<p>I feel so heartbroken for Michael Brown’s family. All they know is that their unarmed son, who had no prior record of run ins with law enforcement, was shoot multiple times by one of their city’s police officers. They have apparently been given no information about what circumstances precipitated the use of deadly force. Multiple witnesses have said that Brown was shot repeatedly, at one point, even as he held his hands in the air. The name and professional record of the officer involved is being withheld. If it were my son, the geeky and somewhat eccentric Eagle Scout, who also happens to be black (he’s actually biracial, but in America, it essentially means he’s assumed to be black) I think I’d be wild with grief, confusion and outrage over the way my family was being stonewalled ( essentially disregarded) by the Police Dept. and city government. </p>
<p>I’m curious. Prior to this shooting, what had been the nature of Ferguson PD’s community relations in Michael Brown’s neighborhood?</p>
<p>Belle, holy God Almighty, that was a scary story. If it hadn’t actually happened to you, I’m sure you would have never believed it could happen. Your poor, traumatized kids…and that this lunatic actually had accomplices who continued to harass you, is beyond surreal! Have you consulted a lawyer? I mean,honestly…words fail me. </p>
<p>Poetsheart, you know, after I posted my story, I thought to myself “No one on CC will believe this story. I wouldn’t if it weren’t me.” I thought a lot about talking to a lawyer in the days that followed, but I didn’t pursue it because I had honestly lost faith in all “public defenders”. Not to mention the "he said, she said’ aspect. My poor kids really had it rough for a while, and the youngest still hates to see police cars. I was so glad she wasn’t with me the other day. It just makes me wonder how things got this way in our society.</p>
<p>Zoosermom, I wholeheartedly agree that the officer should be named. The difference between the way things were handled by your local PD and that of Ferguson’s PD most likely outlines why the two incidences had such opposite community responses. People who feel that law enforcement is their enemy instead of their alley in maintaining a safe community will react as if they are under siege. To the people in Brown’s neighborhood, it can only appear as if the Ferguson PD has closed ranks to protect a dirty cop, and the silence it maintains in the face of grief and outrage signals abject disrespect. </p>
<p>I always want to hear all sides of the story before I pass my own judgment on a situation, but I have to say that the arrest of those two reporters was so unbelievably stupid that I tend to believe that the law enforcement people in that locality are incompetent.</p>
<p>Belle, what a horrible story. I’m more likely to believe it on CC than if someone in my own home town reported it, because we usually think it can’t happen to us. I’ve certainly heard of “driving while black” but not “driving while blond with young kids in the minivan.” I would have called a lawyer. </p>
<p>I was pulled over by a cop for what I believe was “driving while a northerner.” I was driving a rental car with Connecticut plates in Mississippi, on an interstate with fairly heavy traffic. I was told my car had gone over the yellow line on the left – which was total crap, I know I hadn’t. Compared to your experience, I was let off easy – just interrogated about why I was in Mississippi and where I was going. My takeaway was to never get a rental car in the south with northern plates.</p>
<p>As for what’s happening in St. Louis – I read the Washington Post story and watched the video. Granted, the reporters didn’t get up and leave in one second, but what happened to them was unacceptable. The Washington Post reporter is black – wonder if that had anything to do with what happened. </p>
<p>After 9/11, Congress approved a lot of money for homeland security that went to local police departments – and they have gunned up as a result. </p>
<p>I have a friend on Facebook, an affluent educated black man, who posted that he prays every day that his 18-year-old son doesn’t get accosted by the police. I simply can’t imagine living with that kind of fear.</p>
<p>Hunt, I’ve been trying to be patient in waiting for sufficient information before passing judgement in this case also, but I have to say that the utter stone faced silence of the Ferguson PD does not engender confidence that it will act in good faith. Add the heavy-handed way in which these reporters were treated, and it makes me feel anxious about this whole incident having a satisfactory outcome. </p>
Well, sometimes driving while female can cause different problems.</p>
<p>Poetsheart, if the shooter had been a regular guy on the street, his name would be mentioned. The police shouldn’t be treated differently. Yes he should be protected (there was protection here and I have no problem with that), but I think that treating the officer differently is part of the reason something like this could happen, if that makes any sense at all.</p>
<p>Apparently the two reporters were using the wifi at MacDonalds. IMHO, the police showed their true colors when they arrested them and pushed them around: supremely stupid authoritarian brutes who get their kicks from intimidation. Little boys who think they are big men because someone let them strap on a gun and gave them a badge. I, like Hunt, always try to reserve judgement until all the facts are in, but…</p>
<p>The militarization of the police in this country is appalling.</p>
<p>Belle, your story is terrible, but completely believable, unfortunately. Now, imagine if you were black? I can only imagine the fear that black parents feel every day when their children leave the house.</p>
<p>Ah, yes. “driving while a northerner”. Only slightly less dangerous down here than “driving while black”. He interrogated you about why you were in the state? Ridiculous.</p>
<p>Arguments giving law enforcement the benefit of the doubt and “appearance of feds can escalate an already intense situation” are similar to ones advanced by segregationist sympathizers in Missouri and other parts of the nation during the '50s and '60s. This has continued to some extent in many majority White communities* even in parts of the NE under various guises such as “states rights”. </p>
<p>If one examines recent US history, this shouldn’t be too surprising considering it was the Federal government and authorities which passed legislation and when necessary, sent in National Guard and Federal troops** to enforce desegregation and provisions of Civil Rights legislation. </p>
<p>Not surprisingly, state/local politicians and authorities protested this as they were among those who resented Federal desegregation and Civil Rights court decisions/legislation and enforcement of its provisions due to them being proponents of Jim Crow and its associated policies…which they eagerly and brutally enforced against those whom it was directed. </p>
<p>One other thing to keep in mind, there have been historical instances where excessive overbearing actions by law enforcement or military authorities has sparked riots/revolutions. </p>
<p>Some examples off the top of my head include the rioting/US Revolution in wake of the Boston Massacre/forcing local colonists to house British soldiers, outrage over harsh punishments over minor crimes by the starving poor*** and great social inequality sparking the French Revolution, longstanding grievances over overbearing police actions before Watts/Stonewall Riots in the late '60s, the harsh confiscation and humiliation of a vegetable peddler by a policewoman and his self-immolation sparking the Tunisian Revolution, etc. </p>
<ul>
<li>Some I’ve heard firsthand were in communities located in some Philly suburbs, NNJ, upstate NY, and some suburbs outside of Boston. Heck, in the case of Southie/Dorchester in Boston itself, I heard such talk from some longtime White residents still angry about busing policies from the '60s and '70s while doing the 2000 census.<br></li>
</ul>
<p>** Some parallels with Reconstruction after the Civil War including how discriminatory policies like Jim Crow were implemented once Rutherford B. Hayes pulled the last of Federal troops involved in Reconstruction enforcement out of the south. </p>
<p>*** Ancien regime France had a series of bad harvests during the 1780’s due to climatic factors which caused food shortages. Combined with a harshly enforced taxation which overwhelmingly fell onto the middle and lower classes due to aristocrats and wealthy commoner associates exempting themselves from practically all taxes due to old medieval privileges they held in their own right or extended to them by royal/aristocratic help, the cumulative anger from years of such harsh systemic inequality combined with desperation ended up sparking what became known as the French Revolution. </p>
<p>Could not agree with you more, Niqui. And if the majority white communities think that is the reality only for people of color, they are in for a rude awakening.</p>
<p>It’s a natural consequence of the orderliness everyone wants. People don’t want others to buy/sell/use drugs, they don’t want others to carry firearms, they don’t want others to prostitute themselves, they don’t want others to “act suspiciously,” then what they really want is a highly effective police force. </p>
<p>It makes perfect sense, Zoosermom. The withholding of information as fundamental as the name of the officer involved sends the message that police officers should be shielded better than the ordinary citizen, and that they are potentially above the law. I understand the need to protect the officer from vigilantism, and precautions are available to prevent that. But withholding his name sends the message that his life is more dear than that of the unarmed boy he shot. Overall, the Ferguson PD is simply handling this case entirely wrong. </p>
<p>I do not think the police officer should be named. With the violent thugs taking advantage of the situation, not only could he be in mortal danger, but his family too. People rioting, burning, hurting others, destroying their community…won’t accomplish anything good whatsoever. Why is it that the community isn’t rioting over the fact that young black men are massacring other young black men at record rates? It is absolutely tragic.</p>
<p>On the other hand, I am horrified by the militarization of our police force. They have become way too heavy handed. I have an extended family with a number in law enforcement so I usually support the police. But they have been going overboard, there may be little accountability, and if those reporters were arrested for nothing, that is horrendous. I hope it is fully investigated. I have little trust in what anyone says is their side of the story, but we can’t even start going down the path of arresting reporters because they are doing their jobs</p>
<p>I absolutely do not trust the government. I am that right-winger who is deeply suspicious and believes we need the right to bear arms to protect us from the government. I wholeheartedly agree that arresting the reporters for doing their jobs is dangerous and outrageous. Would that reporters always did their jobs w/r/t the government . . .</p>
<p>A good friend of mine was pulled into a patrol car and raped by a uniformed officer when she was 12. Police work is a haven for sadists, bullies and sociopaths and has been for a long time. It galls her that both of her twin daughters married cops.</p>
<p>The DHS understands that since police are increasingly immune from judicial oversight, a Ferguson-like response (or worse, the Maurice Ferguson shootings in the coffee shop) is the citizens’ only recourse for expressing outrage. In my town, the average police officer writes $350,000 worth of traffic tickets per year but they do not investigate crimes of less than $10,000 damage. They are not exactly gaining many allies.</p>
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