Ferguson

Samir Mehta | August 18, 2014
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Lori Lancaster | August 19, 2014
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Erik Bates | August 19, 2014
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Samir Mehta | August 19, 2014
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Chris Lemler | August 19, 2014
In my eyes I think that the protesters ought to just quit what they are doing listen to the police. Now they just keep getting tear gas and protesters are throwing rocks and bottles and other stuff. Somebody is gonna get seriously hurt in this whole thing before it's over if this protesting keeps up

Joanna Woods | August 19, 2014
I don't believe it's the protesters doing the harm. It's the criminals taking advantage of the situation. They are the ones doing the damage and making everyone forget the original reason for the protests in the first place. The original issue is the fact that a person was shot and killed with unnecessary deadly force.

Scott Hardie | August 20, 2014
Damn it's good to be white.

If I were black and a cop, and I shot a compliant unarmed white kid six times, I'd already be in jail awaiting a homicide trial. There wouldn't be any protests, because there wouldn't need to be: Justice would be swift and merciless.

But I'm white! I can be a cop and shoot a compliant unarmed black kid six times, and my own department will protect me, refusing to divulge so much as my name (a protection afforded to no other suspects save minors) for over a week while keeping me on paid leave! And furthermore, strangers will send me $10,000 unprompted because they'll fear, in their words, a "lynch mob mentality." Ha! Given our nation's history, that's a funny choice of words, isn't it? And if the unthinkable happened and somehow I was convicted of homicide (like that'll ever happen!), they'd have to keep me in a special cell isolated from the rest of the prisoners for the rest of my life, because my famous white ass wouldn't survive one day in genpop. Nope, no richly deserved justice for me!

Our country is so fucked up.

It's perversely wrong and prejudicial for the Ferguson PD to have released that surveillance footage of Michael Brown robbing the convenience store on the night that he was killed. It has filled hateful American hearts with thoughts like, "Well, he's a criminal, and he got what he deserved." Darren Wilson had no way of knowing what Brown had done before he saw him. Brown could have raped a nun an hour earlier and it wouldn't have mattered: That cop had no reason to shoot him dead. Worse is the forwarding around of private photos of Brown posing like a gangsta thug with a gun held sideways and a wad of cash between his teeth, as if this somehow means that he deserved to be shot six times for minding his own business on a public sidewalk. What in the fuck is the matter with people?

Witness reports varied, from Brown rushing Wilson to Brown fleeing, but neither is correct: The autopsy showed that Brown was still for all six shots, and in fact, was on his knees for the final two shots that killed him. It also showed that he was up to thirty feet away from Wilson. We also know that he was unarmed. What about this situation makes this anything other than homicide? If you don't want to blame Wilson personally because he was just a cop doing his job and making a hair-trigger judgment that will forever haunt him, then the next logical step is to blame the overzealous police force for militarizing their officers. The solution to the insanely frequent murder of black citizens by police all over the nation isn't going to be "better training" or "more sensitivity" or even "racial hiring quotas," because white officers are still going to perceive black citizens as a threat and keep shooting them -- if we could merely pretend racism away like white people keep trying to do, it would be gone already. The real solution is to eliminate lethal force as an option. Absolutely keep protecting the police with Kevlar and helmets and riot shields as needed, but take away their guns and equip them with swift and effective peace-keeping tools that do not kill, like Tasers and tear gas and rubber bullets. Had any of those been used on Michael Brown instead, it would still be a significant injustice, but at least not a fatal one.

I am 100% with the protesters on this matter. Wilson's shooting of Brown was murder and deserves to be treated as such, and any failure to charge him is unacceptable. The Ferguson PD's protecting of Wilson was unconscionable, and their escalation of the conflict with protesters and journalists was wholly wrong. But this anger is about much more than just Michael Brown. This is about our society having reached a point where we can no longer accept that some black people are just going to have to die because white people feel threatened. Our nation has a long, depraved history of white people feeling entitled to do whatever they please to black bodies with impunity, and slavery is the beginning rather than the end of that arrangement. It is not acceptable for white cops to get away with killing black civilians, it never has been, and it must stop happening.

Scott Hardie | August 23, 2014
I guess I got my outrage out there just before this news story inevitably quieted down. I hope it wasn't unseemly of me to say.

I think what angers me most about this is the denial of white privilege by so many white people. They refuse to see it. They think black people really are treated fairly, and if an individual black person like Michael Brown suffers, it's either his fault somehow, or at best, dumb luck and an aberration. How can anyone live in this society and not recognize the overwhelming privilege that whites enjoy? Every institution that we have -- local police, government at all levels, education, the health care system, banking, housing, neighborhood associations, trade associations, employers, retailers, even the news media and entertainment -- they are all rigged to take away from black people and give to white people. I feel silly saying this obvious everyday truth as if it's profound, but so many people refuse to recognize it, and that infuriates me. The problem cannot be solved if it won't be acknowledged.

One of the best Ferguson writings that I read this week was by Matt Zoller Seitz, who told of blatant white privilege by police in his own life and how it shaped his thinking.

Aaron Shurtleff | August 23, 2014
I think part of the problem is that sometimes, it seems like the opposite of what you are saying is taken as NEVER true, you know, and that strikes a nerve with some people. It seems like EVERY time there is ANY kind of interaction between a white male and a non-white male, if the non-white male is in any significant way on the "losing" side of the equation, then it absolutely HAS to be because the process was in some way rigged against them, because white male privilege. And if you disagree with the assessment of white male privilege in any particular situation, you are blind at best, and horribly racist at worst.

Also, Scott, I would like to know where you got your autopsy information. I've looked around, but I cannot find the reference to the particulars you related. (Not saying you are lying/exaggerating, I just am not savvy with searches) The information I am seeing is that of the three autopsies (state, family, and federal), only results from family paid/sponsored has been released to the public (not that I am in any way implying that might be influencing the results or how it was released to the public), and that even the person (and their assistant, who seems to be talking to the press a lot too) say that results aren't super clear. Due to their autopsy being "second" (and some information is obscured by having been through one autopsy already) and that they didn't have access to the clothes Brown was wearing among other things. I am seeing that it isn't 100% clear whether he was moving or not, nor whether he was in a submissive or aggressive position when he was shot. And I was looking mainly at CNN, which to my knowledge, is not particularly prone to leaning towards pro-white or pro-cop stances (please correct me if I am mistaken).

Don't get me wrong, I think something hinky happened here. But I'm not ready to say that Darren Wilson deserves all the hate he is getting (though I do agree that a non-violent alternative would have been better). I think I need to see where this ends up. Maybe it's the white male privilege speaking here, but I don't see enough to feel 100% certain of what justice will be here.

I am 100% certain that whatever the end result, not everyone will be happy about it.

Scott Hardie | August 23, 2014
I hear what you're saying, but personally, I think white privilege really IS a factor in most transactions between whites and blacks in which blacks lose out, which is to say, most transactions between whites and blacks. For a hypothetical example, a bad deal between two small business owners in which the black businessman voluntarily agreed to unfair rates when trading with the white business owner? Black businesses have fewer customers and fewer lenders and face far more hostile environments than white businesses, and the black business owner may have been desperate to make a deal to stay open even if the terms were unfair. For another example, a branch falls from a tree in my yard and damages my black neighbor's house? As unlikely as I am to have a black neighbor in the first place, homeowner insurers treat blacks unfairly. The hypothetical list could go on and on.

The article that I read about the autopsy results said that Brown was up to 30 feet away from Wilson (too far to have gunpowder residue on his skin) and that he was on his knees for the last two shots, which struck him in the head. I also know that the results are inconclusive without access to his clothing, and that the results of other autopsies have not been released yet. And I know that the party releasing these results, who represent Brown's family, has warned against taking these findings as conclusive, since they are incomplete. I also know that there are about a million articles out there summarizing this autopsy, each with a slightly different version of the details, so sharing links is pointless. If the version that I read was inaccurate, that's a shame and I retract the relevant parts of what I said.

But as I wrote above, this isn't merely about Michael Brown and Darren Wilson; one dead kid alone isn't enough to bring a city to the brink of riots for over a week. It's that Michael Brown is the latest in a long tragic line of unarmed black civilians killed by white cops, which happens way too frequently and needs to stop. Focusing on the specifics of Brown's shooting -- whether WIlson had reason to believe he was being provoked, whether Brown indeed committed a crime that night -- distracts from the real issue. Even if it turns out that Brown was fully armed and firing at Wilson at the time, it wouldn't mean that white cops don't really kill black civilians too often. So while the autopsy matters and the facts of this case matter in the micro sense, that Darren Wilson deserves justice and the public needs to know what truly happened that night, they don't matter at all in the macro sense. The news media lose sight of the forest for the trees sometimes, and the rest of us out here across America most certainly do too.

Scott Hardie | December 2, 2014
Am I reading this article right? Missouri has the gall to seek millions of dollars more because it cannot afford to pay the salaries of its police and guardsmen in Ferguson? Maybe they shouldn't have blown a fortune in federal funding on this sort of thing. Cue the tiny violins.

Scott Hardie | March 13, 2015
Now that it's crystal clear just how racist and power-abusing the Ferguson police were, and that the police chief has been forced to resign, and that two Ferguson officers have been shot by a civilian, and county and state police have been forced to take over the investigation, one question has become impossible to ignore: Why does Ferguson's police department continue to exist? It will never again have the trust of its citizens, let alone the rest of the country. It is incapable of emerging from this crisis as a viable entity. The time is well overdue to disband the Ferguson police department, and to have county and state police take over their services.

Samir Mehta | March 19, 2015
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Scott Hardie | March 19, 2015
And in the rest of the country, sadly.

Samir Mehta | March 20, 2015
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Scott Hardie | March 21, 2015
Yes. And people live in bubbles, so they don't always know what's going on.

I don't understand Ferguson PD apologists. I understand people giving Darren Wilson the benefit of the doubt because he's just one guy, and it's easy to empathize with someone you're cultured to look up to as a protector and community hero. But to trust the police department and municipality as institutions? Have they read the awful, awful details of the Justice Department investigation? I'm guessing not.