you try to surrender. In the latter case, the cop didn’t even know Mike Brown had stolen cigars. He confronted him for walking in the middle of the road.
But, if the black community had reason to fear and mistrust the police before, how much more so now that the police have put the community under siege and fire on them nightly with a combination of chemical smoke, tear gas, concussion grenades, rubber bullets, and sonic blasts? They do this, mind you, while maligning the victim and defending the murderer.
This is not the way to police any community.
The St Louis Police Dept. (which the Ferguson Police Dept. is part of) is arming a hybrid of concentration camp/reservation. How many American communities are similarly controlled by rogue law enforcement? Dozens or hundreds?
DOJ start ridding our nation of the these criminal police enterprises NOW.
Well I live in a very white area, and I can say that these kinds of things DO happen to white people. It has happened to me any number of times. But I seriously doubt that the stops I have had would have been as cursory and cordial as they were had the officer encountered a black man peering through the driver side window, and a couple of young buddies in the back seat. It is just an unspoken fact that because I look remarkably like everyone else around here that I will almost always enjoy the presumption of innocence, unless there is some glaring reason to suspect otherwise.
Mike, what you say is so true for some of America but quite the reverse in the Fergusons of our nation.
“It is just an unspoken fact that because I look remarkably like everyone else around here that I will almost always enjoy the presumption of innocence, unless there is some glaring reason to suspect otherwise.”
Michael and Johnson both “look[ed] remarkably like everyone else around [t]here [but they did not] enjoy the presumption of innocence, unless there is some glaring reason to suspect otherwise.”
The fact is Darren Wilson did not look like them: his was the face of white arrogant oppression. Sadly, African Americans are familiar with that face.
But kids are kids. Though some white kids have affluenza.
You are certainly correct. There is absolutely nothing analogous in my getting stopped to what is faced by African Americans.
We vacationed in South Carolina a few years ago with an AA couple we have known for many years. It was an upscale, largely white area. It was kind of eye opening for me to see the subtlety with which people were able to inject their bigotry. Our friends just said it is something they have had to deal with all their lives. It’s just baked into the cake for them. I just couldn’t fathom having that kind of thing staring me in the face every day.
Mike, I know and feel what you say and how can we help others of good will to understand the atrocity of it all.
Hey BooMan, don’t knock Missouri policy! We get along with anyone who is Caucasian and comes to church on Sundays. You’re not gonna cause any trouble now or you go head first out the door of this establishment. Just saying, so we understand how things get done here in Ferguson. F*** don’t pour that milk.
My experience going for a ride on a nice sunny afternoon, figured I would go north of the airport and double back into the city of St. Louis.
○ Kinloch Demographics
« click for more info
○ Missouri Historical Society – Fairground Park
In the next chapter of the history of Fairground Park, this swimming pool, touted for its capacity to develop citizenship, served as the site for a civics lesson. On June 21, 1949, a race riot took place when, for the first time, African Americans were permitted to enjoy the pool. The violence occurred against a background of inconsistency when public practice in St. Louis had not caught up with federal laws related to desegregation.
An unidentified young man being beaten during the riot over the Fairground Pool desegregation.
(Photograph © 1949 by Buel White of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch)
While the Municipal Opera, area ballparks, and public transportation were open to all, theaters, restaurants, and hotels were segregated. The Missouri Constitution required that “Negro and white children must learn separately,” but Catholic schools educated all students regardless of race. The Division of Parks and Recreation operated under a deliberately vague policy in relation to its facilities. While the Social Service Directory indicated that all facilities were open to all people, the Commissioner, Palmer B. Baumers, admitted that they were, in fact, restricted. When pushed about the issue, he said, “I inherited this. We just try to please everybody.”
○ St. Louis among most segregated cities in U.S.
Note: For the entirety of this essay, I will refer to this group of African American teachers that resisted school desegregation as the "group of Negro Teachers" or the "Negro Teachers," as this is what the group was referred to by several newspaper and journal articles of this time period. The group did not have a formal name that I have found.
[Source: Black Resistance to School Desegregation in St. Louis during the Brown Era (pdf)]
Read:
Contested Waters
A Social History of Swimming Pools in America
By Jeff Wiltse
From nineteenth-century public baths to today’s private backyard havens, swimming pools have long been a provocative symbol of American life. In this social and cultural history of swimming pools in the United States, Jeff Wiltse relates how, over the years, pools have served as asylums for the urban poor, leisure resorts for the masses, and private clubs for middle-class suburbanites. As sites of race riots, shrinking swimsuits, and conspicuous leisure, swimming pools reflect many of the tensions and transformations that have given rise to modern America.
http://www.uncpress.unc.edu/books/T-7981.html
“@BreakingNews: Attorney General Holder is ordering federal autopsy be performed at request of Michael Brown’s family – @brianefallon http://t.co/D8qysrAQa6“
Correct me if I’m wrong but they still haven’t released the county autopsy of Mike Brown. Waiting for tox so they can malign his character some more.
Oh and what less than a week after Robin Williams killed himself, we knew the prelim cause of death and that he was sober…Mike Brown was killed before that ya mean to rell me that someone isnt holding onto the prelim finding for Mike Brown ya know like how many times he was shot
Could we trust a St Louis PD autopsy anyway?
Under the Ferguson curfew a citizen cannot smoke in their car parked in a house driveway.
http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2014/08/17/man-describes-how-police-in-ferguson-arrested-him-for-sm
oking-cigarette-in-his-parked-car-after-curfew/
We’ve known this for such a long time. And those of goodwill, which I like to believe is a majority, maybe not by much, of white people in this country, have known that it is wrong since the mid 1960s. We even had remedies that we thought would correct the unfairness. Integration, affirmative action, progressive taxation to reduce and limit income and wealth inequality. Then the jerkwads like Nixon, Wallace, Reagan, south Boston white parents, etc. rose up and pushed this country back into a revised form of Jim Crow.
Segregation by skin color, religion, income, etc. is never good for anyone.
Sign Petition to demand a new national law
Michael Brown Law to require law enforcement to wear cameras
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/mike-brown-law-requires-all-state-county-and-local-police-
wear-camera/8tlS5czf
Are social/cultural issues and income/wealth inequalities resolved with another tech surveillance doohickey? If the past fifty years is any guide, the more alarms, locks, cameras, weapons, etc. has only made us more fearful and more divided than ever. And it’s not as if pictures don’t or can’t lie. And even exaggerate the actual event.
An example of that is the still from the video of Michael Brown assaulting the store employee. It looks like a serious assault in the still but minor in the video. Possibly not an unusual reaction for many people when challenged, but few people are as large as Michael Brown was and in short moments, he may not have been fully aware of his own size and strength.
Let’s imagine that the cop was wearing a camera on his helmet and it captured Brown pounding the cop and then knocking the helmet off the cop’s head. How many people would then be able to consider that the later and unrecorded fatal shooting was unjustified?
Now you start inventing out of nothingness.
Start at the beginning:
Let’s imagine the camera filmed 2 kids walking down the middle of a neighborhood street.
But to answer your question anyway, I would not consider this a time for deadly force of 5 bullets.
Consider the equally hypothetical situation I asked above:
How or why (could or would) someone on the outside of a cop car reach in to take a gun that is holstered? (or was it holstered?)
Or another question: Perhaps Michael steped over to the cop car to explain he was almost home?
My hypothetical was nothing but an illustration of how a tech “solution” could lead to a more unjust outcome. At this time, I don’t even accept as true that Brown physically assaulted the cop.
As I keep repeating, and apparently have yet to be heard, it’s highly unlikely that there is any legal justification for shooting Brown from some distance and multiple times.
Now back to: Let’s imagine the camera filmed 2 kids walking down the middle of a neighborhood street.
Okay. Common in neighborhoods without sidewalks. What comes next? This is where I begin to struggle with Johnson’s account. Even if I accept that the cop rolled down his window and unprofessionally added racist and four letter words to “get onto the sidewalk,” Johnson claimed, I told the officer we were not but a minute away from the destination. Why was walking down the middle of the street preferable to using the sidewalk regardless of how near or far they were from their destination? Where most people come from, it’s safer to use sidewalks and not challenge a safety order from a cop.
How or why (could or would) someone on the outside of a cop car reach in to take a gun that is holstered? Difficult to imagine that anyone would even attempt to do that. Holstered or in the hand of a cop. (Would require some seriously heavy duty, mind-altering stimulants to try that — and the store video is good evidence that Brown wasn’t blitzed and confrontational.)
Or another question: Perhaps Michael steped over to the cop car to explain he was almost home? Again, what was so freaking objectionable about the sidewalk? How did using the sidewalk make his journey any longer? Even if it had made it longer, what’s the big deal about twenty extra steps (twenty for a 5’4″ person like me but more like ten for someone as tall as Brown)?
Maybe we should all adopt the “don’t do stupid stuff” motto.
I did understand your position, and that was why I was so bothered about your hypothetical presenting a violent and belligerence boy. It was new fuel for a fire already out of control. You had already presented logical perspective for a reading of the video still.
Although I mis-read the intention of your imagined scenario and question, I answered it. What is your perspective, did you answer it the same way?
About walking down a street (do we really know it was “down the middle of the street”?) instead of the sidewalk:
First, do we know how busy that street about 1 PM on a Saturday?
Second, even in a town with sidewalks walking in the street is not unusual, playing in the street even, if there is no steady traffic. I’m an adult and I do it sometimes for several reasons: the wide open space, kicking a ball or stone, walking in a group of several people, wishing to avoid the residents, uneven sidewalks, etc.
Did Johnson say Michael reached into the cop car? Several days ago, someone on another post and website, suggested any facial injury on Wilson may well have occurred when he was backing up to confront the kids. That seems plausible and there is no Wilson.
Marie, I have appreciate you knowledge and insight and I hope you can also appreciate my visceral knowledge.
Sorry — should have used a different case to present that hypothetical wrt a helmet camera. I apologize for my sloppiness.
If the facts were a person shot one or more times from some distance where it wasn’t reasonable that the shooter or anyone else was at risk for harm, the shooter is likely guilty of a serious crime. “Likely” because it’s undefined that the shooter intended to shoot the victim or even fire the gun. If the intent was to shoot the victim, doubt the number shots fired or number of times the victim was hit changes the equation by much if at all. Exactly what crime would depend on the charges and other facts.
It’s my understanding that both Johnson and the police agree that the encounter began because Johnson and Brown were walking at or near the middle of the street. If that weren’t true and they were on the sidewalk, can’t imagine why Johnson would make that up because then there would have been no reason for the encounter.
If as you’re kicking a rock down the middle of the street, a cop pulls up and tells you to get on the sidewalk, do you balk? Isn’t that the question?
Johnson makes no claim that they complied with the order to get on the sidewalk.
Here’s what Johnson said in one interview. wrt the scuffle in the car, he said
A long way away from proper police procedures. OTOH, it would have to be one big and powerful cop to wrestle someone as large as Brown with one arm through his window while seated inside his patrol vehicle.
What’s plausible to you about a driver incurring a facial injury in the process of backing of one’s vehicle?
Thanks, Marie, I’d prefer sitting over coffee talking with you but here goes:
RE: walking in the street Do we know the kids balked or just didn’t move fast enough for Wilson? (Teens can drag their feet through any action.) Were there other cars on the street to give real reason to the command at that exact moment? (This I really doubt.) Was Wilson pleasant, belligerent or threatening?
RE: facial injury First, do we really know Wilson had a facial injury? Because the Ferguson police chief said so? What kind of injury? Medical report? Photos? Wilson? Does the 10 minute aftermath video show any concern for Wilson’s wound?
RE: backing up a vehicle First, did Wilson drive past the kids then back up to confront them directly? If he did, it could have been done with his head out a partially open door and it might have snapped back to hit him. That does happen. As you say, how did Wilson grab/wrestle Michael through the window. Or was it a partially open door? If Wilson was “struggling” with Michael, how/when did he pull out his gun. Or was it always at the ready? And WHY a gun, just as you say.
Did the patrol car drive to the right or left of the kids? If Wilson backed up, did that endanger the kids or other [phantom] cars? Did it block the passage to one sidewalk or the other?
How much time are we talking about here from Wilson’s command to a citizen’s death?
As you say, WHY a gun?
Was the fatal shot into the top of Michael’s head the final sixth and final bullet? We do know all bullets entered the front of Michael’s body. We don’t know at what range since the clothing was not forensically examined at this recent autopsy. How fast can Wilson’s type of gun shoot 10 bullets?
We do know that Wilson shot to kill. That truth ain’t pretty.
Hell, we don’t know enough and that is deliberately by design of the rogue Ferguson police department conspiracy.
Lots of questions and I don’t have any answers that could be taken as factual. However, piecing together from what has been said and what other evidence has been released, a few things are likely close enough. From the top:
Balking or not moving fast enough: Had it been the latter, Johnson’s account would have been different. So, have to go with not intending to comply with the order at least in a timely fashion.
Reason for the command: Unclear if Wilson was on that street as part of his regular patrols or used this street to get from his prior to call to wherever he needed to be next. Far too many possible observations and thoughts on Wilson’s part as he proceeded down the street to bother speculating about. They range from a racist cop that missed no opportunity to harass black kids to a reasonable concern that walking in this street posed a risk to the kid and vehicles. Regardless of all personal factors of the actors and conditions of the road at that time, there was nothing unreasonable in the Wilson’s order.
Facial injury: no details released. This is a difficult one because we assume that all bops to the face or head leave serious visible marks. Yet, we know that disorienting concussions with no lacerations or immediate swelling do disorient one and the person injured isn’t always fully conscious of the disorientation. Unless or until solid forensic evidence is presented on this element, provisionally put it in the not important bucket.
Wilson’s demeanor: Verbally sharp with an expletive but not threatening when they were told to get on the sidewalk. Have to accept that no threats were issued. Again because otherwise Johnson would have made that claim if it had happened. Likely routine, vehicle patrol cop manner on Wilson’s part at this stage. (Community, foot and bicycle patrol policing reduces tensions and improves relations between the public and police. In my neck of the woods and from what I’ve observed, the cops are very good at diffusing altercations, not infrequently among homeless people.)
Backing up: Johnson claims that Wilson drove forward after ordering them out of the street. Unclear if Wilson backed up or hung a U. The stories are sort of jumbled at this point. Did Wilson only intend to repeat his command? Did he intend to exit his vehicle to enforce his command? Why did Johnson say that Wilson couldn’t open his vehicle door because he and Brown were blocking it? Wouldn’t police SOP at this point be close windows/lock doors and call for back-up? Or are Ferguson/MO cops less cautious and more belligerent in potentially dangerous situations? Or did Wilson not perceive any danger? Or did Brown and/or Johnson do something put Wilson in a position of being able to do more than react?
If we begin this sequence with Brown and Johnson acting friendly or even cooperative (neither of which he’s claimed) as they were up against the patrol car it’s crazy on Wilson’s part to have reached out of the window to grab Brown’s neck. Wilson would have first ordered them to back away from vehicle.
Keep in mind that what followed took place quickly. The reported scuffle and discharge of Wilson’s gun in the vehicle (a bullet casing in the vehicle would be evidence in support of that claim, not that those of a certain political/social persuasion are likely to accept any evidence from the police) is important. Front seat, back seat, or both? Again, too many possibilities and too little information to speculate further at this time.
Do note however that it’s not only Wilson’s state of mind but also Brown’s and Johnson’s that require consideration. As a small woman, I’m handicapped in considering that Wilson could have initiated a physical confrontation with someone as large as Brown even though I know that small guys and cops aren’t so reluctant.
Johnson didn’t claim the opposite of cooperative though, did he?
Did Wilson perceive any danger? I suspect he did not at this juncture. (Bullies don’t expect danger they make danger. You may call that prejudicial but it isn’t uncommon between white cops and black males and I think we now know enough about this police department to at least consider it.)
Johnson was in no position to know when the gun was drawn and there is no possibility of evidence due to the cover-up.
RE: (…not that those of a certain political/social persuasion are likely to accept any evidence from the police) Do you believe any information from Ferguson PD without federal collaboration?
Has the car been examined? Or better question, where is the car who has examined the car? Has the gun been examined? Or better question where is the gun and who has examined it?
The speed of the entire terrible incident is exactly what I am talking about.
I’m a woman and at the same age as Michael, and since, I have seen dozens of cop beatings and suffered a couple for little or no reason. Finally, who was the “trained” policeman, who was the adult.
Sorry to have to keep this exchange going.
Johnson didn’t claim the opposite of cooperative though, did he?
What constitutes the opposite of cooperative? Declining to get on the sidewalk and remaining in the street is uncooperative. Does the opposite of cooperative require uncooperative combined with say, an expletive laced refusal? Johnson doesn’t claim that one of them said okay and/or made a move to get on the sidewalk.
Agree that Wilson didn’t perceive any danger at least up until the reported scuffle began. Why postulate that that was because Wilson is a bully when the more economical interpretation is that the situation didn’t appear dangerous. Plus bullies tend to pick on those smaller than themselves and Brown was a really big guy.
We don’t and can’t know what Johnson was able to observe and later capable of accurately reporting. It’s why I’ve tried to be cautious and limited in what seems likely to be close enough to accurate from Johnson’s retelling.
Do you believe any information from Ferguson PD without federal collaboration? Too funny. I don’t trust the FBI at all (even as one of the greatest guys I’ve ever known was a career FBI agent).
As a juror I voted to acquit a young black woman because based on the map, including structures and dimensions of the site of the alleged crime, the cop had to be lying. (And I was right, but that’s a long story.) Here’s the deal. If the Ferguson PD report that a bullet casing was found in the vehicle, one side will take it as fact, the opposite side will claim that it was planted, I’ll evaluate the claim in light of additional information/evidence such as where’s the bullet. iirc at this point several witnesses, including Johnson, and the PD claim that the first shot was fired within the vehicle and nobody has claimed that Brown was outside the vehicle and the intended target. All of the witnesses and PD could have this wrong — there may not have been a discharge from the gun within the vehicle.
PD’s always impound vehicles involved in an incident or crime. This is problematical because the general public doesn’t have much trust that it will be examined thoroughly and objectively. An additional problem is that such examinations aren’t completed in thirty minutes like on the CSI. Magnifying glasses, tweezers, etc. makes for painstaking work and the public wants instant answers. Odd that the families of victims and their supporters don’t seem to demand the presence of someone qualified that they’ve hired to observe this component of an investigation.
You must highly intelligent to calmly and rationally engage in this discussion with me in light of your age and experiences. I don’t know that I was that mature at eighteen and I’m fairly smart.
There were plenty of trained policemen involved in this. Not saying they were well trained or had adequate skill sets — but that requires public investment which costs money and we aren’t so into paying for such investments.
First, my last sentence was sloppy also…I am not now 18 years old: I’m considerably older. But, at seventeen, I had experienced racial police brutality and not on the TV and could, probably, hold up my part in this conversation pretty well. But I’m still not sure how to measure my intelligence.
Finally good, honest police training requires more than money: it requires a culture of genuine “serve and protect all citizens” and police administration goodwill supervision.
1. Are you trying to make a point by continuing to focus on the “street?” For me it distills down to:
a) kids walking down at or near the center of a street
b) police officer pulls up and tells them to get on the sidewalk
c) kids do not verbally agree to do so
d) kids do not get on the sidewalk
Assume:
a) police officer’s order was lawful
b) not complying with lawful PO order is unlawful
c) the volume of traffic on that street at that time was irrelevant to the legality of the order
Conclusion:
At best, kids were uncooperative with PO
If you can cite any Ferguson city, county, state ordinances that people do not have to comply with lawful PO orders or it’s legal and in the sole discretion of pedestrians to choose whether to walk in the street or on the sidewalk, then do so. And get that info to those demanding Wilson’s arrest ASAP.
What you do in the street and what I do or don’t do in the street isn’t germane.
Wake me when you’ve figured out how to create that culture to “serve and protect all citizens.” (No protection for non-citizens?) iirc minorities call the police for help at least as often as white people do; so may we all think they serve us.
I’m irritating you and started making written mistakes too, especially that citizen/non-resident thing, so I’m done for a while.
Going to read Langston Hughes or Barbara Neely for perspective and some kinda hope.
Yes, I am trying to make an issue of walking on an empty street. That is where it all began. We have no timeline for any of this deadly incident. Dorian’s sketchy memory doesn’t say they specifically did or didn’t or how rapidly. There was no dashboard camera. There was no audio.
FPD protected “witness” Wilson is an adult. Michael Brown is dead kid.
You do not know: “At best, kids were uncooperative with PO.”
The chain of evidence is broken if Wilson drove his patrol car away from the scene. And now, after 10 days of malfeasant FPD activity, it should be suspected that the chain of evidence was broken if any Ferguson cop drove the car off the scene.
Actually, a culture of “serve and protect people” can be nurtured among people in law enforcement-as long as there is just enforcement within the police department.
Marie, I learn from all your posts and comments but sometimes striving for impartiality gives unsubstantiated credit to one of the sides.
Marie, your last comment is best countered by a better writer than I. Here is Ta-Nehisi Coates from the Atlantic:
Black people are not above calling the police–but often we do so fully understanding that we are introducing an element that is unaccountable to us. We introduce the police into our communities, the way you might introduce a predator into the food chain. This is not the singular, special fault of the police. The police are but the tip of the sword wielded by American society itself. Something bigger than Stand Your Ground, the drug war, mass incarceration or any other policy is haunting us. And as long we cower from it, the events of this week are as certain as math. The question is not “if,” but “when.”
Once again, we need reminding of the role the federal government has been playing in this situation and what we know about the players.
While the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division and FBI are investigating civil rights violations, the DOJ Community Oriented Policing Services and the DHS Fusion Center have been coordinating crowd control and providing “technical assistance”. The a DoD program has provided most of the equipment.
The Ferguson Police Chief has a department that shows his racial bias in hiring.
The St. Louis County Police Chief is something of a neo-Confederate.
The St. Louis County prosecutor has a bias because his cop dad was killed by a black guy.
The Governor was a key lawyer in a major case overturning desegregation in the St. Louis metropolitan region.
For all his community policing chops, Ron Johnson was not given the authority to run his strategy, was sandbagged on Friday morning by the Ferguson Police Chief, was sabotaged on Friday night by a police officer spontaneously using tear gas “because he felt threatened”, was humiliated by his governor imposing a curfew on Saturday, and betrayed to the community by the police opening action with tear gas after Johnson said that tear gas would not be used. The white authorities have gone out of their way to let the community know that they expected Ron Johnson to be a good house servant and not to do an effective job. He was reduced to PR. White officials do not like to be shown to be incompetent without retribution.
There is not one element of this federal-through-local partnership that is standing with the community institutionally. The law enforcement fraternity is railroading the decision-making toward cover-up and impunity.
And once again, we see heavy handed repression of expression through immediate brutal force like we saw with the response to Occupy Wall Street. And the tolerance if not the encouragement of provacateurs on the part of the police in order to justify further repression.
It is clear that the state wants silence not justice.
leaders were humiliated by the curfew when they have said what they wanted it? I find it incredibly condescending that people commenting from the safety of their keyboards assume that a 27 year veteran of the MHP “humiliated” by a curfew he clearly said he supported. Not only him but community leaders, like Antonio French, who have been in the middle of the protests from day 1. To assume they were humiliated assumes that Captain Johnson is incompetent and got played by “the man” and also assumes that community leaders who also came out in support of the curfew are too dumb to know what is best for their community.
I also find you reducing Captain Johnson to a “good house servant who only is doing PR” repugnant because not only does it assume he is too dumb to know what he is doing, it ignores the hard work he has been doing. Why you sit at your keyboard reducing him to an offensive stereotype he has been out walking the street, talking to people, trying to maintain order.
As for the events of Saturday, if you watched the 3 AM press conference, as I did, there was clearly a sequence laid out by Captain Johnson that led to the tear gas being used. Events that were supported by tweets from those on the scene, in particular Antonio French who tweeted about a few young men, most likely from out of town, wanting a confrontation.
Apparently a new vid circulating of Mike Brown possibly paying for “rellos”
“@ReaganGomez: NOW video shows Mike PAYING for his rellos. But guess what, Feguson PD made sure 2 get the “robber” narrative out http://t.co/a5zyTcXNXk“
That’s the same video. No evidence that Brown paid. Plus, are store managers in the habit of rushing outside the counter to lock the exit door on paying customers?
Accepting that Brown did a couple of dumb things in that store doesn’t explain, much less justify, the later actions of the subject cop.
When do we get beyond the notion that a victim of a crime need not be a paragon of virtue in his/her everyday life? It doesn’t matter if Brown did one or a hundred minor dumb things in his short life. That’s not the question.
He is wrong.
It is undoubtedly the American way to police a community, from small towns right on through large cities both within and…in time of war (which is all the time somewhere in the world as far as the U.S. PermaGov is concerned) outside of the borders of the U.S. Booman…and most of the people on this site.,..supported and continues to support the administration that has countenanced this particular “way to police” for the duration of its existence. This is not news…except of course it is apparently news to entitlement-blinded middle and upper-middle class white citizens if the great furor of complaint about Ferguson that we are witnessing now is any indication. It is quite amazing how this “news” always seems to be forgotten as soon as the media-lashing dies away. Was it “news” in 1961 when Bull Connor sicced the dogs on civil rights protestors? Yes, it was. Was it “news” in 1999 when NYC cops shot an innocent Guinean boy 19 times at the entrance to his Bronx building? Of course it was. How about the recent police subway murder in Oakland? How about the (nationally televised) Rodney King beating? Was it “news” in the Westchester/NYC bedroom community in which I unhappily lived for a time that the primary job of the police force was to traffic stop any car with dark complexioned people in it 24/7? Not really…it was just a fact of life. It didn’t even make the news. Was Abu Ghraib news? The various massacres in Iraq and Afghanistan? How about the millions killed in Vietnam and other S. E. Asian countries?
Please.
These things are only news for a relatively short time. Then they are replaced by other “news” in the media. It’s a constant stream of “news,” none of which changes things one iota.
This too shall pass, and then we will be able to get on with our busy schedule of electing yet another PermaGov frontman/frontwoman. One who will once again decry the all of the nastiness going on in the streets, just as has every other president since LBJ. But change things!!!???
Get real.
WTFU.
All of this is economically based.
All of it.
If the .01% is to continue its massive economic dominance, the working classes. (The lower working classes particularly, conveniently marked by the color of their skins.) must be kept
barefoot and pregnant…oops, I meant ill-shod and scared shitless. Look cross-eyed at a cop anywhere in the United States and you risk your mortal ass unless you are white and clothed in the trappings of middle-class-and-above wealth.Wake the fuck up.
You expect Obama and Holder to try to change this?
Please.
Wake the fuck up.
How ’bout HRC?
C’mon…
WTFU.
Yours in truth…
AG
The narrative that the media has been telling about the arrests being related to gunfire or looting seems to be false. Kevin Gosztola followed up with the stories of people who were actually taken into custody. Notice the use of the “pending application warrant” status to legally pre-restrain the person arrested from participation in anything where the police could target him for a snatch arrest on any other pretext. And note that even though he was away from the action, he was technically violating curfew.
Man Describes How Police in Ferguson Arrested Him for Smoking Cigarettes in His Parked Car After Curfew
We will see if this guy delivers:
Tell me some more lies about how the Democratic Party’s stance of social liberalism and economic centrism/conservatism makes it no better from the Republican party because economic issues are just that important.
Tell me some more lies, people.
I haven’t read all of it, but it started on the right note …
○ St. Louis Demographics and Lack of Immigrants: “Even the bricks are leaving the city.”
○ The Growth of America’s Cities, 1880-1900 [pdf]
The African-American community in St. Louis has an organization for Black Struggle based on the Principles of Nguzo Saba and Our Black Value System.