Beyond appalling.
Please post useful links, pics, videos. I will update this post with more.
Video of demonstration, police firing teargas and rubber bullets.
Ferguson Is 60 Percent Black. Virtually All Its Cops Are White.
Google News Realtime coverage of Ferguson
This makes me so sad. I grew up in very sheltered circumstances compared to most of the other Americans posting here, in a small rural community 50 years ago (I’m 59), where I was raised to regard the police as my friends. Over the past 30 years or so, that attitude has eroded almost totally. When we as a society frame our metaphors as warfare, however, we get war rather than protection. When we have a war on crime or a war on drugs, we should not be surprised when we get a police force who consider themselves soldiers, and anyone who is not them as being the enemy. It affects the types of people who apply for the job, who is selected, how they are trained, and how they do their job. I think this metaphor goes back to Prohibition at least, if not farther, and will not be easy to change, but we must change it if we are going to prevent this needless and senseless killing and abuse of minorities. Sorry for the screed…
Slept through most of this discussion. It’s so infuriating. The racism, the militarization of the police, just everything.
Thanks, David for the Open Thread, and thanks to Shadow for posting that Clap video.
Last month I finally sat down and watched Fruitvale Station.
All I can think of is the Martin Luther King quote… “A riot is the language of the unheard.”
Glad someone has the same vaguely uncomfortable feeling I’ve often had – that a lot of bad attitudes around policing in the US have their origins way back in Prohibition.
Though it’s worth looking at what some real military folk think of the “militarisation” as shown in Ferguson. https://storify.com/AthertonKD/veterans-on-ferguson?utm_content=storify-pingback&utm_medium=sfy.co-twitter&awesm=sfy.co_hpXF&utm_source=direct-sfy.co&utm_campaign
Takeaway quotes …
I have some thoughts about Ferguson
Thanks for that.
I was thinking about you when I read those observations from other soldiers.
Ugh what is happening there is so fucked up. I know as a white person I can never really understand or feel the same way POC (especially black people) feel about cops, but god I fucking hate them anyways. I can’t not hate cops when I see what they do to people. Cops are supposed to be justice and this? This is not justice. All the thousands of other unprovoked attacks on black people? Not justice. So while I can’t fear and hate them in the same way because I am white, god I can still fucking hate them. I hope this situation prompts a better governance for police – someone should be able (and willing) to stop police from overstepping themselves and hurting people who did nothing and who they know did nothing. Anyways, my thoughts are with Michael’s family and the community of Ferguson.
The first bit of sensible, if not good, news out of Ferguson.
The St Louis County Police will be relieved of duty in Ferguson and replaced by State and Federal officers. http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/08/14/1321549/-Missouri-Governor-announces-St-Louis-County-Police-to-be-relieved-of-their-duties-in-Ferguson
One ironic note. The killing of Michael Brown was the first and only homicide in Ferguson this year.
Things that don’t get you shot in the US if you’re a white man: pointing weapons at federal officers.
Someone should start a tumblr. Maybe there already is one.
The perpetrator is now being fully doxxed by Anonymous. His full name has already been released. Oh shit.
Worse, they have doxxed the wrong person.
Something I should have included above-that although law enforcement in tha US has taken on a military metaphor, many of its personnel have no real experience wirh rhe real military and base their metaphor on TV, movies and military fiction, which have varying degrees of accuracy, which is probably why veterans are finding this situation so foreign, I think. (Goodness, what a sentence.) Ferguson would probably be better off if the Army was in charge of law enforcement. (I think it was in Heinlein’s Starship Troopers (book, not movie) that all police had to be military veterans.)
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Meanwhile, right next door in Illinois, the local ACLU came out with a study showing that PoC drivers are far more likely to be asked to consent to a search of their car, far more likely to grant consent, and far LESS likely for such a search to yield actual contraband. (Similar stats, BTW, apply to dog-sniff searches.) The police officials interviewed insist that there’s no racial profiling going on, and that there’s no intimidation factor driving the higher rate of consent granted–but then you look at Ferguson, and realize that there’s no way Mike Brown’s name is NOT going through the head of a person of color who has just been pulled over on a random stop. The police brass needs to understand, and account for in training, that the intimidation factor is there, no matter what the officer is doing, and the officer needs to moderate his behavior to account for that.
Just to be clear, the link I put up earlier depicts this incident: Al-Jazeera America crew fired upon with tear gas, police take down their equipment.
FIRST AMENDMENT WOOHOO
What I find troubling is the secretiveness of the police. It seems based on what I have read that information on what actually happened, what was the reason for the shooting, and more info on the officer who shot. It troubles me that the Ferguson police department seems like they are hiding information to the public. In addition their police department is virtually all white in a town that has a large African American population.
I think that Obama is going to begin a federal investigation into this matter and have the FBI start an investigation. The problem is these police officers in Ferguson have been shooting rubber bullets on the crowd which was filmed on TV. It reminded me of the “occupy wall street” protests in 2011 where the police shot tear gas into a throng of protesters.
All the rubber bullets do is exacerbate the problem and get people more angry and scared. It does absolutely no good to shoot rubber bullets on a peaceful non violent group protesting as they are protected under the US constitution.
This has got to be one of the worst pieces of racist atrocity in recent history. I have been ashamed by so many things that the US has done from slavery, Vietnam, Nicaragua, etc. etc. etc. that it is difficult for me to feel more ashamed, but I plan to try. The comparison with the way the WHITE Bundy criminals were handled with kid gloves is appropriate — and they are the people who are always complaining about “jack-booted Federal thugs.” Fifty years from now people may look back at Ferguson the same way they look back at Bull Connor and the Birmingham police using dogs and fire hoses on civil rights demonstrators in 1963 or the Chicago police riot at the Democratic National Convention in 1968 — incidents that provoked a national revulsion and brought about some degree of positive change.
We elect our first black President and a young man murdered by police for walking while black — it makes my mind reel.
The ironic thing is that it seems like racism is beginning to lose its grip, particularly among young people. But that simply makes older racist people, including many cops, even more desperate in their racism. Obama’s election caused a lot of racist whites, seeing that so many other whites voted for him, to feel that the country as they know it was slipping away, and that has brought oceans of anger and hatred out of the shadows.
I just hope that every fair-minded person will look at Ferguson and want to vomit, and that this WILL turn out to be some kind of turning point in the understanding of just how prevalent and devastating racism in the US is.
I think you’re right.
Twitter has suspended the account that was posting the info about the St. Louis police department.
Also, today there is supposed to be a nationwide Moment of Silence vigil, and now all of the event pages regarding the vigil have been deleted. All of them. This is quickly becoming frightening.
Ally, I HOPE I’m right. If I’m not, I can’t think of what it would take to wake this country up.
Sorry, I should amend that. What I meant to say is that this whole situation is becoming more and more frightening by the hour. I don’t want to downplay the terror and despair that the people of Ferguson are facing. I’m a WOC, but I don’t suffer from antiblackness, and even non-black POC need to be careful in not silencing the voices of black POC.
You know something else that hurts? When I was in high school and college, I knew guys who went into the police academy. One of them was easily the most fair-minded, easy-going, sincerely good people I ever had the honor to meet. The notion that, over the years, he might’ve become a cop like we’re seeing here, or that he might’ve at least turned a blind eye to other cops like that, chills me to the bone.
I’m concerned that if Obama speaks about this, the right will be become even more adamant that Michael had it coming and the protesters are savage beasts. On the one hand, I think he should speak up about this issue. Because it’s an important national issue. On the other hand, look what happened when Obama said “Trayvon Martin could be my son.”