Missouri is known as the Show Me State. And there's quite a show going on in Ferguson, Missouri. A
show of force, that is:
Ferguson Police Chief Thomas Jackson, who has been the public face of the city torn by Saturday's death of 18-year-old Michael Brown, told reporters earlier in the day that the St. Louis County investigation of the shooting could take weeks to complete. In the meantime, he said, his department welcomes Justice Department training on racial relations in the suburb, where two-thirds of the 21,000 residents are black while all but three of the police force's 53 officers are white.
"Unfortunately, an undertow (of racial unrest) has bubbled to the surface," said Jackson. "Race relations is the top priority right now."
While Jackson said he wanted to mend fences with the community, protesters were on the streets of Ferguson again Wednesday, facing heavily armed police who at time trained weapons on them from an armored truck. Two reporters said they were detained by police while working at a McDonald's in the area.
The situation became more tense after nightfall, with police ordering people to go home and then using smoke bombs and later tear gas after some people threw Molotov cocktails and other things at them. Most of the crowd then dispersed. Journalists who witnessed the events included an Associated Press photographer.
The scene looks more like something you'd see on the streets of Beirut than what you might expect in suburban St. Louis:
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| A man watches as police walk through a cloud of smoke during a clash with protesters Wednesday, Aug. 13, 2014, in Ferguson, Mo. Protests in the St. Louis suburb rocked by racial unrest since a white police officer shot an unarmed black teenager to death turned violent Wednesday night, with people lobbing Molotov cocktails at police who responded with smoke bombs and tear gas to disperse the crowd. Photo: Jeff Roberson, AP |
What you see in this photo is what we have in much of the United States -- a fully militarized police department. There aren't too many Barney Fifes out there on the streets of Ferguson.
Mitch Berg, as he usually does,
makes the salient point:
It’s a tense situation. I get it. The cops want to go home at night.
But then so do the rest of us. We scarcely go a day without some story of the police, somewhere, busting down the wrong door; throwing flash-bang grenades into rooms of sleeping children; making innocent people lie on the floor with guns in their faces, handcuffed, as the police tear the house apart looking for something to justify the raid (and as many laws as there are, everyone’s broken some kind of law or another); of cops shooting family pets that growl at them; of police manhunts shooting up all sorts of innocent people along with the perps.
And worse than all of that, the tendency among some police to assume that peoples’ constitutional rights are an impediment.
I’ll repeat the usual disclaimer; most cops are good cops.
But it’s not the individual cop in the street that worries me. It’s a police culture that is becoming more and more aggressive; more militarized, and militaristic. A culture that, more and more, thinks everyone that’s not in blue (or black, or camo) is a potential danger to be pre-empted.
That is what we are seeing on the streets of Ferguson. Show Me has morphed into Show of Force. And if you suppose that a militarized police force couldn't happen here, you haven't been paying attention:
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| Hey, Kid, Get Off of My (St.) Cloud |
You aren't going to be enforcing traffic laws in that thing. Meanwhile, back in Ferguson,
they're arresting HuffPo journalists, too:
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| His crime? Charging his phone at McDonald's and taking pictures |
The Guardia Civil used to arrest people who took pictures of them. Chevy Chase
may want to reconsider his admonitions about Franco.
6 comments:
in so cal, cops not only arrest you for taking pictures or video (even of every minor thing) they will break your device or steal it... and gather together to lie about it when confronted.
most cops are good? no, they are not.
most cops are assholes. thats why joined the force in the first place.
I don't buy "most cops are good" any more, either. At a minimum, they lost the benefit of the doubt a long time ago.
The Lib candidate for US Senate down here (who happens to live in my general neighborhood and by all accounts is a terribly decent guy) remarked on Facebook this morning that he is seeing a lot of Tea Party and hardcore progressives retweeting each other (approvingly) over Ferguson, and that gives him hope.
I'm not *that* optimistic (I rarely am) but I've been following these kinds of stories for years...and this really does feel different. Ross Douthat and Kevin Drum are writing pretty much the same column right now. We might be turning a corner here in terms of public opinion.
So the politicians might catch up with the rest of us in another 3-4 election cycles, if we can manage to stay mad enough.
follow the $$, brian. police unions pay lots of $$ and sell their endorsements as well. its not just about pay and benefits, either. cops like the power, and the way the rules/laws are bent for them.
if you knew some of things that are state law in CA pertaining to cops and their own rules, it would amaze you, probably even terrify you.
a lot came out in the dorner man hunt: several attempts at nonjudicial executions due to mistaken identity (like mistaking a small mexiacn woman for a large black man...)... and NOTHING was done about it, short of a chuckling, 'yeah... we need to work on that...'
"There aren't too many Barney Fifes on the streets of Ferguson."
How do we know? There are probably just as many Barney types now as before; the difference is now they don't have just one bullet, they've got an AR-15 (or even a 16) with multiple magazines, armored vests, armored vehicles and a bureaucracy to back them up. Can't you just hear them in their lines, chanting, "We've got to nip this in the BUD!"
Can't you just hear them in their lines, chanting, "We've got to nip this in the BUD!"
Actually, I can hear it. And that's the problem.
Time for mandatory cameras/voice recorders for officers. I'm thinking that officers are not necessarily worse than the rest of us, but rather simply have incentives to do what they do. And given the choice of thinking vs. bullying, too many choose the latter because it's easier.
Penalize bullying by recording it (Mark Steyn had a nice column on this today), and you'll get more thinking. And (eliminate weedy yards in the hood?) maybe fewer kids in the street and fewer Fergusons.
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