Escalating Tensions in Ferguson, Missouri
August 18, 2014 11:45 PM Subscribe

We are now entering day 10 of protests in Ferguson, MO, protesting the murder of unarmed teenager Michael Brown by local law enforcement officer Darren Wilson on August 9th.

On August 15th, the Ferguson PD revealed the name of the officer who shot Michael Brown as Darren Wilson after much delay and demand, and released a surveillance video of someone they allege is Michael Brown involved in an altercation with a store clerk. The police initially claimed that this robbery to be the reason for the initial contact between police and Michael Brown. The Ferguson chief of police has since confirmed that Darren Wilson had no knowledge of the robbery prior to approaching Michael Brown, and later amended his statement to say that Wilson stopped Brown for blocking traffic. A lawyer representing the Ferguson market portrayed in the video has stated that the owner did not call the police. This video was released alongside a 16-page incident report of the robbery, against the advisement of the Department of Justice that it would incite further violence. The press conference also revealed that Darren Wilson had left the area 'days ago'.

An initial autopsy conducted of Michael Brown's body showed no sign of struggle, and six bullet wounds. Michael Brown's family has commissioned a second autopsy, citing a desire for independence and objectivity from the Ferguson police, and the Department of Justice will be conducting a third autopsy.

Amnesty International has sent in observers, marking the first time the human rights organization has deployed a team in the United States. The Washington Post has a good summary of how the rest of the world sees the crisis in Ferguson (thanks to naju for that link).

Part of the excessive militarization of the police is being attributed to military supply donations to the local police, which must be used within a year or else forfeit. "When more police departments get SWAT teams, they conduct more SWAT raids."

John Oliver has delivered a scathing take on the situation in Ferguson on his HBO show, Last Week Tonight. (Fanfare thread.)

Governor Jay Nixon declared Ferguson an emergency state on Sunday, August 17th, and called for a curfew of 12 AM - 5 AM. However, police crackdown on Sunday began well before curfew, firing off tear gas and blaring LRAD at the protestors. (Tear gas, incidentally, is banned in international warfare under the Geneva convention.)

Barack Obama met with the Attorney General Eric Holder to discuss the situation, and gave a televised address to the nation on August 18th, confirming that Holder will be traveling to Missouri. Ezra Klein makes an argument for why a strong show of passion from the President would only make things worse. The FBI is now canvassing the neighbourhood, and the National Guard was deployed to Ferguson, but have largely been employed guarding the "command center" rather than engaging with protestors.

There has been an official petition on WhiteHouse.Gov to enact a Mike Brown law, requiring all state, county, and local police to wear a camera at all times. The petition has over 119K signatures so far, which means it will receive an official response from the white house. A similar law has seen great effectiveness in reducing police brutality in other parts of the country.

Meanwhile, protests have continued nightly, with escalating tension and use of force. Police have become increasingly hostile towards the media and even Amnesty International. Several journalists have been detained and subsequently released, including Getty photographer Scott Olson, who has been steadfastly documenting the events in Ferguson.

Other resources:

MeFi's own desjardins' excellent list of Twitter folks covering Ferguson
A list of Amnesty International people on the ground
A Reddit live feed of scanner reports, news links, and tweets coming out of Ferguson
A list of live streams currently available and covering Ferguson (account needed)
The #handsupdontshoot hashtag on Twitter, a reference Michael Brown's reported last words to Darren Wilson
A list of places to donate to, petitions to sign, and upcoming protests.

posted by Phire (3234 comments total) 260 users marked this as a favorite

My disclaimer in the other thread stands - I tried to cover the substantive points, but it's late and I'm tired and there's just been so damn much. Thanks to Shouraku, triggerfinger, and ob1quixote, all of whom I have shamelessly cribbed links from in the first FPP.
posted by Phire at 11:46 PM on August 18, 2014 [15 favorites]

Worth noting: still no evidence of Molotov cocktails or any other of the justifications cops are claiming
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 11:47 PM on August 18, 2014 [27 favorites]

Here is the deleted thread, which had some good links and commentary going.

(hope it's okay to post this)
posted by triggerfinger at 11:47 PM on August 18, 2014 [4 favorites]

As i said in the quickly blammed thread, what ever happened with that guy getting shot at the protest? Any more news on what was up with that?
posted by emptythought at 11:48 PM on August 18, 2014

People were starting to discuss molotov cocktails in the other thread, and I was about to post this NYT video, which had just shown up in my feed and has a shot of a protestor throwing what appears to be one (note: if true, this would be the first and only evidence I've seen of molotov cocktails).
posted by triggerfinger at 11:51 PM on August 18, 2014 [4 favorites]

.
posted by iamkimiam at 11:52 PM on August 18, 2014

I said this in chat, but I'll say it again here:

I would really like to request a different nightmare dystopian future.
posted by dogheart at 11:52 PM on August 18, 2014 [67 favorites]

The last ten days in Ferguson, Missouri have seen teenager Michael Brown killed by police, a peaceful protest met with dogs, a heavy handed crackdown, reporters arrested, some semblance of order restored, a return to chaos, a state of emergency declared and curfew imposed, the FBI canvassing the neighborhood, the activation of the National Guard, and more reporters threatened and arrested. Yet in all that's followed, one inevitable fact remains: 18-year-old Michael Brown is dead, and his parents must live through that.

P.S. Well done, Phire. Reproducing my inferior attempt that I quashed before even clicking post here in Take Two.
posted by ob1quixote at 11:53 PM on August 18, 2014 [18 favorites]

Not to derail the Ferguson-specific discussion which I am hoping will continue the excellent job done on the first discussion, but if any of you are, like me, more shocked than you were prepared to be to see the mask come off, and wondering what you can possibly do.. whatever the outcome of these protests these issues are not going away any time soon.

There are organizations out there that are not going to let this simply drop when the news cycle moves on to whatever's next. Direct your time, money, and resources where YOU think they will do the most good, but for your convenience:

posted by Nerd of the North at 11:55 PM on August 18, 2014 [13 favorites]

so hey uh

remember how we all patted ourselves on the back about how Tiannenmen Square was a thing that couldn't happen in America
posted by DoctorFedora at 11:56 PM on August 18, 2014 [61 favorites]

I refrained from commenting in the first thread because I wasn't capable of anything more productive than a constant stream of expletives and GRAR. Here it is, ten days later, and while I'm not GRAR'ing at everything in my path, thanks to being able to talk it out with other MeFites, I can honestly say that I've had it. The killing of Michael Brown distilled everything that's currently wrong with law enforcement and race relations in our country to a single occurrence. I am profoundly sad for his family, and equally saddened and appalled for my country. I'm not sure that we can come out of this to any sense of normality in the near or even mid-future. These are some very dark times.

.
posted by Purposeful Grimace at 11:57 PM on August 18, 2014 [12 favorites]

Many of don't use chat or have limited internet. So what happened in the last hour?
posted by futz at 11:58 PM on August 18, 2014

Teargassing journalists. Sealing off an entire street with concrete barricades.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 12:00 AM on August 19, 2014 [4 favorites]

remember how we all patted ourselves on the back about how Tiannenmen Square was a thing that couldn't happen in America

Correct me if I am wrong, but the death toll in Ferguson stands squarely at 1.

I mean, yeah, a lot of bad shit is going down, but there's not a massacre happening.
posted by Noisy Pink Bubbles at 12:01 AM on August 19, 2014 [30 favorites]

As in, an entire neighbourhood is being teargassed. Check @Awkward_duck

Yet, NPB. Yet. One itchy trigger finger and everything goes (even more) pear-shaped.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 12:03 AM on August 19, 2014 [6 favorites]

The death toll is 1 so far. Given all the gassing they've been doing after setting the media blackout in place, I'd be surprised if everyone survives through to tomorrow.

And even more surprised if those deaths are accurately reported by anyone in any position of authority.
posted by cmyk at 12:04 AM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

Many of don't use chat or have limited internet. So what happened in the last hour?

Yeah, basically police throwing shitloads of tear gas at groups of people for apparently no other reason other than they were groups of people, that were....moving, I guess.

And barricading people/cars in with concrete blocks on every street blocking exits.

Oh, and Amnesty International got escorted out at gunpoint.

No real good news anywhere, really.
posted by triggerfinger at 12:05 AM on August 19, 2014 [11 favorites]

This is what I saw earlier and mistook as "agitators"...the guys in the yellow shirts with "Observer" on them. Who thought rounding them up and booting them was a good idea?
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 12:08 AM on August 19, 2014 [3 favorites]

I was watching the live feed from Vice for a while - who would've thought that they would now be one of our most hard-hitting news organizations today? - and livetweeted some of it, so let me see if I can sum up the gist: Tim Pool and his cameramen were pinned by live fire and then teargassed quite heavily, and subsequently all media was then told to disperse to the "designated staging area" or else risk arrest. The media, from what I understand it, were then subsequently kettled away from the initial location, while the SWAT apparently went from yard to yard "clearing houses". People were told to get off the street and keep moving or risk arrest - even standing on the sidewalk was apparently not okay. There were reports from people on the street that the police was telling them to go one way and SWAT another, and many protestors (including Wesley Lowery) had been having trouble escaping barricades that police set up in the neighbourhood - a driver offering a ride to protestors was stopped by the police, guns drawn. There are some terrifying of the police advancing on the crowd.

I haven't been listening/watching live feeds for about an hour because it's just way too much, so I don't know what the latest is. That's all the info I have as of about 1 AM Missouri time.
posted by Phire at 12:08 AM on August 19, 2014 [17 favorites]

Cops who don't want Amnesty International seeing the shit they're pulling, Ray.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 12:09 AM on August 19, 2014 [28 favorites]

I'm gonna ask this in hopes that nobody presumes I'm trying to mitigate the shooting of Brown (let alone the aftermath). Lately I feel like anytime I question the relevance/import of even one facet of a story, I wind up with people assuming that I'm taking a position against the whole deal. Seems like I have to preface everything with a million conciliatory caveats that nobody's gonna care about, anyway. Still, here goes:

All of my (limited) firearms training, a blend of law-enforcement and Coast Guard shooting stuff, is 20 years old. Still, that training all basically sent the message that if you're gonna shoot, you shoot until the target/suspect falls down. That leads to firing multiple shots in quick succession, particularly since there's a general feeling that 9mm often won't put a person down immediately with one shot (so they are therefore still dangerous).

Does anyone know if that standard has changed over time at all? Has training or expectations changed somehow? Was it never really a broad standard as I understood it in the first place? I'd really like sources and/or professional knowledge, please.

Everything I was taught was weighed on whether you pull the trigger the first time (which, from everything I've seen on this case, shouldn't ever have happened). That tends to leave me feeling like the ever-present question of "how many times was X shot?" isn't all that relevant unless it's a truly ridiculous number. But, again, it's been a long time, and it's not like I was ever a sworn police officer.

Gah. Yeah. And now I feel like I should write some diatribe about how I feel like all of this is awful. But I guess "How do I discuss singular points of broad topics on the internet without causing a flame war?" is probably a question for another venue...
posted by scaryblackdeath at 12:14 AM on August 19, 2014 [12 favorites]

Yeeks...kicking out Amnesty International? Isn't that the kind of thing you do to make U.N. troops appear on your doorstep?
posted by sexyrobot at 12:14 AM on August 19, 2014 [5 favorites]

Oh, and Amnesty International got escorted out at gunpoint.

On what grounds?! This is insane.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 12:14 AM on August 19, 2014 [11 favorites]

On what grounds?! This is insane.

On the grounds that this would all blow over if people didn't keep watching local law enforcement and seeing all of their bad tactics and huge mistakes, obviously.

Because that's working great so far.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 12:16 AM on August 19, 2014 [16 favorites]

And even more surprised if those deaths are accurately reported by anyone in any position of authority.

Covering up deaths is orders of magnitude more complicated than covering up the cause of one death which is what they're accused of doing so far.

In any case the death toll in Tiananmen Square could have been up to 1000. What's going on in Ferguson is very important but such a comparison just obscures the truth of things. The worth of a social movement is not determined by its death toll.
posted by Justinian at 12:16 AM on August 19, 2014 [19 favorites]

On what grounds?!

I'm pretty sure it was so that AI didn't have a chance to observe the police abuses. Same reason the journalists were removed from the situation.
posted by el io at 12:17 AM on August 19, 2014 [4 favorites]

If you have an idiot racist relative (don't so many of us?) I've found an effective tool is to say this:

"You think Ferguson is an isolated thing? You think trying to "contain" the people there with force instead of listening to them will work? Well, when [insert similar local neighborhood here] starts to realize what has to be done to get some justice, I hope you think your petty bullshit was worth it Tom!"

(You can remove the "Tom" part if you'd like)
posted by lattiboy at 12:18 AM on August 19, 2014 [10 favorites]

Two interesting links from filmmaker Michael Moore via Twitter.

This one regarding a nurse who was on-site after Brown was shot, and begged to check his vitals and attempt to revive him.

And this one, apparently a live-tweeting of the events moments after Brown's shooting.

I've tried to fact check these as rigorously as possible, but, like Phire, it's late and I'm tired.
posted by LoRichTimes at 12:19 AM on August 19, 2014 [3 favorites]

I mean, yeah, a lot of bad shit is going down, but there's not a massacre happening.

Yet.

I mean, if one did happen--say, some horrific number like 65 civilians killed with no injuries to speak of on the jackboot side--I am not at all confident that a significant number of Americans wouldn't just cackle and say "maybe this will send a message to those people that uppity doesn't pay!"

I mean that. Everything is so hateful right now. Maybe it has always been, and my white suburban upbringing (long time ago, now) shielded me from it, and it just seemed better because at least the people in power had to pretend like that wasn't the case, and mainstream journalists actually tried to do their jobs rather than provide PR for the police. Maybe the mask is off now, and we get to see the beast.

If that's the case, that's actually good at the same time it'd awful, because at least comfortable clinging-to-middle-class white people like me have to look into this particular abyss. I cannot look in there and do nothing about it, even if that's just sending a bit of money to people who may be able to do more.

It's funny how my go-to charities are the Red Cross, the ACLU, Planned Parenthood and the NAACP. All exist because the government won't do its job.
posted by maxwelton at 12:19 AM on August 19, 2014 [75 favorites]

From Metafilter's boyfriend, @craigyferg: "Ferguson family motto is "Dulcius ex Asperis" which means "Sweeter after Difficulties" I hope for the town of #Ferguson that this is true."
posted by orrnyereg at 12:19 AM on August 19, 2014 [15 favorites]

An audio feed (not sure if it's archived) was reporting that they were hiding from police who were speeding all over town, firing multiple "five or six at a time" canisters of tear gas into any groups of people they found.

Once they got the media out of the way and set the roadblocks up, it's just... target practice.
posted by cmyk at 12:20 AM on August 19, 2014 [5 favorites]

scaryblackdeath, there was a discussion around that in the last thread. I don't remember all of it the details but I'll try to find and link to the discussion.
posted by triggerfinger at 12:21 AM on August 19, 2014

Re: Amnesty, The police were ejecting anyone who did not have "media credentials", which almost included one of the VICE reporters until others stood up for them (his PRESS badge -- sewn on -- did not survive the encounter).

Anyway, per discussion in chat, @chriskingstl has posted a link to this: Meet Greg “Joey” Johnson, An Opportunistic Communist Revolutionary Agitating in Ferguson (Video)
posted by dhartung at 12:21 AM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

The press conference is starting and you can watch it here.

They are starting with a prayer and ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻
posted by Phire at 12:22 AM on August 19, 2014 [32 favorites]

The National Bar Association has Filed a Lawsuit Against the City of Ferguson and the Ferguson Police Department Seeking Pertinent Information Related to the Shooting
posted by cybercoitus interruptus at 12:22 AM on August 19, 2014 [11 favorites]

The richest and most privileged country in the world should not be doing shit that requires Amnesty International to take time out of their day to watch over us. We should be better than this, and they have other important work to do.

Sorry to say, we've being doing this kind of thing for a very long time, for decades (centuries, if you look at the bigger picture). When Amnesty International was founded in 1961, the equivalent police forces liked to use firehoses instead of LRAD.

I don't need to go over the percentages and sheer numbers of black and other minorities in our prisons now, how much of a prison state we are compared to even the worst regimes around the world.

The argument could be made that Amnesty should have been observing us all along.
posted by Celsius1414 at 12:22 AM on August 19, 2014 [36 favorites]

This is the ex-law-student in me talking, but: Has anybody actually filed suit or stated intention to do so, so far? This is absolutely not to dismiss the impact of everything else going on, but it's something I haven't heard anything about, and I just keep thinking, do they realize that they're basically spending the city budget for the next five decades on this idiocy? I'm imagining that most of the suits are going to take awhile to start coming in, but where are the temporary restraining orders?

--and then cybercoitus interruptus posts as I'm typing, so I guess that's at least a start of an answer.
posted by Sequence at 12:23 AM on August 19, 2014

No. You do not get to stand in the middle of Ferguson wearing a police badge and pray for peace. Fucking no.
posted by cmyk at 12:23 AM on August 19, 2014 [29 favorites]

Yet.

Sure, but that doesn't imply anything about the likelihood of a massacre which I think is clearly vanishingly low for anything that could reasonably be called a massacre. Just like the comparison to Tiannenmen Square this kind of thing doesn't shed any light on the very real issues that are actually being exposed..
posted by Justinian at 12:23 AM on August 19, 2014 [3 favorites]

The National Bar Association has Filed a Lawsuit Against the City of Ferguson & Police Department.
posted by Phire at 12:24 AM on August 19, 2014 [3 favorites]

I read that as "National Rifle Association" and was very confused.
posted by Justinian at 12:25 AM on August 19, 2014 [3 favorites]

Note that the National Bar Association^ (black lawyers) is distinguished from the American Bar Association, which at one time did not admit anyone but whites.
posted by dhartung at 12:25 AM on August 19, 2014 [25 favorites]

Maxwelton, if people did get massacred, I'd go to Ferguson myself. I don't know what I would do or how I could help, but I wouldn't just watch it on television.

Part of me already wants to go, just to show support, but I'm not sure that would be wise, or even desired.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 12:26 AM on August 19, 2014 [5 favorites]

triggerfinger: “People were starting to discuss molotov cocktails in the other thread, and I was about to post this NYT video, which had just shown up in my feed and has a shot of a protestor throwing what appears to be one (note: if true, this would be the first and only evidence I've seen of molotov cocktails).”

Yeah, although it looks like it goes out right before launch. Also the contents appear clear to me. I'd expect it to be more gasoline colored. Also, I think that was last Wednesday. There was also this AP photo from Wednesday night of a different guy.

I don't have a link, but I watched them take a bottle of clear liquid with a rag down the neck out of the back of that pickup that had all the people in it tonight live on television. I'm willing to accept that there have been Molotov cocktails present at the protests, for some value of Molotov cocktails that don't actually light anyone or anything on fire.

futz: “Many of don't use chat or have limited internet. So what happened in the last hour?”

In addition to everything above, the cops quite literally used tear gas to pin down Jacqueline Lee of The Belleville News-Democrat.
posted by ob1quixote at 12:27 AM on August 19, 2014 [5 favorites]

"You think Ferguson is an isolated thing? You think trying to "contain" the people there with force instead of listening to them will work? Well, when [insert similar local neighborhood here] starts to realize what has to be done to get some justice, I hope you think your petty bullshit was worth it Tom!"

(You can remove the "Tom" part if you'd like)

No, it's Tom.
posted by Drinky Die at 12:28 AM on August 19, 2014 [15 favorites]

I keep thinking all that money they've spent on those ridiculous armored battle vehicles and military gear - all the better places it could have gone. It was an insult to injury to have made such a display of intimidation and violations of rights (including the bullying and arrest of news reporters trying to cover what will probably turn out to be the national story of the year).

Watching the August 16 press conference, where an embattled Governor Nixon looked inadequately out of touch with the people's grievances, I felt I was watching something very rare. Here was the governor of the state of Missouri being questioned by his constituents - asked to act on their behalf to serve justice. Several times people asked Mr. Nixon to address the officer who murdered Mike Brown. Several times he sidestepped that line of questioning and left the podium to other officials to handle the angry, pained questions that community members wanted direct answers to.

It's an amazing video, really. Watching someone use dry, euphemistic rhetoric to address people who so clearly saw it for what it was and sometimes dared to cut through it... it was both heartbreaking and inspiring.

Example:

Governor Nixon: We can NOT have looting...crimes at night...we can't have people fearful...

[Woman in background]: We can't have police officers killing people!

This is what the protests are about. What the people want is accountability, and the ability to live without fear that a squad car pulling up is anything more than a public servant doing his duty to uphold lawful principles and protect the people from the kind of violence that would get people without badges life in prison (or worse) for carrying out.
posted by fantodstic at 12:28 AM on August 19, 2014 [73 favorites]

Captain Johnson in the press release claiming police officers acted with professionalism, asking protestors to protest "during daytime hours", and blames the media for making things worse because "they had to be repeatedly asked to return to the sidewalks". I can't.

No shots fired by police, apparently, but about a metric shit tonne (Official Scientific Measurement) of tear gas. What are the odds that that was a deliberate strategic decision?
posted by Phire at 12:30 AM on August 19, 2014 [6 favorites]

This press conference makes me want to puke
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 12:32 AM on August 19, 2014 [2 favorites]

Sure, but that doesn't imply anything about the likelihood of a massacre which I think is clearly vanishingly low for anything that could reasonably be called a massacre.

It might not be likely to hit Tiananmen Square numbers, but we are well, well past the point of tensions escalated where they were on May 4, 1970. And I have walked past that memorial more times than I can count. Google's dictionary says a massacre is "an indiscriminate and brutal slaughter of people", which to my mind, May 4 was, because the important part of the May 4 shootings was that four students died, but it wasn't like anybody was controlling the situation such to make sure that only four students died. Those were white college kids, and they still fired live ammunition into a crowd because someone allegedly threw a rock. You think that can't happen again?

Part of me already wants to go, just to show support, but I'm not sure that would be wise, or even desired.

I said this in an Ask thread, but it still holds true here: Give money, not time, unless you have no money to give. To add to that, even if you have no money, give time locally if you can before going there, unless you have special useful skills. Groups that do real good in these situations never have enough budget but often have a surplus of volunteers, especially in the wake of big publicized events.
posted by Sequence at 12:32 AM on August 19, 2014 [18 favorites]

Johnson has a molotov cocktail at the conference that was allegedly thrown at police, but acknowledges that many people in the media and protestors have said that they cannot corroborate the presence of molotov cocktails. He also has guns/bullets allegedly fired by protestors last night.

No updates on the condition of the shooting victims.

A question asking about whether peaceful protestors are allowed to be here at night - "They have a right to be here, but I ask them to come during the daytime". Questions about curfew being dodged with "safety was a concern".

I don't know how much longer I can watch this bullshit.
posted by Phire at 12:33 AM on August 19, 2014

He's claiming that the violence "just happened to happen" around midnight, despite curfew - when, conveniently, is the time the police stirred the crowd up with the LRAD and bullhorn announcements that anyone sticking around was in danger of arrest.
posted by cmyk at 12:35 AM on August 19, 2014 [2 favorites]

Wasn't Johnson supposed to be the good guy?
posted by orrnyereg at 12:35 AM on August 19, 2014 [4 favorites]

This press conference makes me want to puke

Officer Johnson is a cynical token brought in to give the white police a black face.
posted by anemone of the state at 12:36 AM on August 19, 2014 [25 favorites]

Depends on who he's being the good guy for.
posted by dhartung at 12:37 AM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

I'm willing to accept that there have been Molotov cocktails present at the protests, for some value of Molotov cocktails that don't actually light anyone or anything on fire.

I agree. I'm not an expert on these kinds of things, but comparing the handful (?) of unlit molotov cocktails they've found with the seemingly indiscriminate amount of teargas and flashbangs being thrown along with house-to-house sweeps and everyfuckingthing else the police have been doing seems..........DISPROPORTIONATE.
posted by triggerfinger at 12:38 AM on August 19, 2014 [8 favorites]

Ugh. That press conference with Johnson was pretty terrible.
posted by krinklyfig at 12:38 AM on August 19, 2014

One of the things that's been going through my mind tonight is that keeping things in perspective, since even the notoriously-polite Canadian populace can begin looting and burning things in response to much milder things like disappointing hockey outcomes this really is in sum an emphatically peaceful protest against a police officer shooting someone to death and the subsequent outrageous actions of law enforcement.

Ray Walston, Luck Dragon: Part of me already wants to go, just to show support, but I'm not sure that would be wise, or even desired.

Relevant AskMe.
posted by XMLicious at 12:40 AM on August 19, 2014 [8 favorites]

Let's see...

- Claiming 'heavy gunfire' at cops, with no proof
- Claiming Molotov cocktails (plural), with no proof, just one that is let's just say suspiciously made
- Claiming the media made things worse
- Claiming violence spontaneously erupted and not in response to deliberate police provocation

I can't even continue I'm so angry
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 12:41 AM on August 19, 2014 [21 favorites]

This just gets more upsetting each day. (I know that's a major understatement)
posted by SisterHavana at 12:42 AM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

I really wonder who got to Captain Johnson, and how. His behaviour on the first night he was in Ferguson is so markedly different from how he's been the past few days and I have to have to believe that his strings are being pulled rather than that someone would turn on those he stood alongside so quickly and completely.
posted by Phire at 12:43 AM on August 19, 2014 [15 favorites]

"We're gonna make this community whole" -- yep, metric fuckloads of tear gas, tanks, and massed guns pointing at unarmed civilians will make Ferguson whole right into the ground. Citizen! If you fail to submit to our making this community whole, you will be arrested or have other unnamed but threatening actions inflicted upon you!
posted by cybercoitus interruptus at 12:44 AM on August 19, 2014 [5 favorites]

Phire: “Johnson has a molotov cocktail at the conference that was allegedly thrown at police, but acknowledges that many people in the media and protestors have said that they cannot corroborate the presence of molotov cocktails.”

No, that's almost certainly the bottle I saw them take out of the back the pickup with all the people in it. One presumes all the occupants will be charged with conspiracy and possession of a weapon of mass destruction.

In all seriousness, as Bomani Jones said tonight, they need to pick up Darren Wilson, book him, mug shot him, hand him the check to bond out, put him on paid leave, then put it on the front page of the paper. That's got to be cheaper and easier than all of this mishegoss.
posted by ob1quixote at 12:46 AM on August 19, 2014 [12 favorites]

He seemed sincere tonight. His voice was cracking and he was emotional. He described officers coming under gunfire, and I believe it from watching the Vice feed. He's saying that he doesn't want to see a single casualty and that he's taking steps to ensure that.

But here's the thing we all know, those of us who have been watching things go down on the livestreams: the people are amped up directly because your police are showing up in paramilitary gear, shutting down the town, confusing and yelling at the media and separating them from the protesters, shooting teargas at the slightest provocation (water bottles), blaring ear-piercing sonic torture devices. You're the ones angering the crowd. Deliberately. Don't get emotional and defend and justify police force, when the police have instigated this from the very beginning. You saw yourself how the community comes together when the police deescalates and supports the protesters, rather than treating them like cockroaches to be flushed out. You of all people should be aware of the reality of how to make things better.
posted by naju at 12:47 AM on August 19, 2014 [81 favorites]

Someone got to Captain Johnson, right? He seemed so sincere earlier days, talking about how he wasn't afraid of this community. That didn't seem like an act to me.

This creeping feeling that there is no good guy and no way to resolve this is the worst and scariest thing I've ever known.
posted by Pardon Our Dust at 12:47 AM on August 19, 2014 [3 favorites]

There are lots of good guys. They're just protesting, not wearing uniforms.
posted by anemone of the state at 12:48 AM on August 19, 2014 [43 favorites]

I have to wonder what Wilson is thinking right now. Say he drove back tonight and turned himself in. Wouldn't that calm everything down pretty much immediately? One guy does the right thing and a dangerous situation would be defused.
posted by orrnyereg at 12:51 AM on August 19, 2014

"We're gonna make this community a whole"

Ftfw
posted by nathancaswell at 12:51 AM on August 19, 2014 [3 favorites]

Say he drove back tonight and turned himself in. Wouldn't that calm everything down pretty much immediately?

Turned himself in to what? He's not on the lam, he hasn't been charged with anything.
posted by Justinian at 12:55 AM on August 19, 2014 [13 favorites]

One guy does the right thing and a dangerous situation would be defused.

I am quite sure he doesn't think he did anything wrong, and all of 'those people' who are protesting are getting too big for their britches.

Seriously.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 12:55 AM on August 19, 2014 [11 favorites]

he hasn't been charged with anything

AKA the root of the whole problem.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 12:57 AM on August 19, 2014 [30 favorites]

Which doesn't change the fact that there's no-one to whom Wilson can turn himself in at this point, which is all I was sayin'?
posted by Justinian at 1:00 AM on August 19, 2014 [2 favorites]

He could easily do a press conference stating that he is aware of how his actions have caused pain for the community, and he is returning to the community to face the music.

But he's probably scared. Poor little guy.

*puke*
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 1:02 AM on August 19, 2014 [3 favorites]

Since I cant' find a way to get a time index or fast forward on Bomani Jones' video podcast, the gist of what he said is that the powers that be in Ferguson should just sacrifice Wilson and charge, arraign, and bond him out just to keep the peace.
posted by ob1quixote at 1:03 AM on August 19, 2014

Also because that would be the right thing to do.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 1:04 AM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

To face what music? The root of the problem is the complete lack of investigation into the shooting and the contradictory information provided by the police. Apparently the police didn't even interview the witnesses.
posted by I-baLL at 1:04 AM on August 19, 2014 [4 favorites]

> the gist of what he said is that the powers that be in Ferguson should just sacrifice Wilson and charge, arraign, and bond him out just to keep the peace.

That would start a horrible precedent and would not solve any of the underlying causes of the problems with police corruption and police/community relations.
posted by I-baLL at 1:06 AM on August 19, 2014 [4 favorites]

Earlier in chat someone (sorry, I can't remember who), posted this instagram from the Ferguson Library, which might be my one of my favorite things I've seen lately.

The small bright spots in such a huge gulf of sadness. Libraries are a treasure.
posted by triggerfinger at 1:08 AM on August 19, 2014 [13 favorites]

I-baLL: “That would start a horrible precedent and would not solve any of the underlying causes of the problems with police corruption and police/community relations.”

Oh, absolutely. On the other hand, how many more nights of this can the town really take? The only thing that hasn't brought the conflict to all-out war is the fact that while lots of leftists have Che Guevara t-shirts, not nearly as many have read his book.
posted by ob1quixote at 1:12 AM on August 19, 2014 [8 favorites]

That would start a horrible precedent

Hmm, yes. Charging police who murder unarmed suspects would be a horrible precedent.

Doing so would, actually, start addressing those underlying causes of which you speak.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 1:12 AM on August 19, 2014 [24 favorites]

feckless: What do you expect them to do? Arrest him and....? I can just imagine the trial:

Prosecutor: The defendant has been charged with murder. However since there was no investigation whatsoever I'm going to sit back and cross my fingers.

You can't charge somebody without any investigation. The problem is that the local police haven't investigated anything. This is why people are up in arms.
posted by I-baLL at 1:18 AM on August 19, 2014 [4 favorites]

"they need to pick up Darren Wilson, book him, mug shot him, hand him the check to bond out, put him on paid leave, then put it on the front page of the paper. That's got to be cheaper and easier than all of this mishegoss."

I'm pretty sure that the intent of the police isn't to bring peace to Ferguson. At this point they don't seem to be doing anything but contradicting everything they claim to be doing to help, out in the open while cameras are rolling, when they're not arresting journalists. All their actions seem to be speaking the naked language of brute power and suppression, while they do everything possible to inflame and incite the protesters and media. It seems very much like deliberate provocation, and I feel like they haven't gotten the violent response they wanted yet, the kind of thing that would justify a serious crackdown, but it's happening nonetheless.
posted by krinklyfig at 1:19 AM on August 19, 2014 [13 favorites]

ob1quixote: "On the other hand, how many more nights of this can the town really take?"

People won't just go home because of an arrest. Hell, most of the folks are home. The cops are teargassing whole neighborhoods.
posted by I-baLL at 1:20 AM on August 19, 2014 [4 favorites]

Can anyone imagine the police leadership, prosecutor, and political leaders of Ferguson and Saint Louis County deciding to admit at this point that they were wrong and should have investigated diligently from the beginning?

No, of course you can't.

Regardless of whether they picked the right course of action they are, at this point, fully and irrevocably committed -- there can be no backing down for them on the issue of whether or not Officer Wilson should be charged.
posted by Nerd of the North at 1:20 AM on August 19, 2014 [7 favorites]

Earlier in chat someone (sorry, I can't remember who), posted this instagram from the Ferguson Library, which might be my one of my favorite things I've seen lately.

The small bright spots in such a huge gulf of sadness. Libraries are a treasure.

*Please watch closely for the removal of this sign.
posted by Drinky Die at 1:30 AM on August 19, 2014 [8 favorites]

"they need to pick up Darren Wilson, book him, mug shot him, hand him the check to bond out, put him on paid leave, then put it on the front page of the paper. That's got to be cheaper and easier than all of this mishegoss."

At this point, even if they arrest, convict, and execute Wilson on the steps of the courthouse by having him torn apart by a horde of vicious rabid demon weasels in full view of the protestors, that not going to be enough.

The entire police force of Fergueson has been threatening, intimidating, manhandling, macing, LRADing, teargassing, and imprisoning these people - without any sort of reasonable cause - for more than a week. Wilson was only the trigger. It's bigger than Wilson now. They're all culpable.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 1:51 AM on August 19, 2014 [41 favorites]

One comment deleted; hey, sorry, but we really can't have an I/P discussion in this thread, so maybe rephrase in a way that doesn't set off a huge derail? Thanks.
posted by taz (staff) at 2:01 AM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

“An Open Letter to Captain Ronald S. Johnson,” Chief Ed Delmore, Law Officer, 17 August 2014

“What's the Agenda in Ferguson?,” Lt. Jim Glennon, Law Officer, 18 August 2014
posted by ob1quixote at 2:18 AM on August 19, 2014 [9 favorites]

I'm not sure why it matters that nobody else has been killed yet. Isn't the death of one young man enough? Isn't the community outrage that has been squashed every night by militarized police enough?
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 2:23 AM on August 19, 2014 [7 favorites]

#Ferguson Capt Johnson just said to @JakeTapper 'we didnt use tear gas, just smokebombs'.Tapper: 'Yes you did,we got gassed'.Capt: ok we did
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 2:24 AM on August 19, 2014 [29 favorites]

ob1quixote: "“An Open Letter to Captain Ronald S. Johnson,” Chief Ed Delmore, Law Officer, 17 August 2014

“What's the Agenda in Ferguson?,” Lt. Jim Glennon, Law Officer, 18 August 2014"

Urgh.
posted by brokkr at 2:31 AM on August 19, 2014 [7 favorites]

#Ferguson Capt Johnson just said to @JakeTapper 'we didnt use tear gas, just smokebombs'.Tapper: 'Yes you did,we got gassed'.Capt: ok we did

That is the sound of the last lingering threads of Johnson's credibility evaporating.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 2:35 AM on August 19, 2014 [4 favorites]

Setting him up to fail seems like it was the whole point.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 2:37 AM on August 19, 2014 [14 favorites]

Holy shit that is cringey and embarrassing.

I'm really wondering what message they're trying to send here. Because the one coming through loud and clear is something to the effect of "All police are full of shit, but especially the ones who go out of there way to show you momentarily how much they aren't and how much they get it and can totally pal around and have your side".

Because every kid in this area whose old enough to remember this is never going to be convinced of anything but ACAB.
posted by emptythought at 2:38 AM on August 19, 2014 [15 favorites]

ob1quixote: "“An Open Letter to Captain Ronald S. Johnson,” Chief Ed Delmore, Law Officer, 17 August 2014

“What's the Agenda in Ferguson?,” Lt. Jim Glennon, Law Officer, 18 August 2014"

I guess I shouldn't be stunned at how differently they perceive these events but I am. Really? If there's a few troublemakers in a larger crowd the correct response is to tear gas the whole crowd? The correct response when an officer has shot a kid is to smear the kid sooner?

I guess everyone is guilty and deserving of punishment. Judge Dredd has arrived.
posted by Joey Michaels at 2:42 AM on August 19, 2014 [3 favorites]

...Law Officer...Law Officer...

To quote from their "about" page:

Featuring the best in tactics, technology and training for the law enforcement professional, Law Officer magazine provides the quality information needed to get the job done safely and effectively. Editorial content targets the needs of trainers, supervisors and middle managers ... important decision-makers and purchasing influencers.

Between that and the various equipment sections, the goal of the magazine seems to be to sell toys to cops via pushing thin blue line bullshit and fear.
posted by frimble at 2:55 AM on August 19, 2014 [14 favorites]

ob1quixote: ““An Open Letter to Captain Ronald S. Johnson,” Chief Ed Delmore, Law Officer, 17 August 2014

“What's the Agenda in Ferguson?,” Lt. Jim Glennon, Law Officer, 18 August 2014”

brokkr: “Urgh.”

Joey Michaels: “Judge Dredd has arrived.”

The worst part is only cops who take their profession seriously are likely to read the copy of Law Officer Magazine that's probably lying around the break room. I shudder to think what passes for analysis among those who wouldn't bother.
posted by ob1quixote at 2:56 AM on August 19, 2014 [3 favorites]

Just to be clear, I'm not criticising ob1quixote for posting the links, just saddened that "Be afraid, buy more stuff" is a line of advertisement to cops.
posted by frimble at 2:59 AM on August 19, 2014 [6 favorites]

New Republic's Angela J Davis on Bob McCulloch the person who will decide on Michael Brown's death being investigated.
posted by viggorlijah at 3:05 AM on August 19, 2014

This, ladies and gentlemen, is our fabled molotov cocktail. Almost famous as evidence of it existing for the past three days has never been brought forth but here it is:

View it in all it's splendid, unlit, probably unlightable glory! We wanted proof. They gave us proof...of an unthrown, unlit, probably dud, probably fabricated molotov cocktail.
posted by lizarrd at 3:12 AM on August 19, 2014 [24 favorites]

A detail not entirely elucidated in this new FPP, my notes: The incident report and video released as mentioned in the first paragraph below the fold only cover the alleged robbery—not the fatal shooting, which is designated by the police as a separate incident. At the point the convenience store video was released the authorities were also already in possession of video of the shooting such as that of Piaget Crenshaw (via), but did not release it.

The ACLU sent a letter to the Police Department's Custodian of Records under the Missouri Sunshine Law reading in part,

This request is for the incident report only, which is deﬁned as "a record of a law enforcement agency consisting of the date, time, specific location, name of the victim and immediate facts and circumstances surrounding the initial report of a crime or incident, including any logs of reported crimes, accidents and complaints maintained by that agency" Mo. Rev. Stat. § 610.100.1(4). Unlike "investigative reports," which may be closed until the investigation becomes inactive, "[a]ll incident reports and arrest reports shall be open records." Mo. Rev. Stat. § 610.100.2.

The Bureau of Central Police Records responded with a one-line print-out of a search result listing the shooting incident but added a hand-written note,

In ref to your request for incident report involving Michal [sic] Brown, This is an on-going investigation and we are not able to release a copy at this time.

The ACLU then filed a law suit ^{(PDF, includes original letters)} against both the Police Department and the County itself (who appear to be represented by the same lawyer) saying that Defendants' failure to produce the requested records is a purposeful, or, in the alternate, knowing violation of the Sunshine Law.

Yesterday Carlos Miller of Photography is Not a Crime said that PINAC had submitted its own Sunshine Law request for the incident report as well as coordinated more than a hundred other people submitting the same request by email, cc'ing a PINAC email address. But when he spoke with the police lieutenant at the records office, he was told that none of the emails had been received due to an email outage and that they had probably "disappeared." In the comments, hacking attempts are mentioned that may have disrupted email service to the police.
posted by XMLicious at 3:14 AM on August 19, 2014 [14 favorites]

They are using the presence of unlit Molotov cocktails as evidence that its warfare out there yet nothing is on fire. Do black people not have lighters or something? BULLSHIT.
posted by Foam Pants at 3:24 AM on August 19, 2014 [29 favorites]

> #Ferguson Capt Johnson just said to @JakeTapper 'we didnt use tear gas, just smokebombs'. Tapper: 'Yes you did,we got gassed'. Capt: ok we did

That is the sound of the last lingering threads of Johnson's credibility evaporating.

I saw this exchange between Johnson, Tapper, and Don Lemon around 2AM when it happened. It was preceded by an equally comical interlude in which they were initially interviewing him by phone, then one of them said something like "Hey - we can't be too far from each other, right?" and they went through the process of describing nearby landmarks and coordinating directions for several minutes, live on the air, with Tapper and Lemon occasionally glancing at the camera cringingly, until Johnson walked up out of the background to shake hands with them. I'm guessing you may not find a clip of that on CNN's video archive.
posted by XMLicious at 3:25 AM on August 19, 2014 [2 favorites]

lizarrd: "View it in all it's splendid, unlit, probably unlightable glory! We wanted proof. They gave us proof...of an unthrown, unlit, probably dud, probably fabricated molotov cocktail."

That looks like a plastic (PET) bottle to me, which would of course be near totally useless as a molotov. Anybody who knows Colt bottles who can elaborate?
posted by brokkr at 3:38 AM on August 19, 2014

"To protect and serve" seems more about protecting and serving the police department these days.

Those Law Officer editorials are a joke. If they seriously think some needs a hundred hours of ride alongside, plus various classes in order to be able to criticize police offers, that's idiotic.

You're supposed to be the professionals. Shooting an unarmed person doesn't sound professional.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 3:38 AM on August 19, 2014 [6 favorites]

Even if we were to assume for sake of argument that the Molotov cocktail is legit, the presence of a single Molotov cocktail does not justify all of this foofaraw. Indeed, the actions of Ferguson PD are exactly what create such things. It's telling that we had never seen such an object before, in these protests. Nobody had felt the need to make such a thing until after several days of rolling tanks.

Between the tear gassing and the LRADs and the concrete blockades and all the rest, it's not a surprise that, yes, much as in the sweaty-bed fantasies of the Second Amendment groupies, the citizens of Ferguson eventually felt the need to defend themselves from an occupying force. I do not endorse the creation of such devices. However, this is nonetheless the inevitable result of how Ferguson PD is failing its community.

I'm also a big fan of the baggied gun right next to it. Subtle, guys. If I didn't know any better, I would swear that you were cobbling together a post hoc justification for careening around like chickens with sparklers duct-taped to their heads.

In my fantasy world, they would just summarily fire the entire Ferguson PD. Or, assuming union objections, they could stay on at full pay, but only with Nerf swords, pantomime steeds, and mandatory boomboxes which play "Baby Elephant Walk". And if, instead of "hello", they could only say, "MAKE WAY FOR A VERY SPECIAL BOY!".
posted by Sticherbeast at 4:15 AM on August 19, 2014 [28 favorites]

lizarrd: “This, ladies and gentlemen, is our fabled molotov cocktail. Almost famous as evidence of it existing for the past three days has never been brought forth but here it is:

View it in all it's splendid, unlit, probably unlightable glory! We wanted proof. They gave us proof...of an unthrown, unlit, probably dud, probably fabricated molotov cocktail.”

I absolutely agree that the police have overreacted to — well what haven't the overracted to in the last ten days? Anyway, all this talk of Molotov cocktails from the police seems a little overblown. What it looks like when people use Molotov cocktails is more like what you'd see in The Maidan.

However in the interest of fairness, at about 4:50 in this video from the live midnight Last Word you can pretty clearly see the guy in blue pull what appears to be the above "Molotov cocktail" out of the back of the pickup. You get a little bit better view of it as one of the tactical team tries to balance it on the hood of a nearby car a minute or two later.

As I said above, "I'm willing to accept that there have been Molotov cocktails present at the protests, for some value of Molotov cocktails that don't actually light anyone or anything on fire."
posted by ob1quixote at 4:17 AM on August 19, 2014 [3 favorites]

That looks like a plastic (PET) bottle to me, which would of course be near totally useless as a molotov. Anybody who knows Colt bottles who can elaborate?

Looks like a glass bottle to me. The plastic 40s look VERY different, and lack that distinct 40oz shape.

In addition to this, colt 45 is not available in plastic bottles. Only millercoors brands do the "safety" 40s right now.

And that said, i'm totally about that tweet above. choosing a colt bottle for something that is likely a complete fabrication just screams dorky racist honky shit to me. "What bottle do you think a black guy would use?". It's like something the villain in a total satire blacksploitation movie like undercover brother would do.
posted by emptythought at 4:18 AM on August 19, 2014 [35 favorites]

Instead of their current manual (if such a thing even exists) they get printouts of Phillippe's greatest hits from Achewood. THIS IS YOUR ROLE MODEL NOW.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 4:18 AM on August 19, 2014 [4 favorites]

I was idly flipping around the high reaches of cable last night and came upon the episode of Parks and Recreation where Leslie is trying to get the retiring police chief to endorse her, and he talks about how her opponent gives a lot of money to the force, and Ben replies, "Mo money, mo problems, I always say," and the chief glares at him and says, "Or mo money, mo Kevlar vests that save lives," and I could barely keep myself from screaming "YOU WORK IN FUCKING PAWNEE IT IS NOT FALLUJAH" and I really should have gone to bed at that point but Louis CK was in that ep as well and I felt better.
posted by Etrigan at 4:21 AM on August 19, 2014 [6 favorites]

So, did we do the part where it seems that the CCTV footage does not in fact show Brown shoplifting?
posted by ominous_paws at 4:26 AM on August 19, 2014 [11 favorites]

So, did we do the part where it seems that the CCTV footage does not in fact show Brown shoplifting?

Yea, and we did the part where that doesn't necessarily show him not. Yea, the first video painted it a very specific way they wanted to... But the general consensus reached in the ridiculously huge original thread was that it was an ID check type confrontation, which seemed to be supported by the fact that he apparently had no ID or drivers license and only an expired learners permit.

the "He goes in and tries to buy them, clerk says no, he throws the money on the counter and tries to just leave" routine seemed super reasonable and plausible to me when it got brought up then. That's exactly the kind of shit that me and my friends did when we were his age. Because hey, "it isn't stealing if you pay for it!" cocky teen boy logic.

They have to accept the sale or it's shoplifting, even if you leave the money there. It's very telling that the clerk never called the cops though, probably deeming it not even worth it because he left the money there and as mentioned in thread 1, it could open them up to licensing issues for "selling to minors" even if they sort of technically didn't.

I really wish there was some way to just block all future discussion of the shoplifting thing in the entire world though, and MIB neuralizer style erase it from everyones memory. Because as John Oliver said, it's fucking pointless. And even Ron Johnson, before he revealed himself as the neutered new-boss-same-as-old-boss directly stated that he was not suspected of being involved at the time he was stopped.
posted by emptythought at 4:33 AM on August 19, 2014 [10 favorites]

Maxwelton, if people did get massacred, I'd go to Ferguson myself. I don't know what I would do or how I could help, but I wouldn't just watch it on television.

What's stopping you now? Honestly, this will keep happening as long as it's only black people standing up. If you're white and genuinely want this to change, you need to join the protests, either in Ferguson or somewhere else.

Yesterday the police in Ferguson arrested a 90 year old woman for protesting. She's a Holocaust survivor. What are the rest of you doing?
posted by dry white toast at 4:38 AM on August 19, 2014 [6 favorites]

That looks like a plastic (PET) bottle to me, which would of course be near totally useless as a molotov. Anybody who knows Colt bottles who can elaborate?

Yeah, Colt 45 bottles are glass.

And that said, i'm totally about that tweet above. choosing a colt bottle for something that is likely a complete fabrication just screams dorky racist honky shit to me. "What bottle do you think a black guy would use?". It's like something the villain in a total satire blacksploitation movie like undercover brother would do.

I hear you. That said, I don't see how the drink choice makes it any more or less likely to be a fabrication. It's not as if people (black and otherwise) don't drink Colt 45 in real life. It's also a pretty decent practical choice for a Molotov: just spacious enough, holdable and throwable, breaks upon impact.

If I were a corrupt cop who was manufacturing phony Molotovs, I would take a variety of beer/malt bottles and stuff them with rags. I wouldn't just hastily assemble one Colt 45 and hope people really respond to the stereotypical drink choice. I mean, if I'm already telling lies about the opposition, why only dip my toe in it? It would be trivial to assemble the ingredients.

The whole thing is still Ferguson PD's fault. And the "why not multiple bottles" angle cuts in the other direction as well: are they really trying to say that all of this apocalyptic horseshit was about a single unlit Molotov? A weapon which was only created in the wake of a days-long siege? It's like watching an idiot burn down his house, because a mouse might eventually get in.
posted by Sticherbeast at 4:38 AM on August 19, 2014 [7 favorites]

DemocracyNow is live in Ferguson from 8-9am EDT (via)
posted by jeffburdges at 4:40 AM on August 19, 2014 [2 favorites]

Some media company needs to put an armored truck full of running cameras in the middle of all this and just leave it there.
posted by wabbittwax at 4:40 AM on August 19, 2014 [7 favorites]

ET - won't dwell on this if it's come up before. I appreciate your point about it not mattering in that sense, but to me it's still shocking that such a flagrant attempt at editing the footage was made. Which probably makes me hopelessly naive.
posted by ominous_paws at 4:42 AM on August 19, 2014

The President needs to invite Wilson and the parents of Michael Brown over for cocktails. That would end this whole mess.
posted by Renoroc at 4:43 AM on August 19, 2014 [4 favorites]

I really wonder who got to Captain Johnson, and how. His behaviour on the first night he was in Ferguson is so markedly different from how he's been the past few days and I have to have to believe that his strings are being pulled rather than that someone would turn on those he stood alongside so quickly and completely.

I'm not sure why everyone in the thread hating on the police thought that somehow a Captain from the Highway Patrol was going to make it all right, even if he is African American.
posted by OmieWise at 4:44 AM on August 19, 2014 [8 favorites]

The world gets repeatedly told that Johnson is in charge, when clearly he's not deciding anything, he doesn't even know what's going on half the time, he just stands there in front of the cameras trying to figure out how to keep his pension
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 4:45 AM on August 19, 2014 [6 favorites]

I'm not sure why everyone in the thread hating on the police thought that somehow a Captain from the Highway Patrol was going to make it all right, even if he is African American.

Whatever the first night he was in charge (Friday?) went so well, and peacefully. And he grew up around Ferguson. I think a lot of us were hopeful.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 4:48 AM on August 19, 2014 [9 favorites]

Yeah, Johnson legitimately seemed to get it on Friday night. I have no idea what to make of that in retrospect anymore.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 4:50 AM on August 19, 2014 [6 favorites]

I'm starting to see references to this tweet among conservatives:

Police sources tell me more than a dozen witnesses have corroborated cop's version of events in shooting #Ferguson

That's from Christine Byers, crime reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. This is apparently the next step in the police PR response.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 4:50 AM on August 19, 2014 [2 favorites]

I guess it's just that the "Hah, see, he DIDN'T steal them!" narrative bugs me because it's also spin. It's reactionary spin, and spin we want to high five because it at face value seems to be scoring for our team... but it's still not really a seemingly accurate representation of what went on there that makes sense.

There's a lot of spin and bullshit coming from the cops side, but i don't think we're helping anything at all by just firing the same laser cannon straight back. Lead with the facts, not a questionable interpretation.

I also think we really need to bring back that big 20-ish item list from thread 1, it went(compiled from several posts). Let's try and check off what we can:

1. Darren Wilson's record from his years with the dissolved Jennings police department
2. Any of Wilson's disciplinary records that aren't in his Ferguson Police Department file
3. All video of the shooting from the cellphones that were confiscated by police
4. The police reports directly pertaining to the shooting of Mike Brown
5. The percentage of Ferguson police officers who actually live in Ferguson
6. What happened in the conversation leading up to the shoplifting incident
7. What tests the medical examiner did to find Mike Brown had marijuana in his body
8. Why purchased body cameras weren't in use in Ferguson, and when they will be
9. Why Darren Wilson hasn't been detained, and whether police know his whereabouts
10. Why no ambulance was called when Mike Brown was shot
11. Why a nurse on the scene was not allowed to help when Mike Brown was shot
12. Why Mike Brown's body was left on the scene for four hours after he was shot
13. What role Charter and AT&T had in censoring local cable and Internet last weekend
14. Who's astroturfing Twitter with "Michael Brown is GUILTY! Forget that thug and stop being bitches!"
15. Mike Brown's juvenile record (If it exists it will get out because the Gentle Giant thing has to be put to rest once and for all).
16. Darren Wilson's medical records for the "medical treatment" he got after the incident.
17. Who leaked the "traces of marijuana" result to the press?
18. Any proof that protesters actually did fire Molotov cocktails etc at the police.
19. Name of the officer who threatened he would shoot the reporter last night.
20. Why Chief Jackson released the video and other materials about the robbery when expressly asked not to by the DOJ and other parties.(and who FOIA'd it, if anyone)

As a random closing note, i was driving around tonight trying to pull some stupid coupon deal. I was listening to NPR, because there's rarely anything worth listening to on the radio and i had forgotten the cord for my phone. And oh hey, they're talking about Ferguson!

Less than 2 minutes in, they describe the convenience store alleged shoplifting as both a "alleged strong arm robbery" and, i shit you not, thuggish. It sounded shockingly fucking fox news to me.* I seriously had to just turn it off. It almost seemed like the person who was being interviewed was a bit off-put by that language too.

Stitcherbeast: I hear you. That said, I don't see how the drink choice makes it any more or less likely to be a fabrication. It's not as if people (black and otherwise) don't drink Colt 45 in real life. It's also a pretty decent practical choice for a Molotov: just spacious enough, holdable and throwable, breaks upon impact.

The thing is, colt is not the cheapest 40. Every time i see it around here it's sort of mid-priced as far as 40s go, since it's not made by millercoors who seem to make most 40s, but by pabst. It's like 50 cents or a buck more than say, olde english. Unless you just found it in the recycling, if you went and bought a 40 and some gas to make a molotov... why wouldn't you get the cheapest one? I also don't even see it around outside of a store almost ever because of that. If you're buying a 40, you're probably going to get pretty much the cheapest one that you don't hate. There's usually 2-3 around the cheapest price point(oe, mickeys, 211, etc). I'd see like, empty 211s and OE 40s all the time back before they banned them from sale in the main part of my city, but very rarely colt 45.

Combine that with the fact that it's associated with black people by disconnected-from-reality racist white people in the same way that watermelons, kool aid, and fried chicken are and it just makes me really skeptical and somehow sets off my bullshit alarm as a lazy frame job. It just feels like another element of the full court press to frame the entire town as being full of uppity negroes by out of touch racist white cops/good ol boy politicians.

*(i can't dig up the transcript right now, it wasn't this, it was a longer form piece slightly. I plugged in "npr ferguson transcript august 18th" and drew a blank besides that so idk)
posted by emptythought at 4:50 AM on August 19, 2014 [37 favorites]

Pater, exactly. This strikes me as awfully convenient timing. Let's see those witnesses.
posted by GrammarMoses at 4:55 AM on August 19, 2014

“An Open Letter to Captain Ronald S. Johnson,” Chief Ed Delmore, Law Officer, 17 August 2014

This asshole compared Michael Brown's mindset at the time he encountered Officer Wilson to the mindsets of Ted Bundy, Timothy McVeigh, and Eric Rudolph. Because knowing you may have stolen rellos is equal to knowing you're a serial killer or terrorist on the lam who's facing the death penalty if caught.

Note that there is a comment section on that article...
posted by sallybrown at 4:56 AM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

Yesterday the police in Ferguson arrested a 90 year old woman for protesting. She's a Holocaust survivor. What are the rest of you doing?

I'm gonna get some sleep after this last one, but it's not like this hasn't happened before at big protests, and it didn't push anyone over the edge then. Hell, they pepper sprayed and kicked a pregnant lady and no one really gave a shit.

It's egregious and fucked up, but i don't think it's as much of a yardstick or line in the sand to the general populace as we want it to be.

Maybe i just have care fatigue, but i feel like a lot of people on here are a bit pollyannaish about what will make the general American People sit up and take notice. This is getting some nice media coverage, but i still think it doesn't feel real to a hell of a lot of people because it's just on the tee-vee or the internet and they can switch it off whenever they feel like it. I feel like short of gunning down a huge crowd of people live on TV(or at least, live from the aftermath) will this ever really reach that point. That, and most of the discussion i've seen elsewhere is pretty disgusting and is already fairly sold on the "Oh, a thug got shot by the cops, hmm" narrative.

There was a good post in the last thread about the convenience store detail knocking the anger and fight out of a hell of a lot of even seemingly pretty decent people. And with that done, some far more egregious stuff is going to have to happen at the protests to really lock those people back in... and it just hasn't yet.
posted by emptythought at 5:06 AM on August 19, 2014 [3 favorites]

Police sources tell me more than a dozen witnesses have corroborated cop's version of events in shooting #Ferguson

Yeah, right wing folks keep posting stuff like this, or stuff about how Wilson spent a day in the hospital to deal with facial injuries, and all this other bullshit, and I can't figure out where it's coming from originally. Have the police actually made any public statements like this?
posted by inigo2 at 5:07 AM on August 19, 2014 [5 favorites]

Bet you $20 it's seeded by that shady PR firm they hired that made claims about "seeding multiple creative stories and angles!" on their site. And if not them, then some PR within the local or state government.
posted by emptythought at 5:08 AM on August 19, 2014 [16 favorites]

Ugh. Ugh. Fuck.
posted by showbiz_liz at 5:09 AM on August 19, 2014

Police sources tell me more than a dozen witnesses have corroborated cop's version of events in shooting #Ferguson

If true, then it's worth asking why people got so upset.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 5:09 AM on August 19, 2014

"Police sources tell me more than a dozen witnesses have corroborated cop's version of events in shooting #Ferguson"

Yeah, if this were true, police sources would be shouting it from the rooftops, not leaking it.
posted by klarck at 5:13 AM on August 19, 2014 [45 favorites]

Also, just in passing, because it's being discussed, and in no way to justify any action taken by the cops: I have seen a couple of photos of lit Molotov cocktails.

And then there's this, which makes me want to weep.
posted by GrammarMoses at 5:14 AM on August 19, 2014

At this point, it's going to take some serious data/evidence before I believe anything from the cops there even if they're just claiming that, say, the sun rises in the east.
posted by rmd1023 at 5:14 AM on August 19, 2014 [5 favorites]

Also, just in passing, because it's being discussed, and in no way to justify any action taken by the cops: I have seen a couple of photos of lit Molotov cocktails.

Those are tear gas canisters.
posted by Metafilter Username at 5:16 AM on August 19, 2014 [46 favorites]

GrammarMoses, I'm pretty sure that first picture is a tear gas canister being thrown back at the police. If for no other reason that lighting and throwing a Molotov cocktail is the kind of thing you put your chips down for.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 5:16 AM on August 19, 2014 [37 favorites]

Police sources tell me more than a dozen witnesses have corroborated cop's version of events in shooting

I find it very, VERY hard to believe that "more than a dozen people" were (a) there, (b) watching as the events unfolded and not just after shots were fired, and (c) willing to talk. And as klarck says, if this were true the police would be holding a press conference, not leaking it to Fox.
posted by schoolgirl report at 5:16 AM on August 19, 2014 [6 favorites]

Bulgaroktonos, point taken -- esp given the AP's caption. (D'oh!) But that second one is definitely a bottle. There's a series of photos of this vignette.

A note on my motives: I fucking hate these cops, and I think they should all be censured and fired. At the same time I think we (the actual and virtual protestors) can't afford to be wrong about small details, because those mistakes give Certain People a reason to write off the whole debacle (cf. cigar box).
posted by GrammarMoses at 5:24 AM on August 19, 2014 [2 favorites]

Honestly, I think the molotov cocktails are a red herring here. They aren't, if they exist, coming from the local protestors, but fringe groups who should be dealt with without having to teargas the crowd.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 5:29 AM on August 19, 2014 [5 favorites]

Perhaps we should compare the percentage of protestors who have Molotov cocktails with the percentage of Ferguson police who have shot Michael Brown.
posted by Metafilter Username at 5:32 AM on August 19, 2014 [35 favorites]

Related: Full text copy of Henry David Thoreau's 'On Civil Disobedience' (1848)

“If the machine of government is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law."

posted by Fizz at 5:33 AM on August 19, 2014 [25 favorites]

Thanks for this, Phire. Excellent roundup.
posted by rtha at 5:34 AM on August 19, 2014 [4 favorites]

huh. npr is saying that protestors picked up smoke bombs that were thrown at them and threw them back at police. and then the police are describing being under assault. yeah, you throw shit like that at me, damn straight my first impulse is gonna be to chuck it back.

i hope any St. Louis area PD requests for more federal funding to militarize the police are met with a FUCK NO forever and ever, but that's closing the barn door after the horse is out, I guess.
posted by angrycat at 5:35 AM on August 19, 2014 [8 favorites]

Perhaps we should compare the percentage of protestors who have Molotov cocktails with the percentage of Ferguson police who have shot Michael Brown.

OK, OK. Jeez. Sorry. Was just noting facts. I promise I won't bother in the future.

You might notice that I mentioned above my position on the issue.
posted by GrammarMoses at 5:35 AM on August 19, 2014 [2 favorites]

OK, with this glut of links and opinions I'm still confused about one thing: there was a big deal made about the state troopers and the national guard coming in to "restore order" in Ferguson, but everything I see still seems to talk about the local PD running amok. What exactly is going on with these three different orgs on the ground, is there any clash between them or are they all just continuing to attack protesters and observors?

Nobody seems to know? Like, Johnson of the Highway Patrol is ostensibly in command, but he keeps being caught flat-footed, not knowing what is going on. The cops tried to sweep the protesters out because they were afraid the protesters were going to "overrun" their HQ, so the National Guard comes to protect the HQ -- which frees up the cops to launch their biggest attempt yet. When people ask at the press conferences, who is in charge, they get told that Johnson is, or that decisions in the field are being made by the tactical commanders; so who knows?
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 5:36 AM on August 19, 2014 [8 favorites]

"I'm pretty sure it was so that AI didn't have a chance to observe the police abuses. Same reason the journalists were removed from the situation."

This attributes motive and organization to the police that I'm not sure is there; this is fucking amateur hour and these cops are flailing at almost total random. I suspect the motivation of individual officers is probably "make people leave" and are extra-focused on those they view as outsiders -- like the press and Amnesty -- because they're easy to identify and noticed as individuals outside the amorphous mass of protestors that the cops are dehumanizing into an amorphous mass.

It seems to me that they're following a mishmash of regulations and playbooks that have no application to the present situation; they're starting with things that are sort-of recognizable as "normal" ways to treat press coverage of protests or community events in completely different situations. Like, "Oh, sure, we'll just treat this like it's the press area at the local Air Show and we're just doing crowd control and first aid, not like we have a set of major protests and keep teargassing people." They keep doing things like you might do at a normal traffic stop (discourage press from recording private citizens being stopped by police, which might cause undue embarrassment) but you totally don't do at a protest. It's completely bizarre and there is just no strategy.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 5:38 AM on August 19, 2014 [31 favorites]

Woo, states-and-counties-and-municipalities' rights!
posted by PMdixon at 5:42 AM on August 19, 2014 [4 favorites]

Grand jury "could" begin considering Brown shooting case tomorrow.
posted by scatter gather at 5:43 AM on August 19, 2014

OK, OK. Jeez. Sorry. Was just noting facts. I promise I won't bother in the future.

Maybe I missed something, but sounds like others are just making factual corrections to your points and/or questioning your framing based on facts. Telling you you got something wrong is not telling you to stop posting, it's helping stop the spread of misinformation, which is vital.

What exactly is going on with these three different orgs on the ground, is there any clash between them or are they all just continuing to attack protesters and observors?

The NG is coming in under the control of the highway police headed by Captain Johnson, although the extent to which he is really in control is an open question. NG is guarding the police's "command center" post - I don't believe we've seen any interaction between NG and civilians. Last night, it looked like the police on West Florissant were a mix of Ferguson police (blue shirts, I believe), St. Louis County PD (whom I've heard to referred as "county browns" due to their uniforms), and highway patrols (not sure what they wear).
posted by sallybrown at 5:44 AM on August 19, 2014 [5 favorites]

When you're a person armed by the state and offered special legal authority to use force and detain people, "flailing at almost total random" because it's "amateur hour" isn't really an acceptable explanation.
posted by Metafilter Username at 5:44 AM on August 19, 2014 [23 favorites]

It's helping stop the spread of misinformation, which is vital.
I couldn't agree more completely.
posted by GrammarMoses at 5:46 AM on August 19, 2014

The LA Times published a little thing about Michael-Brown-the-rapper.
posted by box at 5:57 AM on August 19, 2014

this is fucking amateur hour and these cops are flailing at almost total random

This. It's obvious that the police are being given conflicting (or no) instructions from state and local officials, who are clearly foundering and utterly failing to get out in front of the situation. It's a situation that screams for sending in officials from the federal Department of Justice to run things in the city for a while, but can you imagine the uproar from conservatives (even if such a thing was possible, which I'm not sure it is)?
posted by Dip Flash at 5:57 AM on August 19, 2014 [4 favorites]

A few comments deleted; please drop the 18-year-old is not a teen derail.
posted by taz (staff) at 5:58 AM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

""flailing at almost total random" because it's "amateur hour" isn't really an acceptable explanation."

100% agree, it's completely inexcusable. This sort of situation calls for the best possible policing, not this nightmare clusterfuck.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 5:58 AM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

This is getting some nice media coverage, but i still think it doesn't feel real to a hell of a lot of people

What I've found is a lot of people are very unwilling to say "they cops are out of line." They tell themselves that if force is used, then it must be justified, even in the face if overwhelming evidence. Because the alternative is hard to accept.

This morning someone said, "well people were throwing rocks at Chris Hayes, so I guess I have no sympathy for them [the protestors]." I literally dragged them to my computer and made them look at all the images from the last few days. Not sure if I entirely changed his mind, be he's just been pretty quiet all morning. I understand that upending someone's entire worldview can be painful, but there's no excuse. I'm going to fight this attitude every way I can, even if I have to drag people kicking and screaming.
posted by C'est la D.C. at 5:59 AM on August 19, 2014 [21 favorites]

Is the Major hiding out with Darren Wilson or something?
posted by Artw at 6:00 AM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

Social Media and Political Activism in the Modern Era
posted by jeffburdges at 6:02 AM on August 19, 2014 [2 favorites]

Well thank goodness -- the singer from Disturbed (David Draiman) has weighed in:

THE MORE I HEAR/DISCOVER, THE MORE I'M STARTING TO CHANGE MY POSITION ON THIS MICHAEL BROWN INCIDENT... HE MAY HAVE GOTTEN WHAT HE DESERVED

posted by inigo2 at 6:03 AM on August 19, 2014 [2 favorites]

Reading that makes me feel sick to my stomach.
posted by h00py at 6:06 AM on August 19, 2014 [17 favorites]

Dogwhistles work.
posted by Artw at 6:07 AM on August 19, 2014 [10 favorites]

The police say it is a DoD training exercise but they didn't announce it in advance, they won't say when it ends, and they won't say who authorized it or what the purpose is. I can't help but conclude they're trying to intimidate people into not protesting.

That'd be about par for the course for the Minneapolis police.
posted by hoyland at 6:12 AM on August 19, 2014

We're beginning to seriously consider not going to a family wedding we're supposed to be attending soon, because we know that the entire parent/aunt/uncle generation of the family is going to be saying hideous crap about Michael Brown. Or, best/worst scenario, none of this is going to be on their radar at all because it's 'just Those People looting and getting what they deserve.'

Ugh. Everything is terrible, and I'm having a hard time staying as informed as I want to be, so thank you for this round-up, Phire.
posted by Stacey at 6:13 AM on August 19, 2014 [3 favorites]

THE MORE I HEAR/DISCOVER, THE MORE I'M STARTING TO CHANGE MY POSITION ON THIS MICHAEL BROWN INCIDENT... HE MAY HAVE GOTTEN WHAT HE DESERVED

Awesome. Dude writes "Never Again" song about the Holocaust and then supports the slaughter and oppression of Palestinians in Gaza and blacks in the US. Way to be, asshole.
posted by crayz at 6:14 AM on August 19, 2014

The police say it is a DoD training exercise but they didn't announce it in advance, they won't say when it ends, and they won't say who authorized it or what the purpose is. I can't help but conclude they're trying to intimidate people into not protesting.

A derail but I kind of felt the same thing. I mean, in normal circumstances I wouldn't really overthink it, but given the last week in this country, the blanket helicopter patrols gave me a really totalitarian vibe.
posted by Think_Long at 6:16 AM on August 19, 2014 [3 favorites]

We're beginning to seriously consider not going to a family wedding we're supposed to be attending soon

Oh boy. My father-in-law is coming up to visit this weekend. I really hope discussion doesn't get ugly. Sometimes I have to bite my tongue around him, but I don't think I can about this.
posted by Foosnark at 6:17 AM on August 19, 2014

I've been really appreciating Rafi DiAngelo's blog SoLet'sTalkAbout during this whole thing. I linked to it a couple times in the last thread.
posted by showbiz_liz at 6:21 AM on August 19, 2014 [2 favorites]

Good morning, St. Louis Post-Dispatch
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 6:23 AM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

Not sure if this was in the other thread, but I think it's important, from Wesley Lowery:

"Are you leaving? Please don't leave. PLEASE! What if they shoot us? You have to be here to tell people" she told me & a photog. On several nights that's been expressed to me: the desperate desire from residents who assume police will kill them for media to document. The fear and desperation in their voices is something I can't shake. Keeps me up, pacing, at night. Replaying in my head.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 6:25 AM on August 19, 2014 [52 favorites]

Here in Minneapolis, a fleet of 7 enormous black helicopters is buzzing downtown buildings a few hundred feet from the ground from dusk until past midnight. I was directly under one last night, it was terrifying. The police say it is a DoD training exercise but they didn't announce it in advance, they won't say when it ends, and they won't say who authorized it or what the purpose is. I can't help but conclude they're trying to intimidate people into not protesting.

Wow.

There have been a lot of "training exercises" in MPLS lately, as far as I can tell - we've had a bunch over at the UMN, although not in my part of campus.

I wonder what's going on over north - that was where the Michael Brown vigil was last week (where the cops arrested a young woman basically for stepping into the street, which tons of people do to cross that street), and people are meeting at the Urban League this week to talk about some kind of more sustained anti-police-brutality organizing. I am personally so ready to get involved - I did not sign up to live in a society run by a bunch of Jim Crow LARPers.

I feel like the way things work here, there isn't that much back channel communication between people (mostly black organizers) over north and white people who normally work on this kind of stuff over south - like, almost no one I knew from south even heard about the vigil, and when there was the big Trayvon Martin protest here, I only found out about it by coincidence. It really brings home how segregated this city is on every level - even more than in the nineties, I think, because I went to some anti-police-brutality stuff back then and it seemed like there was better communication between organizers over north and various groups in S MPLS. South Minneapolis isn't all white or anything, but because the city has done its level best to sequester and control the north, it seems like it works almost as though there were a strict racial divide on north-south lines even though there isn't.

I mean, obviously, in MPLS any anti-police-brutality work needs to be POC-centering and particularly center black leadership, since people of color, especially black Minneapolitans, are dramatically most affected. But in terms of sheer numbers and money, I think it's important for white people to get involved.

(On another note - what's been occurring to me about Ferguson is that it is absolutely going to escalate police response to protests everywhere in the US. Those jackasses are always looking for an excuse, and if Ferguson can use live ammunition and snipers and toss around tear gas cannisters like they're confetti, everyone else is going to step up what they do. On a purely selfish level, I keep thinking of the various protests that I go or have gone to, and how many of those were violent enough to be unpleasant, and I find myself wondering what is going to go down in the next few years. God help us if the cops start shooting people in Ferguson.)
posted by Frowner at 6:26 AM on August 19, 2014 [15 favorites]

On another note - what's been occurring to me about Ferguson is that it is absolutely going to escalate police response to protests everywhere in the US. Those jackasses are always looking for an excuse, and if Ferguson can use live ammunition and snipers and toss around tear gas cannisters like they're confetti, everyone else is going to step up what they do.

With so much chaos, someone will do something stupid. And when they do, things will turn nasty.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:29 AM on August 19, 2014

THE MORE I HEAR/DISCOVER, THE MORE I'M STARTING TO CHANGE MY POSITION ON THIS MICHAEL BROWN INCIDENT... HE MAY HAVE GOTTEN WHAT HE DESERVED

>The Year Of Our Lord Two-Thousand and Four-of-Teens
>Being this down with the sickness
>Shiggity diggity dugong double-dungareeno
posted by Sticherbeast at 6:29 AM on August 19, 2014 [3 favorites]

CNN is STILL reporting about the obviously prank phone call alleging that Brown charged Wilson and that's why he shot him. FFS.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 6:30 AM on August 19, 2014 [6 favorites]

I just also fucking wish that all this media coverage with the warzone pictures could somehow be a little more about how people, real people, are actually living in the middle of that. It's not a movie.
posted by Frowner at 6:30 AM on August 19, 2014 [19 favorites]

Good morning, y'all! What country did I wake up in today?
posted by desjardins at 6:30 AM on August 19, 2014 [6 favorites]

What happened to the National Guard coming in?
posted by drezdn at 6:31 AM on August 19, 2014

What happened to the National Guard coming in?

They're apparently guarding the super important police command post while The rest of the police get their jollies using citizens for target practice.
posted by Artw at 6:33 AM on August 19, 2014 [8 favorites]

They said the NG was only going to protect the police command center.

Dollars to donuts (heh) there'll be a press conference today where it's announced their role will be stepping up to actively patrolling.
posted by Foosnark at 6:35 AM on August 19, 2014

Policing by consent
posted by Foosnark at 6:39 AM on August 19, 2014 [7 favorites]

Because goodness knows the police need protection what with all the rubber bullets and teargas canisters they've so generously given the protestors.
posted by Westringia F. at 6:41 AM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

Are you kidding? The cops need a ton of protection. Do you have any idea how many unarmed teenagers are in the area?
posted by shakespeherian at 6:44 AM on August 19, 2014 [35 favorites]

Good morning, y'all! What country did I wake up in today?

Land of the ~~Free~~, Home of the Brave.
posted by Atreides at 6:44 AM on August 19, 2014 [3 favorites]

@Nettaaaaaaaa, who was teargassed in Canfield last night, was alleging that there have been drones out every night - has that been substantiated by anyone else? You'd think that would be all over the media.
posted by desjardins at 6:44 AM on August 19, 2014

Actor Orlando Jones has taken a bucket challenge of his own:

Every shell casing in that bucket represents the life of someone who fought and died in the goal for civil rights and human dignity.
posted by showbiz_liz at 6:44 AM on August 19, 2014 [49 favorites]

If you haven't been watching the Twitters - someone whose tumblr I look at (she's a great comics artist and zine writer) linked to this round-upy thing here.

Some of this feels so familiar, because it's just the same stuff they do at hippie protests but accelerated - more tear gas, a lot more; undercovers; and I know a couple of people who have had cops threaten to kill them when they were behaving non-violently and appropriately at protests. Part of me feels like "see, see, you didn't believe this when it was happening to hippies because the official narrative is always that we deserve what we get"...and then I realize that basically no one believes that it's happening in Ferguson either.

I've never been in a protest where wooden rounds were fired.

It's like I felt when one of my friends was held on the floor at gunpoint when the police broke up a media center; you know you're just one pumped-up idiot away from people being dead, and it's very very hard to believe and terrifying at the same time.
posted by Frowner at 6:45 AM on August 19, 2014 [29 favorites]

I've never been a reader of Vice and always kinda thought of them as the Jackass of news sites, like "Hi we're Vice and today we're going to North Korea!", but holy shit if they aren't the best thing going with their live streams. I finally watched one for a significant amount of time last night and caught the whole pinned down, then gassed, then escaping to the nice lady's front lawn and recovering. They should win some sort of award for this.
posted by DynamiteToast at 6:47 AM on August 19, 2014 [22 favorites]

There's plenty of precedent for abuse of protesters (especially blacks), but is there a precedent in this country for this much control/abuse of the media?
posted by desjardins at 6:52 AM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

I'm reading this thread when I should be doing database work, and every word and image is breaking my heart and inflaming my brain. Thanks for putting this together, Phires, this is all stuff that people need to see.
posted by Strange Interlude at 6:53 AM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

The 9 principles of policing in the article foosnark posted are gold:

1. To prevent crime and disorder, as an alternative to their repression by military force and severity of legal punishment.

2. To recognise always that the power of the police to fulfil their functions and duties is dependent on public approval of their existence, actions and behaviour, and on their ability to secure and maintain public respect.

3. To recognise always that to secure and maintain the respect and approval of the public means also the securing of the willing co-operation of the public in the task of securing observance of laws.

4. To recognise always that the extent to which the co-operation of the public can be secured diminishes proportionately the necessity of the use of physical force and compulsion for achieving police objectives.

5. To seek and preserve public favour, not by pandering to public opinion, but by constantly demonstrating absolutely impartial service to law, in complete independence of policy, and without regard to the justice or injustice of the substance of individual laws, by ready offering of individual service and friendship to all members of the public without regard to their wealth or social standing, by ready exercise of courtesy and friendly good humour, and by ready offering of individual sacrifice in protecting and preserving life.

6. To use physical force only when the exercise of persuasion, advice and warning is found to be insufficient to obtain public co-operation to an extent necessary to secure observance of law or to restore order, and to use only the minimum degree of physical force which is necessary on any particular occasion for achieving a police objective.

7. To maintain at all times a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and that the public are the police, the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.

8. To recognise always the need for strict adherence to police-executive functions, and to refrain from even seeming to usurp the powers of the judiciary of avenging individuals or the State, and of authoritatively judging guilt and punishing the guilty.

9. To recognise always that the test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, and not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with them.

That's from the 1800s. Victorians got this where politicians and police of 2014 apparently don't.
posted by Artw at 6:54 AM on August 19, 2014 [48 favorites]

Actor Orlando Jones has taken a bucket challenge of his own

Wow. Hard to watch. He notes in the video that he's a reserve sheriff and lifetime member of the NRA.
posted by sallybrown at 6:55 AM on August 19, 2014 [9 favorites]

The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a think tank in Washington D.C., apologized for tweeting that Amnesty International should "suck it."
posted by argonauta at 6:56 AM on August 19, 2014 [3 favorites]

The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a think tank in Washington D.C., apologized for tweeting that Amnesty International should "suck it."

Not The Onion, in case anyone else was wondering
posted by showbiz_liz at 6:58 AM on August 19, 2014 [44 favorites]

Last night, it looked like the police on West Florissant were a mix of Ferguson police (blue shirts, I believe), St. Louis County PD (whom I've heard to referred as "county browns" due to their uniforms), and highway patrols (not sure what they wear).

Ferguson seems to be dark blue pants, light blue shirt. County seems to be dark brown pants, Khaki/butternut shirt. Highway Patrol is pretty similar to Ferguson, but it looks like the shirts are lighter, and they also wear a diagonal belt across the chest. I know the Ferguson police commanders wear white shirts. And it looks like the Highway Patrol frequently have vests with "Trooper" written on them. Is this right?

When they're in body armor, it would be hard to tell, because it seems to vary quite a lot.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 6:59 AM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

I suspect it started going all wrong -- this time, because it has gone wrong before -- when we declared a War On Drugs and then a War On Terror, two wars that know no boundaries or limits. There's been enough of that rhetoric that the police seem to believe they're at war with the people they were supposed to serve and protect.
posted by Foosnark at 7:02 AM on August 19, 2014 [22 favorites]

Man if that stupid little CSIS thing doesn't drive home the connection between doing stupid violent shit abroad and stupid violent shit internally.
posted by PMdixon at 7:03 AM on August 19, 2014 [25 favorites]

Criticism of police tactics and intimidation against Ferguson protesters have led to an outcry, including from Iran's Supreme Leader, Egypt and China [emphasis mine] (via)
posted by desjardins at 7:05 AM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

Criticism of police tactics and intimidation against Ferguson protesters have led to an outcry, including from Iran's Supreme Leader, Egypt and China

Thanks but no thanks.
posted by empath at 7:11 AM on August 19, 2014 [7 favorites]

It seems noteworthy to me that any daylight protests, which the police are urging, would have less people; some would certainly be at school, work, or other responsibilities.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 7:11 AM on August 19, 2014 [7 favorites]

Ah, D.C., keeping it classy as always.
posted by C'est la D.C. at 7:13 AM on August 19, 2014

Iran, Egypt, China? Crocodile tears of the highest order.

There are so, so many credible sources pointing out the horrors of Ferguson. No need to give these leaders any attention. That said, of course the US loses its credibility whenever such crimes occur on its own turf. Even for just purely self-serving reasons, a neocon should be appalled that Ferguson is damaging our brand so much.
posted by Sticherbeast at 7:14 AM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

I thought I saw in the newspaper images posted upthread that school had been canceled for the week?
posted by C'est la D.C. at 7:15 AM on August 19, 2014

No need to give these leaders any attention.

I don't know, it's pretty bad when China is like, "Hey, your policing sucks." Not that they have any leg to stand on, but they're not wrong.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:17 AM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

Ah, D.C., keeping it classy as always.

That's a thinktank in DC. That's not DC.
posted by inigo2 at 7:17 AM on August 19, 2014 [6 favorites]

All schools in the Ferguson-Florissant School District will be closed Tuesday, August 19 through Friday, August 22 due to continued unrest in and around Ferguson, Mo. This decision was made after much careful deliberation and consideration of input received from local law enforcement officials and District security staff.
posted by tivalasvegas at 7:18 AM on August 19, 2014

One thing I find relevant that isn't discussed much is that the use of tear gas against military targets is forbidden by the Geneva Convention. But it is both perfectly legal, and increasingly commonly, used against civilians.

I also have to question the viewpoint that a lot of people, not here, seem to take for granted: that there is an inherent need to disperse crowds. I find this especially puzzling because the right to come together and form a crowd is explicitly protected by the US Constitution, yet no one on the news seems to question the legitimacy, or even the purpose, of the police breaking up crowds.

As a dirty fucking hippie and liberal communazi I think I understand the reasoning, namely that it is for the police to assert dominance and to instill submission in the populace. But I don't think any of the talking heads on the news will admit that's the point in dispersing crowds, so I'd like to know what they think the purpose is?

What legitimate function of government is threatened when people get together in a group and walk in the same direction while chanting slogans? Why is this activity so threatening, so dangerous, and in need of immediate and forceful prevention that it is accepted by a broad swath of the US population that the use of tear gas, water cannons, rubber bullets, etc is viewed as valid and needed?

None of the people advocating the breaking up of crowds ever seems to explain why they think it is so urgently necessary, it's simply taken as a given that when people assemble to petition the government for a redress of grievances that this is very dangerous and must be stopped as quickly as possible.

More broadly, I think we're seeing the natural and inevitable reaction to the war that the government at all levels has waged against black people since the end of Reconstruction. The War On Drugs was explicitly formulated by Nixon as a war on blacks, and the result has been everything he could have dreamed. The police are militarized, and that military force is pointed straight at America's black population. It is only when it spills over a bit, as it inevitably will, and affects white people that it gets any attention.

Policing is tightly focused on black people, as evidenced that while only about 12.6% of drug users and dealers are black, over 80% of arrests for drug crimes are black, and over 90% of people serving prison sentences for drug crimes are black. This is a systemic effort to criminalize the black population and deny the vote to blacks by making a large number of blacks (mostly men) convicted felons.

The use of asset forfiture amounts to nothing more or less than sustained economic warfare against the black population. The police can simply take, on nothing more than suspicion of drug involvement or casual association with a known drug criminal, any economic gains made by black people. And they do. The popular picture of asset forfeiture is that of the police seizing Cadillacs and bars of gold from drug kingpins, but the reality is more the police seizing a used car from the estranged spouse/significant other of a petty corner dealer.

The simple fact is that the government of the USA is, and has been, working diligently to deny black people equal participation in society, to keep black people as a social and economic underclass, and generally to hold black people down. And it shows. The average black household with an income over $100,000/year lives in a house and neighborhood comparable to a white household with an income of around $30,000/year. The percentage of black Americans living in poverty is over twice that of white Americans living in poverty.

Ultimately that's what Ferguson is about. The death of yet another black man at the hands of the police was the catalyst, but protests of this nature don't happen in a vacuum. They happen as the result of a population who have been beaten down for generations finally have had enough and assert themselves as people and demand equal participation in society. When the consequences of doing that are judged to be lower than the consequences of simply accepting yet another humiliating reminder of their second class citizenship and kowtowing to the white authority in hopes of keeping what few gains they have made.

This is, from my dirty fucking hippie point of view, why the government at all levels is so desperate for a return to normalcy. Because normalcy means black Americans quietly submitting to their status as the designated victims of government and police, and eating the shit sandwich they've been given without complaint. Normalcy means going back to the people of Ferguson living with the police as an invading army who hates them and takes every opportunity to grind their faces in their subjugation.

And, to my dirty fucking hippie self, that's the real reason why the talking heads, and the government officials holding press conferences, and all the others work with the unspoken and never questioned assumption that breaking up the crowds and ending the demonstrations is an urgent necessity. Because if they can't do that, if the power of the government is demonstrated to be insufficient to shut up the people of Ferguson than it might make black people elsewhere in America more uppity. Hell, it might even shake up enough white voters that the system would have to change a bit.
posted by sotonohito at 7:18 AM on August 19, 2014 [205 favorites]

Once again I'm grateful to wake up and see no one else got killed in Ferguson. The police escalation there is just so dangerous, all those guns. The snipers are most disturbing to me because what, is a sniper really just going to gun someone down from 200' away in a big crowd? But this video of a police line marching, assault rifles and shotguns leveled at unarmed civilians, is also terribly frightening. Those men look like they are ready to kill people. Worse, they want to look like that.

I can't imagine what the police's endgame is here. When Johnson got put in charge a few days ago we all breathed a sigh of relief, finally someone compassionate who could calm things down. But then the next morning the Ferguson PD started leaking inflammatory info on Brown – the alleged shoplifting, the leaked autopsy. I fear that their goal is to provoke an actual massacre in Ferguson so in the cover of chaos they can say "see, these people are animals, our police was right in shooting Brown in the first place".

I'm also curious who all is protesting now. It feels like the protests have their own momentum, people there because they're angry in general and not specific to Brown's killing or local racial justice. Are there a bunch of black bloc mall anarchists on the scene? Random thugs showing up just because it's fun to be out at night challenging cops? Most big protests attract some of that, provocations that distract from the adults protesting meaningful problems. I've read precious little about who is out there protesting, and why, most of the national coverage is the paramilitary police.

The FAA has extended the flight ban for another week. As abridgments of civil liberties go this is relatively minor, but it has the effect of banning news helicopters from the scene. I can't think of a TFR being used this long before. Usually this kind of restriction is put in place over a fire, to prevent some civilian pilot from bumbling into a firefighting plane. Two weeks of military lockdown of a US city is very weird.
posted by Nelson at 7:18 AM on August 19, 2014 [23 favorites]

Omnivore has a round-up: The police presence in Ferguson

"From Charles E. Cobb Jr., on ‘the challenge of Ferguson’" - Cobb is the author of This Nonviolent Stuff'll Get You Killed
posted by the man of twists and turns at 7:18 AM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

"Now I want you to look at what is going on in Ferguson, Missouri, in downtown America, okay? These are armed police, with — not machine guns — semi-automatic rifles, with batons, with shields, many of them dressed for combat. Now why they’re doing this? I don’t know. Because there is no threat going on here. None that merits this. There is none, okay? ...there is nothing going on on this street right now that merits this scene out of Bagram. Nothing."

-- Jake Tapper on CNN, last night
posted by GrammarMoses at 7:19 AM on August 19, 2014 [78 favorites]

Captain Johnson in a CNN interview last night insinuated that he may be losing respect with some of the officers due to his earlier lighter-touch approach (he described a situation in which he decided not to intervene in a store being looted) so he is probably feeling the pressure to conform to the law-enforcement zeitgeist/cargo cult.

And he certainly isn't making low-level tactical decisions or even coordinating the various groups if he has time to give a TV interview 30 minutes after the tear gassing started.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 7:21 AM on August 19, 2014 [4 favorites]

He's clearly doing fuck all other than being an ill informed PR face.
posted by Artw at 7:24 AM on August 19, 2014 [4 favorites]

Ferguson and the Lessons of Conflict Zone Policing

From an academic standpoint, we can refer to the American dons of police studies: Bob Perito of the U.S. Institute of Peace and David Bayley of the State University of New York in Albany, who together authored The Police in War. Perito and Bayley categorize five levels of insecurity: war, insurgency, subversion, disorder, and normal crime. They also distinguish six types of police officers: uniformed general, non-uniformed criminal investigators, stability police, armed units, covert intelligence agents, and border police. They are very clear, based on their collective experience of study and practice, that stability police – police with masks, shields, batons, and other nonlethal weapons – should handle disorder and armed police – police with assault rifles, sniper rifles, and other lethal weapons – should handle subversion and insurgency. These conclusions relate directly to something well known to anyone in military studies: the principle of proportional response. If the people you want to control have guns, you respond with guns. If they have less-than-guns, you respond in kind. Using armed units against unarmed civilians violates the expectations that citizens have of their government, and not just in the United States. I have explained at Vox how I think the police should be handling this situation, but the core issue is that their failure to respond proportionally has become their single greatest reason for their failure to diffuse this situation. I encourage anyone interested in this phenomenon to read up on what happened in April 2003 with the 82d Airborne Division in Fallujah. These failures have long-lasting consequences.

posted by the man of twists and turns at 7:27 AM on August 19, 2014 [34 favorites]

And he certainly isn't making low-level tactical decisions or even coordinating the various groups if he has time to give a TV interview 30 minutes after the tear gassing started.

I feel for the guy. He's gotten little to no support from above, and he's got no support on the ground.

I don't think he is lying so much as he is being lied to and played.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 7:29 AM on August 19, 2014 [11 favorites]

Conor Friedersdorf has a good idea:

"So recall the mayor. Recall the city council. Elect new officials who will fire the police chief."
posted by Cash4Lead at 7:29 AM on August 19, 2014 [14 favorites]

I don't know, it's pretty bad when China is like, "Hey, your policing sucks." Not that they have any leg to stand on, but they're not wrong.

It's actually because the party leadership over there just loves to rub it in whenever America makes any missteps, especially if they are missteps that America regularly criticizes China for making (which almost seems fair, in a way).
posted by obliterati at 7:30 AM on August 19, 2014 [5 favorites]

To be honest, this doesn't remind me of Tiananmen Square as much as it does the Tunisian Revolution.
posted by ZeusHumms at 7:30 AM on August 19, 2014 [2 favorites]

It's obvious that the police are being given conflicting (or no) instructions from state and local officials, who are clearly foundering and utterly failing to get out in front of the situation

The authorities are playing "keep away" with the truth. Nobody knowing anything and autonomous actions appear to be the strategy at all levels. This, coupled with the dissemination of misinformation, preserves confusion and allows the authorities to control the narrative.

Huh, publicizing that China and Iran are also criticizing the Police. I'm sure Common Ground PR had nothing to do with that.

Now that reporters have acceded to the media pan, thus denying the possibility of citizen journalism, we see further splits there as people their press badges ripped off by cops, and meanwhile are kept from action anyway.

The police and government certainly want Darren Wilson to get off, not the least on the advice of their liability lawyers, and everything they are doing should be seen through that lens.
posted by rhizome at 7:32 AM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

I've lived here my whole life, and in my experience it is uncommon for people in the U.S. to regard "crowds" as anything other than a direct prelude to blue-collar crime and/or riots. Not to mention the tendency of conservatives and moderates to assume that any public displays of collective action will inevitably make life worse for them.
posted by IShouldBeStudyingRightNow at 7:33 AM on August 19, 2014 [7 favorites]

Jeffrey Smith, former state senator from the area (and white man), brings some additional context via The New Republic.
posted by GrammarMoses at 7:36 AM on August 19, 2014 [5 favorites]

The FAA has extended the flight ban for another week. As abridgments of civil liberties go this is relatively minor, but it has the effect of banning news helicopters from the scene

But I've seen feeds from at least two news helicopters - FOX2 (local St Louis station) and CNN.
posted by desjardins at 7:36 AM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

That film with the police marching with guns drawn - frankly that scares the hell out of me. I just...that is just so non-standard for police repression in this country in the last twenty years. The rest of it is an intensification of stuff I've seen or friends have seen - I mean, I have seen people throw tear gas canisters back at police, I've seen lines of riot police; I've had friends who've gotten badly hurt by rubber bullets; I've been around when reporters were arrested and legal observers were beaten.

I know I'm sort of repeating myself here but my mind is just reeling.

I think what scares me most is the idea that if they do start shooting, no one will really care. If it's just a couple of dead kids, people will disbelieve it or forget it or decide that they deserved it, but it will be an absolute Rubicon for protest in the contemporary US, because if they can kill kids at a protest without consequence, that will be the new backstop for cop behavior at protests. It's not that it will happen all the time, but where "beat people and use tear gas and rubber bullets" has pretty much been the limit, the worst case for a while, the worst case will switch over to killing people.

And because this is a racist country, if it happens in Ferguson, people will disbelieve or ignore it because the victims will be black, and then in another ten years there will be slippage and people will disbelieve or ignore it whoever it is.

Sometimes I think that maybe even though this stuff is terrible, when it's finally in the open we can get the poison out, and the hatred of black people and disregard for black life is a poison that has always been running underground and sickening this country. I just feel like getting media on this stuff is kind of the last weapon - relying on the idea that if "everyone" knows about this stuff and sees it with photographic evidence then it will somehow be stopped. I find myself worrying that the last weapon is going to fail.

In theory, I believe that "everyone" is pretty useless and that power comes from organizing - that white people, for instance, are not as a category willing to inconvenience ourselves even trivially to diminish racism unless we're forced to do so, and that power comes from when marginalized people organize themselves to be able to force people. I basically believe that moral suasion isn't very important. And in theory I believe that the people united will never be defeated, and so on. In actual practice, I find myself horribly afraid that all that will happen, in the long run, is that people will try to organize and be brutally, repeatedly crushed down, and that the more violence is in the media, the more "everyone" will just get used to it and think it's perfectly okay.
posted by Frowner at 7:36 AM on August 19, 2014 [55 favorites]

Surprised that Putin hasn't stuck his oar in.
posted by Artw at 7:37 AM on August 19, 2014

Thank you for this, Phire.
posted by droplet at 7:37 AM on August 19, 2014

Not to mention the tendency of conservatives and moderates to assume that any public displays of collective action will inevitably make life worse for them.

Related to that, the MO RNC thinks setting up voter registration booths in Ferguson is "disgusting" and "inappropriate."
posted by almostmanda at 7:38 AM on August 19, 2014 [12 favorites]

Michael Brown and the Danger of the Perfect Victim Frame: Today, if we are to believe law enforcement and personal responsibility-loving politicians such as President Obama, black victims of white racism must still, as Colvin put it, “fit the profile.” Their victimhood is only supposed to matter if their lives are pristine.

Yep, I think one of the strongest arguments I've ever heard against capital punishment is even more applicable here. Even if we accept that the person involved is guilty as sin, the arbitrary and inconsistent application of lethal force violates the principle of equal protection. We object to that abuse of force, not because everyone abused is a saint, but because those abuses are differentially and arbitrarily applied on the basis of race, class, and disability.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 7:38 AM on August 19, 2014 [7 favorites]

Surprised that Putin hasn't stuck his oar in.

He's saving it for the next time the U.S. says anything about Ukraine. No need to remind the American public that he's sponsoring a civil war while they're distracted.
posted by Etrigan at 7:39 AM on August 19, 2014 [2 favorites]

You can't charge somebody without any investigation. The problem is that the local police haven't investigated anything.

Good thing the FBI has been investigating then.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 7:39 AM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

These conclusions relate directly to something well known to anyone in military studies: the principle of proportional response. If the people you want to control have guns, you respond with guns. If they have less-than-guns, you respond in kind.

The way police are trained is not to respond proportionately, but to escalate. If they encounter resistance, they apply more force. More resistance? More force. Weapons? Bigger weapons. So long as that's the model they are given, this is how they will behave.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 7:40 AM on August 19, 2014 [4 favorites]

Ferguson and Patience for the Appalled by Stacia L. Brown.
posted by metaquarry at 7:40 AM on August 19, 2014 [4 favorites]

Report of "white anarchists" assaulting a protester and distributing explosives:

Please stand in solidarity with us even if just from your homes and computer screens. We are doing this for us.

posted by audi alteram partem at 7:41 AM on August 19, 2014 [2 favorites]

No need to remind the American public that he's sponsoring a civil war while they're distracted.

Fair point - WWIII almost kicked off on the border the other day and nobody noticed.
posted by Artw at 7:43 AM on August 19, 2014 [3 favorites]

The most important measure of the effectiveness of a state is its control over and responsible exercise of its delegated monopoly on violence in service of the protection of all the citizens resident and present within its territory.

Framed this way — and I think this is a fundamentally useful framing, even though it makes me sound like a libertarian — when will the legitimate government of the territory in question emerge to defend Ferguson from the armed insurrection currently being undertaken by its local law enforcement agencies? Who does one appeal to? The state authorities who are currently backing the insurrection? The federal authorities who supplied arms to the insurrectionists?
posted by Vetinari at 7:44 AM on August 19, 2014

"I want to be able to do my job as a member of the media and not be arrested for just doing my job," he told Pancho Bernasconi, vice president of news at Getty Images.

Scott Olson and his Striking Photographs of Ferguson.
posted by Fizz at 7:44 AM on August 19, 2014 [3 favorites]

Reparations for Ferguson (Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Atlantic)
posted by box at 7:45 AM on August 19, 2014 [2 favorites]

Audio of Elon James and others being teargassed

Elon James is facing some serious bullshit trolling on Twitter accusing him of fabricating police teargassing entire neighbourhoods as well as crowds. It's astounding to me that anyone can listen to that clip and think it was made up. The contortions we go to to maintain our illusions.

This is from Friday but I missed it at the time - a fantastic interactive from the NYT of the spread of military's surplus gear in the police force. (Fun exercise: filter by 'assault rifle' and see how it basically doesn't change.)
posted by Phire at 7:46 AM on August 19, 2014 [8 favorites]

Good thing the FBI has been investigating then.

I remember reading before that the federal government was limited to investigations of civil rights violations. Does the FBI have more leeway than the DoJ there? Who can do what here?
posted by C'est la D.C. at 7:46 AM on August 19, 2014

It's very disheartening how few people in my circles seem to care at all about this. It almost makes me wish my Facebook were filled with people trying to spread the "thug" narrative--because at least they'd be paying attention.
posted by sallybrown at 7:47 AM on August 19, 2014 [2 favorites]

I have no idea. All I know is the FBI was going door to door investigating the shooting, and dropping off cards virtually begging Ferguson residents to contact them with info.

Because the Ferguson PD wouldn't interview any witnesses.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 7:48 AM on August 19, 2014 [5 favorites]

Report of "white anarchists" assaulting a protester and distributing explosives....

Dear Black Bloc groups:

STOP BEING ON OUR SIDE YOU'RE MAKING OUR SIDE LOOK STUPID
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:49 AM on August 19, 2014 [29 favorites]

Ferguson made the front pages of these international newspapers...

To the German papers, you can add Die Welt, Der Spiegel and, amazingly, Bild. Bild being both similar to the Sun, and the newspaper with the largest circulation in Europe.

Reporters from Die Welt and Bild got detained last night, with one still whereabouts unknown, so that likely also plays a role.
posted by frimble at 7:49 AM on August 19, 2014 [3 favorites]

sallybrown - I wouldn't draw conclusions from Facebook. I haven't posted about it there at all but I've been closely following the developments (as you can see from my many comments).
posted by desjardins at 7:49 AM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

I wouldn't take the ineffectiveness of Molotov cocktails as evidence that they were manufactured by the police. Even though they're in public consciousness a lot, I don't think most people actually know how to make them properly. It's more difficult than you would think.

Just the same, "the protestors have Molotov cocktails, but none they can actually use" doesn't strike me as the vindication the crackdown is looking for.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 7:49 AM on August 19, 2014 [2 favorites]

I also appreciated this series of tweets from a law prof on Twitter Sam Bagenstos (@sbagen) about next steps for the DOJ.
posted by Phire at 7:50 AM on August 19, 2014 [5 favorites]

Related to that, the MO RNC thinks setting up voter registration booths in Ferguson is "disgusting" and "inappropriate."

“Injecting race into this conversation and into this tragedy, not only is not helpful, but it doesn’t help a continued conversation of justice and peace.”

It's incredible that someone actually said this.
posted by nathancaswell at 7:50 AM on August 19, 2014 [53 favorites]

Because the Ferguson PD wouldn't interview any witnesses.

Nonsense - they have DOZENS of witnesses who support the version the cop tells.

An they are all of unimpeachable skin color, unlike those looters who were actually there when it happened.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 7:52 AM on August 19, 2014 [28 favorites]

I saw on twitter and google news that people are now protesting in LA against the LAPD shooting of Ezell Ford.

Good, now let's get NYC protesting about Garner. I'm sure there's probably a dozen cities that have had an unarmed black man murdered by cops recently, they should get on the protesting too.

Or, frankly, a national General Strike.

It's incredible that someone actually said this.

Incredible as in it shouldn't be believable? Because if it's coming from RNC, it's depressingly believable.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 7:53 AM on August 19, 2014 [4 favorites]

Sally brown, I too have disengaged from most social media, but it's not that I'm not paying attention. I disengaged during Gaza, and haven't gone back.
posted by dejah420 at 7:54 AM on August 19, 2014 [3 favorites]

sallybrown, I posted on FB about this for the first time today, only to link this FPP. My Twitter's been lighting up about it for days. I rarely post about political things - or anything that means anything to me, really - on Facebook because I don't have the energy to worry about and monitor subsequent comment threads. I know more than a few people who feel the same way. There's a certain fucked-up facade of carefully disengaged Polyanna-ism in how Facebook feels to me; the context collapse from friends and coworkers and families is too much to negotiate and it's like we've all agreed to not remind each other of how much we differ. It's weird to have a social network I spend at least 15-20 minutes on every day not actually represent anything approaching my personal identity, but I guess that's not so different from the negotiations we do in real life every day.
posted by Phire at 7:55 AM on August 19, 2014 [18 favorites]

What is the rationale for closing the schools? I can't see what's gained; perhaps I'm wrong, but it does not seem to be too dangerous to travel between home & school, and the risk of having Unarmed Teens collected in a lunch hall seems no worse -- better, even -- than having Unarmed Teens on the streets. At the same time, there's a lot that's lost: the burden of canceling classes will fall disproportionately on poor working folks who will have to take time off or pay for childcare, and it sacrifices a brilliant "teachable moment" to discuss current events in the context of Civil Rights history.

I'm trying not to be cynical about it, but frankly it's hard not to read this as deliberately depriving people of education and trying to create an environment where young tempers are unsupervised and Something Happens. I'd love for there to be a better reason. Someone, please, explain to me why the kids aren't in school.
posted by Westringia F. at 7:59 AM on August 19, 2014 [6 favorites]

Facebook is also not displaying a lot of stuff in my news feed. My own boyfriend posted some of his thoughts about Ferguson on Facebook and I never saw his post, even in my special "Close Friends" list feed. I am not saying they're deliberately hiding Ferguson posts specifically, just that their news feed algorithm is so fundamentally broken that you shouldn't assume just because you're not seeing something that it doesn't exist.
posted by misskaz at 7:59 AM on August 19, 2014 [28 favorites]

(To my mind, there is at least a 50% possibility that the white "anarchists" are not actually anarchists - I think it's fairly possible that they're undercovers, since there are plenty of records of this kind of thing happening at protests run by actual white anarchists, and indeed, I've been in political milieux where there were very, very plausible white "anarchist" undercovers trying to get people to commit violence. I don't think there's any real way to figure out whether they're ringers or not at the moment, but I expect it will become clear in the longer term. One of the big problems with Black Bloc, IMO, is that it's this very loose collection of people and practices that is absolutely infiltrated and where people are very security conscious/not-sharing-information, and as a result, it's very difficult to say "hey, this fool racist thing that someone did - I think that might have been an undercover". I think at this point, actually, Black Bloc-style tactics should mostly be abandoned and discouraged - they've basically been discredited and infiltrated to the point of uselessness, and they attract amateurs and macho adventurer types. And of course, because it does attract, basically, macho assholes, that means that it is also plausible that it's not an undercover, just a macho racist asshole opportunist.

This is one reason that I personally want to get involved with whatever comes out of the Urban League-led stuff here - I feel like white anarchists need to prove that we can be reliable allies on this stuff and that we can compromise not our beliefs but our tactics, actions and language in the interest of organizing led by people of color.)
posted by Frowner at 7:59 AM on August 19, 2014 [22 favorites]

I've been posting about it on my FB. A few others from the area, or formerly from the area, or who are generally dirty hippies like me have too.

Based on the patterns of likes and comments, I strongly suspect FB is not showing all my posts about it.

Overall, for every one post about Ferguson, I have seen about 100 each on Robin Williams or the ice bucket challenge thing.
posted by Foosnark at 7:59 AM on August 19, 2014 [14 favorites]

> It's incredible that someone actually said this.

It's straight out of their (incredibly depressing) playbook. It's incredible that anyone can take a statement like that seriously, and yet.
posted by rtha at 8:01 AM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

They make the same comments about "class warfare." "Oppressed people mentioning oppression are the real problem" is a depressingly common tactic for shutting people up. It happens on MeFi quite frequently. People have even quit the site because they believe it so strongly.
posted by OmieWise at 8:04 AM on August 19, 2014 [17 favorites]

> ACLU donation link
> NAACP donation link
SPLC donation link [Southern Poverty Law Center]
posted by morganw at 8:04 AM on August 19, 2014 [10 favorites]

Related to that, the MO RNC thinks setting up voter registration booths in Ferguson is "disgusting" and "inappropriate."

Where can I donate to help setup voter registration booths in Ferguson?
posted by Golden Eternity at 8:04 AM on August 19, 2014 [17 favorites]

Holy shit that audio of Elon Jones being teargassed. Gripping. Terrifying.
posted by misskaz at 8:05 AM on August 19, 2014 [3 favorites]

This is collective punishment, plain and simple.

This is about black people getting too "uppity" because a cop shot one of their kids.

Missouri Goddamn.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 8:06 AM on August 19, 2014 [18 favorites]

Good, now let's get NYC protesting about Garner.

I hear you, but the thing with NYC and Garner is that the powers that be are taking the incident much more seriously - De Blasio has denounced the incident, the police made no effort to hide the officer's name (Daniel Pantaleo) and there are talks of grand jury charges against him. The NYPD is also reviewing how officers are trained in public encounters. It's almost like New York and Ferguson are a Goofus-and-Gallant morality tale - they both fucked up, but the NYPD is handling it better.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:06 AM on August 19, 2014 [12 favorites]

It's one level of insanity for the RNC to complain that the Dems are using this tragedy for political gain. It's an entirely different level of insanity for the RNC to look at what's going on and saying that it has nothing to do with race and that race shouldn't be injected into the conversation. Race is the conversation.
posted by nathancaswell at 8:07 AM on August 19, 2014 [5 favorites]

remember how we all patted ourselves on the back about how Tiannenmen Square was a thing that couldn't happen in America

No.
posted by aught at 8:08 AM on August 19, 2014 [12 favorites]

Phire, thank you for posting this.

Overall, for every one post about Ferguson, I have seen about 100 each on Robin Williams or the ice bucket challenge thing.

It's fascinating to me what people focus on. My FB feed is filled pretty equally with posts about the situation in Ferguson, Israel/Gaza and the ALS ice bucket challenge. I've seen nothing on Robin Williams since last week.
posted by zarq at 8:09 AM on August 19, 2014

The elite in this country know exactly how much black people are mistreated, which is why they're so afraid of black people rioting. If the elite were just greedy and ignorant, they wouldn't be so afraid.
posted by miyabo at 8:09 AM on August 19, 2014 [17 favorites]

Just as a quick note, apparently the Amnesty International team (forced away from the scene at gunpoint last night) is all safe and accounted for.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 8:11 AM on August 19, 2014 [6 favorites]

Just as a quick note, apparently the Amnesty International team (forced away from the scene at gunpoint last night) is all safe and accounted for.

This sentence blows my mind on so many levels.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:13 AM on August 19, 2014 [25 favorites]

The richest and most privileged country in the world

You might want to check your figures. The U.S. isn't in the top five for wealth/capita on the IMF, World Bank, or CIA lists. See here.

Besides, thinking about the U.S. this way, even when criticizing it, is still indulging in "American exceptionalism" thinking.
posted by aught at 8:14 AM on August 19, 2014 [28 favorites]

Westringia F.: "What is the rationale for closing the schools? I can't see what's gained; perhaps I'm wrong, but it does not seem to be too dangerous to travel between home & school, and the risk of having Unarmed Teens collected in a lunch hall seems no worse -- better, even -- than having Unarmed Teens on the streets. At the same time, there's a lot that's lost: the burden of canceling classes will fall disproportionately on poor working folks who will have to take time off or pay for childcare, and it sacrifices a brilliant "teachable moment" to discuss current events in the context of Civil Rights history."

I hear you, but when it comes down to it...if I were a parent in Ferguson, I'm not sure I'd want to let my kid out of my sight. Honestly, with the way that the police lines have been trapping people while ordering them to disperse, I'd probably be a bit paranoid that a school full of children would "incidentally" wind up behind some sort of strategic line in the sand.
posted by desuetude at 8:15 AM on August 19, 2014 [6 favorites]

More and more I am seeing incidents (like this one) which scare the shit out of me, because they indicate that this country is on the edge of exploding into violence not seen since the late 1960's, and maybe even not since the early 1860's.

"Democracy Now" played Nina Simone's blood-chilling 1965 reading of "Strange Fruit" as an interstitial in its coverage of Ferguson today - it felt perfectly appropriate.
posted by ryanshepard at 8:16 AM on August 19, 2014 [8 favorites]

It's fascinating to me what people focus on. My FB feed is filled pretty equally with posts about the situation in Ferguson, Israel/Gaza and the ALS ice bucket challenge. I've seen nothing on Robin Williams since last week.

FB quickly becomes a self-selected echo chamber for a lot of people. Lately mine is a lot of Ferguson and some bits of "ice bucket challenge is a waste of clean water during a drought," but I'm a white liberal-ish in Seattle who grew up in LA.

I've got the problem that if I say something that does not adhere entirely to a given story, I get people who presume that I must be completely taking the other side. There are one or two points of the coverage of the Brown shooting that I question because I feel like it's incendiary reporting, and so naturally some friends freak out like I'm backing up the police there or something crazy. It's very frustrating. :(
posted by scaryblackdeath at 8:16 AM on August 19, 2014 [7 favorites]

if I were a parent in Ferguson, I'm not sure I'd want to let my kid out of my sight.

Triply so if I were a parent of colour. (I'm not sure if you're a person of colour so, sorry if that comes across wrong.)
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 8:18 AM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

> cops quite literally used tear gas to pin down Jacqueline Lee

And hit her with canisters.

Lee Han Yol, killed with a canister to the head, 1987
Kim Ju-yul, same, 1960
Bassem Ibrahim Abu-Rahma, CS canister to the chest, 2009

These are less lethal weapons, not non-lethal.
posted by morganw at 8:20 AM on August 19, 2014 [15 favorites]

From Conor Friedersdorf's article:

My reading of the relevant Missouri law suggests the legal requirements could be met easily. Incompetence is grounds for recall. If city leaders in Ferguson don't now qualify as incompetents, who ever would? And as a Daily Kos author noted days ago, "Petitions must include the signatures of 25% of registered voters, which should not be too hard to do at this point." That would trigger a recall election. Turnout would presumably be high. Many blacks have been disenfranchised due to past convictions and attempts by GOP state legislators to depress voter turnout, but with this momentum, that obstacle isn't insurmountable.

This would be excellent.
posted by sallybrown at 8:20 AM on August 19, 2014 [27 favorites]

desuetude & feckless, I definitely get that fear, but keeping kids home can be the parents' choice -- it doesn't need to be imposed.
posted by Westringia F. at 8:20 AM on August 19, 2014

desuetude & feckless, I definitely get that fear, but keeping kids home can be the parents' choice -- it doesn't need to be imposed.

Well, okay, but why punish some children whose parents don't feel safe sending them?
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:24 AM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

I hear you, but when it comes down to it...if I were a parent in Ferguson, I'm not sure I'd want to let my kid out of my sight. Honestly, with the way that the police lines have been trapping people while ordering them to disperse, I'd probably be a bit paranoid that a school full of children would "incidentally" wind up behind some sort of strategic line in the sand.

The kids get "uppity" and conduct a student strike. That would basically be an even bigger clusterfuck. Normandy High School with 97.9% black student population? It would be a black Kent State.
posted by Talez at 8:24 AM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

desuetude & feckless, I definitely get that fear, but keeping kids home can be the parents' choice -- it doesn't need to be imposed

Schools are statutorily required to provide a given number of days. If they close, then those days can be made up, whereby if the parents keep the kids home, those days are lost.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 8:25 AM on August 19, 2014

Some bad weather is rolling in to the area -- thunderstorms potentially with hail.

There's also an "Excessive Heat Watch" for August 19-24 with heat indices expected to be around 105. This summer has been generally gentle, but low nighttime temperatures are now approaching what the highs were last week. That isn't going to be good for anyone's mood or health I expect.
posted by Foosnark at 8:25 AM on August 19, 2014 [4 favorites]

It would be a black Kent State.

That already happened, in 1970.
posted by ryanshepard at 8:27 AM on August 19, 2014 [23 favorites]

Hands up, don't shoot.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:30 AM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

FWIW, Staten Island DA sending Eric Garner case to grand jury.

HEY FERGUSON PD....
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 8:32 AM on August 19, 2014 [2 favorites]

Regarding the Eric Garner case, "Staten Island District Attorney Daniel Donovan announced Tuesday that an extra grand jury will be impaneled to hear evidence next month in the July 17 death of Eric Garner."
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:32 AM on August 19, 2014

"What is the rationale for closing the schools? I can't see what's gained; perhaps I'm wrong, but it does not seem to be too dangerous to travel between home & school, and the risk of having Unarmed Teens collected in a lunch hall seems no worse -- better, even -- than having Unarmed Teens on the streets. At the same time, there's a lot that's lost: the burden of canceling classes will fall disproportionately on poor working folks who will have to take time off or pay for childcare, and it sacrifices a brilliant "teachable moment" to discuss current events in the context of Civil Rights history."

As a teacher: I can only imagine how hard it would be to conduct classes in the middle of all this. Yes, it's a teachable moment, and that should by all rights be seized upon. I'm the sort of teacher who prioritizes current events as matters for the classroom. Thing is, once you do that, you still have to move on to core curriculum stuff. You still have to put aside the madness endured by your city and your students and their families and teach math and grammar and cell structure. That is incredibly hard to do when your students are (justifiably!) worried about their family members being arrested while they're in school. You'd give the kids a place to talk about this and work out their feelings, but you could do that for only so long--and yet the kids would simply not have their minds on all the other things they'd need to do. Most "teachable moments" are just that: moments. Not ongoing crises with sirens stretching out over days and days.

Classroom management would be an issue. Kids would be upset. They'd be looking for an outlet for their anger. And the moment a teacher has to move from gentle corrections to something else, it could easily feel like a reflection of the oppression in the streets, and that's a feeling that could define the rest of the year in a classroom. Not at all the way I'd want to kick off my year.

And the little ones? K-3rd grade? Maybe even on up to 5th? I really can't imagine how they must be feeling right now. Maybe a lot of them could really use a teacher in addition to whatever family support they have. I don't know.

I don't pretend to know whether closing the schools is the right call or the wrong one, but barring some revelations of malfeasance, it's not something I'm going to condemn out of hand.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 8:33 AM on August 19, 2014 [20 favorites]

Here's an Amazon wishlist of supplies that the protestors on the ground in Ferguson are asking for.
posted by Phire at 8:33 AM on August 19, 2014 [17 favorites]

Now that I'm in my late 30's I fear the police as much as I ever did. I get a tingling in my spine whenever I see a cop car, or even when a table of cops is seated near me in a diner.

I have always been afraid of the cops, because I grew up in a small town where they were in fact more dangerous than the criminals we had. I have much the same reaction you do. This used to be positively hilarious to some of my friends.

The degree to which they find it humorously irrational has rapidly declined over the past couple of years.
posted by winna at 8:34 AM on August 19, 2014 [18 favorites]

if I say something that does not adhere entirely to a given story, I get people who presume that I must be completely taking the other side.

This. A result, to my way of thinking, of the ubiquitous, poisonous and relentless boiling down of every concept to an either/or dichotomy. It is all-pervasive. And it is destroying us.
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 8:35 AM on August 19, 2014 [4 favorites]

There's also an "Excessive Heat Watch" for August 19-24 with heat indices expected to be around 105.

That reminds me of a movie I saw one time...

Coconut Sid: It ain't safe in our own fucking neighborhood! Never was. Never will be.
Sweet Dick Willie: We ain't gonna stand for this shit no more, Sal. Ain't gonna stand for no fucking police, punk!
ML: It's as plain as day. They didn't have to kill the boy.
posted by desjardins at 8:35 AM on August 19, 2014 [4 favorites]

You can totally work this into the core curriculum. Take this math word problem: If police fire three rubber bullets and throw five canisters of tear gas, how many peaceful protesters and journalists go to the hospital?

(Apologies for snark)
posted by C'est la D.C. at 8:37 AM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

Regarding the school closings: It's mid-August. Don't they have summer vacations in MO?
posted by rocket88 at 8:37 AM on August 19, 2014

rocket88, a lot of Southern and Midwestern schools go back in the middle of the summer.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:38 AM on August 19, 2014

(concerning the voting registration efforts are disgusting comment) It's one level of insanity for the RNC to complain that the Dems are using this tragedy for political gain...

I think the thing that stands out is how blatantly Newspeaky, ignorance-is-strength the content of their complaint is... it's disgusting that more Americans might end up registered to vote. The formal affirmation of the franchise is a thing to loathe.

Some time in the last year I was flipping through the channels and hit Fox News to find a rebroadcast of a 1967 interview of Ronald Reagan by William F. Buckley, ass-kissingly commented upon in intermissions by Charles Krauthammer.

At one point Buckley and Reagan did this little bit about how absurd and contempt-worthy it was that as a consequence of political events everyone had more and more rights all the time, and I think it was Buckley who said something about what a terrible shame it was that he would die with more rights than he was born with.

what i can't even

If I have my timeline right this would have been around the point when Reagan pulled the "oops I was totally tricked into legalizing abortion in California" thing.
posted by XMLicious at 8:38 AM on August 19, 2014 [13 favorites]

Regarding the school closings: It's mid-August. Don't they have summer vacations in MO?

August 14th was the first day of school for Ferguson-Florissant School District.
posted by Talez at 8:39 AM on August 19, 2014

Mayor Knowles on MSNBC says there is no racial divide. Tamron Hall asks him if he has been watching the news.
posted by mokeydraws at 8:39 AM on August 19, 2014 [31 favorites]

I've seen feeds from at least two news helicopters - FOX2 (local St Louis station) and CNN.

That's good to know. I wonder if they were filming from above 3000'? Or maybe they got permission from air traffic control to enter the TFR? It's probably at the local controller's discretion, although given the politics I'd be surprised if anyone stuck their neck out to help a news crew.

FWIW, here's a street map of Ferguson with the flight restriction overlaid on it. Derived from the FAA TFR, and while I could have screwed up the reprojection I think I got it right. It's 6 miles in diameter which covers quite a bit of ground. Only up to 3000', but I don't know if news cameras can operate at a longer distance than that. Eyeballing a comparison to this Reddit livefeed map, most of the activity is on W Florissant Ave. A mile east of that is clear of the TFR.
posted by Nelson at 8:40 AM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

> C'est la D.C, I think this is kind of what you're looking for.
posted by furnace.heart at 8:40 AM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

On an unrelated note he kind of reminds me of Jon Favreau.
posted by mokeydraws at 8:41 AM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

Eyewitness testimony from Amnesty International observers.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 8:42 AM on August 19, 2014 [8 favorites]

I'm seeing that August 12 was actually the first day of school last year (for the 2013–14 school year) in Ferguson-Florissant. I think we used to start at least a week or two later when I went there...but the weather was also a bit more predictable back then. This past winter, there were a lot of snow days, so I wonder whether that's part of why they start earlier now.
posted by limeonaire at 8:43 AM on August 19, 2014

Ferguson made the front pages of these international newspapers (I don't speak most of these languages so I'm going by pictures): Venezuela, UAE, Spain, Slovenia, Japan (in English), Italy, Germany, Denmark, Canada (French), Canada (English), Austria.

Interestingly, most of the photos seem to be of protesters and not police

This is what hurts me the most. There has been so much goodwill and international attention for one kid being shot by the police in Ferguson, Missouri. There is something very new about how this happened with social media and everything, and it seemed to me it maybe could be a turning point for organizing activist communities internationally against police brutality and the criminal mindset that infects so many police departments around the world, and other problems. It is beautiful to watch how the people of Ferguson support each other; praying together, barbecuing together, protesting together. What an amazing show of maturity and love.

But it will probably all get lost in the rioting and shooting and bomb throwing, much of it by white "anarchists." If these guys want to start anarchy, why can't they go back to their suburban white neighborhoods and firebomb their Whole Foods or something? What do they have against the people of Ferguson?

One thing that becomes more and more clear to me seeing this is how indispensable the black church must have been in forming the success of the civil rights movement - organizationally and morally.

Earlier in the night Ron Johnson looked to have done an amazing job at preventing a catastrophe when the Ferguson police where about to rain wooden bullets and tear gas down on a huge crowd of peaceful protesters for throwing water bottles. The way the community leaders, media, and highway patrol stepped in between the protesters and police-mob was amazing. They guy is in a tough spot, and I think he deserves a little more support. Apparently in the area where things went really badly this buffer between the police and violent agitators didn't exist.
posted by Golden Eternity at 8:43 AM on August 19, 2014 [9 favorites]

Here's an Amazon wishlist of supplies that the protesters on the ground in Ferguson are asking for.

Thanks for that Phire!
posted by Foosnark at 8:44 AM on August 19, 2014

The way the police are selectively, anonymously leaking information to support "their side" of this is just sickening. They are public officials. They can and should speak in public in an official capacity, on the record, and give a full accounting of what is known without prejudice. But these propagandist anonymous phone calls and leaks are obscene and if they aren't illegal, should be.
posted by crayz at 8:44 AM on August 19, 2014 [8 favorites]

Officers on the daytime shift pleasant. Just watched Officer Christianson (Hwy Patrol) joking around with some local kids - all smiles
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:45 AM on August 19, 2014

It seems noteworthy to me that any daylight protests, which the police are urging, would have less people; some would certainly be at school, work, or other responsibilities.

Not to mention making the protesters keep moving means that a lot of older and physically challenged people can't participate. It's not a coincidence; they are trying to reduce the number of people they perceive might be more sympathetic to outsiders watching, especially when any of them become victims of police force.

And I know the "hands up" approach is self-imposed, but just try keeping your hands raised above your head for five minutes. Or three. Or one.
posted by Room 641-A at 8:46 AM on August 19, 2014 [5 favorites]

Children carrying signs that say "I am American" in #Ferguson. There are no words. #BlackLivesMatter #AllLivesMatter - Jasmine M Heiss

posted by crayz at 8:46 AM on August 19, 2014 [4 favorites]

per discussion in chat, @chriskingstl has posted a link to this: Meet Greg “Joey” Johnson, An Opportunistic Communist Revolutionary Agitating in Ferguson (Video)

Antonio French is tweeting pictures of him, too.
posted by mediareport at 8:46 AM on August 19, 2014 [7 favorites]

I think the thing that stands out is how blatantly Newspeaky, ignorance-is-strength the content of their complaint is... it's disgusting that more Americans might end up registered to vote. The formal affirmation of the franchise is a thing to loathe.

The concern, expressed both in the article and in the comments, is that the Democrats are taking a tragedy and politicizing it. Many of us had the same exact complaint about Republicans after 9/11, which they used to fearmonger their way into a second Bush term. And two wars. And to lock up brown people and dissenters. Etc.

The GOP does not want minorities to vote, yes. This much is obvious. But there are precedents to their complaint. And under different circumstances, many of us, myself included, have raised similar objections.
posted by zarq at 8:47 AM on August 19, 2014 [3 favorites]

Again, the conservative media hate black people. The picture accompanying the headline "RIOTERS THROW MOLOTOV COCKTAILS AT POLICE IN FERGUSON -- AGAIN" is a picture of someone throwing a tear gas canister back at cops.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2014/08/17/Breaking-Molotov-Cocktails-Again-Being-Thrown-at-Police-in-Ferguson
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 8:48 AM on August 19, 2014 [2 favorites]

Earlier in the night Ron Johnson looked to have done an amazing job preventing catastrophe when the Ferguson police where about to rain wooden bullets and tear gas down on a huge crowd of peaceful protesters for throwing water bottles. The way the community leaders, media, and highway patrol stepped in between the protesters and police-mob was amazing. They guy is in a tough spot, and I think he deserves a little more support. Apparently in the area where things went really badly this buffer between the police and violent agitators didn't exist.

I am not ready to call Johnson an establishment tool yet. He is in an incredibly tough spot. There's not a doubt in my mind that the local & county police resent the living fuck out of his presence and will do everything they can to undermine him. I'm willing to bet he has very little actual power to correct them--he probably can't hand out suspensions or fire anyone--and he has to try to maintain some level of cohesion, even while being sabotaged.

And, yes, people have broken into a store here or thrown objects there. He's a cop. I'm not surprised he reacted to that. I'm not surprised he has made mistakes. I won't condone the gassing and the military tactics (which even the military doesn't even use). They're plainly a mistake. Johnson is starting to seem like another big mistake, and it's not a mistake of his doing; it's the mistake of whoever put him there without really giving him the authority and back-up that he needs.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 8:49 AM on August 19, 2014 [11 favorites]

Man, if I didn't have a big release today I would totally be calling in sick. I'm going to have to turn on all of my various internet blocking things to get any work done today.
posted by Phire at 8:49 AM on August 19, 2014

Don't dox.
posted by OmieWise at 8:49 AM on August 19, 2014 [2 favorites]

????
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 8:50 AM on August 19, 2014

God forbid we don't fear-monger our way into more people voting.
posted by Golden Eternity at 8:51 AM on August 19, 2014 [2 favorites]

Egypt urges U.S. to show restraint in "American Spring"
posted by Nevin at 8:51 AM on August 19, 2014 [7 favorites]

per discussion in chat, @chriskingstl has posted a link to this: Meet Greg “Joey” Johnson, An Opportunistic Communist Revolutionary Agitating in Ferguson (Video)

Wow. Did anyone realize the aging communist stirring up riots in Ferguson is the same dude who took flag-burning to the Supreme Court? What an odd world
posted by crayz at 8:53 AM on August 19, 2014 [11 favorites]

Many of us had the same exact complaint about Republicans after 9/11, which they used to fearmonger their way into a second Bush term. And two wars.

When Dems politicize something, it leads to more voting.

When Repubs politicize somethng, it leads to more dying.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 8:53 AM on August 19, 2014 [37 favorites]

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2014/08/17/Breaking-Molotov-Cocktails-Again-Being-Thrown-at-Police-in-Ferguson

I know we shouldn't ever read the comments, but holy shit they're really, really racist and horrible. Fucking hell.
posted by zarq at 8:53 AM on August 19, 2014

No shots fired by police, apparently, but about a metric shit tonne (Official Scientific Measurement) of tear gas. What are the odds that that was a deliberate strategic decision?

It's completely bizarre and there is just no strategy.

wouldn't that be "to pick up Darren Wilson, book him..."?

re: tienanmen (or maidan, the arab spring, 1776, etc.) to the extent that all revolutionary movements are against (some perceived) injustice, the level of violence so far has thankfully been minimal so far, esp against the scale of injustice, but what hasn't and i think is notable is the social media response for social justice (that's also a thing in china) that people (and gov't) are still getting used to in terms of the (meta-)messaging shaping the debate (and this itself being part of the meta-narrative of how the re-public views itself; i just keep seeing 'the happening world'...)

do you hear the people sing...
posted by kliuless at 8:55 AM on August 19, 2014 [2 favorites]

Think Tank Blames Intern For Tweet Telling Amnesty International To “Suck It"
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:57 AM on August 19, 2014

Of course they do.
posted by rtha at 8:59 AM on August 19, 2014 [32 favorites]

God forbid we don't fear-monger our way into more people voting.

The Republicans scared the shit out of Americans with outright lies and false "terror alerts" for years after 9/11 to keep their asses in authority. You're damned right we shouldn't tolerate fearmongering to scare people into voting. It's an abuse of power.

That said, I don't think setting up a voter registration booth when the target audience can actually see, unfiltered, the police abusing their authority and attacking unarmed civilians can be considered fearmongering. At that point, it's a goddamned practicality.
posted by zarq at 9:00 AM on August 19, 2014 [24 favorites]

I like how seemingly one lone Breitbart reader comments:

You are racist. Calling black people an ape/savage? There is this thing in our country called justice. Everyone gets a fair trial. It doesn't matter how thugged out you look or if you just robbed a store. You get a fair trial. It is called America.

He got 10 likes compared to hundreds for the "big ape"/"plantation"/"savages" comments. I wonder if this is the moment that guy realizes the kind of company he's keeping.
posted by crayz at 9:00 AM on August 19, 2014 [39 favorites]

I've decided I'm tired of not seeing much on Facebook on this and I'm going to be the change I want to see on the web. I'm linking an image - which is free to share & use - so FB will automagic it into visibility and posting the following text:

People are being tear gassed and shot with rubber bullets in Ferguson MO because they want to stand up in their own neighborhoods and make their voices heard.

Whether you think Mike Brown's shooting was valid or not, whether there are violent cranks in those crowds or not, the majority of those people in that crowd are law-abiding citizens. They have a constitutional right to assemble. To use painful crowd control methods against people because they choose to stand in their own streets is UnAmerican and not okay.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3a/Occupy_Oakland_Nov_12_2011_PM_57.jpg

I encourage you to copy & paste this and share it as your own status if you agree.

I'm not bothering to talk about what I feel is the gross injustice for MB or a million other things, or mention the LRAD (which people may now know about and explaining it seems a diversion from basic issues) - sticking with what I know my friends across all the political spectrum believe in being right for themselves. I am narrowly resisting ranting about how nobody would bother my pasty white ass if I wanted to go out and harangue people in the public square.

Help yourself if you like.
posted by phearlez at 9:02 AM on August 19, 2014 [4 favorites]

"What is the rationale for closing the schools? I can't see what's gained; perhaps I'm wrong, but it does not seem to be too dangerous to travel between home & school, and the risk of having Unarmed Teens collected in a lunch hall seems no worse -- better, even -- than having Unarmed Teens on the streets. "

What I'm hearing is:
1) Uncertain bus access, due to police road blocks and road closures;
2) Desire to increase building security for the children;
3) Concern about older students (high school students) whose emotions are running very high having fights at school about the issue (this is a thing that actually happens, not overblown);
4) Concern about high school students many of whom actually knew Michael Brown who are in grief and shock;
5) Lack of available resources like grief counselors to support regular school staff, because those community resources are currently taxed to the limit;
6) Parental concern about safety of their children and the number of parents who have informed school officials they want to keep their children home until things calm down (this is probably an overblown concern; they are almost certainly safe at school; but it's understandable why parents would feel this way, and they do have the right to keep children home);
7) The number of families who have evacuated the affected neighborhoods to stay in hotels or with family until things calm down, whose children won't be available for school until the families return;
8) Concern about excessive or intrusive media coverage of children at schools, especially the high school, where the large gathering of children who actually knew Michael Brown will be an irresistible target for journalists as they enter and leave schools, which may be both traumatic for the children and is likely to present an actual traffic safety hazard with large numbers of children, cars, and buses all in one place at one time already typically straining local transportation infrastructure when school starts and ends.

By cancelling days now and adding them to the end of the year, they provide predictability for families (instead of cancelling one day at a time, requiring scrambling every day for child care arrangements) and ensure all students can get to school on those days. The schools are using the extra days to review building security and to coordinate grief counseling services and provide staff with resources/training on grief, racism, etc., for their students.

I'm sure it also has to do with it being the beginning of the school year; if it were mid-year and students and teachers were already in a groove, it is easier to handle this sort of disruption, and I think they'd be less-likely to cancel ... but bus access is frequently the deciding factor since so many student require buses.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 9:03 AM on August 19, 2014 [25 favorites]

Facebook is also not displaying a lot of stuff in my news feed.

Well, if you look at the front page of MetaFilter, there is only one (just one!) post devoted to Ferguson. And there aren't any AskMe's devoted to Ferguson that I can tell...

In other words, people are thinking about it and discussing Ferguson. But, like on MeFi, life goes on.
posted by Nevin at 9:05 AM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

Well, if you look at the front page of MetaFilter, there is only one (just one!) post devoted to Ferguson.

This is a feature, not a bug.
posted by nathancaswell at 9:07 AM on August 19, 2014 [30 favorites]

But, like on MeFi, life goes on.

Well, this thread has crashed Metafilter several times, and there is a very noticeable lack of other threads.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 9:09 AM on August 19, 2014 [10 favorites]

Westringia F.: "desuetude & feckless, I definitely get that fear, but keeping kids home can be the parents' choice -- it doesn't need to be imposed."

Attendance records are used in all kinds of ways. "Success rate" of schools. "Effort" of student. "Parental concern" for child's education. Truancy.
posted by desuetude at 9:09 AM on August 19, 2014 [5 favorites]

Here's an Amazon wishlist of supplies that the protestors on the ground in Ferguson are asking for.
posted by Phire

Thanks so much for that link Phire! Really awesome. Lots and lots of ways to help in that blog post. More than just the Amazon wishlist, including helping Michael Brown's family also.

It's good to be able to feel like there's something you can do, no matter how small. Instead of just sitting paralyzed and numbed watching the same dispiriting clips over and over.
posted by marsha56 at 9:09 AM on August 19, 2014 [3 favorites]

Officers on the daytime shift pleasant. Just watched Officer Christianson (Hwy Patrol) joking around with some local kids - all smiles

Oh my God, this wrecked me. I...just lost it for a minute. There's no picture, and the name isn't spelled the same (might just be a misspelling?), but that could potentially be one of my oldest friends from Florissant, who's now a Missouri Highway Patrol officer. I haven't seen him since college. I'm simultaneously hoping it is him—because that sounds totally like him, and I trust him, and I trust that he'll do the right thing in our hometown if it's at all within his power, and I know he has a disarming sense of humor that we desperately need right now—and that it isn't him, because now my abstract worry about him being called in on this is concrete.
posted by limeonaire at 9:11 AM on August 19, 2014 [29 favorites]

Concern about older students (high school students) whose emotions are running very high having fights at school about the issue (this is a thing that actually happens, not overblown)

I was in 8th grade during the OJ verdict, and there were two guys in my orchestra class, cellists, who were best, best friends. One was black and one was white. The day after the verdict, the two of them got into a fist fight in front of the whole class. I don't doubt it actually happens.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 9:14 AM on August 19, 2014 [17 favorites]

The white guy on the left is the one who was trying to incite a riot last night. He came here from Chicago.

That looks like a member of the Revolutionary Communist Party. They're a Maoist group that was much larger back in the day (70s). Today they seem to specialize in obnoxiously showing up to protests and trying to lead them in the most "revolutionary" direction possible (whatever that means -- sometimes it's confrontational, other times not). For instance, after the Trayvon Martin shooting, they would call for an RCP-led protest at the same time in place where a community protest was already announced, in order to both attempt to show that they had large numbers at their actions and attempt to co-opt demonstrators.

I've heard a bunch of other talk about "anarchists" or "outside agitators" (CNN? Amnesty International? Nelly?) or "provocateurs" or whatnot, but I think these people are who most are referring to, and I'm going to keep thinking that until proven otherwise. Someone in chat last night said something like the most dangerous thing an anarchist would do is offering people dumpster dived vegan cronuts.

That being said, and as much as I find RCP's ideology and practice distasteful, I have real reservations about turning anyone in a protest movement over to the police. Antonio French is more than just tweeting pictures of RCP members; he's shoving them around at protests.

I'm sure there are people who want to loot or fight the cops or engage in other activity that Antonio French et al find unproductive. They don't need the RCP to do that -- in fact, they have been doing that already. I find narratives that counterpose a pure, nonviolent, black, local "community" or "people" to foreign, white, troublesome, violent "outsiders" very unconvincing (there are black RCP members, btw). In fact, this would seem to be a perfect line that police and their supporters would want to propagate, and it often is. It narrows down the number of "legitimate protesters" down to a minimum, and excludes more radical elements, or any outside help. (Mind you, I'm not arguing the RCP, in particular, is helping anyone.)

There's a lot of anger out on the streets, many people from within and without the "community" (whatever that is) who are trying to turn the protests in a direction they deem productive, some more agitational than others. Big political events are complicated. And all developments within the protest movement that one finds unfavorable can't be blamed on the RCP bogeyman.
posted by Noisy Pink Bubbles at 9:16 AM on August 19, 2014 [9 favorites]

You're damned right we shouldn't tolerate fearmongering to scare people into voting. It's an abuse of power.

True fear is a gift. You're darn right fear of police brutality and voter disenfranchisement should not only be tolerated but celebrated.
posted by Golden Eternity at 9:16 AM on August 19, 2014 [3 favorites]

The concern, expressed both in the article and in the comments, is that the Democrats are taking a tragedy and politicizing it.

Yeah, they're undoubtedly accruing political benefit from those sorts of actions, but they're doing so by encouraging people to increase their participation in their representative government to redress their grievances in a peaceful manner through the institutions and rule of law we all commonly benefit from - something that should be a fairly neutral act like state and municipal support of primary election operations is, since those registering to vote can use that vote any way they want. It's only because the 21st-century Republican party would never intentionally redress the grievances involved here that the benefit of greater voter registration will devolve on only one party.

It's like, yes evangelism is a motivation of and component in Christian missionary work, but if Richard Dawkins or someone of his ilk were to call no-strings-attached digging of wells or feeding of orphans or washing the feet of lepers by missionaries "disgusting" and portray it as a terrible unjust tragedy that the world would be far better off without, even though I'm an atheist myself I'd regard that as unmitigated bullshit.

On preview, you express a similar notion I think about the voter registration booths.
posted by XMLicious at 9:17 AM on August 19, 2014 [5 favorites]

Thanks scaryblackdeath, Eyebrows McGee, desuetude, & others for answering my question about the rationale for closing the schools! I'm still saddened by it, but less cynical about the reasoning.

(I was going to type "it makes sense to me now," but no: none of this makes ANY sense.)
posted by Westringia F. at 9:19 AM on August 19, 2014 [7 favorites]

Hell, I feel like getting in a fist fight over some of this, and I'm 44, and I'm only coming across the horribleness of this via metafilter, John Oliver, and NPR. If I was in high school, forget about it, I'd be on hair trigger.
posted by angrycat at 9:20 AM on August 19, 2014 [18 favorites]

Well, this thread has crashed Metafilter several times, and there is a very noticeable lack of other threads.

Maybe this was said elsewhere and I missed it, but I'm curious, do we know how many people were trying to access the thread at once when it collapsed?
posted by C'est la D.C. at 9:20 AM on August 19, 2014

There was a list of questions in the last thread and I think copied to this one. I noted when I read them that something about many of them bothered me and I think I can express it.

It's wrong to focus on Darren Wilson. His past behavior as an officer while not exactly irrelevant is less relevant than the structure around him. To look so hard for evidence that he was a bad cop is to ignore that the system tolerates (even rewards) bad decision making while ignorin subtle (and less so) prejudices. Darren Wilson could be Boy Scout, so to speak, whose never been in trouble. That doesn't mean he couldn't let societally normally prejudice about the "dangers of black men" cause him to over-react. It's less a problem to me that one cop screws up. It's a greater problem that the system is setup to let them off and pretend like there's nothing we can do.

I see this as parallel to the "good kid" meme about Mike Brown. It doesn't matter that he was or wasn't a good kid. His actions (for good or ill) were likely irrelevant to his death. That cop could still have overreacted if he were Jesus himself. Digging into the cop's past to see what else he's done wrong tells us nothing about this incident so much as what it tells us about the system and how much it encourages treating black people as lessor.
posted by R343L at 9:23 AM on August 19, 2014 [27 favorites]

Of course I realize I didn't make the final point: to care too much about the cop's past behavior is to let the authorities and our society off the hook. If he's a bad cop we can't just wash our hands of it, just as if Brown really had been a criminal it wouldn't be okay for him to be shot in the street like that.
posted by R343L at 9:25 AM on August 19, 2014 [7 favorites]

It's wrong to focus on Darren Wilson.

In what sense though? These protests are going to happen every night until he's arrested, I think.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 9:26 AM on August 19, 2014

That looks like a member of the Revolutionary Communist Party. They're a Maoist group that was much larger back in the day (70s). Today they seem to specialize in obnoxiously showing up to protests and trying to lead them in the most "revolutionary" direction possible (whatever that means -- sometimes it's confrontational, other times not)

Oh god, the RCP is there? Fuuuuuuuuck.

I have personal experience with this group - they had a nasty habit of showing up to peaceful anti war veteran protests and telling everyone who could hear that the veterans were going to be the vanguard of the revolution shooting the enemies of the state and/or telling veterans that the cops were coming to kill us. I was so glad that the shield of our veteran perception was stronger than the antagonizing the RCP were trying to do. I am really sadly unsurprised that they are showing up in Ferguson like the vultures they are.
posted by corb at 9:27 AM on August 19, 2014 [10 favorites]

It's wrong to focus on Darren Wilson.

Yeah, no. We absolutely should focus on the cop who murdered an unarmed kid.

We should also focus on the rampant institutional racism that enabled it to happen.

These are not mutually exclusive, and what you are saying comes perilously close to excusing Darren Wilson for murdering an unarmed 18 year old.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 9:28 AM on August 19, 2014 [10 favorites]

the gist of what he said is that the powers that be in Ferguson should just sacrifice Wilson and charge, arraign, and bond him out just to keep the peace.

That would start a horrible precedent and would not solve any of the underlying causes of the problems with police corruption and police/community relations.

My instinct is to snark, as others have done, yes, wouldn't it be awful to set the precedent that when a cop shoots someone in less than clear circumstances that they get treated marginally like everyone else does. But one of my friends, who has defended capital cases, commented on Facebook about this far better than I could and she has said it's fine for me to share those bits here.

She was responding in a thread where she's posted a New Republic article about Bob McCulloch's discretion in charging the officer and getting justice for Mike Brown. Someone else suggested it was too soon for the facts and she responded:

It'd be nice if every person charged with murder had the benefit of thorough investigation by the police and the prosecutor before being charged. But our adversarial system doesn't give that benefit to citizens, even those who vehemently claim self-defense in their voluntary statements to the police. I know, I've represented those battered women who killed and were immediately charged, jailed, held, had to make bond, lost their jobs, only for the machinery to spit out a not guilty. If the system is a good one, it should work the same way for everyone.

Another defense attorney chimed in, agreeing, "With my client armed, the deceased not, and eyewitnesses, I don't recall prosecutors ever mulling for weeks over whether to charge my guys."

The apologia brigade was undeterred, with another person saying "How about if we allow the process to play out and find the facts" so my friend added:

Unless police officers have a specific statutory privilege that entitles them to more investigation when their conduct (actus reus) demonstrates a provable murder case (with all the inferences which the govt. enjoys from the use of a deadly weapon in that prosecution), then the process is not playing out in a regular manner. Self-defense is an affirmative defense that must be raised by the defendant. The officer here is being treated differently from any other person who shot and killed someone. Put more bluntly, if you shot someone 6'2", 290 lbs., Linda you'd be charged with murder. (In which case, you should call me.) And I would raise your self-defense claim and the jury would assess these facts. You would not be given the benefit of the doubt in the charging and the investigation in my experience. The machinery of the executive would begin to work almost immediately to gather facts and evidence to prove your guilt. And we have an adversarial system, and that's a part of it. This officer is being treated like he's in the France, with an inquisitorial system. Both have strengths and weaknesses. If many of my clients had enjoyed the depth of objective, even suspect-oriented investigation that this officer is getting, I would have never been appointed, fewer tax dollars would have been spent, juries wouldn't have been in service for days, etc.

It's very clear where my sympathies lie, but as far as I'm concerned I'm all for charging cops (and anyone) in a case that looks that cloudy. The idea that it's going to stop them from acting in their own self preservation is idiocy, and knowledge that a less than obviously clear circumstance will result in a charge seems to me to be a GREAT way to cut down on insanely troublesome actions. When I was a youngish man in Miami there was a notorious death where an officer walked into the path of a speeding motorcycle (over a traffic infraction) and shot... and leaned on the fact that he feared for his life.

If cops start thinking about their chain of actions as ones that can get them cuffed I don't see that as anything but a good thing.
posted by phearlez at 9:28 AM on August 19, 2014 [86 favorites]

npr is saying that protestors picked up smoke bombs that were thrown at them and threw them back at police. and then the police are describing being under assault.

If the protestors start bleeding on police uniforms then they're going to be in real trouble.
posted by homunculus at 9:32 AM on August 19, 2014 [12 favorites]

alleging that there have been drones out every night - has that been substantiated by anyone else? You'd think that would be all over the media.

You'd think that would be the media. "We can't get any more helicopter shots due to the flight restrictions, but lookee here at the exclusive quadcopter footage an anonymous source just sent us. We need to reiterate that we do not support violations of FAA rules, and that these unknown persons with suspiciously expensive high quality aerial photography gear should keep it all grounded."

Too implausible still? Give it time; the expensive gear keeps getting less expensive. I wonder what the police reaction will be when any big event on the streets is surrounded by drones watching the "fireworks" without regard to legality.
posted by roystgnr at 9:32 AM on August 19, 2014 [5 favorites]

That looks like a member of the Revolutionary Communist Party. They're a Maoist group that was much larger back in the day (70s). Today they seem to specialize in obnoxiously showing up to protests and trying to lead them in the most "revolutionary" direction possible (whatever that means -- sometimes it's confrontational, other times not)

See, I was attributing the stories of "outside agitators" to Black Bloc groups, who also seem to show up at protests and - well, as far as I can tell, the logic behind things is somewhat similar to the RCP, but they don't talk about it so much as they just get around to starting shit.

(Admitting I have a bit of a bias; I think I mentioned getting caught up in the chaos from a Black block group action during one of the marches during the 2004 Republican Convention, and I've had a wee grudge ever since.)
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:33 AM on August 19, 2014 [5 favorites]

My biggest doubt about it being anarchist kids is they're usually so loud about doing dumb things - they certainly wouldn't shy away from being on camera. Punching fellow protestors sounds out of character too.
posted by Artw at 9:36 AM on August 19, 2014 [2 favorites]

These are not mutually exclusive, and what you are saying comes perilously close to excusing Darren Wilson for murdering an unarmed 18 year old.

When I think of this, I think a lot about a friend of mine from the Army. We'll call him Joe, though that is not nor has ever been his name. Joe was a really good guy - sweet and thoughtful and compassionate. Then Joe got deployed to a unit where the commander and the rest of the command staff really, really hated Iraqi insurgents and made it patently clear. They spent every day talking about how terrible they were, all the terrible things they would do, dwelling on the women and children who suffered under the insurgents. It culminated in the commander offering a four-day pass and an 'Attaboy' to anyone who killed an insurgent with a knife.

My friend Joe stabbed an insurgent to death with a knife for a four day pass and the approbation of his comrades. It was not until I talked to him about it, later, that he even knew it was wrong. How could it be wrong, if his commander, who taught him all the rules and what to do, said it was right? How could it be wrong if all his brothers-in-arms with more experience said it was right and that he acted rightly?

I think of that, of Joe, when I think of Darren Wilson. I wonder what the command climate of the police station in Ferguson was, a police station that we've already heard racist language coming out of, that we've already heard an us-vs-them mentality from. I don't think it excuses Wilson, but I wonder what he had been told, about how to react to someone who strikes or struggles with a police officer. I wonder what he thought was the correct thing to do, from the police department and fellow officers he worked with. And I wonder, if that is the case, if it can be considered the right thing to do to charge Wilson and leave his command untouched.

In the military, we have a concept called command responsibility. You are responsible for the climate you allow under your command, and you are responsible for the orders you give. If you gave unclear or illegal orders, and someone else physically committed them, you are equally as responsible as if you had done them yourself. Yours was the order, yours was the command, yours was the culpability.

I don't know if we have anything like that in the civilian world, or in the police structure. But by god, I really think that we should. The idea of this police department being able to escape by ultimately throwing Wilson out as a bone and going on blithely really bothers me.
posted by corb at 9:38 AM on August 19, 2014 [76 favorites]

These are not mutually exclusive, and what you are saying comes perilously close to excusing Darren Wilson for murdering an unarmed 18 year old.

As I read it R343L was saying no such thing, but rather making an excellent point about scapegoating behavior on both sides. Obviously the militarized power structure is horrific here, Darren Wilson is just the face of it at the moment. There will be other faces, equally loathsome, and nothing will change if we focus rage on them individually in succession.
posted by Bistle at 9:38 AM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

I don't even know anymore.

"I’m a cop. If you don’t want to get hurt, don’t challenge me."
posted by lizarrd at 9:39 AM on August 19, 2014 [14 favorites]

I put together that initial list, and I know what you mean, R343L. By way of background, I was mostly just making a list of the things that I thought a lot of people wanted to see that I worried might get forgotten or lost in the shuffle—in situations like this, it has in the past felt like we discuss a lot of things here on MetaFilter that never get brought up in subsequent media coverage or prosecution, or that we ourselves move on from in discussion and never get back to. So I wanted the list there as both a starting point for further discussion and as a waypost, too, so that when we look back at this point later, we'll remember how opaque things have been. People are protesting not just for justice, but because transparency has been sorely lacking, so releasing more of this info that people have been calling for from the beginning (and that multiple organizations are now suing for) might also help in that regard.

And as I also realized after I threw it out there, a lot of those pieces of information would've been more useful than the video that the Ferguson police did release. So for me, it turned into sort of a "Hey, while CNN is endlessly showing the same three seconds of video, don't forget about these things" kind of effort.

But of course there's no guarantee that any of it will help or that all of it's relevant. You're right—it doesn't necessarily matter if Wilson had a previous record, and there is a parallel there to the "good kid" argument. But would I like to know? Of course! And is there a chance that, due to bureaucratic shuffling over the years in three different police departments (Jennings, Ferguson, and the St. Louis County), any info in that did exist in that regard might have been lost or be in the process of being "lost"? Yep. So that's why I included that in the list.
posted by limeonaire at 9:40 AM on August 19, 2014 [2 favorites]

Holy balls. From lizzard's link: Most field stops are complete in minutes. How difficult is it to cooperate for that long?

How difficult is it for you to leave people the fuck alone? (Sorry.)
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 9:42 AM on August 19, 2014 [18 favorites]

There's no picture, and the name isn't spelled the same (might just be a misspelling?),

Incredibly common to misspell Scandinavian names, because there are so many identically pronounced variants.
posted by eriko at 9:43 AM on August 19, 2014 [4 favorites]

The road to actually charging police when they murder black men starts with a single policeman.
posted by Artw at 9:43 AM on August 19, 2014 [16 favorites]

I’m a cop. If you don’t want to get hurt, don’t challenge me."

LAPD officer. See the discussion about command responsibility above.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 9:44 AM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

What's the plausible endgame here? Given other similar events, how is this likely to end? How do we step back from whatever abyss we're staring into? (Short term, as in Ferguson and police and protests; not as in How to stop systemic class and race problems in the US.)
posted by troyer at 9:45 AM on August 19, 2014

In the military, we have a concept called command responsibility. You are responsible for the climate you allow under your command, and you are responsible for the orders you give. If you gave unclear or illegal orders, and someone else physically committed them, you are equally as responsible as if you had done them yourself.

Corb, what happened to your friend's commander—the one who offered a 4-day pass to anyone who stabbed an enemy combatant to death—was he/she ever punished by the Army?
posted by Atom Eyes at 9:45 AM on August 19, 2014 [7 favorites]

Even though it might sound harsh and impolitic, here is the bottom line: if you don’t want to get shot, tased, pepper-sprayed, struck with a baton or thrown to the ground, just do what I tell you. Don’t argue with me, don’t call me names, don’t tell me that I can’t stop you, don’t say I’m a racist pig, don’t threaten that you’ll sue me and take away my badge. Don’t scream at me that you pay my salary, and don’t even think of aggressively walking towards me. Most field stops are complete in minutes. How difficult is it to cooperate for that long?

The latter part of that sentence sounds like a litany of things the officer is tired of hearing, rather than any sort of justification for the actions he suggests in the former part of the sentence. But unfortunately, he seems to think otherwise.
posted by limeonaire at 9:45 AM on August 19, 2014 [20 favorites]

The Court of Military Appeals held that "the justification for acts done pursuant to orders does not exist if the order was of such a nature that a man of ordinary sense and understanding would know it to be illegal."

I'm all for assigning culpability to the higher-ups who create a culture that creates this shit. But regardless of his command culture, charging him for ending someone's life unnecessarily because he used inappropriate force would never be throwing Wilson out as a bone.

And seriously corb, if you don't recognize how insulting and incendiary that phrasing is then you really need to take a moment and think about how you communicate your thoughts.
posted by phearlez at 9:47 AM on August 19, 2014 [20 favorites]

I also believe every cop should use a body camera to record interactions with the community at all times. Every police car should have a video recorder.

...

And you don’t have to submit to an illegal stop or search. You can refuse consent to search your car or home if there’s no warrant (though a pat-down is still allowed if there is cause for suspicion). Always ask the officer whether you are under detention or are free to leave. Unless the officer has a legal basis to stop and search you, he or she must let you go.

posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 9:48 AM on August 19, 2014 [2 favorites]

WRT Facebook and visibility: what you post and what you comment on affects what you see. I'm posting a lot about Ferguson, and I'm seeing a lot about Ferguson.

But what I think is also affecting my own FB feed is the fact that I'm FB friends with the pastors at my church. My church is extremely progressive, noteworthily so even within its extremely progressive denomination (UCC), and the congregation is almost exclusively white -- but one of our pastors is a black woman who is a single mother to a 5 year old son, who is also black. She has been extremely forthright about this issue, and has been speaking directly to her congregants as well as to white people in general, encouraging us to talk to one another, to talk about this to our liberal white friends, to talk about this with our children. "I had to start teaching my son about racism when he was three, for his own safety," she said. "White people, teach your children, too. Don't make my son bear this burden alone." I think her very vocal leadership on the issue is provoking a lot of the church membership, many of whom I'm also FB friends with, to post more, to discuss more.
posted by KathrynT at 9:49 AM on August 19, 2014 [22 favorites]

My friend Joe stabbed an insurgent to death with a knife for a four day pass and the approbation of his comrades. It was not until I talked to him about it, later, that he even knew it was wrong.

There is literally nothing in either one of these sentences that is believable.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 9:49 AM on August 19, 2014 [12 favorites]

But regardless of his command culture, charging him for ending someone's life unnecessarily because he used inappropriate force would never be throwing Wilson out as a bone.

My apologies for being unclear: what I was trying to say is that this police department, if it offered Wilson up and stopped defending him, would probably be acting on that, not that charging him would necessarily be so. I cannot possibly imagine a circumstance in which this police department would do so purely on principle alone, and have seen literally nothing from this police department to suggest that it is not the hell-enclave I imagine.
posted by corb at 9:51 AM on August 19, 2014 [2 favorites]

I wonder if that's who I saw leading a protest in downtown Oakland last night. It was a small group, and several of them had "Revolution" t-shirts on.

Yeah, probably. They have a recognizable aesthetic, with the (I feel dirty for linking to this right-wing website, but whatever) black tshirts with red and yellow lettering. Also they're usually handing out their Revolution newspaper.

If you're in Oakland, they also have a bookstore in the East Bay that you can visit! (They have these bookstores all over the country.)

But AFAICT the RCP isn't particularly strong in Oakland. And lord knows there's plenty of other people in Oakland that would be protesting this stuff...
posted by Noisy Pink Bubbles at 9:51 AM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

The concern, expressed both in the article and in the comments, is that the Democrats are taking a tragedy and politicizing it. Many of us had the same exact complaint about Republicans after 9/11, which they used to fearmonger their way into a second Bush term. And two wars. And to lock up brown people and dissenters. Etc.

Who are the Democrats politicizing this tragedy? So many of them haven't even bothered to discuss this that it's creepy. Those that have are taking the exact same direct action (demilitarizing the police, investigations into police procedures, etc) that many on both sides seem to want.

The GOP does not want minorities to vote, yes. This much is obvious. But there are precedents to their complaint. And under different circumstances, many of us, myself included, have raised similar objections.

This is some horrifyingly wrong "both sides do it" BS that I frankly didn't expect to see here. More people are hit by lightning or claim they've had alien encounters than there are verifiable instances of voter fraud. There is copious evidence that nearly every single voter suppression law is intended to be discriminatory, usually across racial lines, and shockingly often that intent is stated outright. I have no idea what "different circumstances" you have raised similar objections over, but I sincerely hope that, at worst, you greatly misunderstand the actual circumstances and objections of the wave of voter suppression laws.
posted by zombieflanders at 9:52 AM on August 19, 2014 [22 favorites]

That WaPo editorial is disgusting. Disgusting.
posted by sallybrown at 9:53 AM on August 19, 2014 [20 favorites]

I don't know how to reconcile "if you don't want to get shot [...] just do what I tell you" with "you can refuse consent to search" and "always ask the officer whether you [...] are free to leave".

Nah, I'm just playing, I know exactly how to reconcile it. He's lying about the last two things.
posted by penduluum at 9:53 AM on August 19, 2014 [38 favorites]

is there a precedent in this country for this much control/abuse of the media?

Short form - yes.

Longer form:
Books like The mighty Wurlitzer, findings in the Church Commission, Cass Sunstine and the electronic media infiltration comments, The Guardian newspaper sidewalk fixing after Snowden, et al.

Where does one wish to draw the line?
posted by rough ashlar at 9:54 AM on August 19, 2014 [2 favorites]

So...this cop. He shot this kid because....jay-walking? Do I have this right?
posted by Hoopo at 9:55 AM on August 19, 2014 [3 favorites]

That WaPo editorial is disgusting. Disgusting.

It is literally the most offensive thing I have read about policing.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 9:56 AM on August 19, 2014 [13 favorites]

I'm having trouble donating to the ACLU... says (both) my credit cards have been declined. Neither is a Visa, which is sometimes the issue, but ACLU doesn't specify what card types they take. Anyways, someone should try to donate and tell me if they're successful ;)
posted by Strass at 9:57 AM on August 19, 2014

I post a lot of political stuff on Facebook; at this point I assume people either ignore me or block me or just wait for me to post something about kittens to comment. Since I still get comments on kitten posts or I-got-a-haircut posts, I know people are out there. I don't know what they think. I guess I'm grateful they aren't coming over and being racist on my posts, but it is hard to parse what they are actually thinking.

Still, I feel like I have to post. If only to let myself know, I am not shutting up. I am not turning away.
posted by emjaybee at 9:59 AM on August 19, 2014 [5 favorites]

I was unclear. I don't mean Darren Wilson shouldn't face trial etc. of course he should. I meant that it's will be all too easy for our society to decide that once he's punished, everything is fine. After all, he was clearly a bad cop - the system works! For what it's worth, it's pretty clear the protestor largely understand this: the words I've heard are most angry that a cop yet again killed someone unjustly and the authorities tried to ignore it. So when I said it was wrong to focus too much on Wilson I meant it was wrong for the talking heads and the public discussion away from the town to care too much abut Wilson's past because that tends to lead to pretending it is an isolated incident, just one bad cop.
posted by R343L at 10:06 AM on August 19, 2014 [8 favorites]

Too implausible still? Give it time; the expensive gear keeps getting less expensive. I wonder what the police reaction will be when any big event on the streets is surrounded by drones watching the "fireworks" without regard to legality.

There are already hobbyist drones (small FPV airplanes) that could be launched from a couple of miles away and loiter over the protest area shooting video for 30 minutes without too much issue at all. The cost of putting one together is around $1000 right now, it will probably be cheaper next year though. Right now there is not an "out-of-the-box" solution, you'd need someone with the expertise in putting all the parts together.

I do need to make abundantly clear that I would NOT consider using an FPV model aircraft to shoot video of protests in Ferguson to be "hobbyist activity". Social activism or guerrilla journalism perhaps, but not a "hobby" activity.
posted by smoothvirus at 10:08 AM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

Related to that, the MO RNC thinks setting up voter registration booths in Ferguson is "disgusting" and "inappropriate."

A far more profitable way of looking at the situation would be to say that this current civil unrest is a direct and very predictable result of the Republican Party's long-term strategy to disenfranchise black and other minority voters.

Just two specific relevant examples that bear directly on Ferguson: #1. Missouri recently passed statewide voter id requirements. #2. Ferguson, like many Missouri communities, has off-cycle municipal voting and a system of half in-district, half at-large city council members that virtually guarantees that minority populations will be underrepresented.

The political geniuses who set these type of systems up obviously think highly of them, but the inevitable result is that problems in our communities cannot be worked out through the political system (painful though that is, at times) but rather smolder underground until they erupt in protests like we are seeing in Ferguson, or worse.

By far the most productive way to deal with these issues will be to get these previously underrepresented communities involved and active in the political process--by, for example, registering unregistered people to vote, by working hard to actually get out the vote in the communities in (for example) municipal elections, and by working to cultivate political organization, leadership, and viable candidates from the previously neglected communities.

If what is happening now in Ferguson results in an organized and politically active black community in Ferguson, you could easily see them taking half or more of the available City Council seats in Ferguson next April.

That would change the balance of power in the city dramatically, and lead to some real thoroughgoing change in, for example, the police force and its policies.

If we can't (or won't even try) to solve the problem that way, I fear greatly for the what the next inevitable step will be.
posted by flug at 10:08 AM on August 19, 2014 [23 favorites]

FWIW, here's a street map of Ferguson with the flight restriction overlaid on it.

Looking at the new TFR. It's wider (3nm from the center,) unlike the first one, the requesting authority is the Officer of the Governor of Missouri, and answering a question I had about "how is this not fucking with Lambert?", arriving and departing traffic for STL are explicitly exempted from the TFR, so for them, it doesn't exist.

Also, the area is in the Class B airspace for STL, so operations are already restricted. This is in the lowest part of the Class B airspace, which is generally 6nm from the CSX, the VOR-DME navigational beacon located at the airport. Everything between 8000' and the surface has to be in contact with STL ATC and given clearance to enter.

Diagram here I hope. The class B is the nested roughly circular areas around STL. The altitudes for each section are written as HI/LO, so 80/30 means between 8000 and 3000 is the class B in that section.^* Be carful if you zoom out, because it'll switch from the VFR chart to the WAC chart, which has less detail. In particular, you'll only see the outermost line of the Class B.

Note that Ferguson is in the 80/SFC section, which means below 8000 all the way to the ground.
posted by eriko at 10:08 AM on August 19, 2014

It is literally the most offensive thing I have read about policing.

It's offensive, but I also think it's illuminating. The officer says:

"Working the street, I can’t even count how many times I withstood curses, screaming tantrums, aggressive and menacing encroachments on my safety zone, and outright challenges to my authority."

In which we learn that the worst thing he can imagine is challenges to his authority.

"if you don’t want to get shot, tased, pepper-sprayed, struck with a baton or thrown to the ground, just do what I tell you."

In which we learn that he thinks it is completely acceptable to shoot someone for not doing as they're told.

"Unless the officer has a legal basis to stop and search you, he or she must let you go. Finally, cops are legally prohibited from using excessive force: The moment a suspect submits and stops resisting, the officers must cease use of force."

In which we learn that he's a credulous idiot or pretending to be one.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 10:08 AM on August 19, 2014 [93 favorites]

Y'know, every interview I see with an actual Ferguson resident indicates that there are a number of violent protesters attacking the police and that those people are not locals. Several residents have said that on air, especially at the beginning of the week. They've come to join the riots. If I were a Ferguson community leader I'd make it mission one to corral those people, if you can, I know people like that and they're fanatics too.

Going to Ferguson to peacefully protest in solidarity with the locals is great. But even on this thread there are people who want to go help fight the pigs. It doesnt help and personally I think hiding behind peaceful protesters while you throw rocks at the police is despicable. The people of Ferguson have a voice but it's being pretty thoroughly lost in the shouts of others from what I can see.

I also think this is why Johnson can't get a handle on anything.
posted by fshgrl at 10:08 AM on August 19, 2014 [6 favorites]

Officer Darren Wilson’s Online Support Group Is As Classy As You’d Expect

They wish this situation wasn't racialized. "Al and Jesse would never come out from cowardly hiding if it were a black cop and white offender," says one organizer, very un-racist-ly.
...

posted by tonycpsu at 10:09 AM on August 19, 2014 [3 favorites]

I don't even know anymore.

"I’m a cop. If you don’t want to get hurt, don’t challenge me."

On some level, he's right. If you're the kind of person that only has infrequent, rather perfunctory, interactions with cops, it's not worth getting tased over a speed trap. Just be polite, follow directions, pay the stupid ticket and get on with your life.

But there are huge swaths of the population that are essentially under the thumbs of an oppressive and abusive police force, and giving them the same advice is tantamount to telling them to abandon their desire to live as a human being in a free society. If you live in a jurisdiction where the cops feel comfortable yelling at you: "Get the fuck on the sidewalk!", you're not in a place were police officers have earned any respect or deference, IMO.
posted by empath at 10:09 AM on August 19, 2014 [35 favorites]

it's not worth getting tased over a speed trap. Just be polite, follow directions, pay the stupid ticket and get on with your life.

What if I did nothing wrong, and they claim that I did because of the color of my skin?
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 10:11 AM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

emjaybee: I post a lot of political stuff on Facebook; at this point I assume people either ignore me or block me or just wait for me to post something about kittens to comment. Since I still get comments on kitten posts or I-got-a-haircut posts, I know people are out there.

I can't tell for sure if you're being knowingly ironic here, but in case not: you get that Facebook is likely not showing any of them your political posts, right? That they're literally not seeing them?
posted by nobody at 10:11 AM on August 19, 2014 [4 favorites]

We have a justice system in which you are presumed innocent; if a cop can do his or her job unmolested, that system can run its course. Later, you can ask for a supervisor, lodge a complaint or contact civil rights organizations if you believe your rights were violated.

Pull the other leg, that one's long enough already.
posted by phearlez at 10:12 AM on August 19, 2014 [3 favorites]

Maybe that's what we could be doing if we're feeling helpless about this situation - writing to WaPo and expressing our disgust about that oped in the form of a letter to the editor.

Let that officer see the overwhelming majority is against him.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:13 AM on August 19, 2014 [4 favorites]

There's nothing I can say that hasn't already been said by wiser, more collected, more intelligent voices upthread, and nothing I can do except throw more money at the ACLU and the folks who are out there fighting the good fight -- but that WaPo link? Holy shit.

I'm a nominally Buddhist, peace-and-love-oriented, perpetually hopeful, painfully earnest hippie-type person, but oh my god in heaven, I hate police. I hate them with such a passion that stories like this make me turn off the outside world altogether. I've hated them this much since I was a very small child, and only partially because my dad is a dark-skinned dude with multiple felony convictions. I have never, not once, found myself in a situation where a visible police presence has helped more than it has harmed.

I'm 5'3" and ~110# and I've been handcuffed at a routine traffic stop because I didn't know my rights. They pulled me out of the car and put me face down on the ground when I asked why they were pulling me over... a burned-out tail light, as it turned out. But apparently I was just too uppity with my questioning! Because one of the officers laughed and said, "Stop struggling" -- laughed because I wasn't struggling at all -- before putting his boot on my neck, presumably as a display for the trainee who was along for the ride. I hate police. They are desperate, craven, positively slavering for the citizenry to react with anything except cowed and unequivocal acquiescence. They are looking for absolutely any excuse -- any word, any look, any gesture, any question, anything they can spiff up and prop up as a justification to, very literally, take you down. I expect absolutely nothing from any LEO on the planet except unambiguous escalation, violence, and inter-officer collusion/cover-up.

But that WaPo link made me realize I had no idea what hating police felt like before now.

Holy shit.
posted by divined by radio at 10:13 AM on August 19, 2014 [119 favorites]

Let that officer see the overwhelming majority is against him.

Sadly, I think the overwhelming majority are in favor of cops beating black people.
posted by empath at 10:14 AM on August 19, 2014 [8 favorites]

I made the mistake of posting the WaPo article to Facebook, and now I have the cop defenders coming out of the woodwork.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 10:14 AM on August 19, 2014

The whole "look, we found a Molotov cocktail" thing strikes me as similar to the "he was a suspect in a robbery" thing. Oh, hey, look, he was a suspect in a robbery. What's that you ask? Did the cop who shot him have any idea that he was a suspect in a robbery? Well, ha, funny thing, no, he had no idea. What? You want to know what it has to do with anything then? Well, it's funny you should ask, and it all makes total sense, because - oh, hey, look, a Molotov cocktail. What's that you ask? Haven't we been gassing people for days before finding this Molotov cocktail that we're using as justification for gassing people? Well, about that, the thing is - hey! Look! A bunny rabbit! Isn't it a cute bunny rabbit?
posted by Flunkie at 10:15 AM on August 19, 2014 [10 favorites]

Regarding school closings: Here are two uplifting photos from local teachers: "School Closed? Bring Your Students Here", and "Teachers, Here to Teach".

Seems like the "thin ~~blue~~ educational line" has its soldiers on the front line, holding it down. School or no school, the children of Ferguson are learning a ton this past week. I weep for what they've learned. But something about the three women in the above pictures gives me some hope.

I'm heading up to Ferguson right now, actually. And if I see them I'll gladly learn from them or their students anything they'd like to teach me.
posted by jjjjjjjijjjjjjj at 10:15 AM on August 19, 2014 [16 favorites]

Is there any reliable information anywhere regarding the amount of violence the authorities are having to deal with? The media has molotov cocktails and gunshots sourced from protesters almost every where I look and I am having a hard time believing one word of it. Assaulting a police officer is suicidal. Why do we have all this media bullshit about suicidal protesters?

If I was a suicidal protester I think I would use a bomb.
posted by bukvich at 10:15 AM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

nobody, some of them are seeing the (I get occasional likes) but I don't know who. And yes, FB has their fucky algorithms that mean I never know when I am shouting into the void.

How do we step back from whatever abyss we're staring into?

We are already in the abyss. The question is whether we will leave it.
posted by emjaybee at 10:16 AM on August 19, 2014 [2 favorites]

But there are huge swaths of the population that are essentially under the thumbs of an oppressive and abusive police force, and giving them the same advice is tantamount to telling them to abandon their desire to live as a human being in a free society.

Earlier on after Mike Brown's murder I heard on interview on NPR with an African-American father of a pre-teen boy (from Ferguson I believe) talking about how he had had run-ins with the police when he was younger. That didn't seem to scare him so much, but now it had hit him like a brick that his son will inevitably have to interact with police officers, and it scarred him to death. He talked about how he was hammering home to his son all the things he had learned about how to be polite to police officers and avoid being hurt by them. He was so scarred that his son could be beaten or worse by police as he transitioned into adulthood. The guy just wanted his son to do good in school and get into college just like practically every other father. The fact that he has to be legitimately concerned about his son being beaten or falsely arrested is chilling.
posted by Golden Eternity at 10:17 AM on August 19, 2014 [14 favorites]

Sadly, I think the overwhelming majority are in favor of cops beating black people.

Well, let's see about that.

I'm going to be writing the WaPo editor when I get home about that very Op Ed. Anyone else?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:17 AM on August 19, 2014 [9 favorites]

Tear Gas Is A Banned Chemical Weapon, But US Lobbying Made It Okay For Domestic Use... And, Boy, Do We Use It
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 10:17 AM on August 19, 2014 [15 favorites]

It's wrong to focus on Darren Wilson.

Say rather: it is not enough to focus on Darren Wilson. There are at least three things that have to be done:

- Justice for Mike Brown.
- Address issues of racial tension and imbalance of power both locally and nationally.
- Address the issues of overequipping and undertraining/mistraining of police officers.

Approximately in that order.
posted by Foosnark at 10:18 AM on August 19, 2014 [13 favorites]

Folks on Tumblr/Twitter are pointing out that you can't even get glass 40s in Missouri. Don't know if that's true, but kinda damning if it is.
posted by WidgetAlley at 10:22 AM on August 19, 2014 [6 favorites]

Or it's from out-of-town black bloc/RCPers, ruining shit as ever. Honestly, this sort of...how do you say it, like riot protest tourism? has been getting really bad in recent years, and I think it's even more gross when people who generally live in privileged areas are bringing it to Ferguson. The Ferguson residents have to live with the shitty stuff the black bloc'ers are creating and will not be able to leave when the riot cycle is done.
posted by corb at 10:24 AM on August 19, 2014 [7 favorites]

Folks on Tumblr/Twitter are pointing out that you can't even get glass 40s in Missouri. Don't know if that's true, but kinda damning if it is.

Looks like they may be banned in St Louis
posted by crayz at 10:26 AM on August 19, 2014 [2 favorites]

From the WaPo op-ed: Working the street, I can’t even count how many times I withstood curses, screaming tantrums, aggressive and menacing encroachments on my safety zone, and outright challenges to my authority.

MY AU. THOR. IT. TAY.
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 10:26 AM on August 19, 2014 [43 favorites]

"you can't buy 40 oz malt liquor in Missouri. It's a huge bummer. If you go to the Kansas side to get one, you'll have to go to a liquor store"
posted by crayz at 10:27 AM on August 19, 2014

Are they legal in Illinois? East St. Louis is just across the river, and going to Illinois to do things that are illegal in Missouri is a St. Louis tradition.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 10:30 AM on August 19, 2014 [10 favorites]

That WaPo op-ed just leaves me speechless.
posted by rtha at 10:33 AM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

To my mind, there is at least a 50% possibility that the white "anarchists" are not actually anarchists - I think it's fairly possible that they're undercovers, since there are plenty of records of this kind of thing happening at protests run by actual white anarchists, and indeed, I've been in political milieux where there were very, very plausible white "anarchist" undercovers trying to get people to commit violence.

I've seen this personally in Seattle.

I went to the May Day protests this year, but mainly walked on the sidewalk, away from the bulk of the crowd. Once we got to downtown, the police presence was so heavy and crowded that I ended up ducking into a back alley. What did I find? An unmarked black van, with a bunch of burly 30 to 40 somethings wearing and putting on Black Bloc gear. They also looked quite startled when I stumbled upon them, but being a small woman wearing a nice shirt and jeans and a headscarf, I posed no threat to them, and they then ignored me as I walked past, doing the same to them.

The 'anarchists' and Black Bloc people I actually know in Seattle? Skinny kids and 20 somethings, who don't have the money for shiny tactical boots, and definitely don't have the money for a black van. It was pretty obvious these guys were undercovers of some type.
posted by spinifex23 at 10:35 AM on August 19, 2014 [55 favorites]

Honestly, this sort of...how do you say it, like riot protest tourism?

Yeah. These people, and I've met a few, are every bit as bad as the worst of the cops. All they want to do is fight and they love mayhem and don't care who gets hurt.

I remember trying to talk to some.moron who'd claimed she'd released a bunch of animals from a lab. Non native, unhealthy animals. Trying to tell her that was a bad idea. All she cared about was that she'd been on tv. Now she middle aged, middle class, married with 2 kids and a mortgage and a nice white collar job. It really is a disgusting form of poverty tourism.

Spinfexw has a good point too, but I don't know of the Ferguson police are that organized. That's something you see more at pre arranged protests like GTO.
posted by fshgrl at 10:36 AM on August 19, 2014 [3 favorites]

We Are All Complicit, " And we all have a duty—not just to another young, dead black man, and not just to a town in the middle of our country full of frustrated Americans, fed up with being beaten down for the color of their skin or the contents of their bank account—to fix it."
posted by the man of twists and turns at 10:37 AM on August 19, 2014 [4 favorites]

Ugh. Fuck RCP and the Avakianites. Have they ever done anything besides stir up shit and mug for the cameras?
posted by PMdixon at 10:39 AM on August 19, 2014 [3 favorites]

quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon: "From the WaPo op-ed: Working the street, I can’t even count how many times I withstood curses, screaming tantrums, aggressive and menacing encroachments on my safety zone, and outright challenges to my authority.

MY AU. THOR. IT. TAY."

It's not even THEIR authority - it's the State's Authority. They're just leasing it to them for bragging rights or something.
posted by symbioid at 10:39 AM on August 19, 2014 [3 favorites]

> Folks on Tumblr/Twitter are pointing out that you can't even get glass 40s in Missouri. Don't know if that's true, but kinda damning if it is.

There's a kernel of truth to that. But it's not "in Missouri", it's in STL City (and in a defacto sense, also the county).

They were banned under the Bosley Jr. administration in 1994:

In 1994, with the backing of then-Mayor Freeman Bosley Jr., the beer industry, package liquor stores and neighborhood groups, City Excise Commissioner Bob Kraiberg issued an administrative order banning retailers from selling 40-ounce bottles of beer below room temperature. Which is to say: No more cold Forties. In a reciprocal concession to the liquor industry, Kraiberg made legal the sale of single 16-, 24- and 32-ounce cans, which previously had to be sold in packages of at least three. The rationale cited for these measures was simple: too damn many Forties failed to find their way into trash cans, instead assailing the city's streets with shattered glass. -- From RFT

Now, all that said, since there's no market for un-refrigerated 40s, and I haven't seen a glass 40oz in STL in over a decade. I spend most of my time in the City, but have never seen 40s in the County, either.

Cf. this reddit thread, where somebody asks "where can I find 40s"? and /r/StLouis collectively says "I dunno, dude. I haven't seen them anywhere".

So... they're available in St Chas Co., in JeffCo, in Franklin, and across the river. It's not like you can't bring them here. It's just that you don't see them often here. STL is a tallboy town. source: I hang out with a tallboy/40oz crowd.
posted by jjjjjjjijjjjjjj at 10:39 AM on August 19, 2014 [7 favorites]

Hot damn! It looks like it might be true that you can't get 40oz beers in Missouri.

However, I can't find a legal citation for this. This news story from this year seems to indicate that 40oz bottles of beer are, indeed, for sale. Of course, malt liquor isn't beer, but nothing in the statutes seems to draw a distinction on the packaging point.

I also have no idea what I'm doing, so.
posted by Sticherbeast at 10:41 AM on August 19, 2014

And we all have a duty—not just to another young, dead black man, and not just to a town in the middle of our country full of frustrated Americans, fed up with being beaten down for the color of their skin or the contents of their bank account—to fix it."

That's a great article. Focusing on the street fighting is a good way to avoid the real issue. I feel more and more like the feds need to step in but I wonder if that would even help.
posted by fshgrl at 10:41 AM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

If I were a Ferguson community leader I'd make it mission one to corral those people, if you can, I know people like that and they're fanatics too.

This is exactly what was happening on the live feed last night, to the best of their ability. Antonio French made like a linebacker and pushed one out of the crowd.
posted by desjardins at 10:42 AM on August 19, 2014 [5 favorites]

There's only so much he can do but yeah I saw that. It must be so frustrating for the community leaders watching this all go down.
posted by fshgrl at 10:44 AM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

I am just stunned by that WaPo oped. That may be the worst thing I've ever read in a supposedly-credible news outlet. I can't believe my hero Wesley works for the same paper.
posted by desjardins at 10:49 AM on August 19, 2014 [7 favorites]

Speaking of Wesley, he just confirmed that the guy on the scene is a different Officer Christensen (likely this guy, I'm thinking) than my friend growing up, so I'm definitely relieved! Though apparently police from where my friend is currently an officer (sounds like he's not with the highway patrol anymore) have been called in at various points, so I still worry for him.
posted by limeonaire at 10:52 AM on August 19, 2014

problems in our communities cannot be worked out through the political system (painful though that is, at times) but rather smolder underground until they erupt in protests

that could be one of the 'feature, not a bug' things that 'alphas and betas' put in place to maintain systems of control, but rather than 'smash the system' you could, like florida just did, try to uphold principle-based law:

...a circuit court judge in Florida voided the state's congressional map, citing a "secret, organized campaign" by Republican operatives that "made a mockery of the Legislature's transparent and open process of redistricting." The ruling concluded that District 5, held by Democrat Corrine Brown, and District 10, held by Republican Dan Webster, will need to be redrawn. From a purely practical standpoint, this means redrawing any surrounding districts as well, and possibly many of the state's 27 districts overall. "If one or more districts do not meet constitutional muster, then the entire act is unconstitutional," Judge Terry Lewis wrote.

The ruling is something of a barn-burner, and well worth a read. Lewis opens it up with a quote from George Washington warning of "cunning, ambitious and unprincipled men" who will "subvert the power of the people" and "usurp for themselves the reins of government."

and from there you could maybe try stuff like:
-Race-blind affirmative action: Identifying the disadvantaged
-An Idea For Decreasing Income Segregation And Increasing Economic Mobility

but that is for another day...
posted by kliuless at 10:55 AM on August 19, 2014 [6 favorites]

Looks like they may be banned in St Louis

They're banned in St. Louis City and Kansas City, MO. They may be banned in other communities, but it is not a statewide law.

The main reason was litter, and the response was 24oz cans, so the idea of someone driving a long way to get an actual 40oz is sort of inane. There are plenty of large glass bottles available locally, obviously -- wine, Schalfly bombers, etc.

I do not know about the County, or about various communities within the county. Remember: St. Louis City, politically speaking, has literally nothing to do with St. Louis County. Laws in the city do not apply to the county, and laws in the county do not apply to the city.

The STL city ban was incredibly popular across the entire city. The drinking outside didn't bother people nearly as much as all the glass lying around. Rules on individual sale were changed to allow single sales of 24oz and quart cans at the same time, and STL just moved onto cans. The glass got swept up and stayed swept up.

A new MO law allows individual 12oz beer sales, those are in glass, but I'll bet a million dollars if they start showing up in the street, STL will ban those as well. STL is a drinking town -- there's no law against public intoxication^* and it is explicitly legal to drink in public parks if you're on the grass, but anybody who remembers pre 1994 and all the glass will be onboard a new law if the glass gets out of hand like it was before 1994.

* Indeed, Missouri is one of six states where this is true, and Missouri explicitly bars localities from outlawing public intoxication. You can outlaw public consumption (and most do) and you can outlaw drinking and driving, but walking out of a bar three sheets to the wind is explicitly legal is Missouri.

Puking on the cops shoes, however, remains dumb. Get drunk with dignity.
posted by eriko at 10:58 AM on August 19, 2014 [2 favorites]

it'll be because the prosecutor's put together an intentionally half-assed case and wants to tank the indictment.

The grand jury has to be drawn locally, right?
posted by corb at 10:59 AM on August 19, 2014

Honestly, when I think about the lives these people have and the neighborhoods they live in, the fact they aren't in downtown STL burning things to the ground is astonishing. They are goddamn saints.
posted by lattiboy at 11:00 AM on August 19, 2014 [16 favorites]

Ferguson calls for 'nighttime quiet and reconciliation,' pledges dash and vest cameras

The city has pledged to help increase black applicants to the county's police academy, raise funds to secure dash and vest cameras, develop programs and incentives to encourage residency of police officers in Ferguson, work with schools to engage young people and provide resources for growth, and rebuild the West Florissant business district.
posted by Foosnark at 11:01 AM on August 19, 2014 [10 favorites]

Ray Kelly Thinks Ferguson Police In Ferguson Are Out Of Hand

This is the same guy who wanted stop-and-frisk to instill fear in minorities.
posted by homunculus at 11:02 AM on August 19, 2014 [12 favorites]

I'm frankly terrified that if they submit the Darren Wilson murder charges to the grand jury tomorrow, it'll be because the prosecutor's put together an intentionally half-assed case and wants to tank the indictment.

I was tempted to make the usual grand jury joke and say I'm not sure Forrest Gump could put together a case that half-assed, but then it's a cop violence case and an officer actually wrote that WaPo piece and attached his real name to it.
posted by phearlez at 11:02 AM on August 19, 2014 [3 favorites]

Are we talking Bob McCulloch, who was outraged when the teargassing stopped for all of one night? Yeah, I would not hold out any hopes for anything useful coming from him whatsoever.
posted by Artw at 11:02 AM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

I feel like today's L.A. Times editorial "Ferguson's police force can learn from LAPD" is an unfortunate companion to the WashPost article. Either way, I'm feeling less awesome about this town now. (Though this one, about a different police force in LA, is more optimistic LAUSD to decriminalize student fights, petty thefts and minor offenses.)
posted by jetlagaddict at 11:02 AM on August 19, 2014

I love that Op-Ed. There have been massive resources devoted over the past few decades to making it less obvious that police can and do think like Judge Dredd. He just puts it out there in WaPo, where the National Review and their ilk can't pretend that local law enforcement is ethical by definition. Also the unstated assumption that a police officer is obligated to view the public as a safety hazard.
posted by IShouldBeStudyingRightNow at 11:03 AM on August 19, 2014 [2 favorites]

Wait, the LAPD has the fucking colossal gall to argue that they are a model of community trust?
posted by corb at 11:04 AM on August 19, 2014 [6 favorites]

True fear is a gift.
posted by Golden Eternity at 12:16 PM on August 19

We need someone to write The Gift of Fear: Dealing with the American Police edition
posted by magstheaxe at 11:05 AM on August 19, 2014 [19 favorites]

The city has pledged to help increase black applicants to the county's police academy, raise funds to secure dash and vest cameras, develop programs and incentives to encourage residency of police officers in Ferguson, work with schools to engage young people and provide resources for growth, and rebuild the West Florissant business district.

Wow, some of those would have been decent responses a week ago, some of those are good ideas that probably should have been in places years ago, and yet I'm still not seeing a "working on community relations by not threatening them with guns" or "not tear gassing and restricting the movement of the media" in there.
posted by jetlagaddict at 11:05 AM on August 19, 2014 [14 favorites]

Honestly, when I think about the lives these people have and the neighborhoods they live in, the fact they aren't in downtown STL burning things to the ground is astonishing. They are goddamn saints.

I think this is why a lot of white people (not you) downplay or disbelieve racism; if we were subject to the same injustices, we'd be furious. It's hard to understand why there isn't constant rioting, so the cognitive dissonance is resolved by saying "it must not be as bad as what they are claiming."
posted by desjardins at 11:07 AM on August 19, 2014 [51 favorites]

This song (released almost eight years ago) should be the anthem of this whole thing. It's a true masterpiece of a song, I'm shocked it isn't more widely known.
posted by lattiboy at 11:07 AM on August 19, 2014 [3 favorites]

From Antonio French's twitter:

We've had an officer involved shooting in St. Louis City. Here at the scene to keep the crowd calm & find out exactly what happened. #peace
posted by spinifex23 at 11:08 AM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

raise funds to secure dash and vest cameras

They could sell some of their excess equipment, and maybe some cupcakes!
posted by rtha at 11:08 AM on August 19, 2014 [4 favorites]

corb, no one would devalue human life like the LAPD unless they had no doubt it was ethical and virtuous in context. They honestly believe their talking points.
posted by IShouldBeStudyingRightNow at 11:08 AM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

That WaPo thing. Ugh. It's almost like ignorant privilege (let's pretend this guy is honorable and noble), just the first few paragraphs strike me as the sort of thing that a white guy says when he says *I don't say the N-Word, therefore it doesn't exist.*

I was this way, when I was utterly shocked to see my dear friend assaulted by a guy she was giving a hug goodbye to as he grabbed her breast. It shook me to my core. She told me this is how it often is for Women.

The "good cops" are naive or complicit.

If this guy is truly as outstanding a cop as he claims he is, it doesn't mean shit when there ARE bad cops out there. And if he continues to act as if all police are all good and all right and there's never a case where a cop does something not just by making a bad call or a judgement in error, but outright maliciously acts based upon their prejudices, then he's not as good a cop as he thinks he is, because his very act of ignorance (purposeful or not) means he's in on the fix, no matter how much he justifies his righteousness to himself.

I wonder what he thinks of a guy like Serpico, or any other whistle-blowing cop that actually IS a good cop who WILL put their whole livelihood and even, potentially, their lives on the line for standing up against corruption in their own ranks.

And this is where we get into the myth of just the "single bad cop" vs the institutions that enable them to keep perpetrating their badness, while all the so-called "good cops" let this shit happen day in and day out, and all the fucking apologists jump on board and so everything they can to demonize the victims of police brutality and lionize the officer for doing such shameful deeds. Or, rather, they SHOULD be shameful, and they are to those of us with a sense of humanity and obligation to our fellow citizens. But apparently, not to those boys (and girls) in blue.
posted by symbioid at 11:09 AM on August 19, 2014 [3 favorites]

outside agitators .... riot tourists ..... An unmarked black van, with a bunch of burly 30 to 40 somethings wearing and putting on Black Bloc gear.

Facial recognition isn't just a tool for the State. The access to commercial facial databases can be rented by non-State actors.

Eye holes in a face mask it seems are good enough to get ID with the systems it seems. Too bad the old butyl mercaptin anti-rape kits were no longer being sold because it would make for a smelly tagging of the Black Blockers.
posted by rough ashlar at 11:09 AM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

From foosnark's link

Johnson also lectured reporters at the scene, telling them they were interfering with police and putting themselves in danger by failing to immediately clear areas when asked to by officers. He also implored reporters to “not glamorize the acts of criminals.”

I don't think the cops have come off as glamorous.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 11:11 AM on August 19, 2014 [15 favorites]

What I don't understand is, beyond monetary concerns, why the Ferguson department only bought two dashboard cameras and two wearable cameras and didn't use them. It just seems like a terrible series of half-measures.

On preview, oh wow. Here's more info on the officer-involved shooting in north St. Louis (under an incredibly poorly spelled headline, "St. Louis City offer shoots, kills knife-weilding suspect").
posted by limeonaire at 11:12 AM on August 19, 2014

From Antonio French's twitter:

We've had an officer involved shooting in St. Louis City. Here at the scene to keep the crowd calm & find out exactly what happened. #peace

Wait what

Another one?
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 11:13 AM on August 19, 2014

Wait what

Another one?

I don't know. If a guy tried to attack the police with a knife... that probably justifiable, no?
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 11:15 AM on August 19, 2014

Assuming he did in fact try to attack the police with a knife, which I'm going to need more than the shooter's word on.

At least it doesn't seem related to Ferguson.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 11:16 AM on August 19, 2014 [3 favorites]

Wait, the LAPD has the fucking colossal gall to argue that they are a model of community trust?

It's probably safe to say that the LAPD's ability to earn the trust of the community is far better than their ability to identify pickup trucks or to distinguish colors.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 11:17 AM on August 19, 2014 [23 favorites]

I think this is why a lot of white people (not you) downplay or disbelieve racism; if we were subject to the same injustices, we'd be furious. It's hard to understand why there isn't constant rioting, so the cognitive dissonance is resolved by saying "it must not be as bad as what they are claiming."

I think it's more than that. I think, for your average white middle class person and/or community, they have a lot more resources than your average low-income black community. It would never get to that point, because there's a lot more political influence. When there's even a mild mannered outcry, there are usually results. Lawsuits are well funded and have community pillars backing them. There aren't riots, because riots come with a sense of frustration and helplessness.

So I think there's this sense of "Why don't they just calm down and wait for the political influence to take hold and punish the guilty?" without the realization that there is no political influence, that this is not fixable with the resources the community has at its disposal.

Then again, I'm not white, so I may be completely wrong on that.
posted by corb at 11:18 AM on August 19, 2014 [23 favorites]

The Guardian have started liveblogging Ferguson, and seem to be getting their information from a lot of the same sources that show up in this thread. Might be a good place to check for links that might get lost if you're trying to keep up with the frequent updates here.
posted by harujion at 11:19 AM on August 19, 2014 [4 favorites]

Wait what

Another one?

1) This is St. Louis City PD, and presumably this occurred in the city.

2) We literally know nothing about this except what Antonio French posted, and his followup: "Crowd forming around crime scene. @ChrisCarter3 and Chris Carter, Sr. also here. #peace"

Antonio French is the 22nd Ward Alderman in the City of St. Louis.
posted by eriko at 11:22 AM on August 19, 2014

New essay from Brittney Cooper (previously: In Defense of Black Rage): America's New Racial Low Point:

I’m tired of journalists being bullied for trying to tell the truth. I’m tired of explaining to white people why our anger is justified, why looting, which is a property crime, should not even be part of a conversation about the killing of a teenager, why the alleged shoplifting of cigarettes is not a capital offense, why the police officer who killed Mike for the crime of walking in the street is the real thug.

White racism and white privilege continue a bad cop-good cop routine with black America that is utterly exhausting. Just when we think we are making headway, a well-meaning white person asks “but can’t we condemn the looting too?” The question is: Have you condemned the killing? Or have you tried to explain it away? To justify it?

I will not engage in a condemnation quid pro quo with trolls, well-meaning white citizens or respectable black ones, “Brand New Negroes” I call them, in the tradition of the famous text from Harlem Renaissance philosopher Alain Locke. I will not concede that destruction of property is equal to the taking of life. I will not answer calls to be reasonable in the face of unreasonable, unjustifiable black death.

posted by scody at 11:24 AM on August 19, 2014 [64 favorites]

eriko, as I posted above: Here's more info on the officer-involved shooting in north St. Louis. Here's the Post-Dispatch story stub, too, which presumably will get more info added.
posted by limeonaire at 11:25 AM on August 19, 2014

What would you prefer to call a shooting of an unarmed kid in broad daylight?

Shooting. Killing. Not murder, until it's shown to be murder.
posted by in278s at 11:26 AM on August 19, 2014 [4 favorites]

Scott Greenfield responds to the WaPo nightmare of an oped

Most field stops are complete in minutes. How difficult is it to cooperate for that long?
This is where we, sadly, part ways. When you use the word “cooperate,” you do so applying the cop definition. We, non-cops, are to cooperate with you, cop. We, as you’ve already told us, are to do as you say. Your idea of cooperation has nothing whatsoever to do with cooperation. It’s just a much better word than “comply or I will inflict pain, perhaps even death.” If they put “comply” on the side of a cruiser, it would really suck as marketing, so you call it “cooperation,” which sounds all warm and fuzzy, much as “stop resisting” sounds reasonable as you pound your baton into an unconscious person’s skull. That only happens rarely too.

posted by phearlez at 11:27 AM on August 19, 2014 [43 favorites]

Any speculation on why there aren't more people protesting in Ferguson? The crowds I've seen in pictures/on the live feeds (day or night) look like several hundred, definitely less than a thousand protesters (I'm not including media, obvs). Yet there have been thousands in other cities. Are my numbers that far off? Given all the attention, I would think the streets would be packed constantly.
posted by desjardins at 11:28 AM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

Maybe the police teargassing people is keeping crowd numbers down? That is the point of teargassing them, after all.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 11:31 AM on August 19, 2014 [4 favorites]

Shooting. Killing. Not murder, until it's shown to be murder.

Homicide work for you?
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 11:31 AM on August 19, 2014 [4 favorites]

I don't know for sure, but I suspect part of it is because the protests are spread out a bit. There have definitely been a few times where, for instance, there were protesters at the QT, across from the Ferguson PD, at the county police headquarters over in Clayton, and up and down West Florissant Ave.

Also, this has been going on for more than a week now, and few people can spend 100% of their time out there.
posted by Foosnark at 11:32 AM on August 19, 2014

I think this is why a lot of white people (not you) downplay or disbelieve racism; if we were subject to the same injustices, we'd be furious. It's hard to understand why there isn't constant rioting, so the cognitive dissonance is resolved by saying "it must not be as bad as what they are claiming.

White people would be, and have gotten, furious and have rioted over much smaller things. Isabel Wilkerson writes about the Cicero Race Riot of 1951 in her book The Warmth of Other Suns. This occurred when this young black couple tried to move to Cicero, IL, a Chicago suburb.

4,000 whites attacked the building that the couple, the Clarks, were moving into. The 60 police officers sent to control the situation did not do so. In fact the police chief told the Clarks "You should know better. Get out of here fast. There will be no moving into that building".

The rioters threw rocks, destroyed the building, set fire to it. Firefighters called to the scene were met with bricks and stones by the mob. The Illinois National Guard moved in, and rioters fought with them. This went on for 3 days after $20,000 (in 1951 money) was done to the building. Cruelly, the rioters threw a piano, which Mr. Clark had save for for years for his kids, out the window, destroying it.

The riot was front-page news in Asia and attracted worldwide attention. The Cook County grand jury did not indict a single rioter. Incredibly, the Clark's attorney from the NAACP, the owners of the building, and the rental agent, were indicted on charges of inciting a riot and conspiracy to damage property (though the charges were dropped after widespread criticism).
posted by AceRock at 11:32 AM on August 19, 2014 [105 favorites]

"One of the oldest African-American bar associations in the country is calling on the Missouri prosecutor who is overseeing an investigation into the fatal shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown to recuse himself.

The Mound City Bar Association is concerned that St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Bob McCulloch's family ties with St. Louis' police department may impact his ability to conduct an impartial investigation. The prosecutor's father, mother, brother, uncle and cousin have all worked for the department, and his father was killed while responding to a call involving a black suspect, according to CBS News."
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 11:32 AM on August 19, 2014 [21 favorites]

(Add to that, as well as the National Moment of Silence event in downtown STL.)
posted by Foosnark at 11:32 AM on August 19, 2014

I am so unbearably overwhelmed by all of this. I just sent a shitload of stuff from the Amazon page. I feel as though I have lost faith in our nation's ability to live with one another. We are all standing so far apart...as if we will never come together.
posted by Sophie1 at 11:34 AM on August 19, 2014 [2 favorites]

Arresting people for jaywalking makes profits for Ferguson/Florissant. Daily Kos, with a paper written by ArchCity Defenders.

I feel sick.
posted by mgrrl at 11:34 AM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

"Police come under 'heavy gunfire' in Ferguson, arrest 31 people"

They're saying that two people in the crowd were shot, but not by police, and the people were taken to the hospital. Any word on who/what/why?

corb, that story's from first thing this morning, reporting on what happened overnight. And apparently the figure police gave is incorrect. It seems 78 were arrested overnight, not a mere 31 people.
posted by limeonaire at 11:36 AM on August 19, 2014 [2 favorites]

Best of all, there was no such thing as jaywalking until the 1920s. Streets were for *people* before that... For bicycling, walking, and gosh, even protesting.
posted by entropicamericana at 11:38 AM on August 19, 2014 [12 favorites]

Arresting people for jaywalking makes profits for Ferguson/Florissant.

From what I've seen, this is extremely common in Smalltown, USA. There is a fix that works: fines go to general revenues, police services get paid solely from a single budget appropriation at the municipal or state level.

Making the police entrepreneurial and self-funded downloads taxes from the rich to fines on the poor. They become occupiers and harassers, rather than protectors.
posted by bonehead at 11:39 AM on August 19, 2014 [20 favorites]

Bicycling?! That's insane.
posted by mlis at 11:39 AM on August 19, 2014 [6 favorites]

Also, this has been going on for more than a week now, and few people can spend 100% of their time out there.

Exactly. Protesting is fucking exhausting. You're in public, you are standing the whole time, it's hot, there's no shelter, there's inadequate food and water and bathroom access. And this is setting aside the fact that people are facing down a militarized police presence that is literally more heavily armed than the actual army during an actual war. Now, multiply that by 10 days.

The fact that there are still hundreds of people out there despite all of this is fucking heroic, not an indictment of the lack of willpower or commitment of the people of Ferguson.
posted by scody at 11:40 AM on August 19, 2014 [52 favorites]

Police arrested 78 people in Ferguson during the most recent overnight protests, according to NBC News and local St Louis news channel KSDK, which published a list reportedly from St Louis Justice Services.

Only four people arrested are residents of Ferguson, 50 are residents of the St Louis area and 19 are out-of-state residents. The remaining five are from other parts of Missouri.

Of those arrests, 75 were for failure to disperse, two were for unlawful use of a weapon and one person, from Illinois, was arrested for interfering with an officer.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 11:41 AM on August 19, 2014 [4 favorites]

You would think the police would want the media around to capture this "heavy gunfire" on camera.
posted by inigo2 at 11:42 AM on August 19, 2014 [18 favorites]

Anyone else having problems working today. I sure am. It's not just getting distracted by wanting to keep up with what's going on but with things here just seeming so superficial. One of my colleagues was freaking out about some piece of paper getting misplaced and I had to work at acting like I cared.

thank you for this thread it's keeping me sane.
posted by Jalliah at 11:45 AM on August 19, 2014 [20 favorites]

To be clear, I didn't mean to criticize the people of Ferguson for their "lack of commitment" or whatever although I see how that's the way it came across.
posted by desjardins at 11:46 AM on August 19, 2014

You would think the police would want the media around to capture this "heavy gunfire" on camera.

Everyone in the world has a camera phone now. We don't even need the media to capture it. If it was happening, it would be all over YouTube.

I'm sure guns have been fired but the photos of the police look exactly like soldiers. It's scary.
posted by fshgrl at 11:47 AM on August 19, 2014

Twitter @Awkward_Duck: We are meeting at County Prosecutor Bob McCulloch’s office (at 100 S Central Ave, Clayton MO 63105) TODAY at 3PM
posted by Golden Eternity at 11:48 AM on August 19, 2014

Jalliah: Anyone else having problems working today. I sure am.

Yeah. I've been mulling cancelling a therapy appointment because I so do not want to spend an hour thoughtfully discussing how yes, I'm still having persistent negative thoughts like I have been all summer but no, I don't really want to work on thoughtfully picking them apart and challenging my own assumptions about how shitty life is right this minute.
posted by deludingmyself at 11:52 AM on August 19, 2014

Everyone in the world has a camera phone now. We don't even need the media to capture it. If it was happening, it would be all over YouTube.

Yeah, that's why I'm curious about the two people they say were taken to the hospital for gunshots.
posted by corb at 11:52 AM on August 19, 2014

Cameras are cheap nowadays. If you're running a police department, and you don't have all your cruisers equipped with dashcams, you've made a conscious decision and we're entitled to draw inferences from that. The same goes in those situations where bystanders get in trouble for grabbing video of an incident. When the cops are doing their job the right way, the video will back them up. When the cops don't want video, they know their conduct won't stand up to public scrutiny.
posted by in278s at 11:52 AM on August 19, 2014 [12 favorites]

they HAVE dashcams and bodycams in ferguson. Lying around, gathering dust, unused.
posted by KathrynT at 11:54 AM on August 19, 2014 [8 favorites]

Post-Dispatch reporting a funeral and public memorial for Michael Brown will take place Monday.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 11:54 AM on August 19, 2014

Yeah, that's why I'm curious about the two people they say were taken to the hospital for gunshots.

http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/injured-and-shooting-victims-might-be-higher-than-reported/article_4b45633f-c026-5e77-9b4b-37c991b2de73.html
posted by asockpuppet at 11:55 AM on August 19, 2014

We do not do justice in America on the streets. We have legal processes that are set in motion, that are designed after centuries of Anglo-American jurisprudence tradition. They’re designed to protect the rights and liberties of everyone involved. That includes the Brown family; for justice for them and the community. It also includes the officer not yet been charged.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 11:55 AM on August 19, 2014 [3 favorites]

Ferguson teacher requesting help with school supplies for when schools do reopen:

http://www.donorschoose.org/project/history-is-our-story-part-ii/1287920/

and Florissant:

http://www.donorschoose.org/project/easing-into-kindergarten-with-a-new-ease/1287529/
http://www.donorschoose.org/project/sensational-science-and-nail-biting-news/1246994/
posted by shattersock at 12:00 PM on August 19, 2014 [3 favorites]

Roomthreeseventeen: We do not do justice in America ~~on the streets.~~

Fixed that for the Lt. Governor.
posted by Joey Michaels at 12:02 PM on August 19, 2014

From asockpuppet's link:

But the public won't hear about Britton's condition from hospital officials. And the public may not be hearing about other gunshot victims or the full scope of injured individuals because of the hospitals' concerns about privacy issues.

St. Louis area hospital officials say once someone has been identified as a “victim of violence” they cannot share any information regarding that individual.

Gunshot victims are routinely identified as “victims of violence,” hospital spokesmen say.

[....]

Unless Britton's family shares news of his condition, the public will have to rely on St. Louis County police to provide status updates.

So we're stuck waiting on the police to let us know if they've seriously wounded anyone else? Realistically, considering the tear gas last night, people got seriously hurt. By the police. But it's nothing we'll hear about.
posted by cmyk at 12:03 PM on August 19, 2014

police shot and killed a man in St. Louis.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 12:04 PM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

White people would be, and have gotten, furious and have rioted over much smaller things

Well, that's kind of my point. White people riot when their hockey team loses. Black people aren't rioting, so I guess racism can't be that bad, right?
posted by desjardins at 12:05 PM on August 19, 2014 [5 favorites]

cnn link here: Man dead after officer-involved shooting in St. Louis
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 12:05 PM on August 19, 2014

Twitter @ReporterFaith Chief: Two officers fired shots killing 23-year-old suspect.

Twitter @ReporterFaith: Chief: suspect had a knife within 3-4ft of officer. #officerInvolvedShooting
posted by Golden Eternity at 12:06 PM on August 19, 2014

Also, these threads have been so good, but as they get long and I'm scrolling and ctrl-F-ing back and forth to find things like the links to ways to help, live feeds, etc, I really wish they had an accompanying wiki. Phire did yeoman's work last night pulling all those links together, but the inherent structure of Metafilter makes keeping track of current resources hard.

I'm not sure the Metafilter wiki would be ideal for that sort of "breaking news" page. We could however, create a free-form publicly-editable google doc for people to add to. That wouldn't be hard to set up and keep organized.
posted by zarq at 12:06 PM on August 19, 2014 [3 favorites]

they HAVE dashcams and bodycams in ferguson. Lying around, gathering dust, unused.

They only have 2, though that's 2 more than they have deployed.

There's a legitimate issue with cams in that dealing with the footage is a challenge. In even a small police force it could get big quick, and that's been discussed in articles. However that overlooks a very simple method of physically handling the records: just use a new memory card every day. The devices sold by DashCamDiaries (I don't get kickbacks; I just remember them from the Flex Your Rights contest) say they'll do 16h of recording on a 32g card.

Those cards are around $17 online; I imagine there's a small discount you could get if you were buying hundreds. Officers on duty could turn in a card at the end of the day and it could get tossed in an envelope with the date marked on it. Tomorrow is a new day and a new card, at a cost less than 1 hour's salary for the officer.
posted by phearlez at 12:09 PM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

Well fuck: St. Louis police fatally shoot man who brandished knife
posted by Phire at 12:10 PM on August 19, 2014

(CNN) -- A police officer was involved in a shooting in St. Louis on Tuesday, and a man was pronounced dead in the incident, authorities said.

...

It was not immediately clear whether the officer killed him. The investigation is ongoing.

Oh, come on.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 12:10 PM on August 19, 2014 [3 favorites]

deludingmyself: For example, something like this.
posted by zarq at 12:11 PM on August 19, 2014

zarq, I'm gonna memail you a question that is relevant to this situation but a complete derail in this thread.
posted by KathrynT at 12:13 PM on August 19, 2014

Vox: Police are operating with total impunity in Ferguson: "And what's particularly shocking about this form of evasion [policing without a nametag] is how shallow it is. I can't identify the officers in that photograph. But the faces are clearly visible. The brass at the Ferguson Police Department, Saint Louis County Police Department, and Missouri Highway Patrol should be able to easily identify the two officers who are out improperly arresting photographers. By the same token, video taken at the Lowery and Reilly arrests should allow for the same to be done in that case. Policing without a nametag can help you avoid accountability from the press or from citizens, but it can't possibly help you avoid accountability from the bosses. For that you have to count on an atmosphere of utter impunity. It's a bet many cops operating in Ferguson are making, and it seems to be a winning bet."
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 12:16 PM on August 19, 2014 [45 favorites]

Speaking of Google Docs, Joanne (@sabzbrach) tweets "Data is fun: here is the sheet @caulkthewagon and I are using to track less-lethals deployed in Ferguson: https://t.co/WaAFUiGXbS"
posted by zix at 12:16 PM on August 19, 2014 [2 favorites]

Hedy Epstein, the 90-year-old Holocaust survivor who was arrested in #Ferguson, wore a shirt that read "Stay Human"
posted by jeffburdges at 12:17 PM on August 19, 2014 [5 favorites]

From the Guardian:

The victim had stolen two energy drinks from a convenience store and was wielding a knife and acting erratically, said Dotson.

Dotson said witnesses could hear the man saying: “shoot me now, kill me now.”

He said the man did not respond to demands to drop his weapon as he approached the officers, carrying the knife with an overhand gesture. The man was within three to four feet of the officers when they shot him.

“I think officer safety is the number one issue,” Dotson said.

What the actual fuck? They are armed to the teeth with non-lethal weaponry and they can't handle a guy with a knife? This is out of control.
posted by Acey at 12:18 PM on August 19, 2014 [20 favorites]

they HAVE dashcams and bodycams in ferguson. Lying around, gathering dust, unused.

Right, as linked above, as reported by CNN, they apparently only have two of each. That's just bizarre.
posted by limeonaire at 12:18 PM on August 19, 2014

Dotson said witnesses could hear the man saying: “shoot me now, kill me now.”

Normally I would think that would be suicide by cop, but in light of Ferguson I wonder maybe he was trying to say something about excessive use of force?
posted by corb at 12:19 PM on August 19, 2014 [4 favorites]

The cops all took their name tags off in Toronto during the last G20 debacle. About 90 of them were docked a day's pay, and I'm sure all of them thought it was money well spent for a chance to beat people up all weekend long.
posted by The Card Cheat at 12:21 PM on August 19, 2014 [18 favorites]

What the actual fuck? They are armed to the teeth with non-lethal weaponry and they can't handle a guy with a knife? This is out of control.

"You got pissed that we're shooting black people and now you're pissed we're shooting crazies? Where the fuck does it end with you bleeding heart libruls? Who the hell can we shoot? White people?"
posted by Talez at 12:21 PM on August 19, 2014 [18 favorites]

Something I've wondered for a long time: why isn't there a priority on keeping people alive when it comes to police confrontation? There are ways to 'subdue' people, even suicide-by-cop determined people (assuming that's even true, which I doubt), without killing them. I'd like to see a focus on police reducing lethal force and instead working on Bringing 'Em Downtown, or wherever, alive. But then I also want that pony I asked Santa for when I was eleven.

On preview: corb makes a really good point there.

Probably irrelevant: I wonder if Hedy Epstein is a Michael Franti fan.
posted by cmyk at 12:21 PM on August 19, 2014 [3 favorites]

I mean, a guy in London went berserk with a machete and they still took him alive. This is insane.
posted by Acey at 12:22 PM on August 19, 2014 [17 favorites]

Can anyone better versed in media speak to the sudden cluster of sites claiming that Darren Wilson suffered an "orbital blowout fracture" during his encounter with Mike Brown?

I mean, I know that it's bullshit and that you shouldn't trust Free Republic any further than you can throw it, but how does this sort of thing crop up and how can you combat it?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 12:23 PM on August 19, 2014

Chris Hayes is tweeting that the guy with the knife may have been mentally challenged.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 12:24 PM on August 19, 2014

I mean, a guy in London went berserk with a machete and they still took him alive. This is insane.

Every other mother fucking country in the world takes their batshit crazy people alive. This isn't a UK is civilized thing. This is a "US local cops are fucking brutal" thing.
posted by Talez at 12:24 PM on August 19, 2014 [34 favorites]

Something I've wondered for a long time: why isn't there a priority on keeping people alive when it comes to police confrontation?

There is. Specifically, the police people. Like the St. Louis police chief said in reference to this very incident, "I think officer safety is the number one issue."
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 12:25 PM on August 19, 2014 [14 favorites]

I think it's safe to say that police officers in almost every other country are better trained to deal with assailants in a non-lethal manner. Not because they have better officers, but because they have better training policies and protocols for situations like that. It's really sad and it just leads to worse outcomes.
posted by jetlagaddict at 12:25 PM on August 19, 2014 [3 favorites]

I also don't believe a word the cops are saying.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 12:26 PM on August 19, 2014 [3 favorites]

Oh, come on.

If the CNN reporter has one person saying the policeman shot the person, and another saying another person shot the person, then this is the correct thing to say. We now have a report where STL police state that they did shoot, so the CNN report *now* is nonsensical, but 15 minutes ago? It may well have been two conflicting stories.

In a rational world, this story would be vetted for a couple of hours before it went out so conflicting information could be resolved. But we don't live in that world. Indeed, with Twitter in play, stories are publicized seconds after an event, and there is no fact checking in the initial stages.

I think this is actually a very bad thing, but between everyone online, instant amplification, and the 24 hour news stations desperately trying to fill their hourly quota of the word "breaking", I don't see how we go back to the days of responsible journalism.

You can say, "Well, if a person saw it, it must be true, why not let them tweet?" In fact, eyewitness testimony is horrifically flawed. We don't impartially see images. Our eyes take in photons, and our minds create images, and even then, we are fitting that image within our world views, and those worldviews have a real influence on what you perceive.

I'm not saying don't let them tweet. I'm saying I miss the days when you could take until press time to gather different reports, collate them and corroborate them, and look at the larger pictures and how what found out today fits into that, then write the story.

Now, it's GET IT ON THE AIR and GET IT ON THE WEBS and we hope we can sort it out later, except, of course, we often never do, because the next thousand breaking stories are already on the way.

I'm wondering what reports will have come out on this in the time it took me to type this? I know very little, but I know this -- the story when I started typing this post is not the same as the story when I finished typing this post.
posted by eriko at 12:26 PM on August 19, 2014 [4 favorites]

Antonio French is more than just tweeting pictures of RCP members; he's shoving them around at protests.

Good for him. Those RCP scumbags are damned near the Westboro church of the Left. They're gonna get people killed - people who have a legitimate grievance and right to peacefully protest. Fuck those assholes.
posted by stenseng at 12:27 PM on August 19, 2014 [21 favorites]

Back home we had a naked guy on a billboard with a pistol and they took him alive! Using a god damned cherry picker!
posted by Talez at 12:27 PM on August 19, 2014 [3 favorites]

I'm not exactly thrilled with the way US cops have become utterly incapable of dealing with threats any other way than guns (cops all over the UK manage to deal with kids with knives with a baton and a stab vest, for example) but if the guy was genuinely within a yard or so with a wielded knife it wasn't an illegitimate shooting. Note the if, of course; I haven't heard any witnesses saying contrary, but with cops these days I always reserve judgement.
posted by tavella at 12:28 PM on August 19, 2014 [2 favorites]

I'm pretty sure that first picture is a tear gas canister being thrown back at the police

No, he was throwing it away from kids and not at police.
posted by soelo at 12:28 PM on August 19, 2014 [8 favorites]

Corb, are you saying he might be Ferguson's equivalent of the self-immolating monk?

On a potentially related note, given the notorious issues with police handling mental disabilities in the best of circumstances, I'm really praying that everyone there has at least someone looking out for them.
posted by C'est la D.C. at 12:28 PM on August 19, 2014

I don't think I've seen this linked yet: Actor Jesse Williams: We Are Not Treated Like Human Beings:

"There’s a complete double standard and a complete different experience that a certain element of this country has the privilege of being treated like human beings, and the rest of us are not treated like human beings, period. That needs to be discussed, that’s the story. That’s what gets frustrating for people — because you don’t know five black folks, five black men in particular, that have not been harassed and felt threatened by police officers. You can’t throw a rock and find five of them. We’re not making this up."

posted by Phire at 12:29 PM on August 19, 2014 [10 favorites]

I'm a fan of reddit, but it's complete and blinding whiteness is on full display right now. Yes, there are some Ferguson mega threads with thousands of comments (half of which are Free Republic level bad), but the number one thing right now?

A new still from ANT-MAN staring Paul Rudd!

Literally nothing about what is happening at Ferguson on the first three pages of "hot" posts. You have to go to number twenty for "top" from the last week.

It is pathetic.
posted by lattiboy at 12:29 PM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

I mean, a guy in London went berserk with a machete and they still took him alive. This is insane.

It's not as though we have well funded psychiatric care available for people. So, you see, in America if you arrest the crazy guy, he's out in a few hours/days and then you have to deal with crazy guy again and/or answer questions as to why he wasn't still locked up the next time he gets into trouble.

There's a lot of incentives built into the system, most of them perverse.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 12:30 PM on August 19, 2014 [4 favorites]

They have no doubt received training on dealing with this exact situation in a non-lethal manner. The man was not brandishing the knife at them and rushing, he was holding it in an overhand gesture three or four feet away. They were in full protection. It should've been easy to disarm him without a casualty. This is another fucking unjustified killing from where I'm standing. These aren't police operating under standard protocol, they're tyrants with itchy trigger fingers.
posted by naju at 12:30 PM on August 19, 2014 [19 favorites]

If the CNN reporter has one person saying the policeman shot the person, and another saying another person shot the person, then this is the correct thing to say.

Unfortunately, CNN is doing invisible edits, so it's impossible to prove otherwise.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 12:31 PM on August 19, 2014

Small-town police in Canada were able to take a guy alive who had just shot 5 of their colleagues. You can do better, America.
posted by Space Coyote at 12:32 PM on August 19, 2014 [28 favorites]

Literally nothing about what is happening at Ferguson on the first three pages of "hot" posts.

Fifth link

It does vary depending on your subscribed subs, but if you unsubscribed r/politics I don't know what to tell you.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 12:34 PM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

Our eyes take in photons, and our minds create images,

LIke the rubber bullets?
posted by rough ashlar at 12:34 PM on August 19, 2014 [2 favorites]

It just occurred to me. They like riots. Not just because the testosterone fueled violence that lets the cops exert their "authoritay", but because if you're out in the streets protesting, it means you're not inside stealthy and organized for something much larger. It keeps you focused on the immediate tactical actions not the larger strategic issues.

So here I ask: What's next? What is the strategic move? Our eyes are on the battle, what about the war? Lawyers are being called in for this issue, and the DOJ is looking into things, and politically, we have a lame duck president who doesn't (and ostensibly, can't) rock the boat.

Someone pointed out in one of these threads that Bush Sr. was able to say more against police violence than Obama is allowed to... Do we need to have a Nixon goes to China moment?

Is working towards undoing the war on Marijuana (and hopefully the larger war on drugs, someday) part of the larger war? If we get one white dude who speaks out against police violence, but doesn't address these larger issues, are we really helping anything?

So all eyes on the frontlines, racist spewing hatred on the sidelines, and the masterminds at the rear planning the next moves, for and against. Lawyers, juries, politicians, community activists, mothers of dead children writing letters and demanding change. Opportunists ready to make a name for themselves and make some money on the way exploiting either side of the issue.

Christ.
posted by symbioid at 12:35 PM on August 19, 2014 [8 favorites]

LIke the rubber bullets?

I know, that reporter screwed up, we'd better follow the #tcot people and turn that into the story. Obviously this means the police aren't using rubber bullets.
posted by inigo2 at 12:36 PM on August 19, 2014

No, that's your "Frontpage" link which is just your subscriptions. To see actual top votes you have to go to all as the subreddit.

See here:

http://www.reddit.com/r/all/top/?sort=top&t=week
posted by lattiboy at 12:37 PM on August 19, 2014

> Small-town police in Canada were able to take a guy alive who had just shot 5 of their colleagues. You can do better, America.

On the other hand.
posted by The Card Cheat at 12:37 PM on August 19, 2014 [5 favorites]

but if the guy was genuinely within a yard or so with a wielded knife it wasn't an illegitimate shooting.

The problem with this thinking is similar to the problem with the police presence in Ferguson: WHY are they within a yard or so in the first place? To what extent is their presence/position the precipitating/enabling factor?

Upthread I mentioned the Lozano shooting in Miami *cough* years ago. There's no question that being in the path of a speeding motorcycle is a hazard to your health. But he put himself there. Why were those cops within a yard of the knife-wielding dude? Were they unable to retreat?

At a more forgiving time in my life I would have assumed they were trying to keep citizens safe and drawing his attention but encounter after encounter show police unwilling to choose life over ego and de-escalate a situation with a person with a hand-melee weapon.
posted by phearlez at 12:38 PM on August 19, 2014 [2 favorites]

The guy who shot Sammy Yatim just got charged with second-degree murder.

It took a while, but that's something.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 12:39 PM on August 19, 2014 [3 favorites]

> On the other hand

But on the other hand...
posted by anthill at 12:39 PM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

No, that's your "Frontpage" link which is just your subscriptions. To see actual top votes you have to go to all as the subreddit.

A moment ago I would have said nobody browses reddit that way. Live and learn.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 12:39 PM on August 19, 2014

Vancouver police take down a guy waving a syringe around. They disarmed a guy with a sword a couple of years ago similarly, but there's no video of it.
posted by bonehead at 12:40 PM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

Slight derail, but police in Britain do also shoot to kill first, ask questions later.
posted by vickyverky at 12:40 PM on August 19, 2014 [2 favorites]

Yeah, this "My country's police were able to do X without killing anybody in X instance" is not very helpful though I'm sure it makes you feel great.
posted by pineappleheart at 12:42 PM on August 19, 2014 [9 favorites]

Not 100% relevant, but this sums up something I've been thinking about recently:

It takes a bigger man to walk away

The purpose of Krav Maga is self-preservation and defense of others. ... And although we spend a lot of time training how to escape from worse case situations (being held at gun point, stabbed with a knife, pinned and choked against the ground, just to name a few), one element that is often overlooked is avoidance of conflict altogether.

...

And it even takes a bigger man/woman to know when to use these skills and when to restrain from doing so, even if deep inside you really wish you can teach these people a lesson or two about manners. Imi Lichtenfeld created Krav Maga so “one may walk in peace”. Knowing that you have an arsenal of tools to handle most violent confrontations gives you the peace of mind and the confidence to not be effected by needless provocations and allows you to be that bigger man.

posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 12:43 PM on August 19, 2014 [3 favorites]

Regarding reddit - which I rarely go to and have not customized. #7 item in votes on my screen is Klein's "if this is how police treat journos..." article.
posted by phearlez at 12:43 PM on August 19, 2014 [2 favorites]

It just occurred to me. They like riots.

Yes. Because the police are trained to handle physical confrontation and LIKE it when they can escalate. Traffic stop for a light becomes a drug search. You talking with a cop, they raise their voice you raise yours and now it is a confrontation.

Change the field of battle. Change up the "rules". Walking into the Grand Jury room with criminal complaints is effectively what nailed Gov. Perry. The Rule of Law Radio folks talk about how it is done in Texas.

If your State lets you, the citizen, submit criminal complaints directly to Grand Jury members then why not do that? Most States seem to have some way to bypass the DA to get a criminal complaint filed. Start looking into that more direct method.
posted by rough ashlar at 12:43 PM on August 19, 2014 [9 favorites]

There's one thing here that is really striking to me (and that's saying something giving the events that we have seen unfold) and that is the utter lack of leadership on the political level from federal on down to the local level. I mean if yesterday's press conference doesn't show that the POTUS has already checked out, I don't know what will.

Yup. I took the time this morning to call my Rep and Senators. I was apparently the first person in Mpls (Rep. Ellison) to inquire about this. Sen. Klobuchar and Sen. Franken staff didn't know if others had inquired, but were willing to assure me that Sen. Klobuchar "supports civil rights." I'd urge everyone to take a few minutes and call their electeds and ask why the fuck they aren't saying or doing something - anything! - about this.
posted by MetalFingerz at 12:44 PM on August 19, 2014 [2 favorites]

I read it as less about "hey look at us", more as calling the police on their bullshit. Non-lethal takedowns can be done with the right protocols. Deadly force should be a last option. That they say it can't is crap.
posted by bonehead at 12:45 PM on August 19, 2014 [4 favorites]

You wanna talk about dehumanization?

Dehumanization is saying it is acceptable to take another's life off of the "things that matter" list.
posted by PMdixon at 12:45 PM on August 19, 2014 [2 favorites]

Yeah, this "My country's police were able to do X without killing anybody in X instance" is not very helpful though I'm sure it makes you feel great.

It's not a competition. The point is, killing someone has to be a last resort, particularly when the situation is this tense. I'm in disbelief.
posted by Acey at 12:45 PM on August 19, 2014 [3 favorites]

Slight derail, but police in Britain do also shoot to kill first, ask questions later.

It's also so god damned infrequent that it was a Huge Fucking Deal™ in the UK.

Here's some UK statistics on how often weapons are fired. Pay attention in particular to table 4. The part where in a single year the police have discharged their weapons no more than ten fucking times across the entire UK.

Police in the US have itchy trigger fingers. They should aspire to be more like police in the UK where police killings are so bloody infrequent and generate untold amounts of outrage that you can't help but have a massive shitshow of an investigation.
posted by Talez at 12:45 PM on August 19, 2014 [13 favorites]

If police are able, per that use of force document cited in the other mondo thread, to shoot anyone to stop them from committing a felony and/or escaping, and assault on a police officer - which includes menacing - is a felony - then they are able to shoot anyone who attacks them or looks like they might be attacking them or says they are going to attack them, regardless of the likelihood of success.

If this is not something you want, then maybe the entire use of force doctrine should be looked at, and/or what we expect of police officers.
posted by corb at 12:46 PM on August 19, 2014 [2 favorites]

Ferguson Mayor: 'There's Not A Racial Divide In Ferguson': "The city of Ferguson has been a model for the region about how we transition from a community that was predominantly white middle class to a community that is predominantly African-American middle class." (2:26)
posted by scody at 12:47 PM on August 19, 2014

Every other mother fucking country in the world takes their batshit crazy people alive. This isn't a UK is civilized thing. This is a "US local cops are fucking brutal" thing.

No, it's a race thing. Some white dude lured firefighters and other rescue personnel into a fucking trap with a fake 911 call and opened fire on them and was still taken in alive.

In motherfucking TEXAS. The most highly armed state in the union. This is a "US cops will do whatever they can to execute black people for the crime of being black" thing.
posted by elizardbits at 12:47 PM on August 19, 2014 [120 favorites]

So here I ask: What's next? What is the strategic move? Our eyes are on the battle, what about the war?

I still like the recall election idea Conor Friedersdorf floated. It's hard to organize from a distance but it seems fairly simple given the number of people gathered in Ferguson right now.
posted by sallybrown at 12:47 PM on August 19, 2014

If this is not something you want, then maybe the entire use of force doctrine should be looked at, and/or what we expect of police officers.

Ya think?
posted by PMdixon at 12:48 PM on August 19, 2014

"My country's police were able to do X without killing anybody in X instance" is not very helpful

Much of the discussion about Ferguson concerns the militarization of the police, a theme about which the UK has traditionally been following a different track.

It is fair to note that Lee Rigby was a serving soldier who was run over and then hacked to death with cleavers on a London street, but the UK police successfully disarmed and arrested his killers to face proper justice without punishing anyone's community.
posted by colie at 12:48 PM on August 19, 2014 [4 favorites]

It's not a competition. The point is, killing someone has to be a last resort, particularly when the situation is this tense. I'm in disbelief.

I agree it's not a competition. That's why I don't like the whole "MY country is better at this" stuff.
posted by pineappleheart at 12:48 PM on August 19, 2014 [2 favorites]

What the actual fuck? They are armed to the teeth with non-lethal weaponry and they can't handle a guy with a knife? This is out of control.

This really bothers me. Why the hell even buy and train them on the damn things if they aren't going to be used in a textbook case where non-lethal weapons are called for?

Well, I guess I know the answer. The answer is torture. Non-lethal weapons are to be used to torture the non-compliant but unarmed into submission, that's apparently their only purpose. They need to be outlawed if they're not going to be used to preserve human life.
posted by Slap*Happy at 12:49 PM on August 19, 2014 [16 favorites]

If this is not something you want, then maybe the entire use of force doctrine should be looked at, and/or what we expect of police officers.

Well, that use-of-force guide is unconstitutional on its face and should fall over like an Italian soccer player the first time it's challenged, but the mentality is still there.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 12:49 PM on August 19, 2014 [2 favorites]

This is a "US cops will do whatever they can to execute black people" thing.

As I said in the other thread, it's not so much that want to kill black people as it is that they're not willing to expend any effort to avoid killing them. There's always a reason. It's just that in the same sort of interaction with a white guy, the white guy somehow doesn't end up dead.
posted by empath at 12:49 PM on August 19, 2014 [27 favorites]

I feel like today's L.A. Times editorial "Ferguson's police force can learn from LAPD" is an unfortunate companion to the WashPost article.

I saw that op-ed. Where do you think they learned this from? LAPD basically invented the SWAT team. After the Watts Riots, LAPD wanted to upgrade their heavy tactical response. They even bought an armored car with a battering ram but they mostly used it during drug raids.

The LAPD is not a model for urban pacification. The LAPD is widely blamed for not intervening early in the Rodney King Riots. They just cordoned off the flash point, and stood back while the mayhem started. They let hapless bystanders like Reginald Denny wander right into the center.
posted by charlie don't surf at 12:50 PM on August 19, 2014 [4 favorites]

It's not glee. This fucking situation fills me with sadness. It is showing that, even in a country that nominally shares a similar legal and policing tradition, there is another viable way to do things.
posted by forgetful snow at 12:51 PM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

As I said in the other thread, it's not so much that want to kill black people as it is that they're not willing to expend any effort to avoid killing them.

Wilson's gun didn't aim itself and force him to make the choice as to whether to expend any effort to prevent it from firing.
posted by Etrigan at 12:52 PM on August 19, 2014

Look, I get and can accept that Barack Obama is too polarizing to really help by taking more extreme action (like a strongly worded letter). But where is Hillary Clinton? Does she have a National Police Reform plan? She is taking every black vote in America for granted.
posted by shothotbot at 12:52 PM on August 19, 2014 [4 favorites]

If this is not something you want, then maybe the entire use of force doctrine should be looked at, and/or what we expect of police officers.

yes this is what i want

this exactly
posted by desjardins at 12:53 PM on August 19, 2014 [9 favorites]

What the actual fuck? They are armed to the teeth with non-lethal weaponry and they can't handle a guy with a knife?

Meanwhile the RCMP took in that machete-wielding bus cannibal with a taser.
posted by elizardbits at 12:53 PM on August 19, 2014 [12 favorites]

Well, that use-of-force guide is unconstitutional on its face and should fall over like an Italian soccer player the first time it's challenged, but the mentality is still there.

I seem to recall that being the federal standard? I mean, I hope I'm wrong, but that's what my recollection is telling me. Basically what I'm saying is that to stop this, the entire concept of policing needs to be re-examined. Which I am for.

...well, actually I'm for eliminating the police entirely as an institution of people with special powers whose word and power carries more weight than citizens, but the former is my reform position.
posted by corb at 12:55 PM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

Wilson's gun didn't aim itself and force him to make the choice as to whether to expend any effort to prevent it from firing

I am guessing that Wilson policed as he was trained to police. Throw him in jail if you can (unlikely) but the problem is much bigger. The talk about the UK (or Germany or Japan or ...) is more to remind us that there are other actual, working models of police forces which are working today in the real world.
posted by shothotbot at 12:55 PM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

If police are able, per that use of force document cited in the other mondo thread, to shoot anyone to stop them from committing a felony

A felony you say?

943.201 Unauthorized use of an individual's personal identifying information or documents.
(b) "Personal identifying information" means any of the following information:
1. An individual's name.
(2) Whoever, for any of the following purposes, intentionally uses, attempts to use, or possesses with intent to use any personal identifying information or personal identification document of an individual, including a deceased individual, without the authorization or consent of the individual and by representing that he or she is the individual, that he or she is acting with the authorization or consent of the individual, or that the information or document belongs to him or her is guilty of a Class H felony:

So that fake name/famous dead person you use on twitter/facebook - should you be shot to stop you from using that?
posted by rough ashlar at 12:55 PM on August 19, 2014

Chris Hayes reports that cops on scene don't have tasers and they are not standard issue.
posted by desjardins at 12:56 PM on August 19, 2014

I think it's safe to say that police officers in almost every other country are better trained to deal with assailants in a non-lethal manner.

American cops kill about 400 people a year. UN statistics say that world wide, police killed about 21,000 in 2011. So US police account for maybe 2% of police caused death. Maybe 4.4% of the world lives in America.

We just get on the news more often.

(Obligatory disclaimer - yes, of course we can do better.)
posted by IndigoJones at 12:56 PM on August 19, 2014 [2 favorites]

There's a decades long conversation of what we expect of police officers, foremost of which is their recognition of cultural and institutional racism and its effect on their actions. This conversation never goes anywhere because officials like Nixon and the government of Ferguson absolutely refuse to talk about racism.
posted by audi alteram partem at 12:57 PM on August 19, 2014 [3 favorites]

Surprise, surprise! The journalist who claimed there were 12 witnesses backing up the police's account of the shooting (what account? where is the incident report???) has been on medical leave since March and her tweets are personal, not publication-ready.
posted by sallybrown at 12:59 PM on August 19, 2014 [23 favorites]

But where is Hillary Clinton? Does she have a National Police Reform plan? She is taking every black vote in America for granted.

Are you kidding me? The last major political move Clinton took in recent memory was to distance herself from Obama's less hawkish foreign policy record and declare her plans to be far more hawkish on foreign policy than Obama (and more closely allied with Israel). She's more likely to take whichever side is wielding the big guns and body armor, I'm pretty sure.
posted by saulgoodman at 1:00 PM on August 19, 2014 [5 favorites]

As far as I know the standard the Supreme Court set down in Tennessee v. Garner, which says lethal force is only justified when there is "a significant threat of death or serious physical injury to the officer or others," is still the law. The standard in play in Ferguson is way way way way below that bar.

Ah okay, thanks. I'm not sure where I got the idea that it was to stop a felony! Maybe I was just remembering the pre-Garner standard - which apparently just changed in the 1980s, so it's possible that it hasn't fully spread to all the other police departments (though should)
posted by corb at 1:00 PM on August 19, 2014

Best of all, there was no such thing as jaywalking until the 1920s. Streets were for *people* before that... For bicycling, walking, and gosh, even protesting.

Don't let the Pinkertons hear you say that!
posted by aught at 1:01 PM on August 19, 2014 [6 favorites]

Televison station KCTV reported on Monday that Kansas City Police Department Officer Marc Catron posted a picture to his Facebook page along with this caption: "I'm sure young Michael Brown is innocent and just misunderstood. I'm sure he is a pillar of the Ferguson community."

The photo depicted a black man with a wad of money in his mouth, pointing a gun at the camera. But the photo wasn't of Brown at all. It was of a man in Oregon accused of murder.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 1:01 PM on August 19, 2014 [29 favorites]

Meanwhile the RCMP took in that machete-wielding bus cannibal with a taser.

Not that people are such fans of tazers either.
posted by smackfu at 1:01 PM on August 19, 2014

It is fair to note that Lee Rigby was a serving soldier who was run over and then hacked to death with cleavers on a London street, but the UK police successfully disarmed and arrested his killers to face proper justice without punishing anyone's community.

Actually, the UK is a pretty bad example because they had a massive outbreak of rioting nation-wide over a police killing just a few years ago that has very disturbing parallels to the current situation.
posted by srboisvert at 1:03 PM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

which says lethal force is only justified when there is "a significant threat of death or serious physical injury to the officer or others," is still the law.

Isn't this where the "he was going for my gun" defense comes from?
posted by smackfu at 1:03 PM on August 19, 2014

American cops kill about 400 people a year. UN statistics say that world wide, police killed about 21,000 in 2011. So US police account for maybe 2% of police caused death. Maybe 4.4% of the world lives in America.

Australia killed 7 that same year. So you guys kill four times as many people per capita.

I'm not sure why the response to other civilized countries being fucking aghast at the massive faility rate of your cops (and justice system for that matter) is always "WELL AT LEAST WE'RE BETTER THAN THE AVERAGE WHICH IS WEIGHED DOWN BY AUTHORITARIAN REGIMES" but it just makes Americans look like even more ignorant anti-intellectual neanderthals that just want open hunting season on black people.
posted by Talez at 1:05 PM on August 19, 2014 [25 favorites]

Isn't this where the "he was going for my gun" defense comes from?

In general yes, but Brown was shot when he was 30-35 feet from Wilson's gun, so that story isn't enough on its own. Thus the argument that he was secretly an enraged bison.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 1:05 PM on August 19, 2014 [11 favorites]

Not that people are such fans of tazers either.

That's because in the US tasers are for forcing compliance from elementary school kids, not for subduing dangerous people.
posted by empath at 1:06 PM on August 19, 2014 [9 favorites]

Meanwhile the RCMP took in that machete-wielding bus cannibal with a taser.

Not that people are such fans of tazers either.

Less lethal force is great when it's a substitute for lethal force. It tends, in the US, to be a substitute for non-lethal force, or shouting, or just not using any kind of force and letting non-violent protesters go about their day.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 1:06 PM on August 19, 2014 [24 favorites]

"The cops all took their name tags off in Toronto during the last G20 debacle. About 90 of them were docked a day's pay, and I'm sure all of them thought it was money well spent for a chance to beat people up all weekend long."

Any cop without a nametag on shouldn't be protected by police immunity — he or she should be regarded by the law as a private citizen who, by striking another citizen, is committing assault and should be prosecuted.

That's the balance — if you want to have a monopoly on legitimate force, you need to be accountable at all times.
posted by klangklangston at 1:07 PM on August 19, 2014 [89 favorites]

"you need to be accountable at all times"

with football-style jerseys with big names and numbers on the back, if I had my way.
posted by komara at 1:08 PM on August 19, 2014 [24 favorites]

Any cop without a nametag on shouldn't be protected by police immunity — he or she should be regarded by the law as a private citizen who, by striking another citizen, is committing assault and should be prosecuted.

The Bush administration liked to point out that the Taliban lost Geneva convention protections because they didn't wear uniforms. I don't see why cops should be different.
posted by empath at 1:09 PM on August 19, 2014 [11 favorites]

Gungho, if you want to talk about the post's framing, you can use the contact form or MetaTalk. It doesn't go here. Thanks.
posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 1:09 PM on August 19, 2014 [3 favorites]

Nurses have to wear things on their body at all times when they are on duty in a hospital to track where they are. Why not cops?
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 1:09 PM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

There's a reason why authoritarian regimes employ "secret police"; without being able to hold the police, including individual officers, accountable, there's no way to check their power, even if the structures exist in theory.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 1:11 PM on August 19, 2014 [5 favorites]

@elonjames: If the safety (or perception thereof) of the police officer outweighs the safety of the citizen then we need a new system. Not compliance.

posted by audi alteram partem at 1:17 PM on August 19, 2014 [11 favorites]

"Looter steals rose from florist and tries to cut police officer's fingers on the thorns"
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 1:17 PM on August 19, 2014 [22 favorites]

That's because in the US tasers are for forcing compliance from elementary school kids, not for subduing dangerous people.

Nah, tasers are useful in general policing. Over and over and over again.
posted by phearlez at 1:17 PM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

Any cop without a nametag on shouldn't be protected by police immunity — he or she should be regarded by the law as a private citizen who, by striking another citizen, is committing assault and should be prosecuted.

Any person who wears a police-type uniform and attempts to perform police-type actions without wearing a clearly visible nametag is impersonating a police officer as far as I'm concerned, and should be charged as such, even if they commit no other crimes.
posted by Homeboy Trouble at 1:17 PM on August 19, 2014 [32 favorites]

“Cornel West on Missouri: "Obama reeks of political calculation not moral conviction",” —BBC Newsnight, 18 August 2014
posted by ob1quixote at 1:19 PM on August 19, 2014 [3 favorites]

Are we absolutely certain that WaPo piece wasn't ghostwritten by Paul Verhoeven?
posted by brundlefly at 1:22 PM on August 19, 2014 [5 favorites]

Oh man, don't get me fucking STARTED on the Democrats. Just the biggest bunch of useless sacks of blood I've ever seen. A "review" of possibly de-militarizing the police?!?! You know, to look at why they voted down the Grayson amendment to do this last year!

Hillary hasn't so much as tweeted about this, and she won't, because she needs bigoted white women to vote for her. Our politics is so poisonous.

Yah, my congresswoman finally said something about this on twitter last night, nine days in. And she's a ten term incumbent in a gerrymandered Texas district that is full of not white people who would love for her to get vocal about it. I mean it makes me sick when I know that Hilary's not saying shit because she doesn't want to scare off any potential white voters or whatever, but my congresswoman is black and doesn't have to worry about that at all, what took so long?
posted by DynamiteToast at 1:23 PM on August 19, 2014 [3 favorites]

The photo depicted a black man with a wad of money in his mouth, pointing a gun at the camera. But the photo wasn't of Brown at all. It was of a man in Oregon accused of murder.

I hate people.
posted by Phire at 1:23 PM on August 19, 2014 [25 favorites]

Can anyone better versed in media speak to the sudden cluster of sites claiming that Darren Wilson suffered an "orbital blowout fracture" during his encounter with Mike Brown?

I can't speak to that particularly, but I can say that the orbital fracture was part of the story (previously mentioned) that I heard from a St Louis area friend last week who heard it through the grapevine going back ultimately to people connected with the police, who were making a good deal of effort to spread the 'real story' to everyone they knew.

So basically and in short, this is the police protecting their own through leaks, spreading the 'real story' through the rumor mill, etc etc etc.

These details may or may not be true but they are very certainly the result of friends/supporters of the officer try to shape the media & online narrative in order to protect their friend and fellow officer.

I'll try to avoid injecting my own opinions too much here, but I'll make one point: This is exactly why you can't have the police investigating themselves. There must be some kind of outside, independent investigator for all incidents involving police injuring or killing someone. Their natural human instinct is to protect their own, that's exactly what they are trying to do by releasing this type of information anonymously. It's exactly what the Ferguson Police Chief was doing when he released the videotape of Brown.

And that same impulse that impels them to defend the officer, also makes them completely unsuitable for investigating these incidents in a neutral way. An outside, independent investigation is absolutely required if we want to reduce the numbers of these types of incidents.
posted by flug at 1:24 PM on August 19, 2014

Of the Donors Choose links posted above only this one still needs funding. Let's get it done for this Florissant kindergarden class.
posted by phearlez at 1:25 PM on August 19, 2014 [5 favorites]

Daily Kos Diary, so obviously with a grain of salt, but seems reasonable to me:

Autopsy suggests Mike Brown DID have arms in "surrender" pose when Darren Wilson killed him
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 1:28 PM on August 19, 2014 [2 favorites]

This link collects in one place five eyewitness accounts of the shooting.
posted by prefpara at 1:28 PM on August 19, 2014 [21 favorites]

BBC: Three fatal minutes, several versions
posted by rosswald at 1:32 PM on August 19, 2014 [3 favorites]

Also while we're talking about being disappointed, does NPR not have a station local to St. Louis? I can't remember the last time there wasn't some minor national story that they didn't get a local correspondent to talk about on ATC or Morning Edition within like 3 days tops.
posted by DynamiteToast at 1:32 PM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

St. Louis Public Radio
posted by zarq at 1:33 PM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

Also while we're talking about being disappointed, does NPR not have a station local to St. Louis? I can't remember the last time there wasn't some minor national story that they didn't get a local correspondent to talk about on ATC or Morning Edition within like 3 days tops.

KWMU

Live updates from their staff here
posted by asockpuppet at 1:34 PM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

ob1quixote: "“Cornel West on Missouri: "Obama reeks of political calculation not moral conviction",” —BBC Newsnight, 18 August 2014"

Ooh did he just sorta diss Sharpton. Oh hell yeah, he did! Literally by name. <3 Cornell!
posted by symbioid at 1:38 PM on August 19, 2014 [3 favorites]

This link collects in one place five eyewitness accounts of the shooting.

There is a remarkable agreement between them. It's very damning.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 1:39 PM on August 19, 2014 [11 favorites]

Somewhere back in the beginning of time, this district had itself a civic dilemma of epic proportions. The city council had just passed a law that forbade alcoholic consumption in public areas; on the streets and on the corners. But the corner is, it was and it always will be the poorman's lounge. It's where a man wants to be on a hot summer's night. It's cheaper than a bar. Catch a nice breeze and watch the girls go on by.

But the law is the law so what are the western cops gonna do? They arrest every dude for tipping back a High Life, there'd be no time for any other kind of police work. And if they look the other way, they open themselves up to all kinds of flaunting, all kinds of disrespect.

Now, this is before my time but somewhere back in the 50's or the 60's, there was a moment of goddamn genius by some nameless smokehound who comes out the Cut-Rate one day and on his way to the corner he slips that just bought pint of elderberry into a paper bag. A great moment of civic compromise.

That small wrinkled ass paper bag allowed the corner boys to have their drink in peace and gave us permission to go and do police work. The kind of police work that's actually worth the effort, that's actually worth taking a bullet for.

This is a parable from The Wire, told by Bunny Colvin in Season 3, to his officers. I loved it at the time, but now see it as naive, perhaps delusional. This kind of civic compromise requires some shared ground, some common interest, between citizens and police. Some mutual respect. The events in Ferguson are showing us that, in many parts of this country, there is no common ground, no shared interest. "Go and do police work". Ha. It is becoming clear what "police work" really means to the cops in Ferguson.
posted by AceRock at 1:40 PM on August 19, 2014 [14 favorites]

Yeah, I don't know about the "orbital blowout fracture" thing. I suppose if it happened, this would have happened when the cop grabbed the guy by the neck and pulled him into the car? Seems totally irrelevant given the other details the witnesses have described. Getting punched in the face doesn't mean you get to shoot an unarmed guy who has his hands up and is already bleeding from several gunshot wounds. There's no threat there. That's murder.
posted by Hoopo at 1:40 PM on August 19, 2014

There is a remarkable agreement between them. It's very damning.

The problem is going to be that those accounts were told sequentially in the media. So they've been tainted. I'm not saying they aren't true, I'm saying that a defense attorney is going to eat them up.
posted by Justinian at 1:43 PM on August 19, 2014

Here's an interesting visual. (Right now at Clayton)
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 1:47 PM on August 19, 2014

Yeah, I don't know about the "orbital blowout fracture" thing. I suppose if it happened, this would have happened when the cop grabbed the guy by the neck and pulled him into the car?

Re: the supposed orbital blowout fracture or any other facial injury Wilson had, it definitely immediately occurred to me, perhaps uncharitably, that the dude probably banged his own damn face into his car door while making the stupid move of trying to pull Brown in by his elbow. It seems about as likely as any other explanation that's been put forth. I can't be the only person who thinks this.
posted by limeonaire at 1:48 PM on August 19, 2014 [8 favorites]

Regarding the orbital fracture:

1) Combined with the autopsy report that Brown's body lacked signs of a struggle, that seems to back the friend's account of the door bouncing off Brown and slamming back into Officer Wilson. You don't punch a guy hard enough to break part of his skull and not leave "signs of a struggle" on your knuckles.

2) The site reporting on this is also crediting Christine Byers as if she were an active reporter and not a person who's on leave from her job and who thus isn't holding to any publication standard, which is what she is. So I'm not inclined to trust their fact checking.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 1:48 PM on August 19, 2014 [3 favorites]

The problem is going to be that those accounts were told sequentially in the media. So they've been tainted. I'm not saying they aren't true, I'm saying that a defense attorney is going to eat them up.

Well, maybe. I assume that those accounts don't differ substantially from what the witnesses told the various police and if they testify under oath, then well.

I agree, though, that it is a long shot getting any amount of justice out of this situation.

All of that said, it does sort of explain the disarray at the PD over this - they have to know the cop really shit the bed and they've been working overtime to try and cover up the shit, and the smell of it surrounds them.

They could come clean, but Pigs in Zen.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 1:49 PM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

State prosecutors to present evidence in Michael Brown case to grand jury
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 1:49 PM on August 19, 2014 [2 favorites]

State prosecutors to present evidence in Michael Brown case to grand jury

This is Bob McCulloch's office, so don't get your hopes up too high about anything because it's probably just going through the motions.
posted by Artw at 1:54 PM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

Charles Pierce: The Limits Of Everything

To Be Wrong Or To Be Chicken

On Weariness
posted by homunculus at 1:59 PM on August 19, 2014 [4 favorites]

meta
posted by twist my arm at 1:59 PM on August 19, 2014 [2 favorites]

Well, maybe. I assume that those accounts don't differ substantially from what the witnesses told the various police and if they testify under oath, then well.

Ah. See, I'm not sure that they did tell the police their stories before those media accounts. If you're right and they did give on the record statements then that's a different story. But I'm realllllly not sure that they did?
posted by Justinian at 2:02 PM on August 19, 2014

Yeah, the police would have had to ask.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 2:03 PM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

Ah. See, I'm not sure that they did tell the police their stories before those media accounts. If you're right and they did give on the record statements then that's a different story. But I'm realllllly not sure that they did?

Some of the statements were made immediately after the shooting -- Dorian Johnson, Emmanuel Freeman, Piaget Crenshaw. All were made before the autopsy results were released. They may not have been made to police, but they were made on contemporaneous video or time-stamped twitter.
posted by KathrynT at 2:06 PM on August 19, 2014 [4 favorites]

Exactly. Having the police make a case against the police is extremely problematic.
posted by Justinian at 2:07 PM on August 19, 2014

Didn't it take a couple of days before the police talked to Dorian Johnson?
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 2:08 PM on August 19, 2014

Can a grand jury verdict be appealed? What if Holder recommends that McCulloch recuse himself and he refuses to? Is there anyway the people of Ferguson can file again without going through McCulloch?
posted by Golden Eternity at 2:08 PM on August 19, 2014

From that awful cop-written WaPo editorial linked above:

here is the bottom line: if you don’t want to get shot, tased, pepper-sprayed, struck with a baton or thrown to the ground, just do what I tell you.

No. Absolutely not. I refuse to recognize the legitimacy of any police force that says this. My rights aren't niceties too delicate for the real world. The right of the citizens of Ferguson to assemble is not something the police or anyone else has the authority to revoke arbitrarily, either.

But this is the conventional wisdom right now, and it's deeply, irreparably pathological. This is antithetical to a free society, it's morally indefensible, and as we know, even complete, humiliating submission to a thug with a badge doesn't guarantee a goddamn thing about my safety, or yours, or anyone's.

The police in America have always brutalized Black people and non-Whites disproportionately, and they've always brutalized some White people. But since the federal military surplus program started in the 90's, and especially after 9/11, they've become ever more paranoid, violent, lawless, and have replaced their imperative to serve and protect citizens with a mission to viciously stamp out any and all perceived disobedience, no matter how unthreatening or justified it may be, to state authority. This is the mentality of the authoritarian state. This is the police state. We can stop dreading its arrival because it's here. Now let's do something about it.
posted by clockzero at 2:08 PM on August 19, 2014 [69 favorites]

Didn't it take a couple of days before the police talked to Dorian Johnson?

Yeah, but... Piaget, I think had given a statement and had her phone confiscated basically immediately.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 2:09 PM on August 19, 2014

AG Holder was briefed by phone on the preliminary findings of the federal autopsy on Michael Brown this afternoon.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 2:11 PM on August 19, 2014

So, I have a friend who works as a firefighter for the city of St. Louis (yes, city, not county very much a difference) and he has posted on Facebook that apparently yes, medics were there and that they did indeed transport Officer Wilson who did suffer facial fractures. How he does not say nor did he personally respond to the call. He says lots of facts are being missed because of little to no facts being released to us (unclear if it is FIRE/EMS or public in this case.)

Take with whatever grain of salt, you'd like.

I'm not sure what to make of it other than, well, if Officer Wilson did suffer injuries why not post pictures? Release that information? If he had fractures, I assume X-rays were necessary of some form?
posted by lizarrd at 2:11 PM on August 19, 2014 [3 favorites]

A message to the people of Ferguson, Eric H. Holder Jr.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 2:12 PM on August 19, 2014 [7 favorites]

"So that fake name/famous dead person you use on twitter/facebook - should you be shot to stop you from using that?"

FUNNY YOU SHOULD ASK, Peoria is being sued by the ACLU for having a SWAT-type raid on a guy with an anonymous twitter account pretending to be the mayor -- bulletproof vests, helmets, guns drawn, door kicked in, the whole bit. Seven cops to bust down this guy's door. SEVEN. Drawn weapons in case he, I don't know, POSTED A HUNDRED AND FORTY MORE CHARACTERS TO TWITTER while they were arresting him.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 2:13 PM on August 19, 2014 [59 favorites]

Now let's do something about it.

It seems so hopeless when so many people look at what is happening in Ferguson as not going far enough. There's a significant number of americans that would have been happy to see dogs, real bullets and firehoses.
posted by empath at 2:14 PM on August 19, 2014 [4 favorites]

"I urge the citizens of Ferguson who have been peacefully exercising their First Amendment rights to join with law enforcement in condemning the actions of looters, vandals and others seeking to inflame tensions and sow discord." - Eric Holder

Which they have been doing but I guess Iraq and stuff.
posted by RedShrek at 2:16 PM on August 19, 2014 [5 favorites]

FUNNY YOU SHOULD ASK, Peoria is being sued by the ACLU for having a SWAT-type raid on a guy with an anonymous twitter account pretending to be the mayor -- bulletproof vests, helmets, guns drawn, door kicked in, the whole bit. Seven cops to bust down this guy's door. SEVEN. Drawn weapons in case he, I don't know, POSTED A HUNDRED AND FORTY MORE CHARACTERS TO TWITTER while they were arresting him.

And now they have his computers and plenty of time to dig through his email, etc. Hope he wasn't cheating on his wife or buying pot, or talking shit about his boss, etc.
posted by empath at 2:17 PM on August 19, 2014 [3 favorites]

pineappleheart: "Yeah, this "My country's police were able to do X without killing anybody in X instance" is not very helpful though I'm sure it makes you feel great."

It is precisely helpful for comparing and contrasting: If the Lieutenant Governor of the state says that "We have legal processes that are (...) designed after centuries of Anglo-American jurisprudence tradition.” it is worthwhile to see how those processes compare to the model. It is useful to see how we diverge from the model, and what advantages and disadvantages there are between the two.
posted by boo_radley at 2:17 PM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

Hope he wasn't cheating on his wife or buying pot, or talking shit about his boss, etc

His roomate was arrested for possession, but IIRC, it's been thrown out already because the original warrant was bullshit, and so fruit of the poison tree and all that.

Ars has more.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 2:20 PM on August 19, 2014 [3 favorites]

An unmarked black van, with a bunch of burly 30 to 40 somethings wearing and putting on Black Bloc gear.

This is from way, way upthread, but if you see something like this, those people are not anarchists, they are not Black Bloc, they are cops. I know from Black Bloc, I used to run around in that kind of crowd in the late nineties/early 2000s and I am still in a milieu where some people do Black Bloc stuff. I will be glad to discuss in more detail based on experience why I am sure that those people are not Black Bloc via memail, but suffice it to say that people who are doing Black Bloc do not show up en masse, will not be pulling on their black clothes in a van, are very unlikely to be driving an unmarked black van (which would be a total fucking cop magnet)...And what's more, you rarely find "burly" Black Bloc-ers - small but spirited, more like, because they are a bunch of punk kids. And last, not to put down people of my own age or anything, but there just aren't significant quantities of 30 to 40-year old people doing militant protest. The last time I went to anything really militant, I was 34, and I was the eminence grise of the demo.

You know who are burly 30-40somethings who show up in a group in an unmarked van? Fucking agents provocateurs. Maybe cops, maybe freelance, maybe feds.

Clearly, their purpose is to stir shit up so that people get beaten and to give the impression that a bunch of militant whites are coming in and fucking with people. This has the effect of helping to delegitimatize the protests to outsiders and it has the effect of sowing distrust among the actual protesters and causing people to waste a lot of time.

There are two kinds of agents provocateurs - the ones who are actually seriously undercover, who will resemble the targets (ie, if they're infiltrating hippies, they will look like hippies; if punks, then punks, etc) and who are relatively few because they are more difficult to find and recruit; and the ones needed in large numbers on an ad hoc basis. The ones needed in large numbers on an ad hoc basis will not look much like the target group, because they will mostly be off-duty cops. They'll be big, they'll be burly/pudgy, they'll be older, they will be manifestly "in costume".
posted by Frowner at 2:20 PM on August 19, 2014 [71 favorites]

You know who are burly 30-40somethings who show up in a group in an unmarked van? Fucking agents provocateurs. Maybe cops, maybe freelance, maybe feds.

Frowner, I got the implication that this is exactly what spinifex was trying to say with that story.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 2:29 PM on August 19, 2014 [10 favorites]

> There's plenty of precedent for abuse of protesters (especially blacks), but is there a precedent in this country for this much control/abuse of the media

Apologies if this is already covered in this fast-moving thread, but yes, certainly, under various sedition laws.
posted by The corpse in the library at 2:33 PM on August 19, 2014

I've got the problem that if I say something that does not adhere entirely to a given story, I get people who presume that I must be completely taking the other side. There are one or two points of the coverage of the Brown shooting that I question because I feel like it's incendiary reporting, and so naturally some friends freak out like I'm backing up the police there or something crazy. It's very frustrating. :(

This has gotten several replies and a few "yea reallys", but after some thought on it when i was going to initially wholeheartedly agree...

What you're saying there, is a point i've seen mainly brought up by concern trolls. I'm not saying you are one, but whenever you feel like you need to add this disclaimer the shore of that island is within sight. I always try and keep that in mind.

I don't think the pushback of this is entirely kneejerk and pointless, i think it's a conscious reaction to very similar language you see in the objections and interjections of people attempting to derail progressive discourse.

I hear where you're coming from, and i think your post was legit. But i really don't think this thread is a place to high five and commiserate over being "silenced all my life!" in that way. And i sort of saw that starting to happen. And it bugged the shit out of me.

There isn't some super complicated point i have here. Just that when you get that kind of pushback, you should take more than a second to reflect on why and not just settle on "i'm not staying 100% on message so they're forming a circular firing squad!". That situation exists, but this isn't exactly a shining example of it.
posted by emptythought at 2:36 PM on August 19, 2014 [3 favorites]

I think Frowner is probably right re those guys in the van being cops, but I would caution against assuming burly 30-40 year olds doing militant protest are necessarily cops. My experience has been that a lot of veterans back from Iraq and Afghanistan are coming back angry and fit that age bracket.

True enough, but I would bet that anyone with a little common sense could pick them out from cops...it's sort of a cop gestalt, if you will, and one gets used to it.
posted by Frowner at 2:37 PM on August 19, 2014 [2 favorites]

MSNBC article about the First Amendment violations happening in Ferguson.
posted by lizarrd at 2:38 PM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

roystgnr: Too implausible still? Give it time; the expensive gear keeps getting less expensive. I wonder what the police reaction will be when any big event on the streets is surrounded by drones watching the "fireworks" without regard to legality.

That sort of thing is sub $500 now for the solidly decent stuff, and you can get one pre equipped with a camera that record to a memory card for like, under $70. Not one that can hold position on its own or be flown with remote vision/POV or anything, but still, it would fly and record video.

I have no idea why vice or someone didn't bring several with them. Who cares if the cops shoot them out of the sky? That just makes for a better video.
posted by emptythought at 2:39 PM on August 19, 2014

Would it be possible for that to have happened with enough force to produce the orbital fracture?

Easily. Same could happen if he kicked it open hard enough and bounced back.

Or forgot to undo his seatbelt and hit his head on the roof. not that I've ever done that

His getting punched in the face doesn't seem likely. Hard to get a good swing. Maybe an elbow or something.

But anyway, it's sort of bullshit to shoot a guy for it.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 2:39 PM on August 19, 2014

I wouldn't be surprised, corb.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 2:40 PM on August 19, 2014

You know who are burly 30-40somethings who show up in a group in an unmarked van? Fucking agents provocateurs. Maybe cops, maybe freelance, maybe feds.

At the North American summit in Montebello, Quebec in 2007, attentive viewers noted that the footage of "masked anarchists" arrested by police showed that the anarchists all had matching boots identical to the arresting officers'. On August 22, Quebec police denied that the anarchists were plants, and on August 23 confirmed that they were.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 2:41 PM on August 19, 2014 [63 favorites]

but I would caution against assuming burly 30-40 year olds doing militant protest are necessarily cops. My experience has been that a lot of veterans back from Iraq and Afghanistan are coming back angry and fit that age bracket.

These alley van people? Definitely cops. They might as well have been wearing signs to that effect.

There are plenty of 30+ aged people at these anarchist protests, certainly. I'm one of them. However, for the most part, we're not the ones in specifically Black Bloc gear, doing Black Bloc activities. Instead, we're the ones marching alongside them, or in the side/back, providing support during the march (like medic, NLG observers, handing out leaflets, carrying signs, etc.), or providing support in planning for the march. Like, ferrying supplies back and forth. Buying supplies to be ferried. Providing rides, etc.

Us Olds are definitely fed up and angry, though. Oh yes.
posted by spinifex23 at 2:41 PM on August 19, 2014 [4 favorites]

I just thought of something! Remember how one of the witnesses said that the cop tried to open the door, but it bounced back against the cop because Brown was standing there and didn't get out of the way? Would it be possible for that to have happened with enough force to produce the orbital fracture?

Corb that's a really good observation. I've seen people get seriously fucked up by car doors in situations where it seemed like not that much force was involve. They're metal, heavy, have a surprising amount of momentum and can act as force multipliers depending on who is pulling on them where. I've seen solid metal cameras you could seemingly run over with the car get seriously smashed up by doors. And people, and fingers/arms. And yes, on the outside with it opening towards them too.

Good luck ever seeing that story in the media though. Because they want it to be implicit that the injuries were caused by him getting punched with superhuman giant negro strength or something.
posted by emptythought at 2:42 PM on August 19, 2014 [4 favorites]

> You know who are burly 30-40somethings who show up in a group in an unmarked van? Fucking agents provocateurs. Maybe cops, maybe freelance, maybe feds.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Seattle? The arrest of puppetistias with million-dollar bail for possession of turpentine and palm pilots? Mysterious "anarchists" crashing G8 protests in Italy wearing police-issue boots, eventually disappearing into the back-doors of local police stations? All of which were connected to international police training exercises run out of retooled schools for anti-Communist thugs?
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 2:45 PM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

About the orbital fractures: I've had severe orbital fractures, and I've shot my share of handguns. If dude had a fracture or 'blowout' or whatever to the orbital floor, and still managed to put half a dozen rounds into a pretty tight group from 30+ feet without spraying up the entire street, he is an amazing marksman; orbital fractures, in my experience, immediately make you pretty damn blind--or at least very very teary eyed--for at least a few minutes. I don't believe for a second that the cop sustained any orbital fractures prior to the shooting.
posted by still bill at 2:47 PM on August 19, 2014 [27 favorites]

I don't know if we have anything like that in the civilian world, or in the police structure. But by god, I really think that we should. The idea of this police department being able to escape by ultimately throwing Wilson out as a bone and going on blithely really bothers me.

Wow, the people who said this was inflammatory as hell(that you didn't respond to at all, and just moved on from) were on point. Nice shoot and scoot.

I struggled for a bit to come up with a good analogy, but the best i could was the people whose response to legalizing gay marriage was "Well, why don't we just get rid of marriage altogether as a legal thing?"

Why is punishing the department and command structure mutually exclusive to punishing the officer? What's the motivation to constantly try and pan the camera out to wide angle? This isn't the first time you've approached this situation that way.
posted by emptythought at 2:52 PM on August 19, 2014 [3 favorites]

"orbital fractures, in my experience, immediately make you pretty damn blind--or at least very very teary eyed--for at least a few minutes. I don't believe for a second that the cop sustained any orbital fractures prior to the shooting."

But that's the new narrative - the officer's vision was impaired and he thought Brown grew a gun and turned around to fire.

... shit. I thought this was a joke comment when I started writing it.
posted by komara at 2:53 PM on August 19, 2014 [32 favorites]

I just thought of something! Remember how one of the witnesses said that the cop tried to open the door, but it bounced back against the cop because Brown was standing there and didn't get out of the way? Would it be possible for that to have happened with enough force to produce the orbital fracture?

I don't think here, but I've seen discussion along those lines for a week. There are also claims the officer had a leg injury, which also seems more likely to have been the fault of the door than of someone reaching through the window to attack him, and also the theory that the door "bouncing" as Dorian Johnson described led Officer Wilson to assume he was being deliberately physically assaulted. (As we've seen in the 2009 case, any injury or damage that occurs can end up being attributed to the actions of the attacked, so it may merely be cop semantics that a door bouncing off a suspect was interpreted as an attack on his person.)
posted by dhartung at 2:54 PM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

I thought corb was arguing for Wilson's superiors to be held accountable in addition to him, not instead of. Maybe I'm wrong.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 2:55 PM on August 19, 2014 [8 favorites]

I thought corb was arguing for Wilson's superiors to be held accountable in addition to him, not instead of. Maybe I'm wrong.

That's the way I read her comment. Her intent appears crystal-clear to me.
posted by Pudhoho at 2:59 PM on August 19, 2014 [5 favorites]

so back around the time I left small town New Mexico for college there was an incident where city PD had a "man down" called in and responded in force and it turned out he had shot himself in the foot

this is that but a million times worse isn't it
posted by PMdixon at 2:59 PM on August 19, 2014

What a shitty day. In addition to this, ISIL beheaded James Foley and are threatening to behead Steve Sotloff if Obama doesn't accede to their demands.

I feel complete despair right now. This has been one hell of a difficult summer.
posted by sallybrown at 3:00 PM on August 19, 2014 [2 favorites]

(It's kind of a moot point; even if it turns out that Brown was, against all logic and reason, trying to kill a police officer on a residential street in broad daylight, the city's handling of the case and protests is so unbelievably horrible that the entire command structure still needs to be removed root and branch.)
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 3:00 PM on August 19, 2014 [9 favorites]

I just wrote my:

City Councilmember
County Supervisor
State Senator
State Assemblymember
Lt. Governor
State Attorney General

to encourage mandatory cameras on cops. Got some affirmative sounds, but nobody knows if there's a bill that does that yet. It's late in the legislative cycle, so it's a bit tougher to introduce something now, but that's what our glorious gut-and-amend process is for. I'm going to write to my Gov. too, and then to some c4s who do similar work (since in my experience, bills are often "sponsored" by the orgs that really wrote them).

My advice for other folks who want to use this to get a more accountable constabulary out of it is to start at the lowest level, since they usually get fewer calls and often have more of an ability to get things done where you are, then move up. Call them, don't email them (I emailed a couple because I'm a hypocrite, but also because I'm at work and was on a dumb conference call), and they'll be more responsive and will feel more pressure to give you an answer right then.

Whether or not Mike Brown was secretly Bin Laden or Fred Hampton, a lot of damage could have been prevented by having this taped to begin with.
posted by klangklangston at 3:01 PM on August 19, 2014 [23 favorites]

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Seattle? The arrest of puppetistias with million-dollar bail for possession of turpentine and palm pilots? Mysterious "anarchists" crashing G8 protests in Italy wearing police-issue boots, eventually disappearing into the back-doors of local police stations?

Yes. There really needs to be a How Political Protests Work FAQ someplace so that we can just stop retreading these interminable discussions about the supposed "black bloc opportunists" and "white anarchists" and "revolutionaries" who invariably turn out to be cops and provocateur thugs, using the one traveling schlemihl ideologue who showed up from RCP or whatever fringe group as their cover. The whole thing is just a right-wing reframe of the discussion around any and every mass protest, a way of looking at a mass protest that is deliberately designed to split keep-the-peace moderate liberals from radicals — and it seems still to work, way too fucking well, every time it comes out. (Remember the Occupy threads right here on MeFi?) This really needs to be on an Internet lefty bingo card or something.
posted by RogerB at 3:03 PM on August 19, 2014 [9 favorites]

I've had severe orbital fractures, and I've shot my share of handguns. If dude had a fracture or 'blowout' or whatever to the orbital floor, and still managed to put half a dozen rounds into a pretty tight group from 30+ feet without spraying up the entire street, he is an amazing marksman;

Yeah, which is why I'm inclined to blame it on a fellow cop telling him "You fucked up, bro. Now hold still while I apply your alibi."
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 3:07 PM on August 19, 2014 [28 favorites]

SD Police Say Tazing 8-Year-Old Native Girl Was Justified, Family Sues
posted by Artw at 3:08 PM on August 19, 2014 [5 favorites]

Honestly, the cop getting hit in the face (not necessarily 'orbital fracture' level) is the one bit of the cop story that I could see as true. Darren Wilson is driving down the street, yells out the window for them to get out of the road. One of them responds that they are nearly home, and now the cop is pissed because they didn't respect his author-it-tah. Pulls up closer, maybe opens the door into him, maybe yanks Brown down to do the 'you little shit, you get out of the road when I say jump' routine. Gets smacked in the face, maybe deliberately, maybe by the car door bouncing back, maybe because he just pulled Brown offbalance into a car window and he's trying to stand up. Now the cop's author-it-tah has really been disrespected, and he has a gun and he's going to make sure they pay.

I don't know that it has to be part of it -- you get psychopath cops like Johannes Mehserle who kill kids just because they have the impulse and a moment of irritation -- but it does make the escalation from yelling out of a car window to six shots in the head and chest fit better. At least in the world of American cops, where even touching a cop is considered justification for killing someone.
posted by tavella at 3:08 PM on August 19, 2014 [6 favorites]

Does attempting to detain a subject by force through a car window even meet the Peace Officer Standards and Training for the Ferg. P.D.?
posted by morganw at 3:08 PM on August 19, 2014 [2 favorites]

Shooting some dude 6 times including in the face is just what cops do when they stub their toes or whatever.
posted by Artw at 3:09 PM on August 19, 2014 [6 favorites]

a SWAT-type raid on a guy with an anonymous twitter account pretending to be the mayor

I thought you needed a thicker skin than this to get anywhere in politics.
posted by fivebells at 3:10 PM on August 19, 2014

RE: Drones

I have no idea why vice or someone didn't bring several with them.

Battery life. You have a good position where you can wait and then deploy something, great. You want a scan over the crowd for a few minutes, you can do it. In an evolving situation like this? I don't see that your 10-15 minute drone is something you want to deploy. Yeah, maybe it's there when something is going on, but likely not. And then you have a thousand dollar anchor to schlep around till you can charge it up. And they're going to hustle you out of the McDs before you can charge your phone and shoulder-mounted camera, much less your drone.

And that puts aside the issue of the cops flipping their shit over it. Considering the way they have reacted to a plastic bottle being thrown I sure as shit wouldn't want them to figure out I was the person driving the buzzing overhead accountability device.
posted by phearlez at 3:10 PM on August 19, 2014 [3 favorites]

Wasn't Johannes Mehserle suspected of steroid abuse? Could that be a factor here?
posted by Artw at 3:18 PM on August 19, 2014

I thought corb was arguing for Wilson's superiors to be held accountable in addition to him, not instead of. Maybe I'm wrong.

My apologies, I thought that was clear, but I may not have been - I think that the officer and superiors/institution should both be held accountable for what they have done/continue to do in the case of the FPD.
posted by corb at 3:18 PM on August 19, 2014 [5 favorites]

Battery life. You have a good position where you can wait and then deploy something, great. You want a scan over the crowd for a few minutes, you can do it. In an evolving situation like this? I don't see that your 10-15 minute drone is something you want to deploy. Yeah, maybe it's there when something is going on, but likely not. And then you have a thousand dollar anchor to schlep around till you can charge it up. And they're going to hustle you out of the McDs before you can charge your phone and shoulder-mounted camera, much less your drone.

Your ending paragraph is a solid point, but i have one of these quadcopters. The batteries on every model i've ever seen, commercial or home built from components could be swapped in seconds. The batteries are small and it's easy to carry a lot of them.(the ones for mine are like, bic lighter sized. but even big camera-haulers only take maybe snickers bar sized batteries). They stay charged pretty much indefinitely on their own. You could easily have a fanny pack or backpack pouch stuffed with 20 of them and fly for hours and hours. I've done that noodling around just for the sake of flying because it's fun.

I've seen them used to cover protests that were fairly violent in other countries where the security forces were cracking down. It just confuses me that they aren't here.

I thought you needed a thicker skin than this to get anywhere in politics.

I've never been able to find it lately, but where's that old mefi post about the kid who pissed off the local PD, so they executed a dawn raid on his parents house, trashed everything, and then made up a bunch of lies and trashed his rep locally and it stopped him from getting into college or something? because yea, pretty similar story.

It's weird how google turned up nothing. The blog post about it was really good, and it had in big bold text as it's own line "they executed a dawn raid", and i think that was in the fpp. Weird.
posted by emptythought at 3:19 PM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

Does attempting to detain a subject by force through a car window even meet the Peace Officer Standards and Training for the Ferg. P.D.?

And remember Mike Brown was a drug crazed giant who just, literally, knocked over a convenience store and beat the clerk.

So, this was clearly a very dangerous situation - and, the officer didn't call for backup. He didn't even call to tell them what he found. He didn't even get out of the car. So, he then tries to apprehend the guy through a car window, like it's the drive through at Dunkin Donuts.

He shoots the kid, and he doesn't call it in.

This is all very bizarre, even if you take the cops word at it.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 3:20 PM on August 19, 2014 [19 favorites]

the seemingly indiscriminate amount of teargas and flashbangs being thrown along with house-to-house sweeps and everyfuckingthing else the police have been doing seems..........DISPROPORTIONATE.

The drug war means never having to say you’re sorry
posted by homunculus at 3:24 PM on August 19, 2014 [5 favorites]

I hope the teams of lawyers for the media organizations are working overtime crafting their lawsuits against the police.

In the end, of course, it is the taxpayers who will do the pay-outs, not those responsible.
posted by el io at 3:25 PM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

Lately, I've been working on a DIY astrophotography setup which consists of a Raspberry Pi, the official camera module, and some styrofoam. It's surprisingly easy to program the camera.

I've been thinking that pretty much the only thing I could do in this situation that would actually help is to use what I've learned building that to help develop plans for something that could be assembled relatively cheaply (~$100 buying the pieces at hobbyist retail prices, substantially less as raw components) and handed out by organizations like the ACLU or Amnesty International.

The goal would be basically to continuously stream a series of still photos back to a central aggregation point to create something like an "official" record of the event from as many angles as possible. I think it would be possible, with sufficient numbers of them in the crowd, to do something like create PhotoSynth snapshots of a given moment in time.

Additionally, I think it would be possible to rig something like this up so that the only visible component is the camera lens, which is easy to obscure, while the rest of it remains sewn into a vest or something along those lines.

If you are a technical person, think about how your skills might be used to make it so that in the future there is no effective difference between a protest and a gathering of the press.

When the riot line advances into the crowd, we have to make them look the world in the eye.
posted by feloniousmonk at 3:29 PM on August 19, 2014 [19 favorites]

I don't see that your 10-15 minute drone is something you want to deploy [...] Considering the way they have reacted to a plastic bottle being thrown I sure as shit wouldn't want them to figure out I was the person driving the buzzing overhead accountability device.

There's no reason it would have to be a dumb little quadrotor. A fixed wing aircraft is probably better suited to loitering on target anyway, the endurance will be much greater. Maybe an R/C sailplane outfitted with a stabilized, downward-looking camera and a small folding prop.
posted by indubitable at 3:36 PM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

[T]he considered point of view of segregationists during the civil rights era was that 'their' African Americans were either content or too dumb to rebel by themselves, and that therefore if there was unrest it was the fault of the Jewish outsiders and their 'freedom rides' and connections to the global red conspiracy. The obvious liberal response to this sort of line was that injustice anywhere was a problem everywhere, that all citizens had moral agency and a stake in freedom, that there is nothing sacrosanct about 'the local' (and appeals to it are usually reactionary), and that red-baiting had proved itself to be an attack on all democratic forces. At least since Massive Resistance, that was the obvious liberal response. And it took no time at all to think it up, everyone already knew the lines.

So what does it say that a great many of today's liberals unthinkingly regurgitate the stuff about 'outside agitators' in Missouri?

Richard Seymour: What is an 'outside agitator'?
posted by RogerB at 3:37 PM on August 19, 2014 [6 favorites]

For the record, it's not lost on me that I'm basically describing the cameras the police should be wearing.
posted by feloniousmonk at 3:37 PM on August 19, 2014 [6 favorites]

emptythought, I didn't believe that was ever on Metafilter but I found it on reddit.

Redditor bails out student and the article from LA Weekly.
posted by Ik ben afgesneden at 3:38 PM on August 19, 2014 [5 favorites]

The goal would be basically to continuously stream a series of still photos
Additionally, I think it would be possible to rig something like this up so that the only visible component is the camera lens

Pivothead has a $200 8gig glasses - no streaming. Still photos can go at a certain per second rate. The newer Pivothead looks like you could do what you are looking to do.

under $10 gets plastic pocketclips for your cell phone so the camera lens pokes out the front of the shirtpocket - streaming via apps like qix or ipsquick.

The downside to relying on streaming is what happens when cell coverage is stopped or a WiFi blocker is used?
posted by rough ashlar at 3:39 PM on August 19, 2014

This is a project I worked on last year using drones to record police misconduct during protests: http://www.civileyes.me/. I didn't complete it, but the ideas are basically sound modulo choice of exact platform, etc.
posted by jjwiseman at 3:42 PM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

I wonder what the police reaction will be when any big event on the streets is surrounded by drones watching the "fireworks" without regard to legality.

From yesterday: LAPD Tells Drone Operator Not To Fly Over Ezell Ford Protest
posted by Room 641-A at 3:42 PM on August 19, 2014

This is a must read: journalist Ryan Deveraux's account of his arrest last night (and being shot with a rubber bullet). Parts of it read like dispatches from a war correspondent. (Well...)

Between the gaps in the houses we could see the armored vehicles quickly moving up and down W. Florissant, parallel to us. Two turns and the police would find us off that main road and, potentially, shoot at us. We took cover behind a large tree in case the firing started again.

It was then that one of the armored vehicles entered the neighborhood once more, this time ahead of us, slowly moving in the direction we were walking. With their high-powered lights scanning the neighborhood, the only option we had was to announce ourselves as members of the press and hope they wouldn’t shoot. We stepped out of the shadows, our hands in the air, and began yelling, “Press!” and “Journalists!” and “We’re media!” over and over. An officer on top of the vehicle turned his light on us. After a pause, he beckoned us forward. We continued walking, our hands still in the air, still shouting that we were journalists.

With rifles trained on us, we turned right on Highmunt Dr., in the direction of W. Florissant and toward another police vehicle, which had more guns pointed at us. As we made our way forward, I heard a pop and felt a stinging in my lower back. I jumped up instinctively, and realized that the officers behind us, the ones who had asked us to move forward, had shot us with what I believe were rubber bullets. I was hit once and Hermsmeier was hit twice.

posted by desjardins at 3:54 PM on August 19, 2014 [38 favorites]

Now: Shots fired on Halls Ferry between Jennings Station and the "Circle" - Scanner
via http://www.reddit.com/live/tdrph3y49ftn/
posted by whyareyouatriangle at 3:54 PM on August 19, 2014

You know, I'm sensing a pattern in these 'cop kills unarmed [black] man' stories. The cop inevitably claims that the victim was 'reaching for the cop's gun'.

My solution: Cops don't have guns. Sounds silly perhaps, but the UK makes it work (they just call for backup when needed - the backup cops have guns if the situation warrants).

Sure, the cop will be saying 'he reached for my tazer', but then we'll only have tazed unarmed victims, not murdered ones.
posted by el io at 3:55 PM on August 19, 2014 [15 favorites]

The thing that keeps coming back to me with this is that it just seems like the Confederacy riding again…
posted by klangklangston at 3:56 PM on August 19, 2014 [3 favorites]

I jumped up instinctively, and realized that the officers behind us, the ones who had asked us to move forward, had shot us with what I believe were rubber bullets. I was hit once and Hermsmeier was hit twice.

Ugh, I hope they sue the police department into bankruptcy...
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 4:00 PM on August 19, 2014 [4 favorites]

So here is my take on best possible read for the cop on what happened.

He yells at the kid, the kid mouths off to him, the cop opens the door quickly, it bounces back and hits him in the eye, causing the fracture. Delirious, half blind and in extreme pain, he draws down on the kid that's running away. Maybe he fires once accidentally, hitting the kid. The kid turns around to surrender, the cop, high on adrenaline and barely able to see, opens up on him.

Maybe he gets manslaughter if that's his story.
posted by empath at 4:01 PM on August 19, 2014 [5 favorites]

RogerB: Yes. There really needs to be a How Political Protests Work FAQ someplace so that we can just stop retreading these interminable discussions about the supposed "black bloc opportunists" and "white anarchists" and "revolutionaries" who invariably turn out to be cops and provocateur thugs, using the one traveling schlemihl ideologue who showed up from RCP or whatever fringe group as their cover. The whole thing is just a right-wing reframe of the discussion around any and every mass protest, a way of looking at a mass protest that is deliberately designed to split keep-the-peace moderate liberals from radicals — and it seems still to work, way too fucking well, every time it comes out. (Remember the Occupy threads right here on MeFi?) This really needs to be on an Internet lefty bingo card or something.

I agree, but beyond that, I think there's a revolving door of wonks whose experience in monkewrenching foreign politics eventually came home under a rationalization of pragmatism and security. I suspect this goes well back into the cold war. Regardless, it wouldn't surprise me if some of the leading experts in tactics for disruptive protest have a secret resume in teaching waterboarding, buggery, and extrajudicial rendition.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 4:02 PM on August 19, 2014 [2 favorites]

Ugh, I hope they sue the police department into bankruptcy...

To do that they'd have to sue the town into bankruptcy.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 4:02 PM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

The whole "outside agitators' bit is actually brilliant propaganda, whoever first put that in the playbook knew what the hell they were doing.

a) Ofttimes, as Frowner says, there really are 'outside agitators' who are either embedded/undercover feds trying to instigate violence, or ringer cops who actually do the violent crap at protests.

Which obviously justifies massive police violence in retaliation

b) and it does, as sagaciously pointed out above, drive a wedge between indigenous moderates and people who are actually being radicalized, or who have those tendencies already. Plus

c) thereby it delegitimizes what to my mind is a perfectly legitimate response to police violence, and shows the outside world that no matter how much protest might be justified, nobody local is really that angry, and the heads the cops are breaking are therefore those of outside troublemakers who shouldn't have been there to begin with.

On the other hand, the cops there don't seem to be doing anything else right, so any efficacy in the messaging here is probably basically accidental.
posted by hap_hazard at 4:05 PM on August 19, 2014 [3 favorites]

It sure seems like the whole department is rotten to the core. Every last one of them should be fired (at least) and the department rebuilt from the ground up with stricter standards for candidates. In the meantime, maybe federal marshals could do the regular police work for the area?
posted by Flunkie at 4:05 PM on August 19, 2014 [3 favorites]

Fox2News has now joined the ranks of the people that insisted the video proved a different viewpoint aka the really blurry can't really make out audio from that video.

They also helpfully added captioning so that you can accurately hear what they're saying and not at all influencing you to hear that as you read it.
posted by lizarrd at 4:06 PM on August 19, 2014

Maybe he gets manslaughter if that's his story.

lbr he's not ever going to be charged with anything, not ever.
posted by elizardbits at 4:06 PM on August 19, 2014 [9 favorites]

""WAR" in Ferguson: (You better listen)

It's not a joke. It's not a game. If anyone says to you "come see the protest" you need to say "NO!" There's a lot of people out there playing "journalist." I was one of those fools playing "journalist." I will confess that this was the dumbest thing I've ever done in my life. The over-saturation of media is not helping the cause. We were filming at the burned down QT on West Florissant when a protester threw a glass bottle at the police. The crowd was asked by police to disburse over and over again. Those warnings fell on deaf ear's. The police department yelled repeatedly over the loud speaker for the media to separate from the protesters. The "media" understood the level of sincerity when the audible sound of weapons being charged echoed loudly over the chanting demonstrators. A police officer in riot gear invited me to hide behind his armored vehicle. I chose a spot off of the road close to fellow photographer Michael Thomas. The police released a few smoke canisters and then deployed chemicals. I started to choke when an all too familiar sound filled the air. Actual gunfire. This is an unmistakable sound. We heard it during night infiltration in the U.S. Army. I will never forget the sound of gunfire coming my way. The crazy part is that it was a welcome sound. If you heard it....that means that you're still alive. Bullets (unless subsonic) travel faster than the speed of sound. If you heard it...you're alive. The police descended on our position while screaming "Get the fuck out of here!" We were confused as to where he wanted us to go. I remember screaming "WHERE", but I don't remember hearing a direction to run. Still choking from the CS canisters....I took off and ran as fast as I could. All of this was captured on high definition video. I will happily supply is to any media outlet who requests a copy. If you share or redistribute this video on social media or television then you MUST credit Karl Lund for capturing it. Heed my warning. Ferguson is nothing short of a war zone. I will not be able to sleep tonight. I pray that all of my fellow photographer's, police officer friends and ALL of the protesters get home safe. I can't believe that this is happening in our city. I' God be with each of you.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10203577869121821"

http://www.reddit.com/live/tdrph3y49ftn/
posted by whyareyouatriangle at 4:07 PM on August 19, 2014 [7 favorites]

The thing that keeps coming back to me with this is that it just seems like the Confederacy riding again…

Missouri was the base of operations for both the pro-slavery Border Ruffians in 'Bleeding Kansas' and the most (in)famous of the bushwhackers, guerillas and partisan raiders in the American Civil War.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 4:08 PM on August 19, 2014 [2 favorites]

He yells at the kid, the kid mouths off to him, the cop opens the door quickly, it bounces back and hits him in the eye, causing the fracture. Delirious, half blind and in extreme pain, he draws down on the kid that's running away. Maybe he fires once accidentally, hitting the kid. The kid turns around to surrender, the cop, high on adrenaline and barely able to see, opens up on him.

You know, if they had lead with this story then maybe i would be willing to believe it. "I thought he intentionally hit me in the face with the door, and i was injured, and..."

The thing is, where's the eye witness accounts to corroborate that? Why not just lead with it if it was the truth?

Everything that's happened so far leads me to believe there can't be even this "reasonable" of an explanation.

Why would they be this defensive if it wasn't a "how dare you not bow to my authority you fucking kid" situation? These aren't little kids afraid of getting busted stealing pudding from the fridge after bed time. Cops get away with shit, especially when they have a semi-plausible story like that. Something much worse happened here.
posted by emptythought at 4:09 PM on August 19, 2014 [3 favorites]

it's odd how a few random hoodlums beefing with each other are fairly good shots but the minute they try to shoot at the police, they're lousy shots

i'm really not sure how seriously to take these stories
posted by pyramid termite at 4:10 PM on August 19, 2014 [3 favorites]

Elon James is tweeting Instagram videos of the current protests. This one shows you the banners and signs they're carrying, but the people in this one holding flowers (roses?) over their heads and chanting Mike Brown's name are amazing.

no YOU'RE tearing up
posted by Phire at 4:10 PM on August 19, 2014 [4 favorites]

Maybe he fires once accidentally, hitting the kid. The kid turns around to surrender, the cop, high on adrenaline and barely able to see, opens up on him.

IANAL, but that's still murder, no?
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 4:10 PM on August 19, 2014 [2 favorites]

looking into the future, i think bankruptcy for ferguson is very likely for one reason or another - the biggest irony is that by acting the way they have, the ferguson police have guaranteed that the tax base will shrink, liabilities will go up and many of them will be laid off

Have you ever seen a police officer take an action that seemed like there was forethought involved in it that went more than 20 minutes into the future? Because i've seen plenty of examples of stuff that blatantly didn't, and barring some of the brief moments of Ron Johnson being ok in this, nothing really to the contrary in or outside this story.
posted by emptythought at 4:12 PM on August 19, 2014 [3 favorites]

Wasn't there a photo taken by a witness of two police (one being Wilson) standing over Michael Brown's body? Would that show any sign of an orbital fracture?
posted by perhapses at 4:14 PM on August 19, 2014 [4 favorites]

So what does it say that a great many of today's liberals unthinkingly regurgitate the stuff about 'outside agitators' in Missouri?

See...I've seen reports whose veracity I believe, some from Antonio French and Chris King, among others, of "agitators" and/or "instigators": people who arrive ready for a fight, rather than a protest; a few bandana-wearing white dudes throwing bricks or rocks at the cops; a few dudes who've gotten drunk on-site; and equal-opportunity provocation by white dudes and black dudes getting on megaphones and baiting police and demonstrators. Some of these people are not from around here. Some of them are from around here. They may or may not be from the "outside," whatever that means. But regardless of where they're from, their presence makes it difficult for cooler heads to prevail, and they are real.

Then there are people I'd truly consider outside agitators appearing on the scene—like the KKK, which several people have witnessed members of on the ground, and like Westboro Baptist Church, members of which are apparently heading to Ferguson, too.

So no, I don't agree that the notion of "outside agitators" is a false one here. There genuinely are people who don't have the best interests of those in the community at heart who are starting stuff in Ferguson.
posted by limeonaire at 4:15 PM on August 19, 2014 [14 favorites]

What ever story they come out with, even if it has to a hugely unlikely one to achieve this, will completly absolve him of ALL wrongdoing. They can't give on this, not even a little bit.
posted by Artw at 4:17 PM on August 19, 2014 [3 favorites]

The piece in Die Welt was titled "The day the US police became my enemy".

Ansgar Graw wrote:

Für mich ist das alles eine neue Erfahrung. Ich war in etlichen Krisengebieten, ich war in Bürgerkriegsregionen in Georgien, im Gazastreifen, illegal im Kaliningrader Gebiet, als die damalige Sowjetunion westlichen Reisenden den Zugang noch streng verwehrte, ich war in Afghanistan, im Irak, in Vietnam und in China, ich habe heimlich Dissidenten auf Kuba getroffen. Aber um mich von Polizisten fesseln und rüde anschnauzen zu lassen und ein Gefängnis von innen zu sehen, musste ich nach Ferguson und St. Louis in Missouri in den Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika reisen.

which translates to

For me this is all a new experience. I was in several conflict zones, I was in civil war regions in Georgia, in Gaza, illegal in the Kaliningrad region, when the then Soviet Union Western travelers access yet strictly refused, I was in Afghanistan, in Iraq, in Vietnam and in China, I secretly met dissidents in Cuba. But to get detained by the police, get rudely yelled at, and see the inside of a prison, I had to travel to Ferguson and St. Louis, in Missouri, in the United States of America.
posted by adamvasco at 4:21 PM on August 19, 2014 [43 favorites]

The heat index is currently 94 degrees there. The dew point is 74. I wouldn't last 5 minutes outside. Those protesters are dedicated.
posted by desjardins at 4:22 PM on August 19, 2014 [2 favorites]

"Black people have a right to rebel, have a right to resist police brutality, have a right to fight the cops and the entire power structure in the streets if need be. We are an oppressed people, and the state polices us with vicious police force today in cities all over the country. We were enslaved, put in prison as Southern peons, forced onto ghettos in major cities, systematically discriminated in any and all oppressive fashion under this capitalist system. The police in Black, POC and poor communities have always been an occupying army, now this U.S. capitalist state is openly at war with them, and has armed its cops with advanced military weaponry to destroy our communities in the cities. Instead of the New BPP movement playing a new role as an advanced revolutionary detachment, they have instead acted as a minstrel sideshow in Black fatigues. Since the original BPP was destroyed, there has been a massive rise in violent police crimes, which have been unchecked. Tens of thousands of young Black people, and all manner of civilians of color, poor white workers, and all kinds of people have been killed by the police in cities, towns and villages all over the USA, and their deaths have been swept under the rug. We need a mass movement which can organize the youth and the community to fightback, not just in an unfocused act of rage, but a disciplined community based massed militia, and grassroots movement that understands we need to use any means necessary to bring an end to police terrorism. We need to drive the police out of Ferguson, MO. and many other Black and poor communities. We need to demand the demilitarization of the police, and demand that they be put under community control. This is why we cannot accept a bogus organization like the NBPP, which is on the scene in Ferguson, MO. site of a massive rebellion, but totally shirking their duties in organizing resistance. If they are on the scene, and are there asking for the people's surrender, rather than that of the cops, and contributing to the delay or denying of justice in the case of Michael Brown, along with the cops, they are a total sellout organization, a bogus government controlled "new BPP" that must be exposed for the harm it has been doing, and then have the masses of people shut them down."
Lorenzo Kom'boa Ervin (public post)

"Can you believe that they are back to the stupid arguments from the 1960's about "outside agitators" and "damn Anarchists spreading trouble", and now they claim that the people in Ferguson are not fighting, just a "hardcore gang from outside". Well, remember this: "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." Dr. M.L. King."
Lorenzo Kom'boa Ervin (public post)

Just adding some voices to the conversation.
posted by whyareyouatriangle at 4:22 PM on August 19, 2014 [12 favorites]

looking into the future, i think bankruptcy for ferguson is very likely for one reason or another - the biggest irony is that by acting the way they have, the ferguson police have guaranteed that the tax base will shrink, liabilities will go up and many of them will be laid off

Ferguson have 50-something sworn officers which cost just under $5 million a year. A trial is probably going to bankrupt the city. Any judgement will probably see them scrap the department and have it annexed by the county which has a much larger budget to absorb lawsuits for shitheaddery.
posted by Talez at 4:23 PM on August 19, 2014 [2 favorites]

What about their pension fund? That'd be hitting them where it hurts.
posted by Artw at 4:26 PM on August 19, 2014

Wasn't there a photo taken by a witness of two police (one being Wilson) standing over Michael Brown's body? Would that show any sign of an orbital fracture?

I just spent a lot of time looking at those immediate aftermath photos, and I can't see any sign of major swelling or discoloration. However, the photos are mostly crappy cell phone photos and the picture quality is pretty bad; there would have to be a LOT of swelling and discoloration to be unambiguously visible.
posted by KathrynT at 4:27 PM on August 19, 2014 [2 favorites]

What about their pension fund? That'd be hitting them where it hurts.

I think we don't want to start a precedent of counting the pension fund of former employees as assets of an institution. Think of the first time a department of education had to settle a lawsuit for discrimination and decided to take it out of teacher retirement, for example.
posted by corb at 4:28 PM on August 19, 2014 [8 favorites]

Then there are people I'd truly consider outside agitators appearing on the scene—like the KKK, which several people have witnessed members of on the ground, and like Westboro Baptist Church, members of which are apparently heading to Ferguson, too.

Jesus, that'll help. And if this drags on that will undoubtedly only get worse.

On the other hand, what I wish would happen is for rented buses full of polite, angry-but-peaceful, nicely-dressed church people to show up to protest. I am sure there are good reasons if that's not happening- not wanting to usurp the voices of people who live there, people have jobs and stuff, maybe there's no place to stay, maybe people think it wouldn't help. But I still find myself wishing that would happen.
posted by hap_hazard at 4:29 PM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

It seems to me like this is going to continue at least until next Monday, when it might hit a new peak, because that's the day of Michael Brown's funeral and public memorial service.
posted by feloniousmonk at 4:30 PM on August 19, 2014

Graw took the pictures walking around in small circles in an attempt to assuage the officer, but was then cuffed in zip ties anyway. The officer gave his name as Donald Duck.

That last sentence - this is just really bleak satire right
posted by naju at 4:31 PM on August 19, 2014 [10 favorites]

Swat team targets T-Shirt maker?

For his troubles, his house (near, but not in Ferguson) got raided by SWAT team in full riot gear. They took a bunch of his stuff, detained him for awhile, eventually released without charges.

Sourcing on this isn't solid, and I hope to see updates to the story with better sourcing.
posted by el io at 4:31 PM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

Wasn't there a photo taken by a witness of two police (one being Wilson) standing over Michael Brown's body? Would that show any sign of an orbital fracture?

There's video of Wilson walking back and forth around Mike Brown's body. There's no closeup of Wilson's face, though from a distance there doesn't appear to be any injury, and he sure doesn't behave as if he's been injured -- no hand to his face or eye, no indication from the other officer that he's injured, etc.
posted by scody at 4:31 PM on August 19, 2014 [11 favorites]

Armed thugs are terrorizing Ferguson. And the national guard is there protecting... The police command center. What the holy fuck.
posted by el io at 4:32 PM on August 19, 2014 [4 favorites]

corb: I think we don't want to start a precedent of counting the pension fund of former employees as assets of an institution.

To some extent, this would just be continuing the existing precedent, as public retiree pensions seem to always be on the table when municipal bankruptcies occur. Doing it as a means to punish the institution rather than fix holes in a city budget may in fact be a new wrinkle, but honestly, let's not pretend many people (particularly those of the anti-union persuasion) haven't tried to go after municipal pensions.
posted by tonycpsu at 4:36 PM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

^"Surprise, surprise! The journalist who claimed there were 12 witnesses backing up the police's account of the shooting (what account? where is the incident report???) has been on medical leave since March and her tweets are personal, not publication-ready."

Another huge surprise is that a quick skim through her twitter feed shows some pretty, shall we say, *interesting* insight into her personal ideology. I'm wondering who exactly fed her those claims to begin with. Did someone here already post her supposed source?

P.S. To be honest over time I'd felt like metafilter had become a fairly unwelcoming place for me to spend time. My own ideologies felt frustratingly out of step with the majority of members here, and it certainly wasn't making my days any better to read discussion threads on issues I cared deeply about or had direct experience with. But the last few days I've been really, *really* thankful for having these Ferguson threads as a sane refuge from so much of the appalling coverage and commentary that's out there. Thanks everyone for your smart, empathetic, and informative posts.
posted by stagewhisper at 4:36 PM on August 19, 2014 [8 favorites]

we can fix these problems without stealing people's retirement funds. taking pensions en-mass should always be off the table.
posted by el io at 4:39 PM on August 19, 2014 [4 favorites]

I just read Kareem Abdul-Jamar's commentary on Ferguson being about class warfare rather than racial tension. Oh Kareem. What the everloving hell:

Then we’ll start debating whether or not the police in America are themselves an endangered minority who are also discriminated against based on their color—blue.
posted by Phire at 4:41 PM on August 19, 2014 [2 favorites]

Man, I'm starting to think that the only police I can respect these days are the Dog Police.
posted by porn in the woods at 4:42 PM on August 19, 2014

Are any of the live streams up again? I didn't save the addresses last night and am failing to find them again.
posted by Jalliah at 4:44 PM on August 19, 2014

ack never mind. The OP... duh
posted by Jalliah at 4:45 PM on August 19, 2014

Wasn't there a photo taken by a witness of two police (one being Wilson) standing over Michael Brown's body? Would that show any sign of an orbital fracture?

Not necessarily. They could be hairline fractures.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 4:49 PM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

Amanda Terkel ‏@aterkel 3m
Elad Gross, 36, handing out free water and voter registration forms #Ferguson
posted by whyareyouatriangle at 4:54 PM on August 19, 2014

That police in Ferguson are targeting journalists so openly and aggressively is an appalling affront to basic media freedoms, but it is far scarier for what it suggests about how the police treat everyone else — and should tell us much about why Ferguson's residents are so fed up. When police in Ferguson are willing to rough up and arbitrarily arrest a Washington Post reporter just for being in a McDonald's, you have to wonder how those police treat the local citizens, who don't have the shield of a press pass.
If police in Ferguson treat journalists like this, imagine how they treat residents
posted by whyareyouatriangle at 4:58 PM on August 19, 2014 [20 favorites]

we can fix these problems without stealing people's retirement funds.

Yes, just stop shooting unarmed people.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 4:58 PM on August 19, 2014 [16 favorites]

In the cell phone footage taken right after the shooting, Wilson didn't look to me like a guy who just got his facebone fractured. On the other hand, he may well have been in shock and not feeling much.
posted by uosuaq at 4:58 PM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

So if Wilson actually was injured, and we add that to the testimony of the five witnesses, who are all in basic agreement, we get something like:

"We scuffled, and I received an orbital fracture. Brown ran from the scene. I followed him, shooting as I ran. He was wounded. He turned around and, hands over his head, yelled 'Okay! Okay! Okay! Hands up! Don't shoot! I don't have a gun!' I then shot him several more times, including twice to the head, until it was clear he was dead."

I don't think that really sounds any better.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 5:03 PM on August 19, 2014 [32 favorites]

I'm waiting for those fracture rumors to be substantiated by an actual news source (so, something outside of the U.S.), but with the way that department is behaving their actions up till this point I have extreme doubts that any injury wasn't delivered post shooting by another cop as a means of cover-up. That sort of evidence would have changed the way this played out from the start, and their coyness in releasing it a week after the fact is either mind boggling or highly suspicious.
posted by codacorolla at 5:04 PM on August 19, 2014 [2 favorites]

Yeah, many of us well remember how photographs of George Zimmerman with blood on him fed into his self-defense narrative, and wouldn't any on-the-job injury necessarily involve photography, x-rays, MRIs, not to mention DNA samples? It was really strange that the guy's own chief brought it up, defensively, at the (first?) press conference and doing so, held his hand to his face as illustration -- then apologetically said he didn't actually know which side of the officer's face had been injured. Quite odd, really.
posted by dhartung at 5:09 PM on August 19, 2014 [7 favorites]

Dept's reaction says that there is no defense.
posted by PMdixon at 5:12 PM on August 19, 2014 [4 favorites]

Regarding the comments upthread that there may have been undercover officers posing as anarchists in the crowd last night: I have heard this same speculation from people who were actually on the street. There is nothing I've seen yet that really confirms it for me, but I think it's a reasonable question to explore. I was actually witness in 2008, to a police-provoked riot at the Democratic National Convention.
posted by BlueJae at 5:13 PM on August 19, 2014 [3 favorites]

I think Betsy Phillips (Tiny Cat Pants) has a good take:

I think the thing I find most interesting about this is just watching how the racial attitudes I grew up surrounded by and the racial assumptions of the power structures in those places sound to outsiders....I grew up in towns where it was just assumed that black people, except the “good” ones, were more dangerous than white people (even the “trash”) and that they had to be constantly surveilled by the police if and when they were around because, well, “you know how they are.” And everyone nods along, with rare exceptions.

I can see this same attitude in the Ferguson and county police, who keep trying to trigger the “and everyone nods along” portion of the event. Everything they’ve released is about trying to show that Brown is not “one of the good ones,” and therefore, whatever happens to him, it’s not really important for “good” people to bother themselves with.

That they cannot force this dynamic to play out with this individual seems to have caused them to try to escalate things in Ferguson so that they can try to trigger it at a community level–these are all “bad” ones because they’re outside when they’re told not to be, because they don’t respect the authority of the police, etc.–so that they can be vindicated in their treatment of the community and therefore of Brown.

I hadn't thought of the escalation as "trying to force everyone to agree this kid was a bad person" but it makes as much sense as anything else.
posted by emjaybee at 5:14 PM on August 19, 2014 [46 favorites]

This afternoon, DA McCulloch agreed that the Governor has the power to replace him on the case, but he has no plans to do so; the Governor issued a mealy-mouthed statement that both McCulloch and Holder "each have a job to do", calling on them to "meet expectations", of all the dumbest, lowest-bar things to say at this moment.
posted by dhartung at 5:18 PM on August 19, 2014 [8 favorites]

The governor certainly appears to be the Peter Principle at work. Hope he doesn't have any higher political ambitions 'cause he's showing himself unable to cope.
posted by Justinian at 5:26 PM on August 19, 2014 [2 favorites]

Oh, I absolutely agree with Betsy Phillips. It's clear to me that the cops are very deliberately trying to make sure there is chaos. There's a curfew, and protest leaders have spent all day trying to make sure people respect it? Start attacking people hours before the curfew starts. There's supposedly shots fired? Don't hunt for the shooters, instead drive around neighborhoods and gas anyone you see. (And that's being generous and assuming that the mysterious shots that were from non-visible shooters, that hit no one, and resulted in cops attacking protestors who clearly were not shooters, were not from the police themselves as an excuse.)

This isn't overwhelmed cops, this is deliberate provocation.
posted by tavella at 5:27 PM on August 19, 2014 [22 favorites]

Small-town police in Canada were able to take a guy alive who had just shot 5 of their colleagues.

Not strictly accurate. The City of Moncton, like many Municipalities, Provinces and Territories in Canada, contracts out its policing to the RCMP.

The RCMP are not a recently militarized police force; the RCMP have been explicitly paramilitary from their inception. When they were first formed to pacify the western frontier of Canada, American officials publicly expressed concern that this was the start of a military buildup. The Mounties' identity was in large part forged in the North West Rebellion, when they broke the back of an alliance of uppity indigenous peoples who didn't like that they were being swept off their land to make way for colonists.

For Americans, probably the best way to picture the RCMP is if the US Army Cavalry that "won the West" stuck around after the Indian Wars were over. Now imagine that most states, counties and municipalities west of the Mississippi don't bother with having their own state troopers or sheriff's departments or municipal police, but instead just contract out to the Cavalry. They look mostly like police now, but they still have the crossed sabres on their service caps.

The RCMP is in many ways still like an occupying army in lots of Canada, especially in the North, where their role in clearing First Nations off the land isn't forgotten. The RCMP is not very popular in lots of Canada, and many view them as a belligerent and unaccountable organization in desperate need of reform. For one, they are also not without their own incidents, especially suspicious deaths of people in their custody. Because Mounties come from all over Canada and can be stationed anywhere, often half a continent away from home, they are pretty much the antithesis of community policing. Lots of people think they need to go away, and I'm one of them.

If Justin Bourque hadn't been white, I wouldn't bet money on him being alive today.

That said, the RCMP suffered the loss of 4 officers ambushed on a farm in Alberta less than a decade ago. The shooter died after exchanging fire with two other officers. It was the worsts one-day loss of life for the RCMP in 100 years.

Yet despite that recent history, they were successful in taking the Justin Bourque alive after he shot 5 officers, three fatally. That definitely takes much better training and so much more restraint than the ostensibly civilian police in the US seem to display.
posted by [expletive deleted] at 5:33 PM on August 19, 2014 [18 favorites]

There's supposedly shots fired?

That's been bothering me a lot. Does anyone believe that there's been a gun so much as brandished around a cop there, or a shot fired anywhere near them, without massive return fire? I'd really want to see any evidence whatsoever of that, and I'd think they'd want journalists around to provide it.
posted by hap_hazard at 5:34 PM on August 19, 2014 [8 favorites]

Amid the turmoil tearing through this small Missouri town, a high school team prepares for its season opener, and a coach helps his players make sense of the madness around them. The first game is scheduled for Friday
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 5:38 PM on August 19, 2014

Elise Hu ‏@elisewho 3m

Demonstrators at the #STL store shooting site change the #Ferguson chant of 'hands up, don't shoot' to 'hands up, shoot back'
posted by whyareyouatriangle at 5:42 PM on August 19, 2014

brokkr: "That looks like a plastic (PET) bottle to me, which would of course be near totally useless as a molotov. Anybody who knows Colt bottles who can elaborate?"

PET bottles can have their place as smoke generators and fire wall generators but ya are mostly useless for Molotov Cocktails unless the contained material can generate enough pressure to rupture the bottle.

>: ""What bottle do you think a black guy would use?""

Your smart Molotov Cocktail builder uses a Starbucks Frappicino bottle. Small and easily concealable the thin glass and non cylindrical shape greatly increase the chances of breakage. And the screw on top is large allowing for easy addition of rigid thickening agents like polystyrene insulation to your preferred flammable liquid whether that is gasoline, diesel, tar, alcohol or combination thereof. Finally the size allows for a firm grip in a single hand and the mass is similar to that of a fastball/baseball increasing the chances that a lobber unfamiliar with his weapon will strike in the vicinity of his target.
posted by Mitheral at 5:44 PM on August 19, 2014 [28 favorites]

"a high school team prepares for its season opener"

Because god forbid we let anything get in the way of FOOTBALL even when schools are closed.
posted by Tknophobia at 5:46 PM on August 19, 2014 [3 favorites]

Because god forbid we let anything get in the way of FOOTBALL even when schools are closed.

The Ferguson cops have demonstrated their willingness to murder unarmed black teen boys that look like football players.

I would rather those boys were on the pitch than on the streets right now, for their own safety.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 5:50 PM on August 19, 2014 [6 favorites]

Or so you've heard, Mitheral?
posted by uosuaq at 5:50 PM on August 19, 2014 [12 favorites]

Mitheral: I think you know a little bit too much about the construction of optimally designed Molotov Cocktails.
posted by el io at 5:52 PM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

I actually think the football article is great. Especially this:

He boiled inside. He wanted to join the protests during the day, to be one more voice for peace and resolution. On Saturday a distraction arrived. The St. Louis Rams offered the football teams at McCluer, McCluer North and McCluer South free tickets to their Saturday preseason game. Raequan obsesses over Rams slot receiver Tavon Austin; he’s got Austin’s YouTube highlights burned into his retinas. This would be Raequan’s first NFL game.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 5:52 PM on August 19, 2014 [4 favorites]

“Blue porch lights, Darren Wilson T-shirts part of growing support for Ferguson officer,” Jason Sickles, Yahoo, 19 August 2014

“I Support Officer Wilson” surpassed 39,000 Facebook likes Tuesday afternoon. The page was launched by the wife of a Missouri police officer who said it could have been her husband or any other officer instead of Wilson.

“I put myself in that family’s shoes,” she said. “I would want to know that not everyone hated me for doing my job.”

The 33-year-old woman, who has no ties to Wilson or the case, asked that Yahoo News not identify her by name due to the violence and hatred displayed in the St. Louis area since the 18-year-old’s death.

“I’m not scared,” she said. “If I wasn’t concerned about what could happen to me and my family, I would absolutely stand proud and say who I was.”

posted by ob1quixote at 6:00 PM on August 19, 2014

Buzzfeed: How Ferguson exposed Facebook's breaking news problem.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 6:00 PM on August 19, 2014 [5 favorites]

I don't mean to discount the Rams reaching out doing a good thing, and the boys being almost certainly safer on the field than the streets, but it just kind of seems to play into America's fetishization of the game, which has its own cultural problems based around hypermasculinity and violence (concussions, stuff like Ray Rice's domestic violence suspension, etc), while at the same time we're talking about police culture and escalation of force.
posted by Tknophobia at 6:00 PM on August 19, 2014

“I’m not scared,” she said. “If I wasn’t concerned about what could happen to me and my family, I would absolutely stand proud and say who I was.”

So then what you're saying is... you are scared.
posted by Joey Michaels at 6:02 PM on August 19, 2014 [43 favorites]

Your smart Molotov Cocktail builder uses a Starbucks Frappicino bottle.

I learn so much on Metafilter!
posted by orrnyereg at 6:02 PM on August 19, 2014 [21 favorites]

I could see someone saying at best "I'm not prepared to condemn Wilson until we at least hear his side of the story". At best. But where does "I Support Officer Wilson" come from? We haven't heard from him. We haven't seen the results of any investigating.

The only way that makes sense is if you think a cop who shoots a black guy is automatically in the right. Which is an awful thing to believe.
posted by Justinian at 6:05 PM on August 19, 2014 [10 favorites]

yuppies and their damned starbucks molotov cocktails - next, we'll have hipsters slinging PBR 40s
posted by pyramid termite at 6:05 PM on August 19, 2014 [6 favorites]

"I Support Officer Wilson” surpassed 39,000 Facebook likes Tuesday afternoon.

Don't read this page. I took a look at it for about 6 seconds, and now I am nauseous.

The only way that makes sense is if you think a cop who shoots a black guy is automatically in the right.

That is exactly what it says on that page.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 6:06 PM on August 19, 2014 [10 favorites]

I could see someone saying at best "I'm not prepared to condemn Wilson until we at least hear his side of the story"

they're making it up for him as fast as they can
posted by pyramid termite at 6:06 PM on August 19, 2014 [2 favorites]

the mass is similar to that of a fastball/baseball

A few weeks ago, I was watching a news video that showed Ukrainians hurling curbstones and Molotov cocktails, which they were doing with varying degrees of success. It occurred to me that baseball has trained generations of Americans to throw overhand, and fast, and with great accuracy. And if throwing isn't your thing, the sport has equipped millions of American homes with wooden and metal clubs.

For a pastime that involves a lot of aimless standing and lounging around, baseball sure does lend itself to street-to-street combat.
posted by evidenceofabsence at 6:07 PM on August 19, 2014 [16 favorites]

I've been glued to this and the previous thread for the past several days, and I'm very grateful for the level of sanity that I can always count on Metafilter for.

I don't know how much longer I can put up with the frustration and sadness that simply worsens with each new headline.

It's like America is slowly turning into some libertarian fantasy land where "Fuck you, I'm gettin mine" is the rule of law, and whoever is more equipped for self-preservation is within their right to straight up murder anyone who threatens that self-preservation. Even ignoring the whole racism element, the far-right seem to accept this as a perfectly legitimate form of justice, side stepping the need for all the tax dollars and govt red tape of prosecuting people. This mindset will destroy society as a cohesive social entity, which they are either ignorant of, or perfectly happy with.

WTF USA? Get your shit together.
posted by p3t3 at 6:07 PM on August 19, 2014 [12 favorites]

The only way that makes sense is if you think a cop ~~who shoots a black guy~~ is automatically in the right.

An awful lot of Americans believe exactly that.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 6:08 PM on August 19, 2014 [6 favorites]

Wow, WaPo is all up in arms today: "As I wrote then, some folks won’t be satisfied, it seems, until he bursts into the East Room clad in Kente cloth and brandishing a definable “black agenda”or whatever else so many blacks seem to want from him to prove that he cares."
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 6:10 PM on August 19, 2014 [2 favorites]

p3t3: actually, the libertarians are (generally) on the same side as progressives in regards to this event: We need to stop the militarization of the police (stop transferring weapons to them, stop giving them military tools to deal with domestic police issues, stop tear-gassing our own populace).

There certainly is a far-right (partially authoritarian, partially racist) reaction that is disgusting to this whole thing, but the libertarians are allies (at the moment, on this issue).
posted by el io at 6:11 PM on August 19, 2014 [3 favorites]

“Different Rules Apply,” Matt Zoller Seitz, MZS. Blog, 19 August 2014

I believe that there's a difference between knowing something and understanding it. You know how you'll try to communicate something very important to you to another person and sometimes they'll wave you off with an impatient, "I know, I know"? That's knowing: I got the gist, filed it away, I don't need to think about it again. Knowing is comprehension; understanding is deeper because it comes from empathy or identification.

All of which is a wind-up to say: having grown up in a mostly black neighborhood near Love Field airport in Dallas, and having been a diligent liberal for most of my adult life, I already knew there was such a thing as white privilege, and was properly horrified by it, but I didn't truly understand what it meant, on a deep level, until one summer night in 2006, when I was spared arrest or worse thanks to the color of my skin.

posted by ob1quixote at 6:14 PM on August 19, 2014 [9 favorites]

but the libertarians are allies (at the moment, on this issue)

Yet in the polarized If you are not 100% with me you are against me way things are done in many political circles common ground is not a place to stand on, its the leverage point to toss the other off your little island.

(LP.org's press release starts with police should stand down, then launches into failed drug war position that really doesn't seem to matter unless the failure is someone was on 'roids and 'roid raged here and would fail their drug test if placed in the public spotlight.)
posted by rough ashlar at 6:17 PM on August 19, 2014 [2 favorites]

Argh. Listening to the Fox2 livestream, talking about today's shooting. Paraphrase: obviously all the stations would be covering it anyways, but with the rioting and looting that has the town of Ferguson on edge, blah blah blah - the police will conduct a full investigation, as they always do when there's a shooting.

Digs on both ends. Fuckers.
posted by Lemurrhea at 6:19 PM on August 19, 2014

So I'm skimming the MeFi front page and exclaim: "oh god, they beheaded a journalist!"

My husband replies: "Middle East, or Ferguson?"

Sad part: I had to go back and rescan the page. That is not what I should have had to do, America.
posted by bitter-girl.com at 6:24 PM on August 19, 2014 [74 favorites]

Ferguson have 50-something sworn officers which cost just under $5 million a year. A trial is probably going to bankrupt the city.

A lot of municipalities actually have liability insurance that steps up in the event of claims against the police, and the insurers would defend the claim. The defense itself could be expensive, but the damages/penalty could potentially be paid out by the insurance company
posted by Hoopo at 6:26 PM on August 19, 2014

fox2now has a live stream - the protesters, for the first time, are across the street from the police station
posted by pyramid termite at 6:26 PM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

And I have never seen a Fox reporter that nervous.
posted by E. Whitehall at 6:30 PM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

I think the Drug War is relevant to the extent that it drives a lot of the militarization of the police, along with contributing to bad relationship between police and local communities. No knock SWAT raids, stop and frisk, and the like are, to a significant degree, justified by the drug war.

That said, that's not really the conversation to have right now.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 6:31 PM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

(Right)Libertarians are not entirely on (for lack of a more nuanced way to say it) the right side in this, as a quick scan of any of the big reddit threads on the topic will show. Right-leaning libertarians (those who base their position on the sanctity of property and take-all-comers individual liberty) are, at best, concerned about militarization of local police forces. Just like Balko, they tend to find the roots of their argument in the idea that the institution of Police has been corrupted and spoiled by big guns and big federal dollars, ignoring the entire history of police oppression and violence prior to the late 1980s and the start of serious technological militarization.

Sure, they are allies in the sense that they share in the feeling of revulsion at watching a militarized police force suppress dissent, but more often than not, they seem fine with it as long as it's clubs, gas, shields, and pistols and not MRAPs, APCs, ARs, and LRAD. Consider the (correct) reaction libertarian rightists have to police killing dogs, and then consider the rightist libertarian reaction to the murder of Mike Brown.
posted by still bill at 6:33 PM on August 19, 2014 [5 favorites]

Here's a livestream from some guy who's right in the middle of everything. (Right now the protesters are having a prayer circle.)
posted by desjardins at 6:36 PM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

"The heat index is currently 94 degrees there. The dew point is 74."

I'm 100 miles further north, but in the same weather system (so usually about 5 degrees cooler than St. Louis), and it is fuckin' hot out there. It was NASTY when I walked to get my kid at school at 3:30, brutal sun and crazy humid. I had to change when I got home. There were thunderstorms (pretty impressive ones) earlier in the day but they didn't take much humidity out of the air.

"Because god forbid we let anything get in the way of FOOTBALL even when schools are closed."

Look, football is a big sport, not in the revenue sense but in the participation sense. You can have rosters of 60 or 80 or 100 students -- basketball you can have 12 or 15; baseball you can have 20 or 30. Good coaches have a lot of moral authority with students, and for many male students who are not very engaged in school -- who are a particularly difficult group to reach -- sports keeps them engaged and keeps their grades up. And while it isn't really my thing, high school sports can be an important healing force for a community after a disaster -- football was for Washington, Illinois, after the tornado -- because it provides a visible example of children growing to adulthood, young people working hard, and a community that (through its schools) continues to function -- the most important ways for a community to keep working, serving and educating its children and providing a future. Sports also provides a really important avenue for citizens and nearby communities to provide visible support, friendship, and sportsmanship to affected town -- Washington's opponents provided their bus transportation (and for fans and parents), their food, and their hotel lodgings after the tornado, and turned the game into a fundraiser.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 6:37 PM on August 19, 2014 [17 favorites]

When people want me to take their side of the story into account one thing that can help is to tell it to me.
posted by Drinky Die at 6:38 PM on August 19, 2014 [15 favorites]

So, inspired by limonaire's comment that the Westboro Baptist Church had said they were going to Ferguson, I made the mistake of actually trying to find out what was up, I tell you this so you don't have to do the same.

I thought, wow,what's their angle? Because if it's God Hates Cops, I'm going to have to be impressed because probably they'll get teargassed for it or something. But no. But as a matter of fact, what they did have to say (and I'm going by what appears to be their twitter account, which doesn't seem clever enough to be fake) they think that God Hates Missouri. Which is a wonderfully inclusive message.

But God also hates Michael Brown. But also, the protestors are the least to blame for the trouble there. But that's only because God really hates Jay Nixon, for his support of "beastialty and sodomy." (also hated: Katy Perry and Robin Williams, in case you're wondering.)

Man, those guys are worse than Occupy! Pick a message, dudes!

Also, the vines linked on their twitter seem to show a total of 2 WBC people with signs. Which makes me fairly hopeful that they won't cause much actual trouble.

So, actually... that was comforting in a way. But I still feel kind of stupid for even having looked.
posted by hap_hazard at 6:39 PM on August 19, 2014 [5 favorites]

The libertarians in my office that like to have discussions in hushed tones by my desk were talking about Ferguson the other day - their conclusion was We Just Don't Know and that it's Too Early To Tell but that people should really stop making a fuss and breaking things.

I wouldn't count on much from Libertarians on this.
posted by Artw at 6:43 PM on August 19, 2014 [16 favorites]

Under normal circumstances I suspect the grifters at WBC would be happy to be tear gassed by the police (so they could sue them) but I suspect they realize that department is going to have a lot of claims against it in the coming says.
posted by phearlez at 6:44 PM on August 19, 2014

Okay, I've been thinking about this - they were firing live ammo last night, but at what? Why? There's nothing documented about anyone shooting at them, despite various rumors, and certainly no sign that there was any significant gunfire aimed at them. So they weren't returning fire. Why were they shooting in the first place? I know "what were they thinking" isn't really a useful question, but still it seems stupid to the point of brainlessness, because if you just start flailing away with the live ammo, you run the risk of hitting someone on pure accident, and while you can spin a story if they actually had a gun, it would be a giant media disaster if they shot, say, a reporter or a little kid or accidentally shot into someone's living room and killed a person that way. I grasp that this is about state violence and intimidation, but the fact that it's such risky intimidation seems alternately bizarre and really scary.

Night time protests are scary at the absolute best of times, or they're scary to me anyway. Everything feels amped up at even small events.

The weirdest thing IME of one big ongoing unrest scenario (which looks very lightweight compared to Ferguson) was how uneven it was. You'd be on one block and everything is basically normal, and then you'd be on another block and cops are teargassing people and then on another block some other totally peaceful protest is going on. Or you'll be walking around in a normal area and you'll see troops and troops of riot cops. People sell water and soda at these things during the not-actually-dangerous parts because everyone is sitting out in the hot sun for hours. And it can be temporally uneven, too, where everything just ticks along and ticks along and nothing happens and then bam, tear gas. Or you can be just sitting around on some grass and then tons of cops roll up. It just got really surreal for me after a while, and I get a little bit of that feeling watching the different things going on in Ferguson. What I remember is basically walking up the hill out of downtown away from all the stuff that had been going on all day and turning around and looking back and realizing that I expected to see smoke rising up, because there was supposed to be some visible marker of what had happened.

I bet it would be worthwhile to raise funds for therapy stuff for people. (In addition to all the other needs, of course.) I know that people's daily lives in Ferguson are much harder than my daily life, but I did find that after the last big protest that I was freaked out and stressed by it for a long time, even though nothing bad happened to me and I didn't even witness anything worse than tear gas. And I'd be surprised if some of the people who are in the midst of all this shit aren't going to come out of it with serious PTSD.
posted by Frowner at 6:44 PM on August 19, 2014 [9 favorites]

"God Hates Missouri"

Well the WBC are from Kansas.
posted by BlueJae at 6:46 PM on August 19, 2014 [12 favorites]

"Representatives from local civil rights organizations have protested that officers had no legal grounds to search the vehicle, but they ceded the point when reminded by Secret Police officials that our backwards court system will uphold any old authoritarian rule made up on the fly by unsupervised gun-carrying thugs of a shadow government."

- Welcome to Night Vale [episode 2]
posted by komara at 6:48 PM on August 19, 2014 [20 favorites]

Huh. Via twitter, according to the cops, 93% of (presumably last night's) people arrested were not from Ferguson, and 27% not from Missouri.
posted by Lemurrhea at 6:48 PM on August 19, 2014

"God Hates Missouri"

Would be nice to stand next to them with a sign reading "God Hates Misery".
posted by honestcoyote at 6:49 PM on August 19, 2014 [5 favorites]

Here are the arrest numbers in Ferguson from last night according to STL Public Radio.
posted by BlueJae at 6:58 PM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

Anyone have a link handy to the Argus and Vice feeds?
posted by rollbiz at 6:59 PM on August 19, 2014

Argus feed
posted by Weeping_angel at 7:00 PM on August 19, 2014 [2 favorites]

here's what seems like a current list of live feeds (I've tried a few, for accuracy)
posted by desjardins at 7:01 PM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

And, Vice.
posted by Lemurrhea at 7:01 PM on August 19, 2014 [2 favorites]

Appreciate that!
posted by rollbiz at 7:02 PM on August 19, 2014

Is that Vice link to yesterday? Maybe I am misunderstanding something.
posted by prefpara at 7:03 PM on August 19, 2014

Vice isn't up yet. IIRC they're getting geared up.
posted by E. Whitehall at 7:04 PM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

Protest march arriving on the Argus feed.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 7:05 PM on August 19, 2014

Right-leaning libertarians (those who base their position on the sanctity of property and take-all-comers individual liberty) are, at best, concerned about militarization of local police forces.

I really hope this isn't a suggestion that we shouldn't to meet libertarians where they're at and embrace the concerns they share until they've also checked off all the boxes that all the Right-Thinking People have.

Somebody's concerned about police militarization, the right to film, revision of use-of-force doctrines, I want all the help they're willing to offer.
posted by weston at 7:08 PM on August 19, 2014 [2 favorites]

Is the rule that they have to keep walking constitutional? It seems like that would mean that a lot of people who couldn't walk long distances wouldn't be able to participate. And the heat can't be helping.
posted by Weeping_angel at 7:08 PM on August 19, 2014 [6 favorites]

Yeah, that's what I just asked on Twitter: Don't "keep marching" rules at this week's protests abridge the rights of the disabled? And why aren't more people talking about this?

Is anyone keeping a running list of human-rights and/or constitutional-rights violations in the past 10 days?
posted by limeonaire at 7:10 PM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

What Happens When Police Officers Wear Body Cameras

In the first year after the cameras' introduction, the use of force by officers declined 60%, and citizen complaints against police fell 88%.

posted by Golden Eternity at 7:10 PM on August 19, 2014 [8 favorites]

Is the rule that they have to keep walking constitutional?

Does such matter anymore? If it is not, who has the money and will to have that fight?
posted by rough ashlar at 7:11 PM on August 19, 2014

seems a lot more peaceful tonight - cars driving by, people not strictly being kept to the sidewalk. I barely see any cops in the Argus feed.
posted by desjardins at 7:12 PM on August 19, 2014

Via twitter, according to the cops, 93% of (presumably last night's) people arrested were not from Ferguson, and 27% not from Missouri.

Assuming the police are telling the truth, which is a stretch, how many of them were journalists?
posted by anemone of the state at 7:13 PM on August 19, 2014

seems a lot more peaceful tonight - cars driving by, people not strictly being kept to the sidewalk. I barely see any cops in the Argus feed.

Highway Patrol is on the scene. However, they seem to be playing nice. "Please walk on the sidewalk, for your own safety. There is vehicle traffic on the roadway. Please walk on the sidewalk".

No demands, no threats.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 7:14 PM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

Awkward: Why Isn't the NRA Defending Ferguson’s Blacks?
posted by monospace at 7:14 PM on August 19, 2014 [6 favorites]

Regarding the alleged orbital blowout fracture, LGF of all sites is pointing out that the x-ray which is being circulated by right-wing sources alleging to show Darren Wilson's orbital fracture is a pathetic fake.
posted by Pope Guilty at 7:15 PM on August 19, 2014 [13 favorites]

Awkward: Why Isn't the NRA Defending Ferguson’s Blacks?

The Guns of Ferguson: When Tyranny Really Comes into Town, the NRA Goes into Hiding
posted by Pope Guilty at 7:17 PM on August 19, 2014 [7 favorites]

The 10 Kinds of Trolls You Will Encounter Online (and Offline) When Talking About Michael Brown
posted by Joey Michaels at 7:17 PM on August 19, 2014 [6 favorites]

Awkward: Why Isn't the NRA Defending Ferguson’s Blacks?

Because no one is taking away gun rights of the folks in Ferguson? It's outside of their mandate? Gun rights have no bearing on whats going on? Look, I have a hate on for the NRA as much as the next person, but I don't see the point in that discussion.

The question reminds me of 'why doesn't the ACLU stand up for gun rights'. Um, others are doing that fine, it's outside of the ACLU mandate.
posted by el io at 7:19 PM on August 19, 2014 [4 favorites]

A pathetic fake perpetrated my one of the nastiest, sketchiest, least-responsible conservative bloggers in St. Louis, Pope Guilty. (Trust me. I've met the man.) Figures.
posted by BlueJae at 7:20 PM on August 19, 2014

That Matt Zoller Seitz piece that ob1quixote links is excellent. Don't miss it.

I slept about three hours last night and just finished work, so I will probably have to sit tonight out, much as I hate to look away - today's shooting will no doubt mean even worse behaviour tonight. The country had better still be standing when I wake up, America.
posted by Phire at 7:21 PM on August 19, 2014 [2 favorites]

A statement from Governor Nixon.
posted by BlueJae at 7:21 PM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

What Happens When Police Officers Wear Body Cameras

A somewhat older but IMHO better article on body cameras for police.
posted by rollbiz at 7:22 PM on August 19, 2014

Is anyone keeping a running list of human-rights and/or constitutional-rights violations in the past 10 days?

I think maybe the cops are, with basically all of them on it, and on the top is written "To Do"
posted by NoraReed at 7:23 PM on August 19, 2014 [8 favorites]

On the guns in Ferguson... The populace there realizes that the cops will gun down unarmed folks... They are smart enough not to confront the cops with actual weapons - they'll be gunned down and the media won't give a shit.
posted by el io at 7:23 PM on August 19, 2014

You know 'Brutal and Negligent Cops Drove [Point Marion]'s Police Department Out of Business', Hoopo and Talez, because those cops behavior increased the insurance premiums too much. I'd hope the damages for the Ferguson PD both exceed their insurance coverage limitations, thus making the city itself pay up, and also make the police force uninsurable.

Imho, we need a serious actuarial discussion about the potential damages from police misconduct now that police are so wrongly trained, psychologically damaged, etc. I believe this discussion should cover several points : First, American cops are now committing murder an torture with increasing frequency. Second, there isn't necessarily any limit to damages for torture, given its special status. Third, there is a correlation between use of force and various issues seen here, like SWAT teams, racism, etc.

It's therefore a sound actuarial decision to impose stricter limitations on coverage, and significantly increase premiums, especially when the department has a SWAT team, armored vehicles, a history of violence, racism, no body cameras, etc. And incidentally we'd make it spectacularly more expensive to run a police force so badly.

Are there any "anarchist actuaries" here who could explain how to convince the actuarial community that they should take a specific risk more seriously? Do you guys write journal articles for one another an talk at conferences?
posted by jeffburdges at 7:24 PM on August 19, 2014 [20 favorites]

A statement from Governor Nixon.

I got to the part about "acts of tremendous grace" and shut it off. Let me know if its worth watching past this. Nixon dropped the ball at the ten yard line on the first down and wants it back again now that we're third and long. Forgive me for hearing nothing but "I am a self serving weasel" in his speech.
posted by Joey Michaels at 7:25 PM on August 19, 2014

Regarding the rule (first instituted last night) that protesters must keep moving and may not stand still: I cannot see ANY legitimate reason why the police are ordering this. Their supposed justification, as I've heard it, is that this rule will somehow help them tell the difference between peaceful protesters and looters. Excuse me: since when do looters stand still? Protesters on the ground I've spoken with think this tactic is meant to make protesting more physically grueling, so that the protesters will tire out more quickly and will leave more quickly. It's absolutely discriminatory against people with disabilities; it also helped increase confusion on the ground and provided police with plenty of extra excuses to harass and arrest people last night.
posted by BlueJae at 7:28 PM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

For a pastime that involves a lot of aimless standing and lounging around, baseball sure does lend itself to street-to-street combat.

I bet you could launch a wide variety of stuff out of one of those t-shirt cannons.
posted by rifflesby at 7:29 PM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

"I really hope this isn't a suggestion that we shouldn't to meet libertarians where they're at and embrace the concerns they share until they've also checked off all the boxes that all the Right-Thinking People have."

No, not exactly that. I think it's hugely important to recognize and respect the critiques that libertarianism (mainstream and rightist) brings to the table, and to embrace libertarians when possible. I do, though, think that the unending libertarian focus on police militarization (especially in light of Ferguson) is a mistake, and I elaborated on that in a comment in the other thread. My concern is 2 fold; first, I worry that focusing so acutely on militarization advances a reform position in that it allows for 'old fashioned' police violence as an acceptable alternative to technologically militarized police violence. Secondly, I feel like militarization arguments tend to erase the violent history of American Police prior to overt technological militarization. On top of that, it seems clear to me--both historically and theoretically--that Police and the military have always been fused in tactics, technologies, and philosophy, and that both have always been given carte blanche to oppress, torture, and kill poor and POC communities around the world. My issue with the right libertarian critique is that it only identifies militarization as a problem when it knocks on the doors of white property owning men, and only because it's a sign of federal power, not racist and classist police power.

Again, think back on the libertarian response to the recent trend of police killing dogs. It was the correct reaction: anger and disgust at the police action. Now consider the common libertarian reaction to the killing of Mike Brown and the events that followed: lots of concern for the property of merchants (perhaps rightly so), and lots of halfassed justification for the murder of Brown following the release of the bogus 'strong arm robbery' tape (again, property and capitalism above all else). What matters over all else to rightist libertarians, all too often, is property. I'm not sure that I can trust that a rightist libertarian critique of militarization comes from anything other than a property fetish and a feeling that militarized police are another social program gone awry because of too much fed money.
posted by still bill at 7:29 PM on August 19, 2014 [10 favorites]

Awkward: Why Isn't the NRA Defending Ferguson’s Blacks? .... The Guns of Ferguson: When Tyranny Really Comes into Town, the NRA Goes into Hiding

The Gun Owners of America have been quiet and GOA is usually making noise when the NRA is silent, but Jews for the Preservation of Firearms have an opinion. Given the JPFO's video "No Guns for Negros" position - if that was being followed there would be a radically different and far more blood soaked narrative at this point.

The gunfire sounds being reported upthread along with the comments about the bullets coming down ARE a good point to be asking.

Imho, we need a serious actuarial discussion about the potential damages from police misconduct

Why? How often does a case get carried TO a lawsuit let alone to the point of a high dollar settlement? Cases can get tossed, lawyers don't want to take the time to walk the case through the court system VS a quick payout for doing little and then the matter gets a gag on it as part of the settlement.

Yea, plenty of items that could result in damages but few will take things that far along in the justice system.
posted by rough ashlar at 7:31 PM on August 19, 2014

It would be great if we could not catastrophize things beyond the catastrophe we already have. There isn't going to be a massacre, members of the press are not going to be murdered. Things are bad enough without freaking like V is about to swoop down and blow up Parliament.
posted by Justinian at 7:33 PM on August 19, 2014 [5 favorites]

Awkward: Why Isn't the NRA Defending Ferguson’s Blacks?

Because they're a bunch of racist nuts who are happy to see black people die and be beaten.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 7:33 PM on August 19, 2014 [6 favorites]

The question reminds me of 'why doesn't the ACLU stand up for gun rights'. Um, others are doing that fine, it's outside of the ACLU mandate.

I work for the ACLU (MA affiliate). Thank you for saying this, it (plus the fact that we already have pleeeenty to do) sums up pretty well why we're not really touching the issue, at least at my affiliate. "Where are others already doing a good job on an issue?" is one of the factors I really appreciate our local leadership seriously considering.

We defend sex offenders and white supremacists, so I promise you the reason we're not taking it on is not because we think it's unpopular or divisive. :)
posted by rollbiz at 7:35 PM on August 19, 2014 [11 favorites]

Protesters on the ground I've spoken with think this tactic is meant to make protesting more physically grueling, so that the protesters will tire out more quickly and will leave more quickly.

Yup. It's all of this, and additionally that it makes it more difficult to form a cohesive crowd if you can't ever stop and let it pool a bit.

It's one of the things my city's police department is notorious for telling people who don't know better than to challenge their notion of the law, and it's one of the top things I cover in Know Your Rights trainings I do, especially when I am giving them with people who protest a lot.
posted by rollbiz at 7:39 PM on August 19, 2014

Why? How often does a case get carried TO a lawsuit let alone to the point of a high dollar settlement?

I bet their insurers could tell us, and I bet there's not a huge pool of companies that insure police departments. A quick google told me that just the Oakland, CA PD has lost $74 million since 1990 to brutality, misconduct, and civil rights lawsuits. The settlement data appears to be available for download here. Their abuse of a single Occupy protester is costing them $4.5, and his case isn't the only one resulting in a significant payout.
posted by rtha at 7:41 PM on August 19, 2014 [4 favorites]

[OAKLAND]ASM:Here's what Ferguson might look like if Molotovs were actually being used.
posted by yertledaturtle at 7:41 PM on August 19, 2014 [6 favorites]

David Simon writes about the blatant lie of preserving anonymity for the safety of the officer. Written before his identity was revealed, but presented as an argument for the mendacity of the Ferguson PD

The decision of a police agency to hide the identities of its officers behind a veil of secrecy, while asking the public at large to risk all in open court, is not mere hypocrisy. It is cowardice. It is an abdication of your professional role and your basic integrity. Your actions, sir, stand not merely in support of your rank-and-file, or in defiance of a mob; that’s how you wish to be seen, and likely, it is how many will view you within the cloistered culture of the roll-call room. But to the greater public that you serve, your decision is, again, void of all honor or courage.

posted by codacorolla at 7:43 PM on August 19, 2014 [14 favorites]

Lil Boosie - Fuck the Police Ft. Webbie
posted by whyareyouatriangle at 7:44 PM on August 19, 2014 [3 favorites]

WaPo: Why am I being arrested for sitting in my aunt's driveway?
posted by BlueJae at 7:45 PM on August 19, 2014 [4 favorites]

“I Support Officer Wilson” surpassed 39,000 Facebook likes Tuesday afternoon.

Well, at least that's a convenient list of 39 000 racists.

It's therefore a sound actuarial decision to impose stricter limitations on coverage, and significantly increase premiums, especially when the department has a SWAT team, armored vehicles, a history of violence, racism, no body cameras, etc

There is a deep, dark irony in the idea that forcing cops to wear cameras may come at the demands of insurance companies and not legislation.

On the other hand, that may also be the only way to make it happen.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 7:47 PM on August 19, 2014 [7 favorites]

Also, there aren't really forward looking, progressive, and/or effective interpretations for the 2nd Amendment, el lo and rollbiz, which makes it rather useless for the ACLU. How do you make the world a better place with ordinary guns while the government owns machines guns, tanks, etc.? Just silly.

What would a future sensitive 2nd Amendment actually say? Just some thoughts :

(1) Law enforcement is not permitted to use any weapons denied to ordinary citizens unless granted permission by a judge on a case by case basis.

(2) Congress shall make no law restricting what an individual can build for their own personal use, excepting weapons of mass destruction.

I could imagine the ACLU defending either clause quite vehemently.
posted by jeffburdges at 7:47 PM on August 19, 2014

Twitter @BaburRealer: @mollycrabapple #Ferguson has reached Istanbul. This is during a soccer match in Istanbul, Turkey
posted by Golden Eternity at 7:49 PM on August 19, 2014 [12 favorites]

I don't know- a lot of the rightist libertarians I've been seeing are oscillating so quickly between "See what we told you? FEMA camps!" and "Well, he probably shouldn't have beat up that shopkeeper and stolen those cigars, then." that it's starting to fuck up the tides.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 7:51 PM on August 19, 2014 [7 favorites]

jeffburdges: The ACLU's job isn't there to advance progressive causes. It's there to protect the constitution, specifically civil liberties.

If the ACLU was focused on progressive causes, it wouldn't protect the free speech rights of racists/KKK.
posted by el io at 7:53 PM on August 19, 2014 [2 favorites]

Don't forget "this has nothing to do with race! It's all about militarization, and those damn race-baiters are injecting their pet issue!"

Aaaaaaargh.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 7:53 PM on August 19, 2014 [5 favorites]

“I Support Officer Wilson” surpassed 39,000 Facebook likes Tuesday afternoon.

Well, at least that's a convenient list of 39 000 racists.

I'm happy to see that as obnoxious as some of my Facebook friends have been in the last couple days, none of them pop up in the search "Friends who like I Support Officer Wilson." But sickeningly, when I search for "Friends of my friends who like I Support Officer Wilson," the list just keeps scrolling and scrolling...
posted by limeonaire at 7:54 PM on August 19, 2014 [2 favorites]

el io: Because no one is taking away gun rights of the folks in Ferguson? It's outside of their mandate? Gun rights have no bearing on whats going on? Look, I have a hate on for the NRA as much as the next person, but I don't see the point in that discussion.

The NRA doesn't just speak when gun rights are actively being restricted, and they don't restrict themselves to talking about the legal status of firearms. They talk plenty about the freedoms that guns are supposed to defend, so it's actually quite relevant that they're so quiet on this issue where a militarized police force is restricting the First Amendment and many other liberties.

Talking about them as if they're just a one-dimensional lobby is silly.
posted by tonycpsu at 7:56 PM on August 19, 2014 [6 favorites]

from the reddit live feed

"Male in all black, made a threat he had 'all he needed in his pants,' making his way to McDonald's." - scanner

ahahahaha
posted by desjardins at 7:57 PM on August 19, 2014 [4 favorites]

desjardins: his wallet?
posted by el io at 7:58 PM on August 19, 2014 [2 favorites]

.....sure.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 8:01 PM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

Can I be a "Stop abusing the word 'Troll' Troll"???

People are assholes, they say evil nasty things online, some of these people are just dumbfucks and they are merely speaking their mind the same as you or I do. Not all people who speak their mind (stupid and ignorant as it may be) are "trolls". How do you discern who's "legimitately" expressing their thoughts and who's a troll (i.e. don't actually believe what they're saying or pushing the envelope just to get a rise out of you instead of sincerely debating or arguing or expressing their opinion)? It seems to me, I've noticed this more and more, that the term "troll" merely means "someone whose opinions I don't agree with and they're arguing with me so therefore, they are a troll because they won't shut up and do what I say."

Sorry. I just, that "troll" link annoyed me.
posted by symbioid at 8:01 PM on August 19, 2014 [6 favorites]

The NRA is all "tool up for race war, motherfuckers!", but only when it's the right race.
posted by Artw at 8:04 PM on August 19, 2014 [3 favorites]

I wish I could stand vigil stand watch thru the webs.

Depending on the recording laws in your location and location being recorded one might be able to do just that by creating text to index audio/video so others could then look at the "interesting bits".

All the software to do such exists, it would just need integration and people management for the things to get looked at/commented on.

Its not a bad idea, but would take more work than 1 person could toss together and some 2 party consent states would create a problem. There are stabs at such with various copwatch programs.
posted by rough ashlar at 8:05 PM on August 19, 2014

But racism is dead in America, right CJ Roberts?
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 8:08 PM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

"Film The Police"- B. Dolan ft. Toki Wright, Jasiri X, Buddy Peace, Sage Francis
posted by rollbiz at 8:11 PM on August 19, 2014 [5 favorites]

Anyone have a good livestream with someone who isn't standing still in a press pool?
posted by rollbiz at 8:12 PM on August 19, 2014

Vice seems to have changed their link: new one.

Nothing seems to be happening yet, they're trying to sort out some audio channel issues.
posted by Lemurrhea at 8:14 PM on August 19, 2014 [3 favorites]

Elon James/ TWIB, rollbiz, I think.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 8:17 PM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

The DA and the governor are playing PASS THE HOT POTATO with this. Each of them is pointing at the other guy as the one who can get another prosecutor in there.
posted by Justinian at 8:19 PM on August 19, 2014

Ferguson, Missouri

see that line of men that’s marching down the street
carrying automatic weapons,
combat boots on their feet
got to wonder what kind of enemy
they expect to meet
over in Ferguson,
Ferguson Missouri

tanks and armored cars roll down the way
see ‘em firing off that tear gas
all throughout the day
rubber bullets flying, man
gonna be hell to pay
over in Ferguson,
Ferguson Missouri

these police seem to be at war
their trigger fingers ready
snipers on the rooftop ready to fire
their aim is steady
over in Ferguson,
Ferguson Missouri

this ain’t protect and serve,
this is armed attack
these cops are all too ready to kill,
especially if you’re black
but we’re all of us in danger now,
we need to take our freedom back
over in Ferguson,
Ferguson Missouri

people are angry,
they got plenty of reasons to be
every day the police in some new atrocity
from the streets of Staten Island
to the sidewalks of Seattle
peaceful citizens victimized
by cops intent on battle
over in Ferguson,
over in Ferguson,
Ferguson Missouri
posted by flapjax at midnite at 8:21 PM on August 19, 2014 [16 favorites]

Bipartisan Report ‏@Bipartisanism 2 hrs
Police are setting up decontamination showers at the command center in #Ferguson in case they're exposed to toxic chemicals tonight (source)

I can't even
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 8:22 PM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

the protesters have toxic chemicals?

oh wait... fuck.
posted by el io at 8:23 PM on August 19, 2014 [9 favorites]

If only that were somehow within their control!
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 8:23 PM on August 19, 2014 [6 favorites]

BBC is reporting that the man shot earlier today by the cops "was mentally challanged and holding a butter knife"
posted by futz at 8:27 PM on August 19, 2014 [4 favorites]

According to witnesses I should have said...
posted by futz at 8:29 PM on August 19, 2014

feloniousmonk: "The goal would be basically to continuously stream a series of still photos back to a central aggregation point to create something like an "official" record of the event from as many angles as possible. I think it would be possible, with sufficient numbers of them in the crowd, to do something like create PhotoSynth snapshots of a given moment in time. "

PLEASE somebody make this. This concept is utterly amazing. Snapshots in time every few seconds from angles angles angles. Panopticon Gaze right back at them, no where to run, no where to hide - the safety in numbers of the people cannot be defeated when they all seeing gaze looks down upon those who perpetrate violence against the citizens.

And if, of course, if there really is a crime happening in the events, then SURELY the PoPo would want such a technology spread wide and far, right? RIGHT? (Why do I have a feeling they might not like such a technology to be in effect).

Damn this is beautiful, so fucking beautiful. Please please work with someone on making this happen. We have little mini-camera technology (I think it might have even been mentioned in the previous thread) but the idea of combining it all into one "space" to reconstruct 3D serial moments in time, that is abso-fuckin-lutely genius and a game changer.
posted by symbioid at 8:30 PM on August 19, 2014 [5 favorites]

futz: "BBC is reporting that the man shot earlier today by the cops "was mentally challanged and holding a butter knife""

Oh good christ. What the fuck is it going to take to put an end to this insane police state?
posted by dejah420 at 8:31 PM on August 19, 2014 [12 favorites]

To be fair, butter knives are almost as scary as empty water bottles. /gallows.

I shudder to think what's going to happen when that becomes more public. Got a link, futz?

And weird as this may seem, suddenly Google Glass is a really good idea for protests...
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 8:31 PM on August 19, 2014 [3 favorites]

Police are setting up decontamination showers at the command center in #Ferguson in case they're exposed to toxic chemicals tonight

Yeah, see, I just tweeted about some of those toxic chemicals. There are lots of concern trolls out there right now saying pregnant women shouldn't be protesting, framing the fact that they might get gassed (and thus be exposed to miscarriage-producing gases) or pushed onto their stomachs while being arrested for peacefully protesting as some sort of personal-responsibility issue. I'd say it's more of an issue of the police's responsibility to the public, as well as a constitutional-rights issue—safe space needs to be provided for peaceful protest by people with disabilities, health conditions, etc. And there perhaps we agree to disagree.

But what the hell are you even supposed to do if you're pregnant, you live in Ferguson, and you have nowhere else to go? The concern trolls tell pregnant protesters to "go home"—but many people have reported tear gas seeping in through their windows and air-conditioning units. This is not OK. Use of tear gas in Ferguson is a huge public-health and human-rights issue.
posted by limeonaire at 8:31 PM on August 19, 2014 [19 favorites]

Vice just interviewed the dude who has the Thomas the Tank Engine vehicle, quite possibly winning all lifestreams for the night.
posted by rollbiz at 8:32 PM on August 19, 2014 [11 favorites]

I hated the I BELIEVE THAT WE WILL WIN chant during the World Cup (so unwieldy), but I loved hearing it roll down West Florissant tonight on the Argus cam. Keep it loud and proud!

HANDS UP DON'T SHOOT is still #1, though.
posted by sallybrown at 8:34 PM on August 19, 2014 [3 favorites]

Know Your Rights
posted by Cash4Lead at 8:34 PM on August 19, 2014

No link. Just heard it on the radio from a reporter on the scene.
posted by futz at 8:34 PM on August 19, 2014

Bipartisan Report ‏@Bipartisanism 4 mins
A member of the National Guard told @CNN producer in #Ferguson last night that "You want to get out of here because you're white...." .
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 8:38 PM on August 19, 2014

And if any of you don't know what Photosynth is, it's a project from Microsoft that reconstructs a space/place from multiple photographs. It can search flickr for a keyword and find pictures from the same location and give a sort of virtual larger image threaded from all the various smaller images and angles.

Here's a site for you to see just what this tech is and how amazing this concept could be.
posted by symbioid at 8:39 PM on August 19, 2014 [2 favorites]

WaPo: Why am I being arrested for sitting in my aunt's driveway?

When I read this a couple days ago my first thought was: They can order you to "disperse" from private property you have permission to be on? What??!?
posted by rtha at 8:40 PM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

How is it that only the Vice guys have the balls to be outside the "reporter pen"? I mean, yay on them, that's bloody awesome. They've gotten some of the most amazing footage of the events. But seriously, don't we have some war correspondents at some of these major networks?
posted by dejah420 at 8:43 PM on August 19, 2014 [12 favorites]

Useful list of Ferguson Twitter feeds
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 8:44 PM on August 19, 2014

The concern trolls tell pregnant protesters to "go home"—but many people have reported tear gas seeping in through their windows and air-conditioning units.

It's crazy pervasive stuff. I was four during the Mount Pleasant riot in D.C. (in fact, another riot where a shooting by an officer exacerbated and highlighted rising racial tensions in an area.) Our house was on a terrace forty feet above the street, and down a block from any action. The stuff still came in the vents and windows, my parents said. They couldn't leave- where could they go? Who would have paid for the hotel, for the childcare? There really was no escape. What are the people of Ferguson supposed to do-- leave? Who will pay for their hotels, for their food? Over two decades later, and this is still the best we've got?
posted by jetlagaddict at 8:49 PM on August 19, 2014 [7 favorites]

(I also feel so terribly for the kids in Ferguson: the riot, the arrests, the sounds-- it's never going to leave them. Their parents won't forget either. Let alone the presumably continuing threats of police issues and racial inequality in America anyway.)
posted by jetlagaddict at 8:52 PM on August 19, 2014 [4 favorites]

Oh, Jake Tapper.

Is it just me or does the Vice guy sound kind of ...bored? Not quite bored. A mix of relieved, tired, and bored.
posted by Lemurrhea at 8:53 PM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

With Holder arriving tomorrow, I think the police are on their best behavior. What's going on with the National Guard? Are they still holed up at the command post?
posted by Weeping_angel at 8:58 PM on August 19, 2014

I've been expecting this story and here it is [Slate]:

The World's Dictators Love the Unrest in Ferguson

Sample quote:

Russia’s foreign ministry has urged “our American partners to pay more attention to restoring order in their own country before imposing their dubious experience on other nations.”

I'd say "ooo, ice burn" or something but it's really not funny. The LA Times story linked in that quote is actually more informative than this Slate thinkpiece which seemingly all gets its actual facts from it. But the Slate piece has the nice punchy headline.
posted by George_Spiggott at 8:59 PM on August 19, 2014

Weeping angel: Not holed up, protecting it. They aren't there to restore the peace, they are there to ensure the war headquarters of the local military state are not threatened.
posted by el io at 9:00 PM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

livestream now: "Who do you serve? Who do you protect?"
posted by whyareyouatriangle at 9:03 PM on August 19, 2014 [4 favorites]

VICE Live Feed
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 9:04 PM on August 19, 2014

Of course, after I mention that Vice is bored because nothing much is happening...the cops come by and start ordering people around, now it's getting agitated. Good work guys.

I do love the guy yelling "it's a TRAP" though.
posted by Lemurrhea at 9:06 PM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

per @wesleylowery and @awkward_duck, helicopters are starting to spotlight, protesters are being herded out of parking lots and into the street.

WTF? I thought being on the street was a bad thing, last night?
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 9:08 PM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

fffm, I think they're herding them out of the parking lot, but also telling them not to spill onto the street. So a parking lot full of people needs to all squeeze onto the sidewalk.
posted by Weeping_angel at 9:10 PM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

ah, that wasn't clear.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 9:10 PM on August 19, 2014

Who do you serve, who do you protect?
posted by klue at 9:11 PM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

Police forcing everyone out of the strip mall parking lot for no reason, and also keeping them from the street. People were peaceful, and now they're getting more agitated due to more arbitrary orders. One of the leaders telling people to keep moving and, commenting on this latest command, "It's a trap!".

Now people are all riled up and there's some extreme tension between cops and protestors. Rifles are out. Great fucking job, "peace officers".
posted by rollbiz at 9:11 PM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

Those lime green hats are National Lawyers Guild legal observers.
posted by rollbiz at 9:13 PM on August 19, 2014 [3 favorites]

These Peacekeeper guys are doing great work keeping the crowd calm.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 9:14 PM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

Police claiming they moved everyone to 'protect' McD's property per @wesleylowery
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 9:15 PM on August 19, 2014

These Peacekeeper guys

and women!
posted by rollbiz at 9:15 PM on August 19, 2014 [2 favorites]

I do love the Peace Train. It's like a little taste of Burningman in the middle of Fergustan.
posted by uosuaq at 9:16 PM on August 19, 2014 [6 favorites]

Okay, was the song that the "peace train" playing Make Me Wanna Holler?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:16 PM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

These Peacekeeper guys

and women!

Yes, sorry. The Peacekeepers are pretty awesome.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 9:17 PM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

The song playing on the Peace Train's last pass by the Vice camera was Marvin Gaye's "Inner City Blues."
posted by Nat "King" Cole Porter Wagoner at 9:20 PM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

HERE COMES THE PEACE TRAIN
posted by rollbiz at 9:22 PM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

The policeman sure have a lot of zip ties hanging off them.
posted by unliteral at 9:23 PM on August 19, 2014

Thomas rolls again!
posted by Artw at 9:24 PM on August 19, 2014 [3 favorites]

looks like the trooper told the peace train that it needed to leave. :(
posted by el io at 9:24 PM on August 19, 2014 [2 favorites]

Seems like the Peace Train did a good job of being a peace train.
posted by E. Whitehall at 9:26 PM on August 19, 2014 [4 favorites]

Oh, trooper - why do you hate fun?
posted by spinifex23 at 9:26 PM on August 19, 2014 [3 favorites]

That's a pretty pithy summary of the past week, el io.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 9:26 PM on August 19, 2014 [6 favorites]

Text on the orange gun on the Vice feed says "LESS LETHAL"

This does not inspire confidence.
posted by E. Whitehall at 9:28 PM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

Why these guys have the rifles painted camouflage is beyond me. You are not staging for FIBUA.
posted by RedShrek at 9:28 PM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

"Excuse me officer? Can you tell me if any of these guns are armed with live ammunition?"
-Tim Pool of Vice, just now
posted by whyareyouatriangle at 9:30 PM on August 19, 2014 [5 favorites]

Why these guys have the rifles painted camouflage is beyond me.

Surplus military stock?
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 9:30 PM on August 19, 2014

Can I get a definitive ruling on whether the Peace Train is The Little Engine That Could or Thomas the Tank Engine?
posted by sallybrown at 9:31 PM on August 19, 2014

"Excuse me officer? Can you tell me if any of these guns are armed with live ammunition?"
-Vice, just now

(paraphrase): "you'll need to talk to the public affairs officer for an answer to that"
posted by el io at 9:32 PM on August 19, 2014 [3 favorites]

Can I get a definitive ruling on whether the Peace Train is The Little Engine That Could or Thomas the Tank Engine?

Looks like a knock-off Thomas.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 9:32 PM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

Nah, the rifle looked like it had what looked like custom optics which don't come standard with AR variants. Plus the military pretty much gives them plain old rifles. The customization (paint jobs) is pretty much post-issue.
posted by RedShrek at 9:33 PM on August 19, 2014

Wesley Lowery ‏@WesleyLowery 3 mins
Organizers requested to be allowed to gather people for a prayer to end protest. Man on police radio: "and I told them absolutely not"
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 9:34 PM on August 19, 2014 [2 favorites]

The customization (paint jobs) is pretty much post-issue.

But...why? It's not like they need to hide from the Viet Cong.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 9:37 PM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

You see these types of customizations in mostly military units in general and SOF specifically. I just think it's stupid for Police and lends itself to the whole militarization debate.
posted by RedShrek at 9:38 PM on August 19, 2014

Vice stream is back up.
posted by Hairy Lobster at 9:39 PM on August 19, 2014

Because all the badass dudes use camo. Sigh.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 9:39 PM on August 19, 2014 [5 favorites]

For the same reason Call of Duty or Battlefield let you custom camo your weapon; it makes it more fun when you shoot people.
posted by Justinian at 9:39 PM on August 19, 2014 [4 favorites]

Tear gas does seem to be related to miscarriages, by the way. Nice little dig by Michelle Goldberg: Tear Gas Is an Abortifacient. Why Won’t the Anti-Abortion Movement Oppose It?
posted by emjaybee at 9:44 PM on August 19, 2014 [15 favorites]

Robert Klemko ‏@RobertKlemko 4 mins
Giant prayer circle now in Ferguson on Florissant. I cant stress enough the unpredictable nature of this whole thing.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 9:45 PM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

Best line in the Vice live-cast. Regarding the Peace Train:

"He told us earlier that .. he's not street legal."

OMG.
posted by Lemurrhea at 9:45 PM on August 19, 2014 [12 favorites]

One more thing to consider in the whole "why are the police escalating things?" discussion besides all of the stuff I feel like has already been talking about is that as you watch these feeds night after night, consider that the vast majority of these officers are raking in OT. Many will have their best pay year ever, I'd guess...
posted by rollbiz at 9:46 PM on August 19, 2014 [3 favorites]

(Actually, as much of an atheist as I may be, the prayer circle thing is a brilliant tactic. Occupy the street, praying. Even the most hardcore police-boner types would die of the cognitive dissonance required to continue supporting police brutality against people praying.

I hope.)

consider that the vast majority of these officers are raking in OT

Every time I think this situation couldn't be more gross...
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 9:48 PM on August 19, 2014

Why do they even need rifles?

This police escalation is interesting from a game theory standpoint, because it seems counter-productive at face value. It seems bound to radicalize an entire generation in (and outside) Ferguson, and would only make sense if they actually planned on using those rifles, which would (hopefully, right?) mean hell to pay.

So why would they do this? Do they want to shift the Overton window solidly in favor of waving military weapons at protestors, so they might be able to massacre them in the future? Because with all the totalitarian creep the USA has been showing over the past 10 years, that's the way it seems to be headed.
posted by anemone of the state at 9:49 PM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

So why would they do this?

I don't think there's a plan (which is not to say there isn't a pattern of increasing militarization, etc.) -- the police are winging it day by day and minute by minute with loaded weapons, canisters of tear gas and twitchy fingers.
posted by tivalasvegas at 9:53 PM on August 19, 2014

Wesley Lowery ‏@WesleyLowery 13 secs
Oh no
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 9:54 PM on August 19, 2014

A protestor just threw a water bottle... cops running in! (Vice feed)
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 9:55 PM on August 19, 2014

Matt Pearce ‏@mattdpearce 7 secs
Okay, everybody is moving now. Cops came running up. Young guys running way. Cops shouting OUT OF THE STREETS!
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 9:55 PM on August 19, 2014

What do the cops think would happen if they just didn't show up one night?
posted by wabbittwax at 9:56 PM on August 19, 2014 [10 favorites]

Matt Pearce ‏@mattdpearce 16 secs
Now comes the police bullhorn: "YOU NEED TO STOP THROWING OBJECTS AND DISPERSE IMMEDIATELY!"
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 9:59 PM on August 19, 2014

What do the cops think would happen if they just didn't show up one night?

I have been thinking about that, although it'd probably never happen because it'd play as weak in the hinterlands or suburbs or whatever.

But- what I think they think would happen- mass chaos, looting, rioting, bedlam, people begging the cops to come back, and greeting them as liberators when they do.

What I think would actually happen- it'd be safer than it is right now.
posted by hap_hazard at 9:59 PM on August 19, 2014 [4 favorites]

Is it just me or does the Vice guy sound kind of ...bored? Not quite bored. A mix of relieved, tired, and bored.

I'm betting he's exhausted.
How many nights has he been out reporting from those chaotic streets? On the move, operating constantly under the real possibility of harm or arrest the entire night:
dodging cops poised with guns and clubs and firing rubber bullets; wading through clouds of tear gas... Dealing with all the mundane energy-sapping stress caused by equipment failures and technical difficulties.
Add to all that a fuckedup sleep schedule - lord knows where he's laying his head when he finally gets to sleep - and the inevitably sub-par diet you wind up subsisting upon when you're living essential nowhere.
I'm willing to bet heavily that there's no green room waiting for him and his crew, and no deliriously fabulous after-parties.
Flat-out exhaustion, along with the near guarantee of broken, damaged or lost equipment are the only riders written into this gig.

The fact that he's still on post, displaying genuine enthusiasm, is a testament to his fortitude and character.

The men and women who've reported from the front edge of this story have provided us an eye-witness view we would otherwise have been denied.

We owe these people - big time.
posted by Pudhoho at 9:59 PM on August 19, 2014 [29 favorites]

sounds like live gunshots right now on the vice feed
posted by zug at 10:00 PM on August 19, 2014

'all the media need to get back into the designated media area now'
posted by el io at 10:00 PM on August 19, 2014

"ALL CREDENTIALED MEDIA NEED TO EVACUATE THE THE DESIGNATED MEDIA. DO IT NOW."
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 10:01 PM on August 19, 2014

Apologies if I've missed this upthread, but are there any links with more info about the peace train? Because it seems awesome.
posted by TwoStride at 10:01 PM on August 19, 2014

Who is the incredibly creepy sounding police announcer?
posted by monospace at 10:01 PM on August 19, 2014

Fucking hell. And it looked that it would be so peaceful tonight.
posted by spinifex23 at 10:01 PM on August 19, 2014

Rubber bullets, media being ordered away.

It's about to get really ugly.

zug, @mattdpearce said didn't sound quite like gunshots
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 10:02 PM on August 19, 2014

Some creepy policeman. He sounds like a snotty hall monitor.
posted by Pudhoho at 10:02 PM on August 19, 2014

Twitter reports of police dogs on scene are rolling in. Because this didn't look enough like the 60's. Unconfirmed, hope they're wrong.
posted by WidgetAlley at 10:02 PM on August 19, 2014

anemone of the state: "So why would they do this? Do they want to shift the Overton window solidly in favor of waving military weapons at protestors, so they might be able to massacre them in the future? Because with all the totalitarian creep the USA has been showing over the past 10 years, that's the way it seems to be headed."

I have a friend who wrote the following, elsewhere:

The next time this happens, the militarized police response, the almost inevitable murder of demonstrators, will be routine. That's how it works. That's why it's happening now, unfolding in the way it is; to pave the way for the new normal.

It's sad, really. I don't really want to believe it, but what the fuck else is possible? The "liberal" president can't say or do shit cuz he's black and doesn't wanna anger those old white racist fuckers (and young white racist fuckers... let's not kid ourselves... We like to think it's just a generational thing, to make our post-boomer-selves (well I know there's plenty of boomers on here, too :)) feel better, but fact is, racism is ugly and it exists in old and young alike. I *hope* that it's less so in the younger generation, but fact is it's still there. This disgusting sort of white-moralism/blame "black culture" attitude). The right-wing is full of hate. The libertarians are slowly starting to grok that the racism card isn't serving them well so are trying to jettison it or well - use it for their advantage (hey! See police state is racist, liberals, join us in dismantling ALL the state while you're at it!)

ISIS beheads a news reporter, further enflaming bigoted attitudes towards Muslims, AND further entrenching measures against the ever so wonderfully loosely defined "Terror".
posted by symbioid at 10:02 PM on August 19, 2014 [3 favorites]

Dumbass trying to start things.
posted by RedShrek at 10:02 PM on August 19, 2014

The peacekeepers are so brave.
posted by E. Whitehall at 10:04 PM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

Twitter reports of police dogs on scene are rolling in.

Was reported two or three hours ago by Elon I think.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 10:04 PM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

"Shots have been fired. There is a man down. We are LIVE on the air now! #Ferguson #KMOV"

Tweet by KMOV.
posted by spinifex23 at 10:04 PM on August 19, 2014

The next time this happens, the militarized police response, the almost inevitable murder of demonstrators, will be routine. That's how it works. That's why it's happening now, unfolding in the way it is; to pave the way for the new normal.

It already is routine. See Battle of Seattle, DNC, RNC, Occupy... Only the Bundy Ranch Standoff deviated from the playbook, really.
posted by el io at 10:05 PM on August 19, 2014 [3 favorites]

wrong sorry, @Bipartisanreport Dogs being used for crowd control
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 10:05 PM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

Is it animal cruelty if you kill a police dog attacking people?
posted by anemone of the state at 10:09 PM on August 19, 2014

KMOV is live right now: http://www.kmov.com/home/KMOV-Live-Stream-129813793.html
posted by zug at 10:10 PM on August 19, 2014

Vice is back.
posted by E. Whitehall at 10:16 PM on August 19, 2014

Vice is back up. Vice.
posted by spinifex23 at 10:16 PM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

"Keep your hands up or I wil blow your brains out" is what I was just told by police, @TalibKweli
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 10:18 PM on August 19, 2014 [10 favorites]

Surrounded the press!
posted by unliteral at 10:18 PM on August 19, 2014

For others, like me, who might need it right now. Pete Seeger, "We Shall Overcome".
posted by WidgetAlley at 10:20 PM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

officers storm media area to arrest teen
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 10:21 PM on August 19, 2014

Press ordered to a lot, the lot was advanced on by lines of police, press now being told to return to the command post.
posted by rollbiz at 10:21 PM on August 19, 2014

Wesley Lowery ‏@WesleyLowery 19 secs
Officer shoves reporter.
"Get that camera out of my face."
Reporter asks for his name
"Go fuck yourself," officer responds
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 10:23 PM on August 19, 2014 [7 favorites]

The Ferguson police get so worked up when water is thrown at them. Perhaps they are witches, afraid of melting.
posted by Joey Michaels at 10:28 PM on August 19, 2014 [25 favorites]

I hope that guy (from the Vice feed) gets a ride back to his car.
posted by The Great Big Mulp at 10:28 PM on August 19, 2014 [3 favorites]

Capt. Johnson not answering direct questions from VICE reporter, fat white guy yelling threats at said journalist in front of Capt. Johnson instead.

Fuck this.
posted by rollbiz at 10:28 PM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

"Move your ass and get over to that sidewalk", he said.
posted by Pudhoho at 10:29 PM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

Wesley Lowery ‏@WesleyLowery 43 secs
Reporter face down in road being arrested. Tried to take picture. Officer shoves me
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 10:31 PM on August 19, 2014 [3 favorites]

"Move your ass and get over to that sidewalk", he said.

Yes, and it seems like it might be the chief of St. Louis County forces that said that.
posted by rollbiz at 10:32 PM on August 19, 2014 [2 favorites]

"i try to avoid a crowd if it's primarily journalists"
posted by el io at 10:32 PM on August 19, 2014

At least Peter Kinder, the Lt. Governor of MO is not in charge. If he was, all these protestors would be enjoying a dose of that lovely "Anglo-American justice".
posted by RedShrek at 10:35 PM on August 19, 2014 [2 favorites]

How much more of this can Ferguson possibly take? How much more can it give?
posted by goofyfoot at 10:36 PM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

Elon James White has apparently spoken with organizers; they "can't keep doing this every night."

Cops are winning.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 10:38 PM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

Vice just reported the remaining Amnesty observers are pulling out (for the night?)
posted by E. Whitehall at 10:39 PM on August 19, 2014

(source)
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 10:40 PM on August 19, 2014

Observers aren't leaving, but hanging WAY back and also all in one big pack.

Having done a fair bit of legal observing, this seems weird. You've got a dozen plus people but if you're all shoulder to shoulder, you're all going to see the same thing.

It may lessen the chances of being arrested or shot though, I will grant that possibility.
posted by rollbiz at 10:41 PM on August 19, 2014

Another live stream still running
posted by yertledaturtle at 10:43 PM on August 19, 2014

el io: "The next time this happens, the militarized police response, the almost inevitable murder of demonstrators, will be routine. That's how it works. That's why it's happening now, unfolding in the way it is; to pave the way for the new normal.
It already is routine. See Battle of Seattle, DNC, RNC, Occupy... Only the Bundy Ranch Standoff deviated from the playbook, really."

Actually, the paragraph before that actually digresses into how that WAS the norm:

The first time many people have seen the active deployment of police outfitted with military gear. (Unless you've been at a protest in the past twenty years. Or you're not white.) (emphasis mine/symbioid's) The first time it's not just televised, but livestreamed, tweeted, reblogged. The first time people have been able to hold out long enough without being crushed to get it into the news cycle. Among the first times the citizen media has been able to loudly counter the mainstream narrative. But beyond the technological angle, it's not shocking or surprising or any sort of historical aberration; if anything, the aberration is the aforementioned few decades (her previous paragraph) where speaking truth to power actually had an effect.

But I guess I mentioned it because "The inevitable murder of demonstrators will be routine", in particular, re: anemone's comment

"so they might be able to massacre them in the future? Because with all the totalitarian creep the USA has been showing over the past 10 years, that's the way it seems to be headed."

I mean, Kent State we had. And as Kareem's editorial pointed out Jackson State Massacre... But in terms of pure unadulterated slaughter and murder of a protesting population in America, I think you really have to go back to the early part of the 1900s (which I think was my friends point, without specifically mentioning any particular incident)... Ludlow Massacre or the Battle of Matewan... Or hell, any of these Anti-Union Violence incidents listed on Wikipedia.

I'm depressed, because on the one hand there clearly is a racial issue here, but we also need to counteract that with and understanding of class. I keep singing to myself, even though I am not black, but in my heart I stand in solidarity with the Brothers and Sisters who face the struggle every day of their lives, (but I really need to stand more than just in my heart....) But I sing Run DMC's classic Proud to be Black. It's why I want Huey P Newton tattooed on my arm, because he knew about the class and race struggle combined (before COINTELPRO threw the Panthers off the track of their original noble goal).

I guess it scares me because I think this IS the new normal - the trend is steadily growing (as it always has been, since Daryl Gates and the SWAT teams, the militarization in the 90s and post-9/11 of the police, the Drug War in general)... But it seems that we're on the cusp of something much more brutal and dark than we have experienced in our lives so far.

In a sense, though, this is my privilege being torn away. It is precisely the suffering of the black community staring back at me, and that stark division and reality glaring brighter than it's ever glared at me before.

Barking orders to be subservient, to submit. I think maybe it's so much more terrifying and real to me, not just because it's so raw and brutal and scary, but because it's mundane. Because it IS personal. It's not the "political". It's not abstracted out into a protest against some vague 1% or the WTO or World Bank or the Bilderberg Conference. Or even corporate institutions like Monsanto... This is the real raw fresh and all too personal reality. It's not a system or a corporate body or a government institution. It is a young, unarmed man being murdered. And not just any young unarmed man, but one every 28 hours. And all because of the color of their skin, while so many so called "fellow" countrymen (and women) justify it all the while proclaiming that racism doesn't exist and how dare you try to express such a sentiment, you reverse-racist.

It's real it's raw and it's personal. Why is it THIS protest? Why is it Michael Brown? Why does this particular incident seem to be such a sharp point in history whereas even other fairly recent events do not have such an intense power on us. Trayvon had some, but there was no massive build up against people in their own community who are merely striving for Justice. Or did I already forget? Was there such an outpour? Sure there's some, and maybe I just... I get outrage fatigue and I overlook the intensity of various conflicts, but for some reason.

This time really does seem different. And maybe it's that idea - that the sheer brutality of the state, maybe not this particular time, but the next time or certainly soon enough... It will be revealed in a way that will shock us. We've been safe for so long. We've been lucky... At least in America. In Italy and Greece these global protests have had young people dying...

I think I have a lot of thinking to do about my own naivete, about my own privilege and what the personal and political mean to me, and what it means to confront institutions while feeling so powerless to stop it. What do I mean when I say this feels so much more personal vs an abstraction like the "1%". Why does it feel personal, now? It's not as if this isn't just reflective of that abstract institutional racism that is perpetrated everywhere... It absolutely is.

These are ruptures. Percolating to the surface. That's it. These peaks of agitation of crumbling. The 1% issue surfacing in the 2007 crash... All these are intimations of something starker and more desperate to come.

And yet, we remind ourselves "same as it ever was... same as it ever was..."
posted by symbioid at 10:43 PM on August 19, 2014 [25 favorites]

Apparently Wilson is testifying at a grand jury tomorrow which is pretty unusual. Usually you would avoid doing that like the plague if you think an indictment will be handed down. The only reason to testify is if you think there is a good chance of preventing an indictment.
posted by Justinian at 10:44 PM on August 19, 2014

I think it's less that the cops are winning, and more that the protesters have succeeded in attracting widespread attention to how utterly fucked up the policing there is — which was all along one of their major goals.

I am 100% ok with them declaring victory and getting a decent night's sleep rather than going out every night indefinitely to get tear-gassed over and over again.
posted by nebulawindphone at 10:44 PM on August 19, 2014 [8 favorites]

NLG observer being arrested right now.
posted by rollbiz at 10:44 PM on August 19, 2014

And one of the people from the National Lawyers Guild has just been arrested.
posted by Lemurrhea at 10:44 PM on August 19, 2014

Fuck :( I really don't want the cops to win. I wish I could be there :(
posted by Strass at 10:44 PM on August 19, 2014

Arrests being made now. 4 so far.
posted by unliteral at 10:44 PM on August 19, 2014

Whoops, he has been offered the chance to testify. So that doesn't mean he will do so. Whether or not he does should be a good barometer on how strong his lawyer thinks the case against him will be.
posted by Justinian at 10:45 PM on August 19, 2014

KARG just came back on the air, said they reset three times but no dice. But that once they left the area their signal came back. And now they're signing off.
posted by tychotesla at 10:48 PM on August 19, 2014

another good feed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHfVrTl62m0&feature=youtu.be
posted by ghostbikes at 10:49 PM on August 19, 2014

ah of course it goes down as soon as i post it
posted by ghostbikes at 10:49 PM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

FOX2now ‏@FOX2now 5 mins
Police arresting a woman. Guns drawn. They’re telling people to, “Go home.” #Ferguson

Ryan J. Reilly ‏@ryanjreilly 3 mins
"We're gonna start with you guys first." -- officer to reporter on arrests #Ferguson

Matt Pearce ‏@mattdpearce 2 mins
Police: "MEDIA, GET OUT OF THE WAY!"
Young guy: "MEDIA, STAND WITH US."
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 10:51 PM on August 19, 2014 [3 favorites]

@RobertKlemko: Protesters spotted a fair-skinned man about to throw a brick, grabbed him and tossed him. They're screaming WHERE YOU FROM at him.
posted by Artw at 10:56 PM on August 19, 2014 [22 favorites]

It does still mean the cops are winning, though. That's the sad part.

The events in Ferguson are a symptom, like fever and phlegm, of a greater underlying issue.

I agree this is distressing to witness. But don't get too discouraged or lose heart, because there are a lot more battles ahead.

Ultimately it is our actions, or lack of will, that determines what occurs next.
posted by Pudhoho at 11:01 PM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

I do think it's fundamentally a rehearsal, yes. As the middle-class disappears and we head further and further towards the world of 1 percent masters and 99 percent serfs, there's going to be at least a few groups that try to protest it. There's a class of people who are eager to be the masters' palace guards and get paid to put the boot in, and they are demonstrating that they can treat citizens in their own town as enemy combatants, gas and shoot them, barrage them with whatever new 'crowd control' technology they want (no doubt the pain projector will be following the LRAD into service), beat and detain journalists or simply forbid them from covering the protests, and no one will stop them.
posted by tavella at 11:02 PM on August 19, 2014 [16 favorites]

If you rough up a police planted agent provocateur, can you be charged with assaulting an officer performing his duty?
posted by Joey Michaels at 11:03 PM on August 19, 2014 [7 favorites]

I think the war was lost a long time ago. This is just injury management at this point.
posted by RedShrek at 11:03 PM on August 19, 2014 [2 favorites]

If you rough up a police planted agent provocateur, can you be charged with assaulting an officer performing his duty?

If they successfully IDed the fuck it would be amazing.

Of course it could just be some rando.
posted by Artw at 11:05 PM on August 19, 2014

If you rough up a police planted agent provocateur, can you be charged with assaulting an officer performing his duty?

I can't imagine they'd ever admit to installing provocateurs, would they? It'd be a "The secretary will disavow any knowledge of your actions" situation, surely.
posted by rifflesby at 11:06 PM on August 19, 2014

You probably can, Joey Michaels. But even with the idiocy of cops on display here, I don't think any would be stupid enough to bring that charge, because it would provide solid, you-are-totally-fucked-now evidence against the cops.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 11:06 PM on August 19, 2014

I very much hope someone took his picture.
posted by Artw at 11:06 PM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

Oh, this isn't good at all.

From the Chicago Tribune: A 21-year-old man was fatally shot by police on the Far South Side on Tuesday night, authorities said.
posted by tivalasvegas at 11:06 PM on August 19, 2014

ArtW: Your wish is my command
posted by Potomac Avenue at 11:07 PM on August 19, 2014 [3 favorites]

Cops really are winning:

Matt Pearce ‏@mattdpearce 2 mins
.@trymainelee says, and I agree, that media has become an accelerant at this point.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 11:10 PM on August 19, 2014

it'll be a cold day in hell if these things ever work, but here is this petition anyway: http://linkis.com/whitehouse.gov/sLNAS
posted by ghostbikes at 11:13 PM on August 19, 2014

http://www.livestream.com/globalrevolution
posted by cybercoitus interruptus at 11:15 PM on August 19, 2014

sorry, nebulawindphone, I didn't mean to imply the protesters shouldn't be doing whatever is best for their physical and mental health. If it came across that way it wasn't my intention and I apologize. Those people have more bravery in their little fingers than I have in my entire body.

It does still mean the cops are winning, though. That's the sad part.

Well, I don't just mean the protesters should be taking care of themselves (though they should). I also mean that it's up to them to decide what their objectives are and what counts as victory.

I think this tweet from Elon White sums it up: "I can get gassed & rubber bulleted every night for the next month and what will you learn that you don't know right now?" His goal was to draw attention to the behavior of the police there. He has succeeded in that goal. People are paying the fuck attention. They've seen everything that a reasonable person would need to see about the situation there. (Of course, not everyone is a reasonable person — but continued protesting, on its own, is not likely to solve that problem.)

On those terms, measured against those objectives, he has clearly won and the police — to the extent that they were interested in covering their shit up — have clearly lost.
posted by nebulawindphone at 11:16 PM on August 19, 2014 [4 favorites]

Sorry if I'm not with the militant side here, but I think this is dangerous, exhausting, and accomplishes very little. I know people don't want the issue to disappear, but I'm not even sure what macro thing people want. Cameras is a possibility at a national level (although it's much more likely that the feds would fund camera equipment -- a lot is already bought with DOJ grants -- versus requiring it). I don't think a broader police "reform" bill is something that would fly with this divided Congress, and if anything, the establishment point of view has been further reinforced on giving out milspec equipment.

From what I know about the ACRM, King and others were particularly concerned with creating workable and achievable goals that public action like marches and strikes had a reasonable chance of bringing about. I don't know that this movement right now has a lot of coherent goals and I think the multiplicity of complaints that are being bundled up in it has only the prospect of fragmenting and dissipating the effectiveness.

For Ferguson specifically I think the intentional community that I see forming, the networking with Greater St. Louis activists, and the emergence of a tiny voter registration drive are the most important accomplishments that have come indirectly. There's simply no way that a 67% black community should be run with 17% black representation, and I maintain that had Chief Jackson had to report to a majority black council at some point since 2000 (the first census over 50%, I'm told), he and his officers might already be singing a different tune and this might not ever have happened. (Whether they can hire black officers is, as I've said, a potential challenge, but they can certainly move to a community policing model where there is much greater interaction and understanding between the people and the cops.) Certainly we wouldn't have dumb-as-fuck white-as-milk mayor-man showing up on one of the most right-wing outlets there is to claim "Oh, gosh, no race problems here." And they wouldn't be so lacking in atomic-level elements of common sense as to hire a PR firm made up entirely of white yupsters rather than a community mediation consultant and a city-wide sit-down with stakeholders (like the awesome AME pastor).

But getting to that point by ... what? Do people think they're going to beat the police at this game one night? Or god forbid they hope that someone will suffer serious injury or death as a martyr to the cause, finally (seriously?) showing America what cops are really like? As the Pew poll showed most whites, even liberal whites, just have no idea what it's like on the other side of the color line and they're not going to be any more than reluctant allies.

Meanwhile, and I know that right wing concern trolls have been pushing this line out there already, but it's pretty real -- getting investment back into this broke community that depends on fines and citations which fall (you know they do) most heavily on its poorest and blackest members is going to be a rough road. (I live in a neighborhood that just has a high rate of crime merely relative to the rest of town and I've heard that: "Walgreen's moved a mile west because they were sick of getting robbed! You're crazy if you think you can get a grocery store to build downtown." And we never had riots.) There's probably already a sort of redline to the way city development projects work (Florissant Rd. vs. West Florissant Ave., which is also the worst sort of anti-community STROAD imaginable). That's going to get worse unless the electoral dynamics change.

I did verify that at least Missouri is not a state that disenfranchises felons after the end of their sentence/probation. So there is probably no reason other than ... habit? culture? that the 9000 or so black adults are not participating in local politics and elections. I really hope (as a member of my own state/local party) that that changes. I don't see many of the other things that need to change happening until it does.
posted by dhartung at 11:18 PM on August 19, 2014 [8 favorites]

If the police are succeeding in intimidating people from lawful protesting, everyone loses, is where I'm coming from.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 11:19 PM on August 19, 2014 [15 favorites]

“Op-Ed: Killer Mike on the Problems Underlying the Chaos in Ferguson,” Killer Mike, BillboardBiz, 19 August 2014
posted by ob1quixote at 11:19 PM on August 19, 2014 [3 favorites]

Never mind, globalrevolution signing off.
posted by cybercoitus interruptus at 11:20 PM on August 19, 2014

wow, this
posted by ghostbikes at 11:25 PM on August 19, 2014 [7 favorites]

These guys, who are the ones doing the Argus livecast, say that at some point when agitation started this evening, and people were running from the cops, everyone in the area lost internet, and as soon as they were out of that area, they had access again.

Hasn't jamming been ruled illegal by the circuit court?
posted by dejah420 at 11:36 PM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

Someone was claiming on twitter that cops were using jammers as well... while people were livetweeting from the area. So..
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 11:38 PM on August 19, 2014

You probably can, Joey Michaels. But even with the idiocy of cops on display here, I don't think any would be stupid enough to bring that charge, because it would provide solid, you-are-totally-fucked-now evidence against the cops.

Do you really think that they care? They're threatening to shoot reporters. On camera.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 11:40 PM on August 19, 2014 [6 favorites]

I dunno, to be honest.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 11:43 PM on August 19, 2014

I'm not even sure what macro thing people want.

By all existing accounts, a police officer executed a teenager in the middle of a street in broad daylight and is now skipping town on a paid vacation. I'm not really sure what's unclear about this.

However, it seems the Mayor and Governor are either getting played by, or are afraid of, the police chiefs. Darren Wilson benefits from this, and by extension the racist law enforcement community, so it's going to be dragged out as long as possible.
posted by rhizome at 11:54 PM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

I can tell you one end game that I as an outsider 500 miles away would like to see: Federal supervision of the Ferguson, St. Louis County, and any other police department that participated in this fiasco.

As an outsider 900 miles away, I would add that, over the long-term, I'd like to see a sea change toward communtiy-based policing, and rigorous efforts toward eliminating racist policies and policework.

And I'd like to witness that change both in St. Louis County and in jurisdictions across the country—including my own.
posted by evidenceofabsence at 11:54 PM on August 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

From the Chicago Tribune: A 21-year-old man was fatally shot by police on the Far South Side on Tuesday night, authorities said.

From the article:

Officers from a Calumet District tactical team had tried to stop the man for questioning when they saw him riding a bicycle in the 13300 block of South Forrestville Avenue about 9:45 p.m., according to Pat Camden, a police union spokesman.

When officers trained a spotlight on the man, the man pointed a gun at the unmarked squad car, Camden said.

An officer jumped out of the squad car and gave chase on foot as the 21-year-old, now on foot as well, tried to flee, Camden said. When the man pointed the gun in the officer's direction, the officer opened fire, said Camden, whose account was corroborated by police.

Now that's journalism. Getting all sides of the story. The police union, the police. The policeman's benevolent association maybe if you need extra verification.
posted by [expletive deleted] at 11:59 PM on August 19, 2014 [27 favorites]

But getting to that point by ... what? Do people think they're going to beat the police at this game one night?

I think people were holding out for the cavalry, waiting for the state and federal administrations to be embarrassed into coming in and relieving the local imbeciles of duty. Even though everyone up to the President is aware and has commented on the situation, apparently that is not going to happen. Apparently they're all fine with this continuing indefinitely. No one is bending.
posted by forgetful snow at 11:59 PM on August 19, 2014 [5 favorites]

His thoughts were red thoughts: "Do you really think that they care? They're threatening to shoot reporters. On camera."

Threatening hell, they've done it at least twice. Granted, it was rubber bullets or beanbags, but in full goddamn view of the world, they've fired on and hit journalists. As well as arrested them on camera, destroyed their equipment on camera...they've done all the crap they've done with full knowledge that cameras are rolling.

They. don't. give. a. flying. fuck. Why? Because they've had 10 days to prove that there's nothing any of us can do to stop them.

President isn't going to act.

Congress couldn't find their ass with a map, they sure as hell couldn't find political will to do something about this.

Governor acted; sent the National Guard to protect the police.

Police acted, firing tear gas and sonic weapons in neighborhoods full of children with no regard for civilian safety. They've pointed loaded weapons at unarmed citizens. They have acted like ever b-movie bad invader army you can imagine, short of raping the sheep and slaughtering the women...and they're making huge bank in overtime, while getting to rub their erections all over the weapons they get to use on the protestors.

We're fucked people. We're just fucked. Ferguson can't, and shouldn't have to keep protesting just to prove that the president is powerless, the congress is useless, and we have no choice but to "obey if we don't want to get hurt."

My stomach hurts, my head hurts, my heart hurts. I weep for the dreams this country destroyed by laying siege to an unarmed American city for the crime of thinking they had rights. Ferguson proved that the police state is here, and it's here to stay. I've never felt so demoralized and hopeless about our future.

The revolution will not be televised. There will be no revolution. We've already lost.

Oh, and I on the Argus livestream, the cops are setting up some sort of display table with a bunch of guns(?) in boxes, probably going to call it evidence...but all the guns are the same, and I don't know if they're real guns or some sort of toy. Press conference incoming, looks like.
posted by dejah420 at 12:03 AM on August 20, 2014 [24 favorites]

rhizome, c'mon, I'm getting sick of this treatment. I wrote a long, heartfelt post and you're sneering condescendingly. I haven't attacked you and I have shown my commitment to this issue by my participation for days on end. Engage me honestly or not at all.

Yes, people want Officer Wilson charged. I don't know if that's possible. A civil rights prosecution is also, despite sentiments (I'm in favor), not necessarily something that is realistically going to happen (and then, it's a trial and acquittal is a possibility).

But even right here in this thread there are people who practically want to smash the power of the state or at least the cops as a "macro thing". There's very little prospect for meaningful change on the federal level, and I don't see much interest in engaging Jay Nixon, but with Chapelle-Nadal and Jamilah Nasheed on the ground there might be something that could go forward at the state legislative level, but you're still looking at entrenched (and still very white) caucuses and strong sympathies for law enforcement. I focused on the local level because I think that's the brightest route for change, but it's going to take some very focused organizing and relentless work to bring new voices into the city government.

Other things that people -- here and some on the ground in Ferguson -- seem to want are just not realistic or not part of an achievable process. Have the National Guard come out and "protect the people" against rogue police? However good it sounds as a moral proposition it belies a serious misunderstanding of how power structures work and what sorts of levers there are to move them. There is virtually no chance that any level of law enforcement, even if it's right-color, right-home-town Captain Johnson, will do anything but take an "anti-riot" position. So what exactly are you trying to achieve by going there night after night and getting tear-gassed, arrested, or hopefully not worse? I sort of need to ask if you're actually from my planet at that point.
posted by dhartung at 12:08 AM on August 20, 2014 [3 favorites]

So what exactly are you trying to achieve by going there night after night and getting tear-gassed, arrested, or hopefully not worse? I sort of need to ask if you're actually from my planet at that point.

They are communicating their dissatisfaction (that a cop murdered an unarmed teenager and faces no consequences). That is what protesting is.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 12:15 AM on August 20, 2014 [9 favorites]

Capt. Johnson press conference is starting. With a prayer, those fucking hypocrites.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 12:16 AM on August 20, 2014

"Dear god, please don't let these people catch me in my lies", ad libs the livestream guy, sotto voice.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 12:17 AM on August 20, 2014 [3 favorites]

What the holy fuck? The press conference is starting with a prayer. A prayer. By a cop. A publicly paid person who works as a member of government.
posted by dejah420 at 12:17 AM on August 20, 2014 [8 favorites]

What the holy fuck? The press conference is starting with a prayer. A prayer. By a cop. A publicly paid person who works as a member of government.

Ha. I didn't even think about that. I was more appalled that the cops are praying for peace, as if 'peace' was some nebulous force that was out of their control, and not something they were deliberately and consciously shattering with their brutal ham-handed 'tactics'.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 12:20 AM on August 20, 2014 [15 favorites]

They also prayed before the press conference yesterday.
posted by frimble at 12:21 AM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

"Hey, go us! We didn't fire any bullets!"

"In the last 10 days, the residents and police have gotten to know each other so much better" DIRECT QUOTE

Ok, y'all. I've obviously just crossed into some really fucked up reality. It's like that Montel Williams show, where they've got footage of the guy cheating, but he keeps denying it and saying, "Who you going to believe baby, me or your lying eyes?"
posted by dejah420 at 12:22 AM on August 20, 2014 [10 favorites]

Maybe if the protesters put on white face and dressed like the Clive Bundy protesters the police would all leave.
posted by Joey Michaels at 12:23 AM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

Maybe if the protesters put on white face and dressed like the Clive Bundy protesters the police would all leave.

Pretty much. Look at the police 'presence' at the pro-Darren Wilson protests.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 12:26 AM on August 20, 2014 [4 favorites]

The prayer is the key to why they will win. Because a lot of people turn off their brains when the "god" thing is invoked, authority and obedience is part-and-parcel of their religion, and if the men in power are "men of god" that's good enough for them.
posted by maxwelton at 12:27 AM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

a lot of people turn off their brains when the "god" thing is invoked, authority and obedience is part-and-parcel of their religion

*tips fedora*
posted by hellojed at 12:31 AM on August 20, 2014 [4 favorites]

"Keep your hands up or I wil blow your brains out" is what I was just told by police, @TalibKweli

The crazy thing is that this sort of thing is being said at the very time they are trying to claim one of their officers didn't unneccesarily shoot someone.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 12:41 AM on August 20, 2014 [18 favorites]

Yeah it's unbelievable. "Hands up or I'll shoot"? I thought the Ferguson policy was "Hands up and I shoot".
posted by forgetful snow at 12:45 AM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

Pretty much. Look at the police 'presence' at the pro-Darren Wilson protests.

That's just infuriating. When black people protest, they are met with armored tanks, attack dogs, tear gas, guns pointed at them, police in full riot gear. They are maced, cuffed, arrested, jailed, forced to march and move over and over from one area to another with orders barked at them, violent threats made.

But when white people demonstrate, it's Officer Friendly in shorts on his bike. They are allowed to stand, aren't forced to march. No arrests. No threats.

Just sickening.
posted by marsha56 at 12:48 AM on August 20, 2014 [16 favorites]

To be fair, black people demonstrating in favor of not holding cops accountable for shooting unarmed black teenagers would probably also get a friendlier reception from the cops.
posted by JiBB at 1:03 AM on August 20, 2014 [10 favorites]

"In the last 10 days, the residents and police have gotten to know each other so much better"

Pretty much a one-way class, there. It amounts to, "You thought slaughtering a black kid was bad? Check out all of the institutional support we have for that kind of thing, and here's some tear gas for your tears in case you don't get it."

I really don't get where all of this amounts to "smashing the power of the state," dhartung, there is no wallowing in abstraction as far as I can see. I can see the state acting in confusing and self-contradictory ways, but the facts remain. I don't think it's helpful to say that $big_thing is undefined so what's the point of $small_thing, because in this case, registering disapproval with the situation at hand carries more than enough meaning. When the state is saying loud and clear that the response to Mike Brown's killing and the apparent free-reign that police have to wield violence for whatever reason is to let the police do whatever they want, I dunno, man. Are you saying they should be hiring lobbyists?

I saw some commentary about dissolving the Ferguson PD and folding it into the greater St. Louis PD, but who knows. I think it's a reasonably focused idea that the current Ferguson PD be scrapped. As for the ability of the current Ferguson PD to hire black officers goes, I wouldn't be surprised if the hiring process was stacked against them from multiple directions.

There are major affronts and civil rights violations happening here, and even those appear not to allow for recourse. Meanwhile, it even remains to be seen whether this affects Jay Nixon's political ambitions. Why? Because things really are that bad and he was elected on a foundation of the way things are.

But let's get real: what's with all the armor? What is it really protecting against? There's a macro for you. The police are the proximate cause of all of the violence so far, as they usually do at protests these days. Police rioting? Seems to be legal, and that's another problem beyond individual acts. The most peaceful night was when the people thought law enforcement gave a shit, but apparently that was too much so the aggro-bros had to re-assert themselves. Can't be letting people think they're more important than societal control. In that way, perhaps there is a little bit of the smash-the-state, but if creating a responsive and representative law enforcement community qualifies as a smashing, then I perhaps the state deserves it.
posted by rhizome at 1:34 AM on August 20, 2014 [11 favorites]

The grand jury is, so far as I am aware, being empaneled today. It would be pretty shocking if we didn't get transcripts of the proceedings although I don't know if that will happen until after the grand jury either returns an indictment or declines to do so. It would probably help matters if they released transcripts right away so that we could see the wheels of justice churning so I expect they will not do so. Because they taking the opposite approach to what would help.
posted by Justinian at 2:00 AM on August 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

(they are taking)
posted by Justinian at 2:06 AM on August 20, 2014

From the CBC:

Missouri's governor said he would not seek the removal of the county prosecutor overseeing the investigation into the fatal police shooting of the teenager by a white police officer.

A grand jury was expected to begin a criminal inquiry into shooting on Wednesday.

St. Louis County Prosecutor Bob McCulloch's deep family connections to police have been cited by some black leaders who question his ability to be impartial. McCullouch's father, mother, brother, uncle and cousin all worked for the St. Louis Police Department, and his father was killed while responding to a call involving a black suspect.

Gov. Jay Nixon said Tuesday he would not ask McCulloch to leave the case, citing the "well-established process" by which prosecutors can recuse themselves from pending investigations to make way for a special prosecutor.

Departing from that process, Nixon said in a statement, "could unnecessarily inject legal uncertainty into this matter and potentially jeopardize the prosecution."

posted by frimble at 2:08 AM on August 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

So why would they do this?

Maybe it's excessively cynical of me, but I just keep picturing these jackasses high-fiving each other, grinning, and yelling "RaHoWa!" as they load their semiautomatic weapons and strap into their body armor at the start of their shifts.
posted by palmcorder_yajna at 2:12 AM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

"Because no one is taking away gun rights of the folks in Ferguson? It's outside of their mandate? Gun rights have no bearing on whats going on? Look, I have a hate on for the NRA as much as the next person, but I don't see the point in that discussion."

One of the primary examples the NRA provides when asked what exactly they have in mind for the uses of gun rights is the Battle of Athens, Tennessee in 1946. Dirty cops in the town of Athens ruled the county with an iron fist by rigging elections, imposing arbitrary fines, shaking down travelers, getting paid by the state per arrest, and arresting anyone who objected. Things came to a head when GIs returned from the war and organized an opposition candidate who lost despite overwhelming popular support due to obvious fraud. This resulted in The Battle of Athens when those GIs took up arms and chased out the county government by force and held new free and fair elections protected by the power of their citizen held arms.

Clearly neither the city nor county governments of Ferguson continue to have the support of the people of Ferguson and, if the right to bear arms in the way they were borne in Athens means anything, surely an armed response by the people of Ferguson would be the answer here. Right?
posted by Blasdelb at 2:19 AM on August 20, 2014 [22 favorites]

If the goal is to get them all killed, sure.
posted by Justinian at 2:24 AM on August 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

This resulted in The Battle of Athens when those GIs took up arms and chased out the county government by force and held new free and fair elections protected by the power of their citizen held arms.

As an aside, per this Wikipedia citation the GIs took up arms from a nearby National Guard Armory. So although this incident is cited as a rationale for private ownership of firearms, it actually didn't involve privately-owned firearms. Just the ones possessed by the well-regulated militia.

But yeah, to Blasdelb's overall point, it's pretty conspicuous and disgusting how abruptly it happens that rising up against tyranny ceases to be a poignant and noble endeavor and watering the Tree of Liberty is suddenly not so important to some people, when it's black people doing it.
posted by XMLicious at 3:10 AM on August 20, 2014 [26 favorites]

Sorry if I'm not with the militant side here, but I think this is dangerous, exhausting, and accomplishes very little. I know people don't want the issue to disappear, but I'm not even sure what macro thing people want.

The resignation of Chief of Police Tom Jackson, followed by the dissolution of the Ferguson Police Department, would be a start. Justice for Mike Brown would be a start. But I worry now that even that first hoped-for outcome will never come to pass—or that if it does, as others have mentioned, the department's files would just merge into St. Louis County's, like the Jennings police department's files did, and be buried deep. And it's not like the county police are winning over a lot of hearts and minds in Ferguson right now.

But don't forget, beyond those larger goals, there are still at least 20 pieces of information we don't have. Getting some of this released would also be a good medium-term goal. Here's the list from our discussion in the earlier thread:

1. Darren Wilson's record from his years with the dissolved Jennings police department
2. Any of Wilson's disciplinary records that aren't in his Ferguson Police Department file
3. All video of the shooting from the cellphones that were confiscated by police
4. The police reports directly pertaining to the shooting of Mike Brown
5. The percentage of Ferguson police officers who actually live in Ferguson
6. What happened in the conversation leading up to the shoplifting incident
7. What tests the medical examiner did to find Mike Brown had marijuana in his body
8. Why purchased body and dash cameras weren't in use, and when they will be
9. Why Darren Wilson hasn't been detained—and whether police know his whereabouts
10. Why no ambulance was called when Mike Brown was shot
11. Why a nurse on the scene was not allowed to help when Mike Brown was shot
12. Why Mike Brown's body was left on the scene for four hours after he was shot—and what else was found there
13. What role Charter and AT&T had in censoring local cable and Internet last weekend during initial protests
14. Who's astroturfing Twitter with "Michael Brown is GUILTY! Forget that thug and stop being bitches!"
15. Darren Wilson's medical records for any medical treatment he got after the incident
16. Who leaked the "traces of marijuana" result to the press
17. Any definitive evidence that protesters actually did throw Molotov cocktails at police
18. The names of the officers who've threatened they would shoot reporters each night
19. Accounts of what happened in the convenience store from customers or employees present
20. Any evidence that shoplifting video was in fact released in response to a FOIA request

Right now, we only have info re: No. 8 that there were in fact just two body cameras and two dash cameras collecting dust (so the department will have to buy more, you know, sometime); a partial answer to the first part of No. 9 (St. Louis Public Radio says police don't have to arrest Wilson—um, great reporting?); some vague claims I've seen from people on Facebook re: No. 10 (that an ambulance did come, but apparently no one saw it?); and some tiny bullshit on No. 17 (there's like one New York Times video showing a seeming Molotov cocktail and one questionable St. Louis County police photo that's been tweeted).

We need more info. Is there anything else we should add to the list now? We need to put the pressure on now, or we may never see some of this stuff. Those are some things to tweet about when everyone wakes up this morning.
posted by limeonaire at 3:21 AM on August 20, 2014 [23 favorites]

Via Longreads, Harpers, March 2010, on "non-lethal" weaponry and its use both within the US and abroad.

“Non-lethal” is the Pentagon’s approved term for these weapons, but their manufacturers also use the terms “soft kill,” “less-lethal,” “limited effects,” “low collateral damage,” and “compliance.” The weapons are intended primarily for use against unarmed or primitively armed civilians; they are designed to control crowds, clear buildings and streets, subdue and restrain individuals, and secure borders. The result is what appears to be the first arms race in which the opponent is the general population.

posted by frimble at 3:34 AM on August 20, 2014 [8 favorites]

Officer points gun at me and other media on W. Florissant #ferguson
"What's your name sir?"
"Go fuck yourself."
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 5:05 AM on August 20, 2014 [10 favorites]

Musician Talib Kweli and activist Rosa Clemente have both reported on Twitter about being held at gunpoint, with an officer threatening to shoot another detainee who was struggling to stay still because unable to breathe.

Is it me, or does respiratory illness seem to drive cops into a murderous frenzy?

"Keep your hands up or I will blow your brains out is what I was just told by police." Kweli also says that the riot police had formed up and were preparing to rush the crowd before the bottle of water was thrown.
posted by running order squabble fest at 5:07 AM on August 20, 2014 [11 favorites]

That's some crazy video.
posted by OmieWise at 5:09 AM on August 20, 2014

In which the CBC writes a disappointing and terrible article. Deplores two "black-on-white" thefts that he sees, and argues that since we don't have any evidence, we can't assume it was a racially motivated killing.

And that segment on Johnson falls into some weird racial stereotypes. Why does every black person who talks eloquently "sound like a preacher"?
posted by Lemurrhea at 5:10 AM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

Missouri School Kids Chant 'Hands Up, Don't Shoot!'
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 5:13 AM on August 20, 2014 [6 favorites]

Guardian: - Norm Stamper was Seattle police chief from 1994 - 2000
Nothing works in Ferguson. Here's how to fix a police force – and punish cops
posted by adamvasco at 5:14 AM on August 20, 2014 [6 favorites]

@onekade said recently: "Wow if you think this isn't a police state take a look at what's been built in the shadows of even our small cities, waiting for dissent."

The problem is that a lot of voting Americans don't care about Ferguson, because they don't think that they, themselves are impacted by racism or even police militarization. They're white, they're middle-class, and they probably have an OK job that pulls in enough to pay for a couple cars and a house in the suburbs. It might not seem like a ton to them, but it's really quite a life of privilege.

And even though they may very well end up on the other side of that line, what with growing inequality and the increasingly totalitarian nature of the United States (has the NSA been reined in yet? Yeah right.), they don't want to think about it. Compare them to the poor people who don't want to tax the rich because one day they might be rich: They're banking on the police state wanting them to be their lackeys.

This works, as long as the powers care to give them bread and circuses. It needs to be made amply clear to them that the state may one day not need them, and the power that they allowed to accumulate can be turned upon them.
posted by anemone of the state at 5:16 AM on August 20, 2014 [8 favorites]

I'd like to point out again, as I have before, anemone of the state, that Ferguson IS an ordinary suburb. It's a lower middle class and working poor suburb. But people DO own houses and cars there. The crime rate is average for a heavily populated area in MO, not high.

The only real difference between Ferguson and your average American suburb is that a majority of the people in Ferguson are black.

(And even so, a number of white people and people of other races also live there. And I'm heartened to say, many of them have been out on the streets during these protests.)
posted by BlueJae at 5:29 AM on August 20, 2014 [24 favorites]

I'm just now listening to Monday's Diane Rehm broadcast on this. And wow, the police-are-never-wrong shill is an obnoxious, lying little shit.
posted by one more dead town's last parade at 5:31 AM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

Expect that from the MSM shitbirds.
posted by Pudhoho at 5:35 AM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

Ferguson IS an ordinary suburb

Indeed. But the white people, in the white suburbs, don't seem to care because they think it's not their problem because they're middle-class and white. The way to shake them on that is with the police militarization angle. Militarized police means more cops shooting people, everywhere.
posted by anemone of the state at 5:36 AM on August 20, 2014

I think it's time to party like it's 1776.
posted by Pudhoho at 5:41 AM on August 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

Here is more video of Officer Go Fuck Yourself.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 5:41 AM on August 20, 2014 [14 favorites]

On that note... US police given billions from Homeland Security for 'tactical' equipment (from The Guardian). Long story short, the police are seduced by these needlessly dangerous toys, but they are also mandated:

Under a 2007 law, the Implementing Recommendations of the 9/11 Commission Act, “not less than 25%” of the total money for the two programs must be “used for law enforcement terrorism prevention activities”.

There are few other restrictions. State and local authorities are not supposed to use the money to buy land or construct buildings, but the law provides for exceptions. “Not more than 25%” of money under the two grant programs can be spent on “overtime and backfill costs” or other personnel affairs.

The point being they are "forced" to use this excessive military grade equipment even in small towns. And they're not allowed to buy land or construct buildings—things that may actually serve and protect the community. So, quite the incentive to constantly purchase equipment that will send the wrong person on an addictive power trip. The police state is written right into the law, and they expect human nature to take care of the rest, it seems.
posted by Johann Georg Faust at 5:43 AM on August 20, 2014 [4 favorites]

~~The British are coming! The British are coming!~~

Help! Police!
posted by Pudhoho at 5:43 AM on August 20, 2014 [6 favorites]

An hour ago, Jessica Care Moore, Talib Kweli, folks from the Fellowship of Reconcillation, Philp Agnew of Dream Defenders, Bgyrl ForLife, Malik from Occupy the Hood and Trymaine Lee from MSNBC and many others were chased like animals by the cops. We ran to get away and were surrounded on a small path on bridge, surrounded by all types of police and told to lie down and put our hands up. We complied and we were told if we did not stop moving we would be shot.

We were breathing. The young brother lying on my feet as I was holding him was not able to control his breathing he said "I'm choking" the cop told him to stop or he would shoot him. I told him "try not to move, just lay still I got you." The gun was at his chest. I looked at the cop and said "please, he is not doing anything" I tried to record but the cop had his finger on the trigger. I could feel Talib's hand on my back and Jessica behind me. We laid there until one Black officer said "Let them go, we got who we wanted."

In all my life I have never been so terrified. The young brother Devin said thank you I think you saved my life.

What is going down here in #ferguson in all my years of activism, organizing, I have never seen. This is a war zone, a military occupation

Rosa Clemente

posted by crayz at 5:57 AM on August 20, 2014 [43 favorites]

Officer shoves reporter.
"Get that camera out of my face."
Reporter asks for his name
"Go fuck yourself," officer responds

OMG! IT'S DICK CHENEY!
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 6:00 AM on August 20, 2014 [3 favorites]

There was a rally to support the residents of Ferguson in my city yesterday.

As I was riding the bus this morning to work this little old white woman was complaining about the traffic yesterday. She blamed it on the protests and said "I wished I had known about it before hand..", I steeled myself, "because I really hate it when there's injustice in the world." That made my morning. The woman she was talking to didn't seem interesting in engaging her in the conversation though.

Also, small thing, limeonaire, item 15 (sometimes 16) in your list has the officer's name misspelled as 'Darrell'.
posted by papercrane at 6:02 AM on August 20, 2014 [4 favorites]

Ah good call, papercrane, I'll ask the mods about updating it. Thanks!
posted by limeonaire at 6:19 AM on August 20, 2014

My new "favorite" remark on my Facebook feed was an acquaintance who was wondering (with irony) why the police don't just arrest all of the protesters. Some people really want a police state. Breaks my brain.

From a certain perspective that's a good question- if the protestors warrant violent repression, surely they could just be arrested and charged, right? But of course the point of the whole affair is a brutal, physically overwhelming display of force, to establish the physical dominance of the police over the populace. Arresting people can be a tool to that, but if you simply arrest everybody, you're not teargassing them and harassing them in their homes and beating them up and establishing that they are subject to incredible violence at any time for no reason.
posted by Pope Guilty at 6:19 AM on August 20, 2014 [23 favorites]

The only real difference between Ferguson and your average American suburb is that a majority of the people in Ferguson are black.

Oh, I'm sure you could find other "average American suburbs" where the majority of people are black...
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:20 AM on August 20, 2014 [3 favorites]

Actual arrests leave a paper trail.
posted by Artw at 6:24 AM on August 20, 2014 [13 favorites]

Arrests involve rights and responsibilities. Individual arrests are often performed illegally, as individuals often lack resources to fight back, but a mass arrest? Have fun sweeping that under the rug.
posted by Sticherbeast at 6:39 AM on August 20, 2014 [4 favorites]

When you overlay the "we can't prejudge, we need to wait for all the evidence!" people and the "listen to this ambiguous youtube video/anonymous phone call/rumor on a right-wing hate site with the cold hard proof Brown deserved to die!" people, the Venn diagram forms a perfect circle.
posted by crayz at 6:42 AM on August 20, 2014 [10 favorites]

It seems to me that authorities and the people of America have completely lost sight of what a democracy is by this point. And the thing that our leaders and establishment interests are so afraid of seeing happen--American people empowered by the exercise of their long-enshrined rights to assemble actually coming together to effect significant political change--is what we need most to restore America's lost sense of community and democratic cooperation.

These protests are only harming American democracy to the extent that they are now revealing it to be a sham. If the current powers-that-be would only accept popular protests' proper place as the functional part of our democratic system it was always intended to be, they would see there are huge social and cultural benefits to allowing ordinary people, through mass political action, to have a lever of power of their own in the system. When masses of people come together in a democracy and through their combined struggles and efforts, successfully achieve a political goal, that's the lifeblood of democracy! Democracy isn't sustained by our having 100 different brands of razor blade on offer at the grocery store. It's sustained by people being engaged in the process of governing themselves. That's the heart and soul of the community building process in democratic societies--it's what helps forge the close ties among people that allow them to trust each other enough to keep the whole crazy three-ring circus of a true, people-powered system running.

Our leaders don't seem to realize it, but the excessively authoritarian attitude toward democratic activism that's become fashionable among our elites and a solid chunk of the middle class in the last couple of decades is helping to destroy ordinary American's sense of self-worth and community. Add to that the economic diaspora and tax revolts of the last three decades, and it's no wonder we've got malaise in the US.

People coming together in mass to demand political change and getting it is the engine of democracy. This new authoritarianism and anti-populism in our society is choking us and damaging the fabric of American society.
posted by saulgoodman at 6:43 AM on August 20, 2014 [48 favorites]

They'll just keep echoing the empty phrase "united we stand" while jumping up and down on the wedge that drives us apart.
posted by Foosnark at 6:45 AM on August 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

The only real difference between Ferguson and your average American suburb is that a majority of the people in Ferguson are black.

Oh, I'm sure you could find other "average American suburbs" where the majority of people are black...

Sure, but the "average" American suburb isn't black. Would it help to say that "The only real difference between Ferguson and your median/mode American suburb is that a majority of the people in Ferguson are black."?
posted by benbenson at 6:45 AM on August 20, 2014

Mass arrests also require somewhere to put people, and someone to watch the people, and someone to process the people, and if the cops don't have the equipment and space to do that, then they have several hundred angry, frightened folks just sitting there. The things that can go wrong are legion - the angry folks rise up, and they either break out (bad from a police perspective) or the cops have to fight them when the odds are poorer and the cops are more likely to need to use serious weaponry, opening up the possibility of "police shoot protesters while they are in custody". All those people need to be processed or they can't be released, and that means administration, which these folks manifestly don't have to spare. Everyone needs food, water and bathrooms while in custody - and while you don't always get those, a very large arrest where people (probably including children and the elderly) are held for a day or two in the heat with little food, water or sanitation...is going to look even worse than what is going on in Ferguson. (Being held in extreme heat with little food, water or sanitation does happen to people in prison, but it is much harder to spin when it's just a mass arrest.)

Even a "small" mass arrest where the cops are prepared for it and the protesters are not going to fight back takes, IME, at least fifteen to twenty hours to process, and that's when you have the staff and technology.
posted by Frowner at 6:47 AM on August 20, 2014 [3 favorites]

Are they charging anyone they actually have arrested? If anything goes to trial some shit is going to come out.
posted by Artw at 6:50 AM on August 20, 2014

Officer 1 [Holding my arm]: Don’t resist. I’ll bust your ass. I’ll bust your head right here.

Me: [To JP] Are you filming this?

Officer 1: Film it! I don’t give a sh*t. Because you’ll go, and I’ll sure confiscate your film for evidence.

JP: No, what I’m saying is …

Officer 1: I’m asking you to leave!

Officer 2: Go now, or you get locked up!

Officer 1: That’s it.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 6:51 AM on August 20, 2014 [16 favorites]

Also, it occurs to me that "there are three hundred people including the elderly and children being held at gunpoint in a mass arrest scenario with very little water in the heat AND it is going to take two days to get everyone processed and released" would be a fucking powderkeg situation in the media and on the street. It would give a lot of very upset and frightened non-arrested people time to organize, it would be incredibly bad media, it would probably get a lot of people engaged with the issue who have not been engaged with it so far.

There were a ton of unjustified mass arrests during the 2008 Republican National Convention here, and it did end up being very bad media - and that was in a much different situation.
posted by Frowner at 6:51 AM on August 20, 2014 [4 favorites]

Mass arrests also require somewhere to put people, and someone to watch the people, and someone to process the people, and if the cops don't have the equipment and space to do that, then they have several hundred angry, frightened folks just sitting there.

You ever read about how the NYPD handled the mass arrests for the Republican National Convention? They basically rented out some dockside warehouses, built crude cages, and shoved everybody in there, throwing them stale food twice a day, til the conventioneers were gone, then paid out on the lawsuits, considering the massive judgments against the city to simply be part of the price of doing business.

On preview: Frowner knows what's up.
posted by Pope Guilty at 6:54 AM on August 20, 2014 [11 favorites]

And dealing with mass arrests is so hard when you don't have resources for the administrative and infrastructure needs. But if you've got a crapload of military surplus gear burning a hole in your metaphorical pocket, well, maybe there's a better choice available for you.

For some very perverse values of "better".
posted by rmd1023 at 6:54 AM on August 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

Cop pulled a gun on me tonight for asking a question. #ferguson
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 6:55 AM on August 20, 2014

Plus anything other than beating people up entails some degree of actual policework, and Ferguson PD have proved themselves utterly useless at that.
posted by Artw at 6:56 AM on August 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

I saw some commentary about dissolving the Ferguson PD and folding it into the greater St. Louis PD, but who knows.

Doesn't seem like an answer. A lot of the cops on scene are "county browns."
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 6:57 AM on August 20, 2014 [3 favorites]

That split second you think it is over is the most harrowing, terrifying. I thought I was prepared, and I was to a certain extent, but nothing can ever prepare you for that and that fact is that none of us should ever have to prepare for it. Devin and his boys got to go home tonight. They got to go home tonight. I hope they always get to go home.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 6:58 AM on August 20, 2014

Cop pulled a gun on me tonight for asking a question. #ferguson

Every night there isn't an accidental discharge into some protestor/media persons face I am relieved, but some night one of these jumpy fucks is actually going to do it.
posted by Artw at 6:59 AM on August 20, 2014 [11 favorites]

Frowner: "Mass arrests also require somewhere to put people, and someone to watch the people, and someone to process the people, and if the cops don't have the equipment and space to do that, then they have several hundred angry, frightened folks just sitting there."

Picture of (a fraction of) 900 people mass arrested in climate protest. Copenhagen, 2009. You just need enough zip ties; the method is called "the bus".
posted by brokkr at 7:01 AM on August 20, 2014

The only real difference between Ferguson and your average American suburb is that a majority of the people in Ferguson are black.

This is the future of American metro areas. Gentrification is making many inner cities whiter and pushing minorities out to the older inner-ring suburbs.
posted by octothorpe at 7:04 AM on August 20, 2014 [5 favorites]

Top Obama advisers tell African American leaders that justice will prevail in Ferguson
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:09 AM on August 20, 2014

dhartung: I don't know that this movement right now has a lot of coherent goals and I think the multiplicity of complaints that are being bundled up in it has only the prospect of fragmenting and dissipating the effectiveness.

I think you are being too harsh. These protests were a reaction to the senseless death of a teenager. It's only been 10 days. It's easy to play armchair quarterback from thousands of miles away, when you don't know anyone there, and when you don't have to deal with the same injustices on a daily basis for years on end. I don't feel right saying they should do this or that.

Ferguson to this point has not been a movement, it's been a reaction. First to Mike Brown's death, then to the escalating police response. I think things are starting to cohere and that's why the protests were much more peaceful last night. Now there are peacekeepers who are icing out the agitators - I didn't see that before Monday night. I've seen people (on twitter) starting to organize for larger but attainable goals (voter registration, educational funding, etc). I'm really hoping this will come together and will be bigger than just thrown water bottles vs. tear gas for nights on end.
posted by desjardins at 7:10 AM on August 20, 2014 [12 favorites]

I can't even: Missouri Highway Patrol Captain Ron Johnson, the highway patrol captain placed in charge of security in Ferguson Missouri, was photographed making hand signs that some quickly thought were gang signs. The thing is, they were actually hand signs for the black fraternity Johnson has been part of, Kappa Alpha Psi.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:23 AM on August 20, 2014 [20 favorites]

Well, that's right up there with a "terrorist fist jab."
posted by TwoStride at 7:25 AM on August 20, 2014 [18 favorites]

You ever read about how the NYPD handled the mass arrests for the Republican National Convention? They basically rented out some dockside warehouses, built crude cages, and shoved everybody in there, throwing them stale food twice a day, til the conventioneers were gone, then paid out on the lawsuits, considering the massive judgments against the city to simply be part of the price of doing business.

Same story during the Toronto G20 in 2010. 885 people went through that detention centre over the course of a weekend. It was (part of) the largest mass arrest in Canadian history.

Here's the thing: talk to people about the G20 now and they'll tell you it's old news. Over a thousand people were arrested and police kettled random citizens—only a tiny fraction of which appeared to be protesters, none of them violent—at a busy city intersection for hours in the pouring rain, with every camera crew and reporter in town at the scene. And for what? So we could mostly forget about it four years later. The Toronto police chief that oversaw the security response during the G20 just failed to have his contract renewed. Barely anyone even bothered to ask if it was because of the G20, and the response from the police board was essentially "absolutely not."
posted by chrominance at 7:28 AM on August 20, 2014 [11 favorites]

Seen "kettled" used a few times now. Can someone define it for me?
posted by Trochanter at 7:32 AM on August 20, 2014

Kettling is when cops block off an exit and then force the protestors there so they can arrest all of them.
posted by empath at 7:34 AM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

Kettling
posted by Artw at 7:35 AM on August 20, 2014

Kettling, from wikipedia.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 7:36 AM on August 20, 2014

Kettling.
posted by inire at 7:36 AM on August 20, 2014

A group of protest intentionally trapped in a small space (typically an intersection) by the police on all sides. It can last for hours.

It's supposed to be a de-escalation. It's brutal in practice, denying medical aid, water even bathroom access to increasingly distressed people.
posted by bonehead at 7:36 AM on August 20, 2014 [5 favorites]

Deadspin (or some branch of it, not really sure how Kinja works tbh) is attempting to compile a spreadsheet of all known police-involved shootings, if anyone has some time and would like to help with the project.
posted by sallybrown at 7:38 AM on August 20, 2014 [8 favorites]

I think the best way to keep the movement going is to take the protest on the road. American cops kill black kids once a week or so on average so there probably will be opportunities for it to travel. This itself could provide some disincentive to police shooting down unarmed teens, if PD's realize it will bring crowds of protestors and international media down on them. But it's got to be peaceful protesting. Violence and vandalism will just fuck it up.

Human Rights Watch: US: Holder Should Press for Police Reform

US Attorney General Eric Holder should press state and local officials during his visit to Ferguson, Missouri, on August 20, 2014, to reform police practices to improve respect for basic rights, Human Rights Watch said today. Holder should also support federal reforms that could help address concerns about policing and racial discrimination raised during the Ferguson protests over the last 10 days.

posted by Golden Eternity at 7:38 AM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

In Toronto during the G20 in 2010, the police undertook their kettling exercise at a large busy downtown intersection in mid-evening, catching protesters, commuters, passersby, and anyone else nearby. Great success!
posted by ricochet biscuit at 7:40 AM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

People on my feed are telling me they don't necessarily believe Clemente's story because Trymaine Lee hasn't corroborated it. WTF.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:43 AM on August 20, 2014

I have pretty nearly run out of WTFs over the last two weeks.
posted by shakespeherian at 7:45 AM on August 20, 2014 [6 favorites]

Twitter: @ReporterFaith: From the signs/chants, it appears group's main reason for protesting in front of Justice Ctr is to ask that prosecutor recuse self from case
posted by Golden Eternity at 7:46 AM on August 20, 2014

Can someone define it for me?

Answer: yes

Thanks guys
posted by Trochanter at 7:46 AM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

I have pretty nearly run out of WTFs over the last two weeks.

I have a warehouse - I'll be happy to ship you an entire boxcar if you'd like.
posted by Pudhoho at 7:47 AM on August 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

Here's What Happens to Police Officers Who Shoot Unarmed Black Men
posted by Artw at 7:50 AM on August 20, 2014 [8 favorites]

attempting to compile a spreadsheet of all known police-involved shootings

Wikipedia is logging some subset of them. Here's the list for August 2014. Yesterday's shooting in St. Louis is not the most recent entry on that list.
posted by effbot at 7:52 AM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

The entry on that Wikipedia for the man in St. Louis with a knife that police shot - I was hearing reports that he was mentally disturbed, it was a butter knife, and nothing about an alleged robbery. How much stake should we put in these wiki descriptions?
posted by C'est la D.C. at 7:57 AM on August 20, 2014

The tl;dr version of Artw's link is: typically nothing happens to police officers who shoot unarmed black men, even if they have a history of doing so, and they are typically allowed to continue being police officers.

Unless the protests force a change in this case, we can reasonably expect that Wilson will be found by an internal investigation to have acted properly and he will be put back out on the street with the gun he used to kill Brown.

Basically, in America killing unarmed black people is assumed to be part of the job of police, and most white people are fine with that as evidenced by the utter lack of action taken against it.
posted by sotonohito at 7:59 AM on August 20, 2014 [10 favorites]

STL County Prosecutor: No statements or info release about any #ferguson evidence until grand jury is done, which could be October.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:00 AM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

STL County Prosecutor: No statements or info release about any #ferguson evidence until grand jury is done, which could be October.

That seems... Unusual.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 8:03 AM on August 20, 2014

Artw, that is a depressing article. The last sentence in the Baez case really stuck out for me:

In 2003, two more cops were fired for giving false testimony in Livoti's defense.

It took 9 years to fire two officers for committing perjury!? No mention if they faced any criminal charges for perverting justice, or criminal conspiracy, I assume if they did it would have been mentioned in the article. No wonder people don't have any faith in the police's ability to investigate themselves.
posted by papercrane at 8:04 AM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

I think the truth is that the standard for "positive interaction with police" is really, really low at the moment.
posted by desjardins at 8:04 AM on August 20, 2014 [3 favorites]

I hope they have to sell all the riot gear to pay for the damage they've caused these people.

Problem is, in most sale transactions that means that it ends with someone else now having it.
posted by phearlez at 8:08 AM on August 20, 2014 [3 favorites]

Metafilter: Some night one of these jumpy fucks is actually going to do it.
posted by symbioid at 8:15 AM on August 20, 2014

It's extremely frustrating to read about those people being held at gunpoint last night, and yet the stories today all seem to say that last night was a positive turning point in Ferguson. Which is the truth?

Likely both. From what I can see with the situation is that things aren't happening just in one area, so peoples experiences and what they witness could be different depending on where they are.

A protest/occupation thing that I was involved in several years ago was pretty confined in terms of the area involved and even then what people would experience at one place at times was different then another. It was only after the fact that we'd get a clear picture of what really happened even though we had a centralized communication structure.
posted by Jalliah at 8:15 AM on August 20, 2014

I've actually heard a lot of rumbling from more gun-toting libertarian circles that it would be better if the people of Ferguson were armed to a man, and even talking about how church leaders counseling nonviolent resistance are not doing Ferguson any favors. The money quote was "If nonviolent protest in the streets did anything, the police would be doing that instead of training guns and tanks on your children." I think though a lot of that stuff is being kept internal, because Ferguson has been very clear about not wanting armed defense of any persuasion - I think I even saw something condemning the New Black Panthers? So their help is not wanted or requested, which is why it's not there.
posted by corb at 8:17 AM on August 20, 2014

sio42: "Yeah. I know. I just liked the O Henry aspect of it. Maybe someone rich will buy it and then destroy it."

Or more likely someone rich will buy it for their own private security force. It's never too early to prepare for the eventual catastrophic collapse of capitalism!
posted by Strange Interlude at 8:19 AM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

It took 9 years to fire two officers for committing perjury!?

You should not be amazed about taking 9 years but that perjury charging happened at all. The 4 decade serving DA for Milwaukee said in "The Lies have it" (May 1995 ABA) that he just doesn't issue perjury charges and it is way under prosecuted.

A backbone of the legal and paperwork system and if you lie the odds of a DA giving a damn is a number so close to 0 you might as well call it 0.
posted by rough ashlar at 8:19 AM on August 20, 2014 [3 favorites]

I have an idea for a T-shirt launcher business!
posted by Artw at 8:21 AM on August 20, 2014

That seems... Unusual.

Corrupt fuck just wants to sit on it until it goes away.
posted by Artw at 8:22 AM on August 20, 2014

Note that they are releasing no information... apart from that which they can use to smear Mike Brown.
posted by tavella at 8:25 AM on August 20, 2014 [11 favorites]

I've actually heard a lot of rumbling from more gun-toting libertarian circles that it would be better if the people of Ferguson were armed to a man

Well, the police are not responding proportionally to unarmed civilian protesters. But it's not as if the cops would stop acting they were facing an invading army if the protesters were armed to the teeth.

We may find out soon enough. Missouri has (mostly) open carry and gun sales in the region are spiking.
posted by zarq at 8:27 AM on August 20, 2014

Harvard Law students: Hands up, don't shoot
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:27 AM on August 20, 2014 [5 favorites]

We may find out soon enough. Missouri has (mostly) open carry and gun sales in the region are spiking.

Nah, that'll just be racists bunkering in.
posted by Artw at 8:28 AM on August 20, 2014 [13 favorites]

I've actually heard...from more gun-toting libertarian circles that it would be better if the people of Ferguson were armed to a man...

I'm just going to quote from upthread:

If the goal is to get them all killed, sure.
posted by frimble at 8:31 AM on August 20, 2014 [8 favorites]

The money quote was "If nonviolent protest in the streets did anything, the police would be doing that instead of training guns and tanks on your children."

I kind of agree that street protests are a waste of time, but really the thing you do instead of street protest is vote.
posted by empath at 8:36 AM on August 20, 2014

Better how?

Fine, here are links to the JPFO Racist roots of gun control and then No guns for negros.

How the bloodbath/destruction like MOVE or WACO doesn't happen following the JPFO material I don't know, but the 2 above links should give you insight into a gun rights to protect from overreaching government force is supposed to work.
posted by rough ashlar at 8:38 AM on August 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

"If nonviolent protest in the streets did anything, the police would be doing that instead of training guns and tanks on your children."

They should ask their wife if she likes voting.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 8:38 AM on August 20, 2014 [4 favorites]

Missouri likely to pass Voter ID bill this year

Report: Missouri voter-ID bill could disenfranchise 220,000
posted by desjardins at 8:41 AM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

President Obama to deliver statement at 12:45PM ET (I assume this will be about James Foley and Iraq, but who knows.)
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:42 AM on August 20, 2014

If voting in Ferguson did anything by itself Ferguson wouldn't have top-to-tail useless and non representative government.
posted by Artw at 8:44 AM on August 20, 2014 [5 favorites]

I kind of agree that street protests are a waste of time, but really the thing you do instead of street protest is vote.

I used to think this kind of thing was more true than I do today. Part of the issue is that most protests are about something other than the police, so when the protests or the police response get violent, the discussion is no longer about what the protests were supposed to be about, but instead about police vs. protesters.

In Ferguson's case, the protest is specifically about the conduct of the police. So the escalation of police response isn't a distraction to the protest's stated aims; it proves the point of the protesters in a very public way. Would you have heard about Ferguson, let alone seen it on the news for days, if the protesters had decided as one to go home and just vote for different people in the next election?

Which isn't to say the protesters shouldn't vote, because obviously they should. But they can do that and protest as well, and in this case the protest brings a lot of visibility to their cause that will end up helping them.
posted by chrominance at 8:44 AM on August 20, 2014 [23 favorites]

If voting in Ferguson did anything by itself Ferguson wouldn't have top-to-tail useless and non representative government.

Black turnout in Ferguson has been abysmal (largely because of shenanigans with vote scheduling). I doubt that will continue to be the case.
posted by empath at 8:45 AM on August 20, 2014 [4 favorites]

From what I know about the ACRM, King and others were particularly concerned with creating workable and achievable goals that public action like marches and strikes had a reasonable chance of bringing about.

We have the list of 20 answers we want out of this. Anyone want to start working on the list of workable and achievable goals that could/should be the outcome here?

Here are a few that have been discussed or there are petitions for:

* All Ferguson police outfitted with dashcams & chestcams

* A group of citizens, officers, politicians and civic leaders to craft and quickly implement a statement of non-negotiable standards for the performance and conduct of each and every police officer; Ferguson police department’s disciplinary system with the oversight of the citizens’ review board (source)

* Justice Department civil rights investigation, sanctions, and training for Ferguson & County police

* Police required to wear ID (at least badge numbers) when on duty; serious consequences for not doing so

* Investigation and serious consequences for police documented abuses during the protests

* Well funded community organizing group set up in Ferguson & surrounding communities to get African American voters registered, to the polls, help train & support candidates, etc

* Etc.
posted by flug at 8:47 AM on August 20, 2014 [8 favorites]

I just wanted to say, after poking around Ferguson threads in a couple of other places, I really appreciate MeFi even more. This seems to be the one place where "don't read the comments" doesn't apply.

MeFi moderators are top-notch, and pretty much everybody here seems to be a decent human being and I just want to have a beer or other beverage of your choice with you all.
posted by Foosnark at 8:49 AM on August 20, 2014 [35 favorites]

Long before Michael Brown was killed, I learned not to trust police officers. There's an image floating around showing two smiling cops in what I suppose we can now call quaint, tradiitonal uniforms on the left side and cops in tactical gear on the right, with the caption "When did this (image on the left) become this (image on the right)?"

I want to make my own version that shows me as a little black kid looking up to cops as heroes -- as so many cartoons, movies, and comic books I consumed as a child led me to see them -- on the left and older me on the right viewing cops with deep suspicion and fear on the right with a similar caption.

And now events in Ferguson in the wake of Michael Brown's death have led me to believe that I also cannot trust the Democratic Party of America.

So many Democrats are showing themselves to be utter cowards with their silence. Others, with their hemming and hawing and issuing bland statements about how the protesters must be peaceful and non-offensive -- without issuing similar, pointed admonishments to the police -- have shown themselves to care far more about upsetting the Fox News demographic than they do about standing up for justice.

I simply cannot believe that no prominent Democrat other than, unsurprisingly, Sen. Elizabeth Warren has issued a statement as strong as Rand Feckin' Paul's or even as forceful as what President George HW Bush said in the wake of the Rodney King verdict. Biden doesn't have anything to say about this? Neither one of the Clintons? No up and coming Democrat on the national stage feels like going rogue and breaking from the message issued by Democrat HQ to "Stay Bland and Inoffensive" and making it known that she or he thinks the police response has been absolute bullshit?

The local and relatively local Democrats have been outstanding on Ferguson. Why are the national level Democrats for the most part so feckless here? Why should I ever believe them again when they step to the mic and start spouting off about reform and improvement and justice for all and how deeply they're moved by the struggles of the common people?
posted by lord_wolf at 8:50 AM on August 20, 2014 [52 favorites]

Agreed. The Democrats are utterly insipid. It's all "Now is not the time", or "We're looking forward, not backward".

Now is always the time for human rights.
posted by anemone of the state at 8:54 AM on August 20, 2014 [19 favorites]

The idea I think is that it would go more like the Bundy ranch - that they greatly outnumber the cops, who would be scared shitless of guns in a way they clearly are not afraid of civil rights lawsuits.

I'm not sure I agree - I tend to think toting guns without the intention and willingness to use them just winds up with you dead. I was more pointing out that at least in some sectors, they seem well intentioned if wrong. It's possible to condemn looting while also fighting back against a corrupt police state.
posted by corb at 8:56 AM on August 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

If anything, this has exposed what utter cowards our "progressive" politicians are. At this point, I will have to do some heavy drinking before casting my vote for Hillary the Inevitable and whatever young, demographically convenient person she chooses as a running mate.

With that in mind, I'm going to try and figure out what I can do to get Warren in the race. Any ideas MeFi?
posted by lattiboy at 8:57 AM on August 20, 2014 [11 favorites]

My representative, Gwen Moore, who is black, extremely liberal and represents a majority black district, has only had this to say on Twitter (August 14, well after the police brutality had begun):

No parent should have to bury their child. I pray that the sympathy of our nation will help the Brown family through this difficult time.

Her next tweet, on August 19:

Good to see Carrie Hacksaw from the @BrewcityBruiser [roller derby team] at PT this morning! @ATIPT pic.twitter.com/einYcA8ilt

I would be really pissed off if I were a black voter represented by her. I'm going to give her office a call this week.
posted by desjardins at 9:00 AM on August 20, 2014 [3 favorites]

what I can do to get Warren in the race. Any ideas MeFi?

Watch old Steven Cobert shows about the superpac then from your own superpac and make a web site and start pimp'n that. If it gets noticed expect someone else to take the idea and run with it.

Example - tea party narrative.
posted by rough ashlar at 9:01 AM on August 20, 2014

Here's what Gwen Moore had to say on Facebook:

Unfortunately, this is an all too familiar story in our country. Yet again, we find ourselves grieving the loss of another young life cut short. The untimely death of Michael Brown and the civil unrest that followed in Ferguson, Missouri, has touched countless lives. As local and federal authorities continue to investigate these tragic events, we must do everything in our power to peacefully channel our anger and frustration in a manner that honors Michael’s memory and strengthens our resolve. I pray that the concern and sympathy of our nation will help the Brown family through this difficult time. I have faith that Michael Brown’s life will have a lasting impact on this world and inspire hope that tomorrow will be a more compassionate and understanding place to call our own.

Ugh. Have you not looked in the mirror? I think she has a son, too.
posted by desjardins at 9:02 AM on August 20, 2014

Agreed. The Democrats are utterly insipid.

Technically Bernie Sanders is not a dem but his caucus is such that it makes no difference in operation. He's been vocal and public about Ferguson. He flat-out called the FPD an occupying army in the clip here.

But yeah, the lack of public statement from anyone at the national level is abysmal.
posted by phearlez at 9:02 AM on August 20, 2014 [6 favorites]

Tea party narrative is faintly a lie, mind - funded by deep pockets who also own a TV station.
posted by Artw at 9:03 AM on August 20, 2014

Note: Today's coverage of AG Holder in #Ferguson is via pooled-press. Here's who has access: pic.twitter.com/nvW3ykKFLv
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 9:03 AM on August 20, 2014 [3 favorites]

At this point, I will have to do some heavy drinking before casting my vote for Hillary the Inevitable and whatever young, demographically convenient person she chooses as a running mate.

Hillary, to paraphrase Glenn Greenwald, is a venal fucking hawk. But the Democratic party has learned that instead of being truly progressive, they can run candidates like Obama, who they will probably follow with Clinton in '16 and a right-leaning gay man in '20 or '24- all because it gives them a veneer of progressive credibility as they stagger rightward. They would never run a POC, woman, or LGBT person who opposes the national security/police state.
posted by anemone of the state at 9:04 AM on August 20, 2014 [10 favorites]

The idea I think is that it would go more like the Bundy ranch - that they greatly outnumber the cops, who would be scared shitless of guns in a way they clearly are not afraid of civil rights lawsuits.

A big difference between Bundy Ranch and Ferguson is that the BR standoff was federal. And the feds have gotten egg on their face before (Waco, Ruby Ridge) and were really motivated to avoid a similar outcome.

This is Ferguson's Very First Rodeo, and it is strictly Amateur Hour.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 9:06 AM on August 20, 2014 [4 favorites]

(sorry to keep posting) Here's a comment in response to Moore's bland Facebook post, from a woman who is apparently white based on her profile pics:

I just don't understand that mentality. Why, I ask, why???? What in hell did this young man do to deserve this? All the other young men who seem to have brown skin seem to be targets of the police. Why we are slipping back to the 50s and 60s I just don't know, but in my 80ith decade [sic] I would have hoped that this nation had gone beyond all the hatred. I am so sorry this young man who had his whole good life ahead of him and for his parents who now have to try and move forward without him. Where is the sense and fairness in this? I certainly hope justice is served. The Browns need justice, but more, they need their son and we all know that will not happen. I am ashamed that this family is suffering so much now when a "white policeman" has done something so horrendous. He better have a damn good answer for his actions and if not, he needs to serve out the remainder of his days in prison like any other murderer.

Other comments were along the lines of "let's not jump to conclusions and besmirch this poor young white cop's reputation."
posted by desjardins at 9:06 AM on August 20, 2014 [12 favorites]

Have you not looked in the mirror?

Yes but she has money and therefore influence. Didn't someone in her family get in trouble for slashing tires of a Republican get out the vote effort? http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-01-24-tires-slashed_x.htm http://www.nbcnews.com/id/12498215/ns/politics/t/lawmakers-son-sentenced-slashing-tires/

The quality of the public service you get is tied to how much money you have.
posted by rough ashlar at 9:07 AM on August 20, 2014

So county prosecutor Bob McCulloch is now telling people who want him off the case to call the Gov, and even citing Sen C-Nadal. Wow.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 9:13 AM on August 20, 2014

Also accusing the Gov of hiding under the covers and "Nixonian doublespeak" and telling him to "man up"
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 9:14 AM on August 20, 2014

I think this article saying the abuse of journalists on the ground has been turning the media generally to be more sympathetic to the protestors is an incredibly important point. If anything I think strategically this would argue in favor of putting as many further "press" on the ground as possible - it's likely the police could avoid harassing journalists if there were just a select handful from major outlets, but if it's mixed all together with online/citizen/activist press it will become much more difficult for the police to avoid abusing press to the same extent they are protestors generally.
posted by crayz at 9:14 AM on August 20, 2014 [7 favorites]

Tea party narrative is faintly a lie, mind - funded by deep pockets who also own a TV station.

Not the context meant, but one would have to have given more of a damn than "Ugg! Not us therefore bad" line of polarization.

Short version is the narratives were going no where until someone with deep pockets saw a political advantage to funding/taking the narrative as their own.

Perhaps the history of the US Communist party and the party planks that were gaining traction got taken by the Democratic party would be an example The Blue would mostly have emotional distance from and therefore more educational as examples of how a political narrative can be snatched from one and used by a more powerful other? There is a reason rhetoric from the 1960's called the Democrats "Commies"
posted by rough ashlar at 9:15 AM on August 20, 2014

Also accusing the Gov of hiding under the covers and "Nixonian doublespeak" and telling him to "man up"

Wow, someone hand this gentleman another shovel and encourage him to keep digging.
posted by crayz at 9:15 AM on August 20, 2014 [4 favorites]

Ferguson, Watts and a Dream Deferred

The rioting this past week in Ferguson, Mo., by contrast, follows more than a decade of economic stagnation and worse for many black Americans, a trend that appears unlikely to be reversed in the foreseeable future.
...

Things went off track, however, as the 21st century approached. The riots in Ferguson follow a period of setback for African-Americans, despite the fact that we have a sitting black president in the White House.

While the economic downturns of the last decade-and-a-half have taken their toll on the median income of all races and ethnic groups, blacks have been the hardest hit. By 2012, black median household income had fallen to 58.4 percent of white income, almost back to where it was in 1967

That is so much of what this is about, and it could get so much worse. It may damage Obama's legacy more than anything else.
posted by Golden Eternity at 9:16 AM on August 20, 2014 [6 favorites]

This has been making the rounds on Facebook. What planet does this dude live on?
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 9:17 AM on August 20, 2014

Not the context meant, but one would have to have given more of a damn than "Ugg! Not us therefore bad" line of polarization.

Less "not us" than "doesn't exist" - a grassroots campaign like the Tea Party pretends to be is going to have a harder time succeeding because the Tea Party's success comes from elsewhere.
posted by Artw at 9:20 AM on August 20, 2014

I went home. The other guy didn't.

That's white privilege.

White privilege sent me home to my kids.

White privilege is the reason I've never told this story publicly. Matt Zoller Seitz
posted by rtha at 9:21 AM on August 20, 2014 [28 favorites]

So county prosecutor Bob McCulloch is now telling people who want him off the case to call the Gov, and even citing Sen C-Nadal.

The governor's phone number is posted in the comments in response to that. Just sayin'.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:23 AM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

The Organization for Black Struggle, in conjunction with the Hands Up, Don’t Shoot Coalition, has issued the following demands:

Immediate Demands

Local

1. Swift and impartial investigation by the Department of Justice into the Michael Brown shooting

2. Immediate arrest of Officer Darren Wilson

3. County Prosecutor Robert McCullough to stand down and allow a Special Prosecutor to be appointed

4. Firing of Ferguson Police Chief Thomas Jackson

5. Immediate de-escalation of militarized policing of peaceful protestors

6. Ensure the protection of the rights of people to assemble and peacefully protest

7. Hold law enforcement officers accountable for excessive use of force on peaceful protests

8. Immediate release of individuals who have participated in their right to assemble and peacefully protest

National

1. Obama to come to Ferguson to meet with the people whose human rights have been violated by aggressive and militarized policing, including the family of the victim–Michael Brown

2. Eric Holder to use the full resources and power of the Department of Justice to implement a nationwide investigation of systemic police brutality and harassment in black and brown communities

3. Ensure transparency, accountability, and safety of our communities by requiring front facing cameras in police departments with records of racial disparities in stops, arrests, killings, and excessive force complaints

4. Immediate suspension without pay of law enforcement officers that have used or approved excessive use of force. Additionally, their personal information and policing history should be made available to the public
posted by Artw at 9:24 AM on August 20, 2014 [89 favorites]

Sounds good to me.
posted by Trochanter at 9:25 AM on August 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

Immediate suspension without pay of law enforcement officers that have used or approved excessive use of force.

So they're trying to go after brass as well. Interesting.
posted by rmd1023 at 9:44 AM on August 20, 2014 [6 favorites]

That story, Rtha. Holy fuck.
posted by frimble at 9:44 AM on August 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

I just spoke with folks in the offices of two of my representatives--not unexpectedly, neither Henry Waxman (a generally good dude on a number of issues) nor Dianne Feinstein have issued any sort of statement on what's happening in Ferguson, MO. Waxman is 'waiting for the situation to evolve,' per the gentleman answering the phone.
posted by faux ami at 9:48 AM on August 20, 2014

Hold law enforcement officers accountable for excessive use of force on peaceful protests

Maybe demand that they wear some identifying information (name/badge number)?
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 9:48 AM on August 20, 2014 [4 favorites]

Aaron Bady: Anyone want to help put together an archive of cops explicitly saying that they have the right to kill people for disobedience?
posted by Lexica at 9:50 AM on August 20, 2014 [5 favorites]

Jello Biafra and DOA - I Wish I Was In El Salvador (SLYT)

"His toy gun looked real
I had to defend myself..."
I'm always lookin' for excuses
To defend myself

People are storming out into the streets
People are poouring out into the streets
They hate me, they hate me

I just might have to defend myself
NOW!

It's party time...

I look at you and smolder
With my nightstick and my shield
Little kids throw rocks at me
Their moms call me a pig

Commander says I gotta hold the line
'Til the TV cameras leave
Then we'll fire away, make my day
Just like good ol' Kent State

Why wait!
It'll be like I was down in El Salvador
Gonna jerk off with my gun
and kill the poor
Be a big man with my gun
And kill the poor
posted by symbioid at 9:54 AM on August 20, 2014 [7 favorites]

By Their Strange Fruit has an amazing, exhaustive, and incisive write-up of...well, everything.
posted by Phire at 9:54 AM on August 20, 2014 [16 favorites]

Marlin detective on administrative leave after Facebook rant

This is a very revealing look into the mind of a police.
posted by Golden Eternity at 10:01 AM on August 20, 2014

What about "Police Truck," symbioid? Too on the nose?
posted by entropicamericana at 10:01 AM on August 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

Seeing multiple tweets that the police are confiscating supplies from a church.

This would be cartoonish levels of villainy, if this weren't affecting actual people.

One of many tweets.
posted by Dark Messiah at 10:08 AM on August 20, 2014 [4 favorites]

Per Golden Eternity's link, maybe character standards for police would be an appropriate demand. We certainly have them for the lesser-paid school teachers in our communities, and weeding out those with attitudes contrary to public service would seem to be a win-win.
posted by rhizome at 10:08 AM on August 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

That Marlin detective is either lazy by most full-time employment standards or just math-challenged. 120+ hours a month would be 30 hours a week at best in a 30 or 31 day month.
posted by phearlez at 10:10 AM on August 20, 2014 [5 favorites]

If they wanna shoot at us, got a right to shoot 'em up
They shoot us in the back but they say it's from the front
You're warned, even if you aren't armed,
They will find an excuse to do you harm if they think you out of line
In every city's urban jurisdiction you will find
Some people making livings that are creeping from behind
And even if behavin' most the time man they know
If an officer to blame they need to let it go (let it go, let it go)
With a family at home, a mortgage to support
In times where it's hella hard as fuck to find a job
If you wanna keep yours you better not inform
Don't wanna be the side the wrong side of the law
But guess what, the people got a weapon of their own
The lens and a shutter built into a mobile phone
Evidence admissible in court
even more documented cases of what's been goin' on

Shoot the cops
Sh-sh-shoot the cops
Sh-sh-shoot the cops
Take your cameras out ya pockets people,
Shoot the cops,
Sh-sh-shoot the cops
Sh-sh-shoot the cops
Take your cameras out ya pockets people

-- Blue Scholars
posted by litlnemo at 10:12 AM on August 20, 2014 [8 favorites]

> maybe character standards for police would be an appropriate demand. We certainly have them for the lesser-paid school teachers in our communities

No Community Left Behind. If the police department fails to lower crime and improve quality of life, you get a letter from the state informing you that you have the right move to a nearby not-failing neighborhood, and they'll provide transportation.
posted by The corpse in the library at 10:12 AM on August 20, 2014 [11 favorites]

White Opinions Bingo: Ferguson Edition
posted by brundlefly at 10:12 AM on August 20, 2014 [6 favorites]

What the FUCK:

@Nettaaaaaaaa: The police have raided the church we were at last night and took ALL the supplies that were donated to give protesters.

@elonjames: How do you raid a church? How do you raid and take things that AMERICAN CITIZENS BOUGHT LEGALLY to protect themselves? #Ferguson

@MarvinBing: St. Marks church is now being raided by the police in #Ferguson They are taking all of the communities supplies.

Alright, all you personal-property libertarians, I'd better see some fucking outrage here.
posted by Phire at 10:12 AM on August 20, 2014 [67 favorites]

Imho, we need a serious actuarial discussion about the potential damages from police misconduct now that police are so wrongly trained, psychologically damaged, etc. I believe this discussion should cover several points : First, American cops are now committing murder an torture with increasing frequency. Second, there isn't necessarily any limit to damages for torture, given its special status. Third, there is a correlation between use of force and various issues seen here, like SWAT teams, racism, etc.

I know I am broken record about this but Chicago PD is on expected cost the city and state a total of half a billion dollars in abuse settlements paid out for the past few years and going forward into this one. Not only did they not fire any police they gave a pension to the police chief torture ringleader, protected the identities, jobs and pension of the actual torturers and have given the police massive pay raises in the form of unchecked overtime for the past two years and a good contract and budget at the time when every other part of the city is being savaged.

Half a billion dollars. Half a fucking billion dollars. And the perps got off scott-free.
posted by srboisvert at 10:15 AM on August 20, 2014 [19 favorites]

Well fuck. Guess those were some super dangerous blankets and water bottles.
posted by Artw at 10:16 AM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

A church? These cops are using the "First they came for the $subgroup, but I wasn't a $subgroup" as a to-do list.
posted by klarck at 10:19 AM on August 20, 2014 [24 favorites]

A Former Marine Explains All the Weapons of War Being Used by Police in Ferguson
posted by Phire at 10:23 AM on August 20, 2014 [7 favorites]

The next morning press conference prayer had better fucking start with, "Lord, about that thing when we broke into Your house yesterday..."
posted by frimble at 10:23 AM on August 20, 2014 [14 favorites]

Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Black get-out-the-vote campaign in Georgia leads to felony fraud charges for organizers

In the early spring of 2010, ahead of the July school-board primary election, an unprecedented get-out-the-vote effort materialized in the hitherto politically quiet black community. For the first time, they saw a majority within reach at a powerful local institution where a number of issues divided roughly along racial lines. [...]

Handcuffed, [GOTV organizer] Smart soon met nine other incarcerated African Americans who had participated in a vigorous get-out-the-vote campaign ahead of an election the previous month. Three of those jailed had been elected to the local school board. [...]

Yet the massive investigation failed to produce evidence that Smart or any other member of the group had defrauded or coerced a single voter. With these goods lacking, the state built its prosecution instead on proving that she and others breached technicalities like carrying envelopes containing ballots to the mail for their close acquaintances without the proper authorization.

posted by desjardins at 10:23 AM on August 20, 2014 [16 favorites]

I am skeptical of the reports of the raid by police on St. Marks. There's NO WAY they would be that stupid.
posted by RedShrek at 10:24 AM on August 20, 2014

isn't this uh ...in addition to being monstrous and cartoonishly evil, theft?
posted by The Whelk at 10:24 AM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

@elonjames: How do you raid a church? How do you raid and take things that AMERICAN CITIZENS BOUGHT LEGALLY to protect themselves? #Ferguson

Well. Might not be good for PR, but I think we've crossed the line where the protestors would be pretty well justified in molotov-frappuccinoing a few cop cars.
posted by crayz at 10:24 AM on August 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

I am skeptical of the reports of the raid by police on St. Marks. There's NO WAY they would be that stupid.

You prefer to believe that three completely different people who discussed the incident made it up over believing that cops who've been teargassing peaceful protesters could come up with another way to throw their weight around?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:25 AM on August 20, 2014 [8 favorites]

Hey, srboisvert, do you have a good one-stop read for all that stuff? Sounds like the kind of thing that will make a good/horrifying book someday.
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 10:26 AM on August 20, 2014

There's NO WAY they would be that stupid.

In this case, don't ascribe to stupidity what can adequately explained by malice.
posted by Dark Messiah at 10:26 AM on August 20, 2014 [25 favorites]

They'd need a warrant to do that right? I'd love to see what twisted reasoning a judge signed off on to justify that action.

Unless they didn't have a warrant, in which case maybe the police were just looking at a list and realized they missed one.

~~Freedom of assembly~~
~~Freedom of speech~~
~~Freedom of the press~~
Freedom from unreasonable search and seziure

Assuming twitter reports are accurate here, I hope they aren't.
posted by papercrane at 10:26 AM on August 20, 2014 [5 favorites]

STL Public Radio ‏@stlpublicradio 6m
.@rlippmann just spoke with clerk at Greater St. Mark's Missionary Baptist Church - she says there's absolutely NO police there. #Ferguson

FOX2now ‏@FOX2now 1m
Greater St. Mark Church in #Ferguson is not being raided by police, despite reports #STL

Rachel Lippmann ‏@rlippmann 2m
.@TimSLloyd says he just drove by Greater St. Mark Church in #Ferguson and saw no signs of police there.
posted by desjardins at 10:27 AM on August 20, 2014 [7 favorites]

You have it, at least from me. It is unconscionable to take privately donated supplies from private Americans. Civil forfeiture is an evil and especially so when used on relief materials.
posted by corb at 10:27 AM on August 20, 2014

molotov-frappuccinoing

I am just never going to learn how to spell that, am I
posted by shakespeherian at 10:27 AM on August 20, 2014 [3 favorites]

What - exactly do the police think the end game is here?
posted by The Whelk at 10:28 AM on August 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

I'm waiting for 3rd amendment Quartering of Troops violation when the Nat Guard decides to commandeer a house as a crash pad.
posted by asockpuppet at 10:29 AM on August 20, 2014 [3 favorites]

isn't this uh ...in addition to being monstrous and cartoonishly evil, theft?

No, 'civil forfeiture'. The state likes to come up with nice words for murdering your children and stealing from you.
posted by empath at 10:29 AM on August 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

desjardins, earlier report used past tense. Could they have come and gone?
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 10:29 AM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

okay, the people I've seen tweeting about the church raid are not even there (@awkward_duck and @elonjames)
posted by desjardins at 10:30 AM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

desjardins, earlier report used past tense. Could they have come and gone?

again, I have no idea what's actually happening, but here is what I saw:

justified agitator ‏@Awkward_Duck 27m
Breaking now: #ferguson St. marks Missionary Church - home of medical triage and healing for community currently being raided by police.
posted by desjardins at 10:31 AM on August 20, 2014

Obviously I'm not sure what happened, and I hate to cast aspersions on anyone, but the same people tweeting about the church raid were also accused of misrepresenting/falsifying events the other night (Monday, iirc).

No one else is reporting this happened, either. Waiting for objective confirmation is probably a good idea.

Subsequent tweets from the three say the church held gas masks, water and milk. (Milk being used as a teargas eyewash.)
posted by zarq at 10:33 AM on August 20, 2014

I think this is just a rumor without any real basis in fact. I know the Police out there has been really stupid but raiding a church would be inconceivable even by the standards of the Ferguson PD.
posted by RedShrek at 10:33 AM on August 20, 2014

The Weekly Standard, a conservative rag, just compared the police department of Ferguson to bishops who cover up for pedophilic priests, in a mass email blast, for those of you who are curious how the other side is handling this.
posted by corb at 10:33 AM on August 20, 2014 [5 favorites]

desjardins, I know Elon James was accused of making up teargas reports (which he refuted later with the TWiB audio) - was Nettaaaaaaaa also accused of falsifying things?

Elon James is reportedly on his way to the location so I guess we'll have more info soon. If it turns out to be false then I'll be very sorry (and angry) to have spread misinformation.
posted by Phire at 10:34 AM on August 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

yeah, sorry, it's strange that the people tweeting about the church raid aren't there, and none of the people they know that are there have taken pictures.
posted by desjardins at 10:34 AM on August 20, 2014

Rumors happen in chaotic situations. Maybe it's true, maybe it's false, maybe it's a garbled version of some other truth. Nothing would surprise me at this point.
posted by Sticherbeast at 10:36 AM on August 20, 2014

shaun king is also tweeting it but hard to tell if he's just passing on info...
posted by nadawi at 10:36 AM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

While it's reasonable to wait on confirmation of reports, I'm mystified by the belief that the cops we have seen in action the last week would regard raiding a church as 'beyond the pale'.
posted by tavella at 10:37 AM on August 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

was Nettaaaaaaaa also accused of falsifying things?

I believe those were the same accusations that Elon James faced, because iirc they were together that night, but I'd have to wade through about a hundred tweets at this point. I have not listened to the TWIB audio (which is generally useless for me if it's not captioned) so I have not passed judgment on it, just relating what others have said.
posted by desjardins at 10:38 AM on August 20, 2014

I see this has been discussed upthread. But in the midst of a (frustrating) conversation with a friend who has chosen to focus on the looting and shoplifting instead of anything else, he mentioned: "12 witnesses say that Brown lunged at the cop." I googled and this is going around all over the place. The Blaze has a story with 56k shares. "More than a dozen witnesses have backed up the account of Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson in the controversial shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown, police sources reportedly told St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter Christine Byers." This is going around all over conservative media now, it seems. There is absolutely nothing to back it up and it goes against everything we know about the witnesses at the scene. Seriously, this is the dominant narrative the pro-Wilson side is pushing now, and it's literally just a fabrication. If anyone can point to even marginal evidence that these dozen-plus witnesses exist, I want to hear it because I want to assume the benefit of the doubt for people pushing that thread.
posted by naju at 10:38 AM on August 20, 2014 [4 favorites]

I am skeptical of the reports of the raid by police on St. Marks. There's NO WAY they would be that stupid.

This would be the same police who have been threatening to shoot journalists on live TV?

The skepticism seems largely misplaced here... @elonjames, @awkward_duck, and @netaaaaaaa have been backing up what they've been saying with evidence. Elon James was accused of falsifying tear gas reports that he had recordings of.

We're seeing the inevitable discrediting of activists here. Perhaps there's been a game of broken telephone, but the idea that people who have spent the past few days being teargassed and shot at would be resorting to making shit up is, well, gross.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 10:39 AM on August 20, 2014 [9 favorites]

Again, two questions:

One, who's ordering this stuff, and two, really, really, where are the feds?

Is this not blatantly inept?
posted by Trochanter at 10:39 AM on August 20, 2014

I think it starts from someone else's tweets (my best guess is Marvin Bing) and everyone else is reacting.

Jelani Cobb:

At Greater St Mark Church. Witnesses say police came to the building which was being used as aid station for protestors. #Ferguson (1)

Police are gone, pastor of the church said they'd surrounded the building re charge that ppl were sleeping inside. #Ferguson (2)
posted by zix at 10:40 AM on August 20, 2014 [3 favorites]

jelani cobb ‏@jelani9 3m
Police are gone, pastor of the church said they'd surrounded the building re charge that ppl were sleeping inside. #Ferguson

Mark Berman ‏@themarkberman 3m
Employee of Greater St. Mark Church tells me no police raid on the church. "There's nothing going on other than we're having bible class."

Sigh. It's really difficult to know what's going on (for the record, the concept that there would be a raid is totally believable to me).
posted by desjardins at 10:41 AM on August 20, 2014 [3 favorites]

Another shot of that rock thrower, really not wanting his face on camera
posted by Artw at 10:41 AM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

Which is just as bad really. Since when are people not allowed to sleep inside a church, which apart from the centuries-long tradition of churches as sanctuaries (an issue which doesn't seem worth discussing the pros and cons of here) is private property?
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 10:42 AM on August 20, 2014 [5 favorites]

I have a lot of trust in Elon James White, Shaun King and others mentioned above. I think they are pretty solid sources as eyewitnesses. But I want to wait for extra corroboration given that they are NOT claiming to have seen the raid themselves.

(These guys are exhausted. Reading Shaun and Elon this morning -- you can see just how wrung out they are.)
posted by maudlin at 10:42 AM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

There's a football saying: If you're not fixing it, you're coaching it. So, horrifying as it is, do we have to assume that this is federally approved policing?
posted by Trochanter at 10:43 AM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

If they wanted to nab people sleeping in a church they should have come on a Sunday.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 10:43 AM on August 20, 2014 [17 favorites]

The Blaze has a story with 56k shares. "More than a dozen witnesses have backed up the account of Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson in the controversial shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown, police sources reportedly told St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter Christine Byers."

The Blaze should swap out "More than a dozen" with the number of shares the article receives. It would be just as accurate.
posted by ryoshu at 10:45 AM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

Jelani Cobb: "Pastor Tommie Pierson confirmed police entered church building. Unconfirmed reports that police removed materials. "

Elon is at the church. One window is boarded up. (Instagram).
posted by maudlin at 10:45 AM on August 20, 2014 [3 favorites]

From the other perspective: it would be a really fucking stupid rumour to be making up because it's so easily proven wrong. I'm much more inclined to believe that the protestors aren't that stupid...but I guess it only takes one tweet.

Latest from Jelani Cobb: Church says it was a safe space for organizers. Police say they violated housing policy by having ppl stay overnight. #Ferguson

Pastor Tommie Pierson confirmed police entered church building. Unconfirmed reports that police removed materials. #Ferguson

Tommie Pierson is the pastor Greater St. Mark Family Church, so.
posted by Phire at 10:47 AM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

Why are people sleeping in a church a problem for the police?
posted by asockpuppet at 10:47 AM on August 20, 2014 [3 favorites]

They didn't have the "proper authorization". Another video. "If anyone is on the premises tonight they will be arrested".
posted by Phire at 10:48 AM on August 20, 2014

If they wanted to nab people sleeping in a church they should have come on a Sunday.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 10:43 AM on August 20 [3 favorites +] [!]

Epony-awfuckthisshitisalmosttoodepressingforjokesbutIrealizethevalueinhumorasacopingmechanismsoidon'tmeantocriticize-ical
posted by Cookiebastard at 10:48 AM on August 20, 2014 [8 favorites]

naju, I have seen this allegation as well and haven't found any corroboration besides Christine Byers. All media reports that I've read so far with this allegation of 12 eyewitnesses have all been sourced from Byers. It was first mentioned in this mefi comment
posted by fizzix at 10:49 AM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

Obviously I'm not sure what happened, and I hate to cast aspersions on anyone, but the same people tweeting about the church raid were also accused of misrepresenting/falsifying events the other night (Monday, iirc).

In these situations, things get really confusing. I once accidentally sent a small group of people out to [a place] based on nothing, because I had received an impassioned phone call from a friend who had gotten some bad information and was absolutely sure that police were doing [thing]. Nearest I can figure, there were some cops passing by this place for some unrelated reason and everyone got very jumpy.

It's very easy for a person who is basically reliable to get confused and to contact someone else, who then assumes that they can't be confused because they are after all basically reliable.

It's actually quite common for "blah blah raid is happening" to be tweeted and then have it prove to be wrong. In any big protest situation, it is very confusing and people are very jumpy. This is true even if the worst that is happening is pepper spray and nightsticks, and even if you have many people present who have been in this kind of demo before. People for whom it is all new? Who are at actual gunpoint? Just by being there and being basically on point, they are amazing.
posted by Frowner at 10:50 AM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

From the other perspective: it would be a really fucking stupid rumour to be making up because it's so easily proven wrong.

This was my thought. If this is only a rumor, I really hope this doesn't destroy anyone's credibility on other events.
posted by desjardins at 10:51 AM on August 20, 2014

There's an easy way to disprove this "12 witnesses support Officer Wilson's account" story. Ask anyone who shares it to show where we've heard Officer Wilson's account anywhere. No account has been released by Officer Wilson, thus it's impossible to support his account.
posted by Joey Michaels at 10:51 AM on August 20, 2014 [10 favorites]

The witnesses are actually all molotov cocktails.
posted by Artw at 10:52 AM on August 20, 2014 [13 favorites]

Jelani Cobb: "Organizers saying this is the 3rd time police have come here. Last night they had assault weapons."
posted by maudlin at 10:53 AM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

"The amount of restraint the officers are showing is incredible. They are coming under fire every day." This was said by Sgt. Kevin Ahlbrand on Ronan Farrow Daily. He "cant imagine what Darren Wilson is going through."
posted by mokeydraws at 10:53 AM on August 20, 2014

Why are people sleeping in a church a problem for the police?

The same reason the people sitting in a private car on private property were arrested and charged with failure to disperse. Because we are supposed to do what cops tell us to, and by the way, fuck your rights, you'll have rights when cops say you have rights.
posted by rtha at 10:54 AM on August 20, 2014 [37 favorites]

I'm probably going to end up on a watchlist given how many frapuccinos I drink. thanks, mitheral.
posted by desjardins at 10:54 AM on August 20, 2014 [7 favorites]

Why are people sleeping in a church a problem for the police?

I'm not defending the police at all, but: it's one less thing for them to control, for one thing. As a corollary to that, Ferguson PD had been forcing people to go in certain directions, based on where they lived. They had been checking IDs. If people are staying at the church, then there's no longer a point in checking IDs.

For another, it's a basic tenet of guerilla warfare that you do not let the enemy sleep. You do not allow them to have sanctuary. You make them feel surrounded at all times. If the church is a safe base, then the police cannot successfully wage their war.

Even if people are staying at the church, it makes sense for the police to keep stopping by. Make people feel unsafe and surrounded.

...

Generally speaking, rumors happen. You can't judge these tweeters because they got something wrong, especially since oftentimes they were simply relaying information, which can always entail a game of telephone.

I remember on 9/11/01 hearing rumors on the radio of a car bomb exploding right outside the White House. Who knows how that rumor started. These things happen.
posted by Sticherbeast at 10:54 AM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

"The amount of restraint the officers are showing is incredible. They are coming under fire every day."

Show us. Show us some bullets. Show us some bulletholes.

This was said by Sgt. Kevin Ahlbrand on Ronan Farrow Daily. He "cant imagine what Darren Wilson is going through."

I bet it's really annoying like waiting for some minor administrative stuff to be dealt with before you can get back to work.
posted by Artw at 10:55 AM on August 20, 2014 [17 favorites]

He "cant imagine what Darren Wilson is going through."

(cut to Darren Wilson going through a DMT-fueled psychic journey beyond all imagination)
posted by Sticherbeast at 10:56 AM on August 20, 2014 [21 favorites]

@jelani9: Tommie Pierson, pastor of the church, is also a state rep. Saw police on the premises. #Ferguson

This might explain some of the earlier conflicting news reports:

@Nettaaaaaaaa: When you google St Marks it's some church all across town. This space that the police went to USED TO BE St. Sebastian's.

@Nettaaaaaaaa: If you google St. Sebastian's church in Ferguson, MO the address to this St Marks church comes up.
posted by Phire at 10:58 AM on August 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

Yep. "If you knew STL you would know that church used to be St. Sebastian's. Please feel free to follow someone else & unfollow me. I'm over it."
posted by maudlin at 10:59 AM on August 20, 2014

For another, it's a basic tenet of guerilla warfare

um
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 11:01 AM on August 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

Amnesty Int'l is at the church. (I'm still trying to get over having to have Amnesty observers in the US)
posted by desjardins at 11:01 AM on August 20, 2014 [5 favorites]

So it seems like nothing was taken but man, this was an incredibly dumb move by the police. This was not helpful one bit.
posted by RedShrek at 11:01 AM on August 20, 2014

Aside, the Daily Dot has a jaw-dropping report on r/ferguson:

Like r/TravyvonMartin before it, r/ferguson is part of a white supremacist network of 42 subreddits wholly dedicated to bashing African Americans, who have been labeled by the moderators as the “Chimpire.” [...]

U/Jewish_NeoCon2 told the Daily Dot that he jumped on the virtual estate quickly, essentially to ‟squat” it, before it could be created by people with more tolerant views toward African Americans.

U/Jewish_NeoCon2 is the moderator of 91 other subreddits. While some of those subreddit are fairly mainstream, like r/media, most of are inside ‟The Chimpire.” U/Jewish_NeoCon2 announced the creation of the network in a post last month, saying it came out of rapid growth of the anti-black, white supremacist subreddit r/GreatApes:

posted by Phire at 11:02 AM on August 20, 2014 [13 favorites]

That's it. I give up. I formally resign my position in the human race.

Henceforth I shall be a cat. I will poop in a box and other people will feed me. Done.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 11:05 AM on August 20, 2014 [38 favorites]

Holy shit. That's video of that cop pointing a rifle at protestors, threatening to kill them, and telling the questioner to go fuck himself.
posted by maudlin at 11:05 AM on August 20, 2014 [12 favorites]

maudlin, yeah, I posted the Officer Go Fuck Yourself video this morning. Good times.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 11:07 AM on August 20, 2014 [4 favorites]

Aside, the Daily Dot has a jaw-dropping report on r/ferguson:

The amount of straight up fascists and racists on reddit is staggering sometimes.
posted by empath at 11:07 AM on August 20, 2014 [6 favorites]

Sorry, roomthreeseventeen. So hard to keep up.
posted by maudlin at 11:08 AM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

I've only found one hearsay tweet so far that says some Maalox was taken and that kids were at the church.

I'm waiting for Elon James to update his instagram (ig of last night with some supplies in the background). I'm a bit grossed out at myself waiting for proof though.
posted by zix at 11:08 AM on August 20, 2014

Ah, yes, reddit, classy as ever.
posted by tavella at 11:08 AM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

maudlin, no problem. That video is worth an extra few clicks.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 11:08 AM on August 20, 2014

Officer Go Fuck Yourself displays poor muzzle awareness. Please arrange a meeting with a firearms instructor.
posted by Sticherbeast at 11:08 AM on August 20, 2014 [13 favorites]

Phire: "Aside, the Daily Dot has a jaw-dropping report on r/ferguson:"

From the article: "While Reddit collectively prides itself on its tolerance..."

What the what now?
posted by brundlefly at 11:08 AM on August 20, 2014 [15 favorites]

When I get too depressed I go listen to some more We Shall Overcome until I feel better.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 11:09 AM on August 20, 2014

Reddit is probably organizing a coordinated search now to reveal the names of protesters who are giving sass to cops.
posted by naju at 11:11 AM on August 20, 2014 [3 favorites]

From the article: "While Reddit collectively prides itself on its tolerance..."

What the what now?

For "tolerance" read "lack of real moderation."
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 11:12 AM on August 20, 2014 [10 favorites]

From the article: "While Reddit collectively prides itself on its tolerance..."

What the what now?

It's called the Dunning-Kruger effect.
posted by Etrigan at 11:12 AM on August 20, 2014

> What the what now?

Yeah, Reddit doesn't collectively do anything. It's 4chan with a higher average civility level — though that's mainly just a historical accident.
posted by savetheclocktower at 11:12 AM on August 20, 2014

Can we not get on a reddit derail? The main subs are covering this.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 11:12 AM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

This Storify was good, too: The Racist Psychopathy of Discounting Black Witnesses in the Murder of Mike Brown:

4 different eyewitness accounts from 4 different angles (left, right, above, ground level) all tell the EXACT SAME STORY. Period.

What is also SO KEY is that all 4 of these eyewitnesses, including Dorian Johnson who was right there, had the same story from THAT DAY on.

The idea, the gall, to think that 3 strangers, in essence just because they are black, immediately colluded & made up this story is crazy.

Outside of saying that these 3 independent eyewitnesses are lying because they are black, what reason exists? Name one.

(He references 3 witnesses in later tweets because he only posted 3 news videos.)
posted by Phire at 11:18 AM on August 20, 2014 [24 favorites]

Officer Go Fuck Yourself displays poor muzzle awareness. Please arrange a meeting with a firearms instructor.

I disagree. He never points the weapon at anyone or anything he's not prepared to shoot and kill.
posted by phearlez at 11:20 AM on August 20, 2014 [14 favorites]

Phire, that link is not a link!
posted by rtha at 11:20 AM on August 20, 2014

Rookie mistake! Edited.
posted by Phire at 11:21 AM on August 20, 2014

Officer Go Fuck Yourself displays poor muzzle awareness. Please arrange a meeting with a firearms instructor.

The police are pretty consistently aiming their weapons at protestors, all of them.
posted by Artw at 11:22 AM on August 20, 2014

Jelani Cobb

To be clear, this is all happening at the school building adjacent to the sanctuary itself. #Ferguson (1)

The school is connected to the church, which is why the pastor responded to the call that police were in the building. #Ferguson (2)

Church, organizers now say nothing was removed from the building. #Ferguson @cabooklover @emarvelous @AdamSerwer (3)

Pictures from USA Today's Yamiche Alcindor 1, 2
posted by zix at 11:23 AM on August 20, 2014 [3 favorites]

#Russia students at U.S. Embassy in Moscow protest for #Ferguson.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 11:26 AM on August 20, 2014 [3 favorites]

I think people are saying that the witnesses can't be trusted because they are tainted by the first witness's public testimony. It's why cops usually separate and hold witnesses immediately.

Per Byers, I think what happened is that she called a police contact who told her the dozen witnesses thing. I don't think it's deliberate misinformation by the media, at least, probably more the cops.
posted by corb at 11:26 AM on August 20, 2014

Here's a great story from the Seattle city police chief in charge of the police response to the 1999 WTO protests about how to fix the police system to avoid another Ferguson.

Finally, a cop with some sanity.
posted by zug at 11:31 AM on August 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

Per Byers, I think what happened is that she called a police contact who told her the dozen witnesses thing. I don't think it's deliberate misinformation by the media, at least, probably more the cops.

She has never said how she knew. All we know is that she is out on FMLA leave and whatever her sources were, the information did not meet the standards for publication according to her paper.

I agree it seems more likely that the police reached out to her (or responded to a question from her) to try and change the direction of discussion, rather than her just making it up, hearing it from a neighbor or friend, hearing it from another reporter, etc - but for all we know one of those things did in fact happen. What I don't get is why she would jeopardize her job by doing something so misconstrue-able. She basically traded on her job as a reporter to buy the police some credibility and in doing so could have really damaged her paper's reputation...why?
posted by sallybrown at 11:32 AM on August 20, 2014

In addition to aiming weapons at civilians to threaten them, I think this is the first time I have noticed a riot line with armed people intermingled in it. If this actually had turned into a riot, what was the plan with this? The guy with the AR-15 and 4 hours of training last year is just going to back off because he doesn't have a shield and the other proper gear?
posted by feloniousmonk at 11:32 AM on August 20, 2014 [5 favorites]

There's an easy way to disprove this "12 witnesses support Officer Wilson's account" story.

Yeah. Ask for names. I can give you the names and video testaments of almost every witness who corroborates another account. Where are the names and video testaments of the "more than a dozen"?
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 11:34 AM on August 20, 2014 [13 favorites]

Chris Hayes has some interesting stuff up now about the "I <3 Ferguson" signs that are going up on the lawns of the tony houses there.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 11:37 AM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

I'm sure they've all conveniently chosen to go into hiding.
posted by naju at 11:37 AM on August 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

The problem with the church raid is that even if it were exactly as first rumored, hell, even if they'd shot the pastor, I'm still not sure it would be a "surely this" moment. I mean, what's-his-face shot up a kindergarten and we still don't have meaningful gun control. We've had hundreds of damning documents leaked by Snowden, yet the NSA still spies on people. I am not sure what kind of moment it would take to scale back the police state at this point.

Maybe police shooting unarmed children? I mean, surely th ... wait.
posted by desjardins at 11:39 AM on August 20, 2014 [21 favorites]

Dunno about you desjardins but I need a fucking drink. Or twelve. Maybe eighteen would be appropriate.

Despair.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 11:42 AM on August 20, 2014 [4 favorites]

Looks like the GOP found something to be angry at Jay Nixon about.
posted by Artw at 11:42 AM on August 20, 2014

Which does, I guess, make the case for bland as fuck "both sides" nonsense when Obama et al discuss Ferguson, since the moment you stray from that you get this shit.

/vomits forever anyway.
posted by Artw at 11:44 AM on August 20, 2014

I've been drinking all day 'for work'
posted by shakespeherian at 11:45 AM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

Why aren't there a fuckton of pro-bono lawyers descending on Ferguson this very minute, with the aim of gathering and organizing information, evidence, and testimony to launch a MASSIVE set of lawsuits against the city and the PD? Its all well and good for the cops to run roughshod now, but the consequences of those actions should be years and millions upon millions of dollars of civil rights violation litigation, the repeated testimony of every single officer involved in this debacle. If every officer out there knew that any disproportional response or constitutionally questionable action on his part would be recorded and used against him and the department, that he would be called up again and again and again to defend his action on the witness stand over the course of years, that his name would be part of the public record (a single website perhaps, collating all the video, twitter, and other evidence would be very handy indeed) forever, might think twice about sticking his AR-15 in somebody's face and hissing "fuck you"...
posted by Chrischris at 11:46 AM on August 20, 2014 [5 favorites]

Chrischris, perhaps they are deferring to ACLU of Missouri and other groups already on the ground.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 11:47 AM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

over the last week i have sunk into a kind of disassociative state in which i am constantly assailed by dark suspicions that we are on the cusp of some kind of calculated, horrendous event which is about to be unleashed on the country. you've got a population trained to see everything in terms of dichotomy. you've got massive apathy. you've got militant armed-to-the-teeth police coast to coast. bumbling good-for-nothings in government and media. you've got ebolaphobia waiting in the wings. i just don't know.
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 11:47 AM on August 20, 2014 [29 favorites]

Hey, New Yorkers... Michael Brown's family will be in town this weekend at the rally for Eric Garner. Show up.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 11:48 AM on August 20, 2014 [3 favorites]

Details for the Staten Island rally for Eric Garner
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 11:50 AM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

Chrischris, the National Bar Association (black lawyers, mostly) have observers there.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 11:50 AM on August 20, 2014

Is anyone else just filled with despair? It is getting to the point where I don't even want to be at work today, just go home and be sad.
posted by corb at 11:50 AM on August 20, 2014 [26 favorites]

yes.
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 11:52 AM on August 20, 2014 [5 favorites]

Well you can just color me entirely unsurprised that something with the Bloomburg name on it would dispute the idea that showing up in riot gear and having a certain kind of presence from authority might alter the trajectory of how things happen.
posted by phearlez at 11:52 AM on August 20, 2014

I know that in NYC and some other places it's illegal to own gas masks and bulletproof vests if you're not a cop (WHICH IS BULLSHIT) , I wonder if something similar is in play in MO, and that's what they'll use to justify the raid.

Well, it's not illegal to wear a vest in New York, as long as you're not a felon or are committing a crime

http://www.bulletsafe.com/body-armor-law-new-york.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/21/fashion/21BULLET.html

IANAL, but there's a NY law that could possibly be construed to ban gas masks, but I wasn't able to find any reference to someone being convicted/arrested for violating it. I wouldn't be surprised if this has been used to harass protestors though.

NEW YORK Penal Law 240.35 (4):
Being masked or in any manner disguised by unusual or unnatural attire or facial alteration, loiters, remains or congregates in a public place with other persons so masked or disguised, or knowingly permits or aids persons so masked or disguised to congregate in a public place; except that such conduct is not unlawful when it occurs in connection with a masquerade party or like entertainment if, when such entertainment is held in a city which has promulgated regulations in connection with such affairs, permission is first obtained from the police or other appropriate authorities;

posted by longdaysjourney at 11:53 AM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

Trying to find a source for this still, but Shaun King: "Police now admit that Officer Darren Wilson fired his weapon multiple times as Mike Brown ran away. Add that to your fact list."
posted by Phire at 11:55 AM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

Is anyone else just filled with despair? It is getting to the point where I don't even want to be at work today, just go home and be sad.

Well, one good thing about being depressed is this is how I feel all the time, but I'm really angry about what's happening in Ferguson and by extension in the U.S., so the shorter answer is yes.
posted by Joey Michaels at 11:55 AM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

Is anyone else just filled with despair? It is getting to the point where I don't even want to be at work today, just go home and be sad.

Yup. Pretty much. I'm going to go to the coast with my family this weekend, and have planned a full on media blackout and as much beer as I can carry. I also have Peter Paul and Mary's If I had a Hammer on repeat. Its helping a little bit.
posted by furnace.heart at 11:55 AM on August 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon :over the last week i have sunk into a kind of disassociative state in which i am constantly assailed by dark suspicions that we are on the cusp of some kind of calculated, horrendous event which is about to be unleashed on the country. you've got a population trained to see everything in terms of dichotomy. you've got massive apathy. you've got militant armed-to-the-teeth police coast to coast. bumbling good-for-nothings in government and media. you've got ebolaphobia waiting in the wings. i just don't know.

I have felt this way since the Bush Coup of 2001. It is one of the reasons I joined metafilter.
posted by yertledaturtle at 11:57 AM on August 20, 2014 [10 favorites]

Holy fuck, Ferguson PD excreted a tiny nugget of information?
posted by Artw at 11:58 AM on August 20, 2014

I am not filled with despair when I look at the amazing list of new people that I follow on Twitter thanks to Metafilter who are doing amazing things in Missouri and all over this country.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 11:58 AM on August 20, 2014 [5 favorites]

Why aren't there a fuckton of pro-bono lawyers descending on Ferguson this very minute,

National Lawyers Guild (link to their Ferguson-related donation page)
posted by rtha at 11:58 AM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

The ACLU have apparently sent a letter to the MO State Highway Patrol over the conduct of Officer Go Fuck Yourself.
posted by DynamiteToast at 11:59 AM on August 20, 2014 [14 favorites]

The officers who shot the young man in St. Louis yesterday are both put on leave.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 12:00 PM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

Is anyone else just filled with despair? It is getting to the point where I don't even want to be at work today, just go home and be sad.

Yup. Despair, heartbreak, dread, and anger. I've been trying to use the anger to power through some cleaning at home, but it doesn't lend itself to well to software development or sitting through bullshit meetings.
posted by Foosnark at 12:01 PM on August 20, 2014 [6 favorites]

Trying to find a source for this still, but Shaun King: "Police now admit that Officer Darren Wilson fired his weapon multiple times as Mike Brown ran away. Add that to your fact list."

Until he comes up with a source for that I'm going with "nope".
posted by Justinian at 12:05 PM on August 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

It also doesn't lend itself well to trying to learn one's first programming language, but I keep staring at my code and hoping.
posted by deludingmyself at 12:05 PM on August 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

Is anyone else just filled with despair? It is getting to the point where I don't even want to be at work today, just go home and be sad.

If you can define some middle state, one that lies between the way things were and the way things ought to be, what would that middle state look like ?

Probably something like this.

Progress is messy, and all that.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 12:06 PM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

A few days ago I commented that I couldn't see any way America could recover from the enormous wounds that have opened up. A friend replied that this is what the recovery looks like... that everything leading up to this has been a festering wound not healing. It's hard to see that in the midst of all this and I'm still not entirely convinced. But I did appreciate that perspective. It's the only glimmer of hope I'm holding onto in this mess.
posted by naju at 12:08 PM on August 20, 2014 [16 favorites]

FWIW, the source appears to be a NYTimes article which has the following sentence:

As Officer Wilson got out of his car, the men were running away. The officer fired his weapon but did not hit anyone, according to law enforcement officials.

But that's also unsourced, so....
posted by Justinian at 12:08 PM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

I was despairing to look at the paper last night and realize how many truly epically shitty things were competing for space in the headlines. Honestly, ISIS, Ebola, Iraq generally,Ferguson, all of these are huge.
posted by OmieWise at 12:09 PM on August 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

"Last evening, a police officer - who we believe to be a municipal police officer - pointed an assault weapon at civilians and threatened to kill them. When asked for his identity, the officer invites citizens to fuck themselves"

Even after seeing the video, reading these words in an official ACLU complaint is just ... wow. This country.
posted by crayz at 12:10 PM on August 20, 2014 [15 favorites]

You forgot Gaza!
posted by desjardins at 12:10 PM on August 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

I was despairing to look at the paper last night and realize how many truly epically shitty things were competing for space in the headlines. Honestly, ISIS, Ebola, Iraq generally,Ferguson, all of these are huge.

Gaza.

Ukraine.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 12:11 PM on August 20, 2014 [6 favorites]

I just got called an Obama apologist on Facebook for saying we shouldn't start another war in Iraq. It's a tough time to be a progressive.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 12:12 PM on August 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

It seems to me that if Wilson began firing as Brown ran away it doesn't actually matter if Brown turned around and charged at him. One can't argue that you shot a guy because he was charging at you if you started firing while he was charging away from you.

But that's all pure speculation. You know what would help? If the police report were public. If we knew how many shots were fired a lot of this would be academic.
posted by Justinian at 12:13 PM on August 20, 2014

Is anyone else just filled with despair?

Since roughly 2001, yes.
posted by elizardbits at 12:13 PM on August 20, 2014 [30 favorites]

The ACLU have apparently sent a letter to the MO State Highway Patrol over the conduct of Officer Go Fuck Yourself.

Whom they suspect was a municiple officer, so I'm not sure what the Highway Patrol is able to do.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 12:14 PM on August 20, 2014

Also Detroit.
posted by almostmanda at 12:14 PM on August 20, 2014

But that's all pure speculation. You know what would help? If the police report were public. If we knew how many shots were fired a lot of this would be academic.

I've been sort of suspecting for the last few days that there isn't one.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 12:15 PM on August 20, 2014 [3 favorites]

Police guide to “restoring calm”.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 12:15 PM on August 20, 2014

Whom they suspect was a municiple officer, so I'm not sure what the Highway Patrol is able to do.

Isn't HP theoretically the coordinating agency at this point, still?
posted by phearlez at 12:15 PM on August 20, 2014

For anyone feeling overwhelmed by depression or despair, please remember you can always take a page from furnace.heart and do the full media blackout thing, if even for a single day. Your mental and emotional health is important, and there are many, many ways an individual can contribute to the cause. Don't feel obligated to keep yourself plugged in 24/7 to the outrage machine to the detriment of your own well-being.
posted by Atom Eyes at 12:16 PM on August 20, 2014 [21 favorites]

Sometimes all we can do is whistle past the graveyard.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 12:20 PM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

I appreciate that, Atom Eyes. I definitely feel that obligation to keep watching and reading, because I think what's happening is wrong and law enforcement need to know that we're watching. It feels like a moral imperative. But that thing about putting on your own oxygen mask first applies, and I'm not sure it's helpful to anyone for me to just be a miserable anxious heap.
posted by almostmanda at 12:22 PM on August 20, 2014 [4 favorites]

Sometimes all we can do is whistle past the graveyard.

STOP THAT WHISTLING. NOW. I'LL FUCKING KILL YOU.
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 12:22 PM on August 20, 2014 [5 favorites]

"If there is one thing I know to be true—it is this—and I have lived my life with blunt honesty about this—Black people do not benefit from lying to white people about how they really feel about injustice." An amazing reflection from Michael Twitty at Afroculinaria.
posted by donnagirl at 12:25 PM on August 20, 2014 [11 favorites]

I have instituted a Personal Emergency Kittens rule on my computers - I can only have pictures of nearly unbearable cute.

I find that it helps calm me down a bit.
posted by spinifex23 at 12:26 PM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

Also Hiroshima (landslide, at least 36 dead) but who's keeping track certainly not me glued to all my news outlets oh no.

I took a media blackout for about 10 hours last night, 8 of which I was sleeping. Even that helped. I recommend it.
posted by Phire at 12:27 PM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

Is anyone else just filled with despair?

Oh yes. I've now seen enough police crackdowns that I'm (finally!) starting to realize that it's just What This Country Is Like. If our media were describing it happening elsewhere, they might say: Centuries-old ethnic tensions erupted in violence with an attempted military takeover of Ferguson.
posted by Cookiebastard at 12:27 PM on August 20, 2014 [22 favorites]

Atom Eyes: For anyone feeling overwhelmed by depression or despair, please remember you can always take a page from furnace.heart and do the full media blackout thing, if even for a single day. Your mental and emotional health is important, and there are many, many ways an individual can contribute to the cause. Don't feel obligated to keep yourself plugged in 24/7 to the outrage machine to the detriment of your own well-being.

Yes. I'm so excited that I made camping reservations for this weekend way back in February, even if it means an added struggle to get work done so that I can unplug completely for three days.
posted by deludingmyself at 12:28 PM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

I'm hoping the eruption of the Iceland volcano will act as a pressure release valve for the whole goddamn planet.
posted by Atom Eyes at 12:28 PM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

spinifex23, the cats knocking shit over video is especially good for rage.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 12:29 PM on August 20, 2014

Don't feel obligated to keep yourself plugged in 24/7 to the outrage machine to the detriment of your own well-being.

I did that earlier this week and watched both seasons of HBO Rome straight through and the outcome is that I want to put heads on spikes more than usual, so technically not very helpful in this individual case.
posted by elizardbits at 12:30 PM on August 20, 2014 [20 favorites]

heads on spikes is my jam
posted by elizardbits at 12:30 PM on August 20, 2014 [21 favorites]

If you're feeling overwhelmed and depressed by the news, I have a twitter list for that.
posted by desjardins at 12:30 PM on August 20, 2014 [6 favorites]

Oh wow—apparently Mya Aaten-White, the gal who was shot in the head early in the protests (by police or by agitators, she doesn't know), is a former coworker of one of my dear friends. And she still hasn't been interviewed by police.

I've also heard a rumor from another friend that some areas of Ferguson were not subject to the curfews earlier this week—and that some residents were given a map of the boundaries. (I've asked to see a copy, so I'll let you know what I find out.) I wonder how such a map would line up with the areas where the conspicuous "I ♥ Ferguson" signs are popping up.

The lawn signs, by the way, should not be confused with the "I ♥ FERG" T-shirts that were printed by Sportsprint and sold at the Ferguson Farmers Market last weekend to benefit the local food pantry. I have seen some residents using those shirts the same way, posting photos of them just as conspicuously on Facebook, and with much the same meaning, I think. But Sportsprint is run by a really positive, inclusive local family, the Rockamanns—I'm going to go out on a limb and say the shirts were definitely not intended to be used in a divisive way, and the proceeds are going directly to an organization that's helping feed local kids while school is delayed.

Re: your friend, naju, saying this is what the recovery from our collective wounds looks like, I'd agree—or at least I hope so. I've seen a lot of misinformation and outright hate, but I've also seen awkward white friends from North County genuinely stepping out of their comfort zones to attend protests and learn from their experiences there. There is some hope in that.

This piece, by the way, has some really good advice for those who want to be allies in this fight but are working through a lot of those feelings of being awkward and uncomfortable and unsure of where to begin—especially as consciousness of their own racist feelings bubbles to the surface. (The first part is consciousness, but that's the part that really hangs a lot of people up and stops them from contributing, when they realize they have their own weird feelings or behaviors with regard to people of color.) This part really resonated with me:

Throughout my life, I have routinely experienced fear of Blackness, particularly working class and poor Black men, as it has been intimately and relentlessly weaved into my subconscious through images, everywhere, of dark-skinned people doing bad things to light-skinned people, and in my consciousness through political, economic, and cultural attacks, everywhere, on Black communities.

For a long time, I felt guilty for having these feelings, and they demobilized me. But over time, I began to recognize the roots of these fears, and I tapped into my rage for the white supremacist society that raised me and rewards me for having them, and that rage has helped mobilize me.

I think this is a moment that can potentially lead a lot of people to consciousness and action.
posted by limeonaire at 12:30 PM on August 20, 2014 [25 favorites]

Centuries-old ethnic tensions erupted in violence with an attempted military takeover of Ferguson.

Vox: How We'd Cover Ferguson If it Happened In Another Location:

The crisis began a week ago in Ferguson, a remote Missouri village that has been a hotbed of sectarian tension. State security forces shot and killed an unarmed man, which regional analysts say has angered the local population by surfacing deep-seated sectarian grievances. Regime security forces cracked down brutally on largely peaceful protests, worsening the crisis.

Missouri, far-removed from the glistening capital city of Washington, is ostensibly ruled by a charismatic but troubled official named Jay Nixon, who has appeared unable to successfully intervene and has resisted efforts at mediation from central government officials. Complicating matters, President Obama is himself a member of the minority sect protesting in Ferguson, which is ruled overwhelmingly by members of America's majority "white people" sect.

posted by Phire at 12:31 PM on August 20, 2014 [53 favorites]

elizardbits: "Is anyone else just filled with despair?

Since roughly 2001, yes."

There is despair.

There is despair, Mr President. In the faces that you don't see. In the places that you don't visit in your shining city. Mr President you are denying that this nation is more a tale of two cities than it is just a shining city on a hill.

Maybe, maybe Mr President if you visited some more places, if you went to Appalachia where some people still live in sheds. Maybe if you went to Lackawanna where thousands of unemployed steel-workers wonder why we subsidize foreign steel. Maybe, maybe Mr President if you stopped in at a shelter in Chicago and spoke to the homeless there. Maybe, Mr President if you asked a woman who had been denied the help she needed to feed her children because you said you needed the money for a tax-break for a millionaire or for a missile we couldn't afford to use."

Not for honour,
not for glory,
not for profit,
but for love!

Not for honour,
not for pleasure,
not for profit,
but for love!

posted by symbioid at 12:31 PM on August 20, 2014

oh wait those I heart ferguson signs are supposed to be like a pro cop brutality support thing? so i have to be disheartened rather than heartened at seeing those on rich people's lawns? arghg
posted by ghostbikes at 12:34 PM on August 20, 2014

can i also just say i picked the wrong week to ~~stop sniffing glue~~ move to the heartland

*finally remembers to update mefi location*
posted by ghostbikes at 12:36 PM on August 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

I prefer to imagine that the "I Heart Ferguson" signs simply indicate a heterodox approach to Clarissa Explains It All.
posted by Sticherbeast at 12:37 PM on August 20, 2014 [20 favorites]

.
posted by Cookiebastard at 12:37 PM on August 20, 2014

a remote Missouri village

It's a suburb of St. Louis. It's not freaking Moberly.
posted by asockpuppet at 12:38 PM on August 20, 2014 [3 favorites]

It's a suburb of St. Louis. It's not freaking Moberly.

Discerning readers may have noted a degree of satire being employed in the linked piece.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 12:41 PM on August 20, 2014 [26 favorites]

Discerning readers

Boo. I'm not one of those today.
posted by asockpuppet at 12:43 PM on August 20, 2014

I'm not sure that using one arm of the police state security theatre apparatus to try and combat another arm of the police state security theatre apparatus would really do anything in terms of long term solutions.

I get where you're coming from, though.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 12:48 PM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

Am told that the video @ChiefSLMPD will be releasing is pretty clear of #Riverview incident #Ferguson #stl
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 12:50 PM on August 20, 2014

I've been thinking about this for a while and wondering whether or not to ask, or if it's a derail, but whatever:

The other night there was some livestream I was watching or twitter account I was following (at this point it's all a blur, honestly, I'm sorry I can't tie the time or account down) and they were on the ground because of Actual Gunshots, talking about the sound of the bullets in the air, etc. They were adamant that these were not fireworks, nor flashbangs.

I haven't heard of any police officers getting shot, and I don't remember hearing about any civilians getting shot that particular night.

Did anyone ever publicly speculate on who might have been firing (police vs. civilians) and in which direction and why?
posted by komara at 12:50 PM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

My sister made this video about Trayvon Martin last year, and now I feel even more bitter about it.
posted by bq at 12:53 PM on August 20, 2014

Did anyone ever publicly speculate on who might have been firing (police vs. civilians) and in which direction and why?

In an least a couple instances it turned out to be fireworks.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 12:56 PM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

My assumption, komara, and maybe it's a pessimistic one: cops firing into the air to justify egregious actions. Johnson (an appropriately named man, it seems) claimed that cops were under 'heavy gunfire.'

Not that there's been a scintilla of proof.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 12:56 PM on August 20, 2014

Okay, just ... wanted to know I wasn't the only one who thought that.

(though instead of "cops" I thought "cops' friends in the bushes" but same difference)
posted by komara at 12:56 PM on August 20, 2014

komara, you may be referencing the video linked above ?
posted by desjardins at 1:00 PM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

asockpuppet: "Boo. I'm not one of those today."

Leave me out of this, thanks.
posted by boo_radley at 1:02 PM on August 20, 2014 [4 favorites]

komara - are you referring to Tim Pool reporting for Vice on Monday? He and his cameraman were pinned down by live fire behind a transformer on the street and surrounded by teargas, and later ushered off by SWAT. He said that he thought the shots were coming from the protestors, and later talked to a SWAT officer who "confirmed" it - "We weren't shooting, the bad guys were shooting" (my reaction to that) . The guns and shell casings that Ron Johnson showed at the press conference are, I suppose, the guns used by the protestors in that altercation.

I haven't seen reports of anyone injured that night, or confirmations from anyone that this sequence of events is true. Tim Pool was also very pro-police when covering Zucotti, so take that with a grain of salt.
posted by Phire at 1:03 PM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

i didn't get a good look but those 3 guns all appeared to be the same?
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 1:05 PM on August 20, 2014

Did anyone ever publicly speculate on who might have been firing (police vs. civilians) and in which direction and why?

In an least a couple instances it turned out to be fireworks.

Though there is plenty of gun violence in Chicago, based on my lived experience with Everyblock, pretty racist-seeming people think fireworks are gunshots more than the National Average.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 1:05 PM on August 20, 2014 [3 favorites]

SUCCESS! In response to our letter, officer who threatened to kill #Ferguson protesters has been removed from duty https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AFia3Uo0TQ&feature=youtu.be …
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 1:06 PM on August 20, 2014 [17 favorites]

“The Fire This Time,” Bob Herbert, Jacobin, 20 August 2014

“Ferguson and the Lessons of Conflict Zone Policing,” Jason Fritz, War on the Rocks, 19 August 2014
posted by ob1quixote at 1:08 PM on August 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

Removed from duty as in "paid leave aka summer vacation time" presumably and not "stripped of badge and gun and thrown into the municipal trash dump as deserved".
posted by elizardbits at 1:12 PM on August 20, 2014 [16 favorites]

> I know that in NYC and some other places it's illegal to own gas masks and bulletproof vests if you're not a cop (WHICH IS BULLSHIT) , I wonder if something similar is in play in MO, and that's what they'll use to justify the raid.

From photos I've seen on twitter, it looks like first aid volunteers operating out of St. Mark's in Ferguson have been distributing the kind of gas masks and goggles that painters use when they're sanding or removing lead paint on remodel jobs. This is standard equipment you can purchase at hardware stores. I doubt if it's illegal anywhere in the US.

Like a lot of people have said in previous comments, volunteers involved in the first aid effort who weren't at the church at the time appear to have panicked and assumed their supplies were being confiscated when they heard police had shown up at the church. They've since been posting corrections on twitter.

The pastor was given a warning about letting people stay or sleep there overnight, something the church has also been been doing, and told that people who did so would be arrested.
posted by nangar at 1:12 PM on August 20, 2014

elizardbits, probably, although he won't be pointing his assault rifle at anyone in Ferguson tonight.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 1:13 PM on August 20, 2014

What I Did After Police Killed My Son (TLDR/SYAC: worked for police accountability measures and got some put into Wisconsin law)

WPR interview with the author.

There's a lot of interesting parts to Bell's story, but I think one of the most interesting bits is that the award from the civil suit he won apparently became funding for years of political activity to get some accountability measures into place.

People talk about how lawsuits just end up impoverishing our public institutions, and that can be true, but if I'm understanding Bell's story correctly, it shows us the awards can be part of a toolbox for change.

Likewise, there's some conversation about the usefulness of protests. I agree they have limits to how useful they can be alone, and I don't know what the endgame for the protests is, but I think one thing that can happen is that people develop a taste for doing something -- even inconvenient somethings -- and new associations with networks of others in the same place. And the fruit of that can be long-term collective political action.
posted by weston at 1:14 PM on August 20, 2014 [3 favorites]

Wasn't a press conference scheduled for this afternoon?
posted by Ik ben afgesneden at 1:15 PM on August 20, 2014

Paying him to take vacation is a step up from paying him to point his gun at people, even if it's a small step.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 1:16 PM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

Ik ben afgesneden, I think it happened about an hour or two ago.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 1:16 PM on August 20, 2014

komara: "Did anyone ever publicly speculate on who might have been firing (police vs. civilians) and in which direction and why?"

It was Officer Whitey, in the Street, with a Gun. It's like Police State Clue!
posted by symbioid at 1:18 PM on August 20, 2014 [12 favorites]

My main problem with taking action against this guy is that it implicitly says everybody else who pointed guns at nonviolent protestors, camerapeople and random bystanders, but didn't also say "I'll fucking kill you," was just hunky-dory.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 1:18 PM on August 20, 2014 [6 favorites]

SUCCESS! In response to our letter, officer who threatened to kill #Ferguson protesters has been removed from duty

Good first step. Now prosecute him and, if found guilty, fire him.
posted by Flunkie at 1:19 PM on August 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

Prosecute him for what? He should be fired but I'm not sure what he could be convicted of. Making terroristic threats seems like a stretch.
posted by Justinian at 1:21 PM on August 20, 2014

Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish: But if they removed everyone from the force that was pointing guns in a threatening manner at unarmed protesters, most of the police would have to be relieved of duty... And then where would we be?

in a better world
posted by el io at 1:22 PM on August 20, 2014 [6 favorites]

He pointed a deadly weapon at people and threatened to kill them. I'm no law-talkin' dude, but surely one of you law-talkin' dudes can tell me that there's something prosecutable there.
posted by Flunkie at 1:23 PM on August 20, 2014 [4 favorites]

Good first step. Now prosecute him and, if found guilty, fire him.

If you actually were able to prosecute him (as one would a civilian) for pointing a gun at innocent bystanders while threatening to kill them, getting *fired* would be the least of his worries.

I'm no prosecutor, but I'd assume brandishing a weapon, felony assault (menacing) - Cases involving threats of death or serious bodily harm - “aggravated assault,” which I believe is a felony...
posted by stenseng at 1:23 PM on August 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

Not just Ferguson: North County police don't look like their communities

This is not the usual kind of story I've come to expect from the St. Louis Business Journal, and it mentions no specific businesses as a "justification" for the story, as Business Journal stories so often do. I am pleasantly surprised that the paper's reporters chose to dig in and gather these stats.

I'm also saving a copy, in case some editor there decides to "disappear" it. I'm that surprised.
posted by limeonaire at 1:23 PM on August 20, 2014 [4 favorites]

If you actually were able to prosecute him (as one would a civilian) for pointing a gun at innocent bystanders while threatening to kill them, getting *fired* would be the least of his worries.

I'm not saying "the penalty for being found guilty should be that he's fired".
posted by Flunkie at 1:24 PM on August 20, 2014

Yeah, I suppose you could come up with a charge. But it would be much easier and faster just to fire the guy.

Of course the real answer is "hahahaha fuck you guys neither will happen."
posted by Justinian at 1:24 PM on August 20, 2014 [3 favorites]

Flunkie: "He pointed a deadly weapon at people and threatened to kill them. I'm no law-talkin' dude, but surely one of you law-talkin' dudes can tell me that there's something prosecutable there."

We're protesting a guy pointing a deadly weapon at a person and literally killing him. And we still don't believe justice would be served, yet somehow a mere threat would be convictable?
posted by symbioid at 1:25 PM on August 20, 2014

The pastor was given a warning about letting people stay or sleep there overnight, something the church has also been been doing, and told that people who did so would be arrested.

If true, I find this just bizarre, although no more so than anything else the cops have done. Almost any church I've been a part of has had people stay overnight on occasion, whether it's youth lock-ins or housing the homeless. I guess it's possible that violates some kind of code somewhere, but I don't see how you can legally assert that a church can't host people when it wants, how it wants. If only we had some Constitutional protection of the free exercise of religion.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 1:25 PM on August 20, 2014 [10 favorites]

We're protesting a guy pointing a deadly weapon at a person and literally killing him. And we still don't believe justice would be served, yet somehow a mere threat would be convictable?

Oh good lord. I'm supposed to not say that he should be prosecuted just because it won't happen?
posted by Flunkie at 1:26 PM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

Why can't the church have people sleep there?

Don't you get it yet? Because the cops said so. That's all the reason anyone should ever need.
posted by rtha at 1:27 PM on August 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

This is the stupidest argument I've been in in quite some time.
posted by Flunkie at 1:27 PM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

This is the stupidest argument I've been in in quite some time.

Well, its early yet.
posted by Joey Michaels at 1:28 PM on August 20, 2014 [15 favorites]

Not just Ferguson: North County police don't look like their communities

It would probably be a lot faster just to list the police departments which are demographically representative. Which may be a null set since even those which are racially diverse (such as LAPD) are going to have men hugely over-represented.
posted by Justinian at 1:30 PM on August 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

On the block where Mike Brown shot, man just walked by weeping. Then bent over, hands on knees sobbing.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 1:30 PM on August 20, 2014 [8 favorites]

I hope the pastor lets folks stay in the church.

The media will truly love images of the cops dragging out people from a church and arresting them for being in a church. That's the sort of pic that the international media will have on their front pages.
posted by el io at 1:33 PM on August 20, 2014 [23 favorites]

That, roomthreeseventeen. I wish (white/racist) people could feel the depth of it and understand, understand WHY he is crying. Those tears are why I am so angry. His grief is a communal grief, a communal fear. And the individualist politics of American ideology poisons that well and ignore it, blindly, conveniently. I wish I could hug him.
posted by symbioid at 1:36 PM on August 20, 2014 [5 favorites]

The media will truly love images of the cops dragging out people from a church and arresting them for being in a church.
posted by Foosnark at 1:37 PM on August 20, 2014 [3 favorites]

Looks like the Ferguson cops want to collect media from every country possible. CTV's Tom Walters has been arrested and released.

Walters was detained after trying to ask a question of Capt. Ron Johnson of the Missouri Highway Patrol. Walters’s arrest was captured on video camera by CTV News cameraman Liam Hyland.

Thou shalt not question the cops, even if you are a soft-looking middle-aged white guy from Canada.
posted by maudlin at 1:37 PM on August 20, 2014 [5 favorites]

Hey all, if you're interested in doing something, check and see if there are solidarity rallies in your city or nearby towns tonight. Phoenix has one (near the Orpheum Theatre @ 7, for my Phx mefites.)
posted by WidgetAlley at 1:39 PM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

And arresting reporters from around the world? Great way to ensure that the entire world stays outraged at this bullshit.
posted by el io at 1:41 PM on August 20, 2014 [3 favorites]

“In Ferguson, who owns the night?” Trymaine Lee, MSNBC, 20 August 2014
posted by ob1quixote at 1:44 PM on August 20, 2014

"Why journalists should be skeptical about autopsy reports"

A.C. Thompson is not a doctor. But neither are many of the people performing autopsies in the United States, says the ProPublica reporter, who has developed a special interest in those procedures.

“Reporters would do well to approach autopsies with some skepticism,” he said in a phone call. Among the problems with autopsies he’s outlined through his reporting: Many are performed by people with no medical training.

posted by phearlez at 1:44 PM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

Hey all, if you're interested in doing something, check and see if there are solidarity rallies in your city or nearby towns tonight.

Do you know if there's a (relatively) centralized list of all of the rallies planned for tonight? I just checked to see if there's anything going on in L.A., but all I'm getting are references to last week's event.
posted by scody at 1:44 PM on August 20, 2014

That brings us to 15 journalists arrested so far. (The Freedom of the Press Foundation's list is better than Poynter's, by the way, and it's actually doing something about it.)
posted by limeonaire at 1:45 PM on August 20, 2014 [8 favorites]

holy shit that article limeonaire posted about the woman shot in the head - the police came and confiscated the bullet that was removed (i.e. THE EVIDENCE) and now are just being quiet about it and hoping it will slide. i hope she goes after them SO HARD
posted by ghostbikes at 1:45 PM on August 20, 2014 [15 favorites]

“In Ferguson, who owns the night?” Trymaine Lee, MSNBC, 20 August 2014

I'm extremely frustrated that he doesn't mention that apparently he and several other media were chased and basically held by the cops at gunpoint last night.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 1:45 PM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

I don't, I'm afraid, I just happened to find the flyer on Twitter. (@PHXFerguson) You might try your city's hashtag. Twitter seems like the best place to look for now.
posted by WidgetAlley at 1:46 PM on August 20, 2014

Looks like the Ferguson cops want to collect media from every country possible.

Nothing so far tells me that the law enforcement occupying Ferguson have to care about how their actions appear.
posted by rhizome at 1:47 PM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

Making terroristic threats seems like a stretch.

Does it?
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 1:48 PM on August 20, 2014

“Cops Shoot People Dead Every Day. Why Did Ferguson Become Such A Huge Deal?” Sam Stein and Arthur Delaney, The Huffington Post, 20 August 2014
posted by ob1quixote at 2:00 PM on August 20, 2014 [4 favorites]

This is the stupidest argument I've been in in quite some time.

The response you're getting might be because it sounded like you were suggesting he shouldn't/couldn't be fired until after being charged with, tried for, and found guilty of a crime? Maybe that wasn't your intention.
posted by nobody at 2:02 PM on August 20, 2014

"Why aren't there a fuckton of pro-bono lawyers descending on Ferguson this very minute, with the aim of gathering and organizing information, evidence, and testimony to launch a MASSIVE set of lawsuits against the city and the PD?"

There are ethical rules about how lawyers can and can't solicit clients. Having a bunch of lawyers descent on a protest like this tends to confuse the issue and upset protestors (who get told different things by different lawyers, and get upset, which is totally reasonable), and it's tough to practice in areas of law where you don't have experience. The way it more typically works is that you put yourself on pro-bono lists with various groups -- I'm on lists with Lambda Legal, the county Democrats, and a First Amendment watchdog -- and when those groups need to mobilize lawyers, they work their list. Those groups are generally well-known and trusted by the protestors -- everyone knows the ACLU -- and have experience with these situations. They provide a central point of contact and coordination and (in some cases) training for the volunteer lawyers. I've been "mobilized" a couple of times and it's a system that works well; it's a lot easier to deal with a case mediated through an advocacy organization than to take on a client wholesale who's not part of your typical practice. It also allows the responding organization to put its expert attorneys on actual substantive work and the volunteer lawyers to issue-spotting and scut work ... when I've been "mobilized" I've usually been asked to gather the facts of the case, and then occasionally file a couple of routine motions, and then I hand it off to the experts as it goes forward.

Anyway there actually are quite a few legal groups focused on civil rights issues out in Ferguson, as are press rights groups, like RCFP.

"Removed from duty as in "paid leave aka summer vacation time" presumably and not "stripped of badge and gun and thrown into the municipal trash dump as deserved"."

Firing a public employee or disciplining them in a material way (i.e., docking pay) is a government action against a citizen and thus requires due process. It is intensely frustrating to the public, but this is the proper process and this is the first step. You put them on paid administrative leave FIRST, then you have to go through certain due process steps before putting them on unpaid leave, which requires the approval of the elected officials who supervise that employee's department. (Typically within 10 business days the overseeing elected officials must approve either an extension of paid leave, approve unpaid leave, or put the guy back to work ... but extension of paid leave generally just means "it is taking us more than 10 days to get our legal ducks in a row.")

On the plus side, a lot of states have provisions that if an employee is put on paid leave due to the commission of a crime, lingers on the payroll while the case goes through the courts because of various due process requirements, and is convicted of the crime, the employee has to pay back all the salary they received since being placed on paid leave. Which lets government agencies provide proper due process in employment matters so they don't rush through things and end up in trouble (or getting sued by a felon for violating his due process rights when they fired him!), while reducing the galling situation of paying a wrongdoer.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 2:03 PM on August 20, 2014 [20 favorites]

Meanwhile, over at Fox News:

'HE WAS BEATEN VERY SEVERELY'
Source claims attack on Ferguson cop

"THE POLICE OFFICER whose fatal shooting of Michael Brown touched off more than a week of often violent demonstrations in Ferguson, Mo., suffered severe facial injuries — including an eye-socket fracture — and was nearly beaten unconscious by Brown moments before firing his gun, a source close to the department's top brass told FoxNews.com. "

a source close to the department's top brass

So transparent it's sickening.

Hollie McKay wrote the story.
posted by whyareyouatriangle at 2:03 PM on August 20, 2014 [9 favorites]

Apparently the ACLU now has the Michael Brown shooting police report. Wonder if and when we'll see it.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 2:04 PM on August 20, 2014 [3 favorites]

Firing a public employee or disciplining them in a material way (i.e., docking pay) is a government action against a citizen and thus requires due process.

ok but what about the garbage part, that is the most important part
posted by elizardbits at 2:05 PM on August 20, 2014

Is there usually a more in-depth report than the PDF linked in the tweet?
posted by Phire at 2:06 PM on August 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

Right here, r317

spoiler: it says absolutely nothing
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 2:07 PM on August 20, 2014

I wonder if a lot of it on page two is redacted?
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 2:08 PM on August 20, 2014

spoiler: it says absolutely nothing

I think the timestamps say a lot.
posted by junco at 2:09 PM on August 20, 2014 [11 favorites]

“Cops Shoot People Dead Every Day. Why Did Ferguson Become Such A Huge Deal?”

There's some old saying I'm trying to remember, something about straw and the strength of camels' backs....dammit, on the tip of my tongue...
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 2:09 PM on August 20, 2014 [4 favorites]

The response you're getting might be because it sounded like you were suggesting he shouldn't/couldn't be fired until after being charged with, tried for, and found guilty of a crime? Maybe that wasn't your intention.

I'll admit that I think that generally speaking people shouldn't be fired for crimes they haven't been found guilty of, though in a case with such extreme, obvious evidence I wouldn't really mind otherwise. However, your theory about this relating to the responses I got doesn't seem correct to me. I got three responses that I noticed, each of which seemed to have a different fundamental basis to me, none of which seemed to have the fundamental basis that you're saying. Paraphrased, they were:

(1) Prosecute?! What charge could possibly apply?!

(2) If he's prosecuted, getting fired would be the least of his worries.

(3) We can't even get a guy prosecuted for actual murder, why do you think we could get a guy prosecuted for threatening murder?!

None of them seem to me to be based on the idea that people accused of crimes should be fired before being found guilty.

This is the last thing I'm going to say on this stupid subject. I want the guy fired. I want the guy arrested. I want the guy charged. I want the guy found guilty. I want the guy put away for a long time. If I have to swear some loyalty oath to the God of Outrage in order for people to be convinced that I would like these things to happen, please consider me to have sworn it. Thank you.
posted by Flunkie at 2:12 PM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

I think the timestamps say a lot.

Indeed. Reported at 12:43 and it wasn't until 13:30 that STLC cops arrived.

But the report wasn't created until 9:46 on 8/19
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 2:13 PM on August 20, 2014

I think the timestamps say a lot.

Incident: 8/09/2014, 12:02 Saturday
Incident reported: 8/09 12:43
Date/Time entered: 8/19 9:46am
posted by deludingmyself at 2:13 PM on August 20, 2014 [16 favorites]

fwiw I don't think there was anything confusing about your comments, but I was definitely confused by the responses to them.
posted by elizardbits at 2:13 PM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

Sorry, when I said absolutely nothing I was referring to the obvious redaction of almost an entire page.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 2:15 PM on August 20, 2014

Incident: 8/09/2014, 12:02 Saturday
Incident reported: 8/09 12:43
Date/Time entered: 8/19 9:46am

I actually don't think that's an issue. A lot of computer programs generate a date when something is printed.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 2:15 PM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

From that police report:
Printed By/ Reason: #rubme1

That seems...odd.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 2:15 PM on August 20, 2014 [4 favorites]

Occurrence at 12:02. Wasn't called in until 12:43. What happened during those 41 minutes?
posted by asockpuppet at 2:16 PM on August 20, 2014 [7 favorites]

From that police report:
Printed by/Reason: #rubme1

That seems...odd.

I think that's the equivalent of an asshole patron writing some snide racist/sexist/homophobic/asshole shit on a receipt.

Except it's the cops. Handing in their homework to the ACLU. In one of the most polarizing racist events in a generation.
posted by el io at 2:19 PM on August 20, 2014

A young man died while police did nothing and prevented a nurse from attending to him.

Probably also quick coverup/disposal/contamination of obvious inculpatory evidence.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 2:19 PM on August 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

I actually don't think that's an issue. A lot of computer programs generate a date when something is printed.

I'm happy to be corrected, but the PDF also has the printed time on it too: 10:41am on 8/20 (today).
posted by deludingmyself at 2:19 PM on August 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

From that police report:
Printed By/ Reason: #rubme1

That seems...odd.

Looks like Mary Beth Ruby has an unintentionally ribald system username.
posted by asockpuppet at 2:19 PM on August 20, 2014 [23 favorites]

A young man died while police did nothing and prevented a nurse from attending to him.

I have to believe, for my own sanity, that the bullet to his brain immediately killed Michael, and nothing could have been done.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 2:21 PM on August 20, 2014

Looks like Mary Beth Ruby has an unintentionally ribald system username.

Ah, of course. That makes sense.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 2:24 PM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

and was nearly beaten unconscious by Brown moments before firing his gun

So... beaten nearly unconscious + orbital fracture, would logically imply impaired brain function and vision, nevertheless able to hit his target six times, possibly in a tight grouping at a distance if some forensic/autopsy reports are to be believed.

If this story holds up, the guy still shouldn't have a future with a small town PD, he should be a CIA superhero or something.
posted by weston at 2:25 PM on August 20, 2014 [13 favorites]

Anarchist blog claiming to be from the streets of Ferguson

A significant number of protesters are armed. In the first few days, a common tactic was to fire shots in the air to scare the cops off when they got too close. Some openly talk of going to war with the police and don’t hide the fact that they are carrying. The last few days people have begun shooting at the police. Tragically, the only people hit so far have been a handful of protesters- some of them with life-threatening injuries. People are beginning to advocate for more restraint with the gun fire and better aim.

I think it's certainly fine for us to discuss the police tactic of inserting outside provocateurs, but that shouldn't also distract us from the very real possibility that there are belligerents within many social justice movements who do want to opt for violent or militant tactics, and while many of them eschew anything that could be life threatening, there is little that prevents an activist from trading up their molotov cocktail for a handgun.

The last thing and one of the greatest tragedies that this movement could face is for a hothead to get a lucky shot that actually kills a cop in one of these faceoffs, and turns that officer into a martyr that will justify every tank and every LRAD that will funneled into these police department.
posted by bl1nk at 2:26 PM on August 20, 2014 [8 favorites]

"he should be a CIA superhero or something"

Hence his disappearance.
posted by komara at 2:26 PM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

Looks like Mary Beth Ruby has an unintentionally ribald system username.

How do you figure?

RUB(y,)M(ary b)E(th)1?
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 2:28 PM on August 20, 2014

Beth being short for Elizabeth, presumably.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 2:30 PM on August 20, 2014 [5 favorites]

"Elizabeth".
posted by Flunkie at 2:30 PM on August 20, 2014

I'm trying to imagine how big the department must be that they have username collisions on Rubme.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 2:31 PM on August 20, 2014 [15 favorites]

I'm not sure that last 'entered' on the 19th is significant; it presumably represents when the final report was entered into the system as complete and work was being done between initial incident report and then.

Yeah, possibly. There's no incident report creation date for the file, unless it's the Entered date, but I suppose either could be the case.
posted by deludingmyself at 2:32 PM on August 20, 2014

I took it as a joke comment.
posted by futz at 2:32 PM on August 20, 2014

Just a quick reminder that as per their website, you don't have to be a lawyer to become a legal observer for the National Lawyers' Guild, and that they hold trainings periodically. Just in case anyone else is interested.
posted by WidgetAlley at 2:33 PM on August 20, 2014 [8 favorites]

The blank report is full indicative of the level of shits they give.
posted by Artw at 2:34 PM on August 20, 2014 [3 favorites]

And so we raise a shot of looted gin – A TOAST! May we continue to surprise each other.

This is a cop, right?
posted by Artw at 2:36 PM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

Especially compared to the 14 page one from the robbery.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 2:37 PM on August 20, 2014 [15 favorites]

Also, you don't need to be a lawyer to be a member of the National Lawyers Guild. Join us!
posted by andoatnp at 2:37 PM on August 20, 2014 [4 favorites]

The sort of work being done in Ferguson by the NLG is called Mass Defense, so you can check that box on the National Lawyers Guild sign up page if that's what you want to get involved with when you join.
posted by andoatnp at 2:46 PM on August 20, 2014

Joe the plumber tries to remind the world that his racism is still relevant to current affairs.
posted by el io at 2:46 PM on August 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

What happened during those 41 minutes?

Lots and lots of fictional scenarios pondered and discarded, presumably.
posted by elizardbits at 2:49 PM on August 20, 2014 [12 favorites]

weston: "If this story holds up, the guy still shouldn't have a future with a small town PD, he should be a CIA superhero or something."

How many times do I have to tell the blue before it sticks: DO NOT GIVE THEM ANY IDEAS!
posted by symbioid at 2:51 PM on August 20, 2014

Joe The Plumber: Hold A Job Fair In Ferguson, Protestors Will 'Scatter Like Cockroaches'

Somebody should take conservatives up on this challenge. If they want to help the situation, let's have them hold a job fair in Ferguson and see if Joe's prediction holds true.
posted by Golden Eternity at 2:52 PM on August 20, 2014 [16 favorites]

Especially compared to the 14 page one from the robbery.

WTF. Why do the two reporting forms look completely 100% different? They're both from the same reporting department: "HOMICIDE/ROB/SEX ASSALT UNIT" (spelling is off?). Yet the robbery form has dozens of details required to be entered that are completely absent on the homicide form? There's absolutely no identifying details of the victim required? Or anything? I'm just trying to understand here.

Maybe the next step is the ACLU has to sue to obtain the real incident report which will cause further delays.
posted by naju at 2:53 PM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

@HANSEN_SOGROOVY: #Ferguson is a food desert. For some kids: No school = No meal. This is 1 thing we can do from our computers to help. http://stlfoodbank.org/

Small aside... my cousin teaches at the East Palo Alto school district. Despite the fact that it's directly adjacent to one of the wealthiest, most progressive areas in the country, almost all of the students there rely on school for breakfast and lunch. In many cases, the school is the child's only source of food - they aren't getting dinner at home. I'd imagine the case is similar in Ferguson.
posted by Strass at 2:57 PM on August 20, 2014 [4 favorites]

'He is now "traumatized, scared for his life and his family, injured and terrified" that a grand jury, which began hearing evidence on Wednesday, will "make some kind of example out of him," the source said.'

On the other hand, he's still alive, so, you know, count your blessings and all that.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 2:58 PM on August 20, 2014 [21 favorites]

Other comments were along the lines of "let's not jump to conclusions and besmirch this poor young white cop's reputation."

Isn't that what they tell rape victims?
posted by emjaybee at 2:59 PM on August 20, 2014 [4 favorites]

Joe the plumber tries to remind the world that his racism is still relevant to current affairs.

Ugh, Talking Points Memo made Firefox hang with some script. Going there to see an article about Joe the Plumber and then getting hung up with that just added insult to injury.
posted by limeonaire at 3:00 PM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

Isn't that what they tell rape victims?

Have you heard the latest from Steubenville?
posted by Artw at 3:01 PM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

let's have them hold a job fair in Ferguson and see if Joe's prediction holds true.

They actually did this near the St. Louis City shooting:

[Mayor] Slay sent workers with SLATE (St. Louis Agency on Training and Employment) to the neighborhood where one of the topics the chanting crowd brought up was the availability of jobs.

The Mayor says SLATE workers signed up more than 80 people for job training near the site of Tuesday's police involved shooting.

Curiously, I haven't heard anything about how many employees of the City of Ferguson are black, outside of the widely quoted numbers for the police.
posted by dhartung at 3:02 PM on August 20, 2014 [6 favorites]

In response to the Fox news report that Wilson was beat "nearly unconscious", I tried to locate the video of him walking around Michael's body with the other cop. It was shot by a woman who came forward late, and I think it was shot from the balcony of her apartment. Can someone with better google find it? and yes, add another voice to "in shock, despair, sick".
posted by aliksd at 3:04 PM on August 20, 2014

found it: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2728166/Video-shows-cop-shot-Michael-Brown-pacing-lifeless-body-immediately-firing-six-shots-teen.html
posted by aliksd at 3:06 PM on August 20, 2014 [7 favorites]

Joe The Plumber: Hold A Job Fair In Ferguson, Protestors Will 'Scatter Like Cockroaches'

That's rich, coming from America's most notorious blue collar non-worker.

G. Gordon Liddy was a more legitimate plumber than this douche nozzle.
posted by Atom Eyes at 3:06 PM on August 20, 2014 [12 favorites]

Oh yeah, that sure looks like a guy beaten nearly unconscious, alright.
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 3:08 PM on August 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

Hey now. Douche nozzles do more legitimate plumbing than Samuel Joe.
posted by forgetful snow at 3:09 PM on August 20, 2014 [11 favorites]

aliksd: This has the actual video.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 3:10 PM on August 20, 2014 [3 favorites]

What happened during those 41 minutes?

facepalming - lots and lots of facepalming - so much facepalming, he got an orbital fracture from it
posted by pyramid termite at 3:15 PM on August 20, 2014 [18 favorites]

One of the odd twists is that popular right wing site Little Green Footballs has been debunking the orbital fracture story, pointing out the symptoms, that same video, and a misleading CT scan cribbed from somewhere else, as well as that the source of that information is a far right overtly racist "hateblogger." When other right wingers are dismissing you as a "wingnut" and debunking the stories you've made up out of whole cloth, you know there's nothing credible there.
posted by naju at 3:15 PM on August 20, 2014 [16 favorites]

LGF was also good about debunking the Obama birth certificate loons.
posted by Sticherbeast at 3:19 PM on August 20, 2014

Sorry for the derail but LGF is not a right wing site. The site's proprietor, Charles Johnson, was a liberal who went crazy after 9/11, supported Bush, war and more war for a few years, and then finally got his sanity back and has been a very consistent voice for center-left stuff. He's been pretty much an Obot since 2008.

I know this useless bit of trivia since I used to read him back in the day before he went crazy and started going back occasionally after 2006 when he finally regained consciousness. He used to have interesting things to say in the relatively early days of blogging and web application stuff.
posted by honestcoyote at 3:22 PM on August 20, 2014 [12 favorites]

LGF had a huge falling out with their former right wing associates some time ago. It's been Obama cheerleading central for a couple of years now.
posted by maudlin at 3:23 PM on August 20, 2014

What in the helling fuck.

Today in Ferguson, Mo., news, The Washington Post takes on the assertion that Missouri Highway Patrol Captain Ron Johnson has been photographed flashing gang signs with members of the community.

He has not.

To reiterate: Capt. Johnson is a member of Kappa Alpha Psi, a black fraternity that was formed in 1911 at Indiana University in Bloomington, and the hand sign you see in the pictures below is a Kappa greeting.
posted by rtha at 3:23 PM on August 20, 2014 [3 favorites]

The LGF guy, Charles Johnson, had a come-to-Jesus moment in the last couple of years, somewhat like Balloon Juice's John Cole if less extreme. He's been pretty consistently bashing his old compatriots on the loony right for a while now.
posted by tavella at 3:23 PM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

Ah, thanks for the correction!
posted by naju at 3:24 PM on August 20, 2014

and then finally got his sanity back and has been a very consistent voice for center-left stuff. He's been pretty much an Obot since 2008.

DOES NOT COMPUTE
posted by anemone of the state at 3:25 PM on August 20, 2014 [3 favorites]

Why are they pushing this ocular fracture story when their OWN AUTOPSY showed that there were no bruises on Michael Brown's knuckles? I've given someone a suborbital fracture with my fist and I broke two knuckles and my hand swelled up like a five pound ham. I'm calling complete bullshit on this story based on my own anecdata.
posted by Purposeful Grimace at 3:25 PM on August 20, 2014 [10 favorites]

"Obot" is a new word to me. Makes me think I stick to the better parts of the internet. While I'm not an Obama fan, I prefer to avoid pointless silly name calling (I try to do this to politicians of every stripe, no matter how low of regard I hold them in).
posted by el io at 3:26 PM on August 20, 2014 [3 favorites]

For all LGF's faults they do not like being played for fools.

Even when they were in the lead on the Killian/Rather forgery thing, they were pretty thorough about checking to see if MS Word was imitating contemporary typewriters, for example.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 3:29 PM on August 20, 2014

The journalists' mugshots (along with everyone else's) have been posted on one of those execrable "$City mugshots" sites.
posted by desjardins at 3:36 PM on August 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

Sorry, I didn't mean "Obot" in a pejorative sense. It's not used quite as much now, but I've seen a lot of die hard supporters of the president use the term about themselves. It was frequently used over at Balloon Juice. I don't know if the right wing ever appropriated the word.
posted by honestcoyote at 3:37 PM on August 20, 2014

Why are they pushing this ocular fracture story when their OWN AUTOPSY showed that there were no bruises on Michael Brown's knuckles?

Did Ferguson release an autopsy? I thought we only had the private one to go on.
posted by Artw at 3:40 PM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

Another person shot in Ferguson, at the protests:

When she sat up, Aaten-White knew something was wrong. "Oh my God, you're shot in the head," she recalls a young man telling her.

She's OK, obviously, but the bullet that was in her head has somehow gone missing.
posted by GrammarMoses at 3:41 PM on August 20, 2014 [7 favorites]

Hah! that first one (Scott Olson's) is the best - he's all "PSHH you and I BOTH know this is idiotic"
posted by ghostbikes at 3:43 PM on August 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

Oh, lol: Missouri Councilman Explains Racist Facebook Posts: 'I Was A Very Active Republican
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 3:43 PM on August 20, 2014 [4 favorites]

WTF. Why do the two reporting forms look completely 100% different? They're both from the same reporting department: "HOMICIDE/ROB/SEX ASSALT UNIT" (spelling is off?).

The robbery one is from the Ferguson Police Department. The homicide one is from the St. Louis County Police Department. It says "INVESTIGATION FOR OTHER AGENCY" on it.
posted by smackfu at 3:49 PM on August 20, 2014

The following has been kicking around in my head for a few days and it seems like maybe a good idea to post it, as an explanation of why I'm actually feeling hopeful about what's happening.

No despair, not here. Sick, yeah, it definitely hurts to watch, and I'm a hippie-looking white guy a thousand miles away, in a place where that basically makes me invisible to cops. Which makes me reluctant to say it's all going to be OK, because I don't know if it is. But I think so. I don't want anyone to get hurt in Ferguson or anywhere, and I think the list of demands artw linked above would be a very good start. Anyways…

The police occupation of Ferguson has been reminding me of the 2nd Gulf War for awhile. That is, in that case there was a strategy for 'winning the war' which ended with the fall of Hussein (and that was of course an unforgivably, obviously stupid failure of imagination.) Similarly here, when people started protesting in the street, the cops up-armored to where they're half-ass camo-clad Robocops, rolled in the APCs, and started lobbing ordnance.

The thing is, 'shock and awe', overwhelming forces moving really quickly, is really effective as a tactic, and it worked in Iraq, to nobody's great surprise. The problem quickly develops though- what next? And the US didn't have an answer there.

Similarly I see no strategy here, just tactics, which aren't working. All that military gear is made for SWAT team stuff, you move in fast and scare/shoot the shit out of everything if necessary. It works well enough, too, swapping in 'less-lethal' weapons, for a single-day protest, especially if it's a bunch of putative 'hippies n anarchists' at a G8 summit or whatever. Arrest everybody and let the court sort it out, kinda thing, and there's little fallout because, you know, hippies and anarchists.

In a situation like this however, the cracks have already shown. All those swinging-dick macho cops in 50 lbs of tactical gear scared shitless when somebody throws a water bottle. All that disproportionate response, from all that fear. I mean seriously, big tough gym-rat in a set of body armor, you can't shrug off a fucking water bottle? It's making them look weak and foolish.

All those heroes gassing grandmas, pointing guns at journalists, trying to scare all the 'good people' into staying home- it already hasn't worked. Because the cops really are outnumbered, they really have no idea what they're doing, and when their attempts at intimidation fail they don't seem to have anything to fall back on. And i don't think people will forget that, soon, no matter what happens next.

DISCLAIMER- I am assuming that there will be no mass slaughter of citizens. I do of course realize that events could make me seriously regret all this brave/hopeful talk. This feels different from anything that's happened in my (conscious) lifetime, and it feels like some kind of tipping point. I know some people are thinking it's going to tip in the even-worse direction, but I just don't believe that that would be sustainable at all. But I've been wrong about that kind of thing before, but even so, I'm hopeful.
posted by hap_hazard at 3:51 PM on August 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

anemone of the state: Is it animal cruelty if you kill a police dog attacking people?

I believe it counts as killing a cop, because i know that people have been charged with assaulting an officer for assaulting a police dog.(and as per usual, there's some very questionable values of "assault" here).

Seems like it would be a good way to get shot, and exactly the kind of excuse they're looking for.

roomthreeseventeen: Officer points gun at me and other media on W. Florissant #ferguson
"What's your name sir?"
"Go fuck yourself."

Holy shit, that guy is insanely gutsy. or possibly just insane. The cop threatens to kill him and then he taunts the cop by going "Excuse me, officer gofuckyourself! Officer gofuckyourself just pointed a gun at me!".

I mean, that's probably the kind of stupid thing i would do, but holy shit.
posted by emptythought at 3:53 PM on August 20, 2014 [6 favorites]

Pope Guilty: From a certain perspective that's a good question- if the protestors warrant violent repression, surely they could just be arrested and charged, right? But of course the point of the whole affair is a brutal, physically overwhelming display of force, to establish the physical dominance of the police over the populace. Arresting people can be a tool to that, but if you simply arrest everybody, you're not teargassing them and harassing them in their homes and beating them up and establishing that they are subject to incredible violence at any time for no reason.

This leaves out the important point that this isn't just about dominance of the police over the populace.

It's dominance of white people over black. And reminding them what their place is, and not to get uppity.
posted by emptythought at 3:57 PM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

I know some people are thinking it's going to tip in the even-worse direction, but I just don't believe that that would be sustainable at all.

What about this society feels sustainable to you?
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 4:03 PM on August 20, 2014 [4 favorites]

Shaun King: "@ChristineDByers of the St. Louis Dispatch recants her erroneous tweet that 12 witnesses agreed with officer. The damage is done though."

She was on leave or has been put on leave: "On FMLA from paper. Earlier tweets did not meet standards for publication."
posted by maudlin at 4:04 PM on August 20, 2014 [3 favorites]

Artw: Here's What Happens to Police Officers Who Shoot Unarmed Black Men

I genuinely thought this was going to be one of those blank-white-page-huge-text sites that just said "nothing" with the blink tag applied.
posted by emptythought at 4:08 PM on August 20, 2014 [8 favorites]

What about this society feels sustainable to you?

America is running on batteries.
posted by anemone of the state at 4:09 PM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

If you want to donate supplies, military grade surplus Israeli gas masks are available on the internet for cheap.
posted by corb at 4:12 PM on August 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

From NYT: Shooting Accounts Differ as Holder Schedules Visit to Ferguson.
posted by Justinian at 4:15 PM on August 20, 2014

What about this society feels sustainable to you?

Well, inertia's a hell of a drug. But I take your point. I guess I'm just taking it on some kinda faith that strictly from demographics, if nothing else, white supremacy can't/won't last in this country. And I'd prefer to believe that that outcome won't necessarily involve horrific amounts of bloodshed. Like I said, old white hippie.
posted by hap_hazard at 4:18 PM on August 20, 2014

St. Louis Public Radio: "St. Louis Police Release Video, Calls from City Shooting." (the gentleman with the knife)

"The St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department said it will act with complete transparency. It has released the 911 calls, dispatch audio, video of the shoplifting, as well as cell phone video of the police shooting taken by a witness. We are posting the audio and video in its entirety but warn you that it contains graphic language and violence."

posted by Eyebrows McGee at 4:20 PM on August 20, 2014 [3 favorites]

Shaun King: "@ChristineDByers of the St. Louis Dispatch recants her erroneous tweet that 12 witnesses agreed with officer. The damage is done though."

'Erroneous'?! 'Fabricated' is a more appropriate word.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 4:23 PM on August 20, 2014

Even that NYT article claims that some witnesses saw Michael Brown running toward Wilson but doesn't provide any source. Who are these mysterious witnesses who saw something different from the people we know actually witnessed the shooting?
posted by perhapses at 4:23 PM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

First-responders collecting supplies for police who have been handling "racial unrest."

They're not getting everything they need from the local churches?
posted by Lemurrhea at 4:23 PM on August 20, 2014 [8 favorites]

Linked above but worth linking again about the arsensal in police hands.
The arsenal on display in Ferguson is not the arsenal of riot control. In a town whose population is 67 percent black while its police force is 94 percent white, we are dealing with something more insidious, both locally and as a nation. We are dealing with an arsenal of racial oppression.
posted by adamvasco at 4:24 PM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

Holy shit, that guy is insanely gutsy. or possibly just insane. The cop threatens to kill him and then he taunts the cop by going "Excuse me, officer gofuckyourself! Officer gofuckyourself just pointed a gun at me!".

I mean, that's probably the kind of stupid thing i would do, but holy shit.

Wait, what? What are you talking about? The officer people have been calling "Officer Go Fuck Yourself," now identified as Lt. Ray Albers of the St. Ann Police Department, is the one who told the person who asked his name to go fuck themselves, not the other way around.

By the way, Albers has been relieved of duty and suspended indefinitely.

It's worth noting, by the way, that this story initially, even up to an hour ago, did not list Albers' name. Apparently #OpFerguson released the name, which it looks like perhaps prompted this disclosure on the part of the St. Ann Police Department.
posted by limeonaire at 4:25 PM on August 20, 2014 [5 favorites]

My one piece of consolation is that the whole situation must be absolutely killing the people over at Fox news. This is Obama's Katrina, and they can't really go after him for it without potentially expressing sympathy for or solidarity with black people.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 4:26 PM on August 20, 2014 [9 favorites]

First-responders collecting supplies for police who have been handling "racial unrest."

Those poor cops. They only have millions of dollars in funding and military grade equipment. Sometimes, they have to wear the same body armour two days in a row! Like animals!
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 4:26 PM on August 20, 2014 [11 favorites]

Lexica: Aaron Bady: Anyone want to help put together an archive of cops explicitly saying that they have the right to kill people for disobedience?

I fear that like after the RNC/DNC and G20 and such mentioned above, people are just kinda going to forget about this. Even loud angry progressives, for the most part. It will just get added to the enormous list of reasons why people say and think ACAB, but it'll disappear.

Work like this needs to be done. There needs to be a really simple website or tumblr or something people can link to that just gives an outline of everything that happened, and everything wrong that was done with tons of video clips and archived/screenshotted tweets.

Social media now feels a lot bigger, more pervasive, and more connected than it did when that crap happened.

Because it feels like it's way too easy for stuff to slip through the cracks. For the narrative retrospectively to forget all the individual instances of shittiness, and really only give mention to the big blatant ones.

Anyone remember the stories about people shoved in that warehouse in NYC who were becoming extremely ill and even had their lives put in danger by not being allowed access to medications they needed, or medical attention? They were literally begging, and sobbing, some were becoming delirious or starting to pass out.

I haven't seen or heard anyone talk about that since then, or even really talk much about how fucked up that whole warehouse thing was. There was a lot of talk while it was actively happening and just after, but then it kinda faded away. I'm really hoping that shit doesn't happen here.
posted by emptythought at 4:27 PM on August 20, 2014

Albers has been relieved of duty and suspended indefinitely.

They should also give him a binky and an extra nap time - I've known toddlers with greater emotional control.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 4:27 PM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

Wait, what? What are you talking about? The officer people have been calling "Officer Go Fuck Yourself," now identified as Lt. Ray Albers of the St. Ann Police Department, is the one who told the person who asked his name to go fuck themselves, not the other way around.

And then the live streamer responded with, 'Oh your name is 'go fuck yourself'? Excuse me, Officer Go Fuck Yourself...' etc.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 4:29 PM on August 20, 2014 [4 favorites]

EXTREME CONTENT WARNING! (this is a video of a man being killed)

St. Louis PD have released the video of the shooting of Kajieme Powell.

I just can't take anymore.
posted by lattiboy at 4:29 PM on August 20, 2014 [9 favorites]

St. Louis Public Radio: "St. Louis Police Release Video, Calls from City Shooting." (the gentleman with the knife)

I had no prior conception of this shooting, other than a brief mention upthread(?) about it possibly being suicide by cop.

Got to the part where, 9 bullets later, they decided to handcuff the prone form on the ground and.... I'm done. Fuck this. Out of words.
posted by deludingmyself at 4:30 PM on August 20, 2014 [3 favorites]

By the way, Albers has been relieved of duty and suspended indefinitely.

Suspended without pay, if that article is accurate. That's something!
posted by KathrynT at 4:31 PM on August 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

Apparently #OpFerguson released the name, which it looks like perhaps prompted this disclosure on the part of the St. Ann Police Department.

Anonymous is something of a loose cannon, but if there is anybody who deserves a doxing, it's police officers who think that disobedience deserves death.
posted by anemone of the state at 4:36 PM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

So, what is happening to those who have been arrested the past couple of nights? Does anyone know?
posted by spinifex23 at 4:37 PM on August 20, 2014

I've known toddlers with greater emotional control

Similarly I've known toddlers with a more convincing ability to lie about something they did that they were not supposed to be doing.
posted by elizardbits at 4:38 PM on August 20, 2014 [10 favorites]

My god, the weariness in the cameraman's voice when he says "here we go again" is heartbreaking. A lifetime of oppression summed up in four words.

And yeah, it is just textbook inability to use de-escalation / nonlethal methods. He never moved at more than a walk, before the cops showed up the other people are right near him and don't seem slightly concerned. Then the cops show up with firearms drawn from the second they step outside.

Just...fuck.
posted by Lemurrhea at 4:39 PM on August 20, 2014 [4 favorites]

Ugh. That video is hard to watch. It all happens so fast. 15 seconds from the cops getting out of the car, to the gunshots that kill him. 10 seconds from "drop the knife" to him being dead on the ground. They didn't even think twice.

Smarter people than me can parse whether it was justified or not and why. But I'm shocked at how quickly they made their decision.
posted by naju at 4:39 PM on August 20, 2014 [11 favorites]

That shooting video is awful. I couldn't bring myself to watch the whole thing, but the dude is just wandering back and forth, not threatening anybody that's around, and the cops pull up and IMMEDIATELY pull out their guns, point them at the guy, and start screaming at him. Like, there was no attempt to communicate whatsoever. I stopped watching at that point. Seriously, WTF.

Yes, the cops escalated immediately. It certainly changed Powell's attitude.

I couldn't see a knife in the video (although you can hear the cops say 'Drop the knife'), and he certainly wasn't 'brandishing' anything. His hands were at his sides.

He was, however, shouting 'Shoot me, motherfucker', and he was approaching the cops when they shot him.

7 times in quick succession. And then twice more - after he has already fallen to the ground - for good measure, it seems.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 4:40 PM on August 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

Oh my God. They handcuffed Kajieme Powell after they'd shot him and he was already dead. He stole two sodas and set them down on the sidewalk, and police arrived and shot and killed him for approaching them.
posted by limeonaire at 4:41 PM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

I've seen several claims today that the "knife" in question was a butter knife.
posted by stenseng at 4:41 PM on August 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

They weren't even on the fucking scene long enough to have any idea what the mental state of the dude was or the situation before they killed him. My god, if this is what cops think is justified, I don't even have any words..
posted by zug at 4:41 PM on August 20, 2014 [10 favorites]

Approaching them with a knife, yes.
posted by Justinian at 4:41 PM on August 20, 2014

i was expecting to see something a lot more aggressive on the part of the victim from the description of what went on - they claimed he had the knife in an overhand posture and i'm not seeing that at all

the guy who filmed this is right - a taser would have worked
posted by pyramid termite at 4:41 PM on August 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

Butter knife story
posted by stenseng at 4:42 PM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

St. Louis PD have released the video of the shooting of Kajieme Powell.

What The Fuck.

He wasn't doing anything. No attempt at communication before they start shooting. And they had the gall to cuff him after he was already dead.
posted by supermassive at 4:44 PM on August 20, 2014 [3 favorites]

the guy who filmed this is right - a taser would have worked

I remember when tasers came out and the story was that they were being given to the police to use in place of shooting somebody. And of course instead the taser isn't a way to avoid killing, it's just a way to punish noncompliance.
posted by Pope Guilty at 4:45 PM on August 20, 2014 [12 favorites]

Two sodas. Guy stole two sodas. That's how much his life was worth.

Several of us have shared this before, but never call the cops unless you want somebody killed.
posted by Joey Michaels at 4:45 PM on August 20, 2014 [25 favorites]

Fucking fuck.
posted by bq at 4:47 PM on August 20, 2014

Wait, what? What are you talking about? The officer people have been calling "Officer Go Fuck Yourself," now identified as Lt. Ray Albers of the St. Ann Police Department, is the one who told the person who asked his name to go fuck themselves, not the other way around.

And then the live streamer responded with, 'Oh your name is 'go fuck yourself'? Excuse me, Officer Go Fuck Yourself...' etc.

Oops, got it, sorry, emptythought. Unfortunately, livestreams have been loading incredibly slowly for me here, so I've been relying on secondhand descriptions of a lot of things.
posted by limeonaire at 4:51 PM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

Approaching them with a knife, yes.

That could be an explanation if they hadn't kept shooting him after he had fallen over from the first seven shots.

The only reason to do that is to make sure he's dead.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 4:52 PM on August 20, 2014 [11 favorites]

The only reason to do that is to make sure he's dead.

eponytragical

(sorry, this is so awful that gallows humor is all I've got right now)
posted by zug at 4:54 PM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

They got out of their car already drawn down on the guy. At least one of them breaks the cardinal laws of gun safety by covering bystanders with his barrel.

They knew they were going to shoot this man before they arrived on the scene. They knew exactly what this was going to be.
posted by penduluum at 4:55 PM on August 20, 2014

Also note that the cop puts his hand on the butt of his gun as he's trying to get people to back up. That seems pretty goddamn threatening to me, particularly after a community member has just been executed in the street.
posted by KathrynT at 4:56 PM on August 20, 2014 [5 favorites]

They got out of their car already drawn down on the guy. At least one of them breaks the cardinal laws of gun safety by covering bystanders with his barrel.

Do we have a cop here on the Blue that can tell us about what proper procedure for dealing with someone experiencing a mental health crisis is?
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 4:57 PM on August 20, 2014

And they had the gall to cuff him after he was already dead.

I'm pretty sure that is standard procedure - in the event that he's not dead, he is still a suspect and should be restrained.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 5:01 PM on August 20, 2014

Is this recent video of Kajieme Powell getting murdered receiving any play on MSM cable news? This needs to be seen.

.
posted by whyareyouatriangle at 5:02 PM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

proper procedure for dealing with someone experiencing a mental health crisis is?

Probably advisable to try talking to them first.
posted by wabbittwax at 5:03 PM on August 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

The one positive thing I'll say about this latest police shooting is that the St. Louis PD really seems to be determined not to hide anything. What happened seems pretty despicable, but they've been forthcoming about releasing it.
posted by Joey Michaels at 5:04 PM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

(of course, that's like saying "the one positive thing I'll say about ebola is its helping me with my weight loss.")
posted by Joey Michaels at 5:05 PM on August 20, 2014 [9 favorites]

The inexcusable conduct of many police in recent decades should be dealt with not only through a systemic change in dealing with crises from a social mediator perspective more than an authoritarian one, but moreover I think this strongly reinforces the case against firearms.

The pro gun crowd always posits that the best safety against gun threats is to be carrying a gun yourself, but the American police forces are a good example that this has the unfortunate side effect of murder on a weekly basis. Preventing one potential killer by adding another one may slightly reduce the first killers odds of killing, but it also adds an entirely new potential killer into the equation.

The net risk is greater. And not only is it a net risk of bodily harm, but an increase in fear and paranoia that everyone around you is a potential threat, which is the world these police officers seem to be living in. One solution would be for police to counteract that fear by all officers wearing head-to-toe body armor on a daily basis to lessen their fear-based trigger-happiness, but I offer the alternate and more humane solution of MUCH stricter gun laws.

I think this is a necessary first step that will allow police forces to then deal with officer shootings in a much more severe manner, allow for more peaceful policing tactics and the weeding out of violent officers, and will develop public trust and support for the force.

That being said, I know the voting public won't go for this, as even the public critics of the Michael Brown case seem to be focusing just on uncovering what happened and judging the event according to the conventional standards of the current system- but the entire current system is flawed, and without major changes there will only be more and more Michael Browns to come.

I know there's a whole other side of the equation about race and income inequality, social services, and a lot of other reforms. but I feel like this is a chance to pick up the momentum that politicians briefly had for gun reform before they completely gave up on it again last year.
posted by p3t3 at 5:06 PM on August 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

The fact that they drilled him twice after he fell down on the other hand...

I'd be fascinated to hear a cop defend finishing a suspect off as a practice.
posted by Pope Guilty at 5:06 PM on August 20, 2014 [5 favorites]

It's a positive thing that they were forthcoming in releasing it. But doesn't it also demonstrate a tremendous amount of brazen arrogance and hubris? They evidently see no problem with this behavior whatsoever.
posted by wabbittwax at 5:06 PM on August 20, 2014 [7 favorites]

I'd be fascinated to hear a cop defend finishing a suspect off as a practice.

They can't testify to your brutality and poor procedure if they're dead.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 5:08 PM on August 20, 2014 [6 favorites]

Is this recent video of Kajieme Powell getting murdered receiving any play on MSM cable news? This needs to be seen.

The police want it to be seen. Because they believe that having seen that video most people will say it was a justified shooting. I think they're probably correct. You might wish police used deadly force less often. I sure as hell do. But this thread is not indicative of what most people would think upon seeing that video IMO. Most people would say "that's awful, but he did approach them with a knife in his hand so they defended themselves".
posted by Justinian at 5:08 PM on August 20, 2014 [3 favorites]

But doesn't it also demonstrate a tremendous amount of brazen arrogance and hubris? They evidently see no problem with this behavior whatsoever.

One of the major issues with the Brown shooting is that they've not released anything. Whether the SLPD approves of this or not, the effort at transparency is an improvement.
posted by Joey Michaels at 5:09 PM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

Angsty cop shows had led me to believe that cops who have killed people are troubled and haunted by it. That does not seem to be the case here. Taking a life doesn't appear to weigh heavily on these people in the slightest.
posted by wabbittwax at 5:10 PM on August 20, 2014 [8 favorites]

I strongly suspect that having your guns drawn is standard procedure when someone is brandishing a deadly weapon

But they didn't have time to determine personally, on the scene, whether he was brandishing anything. They presumably heard a radio call, exited their vehicle already drawn, and never assessed the threat before escalating. Because in my opinion they had already decided what the situation was, and how they were going to handle it.

I think that inattention and closed perspective is the same thing that leads to at least the second officer to exit the vehicle pointing his weapon at a bystander on the other side of his target, which aside from the unjustified killing itself should be grounds for termination.
posted by penduluum at 5:12 PM on August 20, 2014

The police want it to be seen.

that may be an unwise thing to want - the reaction here is pretty horrified - the reaction of those who were there was pretty horrified

now people all over st louis, including ferguson, are going to see it - i wonder what their reaction will be
posted by pyramid termite at 5:14 PM on August 20, 2014

It's pretty clearly to me that modern American cops are increasingly paranoid even as their job continues to be less and less dangerous. They've become just like the paranoid nutjobs with stockpiles of ammo in the woods. They're too afraid to even make a cursory attempt to diffuse situations so they just escalate immediately to provoke a wrong move and kill people instead. And the more military grade equipment they get, the more terrified they act.

That guy was showing no threatening behavior toward anybody. He wasn't going to hurt anyone. But the cops show up, immediately escalate, and murder a mentally disturbed person. Is this how we treat human beings?
posted by zug at 5:16 PM on August 20, 2014 [25 favorites]

I strongly suspect that having your guns drawn is standard procedure when someone is brandishing a deadly weapon

None of the bystanders said anything about a knife. I don't think they would have casually walked up to and by him if he were really brandishing a weapon in any kind of threatening manner.
posted by zug at 5:17 PM on August 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

I hope that reviewing rules of engagement for cops will be something that comes out of this. Forgive me if I don't re-watch the video, but it didn't seem like either of them even tried to take a few steps back as Powell was walking slowly towards them. And then they shot to kill. I glanced at the YouTube comments (as we all know, it's best not to look *directly at* YouTube comments) and there were a few along the lines of "once officers start shooting, it's to kill, that's just standard procedure". Well, maybe let's have another think about that.
posted by uosuaq at 5:17 PM on August 20, 2014 [4 favorites]

Are you saying you don't think he actually had a knife or you don't think the police knew he had a knife? Because they could easily have seen the knife in his hand when they pulled up.
posted by Justinian at 5:18 PM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

Well, maybe let's have another think about that.

God I hope not. Cops are trigger happy enough I do not want them deciding they can open fire even more easily because, hey, they only meant to put you out of commission for a few months rather than kill you.
posted by Justinian at 5:19 PM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

The police want it to be seen.

that may be an unwise thing to want - the reaction here is pretty horrified - the reaction of those who were there was pretty horrified

I don't want to think what this is going to do to the protests tonight.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 5:19 PM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

I'm saying I don't think they could have determined whether he was "brandishing" the knife, what his attitude or likely behavior was going to be, whether they could de-escalate or solve the problem less lethally, etc., from when they looked out their windshield to when they opened their doors already drawn.

But I think fundamentally I'm probably getting too focused on details and I don't want to distract any further.
posted by penduluum at 5:22 PM on August 20, 2014

20 years ago, odds are greatly against anyone seeing what happened except for those who where there - now, with ubiquitous video recording, more of these incidents are coming to public view

cell phones are just like automobiles - they're going to change our society in ways we're just beginning to realize
posted by pyramid termite at 5:22 PM on August 20, 2014 [13 favorites]

Neither. I'm saying he was not brandishing a weapon until the cops showed up and drew their guns on him. I don't know at what point the knife came out but had they pulled up and acted like people instead of compliance robots he might well still be alive.
posted by zug at 5:22 PM on August 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

I'm not convinced your "average" American (whatever that is, but just for the sake of argument) will see this shooting as "justified". Especially considering Powell was reportedly holding a butter knife and reportedly mentally ill.

It did not appear as though the cops' lives were threatened in any manner.

A good comparison of effective policing might be the video posted upthread where two Vancouver Police take down a person, waving a syringe, with a bean bag gun.

This shooting seems to be an extension of "Stand your ground" logic: do not retreat at any cost, fire if necessary. In days of not so long ago, Police would've set up a perimeter, moved back if necessary, communicated with the individual and, crucially, waited.
posted by whyareyouatriangle at 5:22 PM on August 20, 2014 [16 favorites]

I was discussing the militarization of the police with a friend of mine, who is both a PhD student in clinical psychology and a veteran. He commented on the fact that the majority of police work is social work but they receive very little training in how to deal with civilians.

I am sure that being a police officer is extremely difficult. They answer domestic abuse calls, work with the mentally ill, and do their best to prevent crime. I'm also sure that the social aspects of law enforcement is harder for many (most?) cops than learning how to use a firearm.

So of course when we give them new ways of dealing with problems that don't involve talking, they will use them. As mentioned upthread, tasers are used to punish noncompliance and far too many altercations are ended with violence.

And we let them get away with it, because they have a tough job. But maybe we should address how we equip law enforcement officers to deal with their problems not solely through reducing their access to weapons, but also by emphasizing that police work requires the officer to function as a witness, as a mediator, and as a problem solver.
posted by Strass at 5:23 PM on August 20, 2014 [20 favorites]

Cops are trigger happy enough I do not want them deciding they can open fire even more easily because, hey, they only meant to put you out of commission for a few months rather than kill you.

Well, that's not exactly the direction I was hoping the reevaluation would go in...

I don't want to think what this is going to do to the protests tonight.

Yeah, I worry about that too. This is going to be on people's minds tonight.
posted by uosuaq at 5:24 PM on August 20, 2014

A good comparison of effective policing might be the video posted upthread where two Vancouver Police take down a person, waving a syringe, with a bean bag gun.

Did these St. Louis cops have less lethal options, such as tasers?
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 5:25 PM on August 20, 2014

They didn't have to immediately jump out of their car. They certainly didn't have to immediately jump out of their car with weapons drawn. They could have assessed the situation safe and protected in their car for 5 or 10 seconds and this may well have had a different outcome. They could have retreated as the man approached. They could have talked instead of screaming.

Every single action they undertook toward that obviously mentally ill person was aggressive.
posted by zug at 5:25 PM on August 20, 2014 [11 favorites]

this is all so depressing
posted by whyareyouatriangle at 5:25 PM on August 20, 2014 [4 favorites]

I think you overestimate the average American concern for indigent mentally ill individuals. They're more likely to think it makes him more dangerous, not less.
posted by corb at 5:25 PM on August 20, 2014 [10 favorites]

One shocking thing to me about all this is how bad police officers are with guns. Pointing them at non-violent protesters, covering random people with their barrels, drawing guns well before necessary. It makes me question giving them guns at all. Given that police officers kill far more civilians than vice versa, maybe they don't all need to be carrying guns all the time after all.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 5:25 PM on August 20, 2014 [31 favorites]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't they claim that guy had a knife and was within 3 feet of an officer? That's one big ass 3 feet near as I can tell.
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 5:28 PM on August 20, 2014 [4 favorites]

Jesus fucking Christ, they rolled right up into the guy's immediate space, and from the car doors opening to the beginning of the gunfire is only 10-11 seconds. He was posing no immediate danger to anybody; why in god's name would they think they needed to jump into aggressive action like that?
posted by FelliniBlank at 5:29 PM on August 20, 2014 [5 favorites]

I guess I'm just taking it on some kinda faith that strictly from demographics, if nothing else, white supremacy can't/won't last in this country.

Counterpoint: Whites were less than 20% of the population in South Africa during apartheid.
posted by desjardins at 5:31 PM on August 20, 2014 [7 favorites]

I can't find stats for police shootings in the US, or in Missouri. Probably because they aren't collected.

But Australia tracks police shootings pretty closely. It turns out that 42% of the (105) people shot by police in Australia between 1990 and 2011 were mentally ill.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 5:31 PM on August 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

Did Chris Hayes just say Lt. Ray Albers was following standard procedure by covering the crowd with an assault rife and he was only suspended because he said the word 'fuck?'
posted by ob1quixote at 5:32 PM on August 20, 2014

this is all so depressing

That video is probably a sign that I should do a media blackout, at least for a day. I've had a growing sense of despair (really, it's always there when it comes to this topic, but it's overwhelming right now) since last week, and it is so damn hard to shake the feeling that black lives simply don't matter in this country. I'm so sick and tired of having to worry about my boyfriend, my family, my friends and neighbors.

I'm gonna watch makeup tutorials and cat videos for the rest of the night.
posted by supermassive at 5:32 PM on August 20, 2014 [4 favorites]

His thoughts were red thoughts: "I don't want to think what this is going to do to the protests tonight."

Maybe they're trying to provoke a full-on riot.

I mean, I don't think that the cops shot the guy thinking "whoohoo, now we'll get some violence outta those protesters and we'll get to REALLY fight back." But I think that the cops are feeling both beyond reproach AND defensive about the issue of force. And that's not a combination that tends to lead toward common sense and thoughtful reactions.

So, "trying to provoke a riot" is an exaggeration. But I sure as hell think they're acting in intentional disregard about how they're being perceived and whether their actions might fan the flames.
posted by desuetude at 5:33 PM on August 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

Fuck. Incredible. Fuck. That was wrong. Everything about it was wrong. Those pigs just gunned the fucker down. There's no fucking way any professional - hell anybody - can rationalize that stop. For the first time since this Brown story broke, I'm dropping any aspirations to dispassionate analysis. Just look at it. You don't need any intellect to figure out what went down, just a heart. Fuck these cops and fuck any cop that doesn't call this shit out for total lack of humanity it was.
posted by klarck at 5:34 PM on August 20, 2014 [15 favorites]

It speaks volumes that the individual who filmed the video safely walked right by Kajieme Powell.
posted by whyareyouatriangle at 5:35 PM on August 20, 2014 [17 favorites]

ob1quixote: “Did Chris Hayes just say Lt. Ray Albers was following standard procedure by covering the crowd with an assault rife and he was only suspended because he said the word 'fuck?'”

Yes. Yes he fucking did.

St. Ann Police Chief Aaron Jiminez said the officer raised his gun after he saw a weapon in the crowd. After realizing it was only a BB gun, Jiminez said the officer then scanned the crowd with his AR-22 rifle raised, which Jiminez said is a standard procedure.

“It was havoc at that time. He also got urine thrown on him, having to deal with that is obviously disgusting,” Jiminez said. “However, when he‘s trying to protect the public and asking people to back up, under no circumstances do I, or our department, condone his language.”

posted by ob1quixote at 5:36 PM on August 20, 2014 [9 favorites]

Ain't that America! Pointing a loaded weapon at people is fine, but a few cuss words and he's relieved from duty for a few days.
posted by Joey Michaels at 5:37 PM on August 20, 2014 [57 favorites]

“However, when he‘s trying to protect the public and asking people to back up, under no circumstances do I, or our department, condone his language.”

FUCKING FUCK YOU FUCKING FUCKERS
posted by scody at 5:38 PM on August 20, 2014 [22 favorites]

I hate to say it, but that St. Louis shooting may be justified. Knives are seriously dangerous weapons and you will get shot if you have one in hand and move towards an officer who is within several yards of you. You can close that gap in less than a second.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 5:39 PM on August 20, 2014

Bullshit did a cop spot a BB gun in the crowd and let it ride.
posted by Artw at 5:40 PM on August 20, 2014 [34 favorites]

The Walrus, a Canadian magazine, published an article about how police can deal with mental health crises better in the wake of several fatal shootings by Toronto police.
posted by chrominance at 5:41 PM on August 20, 2014 [6 favorites]

I guess I take back what I said above about covering bystanders with your firearm being a termination offense, because the Chief of the Fucking Police just said it's IN THE FUCKING POLICE MANUAL
posted by penduluum at 5:42 PM on August 20, 2014 [6 favorites]

But… London Police restrain man with machete (without killing him and cuffing his dead body).

(Yes, I realize this is an anecdotal point and all situations are different)

Time… patience… perimeter and willingness to swallow one's ego and retreat, move back and away.

Communication.
posted by whyareyouatriangle at 5:43 PM on August 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

Invoke: Clive Bundy and all those guns: surely they were a bigger threat?
posted by whyareyouatriangle at 5:45 PM on August 20, 2014 [3 favorites]

I hate to say it, but that St. Louis shooting may be justified. Knives are seriously dangerous weapons and you will get shot if you have one in hand and move towards an officer who is within several yards of you. You can close that gap in less than a second.

But try to imagine police handling that (butter?) knife situation with a white rich kid in white rich suburbia. Knowing a knife could be that dangerous, why did they allow themselves to get so close to him in the first place?

Wait -- let's go further. Let's imagine what would happen if these cops knew before pulling up that the kid with a knife was the son of the mayor or the son of the police chief. Whatever procedures they might've been following here, there are obviously other, better, life-preserving ones available.
posted by nobody at 5:45 PM on August 20, 2014 [27 favorites]

Yeah, if he indeed have a knife, you can fuck someone else up pretty badly in seconds, and they may not have known it was just a butter knife.

I think it's really clear from the video that cops are encouraged to kill to protect themselves from damage.
posted by corb at 5:46 PM on August 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

I need to back away from this thread. Before I go and buy a flat of beer all I have to say is:

FUCK. THE. POLICE.
posted by whyareyouatriangle at 5:46 PM on August 20, 2014 [5 favorites]

Bullshit did a cop spot a BB gun in the crowd and let it ride.

I can't actually think of a more obnoxiously obvious lie.
posted by elizardbits at 5:46 PM on August 20, 2014 [17 favorites]

now if only they were encouraged to think
posted by pyramid termite at 5:47 PM on August 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

I just don't get how any of this shit we're seeing came out of any manual of proper police procedure. Any of it.
posted by Trochanter at 5:48 PM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

Um, if they were so desperate to protect themselves from the terrible knife, they could, I dunno, STAY IN THE CAR. That way, if the guy ran up on them in a nanosecond, he could do precisely zero damage to them with the knife.
posted by FelliniBlank at 5:48 PM on August 20, 2014 [7 favorites]

A god damned nightstick could have subdued that fellow. That dead fellow.
posted by Trochanter at 5:49 PM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

As far as the mentally ill man and police process, google up Pete Early and his writing on this. His book CRAZY is great for info on the system in our country that fails the mentally ill in many ways. Not so great for your mood.

As far as the butter knife shooting... I need a text expander snippet with my thoughts on law enforcement and its refusal to ever de-escalate/retreat.
posted by phearlez at 5:49 PM on August 20, 2014

That's it. Getting drunk.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 5:51 PM on August 20, 2014 [9 favorites]

i'm still trying to process that a cop can be commended for pointing a rifle at unarmed protesters and reporters and suspended for saying "fuck"

i think my mind just broke
posted by pyramid termite at 5:51 PM on August 20, 2014 [13 favorites]

I'm not going to watch the Powell video, just like I didn't watch the Foley video. I am surprised how little attention it's getting on my Ferguson twitter list.
posted by desjardins at 5:53 PM on August 20, 2014

Worth noting that the Walrus article I linked above actually depicts a similar scenario: police respond to a robbery call involving a man brandishing a knife and clearly in distress. At least three significant differences:

1) the cops try backing up before they shoot;
2) the whole encounter takes longer than 15 seconds;
3) the victim actually did hurt someone; after he stole some scissors from a store he cut the shopkeeper's hand, though the shopkeeper said afterwards he didn't think the victim meant him any harm.
posted by chrominance at 5:53 PM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

If you are going to shoot an innocent civilian down, it's essential that you use the politest language possible while you do it. Miss Manners suggests "please, sir, leave this location posthaste or I will empty my clip into you."
posted by Joey Michaels at 5:54 PM on August 20, 2014 [15 favorites]

i understand it now - it's alright to threaten to murder people as long as you're polite about it
posted by pyramid termite at 5:55 PM on August 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

oh, geez, joey michaels, darn it
posted by pyramid termite at 5:56 PM on August 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

Livestream of a solidarity march in Oakland.
posted by spinifex23 at 5:56 PM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

i'm still trying to process that a cop can be commended for pointing a rifle at unarmed protesters and reporters and suspended for saying "fuck"

This actually makes weird sense in America.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 5:57 PM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

For something different, possibly more encouraging: Ryan Reilly interviews a 16 year old volunteer at the Ferguson Library, who is watching the younger kids. (Spoiler: he's adorable.)
posted by desjardins at 5:59 PM on August 20, 2014 [3 favorites]

re, rifle-pointing/cussing - stealing layceepee's Apocalypse Now quote from the Marine Corps sexism thread-

Kurtz: We train young men to drop fire on people, but their commanders won't allow them to write "fuck" on their airplanes because it's obscene!
posted by hap_hazard at 6:01 PM on August 20, 2014 [4 favorites]

I think it's really clear from the video that cops are encouraged to kill to protect themselves from damage.

I've perhaps said this before, but when I was in high school, we took a trip to the police shooting range.* I'd shot guns before and had decided that shooting at anything but circular targets was a line I wasn't going to cross, but the total lack of concern the police officer were with had for the thought that they might kill someone one day combined with the feeling of raw power that came with handling a hand gun for the first time were major factors in deciding not to handle guns again. I may have been much more worldly than my classmates, but I was a fairly hopelessly naive teenager and that afternoon was probably the moment where I started treating the police with suspicion by default.

*For reasons unknown (well, lack of space elsewhere), the police range used to be in the basement of my high school. This meant that there was something of a, uh, gun culture at my suburban Chicago high school and that taking the school's collection of rifles to the police station to shoot them was something that happened. Admittedly it was after school, but still.
posted by hoyland at 6:02 PM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

new lawsuit alleges ferguson officers killed a mentally ill man with a taser in 2011
posted by pyramid termite at 6:02 PM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

Are you shitting me? He "saw a gun in the crowd" and then realized it was a BB gun at which time he decided just to let the guy with the supposed BB gun walk around with it? That's not even a competent lie. There are so many things wrong with it that... oh forget it. I don't think we're even supposed to believe it they just know nobody can do anything about it.
posted by Justinian at 6:04 PM on August 20, 2014 [8 favorites]

It's pretty clearly to me that modern American cops are increasingly paranoid even as their job continues to be less and less dangerous.

I say we give cab drivers bulletproof vests and riot gear and take it away from the cops. Reallocate the tools to the more dangerous job.
posted by winna at 6:05 PM on August 20, 2014

i'm still trying to process that a cop can be commended for pointing a rifle at unarmed protesters and reporters and suspended for saying "fuck"

This actually makes weird sense in America.

FCC THE POLICE!
posted by uosuaq at 6:05 PM on August 20, 2014 [20 favorites]

Fuck fuck fuck fuck
posted by crayz at 6:13 PM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

can tell us about what proper procedure for dealing with someone experiencing a mental health crisis is?

Most police officers have no training in dealing with people, or even recognizing people, who are having a mental health crisis. The government department I work for, in a major metropolitan area that attracts more than its fair share of mentally ill individuals, trains the local police in how to deal with mental health crises. The training produces what are called Crisis Intervention Officers. While I'm not personally involved in the training, I've seen the curriculum and syllabi, and one thing that has been striking is just how basic the trainers need to be at the beginning. The police officers literally know nothing about mental health issues. The other thing that's interesting is how hard it can be to work with the PD, where information is controlled very strictly, and hierarchy is very very important.
posted by OmieWise at 6:14 PM on August 20, 2014 [3 favorites]

I can't actually think of a more obnoxiously obvious lie.

It's like a reflex - every last word that comes out of these fuckers mouths is a lie, and everyone is supposed to just nod and ignore it, and any time people don't it breaks their world.
posted by Artw at 6:14 PM on August 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

I'm not going to watch the Powell video, just like I didn't watch the Foley video.

I certainly wouldn't push anyone to watch the Powell video, but unlike the Foley video (which I have been steering well clear of), it's not a case where someone was definitely going to die (after being forced to make some false statements). If you can stomach the Powell video, it at least gives you a chance to form your own impression of what happened and how it could have gone differently; much more so than any textual description I could imagine. So I think there's some real value to it being out there.
But yes, it's a video of someone being killed, so...don't watch it if you're not up for that.
(If anyone is wondering what it's like, I wouldn't describe it as gory, at least in a non-full-screen viewing -- and I'm not going to have a second look. Just a horrible event.)
posted by uosuaq at 6:14 PM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

i'm still trying to process that a cop can be commended for pointing a rifle at unarmed protesters and reporters and suspended for saying "fuck"

A lot of it has to do with the fact that 'fuck' was unequivocally caught on camera, whereas 'vague but incredibly threatening thing that would cause me to aim my weapon at zillions of innocent civilians' wasn't - thus leading to plausible deniability as to weapon-pointing but none for the language.

However, I'll n-th the opinions voiced many times above plus in numerous of the articles linked, that the police weapons discipline exhibited in these incidents, plus that exnibited in the policing of the protests, has just been completely, absolutely, abysmally terrible.

Just for example, (at least) one of the stray rounds from Officer Wilson's shots at Michael Brown went through a window of the nearby apartment complex. Basically, Wilson was shooting randomly towards a densely populated area. Only pure luck kept it from killing or maiming some random person. Meanwhile, there were all sorts of people roaming around behind the the victim of the STL police shooting shown in the video, and they were shooting directly towards the convenience store, which you can assume to be filled with people, as near as I could tell.

Even subtracting out the intended victim, if a random person took those shots in those places in those general directions, they would have their guns confiscated, charged with a felony, locked up, weapons permit revoked. And rightly so.
posted by flug at 6:15 PM on August 20, 2014 [6 favorites]

Heh. You think an actual cop would want to come anywhere near this thread?

I strongly suspect that having your guns drawn is standard procedure when someone is brandishing a deadly weapon whether or not that weapon is a knife, gun, or baseball bat. So I think the idea that the mere fact that they immediately drew their guns upon exiting their vehicles shows they already intended to kill this guy is pretty foolish.

The fact that they drilled him twice after he fell down on the other hand...
posted by Justinian at 7:02 PM on August 20 [1 favorite +] [!]

So, I work at a bar in STL that is one of the few bars that is open until 3 AM. I see a lot of stuff happen - good and bad. Here's the thing: I had a guy with a box cutter on the patio of my bar idly brandishing the box cutter. He seemed like he was drunk more than anything else. Not completely out of his mind drunk, but drunk. I had to go out and get his attention so that hopefully he wouldn't stab or slice anyone at the patio (this included hopefully not stabbing me.) He then attempted to come in to the bar where I told him that I couldn't let him in because of a) boxcutter and b) his already intoxicated condition.

My manager and I end up talking with him for about 20-30 minutes halfway through which my manager called the police because we were incapable of getting him to leave. Eventually, he calms down a bit and starts walking away with the boxcutter still being idly brandished in his hand. The police come up and I point him out as having a boxcutter and possibly intoxicated. They do the remarkable thing of approaching him like a human being and making sure the situation doesn't escalate and arrest him for brandishing a weapon after they have removed the boxcutter from his hand.

EDIT: I should point out I forgot to add that he was an older black man probably in his late 30s. So, he theoretically could've been shot to death.

I don't know if it's because I'm on The Delmar Loop or because the district in which I work the cops are generally good about this stuff.

Watching that video? I'm honestly just shocked that they decided shooting him was the main option.

Now off to get drunk.
posted by lizarrd at 6:19 PM on August 20, 2014 [20 favorites]

Meanwhile we've got cops stealing bullets in case* they might be incriminating evidence...

* yeah, right.
posted by Artw at 6:19 PM on August 20, 2014

Yeah, I'm amazed that my Eddie Eagle (NRA youth) training covered so much (muzzle discipline, range awareness, etc.) that appears to be utterly lacking from "professional" LEO's training.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 6:23 PM on August 20, 2014 [4 favorites]

Ugh, I am so depressed about all this. I was out of town (and more significantly, away from my computer) for the first week or so, so I truly want to thank all you folks for the coverage and conversation here so I could catch up on things, albeit largely after-the-fact. I spent last Tue-Sat with basically just the local newspaper to refer to (unless you count the Fox-generated BS dutifully relayed by a certain in-law). Which, I knew I should take it with a grain of salt, but then when I came back here to hear the real story, it just...it all clicked and became clear. The character assassination tactics. The overblown rioting and looting coverage. And the truly horribly racist things some people still have the gall to say in public. I thought I had paid good attention to the Trayvon Martin story, but for some reason it didn't hit me anywhere near as hard as this.

I just...I am so disgusted. And I fear that nothing will change. The MSM coverage is so pathetic, and that's what most people rely on. It's hard to convincingly relate true accounts that are all over the internet when they're contradictory to the stories that are all over CNN, et al. Like, I'm wondering how they did it in the '60s. If it had happened today, I feel like Rosa Parks would have been reported to be an obese, drunk person who was too selfish to give up her seat to a woman 8.5-months pregnant with twins. And/or just committed some crime / wielded a gun.

And now that I watched the video of how they killed this *dangerously* crazy/erratic man, I'm afraid to see what the narrative is going to be. Surely anybody who's spent an hour on the streets of any city in America can tell that this guy was pretty damn run-of-the-mill. I hope I'm not coming off as insensitive to the mentally ill, but crazy people are everywhere. And if this is how the police are going to handle every crazy [black] person who steals a soda or two...god damn it. I just don't know what to say. Fucked up doesn't even begin to describe it.
posted by gueneverey at 6:25 PM on August 20, 2014 [8 favorites]

Not just handling the weapons, but handling the incidents.

You reach out of your car window and grab a suspect? Wouldn't any police manual say that's a good way to make yourself deal with the suspect while your arm's broke?
posted by Trochanter at 6:26 PM on August 20, 2014

I am very surprised cops didn't confiscate dude's phone btw. Incredibly surprised.

The police released the cellphone video, so presumably they did?
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 6:31 PM on August 20, 2014 [4 favorites]

Goodish news, it looks to be raining fairly hard in Ferguson right now.
posted by uosuaq at 6:31 PM on August 20, 2014

The thing that keeps standing out to me is that every responsible holder of a gun knows that pulling the trigger is an absolute last resort. They must have been in immediate apprehension of serious, fatal bodily harm. They were not. It's very clear what their mentality was, though. They think they're surrounded by a pack of violent animals who won't listen to reason. They think they're in a warzone and their backs are against the wall. They have nothing but contempt and repulsion for every single person they're encountering right now, and they think they're in Vietnam, with anyone stepping out of the shadows to slit their throats at any moment. So with that mentality, shooting is a first resort at all times.

They're eager to release this video to the public because they think it justifies their mentality, not damns it. "Look!" they're saying. "This is what we're up against, us beleaguered cops. They're trying to kill us out there every night." They're proud of this video. They don't realize it shows their delusion and lays bare their entire mentality over the past week. I wouldn't be surprised if another shooting happens tonight. Now they're doubling down on this back-against-the-wall mentality. The lies are getting absurd on their face, they don't care any more about sounding convincing. They're falling into this rabbithole of "us against the insane monsters" and there's no pulling them back from this brink.
posted by naju at 6:32 PM on August 20, 2014 [10 favorites]

Fuck fuck fuck fuck

First let me say that this was upsetting, and that victim deserved better.

I wouldn't put too much emphasis on the inconsistencies. The cops wrote the report based on what they recalled, and yeah, the guy wasn't as close they thought, but adrenaline and all that will play tricks on you. Besides, if they revised their testimony to match the evidence, there wouldn't be any inconsistencies.

And look, they had a call about a guy with a knife acting erratically, and honestly - after a few of the attacks the past few months (vegas, etc.) - I don't really blame them for being twitchy.

So, IMO - the cops did it by the book.

But, but, but, you say, and I agree. The book needs to be revised. That is the problem. The cops did what they were trained to do - and they aren't (in my experience anyway) trained to talk crazy people down from whatever ledge they are on.

Also, credit where it is due. The StL PD relased the info in a timely manner, and are being reasonably straightforward about what transpired. Ferguson could learn a lot.

But, I doubt they will.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 6:33 PM on August 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

One thing that shocked me, and that bodes horribly for the continuing protests, is how having a giant crowd of witnesses watching close by did not make them hesitate for an instant to pull the trigger.
posted by C'est la D.C. at 6:34 PM on August 20, 2014 [14 favorites]

The little DJ in my brain has been scratching, "Fuck tha..wicka wicka..Fuck tha..wicka wicka ..Fuck tha police..woooow wooo," in my brain for the last eleven days. Starting to keep me awake. As always, fuck tha police.
posted by Purposeful Grimace at 6:37 PM on August 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

they aren't (in my experience anyway) trained to talk crazy people down

NPR had a story about two days ago about cops in San Antonio getting some good training on how to deal with mentally disturbed people. Worth a listen.
posted by uosuaq at 6:38 PM on August 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

So, IMO - the cops did it by the book.

Nah. These guys are bad policemen. Sloppy as shit. Looking for fights.
posted by Trochanter at 6:40 PM on August 20, 2014 [7 favorites]

Just for example, (at least) one of the stray rounds from Officer Wilson's shots at Michael Brown went through a window of the nearby apartment complex.

FYI the reference for this is the Piaget Crenshaw interview here, starting about 1:30, where she is describing the initial shots Wilson took at Brown: "The police shot just randomly, they shot through my neighbor's window."

That alone should be sufficient to ban him permanently from the police force and permanently revoke his firearms license, if not more.

I mean, just about the first thing they teach you in firearm safety is "Before you pull the trigger be absolutely sure of your target and what's behind it."

It is positively inexcusable to take even one wild shot like that, where the immediate backdrop is row after row of heavily populated apartment buildings. I don't care WHAT the provocation.
posted by flug at 6:41 PM on August 20, 2014 [9 favorites]

So, IMO - the cops did it by the book.

Is 'doubletap the suspect after you have already shot him seven times and he's lying on the ground, not moving' in the book?
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 6:43 PM on August 20, 2014 [15 favorites]

firearms license? when did this become a thing?
posted by el io at 6:43 PM on August 20, 2014

Really interesting heat map of #Ferguson or related terms tweets.
posted by lizarrd at 6:44 PM on August 20, 2014 [5 favorites]

I'm not sure that people in this thread realize how dangerous knives actually are. If you don't have a bead on someone with a knife within 15 feet of you (who happens to be moving aggressively and screaming at you) then you may well end up dead. So once the police put themselves in the situation where they were out in the open and facing him like that, they absolutely needed to have some weapon trained on Powell--they were in mortal danger.

Obviously, tasers would have been better. Obviously assessing the situation without immediately escalating it would've been better. But this was not a murder in the same way that killing Brown was.
posted by TypographicalError at 6:44 PM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

So once the police put themselves in the situation where they were out in the open and facing him like that

Good call, officers!
posted by Pope Guilty at 6:47 PM on August 20, 2014 [3 favorites]

Some of Pete Earley's writing about the mentally ill and police officer encounters.

Kelly Thomas and David Masters

Our challenge is to remind the public, police, prosecutors, and judges that Kelly Thomas and David Masters did not deserve to die simply because they came into contact with the police and had a mental disorder. Having a mental illness does not make a person’s life worth less than the officer who elected to take that life from him.

His Parents Called For Help: They Received Questionable Justice

Police shootings are becoming all too common. As I am writing this a reader sent me a link to a story about a mentally ill man who was killed by police two nights ago in Norfolk, Virginia, after his family called for help. A 17 year-old boy who was threatening suicide ran at the police two weeks ago in the county adjacent to mine. He had a knife and was fatally shot.

In mental health circles, it’s not unusual to hear someone talk about how mental illnesses are treated differently from physical illnesses. If someone is having a heart attack, you call an ambulance. If someone with a mental illness is acting out, the police are called. This is why CIT is important, but let’s stop for a moment and ask ourselves a simple question. Why is calling the police our only option?

Earley also mentions in one of those articles Crisis Intervention Team Training which is a program to help officers learn less fatal ways of dealing with encounters with the mentally ill. I thought it curious that the origin of the concept was from Memphis, only 300 miles from St Louis.

I looked at the University page and saw they had information on members and there's a lot of them in MO, including St Louis areas. Ferguson claims to have one, though the details are slim and I wonder if this means one person took a training course. The St Louis Metro PD's CIT page has more details though.

The St. Louis County Police Department is part of the St. Louis Area CIT Program. The St. Louis County Police provides CIT services to the St. Louis county area. Click here to view the website

Please forgive me my gallows humor that I bitterly laughed after clicking that link. But it's just the victim of a web reorg and you can find the information about their CIT program here. I wonder if the officers dispatched had received any CIT training. If not, why not? Or why didn't they dispatch officers who had?
posted by phearlez at 6:52 PM on August 20, 2014 [8 favorites]

Letters and Politics has an interview today with Revolutionary Communist Party member Carl Dix, who has been one of the so-called "outside agitators" in Ferguson. Starts at about 31:30. He talks about getting arrested and, as might be expected, is critical of protesters trying to turn him in to the police.
posted by Noisy Pink Bubbles at 6:52 PM on August 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

Obviously, tasers would have been better. Obviously assessing the situation without immediately escalating it would've been better. But this was not a murder in the same way that killing Brown was.

The way I basically see this is as if any other members of the community had done this. Was this guy acting like a class-A citizen who should just be left to wander around? Certainly not. But if a couple community members had pulled up feet away in their car with weapons drawn and then gunned the guy down 15 seconds later, after many other community members had been milling about and filming the guy for minutes? And with continued shots as he falls and a double-tap after he's down?

Yeah, that is called murder.
posted by crayz at 6:52 PM on August 20, 2014 [3 favorites]

For those getting tired of listening to NWA on loop, I recommend the J Dilla version for a change.
posted by p3t3 at 6:56 PM on August 20, 2014 [6 favorites]

To be fair every so often the firearms squad will be called in to deal with someone wandering around with a samurai sword or whatever and shoot them from a safe distance with a rifle if they can't talk them down - probably preventable in a lot of cases though.
posted by Artw at 6:59 PM on August 20, 2014

I see that as I was writing the above uosuaq posted that NPR story. CIT training is what they're talking about and as you can see from the STL PD page I posted they theoretically have a program in place for the entire area.

Which does you squat-all if people don't take the training, don't follow it, or they don't dispatch officers who have taken it, or... who the fuck knows?

Someone should FOIA the department to find out if those officers had the training and how many others have had it across the force. As well as any procedures in place for dispatch to consult who is trained when sending out units. The CIT page has contact names and numbers.
posted by phearlez at 6:59 PM on August 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

So, IMO - the cops did it by the book.

If there is a book that instructs cops to shoot before assessing the situation for more than 15 seconds, there is something deeply wrong with all of us.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 6:59 PM on August 20, 2014 [36 favorites]

For those getting tired of listening to NWA on loop, I recommend the J Dilla version yt for a change.

I thought Lil Boosie's composition was more contemporary.
posted by Noisy Pink Bubbles at 7:00 PM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

#MikeBrown's mother viewed his body for the first time since shooting before meeting with Eric Holder today, per DOJ pool. #Ferguson

In the midst of the national tragedy, tonight I am thinking also of Michael's parents.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:04 PM on August 20, 2014 [12 favorites]

This is how they deal with people brandishing knives in London. Why can't cops in the USA do it this way? Are knives more sharp in the USA?

And UK cops are generally understood to be more brutal than those of most of western europe. This whole thing makes me so fucking sad. What is wrong with our country? How can anyone watch that video and not see police making a choice to kill a man?
posted by crayz at 7:06 PM on August 20, 2014

nah im just listening to express yourself as a palate cleanser
posted by elizardbits at 7:06 PM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

Obviously, tasers would have been better.

Not always. Tasers don't always work as advertised, and then you're in the position of having to drop it, draw your gun, and then fire. Which can be problematic at that range.

Now, with a two person team, like we had here, you could have one providing lethal cover for a non-lethal (or really, less often lethal) attempted takedown. (Assuming they have Tasers or whatever to begin with.)

As mentioned above "the book" needs revising. Ideally they'd get workers from the state mental health/retardation departments to provide training to LEOs on how to take down someone with a minimum of violence (i.e, sans tools.) That said, knives are an especially problematic situation.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 7:09 PM on August 20, 2014

Literally I think in every other western, developed country, something like Powell's killing would provoke a unified national outrage. This sort of thing just does not happen in any other civilized country on earth. There's frankly so many things about which that can be said I'm wondering if it would be easier to simply stop comparing the US to civilized countries.
posted by crayz at 7:10 PM on August 20, 2014 [13 favorites]

it's beyond apples and oranges, it's more like apples and maggot-ridden corpses of democracy
posted by elizardbits at 7:11 PM on August 20, 2014 [8 favorites]

In 2002, I was staying with a friend in Vancouver, Washington State. A pretty white area, yeah? He left the apartment one day to go to work and quickly came back in, saying there were cops outside who had ordered him to go back inside.

I went to the bedroom, and looked out the back window, and saw 3 cops, duck-walking with long guns along the back, under the pine trees. I ducked, and went back to the front and peeked out to the parking area through the blinds.

There was a large armored car vehicle at the end of the parking lot, and more officers in camo.

Apparently, we learned later, a man had call 911 and threatened suicide with a knife. He was inside his apartment, and depressed. I think they got him out alive, but the whole ordeal was entirely overblown.

Watching the Powell video, I think of a drive-by shooting. Those cops pulled up, got out and shot the guy down. Then they backed everyone off very quickly. The bystanders, and the guy shooting the video are all shocked. Because it is shocking. And it should be shocking. How they can drive up and get out and just shoot someone like that? And I am glad that man got it on film, so that we can all see: that's how it is. The cops come up and shoot someone in cold blood. No questions asked.

Certainly, we were very afraid that day, we thought it must be something very bad. And yet, it was just some poor suicidal man in his apartment, with a knife, and the whole fucking SWAT team was sent out. I left Vancouver shortly afterward, thinking the whole Pacific Northwest must be nuts.
posted by Marie Mon Dieu at 7:12 PM on August 20, 2014 [6 favorites]

Meanwhile, in Dallas...

The Huey P. Newton Gun Club holds an open carry rally to protest events in Ferguson
posted by Noisy Pink Bubbles at 7:13 PM on August 20, 2014 [9 favorites]

Excuse me, I think you mean *the greatest* maggot-ridden corpses of democracy.
posted by uosuaq at 7:13 PM on August 20, 2014 [8 favorites]

This is a live feed of a protest in Oakland, and the speakers right now are family members of people murdered by police. Just one after another. I just cannot even.
posted by desjardins at 7:13 PM on August 20, 2014 [9 favorites]

ah, I see spinifex posted the link an hour ago, which makes me even sadder knowing that these speeches have been going on this long.
posted by desjardins at 7:15 PM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

Ideally they'd get workers from the state mental health/retardation departments to provide training to LEOs on how to take down someone with a minimum of violence (i.e, sans tools.)

Didn't take, I guess. That's the 2006 report on their CIT program, though the lack of any subsequent reports makes me wonder whether they ever did anything with it again. Perhaps it didn't get further grants, and/or they were too busy training on their granted BearCats.
posted by phearlez at 7:16 PM on August 20, 2014 [3 favorites]

"My son was murdered by police. He was 16. He was shot at 48 times...he was unarmed." #Oakland #Ferguson #FTP #ACAB
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:16 PM on August 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

The marchers entered a south Dallas restaurant with their weapons, where Dallas police officers inside were finishing eating lunch.

“My brother was killed by Dallas police back in June,” said David Harrison, whose brother, Jason, was shot and killed by Dallas police June 14.
Huey P. Newton gun club had an open carry rally in South Dallas today.
posted by whyareyouatriangle at 7:16 PM on August 20, 2014 [3 favorites]

oh, Noisy Pink Bubbles beat me to it!
posted by whyareyouatriangle at 7:17 PM on August 20, 2014

Maybe this stuff would get across if we recast it in terms of wasting taxpayer money. I mean, surely 47 bullets would have been enough.
yes more dark humor, sorry
posted by uosuaq at 7:18 PM on August 20, 2014

At work today all the break room TVs had CCN on, so if I wanted to make tea I had to try not to get distracted by the video interview of the parents crying about their decapitated son. I turned the fucking TV off.

Then my boss was just... yelling? at people? Which I found stressful but hey it's been a tough week. Everyone seems on edge.

Then I came home and my dumb tiny dog had escaped the safety pen I made for her and had continued to chew through the door frame. Safety pen to keep her from the god damn door frame since she is acting out due to recently diagnosed separation anxiety. Little tiny drops of blood on the floor from a cut I can't find.

After cleaning up the mess and giving her a bath, I sat down and cried on my tiny dog while she was wrapped up in her towel like a burrito.

I can't keep my tiny tiny dog safe from herself. I cleaned up her drops of blood, just a few, and wept about how fucking ridiculous it is that they left that child's body on the street for hours. Those videos of the cops milling around while his blood sat there long after they finally loaded the dead kid in the back of a fucking SUV. All the parents telling their children how to stay safe from cops. That video of that ill man challenging the cops to kill him over two sodas? Are you fucking kidding me? Fuck everything.

dog has a vet appointment and will be fine
posted by skrozidile at 7:20 PM on August 20, 2014 [36 favorites]

#ACAB
posted by whyareyouatriangle at 7:21 PM on August 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

Did anyone else see the Powell video?
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 7:23 PM on August 20, 2014

firearms license? when did this become a thing?

Sorry, I'm more than a bit loose in my language. I'm talking about at least 3 different things:

1. The police can and should regulate who is allowed to carry a weapon as a police officer, and officers who spray rounds about, shoot with innocent bystanders within the field of fire, exhibit poor muzzle discipline, etc, should have that right to carry a firearm in the line of duty revoked immediately.

2. Missouri and most other states prohibit certain individuals from carrying firearms. In Missouri this includes anyone convicted of a felony. Interestingly enough, shooting into a house, or an occupied building, or at a person is a felony. As soon as you have done that with your firearm, no more right to carry a firearm. (Exceptions for self defense, for law enforcement officers, a few other things--but still the point is, even in gun-friendly Missouri shooting at people or occupied buildings is considered very serious business.)

3. Concealed carry permit. You won't be issued a concealed carry permit in Missouri if you have been convicted of a felony or for a few other reasons. Again, that includes blasting away at occupied buildings, people, etc.

What I'm saying is, police officers who are spraying bullets around apartment complexes, shooting at targets where innocent bystanders are standing directly behind, or generally aiming their firearms at crowds of people should have all of #1, #2, and #3 applied to them. These are folks who don't know how to handle their weapon properly.
posted by flug at 7:23 PM on August 20, 2014 [3 favorites]

@rustymk2: Hannity starting his show w/ "report” that #DarrenWilson has a fractured eye socket + was “beaten nearly unconscious”.

I don't even.

#team tiny dog.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:24 PM on August 20, 2014 [7 favorites]

Well, I can understand Hannity's sympathy. He apparently never fully recovered from whatever cranial damage he suffered.
posted by uosuaq at 7:27 PM on August 20, 2014 [20 favorites]

GUESS IT CAN'T BE SLANDER WHEN YOU'RE DEAD
posted by whyareyouatriangle at 7:28 PM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

Despite the lack of annual reports on that web page apparently the CIT training continues apace; they just completed a one week basic course. Here's the training packet. Here's the CIT policy document, including dispatch process.

Dispatch of Call

1. When the Bureau of Communications receives a report of a situation that is known to involve a mental health crisis, the dispatcher shall immediately dispatch the two closest beat officer(s). The closest available CIT officer shall then be located and directed to respond to the call. If the closest CIT officer is from a contract municipality, prior supervisor approval is required.

2. If the Bureau of Communications receives a report of a situation that is not immediately recognized as a mental health crisis, but the first arriving officer determines that a CIT officer is needed, that beat officer shall immediately request a CIT officer to respond.

3. On-duty CIT officers, in adjoining precincts only, may be utilized if the precinct responding to the call has no CIT officers on-duty/available and a supervisor in each precinct is notified by Communications. Supervisors of adjoining contract municipalities shall have discretion on whether or nor not a CIT officer will be sent out of the municipality to respond to a CIT type call.

B. Control of Scene

1. The on-scene CIT officer shall have primary responsibility of the scene on any mental health crisis type call, unless a supervisor is present.

I guess that's irrelevant if the mentally ill person is dead within 15 seconds of the non-CIT trained officers arriving.
posted by phearlez at 7:30 PM on August 20, 2014

Hannity's show is more evidence that movement conservatives hate black people.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 7:31 PM on August 20, 2014 [15 favorites]

I saw the video, why do you ask? It was horrifying.
posted by Marie Mon Dieu at 7:33 PM on August 20, 2014

Hannity's show is more evidence that movement conservatives hate black people.

Yeah, like when I dropped my pen this morning it provided some much-needed new evidence in favor of gravity.
posted by uosuaq at 7:34 PM on August 20, 2014 [13 favorites]

The police can and should regulate who is allowed to carry a weapon as a police officer, and officers who spray rounds about, shoot with innocent bystanders within the field of fire, exhibit poor muzzle discipline, etc, should have that right to carry a firearm in the line of duty revoked immediately.

That might be an uphill battle.

When confronted by the two officers, Johnson raised his weapon, but did not fire. The officers fired a total of 16 rounds, killing Johnson and injuring nine bystanders, none of whom suffered life-threatening wounds. Three of the bystanders were directly hit by police gunfire, while the rest of the injuries were caused by fragments of ricocheting bullets, or by debris from other objects hit by police.

posted by phearlez at 7:35 PM on August 20, 2014

and wept

Then you are the best example of humanity, skrozidile. {{{hugs to you and your little dog}}}
posted by Marie Mon Dieu at 7:38 PM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

Hannity's show is more evidence that movement conservatives hate black people.

This is pretty much incontrovertible by now
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 7:38 PM on August 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

"The police violence in Ferguson and the attendant images have inspired comparisons with Israel’s assault on Gaza. The parallels between Israeli and U.S. militarized policies are not far-fetched. A cursory investigation shows that Israel maintains an extensive network of relations with U.S. law enforcement agencies at the local, state and federal levels.

It is no coincidence that the Ferguson and St. Louis County police forces were trained in Israel in recent years. These connections are so important that the influential American Israel Public Affairs Committee touts their success and the Jewish Virtual Library lists police training as a separate category of U.S.-Israel relations. The CRI, a private counterterrorism-training outfit run by a former Israeli special forces member, promises training in “combat experience in dealing with terrorism, crime and guerrilla warfare.” Over the years, thousands of U.S. personnel at all levels of law enforcement and hundreds of senior managers, from local police chiefs to FBI detectives, have taken counterterrorism training in Israel or attended conferences sponsored by the Israeli government, security-minded conservative think tanks and even the Anti-Defamation League with little to no scrutiny for their role in the militarization of our police forces."
Ferguson is not Gaza … yet
posted by whyareyouatriangle at 7:39 PM on August 20, 2014 [3 favorites]

Ferguson needs to do what my fourth-grade teacher, Cool Valley Mayor Viola Murphy, did in her nearby small municipality in 2013: Dissolve its police force and contract services out to someone else. (And she did it with unanimous support of her city's aldermen, and little fuss from the city's police chief, perhaps because before she was mayor, she was police commissioner for a year. Man. I always liked her, but now I'm even more proud to say she was my teacher!)

It's perhaps telling that when the time came to make a choice between the services of Ferguson's police force and Normandy's police force, Cool Valley chose Normandy.
posted by limeonaire at 7:42 PM on August 20, 2014 [7 favorites]

Hannity's show is more evidence that movement conservatives hate black people.

Are you sure you're not misunderstanding them and they really just hate blah people?
posted by rmd1023 at 7:42 PM on August 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

(Sorry Misantropic, I wasn't sniping at your comment. Just Hannity. Because fuck that dude.)
posted by uosuaq at 7:42 PM on August 20, 2014

Anyone seen a VICE feed for tonight yet?
posted by rollbiz at 7:44 PM on August 20, 2014

Well, fuckity. Convicting Darren Wilson Will Be Basically Impossible.

But these cultural biases are only part of the story of why a conviction will be near-impossible. The central reason is Missouri state law. ...

Instead, as long as there is a modicum of evidence and reasonable plausibility in support of a self-defense claim, a court must accept the claim and acquit the accused. The prosecution must not only prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant committed the crime, but also disprove a defendant’s claim of self-defense to the same high standard. Under Missouri law, all a citizen claiming self-defense or a police officer claiming to have fired while pursuing a dangerous criminal need do is “inject the issue of justification.” In other words, he only needs to produce some evidence (his own testimony counts) supporting the claim. Once he does so, “any reasonable doubt on the issue requires a finding for the defendant.” In Missouri, the burden doesn’t budge an inch, even after we know that the defendant has killed the victim. It doesn’t matter that there is certainty that Darren Wilson shot Michael Brown. As long as there is still the slightest possibility that Wilson acted in his own defense, Missouri law favors Wilson.

WHAT.
THE.
FUCK.
MISSOURI.
posted by Phire at 7:45 PM on August 20, 2014 [28 favorites]

remember when the pigs who beat Rodney King were acquitted?
posted by whyareyouatriangle at 7:47 PM on August 20, 2014

between the Huey P Newton gun club and the persistence, determination and will of those on the streets of not only Ferguson but other cities—I'm optimistic.
posted by whyareyouatriangle at 7:49 PM on August 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

Are there live stream links for tonight?
posted by bq at 7:50 PM on August 20, 2014

I feel like the guy running this Argus feed hasn't moved in like two days.
posted by rollbiz at 7:50 PM on August 20, 2014

As long as there is still the slightest possibility that Wilson acted in his own defense, Missouri law favors Wilson.

How can it possibly be self defense when you are shooting at a person running away from you? They have admitted that much, at least.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 7:54 PM on August 20, 2014

In many ways, a jury finding Darren Wilson not guilty (he'd better *at least* be tried, dammit) would be awful -- apart from justice not being served (uh, IMHO), there might well be some really bad violence following the verdict.
In other ways, this is unfortunately how some injustices (not just unjust events, but systems and circumstances) sometimes get fixed: by being brought to light in the starkest terms.
Of course, the jury might also just band together and say "fuck this shit". At this point, who knows. There'd just better be a fucking trial.
posted by uosuaq at 7:54 PM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

ARGUS livestream.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 7:57 PM on August 20, 2014

At this point I'm wondering if his "reasonable doubt" is going to be the entirety of Ferguson PD pleading the fifth and Bob McCulloch saying "Welp, we just don't know..."

Basically I have zero faith in anything happening locally but am still appalled at how unwilling they are to even through the motions.

Will this bullshit work at the Federal level?
posted by Artw at 8:01 PM on August 20, 2014

bq, here's a list of live streams. I don't know which ones are online right now.
posted by desjardins at 8:01 PM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

Phire: I guess we can add "change Missouri state law" to the to-do list.
posted by desjardins at 8:02 PM on August 20, 2014 [6 favorites]

Oh god. The National Weather Service issued an Excessive Heat Warning for St. Louis through Sunday, with heat index values up to 108 F.

Can't get "Do the Right Thing" out of my head now. As if I wasn't worried for the people of Ferguson already.
posted by argonauta at 8:08 PM on August 20, 2014 [3 favorites]

For all your facebook friends (or whoever) who keep going on about looting and rioting - here's an end-to-end drive of Florisant filmed by some Copblockers the morning before the National Guard is deployed. The extent of any damage seems to be the QT; everything else looks like morning as usual on a suburban strip.

I could live without the throwaway racial humor about the BBQ joint but this was information I was hoping to see.
posted by phearlez at 8:20 PM on August 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

Heat also makes riots more likely.

However, it may also make police less likely to wear heavy, hot armor.

Ahahahahahahahh, who am I kidding.
posted by corb at 8:20 PM on August 20, 2014

Twitter @ryanjreilly: Saw an officer with a GoPro strapped to his helmet tonight. Had only seen them on vehicles before #Ferguson
posted by Golden Eternity at 8:27 PM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

Pogo_Fuzzybutt: "I'm trying to imagine how big the department must be that they have username collisions on Rubme."

It's not unusual with a naming scheme like that to always append a number. Makes the scheme consistent and it discourages people from assuming the Mary Beth Ruby they want is the first Mary Beth Ruby (or Max Elliot Ruben for that matter). Especially in the case where at least some of your workers are dealing with sensitive or confidential material.
posted by Mitheral at 8:27 PM on August 20, 2014

This is kinda trivial, but does anybody know what happens to spent tear gas and smoke canisters? Who cleans 'em up, where do they go, are they considered toxic waste, are people bringing them home for mementos?
posted by merelyglib at 8:35 PM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

What sorcery is this?

San Diego Police handle possibly suicidal white man waving a gun, without killing him.

Looks like they made every effort to not kill him, even after he pointed a gun at officers.

They only shot him once.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 8:39 PM on August 20, 2014 [22 favorites]

San Diego Police handle possibly suicidal white man waving a gun, without killing him.

There's plenty of video, BTW. Compare and contrast with the summary execution of Kajieme Powell, above.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 8:43 PM on August 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

Yessssss. I knew tonight was going to spawn some dramatic photos.
posted by limeonaire at 8:45 PM on August 20, 2014

Killer Mike's interview on CNN.
posted by TheTingTangTong at 8:51 PM on August 20, 2014 [5 favorites]

This went past on my #Ferguson twitter feed faster than I could catch the source, for which I apologize, and cannot verify that it was shot in Ferguson, but it's still awesome. First Amendment Area
posted by dejah420 at 9:02 PM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

Just saw the Powell video...devastated. Fuck the police, the normalization of gun use, how little value some of us place on each others' lives, and mental illness.

.
posted by sallybrown at 9:05 PM on August 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

That "First Amendment Zone" photo comes from the Cliven Bundy thing. A google image search seems to show that as its origin.
posted by tingting at 9:07 PM on August 20, 2014

i'm still trying to process that a cop can be commended for pointing a rifle at unarmed protesters and reporters and suspended for saying "fuck"

This actually makes weird sense in America.

I think if you are biased towards expecting the worst and most dysfunctional aspects of police behavior, you will believe he was suspended for saying "fuck". It may be a little more realistic to believe that he was suspended for saying, "I will fucking kill you."

One is an incidental moment of vulgarity that is, indeed, trivial and would indicate a terrible misprioritization of injustices if that was the legitimate reason for the suspension.

The other is a death threat. I am totally ok with having police officers suspended for saying that to my face. Even if they aren't pointing a gun at me.

Does that help unbreak some of your minds?
posted by bl1nk at 9:08 PM on August 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

No Vice tonight?
posted by whyareyouatriangle at 9:12 PM on August 20, 2014

That Dallas protest (and this whole thread) reminded me of the comic book by Bernardin, Genius, that I saw previewed:

"Genius" follows Destiny Ajaye, a military-minded teen savant growing up in South Central Los Angeles. In the midst of poverty and violence, Destiny sees hope. She sees a way to survive. Using her keen intellect and strategic insights, she unites various gangs and secedes three blocks of her neighborhood from the Union, holding her claim to demonstrate that she and the people of her community have more value than the world would allow them to believe.
posted by emjaybee at 9:14 PM on August 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

While I was at the Ferguson support rally in Phoenix, I learned about another murder by police offers, much closer to home. A mentally woman just outside of Phoenix was shot by a police officer because she threatened him with a hammer. Here's the kicker: the police officer was called to her home to assist her family in moving her to a long-term mental health care facility.

He knew she was mentally ill, he was there to help, and he shot her down anyway. There is no circle of hell low enough for him to burn in.

The only comfort is that at least the Phoenix PD has opened a criminal investigation-- thanks, apparently, largely in response to pressure from community organizers. I'll be attending the support rally for justice on Friday.
posted by WidgetAlley at 9:15 PM on August 20, 2014 [28 favorites]

Sallybrown, you and me too. That was the most horrible thing ever. Pull up, shoot, shoot, shoot. What the fuck? No talking, nothing. Just shoot, shoot, shoot. Then push everyone aside, get out of here, get back. I still can't believe it, they just pulled up and jumped out and shot that man. It's so different from the time I described above, where they all came out in force but were able to "extract" him. Just bam, bam, bam you are dead and we are going to handcuff you even tho' you are dead. Get away there is nothing to see here, get away while we have our hands on our guns, get away we didn't really kill this person, this is a crime scene, yet whose crime is it?
posted by Marie Mon Dieu at 9:19 PM on August 20, 2014 [4 favorites]

Yeah, the Dallas protest thing, when I first heard of it, before I'd heard the name of the group doing it, I assumed it was that cadre of knuckledragging idiots driving trucks with CSA flags that have been stalking the Chili's and Sonics. And I could not imagine it ending well if that group was going to go marching around in South Dallas.
posted by dejah420 at 9:21 PM on August 20, 2014

I think if you are biased towards expecting the worst and most dysfunctional aspects of police behavior, you will believe he was suspended for saying "fuck". It may be a little more realistic to believe that he was suspended for saying, "I will fucking kill you."

Did you read the article? They "don't condone his language". That is what people in America say when someone curses. If this was actually about the threats that were made, and they actually gave a shit, maybe the guy would've actually been arrested. But, no.

Not to mention, none of the other stuff in there (urine, a mysterious bb gun) was seen by any of the cameras or press, was it?
posted by inigo2 at 9:23 PM on August 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

On a similar note, has anyone seen anything at all about the officer that threatened to shoot the reporter on the live feed a few nights ago (but without cursing)? I'm sure Officer Todd is totally on top of it (without actually identifying the other officer, because the reporter pointed at Officer Todd, and #SCARY), right?

Because that would pretty much settle this conversation, right?
posted by inigo2 at 9:28 PM on August 20, 2014

Mary Engelbreit (illustrator from St. Louis) has created a drawing, the proceeds of which will go to the Michael Brown, Jr. memorial fund. (via Charles Jaco's twitter feed)
posted by apartment dweller at 9:30 PM on August 20, 2014 [28 favorites]

Mary Engelbreit (illustrator from St. Louis) has created a drawing

Wow. WOW.
posted by KathrynT at 9:33 PM on August 20, 2014 [6 favorites]

inigo2, his name is Lt. Ray Albers, of the St. Ann PD, and he has been indefinitely suspended without pay while they investigate and will receive psychological counseling. If this is the Officer Go Fuck Yourself guy, that is, there might be others.

Not him. The guy in here.. "You get that light off, or you're getting shot with this."

I haven't heard anything else about him. And since he didn't use curse words, my assumption is nothing has happened to him.
posted by inigo2 at 9:36 PM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

From apartment dweller's link:

While it's not a cheerful little picture you'd want to hang over the sofa, you might know of a school or an office or a police station that could use it. [emphasis added]

Nicely done!
posted by orrnyereg at 9:38 PM on August 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

My point is simply that I think bl1nk is wrong, and further, that I'm past the point of giving these police the benefit of the doubt.
posted by inigo2 at 9:38 PM on August 20, 2014

I think the police have learned their lesson.

We should expect less cursing from them in the future.
posted by el io at 9:38 PM on August 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

The Powell video strikes me as an indifferent execution on the part of the cops. It was easier to off the guy than do even the most basic level of policing. It looks like something you'd see in a WW2 movie.
posted by MillMan at 9:39 PM on August 20, 2014 [9 favorites]

There have been several examples of people being threatened with violence by police during this whole thing. Does anyone know if there's a list anywhere? One officer has been held accountable, for foul language or what-have-you, but what about the others?
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 9:41 PM on August 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

The Huey P. Newton Gun Club holds an open carry rally to protest events in Ferguson

I feel really conflicted saying this. While I am deeply cognizant of the extreme risk that those participating in these demonstrations are taking upon themselves, nevertheless, I think I'm in favor of the Huey Newton gun club's open carry march. If carrying weapons gets cops to stand down for white people, we need to see it work for black people too. And if it doesn't work, we need to see that and ask why. Carrying weapons in Ferguson right now with all those crazy, jacked-up, trigger-happy officer-go-fuck-yourselves is way too dangerous, but open carry demonstrations by POC in other places? I cautiously think this might be a good idea.

If I'm wrong, I still have to say, I am in awe of those with the bravery to attempt this. I know they are taking truly extraordinary risks that those of us with our sickening privilege will never know.
posted by marsha56 at 9:44 PM on August 20, 2014 [19 favorites]

The officer people have been calling "Officer Go Fuck Yourself," now identified as Lt. Ray Albers of the St. Ann Police Department

Cop Ray Albers In Ferguson To Protestors: 'I Will F**king Kill You' (VIDEO)
posted by homunculus at 10:03 PM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

Killer Mike's interview on CNN. yt
posted by TheTingTangTong at 8:51 PM on August 20 [4 favorites +] [!]

And they played "Reagan" and not "Don't Die". look it up yourself.
posted by lkc at 10:04 PM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

And thats a great interview.

Also, just anecdotal about Killer Mike, since this shit is all so fucked up and depressing.

I went and saw Run The Jewels tour last year. It was great. Mike and El-P did separate solo sets and then a joint set for the new album.

At the end of mikes set, he came and just sat down on the stage, and gave pounds and high-fives and fistbumps to everyone around. I was standing a couple rows back, the crowd was quiet, and a dude shakes his hand, turns and looks at me and says "oh, go ahead, man!"

I did the same, a lot of people did.

The front row of an underground rap show was just people politely just shaking the dudes hand, and getting out of the way so the people behind them could do the same.
posted by lkc at 10:11 PM on August 20, 2014 [4 favorites]

The narration on the Powell video has terrifying poetry to it, reminds me of Whitey on the Moon...

"Hands up!"
They just killed him. Here we go again. They just killed this man.
He's dead.
Look how they flipping him up, man, and
He's already dead!
They putting him in cuffs.
He's dead!
Oh my god, they just killed this man. They're cuffing him.
He already dead.
That cop still holding his gun out.
The man is dead!
We're backing up sir!
He dead.
Two fucking sodas, y'all. They could have paid that man. They could have tazed that man.
Oh my fucking god. This again?
He dead. He dead.
posted by chortly at 10:17 PM on August 20, 2014 [22 favorites]

Regardless of any official repercussions Lt Ray "I will fucking kill you" Albers may have for his actions that night, rest assured, that for the rest of his life when you google his name....

Google it now. Now go back and google it 4 years from now. It'll look pretty similar.
posted by el io at 10:19 PM on August 20, 2014 [4 favorites]

Christ, that Powell video. Fuck.

Meanwhile, in Ferguson, protesters marching the hands up, don't shoot loop while lightning keeps rolling purple in the sky, no sign of a cop phalanx so far. KARG camera man quietly razzing some other media guy who he overheard whining about it being wet and there's nothing to shoot.
posted by cortex at 10:27 PM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

Do mentally ill white people get shot by cops as well?

Well, he wasn't shot, but Kelly Thomas was a white, mentally ill man that four Fullerton (CA) cops beat to death three years ago while he begged for his life and screamed for his father to help him (trigger warning: the image of his face after the beating is one of those things that you can never unsee). One was tried for second degree murder, two for involuntary manslaughter, and one for excessive force.

All four walked scot-free.
posted by scody at 10:32 PM on August 20, 2014 [21 favorites]

Billy Bragg performs surprise set in St. Louis for Ferguson
posted by scody at 10:39 PM on August 20, 2014 [17 favorites]

Do mentally ill white people get shot by cops as well?

Anecdotally, yes. A guy I grew up with* was shot in my hometown around Thanksgiving several years ago. He was talking crazy, had a homemade hatchet, and the officer who shot had been bit in a similar standoff the year before.

Also, he lived at home and the family called the police, he was tasered four times and shot twice, and they wrestled for another 7 minutes before a third cop showed up to restrain him.

He lived.

* I was at his place a few months before this happened, with a friend who was an old friend checking in.
posted by lkc at 10:50 PM on August 20, 2014

Do mentally ill white people get shot by cops as well? Or is this still only an issue with black people? All of the stories are either unarmed black men or mentally ill black person or black woman on the highway... When will the common thread be acknowledged.

Racism is absolutely a factor in the deaths you're talking about - but yes, disabled white people get killed by cops. High-profile incidents include Ethan Saylor in Maryland last January and Keith Vidal in North Carolina this January. They're not alone, just examples that got (comparatively) a lot of national media coverage.
posted by spaceman_spiff at 10:51 PM on August 20, 2014 [3 favorites]

[and holy crap do I not mean that as any kind of apologia]
posted by lkc at 11:04 PM on August 20, 2014

And CNN's frontpage:

Beheading video:
Would you watch?
Medieval terror meets social media

/and i'm done for the night.
posted by lkc at 11:38 PM on August 20, 2014 [3 favorites]

Do mentally ill white people get shot by cops as well?
In Australia they do - Roni Levi.
posted by unliteral at 11:42 PM on August 20, 2014

The Powell video is absolutely horrifying. They never even checked on him to see if his life could be saved. I thought he was moving for a while, he died lying there and they never even touched him except to cuff him. No one spoke to him. Then the other officers show up and treat the bystanders like criminals, shouting at them, no show of shock or sympathy for what they saw or any of the emotions you'd expect to see after a horrible event. Just "get the fuck out of here".

Awful.

I live near a homeless encampment and a popular bar district and we have crazy drunk and occasionally violent people wandering around fairly regularly. I've called the cops because a semi-passed out guy in my yard wouldn't let me in my house. This is a very economically and ethnically mixed neighborhood, we definitely have a lot of crime. I've never seen cops act like that, I've seen them basically be very patient with drunk, violent crazy people and I've seen one or two pretty epic wrestling matches but never a gun or tazer drawn. We call the police if someone seems too intoxicated to be safe, for example trying to fight moving cars in the road or stumbling off the sidewalk. If I thought our local police would act like that I'd never call them again.
posted by fshgrl at 11:45 PM on August 20, 2014 [14 favorites]

#fuckCNN
posted by el io at 12:00 AM on August 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

Do mentally ill white people get shot by cops as well?

I'm not 100% sure that James Boyd identifies as white, but I'm pretty sure he'd count as white-passing. He was shot by two Albuquerque PD officers earlier this year. I actually wanted to put together a post on the APD shootings, because we've had rather a lot of them lately and a lot of our local journalists are doing a lot of good work on them, but since my dad works for the Journal and has for most of my life, half the people covering it are people I know personally or who I'm just a degree of separation from, and it felt too much like leaning on the self-post rule to link to them (or to sites that round up a bunch of links, half of which are from them).

Anyway, there was also a major police killing here in 2011 of Christopher Torres, who was schizophrenic. Here's the latest depressing update on that case.
posted by NoraReed at 12:46 AM on August 21, 2014 [2 favorites]

zug: Every single action they undertook toward that obviously mentally ill person was aggressive.

I don't have a cite on this, but similar to n+1 force, i've heard from several people(in meatspace, that i have reason to believe would be knowledgeable about this sort of thing) that a big part of police training is rote memorization of the point that you need to take control of the situation with aggressive dominant posturing.

Like driving up on the sidewalk really aggressively directly in front of someone instead of just pulling over and getting out to have a calm interaction, etc. It's all about acting like the biggest, baddest dog in the room so all the other dogs roll over.

From many actions i've seen the PD in my town take, if this isn't explicitly trained, it's such a deep part of the "police culture" that it's like frat boys and chugging beer.

A lot of the problems i've seen discussed with police actions in this thread in and outside of ferguson reminded me of that. When you view them through that lens, it instantly makes sense.

The full explanation i was given was some bullshit pick up artist type logic of "If you act dominant, other people will fall into secondary submissive roles by default. Then you have control of the situation, and can steer it in whatever direction you want" with the implicit bit being that was a safer direction.

Following on that, it makes a perverse kind of sense when cops get so pissed when people don't comply. If you assume they were taught that people were supposed to just fall into line when they acted like that, they'd be frustrated when they didn't the same way a little kid would be when his videogame froze or he fell off the edge of the platform and had to start over. "But i pushed the right buttons, why isn't it doing it! MOOOMMMMMM". Of course i could also easily see an element of entitled bullshit "how DARE you not listen to me", but the more i've thought about that alleged training over time, the more plausible it seems to me.
posted by emptythought at 12:51 AM on August 21, 2014 [15 favorites]

I don't know what the stats are for the racial breakdown of mentally ill & disabled people being shot by cops, but since we're amassing a plurality of anecdotes, here's my contribution to the POC data column...:

In 2010 I was offered a position at UF Gainesville, and during one of my visits, I picked up a copy of the student paper to see what sorts of things were happening on campus.

In 2010 the University of Florida SWAT team stormed into the home of a [black, disabled, distressed] PhD student, and shot him the head.

Kofi Adu-Brempong was a 35yo geography doctoral student from Ghana who had difficulty walking due to a childhood battle with polio. Apparently he had been suffering delusions about a murder plot against him, and one night had a nervous breakdown. His neighbors heard him shouting, alone, in his apartment, and finally called the cops out of concern. The UF police tried to get him to open the door for an hour and a half; when he stopped speaking to them, they stormed in, SWAT style. They found him in his kitchen holding a "pipe" -- quite possibly his cane -- and responded by shooting him in the head with a semiautomatic assault rifle (a Bushmaster M4, to be precise). Police claimed that he threatened them, but declined to say how, and the charges they made against him were all thrown out due to lack of probable cause. Police also claimed they'd tried to subdue him with taser & beanbag shots but were unsuccessful -- an incredible story considering Adu-Brempong's polio-related disabilities. Adu-Brempong survived the shooting but lost his jaw and tongue, and very nearly had his paranoid fears realized.

So in Florida, at what was ostensibly the state's most enlightened institution, the university's own SWAT team (why the hell do universities have SWAT teams anyway?!) felt so threatened by a mentally ill, disabled, black graduate student that they reacted with near-lethal force. I turned down the UF job, and mentioned this as one of the reasons. But if I hadn't visited or picked up the local paper, I'd have been totally unaware. We hear all about it when a student shoots up a campus, but when the campus police shoots a student? Just another day, I guess.
posted by Westringia F. at 12:58 AM on August 21, 2014 [32 favorites]

How To Deal With Friends' Racist Reactions to Ferguson:

. . . Each and every person making comments that rub you the wrong way has access to the entire Internet, live feeds from Ferguson, materials on the entire history of American racism generally and violence against unarmed black men specifically. They are choosing to think the way they do because it works for them and makes them feel good.

So, being a volunteer social worker for social media ignorance really might not be a great use of your energy at this time . . .

I would urge you to absolve yourself of any sense of responsibility to take time out of your day to respond to the "He was a thug" crowd. Consider using those keystrokes and that time to do something that's more likely to reap rewards. Can you share what's happening with friends and family who may not be fully tuned in but would be receptive? Can you donate to one of the many efforts to improve life in the near term for Ferguson residents? Can you simply be a witness to what's happening and discuss your reactions on your own page (and then pledge not to engage with the comments)?

posted by cybercoitus interruptus at 1:17 AM on August 21, 2014 [8 favorites]

Infographic: A Neutral Look at Police Brutality.

DOJ survey of police attitudes toward abuse of power [pdf]

(Sorry if these have already been posted.)
posted by Westringia F. at 1:45 AM on August 21, 2014 [5 favorites]

@joenewsman: Oakland demonstrators are holding mirrors up to the faces of police officers. #Ferguson pic.twitter.com/iQsM4y16wL”
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 2:27 AM on August 21, 2014 [14 favorites]

Jeez, I'd actually surprised that Chicago blew $500M without prosecuting anyone, srboisvert.
posted by jeffburdges at 3:33 AM on August 21, 2014

WHAT.
THE.
FUCK.
MISSOURI.

Hopefully the fact that there are witnesses to the shooting will make the self-defense factor less of a burden. It was essentially impossible to overcome in the Zimmerman trial because only two people actually saw what happened that night, and George Zimmerman shot the other one dead. There was no way to directly disprove his version of the fight. Wilson shot Brown in front of witnesses, and if they all say Brown wasn't advancing at all, or had his hands up, that cuts very sharply against reasonable doubt.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 3:44 AM on August 21, 2014

So my reflections after absorbing another day of all this:

1. Glad things are cooling down finally. Who knows how this will change after grand jury findings though.
2. What is ultimately the most disturbing to me personally is not the race issues, but the impunity and remorselessness with which American police officers are apparently murdering people and covering/protecting fellow officers who have done so.
3. The fact that in comments and interviews of law enforcement officials I've seen lately, none of them even see this as a problem, but rather as an unspoken favor they're doing for us. The law is on their side, and when it's not, they have no problem fudging the facts to stay in the clear. The system works as it should. They're saving tax dollars and protecting themselves from dangerous baddies who would still be out there if processed through normal legal channels.

And what I hope America as a country can come to realize through all of this, and convey to the law enforcement community: There are no "good guys" or "bad guys". Just GUYS. Regular guys (and gals). All of us. Some have physical, mental, chemical, or psychological challenges to overcome; but that doesn't make them any more good or bad, just more or less in need of assistance and support. And it's your job to help give that support! Hell, if anyone is truly "bad," it's not going to be these locals like Mike Brown at the bottom of the food chain, it's going to be CEOs who are lobbying for laws that put economies at risk, destabilize communities, raise unemployment, etc. Maybe thinking of these townies as "bad" helps you deal with a heavy conscience of arresting so many of them, but to go down that path and take a combative rather than supportive role will only further alienate you from the community and puts you into further danger than you're in already.
posted by p3t3 at 3:54 AM on August 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

Also, if protests are winding down, hopefully they'll be starting up recall elections and civil-rights litigation soon. There need to be consequences for this insanity, on the largest scale anyone can manage. Don't let it fade from memory.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 4:22 AM on August 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

Ferguson attacks and web censorship are parts of same story
posted by jeffburdges at 4:29 AM on August 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

Compton CA School Board Approves AR-15 Rifles for Campus Police
posted by jeffburdges at 4:46 AM on August 21, 2014 [2 favorites]

What is ultimately the most disturbing to me personally is not the race issues, but the impunity and remorselessness with which American police officers are apparently murdering people and covering/protecting fellow officers who have done so.

Well, yes, but that impunity is the race issue. They are the same problem, largely.
posted by Think_Long at 4:58 AM on August 21, 2014 [6 favorites]

I have to say, the Powell video is still driving me crazy. Why does the video look so different from the way police described it?
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 5:06 AM on August 21, 2014 [3 favorites]

Well, yes, but that impunity is the race issue. They are the same problem, largely.

Yes, good point. But I have seen a few articles posted in these threads about white victims of police killings too. And I think it invites too much changing of topic, denials, and sidetracking arguments if you bring race into the police brutality discussion too much. But in the broader sense, yeas it's all the same problem of course.
posted by p3t3 at 5:07 AM on August 21, 2014

a big part of police training is rote memorization of the point that you need to take control of the situation with aggressive dominant posturing.

My son is a police officer (5 years now) and yes, that is absolutely taught in the academy. The change in him from the kid I raised to the man he is now is sometimes difficult for me to handle. And he's considered a "good cop".
posted by hollygoheavy at 5:08 AM on August 21, 2014 [27 favorites]

I have to say, the Powell video is still driving me crazy. Why does the video look so different from the way police described it?

Because they executed a man and didn't want to be criticised for it, so they lied to make their actions seem justified.

Or, their perspectives are so warped that they genuinely believe what they said, because they are the heroes of their own stories and the heroes only kill bad guys. They killed a guy, ergo he must have been bad.

Either way, fuck them.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 5:10 AM on August 21, 2014 [8 favorites]

Do mentally ill white people get shot by cops as well? Or is this still only an issue with black people?

They're pretty equal opportunity in Portland. And that's a couple years old, I'm pretty sure we've had a few more since then.

Now, to be fair, the Portland police don't have all that many black targets. It's a pretty white city.
posted by Caduceus at 5:11 AM on August 21, 2014

I have to say, the Powell video is still driving me crazy. Why does the video look so different from the way police described it?

I noticed that, too. I guess someone digitally manipulated the video. That's the only thing I can think of, since cops are never wrong and don't lie.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 5:17 AM on August 21, 2014 [5 favorites]

Eye witness testimony is known to be faulty all the time. The cops are not immune to that. Once you add in that they already know the answers to the test, and have internalized them, it really takes no nefarious intent at all for them to mis-describe the shooting. I'm not defending the cops, but the problem here is not the understandable difference between their account and the video, it's the culture and expectations that lead to a shooting like this.
posted by OmieWise at 5:29 AM on August 21, 2014 [3 favorites]

Compton CA School Board Approves AR-15 Rifles for Campus Police

The campus officers in Compton are expected to be trained and have the new weapons within a month.

That is insane.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 5:34 AM on August 21, 2014 [11 favorites]

I almost copied and pasted one of the Facebook comments from the Mary Engelbreit drawing, but I couldn't bring myself to subject you all to that. Basically, this person said that Michael Brown beat Wilson nearly unconscious, gave him an orbital fracture, and tried twice to take his gun, and that prior to that he strangled a convenience store clerk during a robbery in which he stole cigarillos to smoke dope and stole the clerk's keys, while threatening to come back later and take more things.

When I was a teen and first studied WWII in high school, I was astounded that Germans from my grandparents' generation could believe such horrible, crazy things about Jews. Now I realize there is nothing special about Germany in that regard. You can get 40% of Americans to believe any crazy slander against a black person, whether it's that the president isn't really a citizen or Micheal Brown beat nearly unconscious a cop who is seen on video walking around unaided, with no apparent distress. It's not hard to imagine that a national crisis and pushing from a charismatic leader could bump that number past the 50% mark, and then anything goes.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 5:47 AM on August 21, 2014 [98 favorites]

Jeez, I'd actually surprised that Chicago blew $500M without prosecuting anyone, srboisvert.

There are some who speculate that the quick payouts are to keep Daley the younger from having to take the stand and explain his role as he was the District Attorney at the time of the torture incidents. Mind you they could probably stop now since he is being given a medical pass on testifying that he forgets everything corrupt he did while in power.

(Also they did send the chief of police to jail for covering up the torture but not for the actual torture - and they let him keep his pension because hey organizing a torture ring to murder innocent men using the state's electric chair is not that serious)
posted by srboisvert at 5:55 AM on August 21, 2014 [4 favorites]

Basically, this person said that Michael Brown beat Wilson nearly unconscious, gave him an orbital fracture, and tried twice to take his gun, and that prior to that he strangled a convenience store clerk during a robbery in which he stole cigarillos to smoke dope and stole the clerk's keys, while threatening to come back later and take more things.

My first reaction was that you should no longer consider this person a friend, since they are obviously a racist moron. But then, if I was relying on the mainstream media for information, ie I didn't have MeFi to steer me to the facts of this situation, perhaps I would believe the same lies peddled from a source claiming to be authoritative.

The news media - or at least a large part of it - is broken. But so many of the element of this clusterfuck are.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 5:55 AM on August 21, 2014

Seeing how the police are handling all these disasters has me wondering what good it would even do to enforce officers to get wired up with cameras. If there is nothing keeping the departments from stonewalling access to camera footage and evidence anyways, the end result is still the same.
posted by p3t3 at 5:59 AM on August 21, 2014 [3 favorites]

It's not hard to imagine that a national crisis and pushing from a charismatic leader could bump that number past the 50% mark, and then anything goes.

Sidenote: in The Anatomy of Fascism, the author points out that the highest the Nazis ever got at a real election was 37ish percent. (Can't speak to how that number squares with what undoubtedly larger percentage were consciously anti-Semitic, etc.)
posted by Sticherbeast at 6:01 AM on August 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

p3t3: True, just cameras qua cameras won't change anything. We need laws mandating that camera footage from cops is public access after X amount of time (a day or two at most), and that any cop who can be found to have interfered with their camera is immediately fired and fined a year's pay or something equally draconian.

The good news is that even without that sort of law, just the existence of the cameras does seem to have a positive effect, a nearly 60% reduction in officer use of force and an 87% reduction in complaints about officers. source.

So even without draconian measures for police interfering with cameras, and even without good transparency on the video, it still results in cops being better cops.

Rather than giving the cops military surplus toys to play with that money should be spent getting a camera on every cop in the country.
posted by sotonohito at 6:09 AM on August 21, 2014 [11 favorites]

From the Telegraph: America has never formally broken its relationship with slavery - and black communities still live in its shadows.
posted by frimble at 6:19 AM on August 21, 2014 [10 favorites]

wondering what good it would even do to enforce officers to get wired up with cameras.

Seems like its the young black men who need the cameras to record their interactions with the police.
posted by shothotbot at 6:22 AM on August 21, 2014 [3 favorites]

True, just cameras qua cameras won't change anything.

I have a suspicion that more cameras will actually change very little, since it appears that a cop could shoot a 10 year old black kid on a bicycle holding an ice cream cone in broad daylight and a majority of white people would still find an excuse for it.
posted by empath at 6:32 AM on August 21, 2014 [17 favorites]

the always-excellent Omnivore: The conversation on #Ferguson, with many links.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 6:34 AM on August 21, 2014 [4 favorites]

Google it now. Now go back and google it 4 years from now.
Odds are he will wear it as a badge of pride and write a book.

Liberals don't like this officer because he threatened a journalist. That is enough to make this guy a conservative icon. CPAC, speaking engagements, radio show interviews, this guy has it made.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 6:38 AM on August 21, 2014 [2 favorites]

Alex Tabarrok on Fuguson and the Modern Debtor's Prison:

Despite Ferguson’s relative poverty, fines and court fees comprise the second largest source of revenue for the city, a total of $2,635,400. In 2013, the Ferguson Municipal Court disposed of 24,532 warrants and 12,018 cases, or about 3 warrants and 1.5 cases per household.

You don’t get $321 in fines and fees and 3 warrants per household from an about-average crime rate. You get numbers like this from bullshit arrests for jaywalking and constant “low level harassment involving traffic stops, court appearances, high fines, and the threat of jail for failure to pay.

posted by shothotbot at 6:54 AM on August 21, 2014 [60 favorites]

So was last night just calmer because of the heavy rain driving off protestors? or was police conduct improved? or is fatigue just setting in and the protests are winding down?
posted by DynamiteToast at 6:56 AM on August 21, 2014

I have to say, the Powell video is still driving me crazy. Why does the video look so different from the way police described it?

You gotta bear in mind that you pay attention, and that makes you different. When the cops lie, their story is what hits the local newspaper headlines, and the cover of Time magazine, and Wolf Blitzer's idiot mouth. The video doesn't get that play, but that doesn't matter, because most people just drift through the world, not paying attention to anything outside of their line of sight, and those people only ever hear the cops' story because that's what the media reports.

The cops' lies? They're not for you. You already knew that cops lie, and so you're a lost cause. They lie because they're playing to the masses, not to the people who pay attention.
posted by Pope Guilty at 6:57 AM on August 21, 2014 [15 favorites]

it appears that a cop could shoot a 10 year old black kid on a bicycle holding an ice cream cone in broad daylight and a majority of white people would still find an excuse for it.

You don't realize how dangerous waffle cones really are.
posted by fleacircus at 6:57 AM on August 21, 2014 [3 favorites]

We need laws mandating that camera footage from cops is public access after X amount of time (a day or two at most)

Well, that could be problematic for routine encounters.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 6:59 AM on August 21, 2014

You don't realize how dangerous waffle cones really are.

Have you ever tried to eat that last bit of a waffle cone where that really hard chocolate is in the bottom? If he threw that at a cop it could put an eye out!
posted by Talez at 6:59 AM on August 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

But the cops show up, immediately escalate, and murder a mentally disturbed person. Is this how we treat human beings?

Oh, see, there's your mistake: the only people these cops see as human beings are white, neurotypical, and probably male.

As for the calm last night (I missed the details because I actually slept for a change), fatigue has very definitely set in. The cops won; they have succeeded in physically intimidating protesters to the point where many are in fear of their physical, emotional, and mental well-being.

RIP America.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 7:12 AM on August 21, 2014 [2 favorites]

shothotbot: "Seems like its the young black men who need the cameras to record their interactions with the police."

This sounds like a good idea, until you remember that as far as police are concerned, cameras magically transform into handguns and knives and grenades in the hands of black men.
posted by Strange Interlude at 7:26 AM on August 21, 2014 [2 favorites]

We need laws mandating that camera footage from cops is public access after X amount of time (a day or two at most), and that any cop who can be found to have interfered with their camera is immediately fired and fined a year's pay or something equally draconian.

In the absence of a civic-minded liberal totalitarian dictatorship this will never happen. Further you would likely have to crush the policeman's union and that point I would rather just move somewhere else, maybe iceland, and take my luck with the volcanos, eat some roast puffin, who knows

Anyway presumably the police would go on strike were such legislation passed or even discussed and then would deliberately instigate violence and looting and whatnot to blame on the uppity minorities and everyone would say "no give the cops more guns!" and ugh fuck it
posted by elizardbits at 7:26 AM on August 21, 2014 [3 favorites]

Some good links there indeed, man of twists and turns. In particular, this one, on the historical echoes of the events in Ferguson.

For stigmatized racial and ethnic minorities, no feature of a racially divided society is a more potent symbol of racial domination or instills the message of subjugation more forcefully than police. When police use violence against stigmatized minorities, especially when police kill minority youth with impunity, it sends the message to a community that their lives are not valued and the state does not represent them. It will not even restrain its own police forces from killing your children.
...
Yet, while police violence against residents of poor minority neighborhoods is almost ubiquitous, riots are rare. They erupt only when all other avenues to justice are blocked, when residents feel impotent in the face of ongoing police violence.

Contrast this rationale to that of the white rioters in Cicero, who had the police on their side, who were not feeling impotent in the face of injustice, but threatened in their privilege, angry and hateful even in their own domination, rioting not as a last resort but as an immediate and prompt complaint against historical progress.
posted by AceRock at 7:26 AM on August 21, 2014

from Frimble's link above:

If a product is “Made in America”, chances are it was made in a US prison. Ninety-three per cent of household paintbrushes in the states are made in US prisons, 30 per cent of consumer electronics. Companies such as Victoria’s Secret, Walmart, Starbucks, Microsoft and Nintendo have products made in prisons (often via subcontractors) and states attract business by boasting about large prison populations which can be put to work as cheap labour.

posted by marsha56 at 7:26 AM on August 21, 2014 [22 favorites]

how the fuck is that even legal
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 7:33 AM on August 21, 2014 [6 favorites]

From Vanity Fair, What Combat Veterans See in Ferguson, Missouri

"I couldn’t get past the fact that the police in Ferguson were wearing better battle-rattle and carrying more tricked-out weapons than my infantry platoon used in one of the most dangerous parts of Afghanistan. Looking at the lines of cops facing off against angry protesters, I was alarmed at their war-like paramilitary posturing."

Lot of good stuff in this article.
posted by TheTingTangTong at 7:34 AM on August 21, 2014 [12 favorites]

Seems like its the young black men who need the cameras to record their interactions with the police.

I highly advise some of you non-black people here on metafilter to start pointing your cameras at police any time you are witnessing an arrest/altercation. As I white male I have done this and been told to turn my camera off/give camera to police/threatened with arrest nearly every time I've done so. I have attracted police attention to myself every time I have done so.

It's easy to make these suggestions if you don't actually have a first-hand understanding of just what lawless bullies police actually are in this country. Remember that cop to the Al Jazeera journalist

At this point, the officer approached me and grabbed my wrist.
Officer 1: [Holding my arm] Don’t resist. I’ll bust your ass. I’ll bust your head right here.
Me: [To JP] Are you filming this?
Officer 1: Film it! I don’t give a s---. Because you’ll go, and I’ll sure confiscate your film for evidence.

That's what reality is like.
posted by crayz at 7:35 AM on August 21, 2014 [15 favorites]

Yeah, the cameras need to exist for the defense of the people the police interact with, but it has to be police who wear them because that's the only way the cameraman doesn't get shot or arrested on sight.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 7:37 AM on August 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

I wonder if people may find some use in those Wifi enabled SD cards, or with having Dropbox (or a similar program) on their phone. This would allow for the automatic upload and back up of any video/pictures taken that the police try to confiscate for "evidence" that could mysteriously be erased or lost later.

I think technology will continue to eclipse suppression methods, and this is a net positive thing.
posted by Twain Device at 7:40 AM on August 21, 2014

how the fuck is that even legal

Unknown to most, slavery is still legal in the US: under the 13th Amendment it was outlawed “except as a punishment for crime”.
posted by marsha56 at 7:41 AM on August 21, 2014 [19 favorites]

This page has the 911 calls and police dispatch from the Powell shooting.
posted by smackfu at 7:41 AM on August 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

Hey guys, I know this question was asked in good faith, but can we please NOT do "but cops shoot mentally-ill white people too!" here?

The data is not comprehensive, but all the studies we have indicate police brutalize blacks at a MUCH higher rater than whites or hispanics [see also other links throught this & the other thread], and that a pervasive culture of racism (overt and latent) not only drives these trends, but also makes it less likely that such incidents make the news or will be whistleblown by fellow cops as cops close ranks along racial lines. There's no reason to think this would be any different for mentally-disturbed people, no matter how many examples we collect about white mentally-ill folks being shot (all while not being able to count the number of white people who act crazy but are dealt with without violence, like Dougie Doug). In fact, intersectionality of racism and ablism probably makes mentally-ill blacks more likely to be shot than mentally-ill whites at an even higher rate than the difference amongst neurotypical people. (How many white autistic teens have you heard of being shot to death by cops, as Stephon Watts, a 15yo black kid with autism, was when his parents called the police -- as they'd been told to do -- for assistance in getting him to go to school?)

More to the point, finding examples to show "white are victimized by police too!" in this context is no different from "but men are victims too!" in a thread about violence against women. It's diverting form the issue in a HUGELY privileged way.
posted by Westringia F. at 7:47 AM on August 21, 2014 [24 favorites]

STL Public Radio: Ferguson's Struggles Attract Out-Of-Towners To Protest Without Violence
posted by Golden Eternity at 7:47 AM on August 21, 2014 [2 favorites]

Recording cops? Relevant apps.
posted by Sticherbeast at 7:48 AM on August 21, 2014 [15 favorites]

Unknown to most, slavery is still legal in the US: under the 13th Amendment it was outlawed “except as a punishment for crime”.

There are many stories from fairly recent times of jails with work contracts telling the local law enforcement "We need a couple dozen workers this weekend," and the cops going out and rounding up people on charges such as jaywalking in places that didn't have sidewalks, public drunkenness in bars, or loitering in front of their own homes.

It's not quite as bad these days, but that's less because the system is better and more because the prisons have a consistent "recruiting" stream thanks to the War on Drugs.
posted by Etrigan at 7:49 AM on August 21, 2014 [12 favorites]

In the abstract I don't have an issue with prison labor. One of the worst things in our prison industrial system is the way we send young folks in and create a disruption in their lives and education. We do little to nothing to prevent recidivism so we just give folks a time-out where they can associate exclusively with other folks who have broken the law and then we barf them back out into the world with a mark on their record that will prevent them from being hired many places. Something that operated as a trade school/internship could have potential to be worthwhile.

Of course that is completely ruined by the fact that we're feeding the prisons a racially imbalanced group on bullshit charges and then not compensating them properly for this work, nor is it often translating into training & opportunity.

But I don't think "how is that even legal?" is the right question about prison labor. I think "how is it legal to exploit them for their labor that way?" is the right question. If the choices are exploitation or nothing I'll take nothing, but a system that really cared about something other than warehousing prisoners could do some real good with the idea.
posted by phearlez at 7:53 AM on August 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

Officer That Threatened To Kill Journalists Removed After ACLU Calls Him Out
posted by jeffburdges at 7:54 AM on August 21, 2014 [2 favorites]

There are many stories from fairly recent times of jails with work contracts telling the local law enforcement "We need a couple dozen workers this weekend," and the cops going out and rounding up people on charges such as jaywalking in places that didn't have sidewalks, public drunkenness in bars, or loitering in front of their own homes.

Hitchhiking 20 years ago, I met fellow travelers who told me that it was standard in New Orleans for the police to arrest people for minor violations in the weeks before Mardi Gras, hold them until that event had ended, and release them after the arrestees had cleaned up the streets. I'm disappointed but unsurprised that this practice isn't peculiar to New Orleans.
posted by Radiophonic Oddity at 7:56 AM on August 21, 2014 [2 favorites]

My apologies feckless.
posted by marsha56 at 8:00 AM on August 21, 2014

A Night in Ferguson: Rubber Bullets, Tear Gas, and a Jail Cell (earlier)
posted by jeffburdges at 8:03 AM on August 21, 2014

Petition To Require All Police To Have Body Cameras Breaks 100,000 Signatures
posted by jeffburdges at 8:03 AM on August 21, 2014 [3 favorites]

Wasn't directed at you, marsha56. (As it happens I knew about the 13th, but still.)
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 8:06 AM on August 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

Hey guys, I know this question was asked in good faith, but can we please NOT do "but cops shoot mentally-ill white people too!" here? [...]More to the point, finding examples to show "white are victimized by police too!" in this context is no different from "but men are victims too!" in a thread about violence against women. It's diverting form the issue in a HUGELY privileged way.

I think you are misreading the question and the replies to it. The question itself is actually arguing that the "common thread" in the shootings is being African American. You seem to be reading the responses as focusing on victims being White, which would, I agree, be problematic in a "not all men" way. But I read them as being about people who are mentally ill, and whether that group is at risk from cops despite their White privilege. Not only is their a lot of evidence that this is true, but anyone remotely cognizant of the history of the treatment of people with mental illness in the US realizes that they form a hugely disenfranchised and oppressed group. Saying so is not remotely making an argument from privilege, nor is it supportive of privilege in any way. I would also argue that it isn't a derail to broaden the discussion to include people who have a good chance of dying if you call the cops about them.
posted by OmieWise at 8:11 AM on August 21, 2014 [11 favorites]

Radiophonic Oddity: a pre-crime operation! How futuristic of them!
posted by XMLicious at 8:11 AM on August 21, 2014

Whatever, rephrase:

phearlez, that is in fact the exact question I was asking. Correction not needed.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 8:15 AM on August 21, 2014

> it appears that a cop could shoot a 10 year old black kid on a bicycle holding an ice cream cone in broad daylight and a majority of white people would still find an excuse for it.

A Reddit thread on the Powell shooting mentioned a magic 21 foot distance and the Tueller Drill and now that I understand cop's mentality around possible knives, I won't be filming police with anything but a chest mounted GoPro anymore. There's a mentality that someone that doesn't have both hands empty and in front of them that's closer than 21 feet will kill you dead 100% of the time before you can get enough rounds into them. You might kill them too, but they'll have stabbed your vital organs and arteries enough times that you'll bleed out before a surgeon can fix you.

It's repeated and reinforced and part of cop lore. Here's a video where a guy helpfully refutes martial arts teachers' claims about effectiveness of knife defense while ramping up the "knife? you're going to FUCKING DIE!" talk.

Hands up, don't shoot.
posted by morganw at 8:18 AM on August 21, 2014 [10 favorites]

I think "how is it legal to exploit them for their labor that way?" is the right question.

The 13th amendment.
posted by Talez at 8:20 AM on August 21, 2014

Newsweek article about Hedy Epstein (elderly woman arrested at St. Louis demonstration on Monday).
posted by nangar at 8:21 AM on August 21, 2014 [2 favorites]

Asian solidarity with #Ferguson #BlackLivesMatter
posted by Golden Eternity at 8:25 AM on August 21, 2014 [6 favorites]

A Reddit thread on the Powell shooting mentioned a magic 21 foot distance and the Tueller Drill

Training video linked from that thread.
posted by smackfu at 8:26 AM on August 21, 2014 [2 favorites]

what the hell, Columbia Daily Tribune
posted by mightygodking at 8:26 AM on August 21, 2014 [16 favorites]

Couple comments deleted. Please take your personal disagreements somewhere where the very active and contentious thread doesn't have to absorb them, thanks.
posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 8:26 AM on August 21, 2014 [3 favorites]

Radiophonic Oddity: "Hitchhiking 20 years ago, I met fellow travelers who told me that it was standard in New Orleans for the police to arrest people for minor violations in the weeks before Mardi Gras, hold them until that event had ended, and release them after the arrestees had cleaned up the streets. I'm disappointed but unsurprised that this practice isn't peculiar to New Orleans."

XMLicious: "Radiophonic Oddity: a pre-crime operation! How futuristic of them!"

It sounds less like a Minority Report deal, and more like what was referred to as Shanghaiing back in seafaring times. When the British government did it, they called it impressment, which is still just a fancy word for "we're taking you away from your home and making you work for us for a while." So yeah, slavery.
posted by Strange Interlude at 8:26 AM on August 21, 2014 [3 favorites]

Training video linked from that thread.

Maybe police should not learn to treat random mentally ill civilians as if they are trained martial artists?
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 8:32 AM on August 21, 2014 [9 favorites]

From December 2013, but still: "Iceland grieves after police kill man for the first time in its history."

Update: Iceland cops haven't used firearms since.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 8:35 AM on August 21, 2014 [12 favorites]

We need laws mandating that camera footage from cops is public access after X amount of time (a day or two at most)

This will be instantly monetized just like mugshots. I'm not saying that this would outweigh the benefits, but it's something to consider.
posted by ryanrs at 8:37 AM on August 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

what the hell, Columbia Daily Tribune

Glenn McCoy has always been human garbage.
posted by Sticherbeast at 8:39 AM on August 21, 2014 [4 favorites]

Antonio French: shift in strategy.
posted by nangar at 8:41 AM on August 21, 2014 [3 favorites]

We are fucked, we are completely fucked as a nation, and I don't see it getting better in my lifetime, if ever. And sadly, it's so fucked up, I am honestly scared to publicly express how fucked up it is, because I'm terrified of ending up on some list or even just be informally known as a troublemaker who can't straighten up and fly right.
posted by entropicamericana at 8:42 AM on August 21, 2014 [13 favorites]

It sounds less like a Minority Report deal, and more like what was referred to as Shanghaiing back in seafaring times.

Oops, you're right, I missed the part where those arrested were being used as labor for cleaning up the streets after the holiday.
posted by XMLicious at 8:42 AM on August 21, 2014

Look, I'm all for getting people to vote. But I am MORE for teaching people how not to be racist dicks when you have power over them.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:43 AM on August 21, 2014 [3 favorites]

I think "how is it legal to exploit them for their labor that way?" is the right question.

The 13th amendment.

That seems a little reductive, and not even necessarily accurate. Most prison labor pays the prisoners something in the way of a wage and when we're talking about semi-skilled jobs it's often a choice. To the extent that there's the "choice" to sit on your ass in your cell and be bored out of your skull and have not even the penny wages to spend in the commissary. But our labor system is filled with "choices" like that, so it's not unique to prisoners. The 13th is more pertinent as a "how is it legal" to have chain gangs or whatever hateful nonsense Arapio is perpetrating this week.

To write it off as "because of the 13th" is to overlook the sizable number of subsequent issues detailed here, including GAO discussion from the last 40 years about whether the minimum wage should apply.

I'd like to think the answer is really more like "because we don't call it slavery" or "people don't much care if prisoners get raped, why would they worry about their wage structure?" Which isn't really all that reassuring about our fellow citizens, but at least it looks into society's choices in recent years in some way.
posted by phearlez at 8:43 AM on August 21, 2014 [2 favorites]

I am honestly scared to publicly express how fucked up it is, because I'm terrified of ending up on some list or even just be informally known as a troublemaker who can't straighten up and fly right.

If not us, then who?
posted by phearlez at 8:46 AM on August 21, 2014 [2 favorites]

Look, I'm all for getting people to vote. But I am MORE for teaching people how not to be racist dicks when you have power over them.

That too, but using a recall election (which I assume is the "next step" he's talking about) to create immediate and visible consequences for the level of evil that's been perpetrated in Ferguson over the last week and a half is critical.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 8:46 AM on August 21, 2014 [4 favorites]

Look, I'm all for getting people to vote. But I am MORE for teaching people how not to be racist dicks when you have power over them.

How about instead people vote, take over city council, fire the police chief and then conduct a thorough internal investigation of all video and witness accounts in which any officer shown to be abusing his power is immediately dismissed. Fuck teaching. All these assholes understand is power, so get the citizens back their power over the police.
posted by crayz at 8:47 AM on August 21, 2014 [11 favorites]

The Shooting Death of John T. Williams

Metz said Birk got out of his car, approached Williams from behind and ordered the woodcarver to drop the knife three times. When Williams failed to do so within four seconds, Officer Birk fired his weapon five times from a distance of 10 feet. Williams was struck by four bullets, including one lethal shot to the chest wall, and died at the scene. In its initial statement to the press, SPD described Williams as having been “advancing towards” Officer Birk, who felt threatened and responded by firing his weapon.

Over the next few days, eyewitnesses began stepping forward to dispute this version of events, and the police department quickly retracted its statement.

Williams was deaf, BTW.
posted by Artw at 8:47 AM on August 21, 2014 [31 favorites]

Something that's an interesting historical irony for me is that the reason posse comitatus laws were passed was to end the federal troop presence during Reconstruction. Now we have effectively militarized police acting as the shock troops for the Neo-Confederacy. Good for the goose, but fuck your black gander.

(I also am someone who bucks about talking about American fascism, but this pretty close — it just needs a totalitarian ideology and a charismatic leader.)
posted by klangklangston at 8:49 AM on August 21, 2014 [8 favorites]

Newsweek article about Hedy Epstein

She makes it so simple. I'm so grateful to just to have read a little about her.
posted by Golden Eternity at 8:49 AM on August 21, 2014

This sounds like a good idea, until you remember that as far as police are concerned, cameras magically transform into handguns and knives and grenades in the hands of black men.

I was thinking about this while watching the Powell video. If the police had shown up a bit earlier, while the guy who shot the video was crossing that open plaza area near Powell, they could easily have just randomly decided he was the "perp" instead and shot him dead if he didn't realize they were telling him to drop his phone.

As rapid as their whole interaction with Powell was, how did they even know for certain he was the suspect they had been called about? There were several people walking around the area, probably many of them holding a small object or with a hand in a pocket.
posted by FelliniBlank at 8:50 AM on August 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

As rapid as their whole interaction with Powell was, how did they even know for certain he was the suspect they had been called about?

They had a pretty good description from the 911 call from the barber shop owner.
posted by smackfu at 8:51 AM on August 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

CrimethInc: The Making of “Outside Agitators”: This is not outside agitation. It is solidarity.
posted by Noisy Pink Bubbles at 8:51 AM on August 21, 2014 [2 favorites]

OmieWise, I wasn't misreading the question (that's why I called it "in good faith"), and I agree with you that police brutality toward (and lack of empowerment & social support for) mentally ill people is a HUGE problem that needs to be addressed. My complaint with the answers is that casting it as an "equal opportunity" issue (as one literally did) and eliding the fact that blacks are more likely to be perceived as dangerous than whites at all levels of behavior -- and hence have a multiplicity of problems if they're black AND mentally ill -- (as all answers did) is, in my opinion, extremely problematic. The trouble with saying that mentally ill folks are at risk "despite their White privilege" is that it adjusts out a huge compounding factor -- race -- and that's what strikes me as being a rather privileged view of the problem.
posted by Westringia F. at 8:52 AM on August 21, 2014 [3 favorites]

Officer Birk

This is darkly humourous, given what the British slang term 'berk' means. (Google it yourself, I don't want to offend people here.)

This is not outside agitation. It is solidarity.

Beaver biscuits. People from RPC and the like showing up to foment violent behaviour are what, exactly?
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 8:53 AM on August 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

Not to mention agents provocateurs planted by police, which has happened in every major demonstration I've been aware of since WTO Seattle.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 8:56 AM on August 21, 2014

This is unbelievable (well, it's very believable, but it shouldn't be): Cop in Ferguson Tweets Lies to Justify Tear-Gassing Protesters In Their Own Backyard:

In the conversation, a Twitter user wanted to know why police would fire tear gas at people on their own property. Weston tells them it's because protesters were firing guns from their backyard.

Daily RFT was in the backyard that was tear-gassed and caught the incident on video. No shots were ever fired anybody in the backyard and each person had their hands up in protest.

Weston also gives a simple reason why tear gas was lobbed at an Al Jazeera TV crew last week: the police were just trying to save them and sometimes, bad things happen in a "war zone."

posted by Phire at 8:57 AM on August 21, 2014 [28 favorites]

Also, two heartrending pieces on The Talk that every parent of a black child has to have:

What Black Parents Tell Their Sons About the Police

"At what age is a black boy when he learns he's scary?"

Every black male I've ever met has had this talk, and it's likely that I'll have to give it one day too. There are so many things I need to tell my future son, already, before I've birthed him; so many innocuous, trite thoughts that may not make a single difference. Don't wear a hoodie. Don't try to break up a fight. Don't talk back to cops. Don't ask for help. But they're all variations of a single theme: Don't give them an excuse to kill you.

The Talk:

I’d always argue with her when she said things like that. Not because she was wrong; because she was right, and her rightness hurt me somewhere deep and inarticulate. American society has indelibly marked my body as exotic, as dangerous, as uncontrollably lustful, as rage-filled, as a symbol of every single societal ill.

It’s odd to grow up not really believing that the various protections enshrined in law apply to you — or rather, that they only apply to you when it’s convenient. That’s really what the Talk is about: It’s pragmatism for a society that doesn’t consider you fully human.

(I did a cursory search and didn't find these links - it's been a long thread, apologies if it's already been posted.)
posted by Phire at 9:00 AM on August 21, 2014 [10 favorites]

It is not the RCP that these liberals are scared of. Only a fool would believe that eight to ten sectarians from Hyde Park have the power to tank a demonstration as large as the ones occurring in Ferguson. But these empty protestations from liberals do have a very clear purpose: separating people of color from a spirit of revolutionary community-building and anticapitalist politics. [...]

As seen in the responses to Ferguson, many liberals today excel at aping leftist aesthetics in order to earn trust into a community while simultaneously resurrecting anti-leftist slurs like “outside agitator.” They pulverize words like “intersectionality” into a meaningless oblivion, and turn them into signals that, yes, they have also taken a Sociology 201 class. They “get it.”

But in reality, these liberals are the enemies of the sort of radical change that these terms of inclusiveness are meant to signify. The language is turned into tools to silence and freeze people out of meaningful discussions about coalition-building and community change and, ultimately, reinforce capitalism’s status quo.

The ease with which certain liberal bloggers at venues like the Daily Beast and Gawker use the terminology of racists, bigots, and violent segregationists should give everyone pause, and it should tell leftists that we have a long way to go towards building a truly progressive media.

Douglas Williams in Jacobin: Love Me, Ferguson, I'm a Liberal: How liberals brought an anticommunist slur from America’s past back to life.
posted by RogerB at 9:03 AM on August 21, 2014 [8 favorites]

The trouble with saying that mentally ill folks are at risk "despite their White privilege" is that it adjusts out a huge compounding factor -- race -- and that's what strikes me as being a rather privileged view of the problem.

Absolutely. African Americans always have it worse that Whites in the US. I take that as a given. I'm just not sure, when you're talking about mentally ill people getting gunned down, that time spent ranking oppressions is time all that well spent.

But, then, I work for and with people who are mentally ill*, and write policy designed not to get them gunned down, so I may care about them inordinately.

*98% of whom are African American.
posted by OmieWise at 9:04 AM on August 21, 2014

The trouble with saying that mentally ill folks are at risk "despite their White privilege" is that it adjusts out a huge compounding factor -- race -- and that's what strikes me as being a rather privileged view of the problem.

I'd say it doesn't adjust anything out, it just points out that there's another disadvantaged class likely to be persecuted. If you struggle with mental illness you may be a "stealth" minority who can "pass" in some or many circumstances, but the system will treat you more harshly when it comes to light. If you're in multiple oppressed groups it's going to pile up.

If you want to focus on the fact that law enforcement has problems dealing with ANY diversion from the norm, super. But otherwise to say we can't address that the system has a problem with the mentally ill, full stop, feels like the suffering olympics.
posted by phearlez at 9:04 AM on August 21, 2014

From the Gawker link, which is GREAT.

Every black male I've ever met has had this talk, and it's likely that I'll have to give it one day too. There are so many things I need to tell my future son, already, before I've birthed him; so many innocuous, trite thoughts that may not make a single difference. Don't wear a hoodie. Don't try to break up a fight. Don't talk back to cops. Don't ask for help. But they're all variations of a single theme: Don't give them an excuse to kill you.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 9:05 AM on August 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

Beaver biscuits. People from RPC and the like showing up to foment violent behaviour are what, exactly?

Not everyone that came from outside Ferguson was from the RCP, or did it to "foment violence" (whatever that means). That's simplistic, slanderous cop-talk, and parroting it is shameful. Someone else linked this story upthread that tells about protesters coming from elsewhere that even has the phrase "Without Violence" to hammer the point home.

If you read the article I linked, it also makes the point that stated addresses of many (especially poor/marginalized) people are often inaccurate for a variety of reasons.

Lest you believe that I sympathize with the RCP, I think I made it pretty clear upthread that I think they're obnoxious.

But these empty protestations from liberals do have a very clear purpose: separating people of color from a spirit of revolutionary community-building and anticapitalist politics.

Ex-fucking-actly. "Violence" is not just disagreeing with Antonio French's politics.
posted by Noisy Pink Bubbles at 9:06 AM on August 21, 2014 [7 favorites]

I just got around to that "What Combat Veterans See in Ferguson" article that TheTingTangTong posted - a great piece well worth reading - and I kind of love this guy (emphasis mine):

To my eyes the police, whose business is peace, have no business strutting through the streets carrying M-4 carbines with reflexive-fire sights on top, surefire tactical flashlights on barrel-mounted rail systems slung from three-point harnesses, or white zip-tie flex cuffs over black-body armor, their eyes and faces obscured by gas masks and their heads covered with Kevlar helmets. A bunch of other combat veterans I stay in touch with online agreed. Indeed, besides black Americans, to whom these kind of disturbing images are hardly new, these veterans seemed the most irate, but also the most attuned to the danger posed by the cognitive dissonance of peace officers dressed for war—and not just in Ferguson, but in Boston in the wake of the marathon bombing.

I sent a message to a former Special Forces friend in Oregon.

“I was wondering what would happen if a bunch of us vets kitted up without weapons and stood in-between the cops and civs.”

His message came back: “I'm doing that this weekend! I’m kitting fully up armor helmet everything. And showing police what they look like. I fully support you!”

posted by Phire at 9:06 AM on August 21, 2014 [37 favorites]

Only a fool would believe that eight to ten sectarians from Hyde Park have the power to tank a demonstration as large as the ones occurring in Ferguson.

A single person throwing a water bottle was enough to touch off an enormous police overreaction on Tuesday night.

During the G20 in Toronto, a very, very few people smashing windows and setting a cop car on fire provoked an enormous police overreaction and how many people arrested, again? Without charges?

Only a fool would write something so transparently untrue and bloody stupid, Douglas Williams.

That's simplistic, slanderous cop-talk, and parroting it is shameful.

Accusing me of either of those things is shameful. Grow up.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 9:09 AM on August 21, 2014 [12 favorites]

Regarding the Powell video, I'll quote myself from the Eric Gardner thread: "I'm constantly wondering, when I see these kinds of incidents, what is the freaking rush? The cop has somewhere to be that he can't just back off for a bit, let things settle?"
posted by schoolgirl report at 9:12 AM on August 21, 2014 [25 favorites]

schoolgirl report, yeah, that. I mean, I understand that he's carrying a knife. But you're going to tell me that the St. Louis police don't have any training to deal with someone who is carrying a knife? Really? Kajieme was someone's son. And even if he had ended up in a place where nobody in the world cared what happened to him, he STILL had the same rights as every other American not to be slaughtered.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 9:15 AM on August 21, 2014 [4 favorites]

"I'm constantly wondering, when I see these kinds of incidents, what is the freaking rush? The cop has somewhere to be that he can't just back off for a bit, let things settle?"

They're just murderers. I heard the comparison to "Waingro" in the movie Heat before, but after watching the Powell video it seems even more fitting. "I had to get it on. He was making a move. I had to get it on."
posted by crayz at 9:16 AM on August 21, 2014 [2 favorites]

His message came back: “I'm doing that this weekend! I’m kitting fully up armor helmet everything. And showing police what they look like. I fully support you!”

oh no my shriveled little raisin heart has been warmed

Seriously tho this is very awesome and it would be great if more vets would do this en masse, but I totally understand that the current state of Ferguson might be too close to bad memories for some, maybe even many, to risk getting involved.
posted by elizardbits at 9:17 AM on August 21, 2014 [4 favorites]

I'm going to the Gardner rally on Staten Island on Saturday and hoping that NYPD doesn't gas us.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 9:18 AM on August 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

Again, police aren't actually trained to do any social work, which is the majority of their job, nor do we teach them how to de-escalate a situation after it's gotten tense.

When we give them bigger, badder guns it only encourages them to act bigger and badder. And acting that was is certainly easier than the difficulty of talking people through rough times - a taser (or gun) is a way faster way to solve the problem.
posted by Strass at 9:21 AM on August 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

There's a solidarity rally in my city on Saturday. I really, really really want to go. But I also have an audition on Monday for a gig that is pretty important to me, and tear gas fucks up your voice for days on end. Metafilter, help me figure out what is reason and what is cowardice.

I've also had career-related reasons for being unable to protest in person, so I've tried to do what I could by donating and showing support online. Can you contact the organization setting up your local rally and ask what they could use? Alternately, consider just donating to support one of the groups helping kids in Ferguson, or one of the national nonprofits helping there (the ACLU, the Freedom of the Press Foundation, etc.).
posted by limeonaire at 9:22 AM on August 21, 2014 [2 favorites]

In Ferguson, Cops Hand Out Three Warrants Per Household Every Year
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 9:27 AM on August 21, 2014 [15 favorites]

"I'm constantly wondering, when I see these kinds of incidents, what is the freaking rush? The cop has somewhere to be that he can't just back off for a bit, let things settle?"

What makes more sense? That US police officers are spectacularly incompetent, or they are a little too eager to draw a gun, point it at someone, and shoot them?
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 9:27 AM on August 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

I second asking what they could use, bringing some food, donating some money for flyers, etc.
posted by Strass at 9:28 AM on August 21, 2014

Again, police aren't actually trained to do any social work, which is the majority of their job, nor do we teach them how to de-escalate a situation after it's gotten tense.

This is not strictly true; I linked above many times to many different CIT programs that recognize this fact and advocate for it. However, as demonstrated by the fact that StL HAS a big CIT program and still yielded this result shows that it's only as good as its application and that policy matters.

The two big policy questions for StL I'd say are "why is this voluntary and not mandatory?" and "why isn't there a greater focus for dispatch to send out CIT-certified folks?" They have a suicide emergency protocol for CIT[pdf] and the general CIT response policy[pdf] but they don't seem to have done any assessment on efficacy since the 2006 report when they first rolled it out.

This is not an unrecognized problem; we are not starting from square 1. We "just" need to get these programs pushed out and make it a priority.
posted by phearlez at 9:30 AM on August 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

morganw's comment about the Tueller Drill which involves the timing necessary to defend oneself from a a hand-held knife attack makes me wonder what will happen at the point when there's easy access to sentry-gun-type weapons that can recognize when someone is drawing a weapon and react before they're able to shoot. I would think it needn't be a computer-controlled firearm like a sentry gun either; something like a blinding laser or maybe even a taser seems sufficient, if the computer can react quickly enough.

(So I'm saying, if we're seeing negative effects from officers being trained to pre-empt knife attacks, it seems like the ways they (or their computers) will need to be trained to anticipate devices designed to pre-empt them might be even more problematic.)
posted by XMLicious at 9:33 AM on August 21, 2014

That US police officers are spectacularly incompetent, or they are a little too eager to draw a gun, point it at someone, and shoot them?

That IS incompetent.

"I'm constantly wondering, when I see these kinds of incidents, what is the freaking rush? The cop has somewhere to be that he can't just back off for a bit, let things settle?"

What I love, too, is how, based just on that knife wielding perp instructional film, the cops drive themselves right into the zone of danger. Turned it right into a lethal situation.
posted by Trochanter at 9:35 AM on August 21, 2014 [7 favorites]

I do think the knife is the main answer to "what's the freaking rush?" It was called in on the 911 call, so the police knew about it.
posted by smackfu at 9:36 AM on August 21, 2014

I think this explains what's going on in Ferguson better than anything else I've read.

It's about money. The police there are essentially a gang running a protection racket.
posted by empath at 9:38 AM on August 21, 2014 [13 favorites]

Sticherbeast: "what the hell, Columbia Daily Tribune

Glenn McCoy has always been human garbage."

Someone should do a cartoon of a political cartoonist in a klan outfit making a racist political cartoon.
posted by symbioid at 9:38 AM on August 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

CrimethInc: The Making of “Outside Agitators”: This is not outside agitation. It is solidarity.

posted by Noisy Pink Bubbles at 8:51 AM on August 21 [1 favorite +] [!]

BULLLLLLLLLSHIIIIIIIT

It's not "solidarity" if you show up and act like an asshole in ways that the local residents who are protesting peacefully *do not want you to act*
posted by stenseng at 9:40 AM on August 21, 2014 [19 favorites]

Someone should do a cartoon of a political cartoonist in a klan outfit making a racist political cartoon.

Missing a label on the klan outfit reading "HACK RACIST CARTOONIST".
posted by Artw at 9:40 AM on August 21, 2014 [6 favorites]

There's a solidarity rally in my city on Saturday.

Assuming it's during the day, it will probably be safe from teargas and smoke bombs; there was a huge march (four, actually) in Oakland yesterday evening and nothing happened except people exercising their rights. But if you feel iffy about it at all, donate to the National Lawyers Guild or similar!
posted by rtha at 9:41 AM on August 21, 2014

Please permit a slight derail to point out that the statement "If a product is “Made in America”, chances are it was made in a US prison." from the article is presented without any documentation by person touting a film that she is working on. To me that statement means that at least 51% of the goods made in America are manufactured in prison, and I just don't think that can be true. Briefly, there are a little over 2 million inmates in the US, and somewhere around 12 million Americans directly employed in manufacturing. From this alone one would think that 51% could not be possible. Digging further I found that most of the inmate manufacturing is for government products, and the number working on retail goods may be less than ten thousand.
posted by achrise at 9:43 AM on August 21, 2014 [6 favorites]

Also CrimethInc? Really? Let me subscribe to your "Starbucks of Anarchy" newsletter.
posted by stenseng at 9:43 AM on August 21, 2014 [2 favorites]

This is not strictly true; I linked above many times to many different CIT programs that recognize this fact and advocate for it.

Most CIT programs are per officer, rather than per Department, by which I mean that some officers will be trained and some won't. At least that's how it is in the big city CIT program that my government department runs.
posted by OmieWise at 9:45 AM on August 21, 2014

Strass: "I second asking what they could use, bringing some food, donating some money for flyers, etc."

Updated list of campaigns/assistance requests. (Same link as Phire's waaaaay upthread.)
posted by desuetude at 9:46 AM on August 21, 2014 [2 favorites]

mightygodking: "what the hell, Columbia Daily Tribune"

The editors at the Columbia Daily Tribune may be reached at 573/815-1700 or write editor@columbiatribune.com Someone should tell them how inappropriate, unacceptable, and damaging this sort of racist depiction is. I will be doing so. Feel free to join me. Not since the era of George McManus and Cliff Sterrett have we seen such gross caricatures of African Americans on an editorial page. They should be ashamed. They should apologize, and they should force the editor responsible for okaying that cartoon to wear the cone of shame for a week.
posted by dejah420 at 9:46 AM on August 21, 2014 [20 favorites]

Seriously tho this is very awesome and it would be great if more vets would do this en masse, but I totally understand that the current state of Ferguson might be too close to bad memories for some, maybe even many, to risk getting involved.

That's essentially where the divide falls. I'm on a lot of the lists of the veterans who would be wanting to do things like this or generally do things like this, and the argument is not about "should we do this, is it an injustice" but more "Can we do this, or are we going to have flashbacks once we see people aiming guns at us and make the situation much worse." Because a lot of us have legit no-shit gas masks, and tear gas doesn't really phase us that much, and PTSD sometimes makes you react to attack in a confrontational manner. If there were more vets there, without a /lot/ of discipline there'd definitely be a lot more canisters being thrown back, I bet.
posted by corb at 9:47 AM on August 21, 2014 [2 favorites]

I thought I saw a link to library donations at some point, does anyone have that?
posted by Artw at 9:50 AM on August 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

What I love, too, is how, based just on that knife wielding perp instructional film, the cops drive themselves right into the zone of danger. Turned it right into a lethal situation.

The police might well drive themselves into the mindset anyways, but think about how we portray police work. We're constantly told it's dangerous, that an officer dies every XX hours. It leaves the impression that cop killers are real problem. We're not told that they largely die in car accidents, so we're left with the sense that police are in grave danger and need to protect themselves constantly.

It doesn't help that police in movies and on TV are often action heroes, chasing down criminals, pulling guns, shooting people, despite that not being what good police work looks like 99% of the time.

These are hard problems to solve, but the cult of the Hero Cop who is constantly in peril from criminals is something that needs to die so we can actually think clearly about policing in this country.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 9:51 AM on August 21, 2014 [11 favorites]

At least that's how it is in the big city CIT program that my government department runs.

I suspect that's the way it is at most if not all locations, and I tried to communicate that fact (at least with regards to StL's program). But the point, I think, is that this isn't something with nobody working on it or recognizing it as a problem. We "just" need to move it from a volunteer program to something that every officer must do as part of hir training, no different from range qualification, and make it something that's prioritized for 911 call centers/dispatchers.
posted by phearlez at 9:53 AM on August 21, 2014

Someone should tell them how inappropriate, unacceptable, and damaging this sort of racist depiction is. I will be doing so. Feel free to join me.

I have done so, thank you for the address and the prompt.
posted by KathrynT at 9:53 AM on August 21, 2014 [3 favorites]

It looks like you can send checks to the address here for library donations.
posted by jetlagaddict at 9:57 AM on August 21, 2014 [3 favorites]

I think this explains what's going on in Ferguson better than anything else I've read.

I suspect this is pretty common. I know the St. Ann cops are heavily focused on speeding tickets. There's a school zone a couple blocks from my home, on a through street in a residential area, where the speed limit is 20 from 7 AM to 6 PM, every weekday regardless of season or holiday. It's a middle school and there's a traffic light and a crosswalk, so it's not particularly dangerous. There's an automated traffic camera, which I can personally attest works just fine. :P

However, most days there's at least one, if not two or three, cops also watching the school zone -- just to catch anyone who speeds up after they pass the camera but while still in the zone. Literally all summer, while school was out, this was the case. This is a town of 13,000, poorer but whiter than Ferguson, which has 40 police offers, but there's almost always one just catching speeders in this one spot.

(For what it's worth, I haven't seen any there since Mike Brown was killed. I guess they're all in Ferguson threatening to shoot people and getting reprimanded for swearing.)
posted by Foosnark at 10:01 AM on August 21, 2014 [2 favorites]

During the G20 in Toronto, a very, very few people smashing windows and setting a cop car on fire provoked an enormous police overreaction and how many people arrested, again? Without charges?

No, "was used as a pretext for". And if there weren't a bottle-thrower, they would have made something up.

I swear to you up and down, I have been in what used to pass for violent protests (ie, no live ammo, no snipers). Things I have seen:

1. Provocateur does something, police smash
2. Protester does something, police smash
3. Police walk up to entirely peaceful people and beat/smash/arrest them

And I have also seen protesters do things and cops do nothing, because it was not yet strategic for them to go in for the kill.

The police often wait for someone to do a fool thing, as long as they're sure that someone will do a fool thing, but they're not going to leave you alone just because you act like a spring lamb.

It really isn't worthwhile to get super-judgy about single actions by protesters on the ground in a super-chaotic situation. I'm also troubled by the whole "good protester/bad protester" divide that is springing up around the internet, because what happens inexorably is that as soon as you accept that logic, someone will always be framed as the bad protester, even if it's for something incredibly trivial like not getting on the sidewalk fast enough. And I also think that it's very easy to assume that the people who call themselves leaders in Ferguson are always right, and that the "radical elements" are outsiders, not black, misguided and troubled young men, etc. There's a huge tendency (that I even observe in myself) to fall back on a "good peaceful protester like MLK" versus "bad militant protester like the Black Panthers" narrative about protest, which usually fails to do justice to the situation or to the political complexity of the actual people on the ground.

Note that this does not mean that a bunch of lose cannon protesters should just waltz in and do whatever the hell they like. People who have no lived connection to a place or to the group protesting don't know enough about what is needed or about the situation on the ground to do anything but perhaps arrive and try to plug in to the action that best matches their abilities and beliefs. This is doubly true for white people showing up at a protest led by black organizers that is a response to a racist shooting.

But it's a mistake to frame things as "if it weren't for those outsiders, everyone would have acted just like Gandhi and the world would be on our side". That has never been the case.
posted by Frowner at 10:03 AM on August 21, 2014 [30 favorites]

(I add that IME if there is one thing that will make the police flip the fuck out and escalate the situation, it would be combat veterans in full gear. I'm not saying that people shouldn't do that, because it's a way of contesting the legitimacy of the police and potentially a powerful symbolic action. I'm just saying that "don't do anything to inspire the police to smash" and "show up in combat gear [even though without weapons" are totally contradictory in my experience of protests.)
posted by Frowner at 10:06 AM on August 21, 2014

From my experience being a veteran on the ground in uniform during protests, and being with other veterans in full combat gear, it does not tend to escalate the police, because they see us as somehow all being on the same side. They do not seem to fear the veterans in the same way. When we were doing street theater - flex cuffing and seeming to beat strangers in the street, in full battle rattle, they didn't even roll up and ask us any questions.

I know it's unfair and shitty, but veteran privilege means that veterans who have identified themselves as veterans generally do not get treated as shittily by police, and often have the ability to shield others.
posted by corb at 10:09 AM on August 21, 2014 [4 favorites]

Metafilter has become my go-to news aggregator. Thanks for all the great info.
posted by ThreeCatsBob at 10:10 AM on August 21, 2014 [7 favorites]

feckless fecal fear mongering: "Officer BirkBeaver biscuits. People from RPC and the like showing up to foment violent behaviour are what, exactly?"

I think part of the issue here is defining "outside agitator"...

I think I mentioned this in the last thread, but I'm not sure. I think there's a couple was this can be interpreted...

1) A political group that uses these events to organize for their own political cause. "Agitate" the crowd, not neccessarily to violence, but to a more revolutionary mindset in the larger scheme of things. THIS is what I would call "solidarity". These people are AGITATING for a larger social change and trying to get people more radicalized, but not necessarily for agitating to violence as an immediate tactical issue (NOTE: propagandists trying to convert someone to a specific ideological mode and thus a paying customer for their political cult. "RPC"? Do you mean "RCP" (Revolutionary Communist Party - the Cult of Avakian -- This is a weird crossover of solidarity/organizing but also recruiting that makes me uncomfortable knowing how these sorts of groups work... I don't know if I should count these types of groups as agitators, though they clearly are, but they're also, frankly, opportunists for their little corner of the revolution)

2) Agents Provocateurs - We know of these scum/filth... As shared in many of these threads, we have the footage from Canada where the so-called "Anarchists"/Black Blockers clearly are pigs in disguise: Between their boots, their desire to not be seen, and their attempts to protect themselves from discovery by cowering back BEHIND THE POLICE LINE for safety. Seriously? What kind of self-respecting anarchist goes to the police for protection. Quite often the big tough bulky older people are clearly provocateurs. It's kind of ageist and bodyist to point this out, but the fact is that generally the block bloc contingent is younger and more fit/athletic. Too much vegan dumpster scrapdiving can make a young fella not so bulky.

I think quite often, the right-wing uses the term "agitator" in the first kind... In the sense that they think that these are dangerous elements who are plotting to work against America's Finest Boys in Blue! The big ol' Communist Threat, you know - "Community Organizers" etc...

This term bothers me for precisely that reason. I think we really really really have to start thinking tactically vs strategically.

The "time for the next phase" is an attempt at strategic thinking, but I worry that it's still using the tactical mindset. And I worry about the continued co-option of authentic people's movements by those in power. I hope and pray that as time goes on these people's movements will start to realize the game, start to unite on multiple fronts and start to organize and work together as necessary in their own domains and on the larger scale to really make an impact.

The biggest frustration to me is that this is gonna turn into "just give the cops cameras" and everything will be fine. Or "Remove the military equipment"... Those are parts of the solution, but we need to do more community organization. We need to have the youth feel that their lives are important and that their future is important and that there is a lot at stake here. We need to get people to work towards solutions that can't be co-opted. The Photosynth idea mentioned in the previous thread (I wish I could remember who posited the idea, because I really really really think this is a necessary concept for the future of demonstrations and mass political action in terms of protection).

I mentioned in this thread my love for Huey Newton, and to see the Huey P Gun Club brought a smile to my eye. Yes, it will be co-opted by the right-wing gun nuts, which is a shame, but frankly... This has always been an issue. Look at the NRA and Reagan and how they tried to prevent the Panthers from having arms.

Historically I think there was a problem, because there was a lack of undertanding and consciousness in terms of of what to do, and COINTELPRO did a damn fine job of undermining things. And we have to remember, strategically, that voting and protests are all nice and fine, but once you start thinking beyond minor tactical events like that, to larger organization and doing it outside the orthodox and officially sanctioned channels, you become a threat to The State qua The State. And in this method you are much more dangerous than mere protestors who are already battling on the front lines.

I propose we work with some of the more liberalminded tech-libertarians to start working on building tools for the revolution. I do not mean a violent revolution here, but rather, tools to "Bear Witness" -- whether it be flying quadrocopters with cameras, 3D Panoramic cameras, small wearable cameras for encounters with the police in everyday traffic stops, or the space-centric/spatially aware vision of stitchign together a thousand windows from every protestor every few seconds via that Photosynth style concept mentioned in these threads... We need to start planning these tools and getting organized, and we need to work on larger scales beyond these little tactical events, and for fuck's sake we have to stop putting our faith in all the usual political assholes who promise the world and constantly under deliver.

That doesn't mean don't vote, but it means, let's work towards changing the platforms, let's work towards putting pressure, real serious pressure from below on these clowns. Let's get an authentic grassroots platform to push beyond the typical bourgeois liberal concerns and start pointing out the increasing police state that grows every day. The NSA, the Racist Police, the Militarization, all that stuff needs to be constantly pointed out, but we also need to make sure people understand that the right-Libertarians can no longer dominate this discussion that we demand SOCIAL Justice, not just Individual Justice.
posted by symbioid at 10:11 AM on August 21, 2014 [8 favorites]

Frowner, I'm specifically addressing the one or two assholes, and not setting up a good/bad protester dichotomy. Yes, sure, the cops will seize any excuse.

But I was here during G20, and I stand by what I said about it.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 10:11 AM on August 21, 2014

Assholes who may or may not--okay lbr probably were--be police plants. As has happened at, as I said before, every major demonstration I've been aware of since WTO Seattle.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 10:16 AM on August 21, 2014

It's not "solidarity" if you show up and act like an asshole in ways that the local residents who are protesting peacefully *do not want you to act*

Well, I agree with that statement technically, but in regards to the situation at hand, it misrepresents the reality in a number of different ways.

1) Some local residents are expressing thanks to members of even the most demonized outside groups in Ferguson. For instance, Carl Dix of the RCP related that in his KPFA interview. (And, for those who might doubt the veracity of anything that comes out of the mouth of an RCPer, the Jacobin article points out that Carl Dix has a very good reputation on anti-racist politics and history of being active on these issues -- in a productive way.)
2) The STL public radio article detailed a number of people who came to Ferguson to protest who are not with the RCP or anarchists or whatever so far as we can tell
3) Local residents have been protesting both peacefully and not so peacefully; their "violent" protest is not exclusively the product of the RCP boogeyman
4) Even those who are held up as the good, peaceful protesters have engaged in violent behavior -- for instance, the video I posted earlier of Antonio French intimidating and shoving another protester he disagreed with

In short, people are coming in from the outside (by the way, that also includes Amnesty International, National Lawyer's Guild, etc.) are behaving in a variety of different ways... just like the locals who were there protesting in the first place. I think we can all agree with Frowner's statement:

Note that this does not mean that a bunch of lose cannon protesters should just waltz in and do whatever the hell they like. People who have no lived connection to a place or to the group protesting don't know enough about what is needed or about the situation on the ground to do anything but perhaps arrive and try to plug in to the action that best matches their abilities and beliefs. This is doubly true for white people showing up at a protest led by black organizers that is a response to a racist shooting.
posted by Noisy Pink Bubbles at 10:16 AM on August 21, 2014

Frowner: I hear what you're saying about the "good protestor/bad protestor" divide.

Would you have a good idea, then, about how to refer to the small handful of loose cannon protestors who pull that kind of loose-cannon shit? Because on the one hand I absolutely don't want to contribute to a protest-tone-argument thing, but on the other hand I want to be able to call out butt-cranks like this. I nearly got myself trampled to death at a march outside the RNC in 2004 when a group 20 feet behind me set fire to a dragon puppet in the middle of the march and everyone panicked and started running because holy shit 15-foot-tall fireball.

From conversations I've had with them, the kindest thing I can think to say about their politics is that their understanding of situations tends to lack nuance; their tactics are more where I have my complaint, because they a) usually tend to make volatile situations worse and b) just serve to turn observers against the rest of the group. And I do want to be able to call that kind of behavior out.

So while I've got my own (highly colorful and impassioned) words for these folk, I suspect a slightly more polite term is called for. It's possible that we simply can't have a nuanced discussion about this kind of protest tactic while a protest is actively going on - but how can we call them out and ask them to knock it off most effectively, or differentiate the vast majority of other peaceful demonstrators from such persons?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:20 AM on August 21, 2014 [5 favorites]

the video I posted earlier of Antonio French intimidating and shoving another protester he disagreed with

If memory serves, that was a protester (or police plant) who was actively agitating for violence against police. That's a rather important detail, because violence against police in these situations really means a hell of a lot more violence against protesters.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 10:23 AM on August 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

The man French was shoving was someone who had driven to Ferguson to clearly cause a riot.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 10:24 AM on August 21, 2014 [2 favorites]

I spent the morning at the Board of Elections getting maps/data to start registering every black person in #Ferguson.
posted by Artw at 10:24 AM on August 21, 2014 [17 favorites]

A journalist for Al Jazeera talks about why he will not be returning to Ferguson, citing the appalling behaviour of other journalists treating Ferguson like a media spectacle:

After what I saw last night, I will not be returning. The behavior and number of journalists there is so appalling, that I cannot in good conscience continue to be a part of the spectacle.

Things I’ve seen:

-Cameramen yelling at residents in public meetings for standing in way of their cameras
-Cameramen yelling at community leaders for stepping away from podium microphones to better talk to residents
-TV crews making small talk and laughing at the spot where Mike Brown was killed, as residents prayed, mourned
-A TV crew of a to-be-left-unnamed major cable network taking pieces out of a Ferguson business retaining wall to weigh down their tent
-One reporter who, last night, said he came to Ferguson as a “networking opportunity.” He later asked me to take a picture of him with Anderson Cooper.

[...]

We should all be ashamed, and I cannot do it anymore. I am thankful for my gracious editors who understand that.

Good for him for taking a stand, I guess, but I definitely wish he were staying and these other assholes were being ejected.

In a few weeks I'm going to take all the articles I've posted here and tweeted and the two FPPs and run the numbers on total word count...and that won't even include the pieces Iv'e read but didn't feel merited posting. It feels like I've been reading about 4 novels a day for 12 days.
posted by Phire at 10:26 AM on August 21, 2014 [28 favorites]

The man French was shoving was someone who had driven to Ferguson to clearly cause a riot.

If your're defending that guy or the brick thrower you're full of it. They weren't allowed to get people beaten up/potentially killed, boo hoo.

Plus also probably cops.
posted by Artw at 10:26 AM on August 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

so, i wrote to the editor at columbia daily tribune and rec'd this response.

Mailbox - Editor 1:22 PM (3 minutes ago) to me I would ask you to look at the cartoon in context. Three of the preceding four days featured editorial cartoons about the Michael Brown tragedy, the militarization of the police response and a likeness of Lady Justice with six bullet wounds. The editorial cartoon yesterday accompanied a Rich Lowry column about the unfortunate presence of looters and how that is not a legitimate form of protest. Provocative yes. Racist? Certainly not in intent or context. I do appreciate your note. Jim Robertson

see, it's the context that makes it ok. silly me.
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 10:27 AM on August 21, 2014 [31 favorites]

quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon, well, that prompted me to write my own letter calling BS.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 10:31 AM on August 21, 2014 [2 favorites]

What a load of utter tosh.
posted by Phire at 10:31 AM on August 21, 2014 [10 favorites]

So actually, upon reflection, it occurs that one reason why police may see military and veterans as on the same side is the strong similarity in training and practice - which may actually give some insight into their minds. (Mind you, this is not a good thing: as my fellow vet mentioned, you cannot train people for war and ask them to maintain a peace.)

Police, like military, focus on creating an atmosphere of absolute loyalty to other police. A lot has been written about the "thin blue line" elsewhere - how police will protect each other, will generally not turn or inform on each other, and those officers who do are socially shunned and passed over for jobs and promotions. But how is that created? I know in the military, a lot of time is spent talking about how by volunteering for the military, you are better, braver, more morally righteous, than the civilians who did not. Your duty is to protect the people in the right uniform, from the people in the wrong uniform. You are loyal to your new military family more, often, than your family or identity of origin. You are the sheepdog that guards the sheep.

But police also tend to socialize primarily with each other. They also wear a unique uniform and must make sharp decisions about who is a Citizen and who is a Criminal. They also are tasked with protecting their Citizens, but also told that the true brotherhood is the Fraternal Order of Police. They do "courtesy" ticket fixing for their fellows. They are expected to be willing to die for each other.

But you can't get that kind of intense tribal loyalty without erasing former loyalties and coming up with an Other. And this is speculation, but I'd be willing to bet cold hard cash that the Other here is the Criminal. Not merely a Citizen doing criminal things, but a capital-C Criminal, someone who is a criminal in their heart, who will always be a criminal, who is just waiting for opportunities to showcase how criminal he is. And that's one reason you get incidents like the Seitz case above - because the police were thinking, "Here's a Citizen in a fight with a Criminal. Well, sure, the Citizen may have provoked the fight this time, but I'm sure he's an all-around good chap.

Now you get to the real kicker: how do you tell the Citizen from the Criminal? And I'm wondering if they may not do it the same way that military tend to do it - by looking at the majority of people they are supporting and opposing, uncritically. Who is in the media positively? Who is on the media negatively? Who stops and offers the policeman a drink or a meal at a restaurant? Who crosses the street and doesn't give them the time of day? Who is the stereotypical Citizen? Who is the stereotypical Criminal?

And given the composition of the jails in this country, and the representation on television, this is almost universally going to be poor, urban, black men. So the institutional racism that is already entrenched in our media and our culture gets focused and magnified by the police training, to no good end for anybody. The police are the dark mirror of our society, and people are dying for it.
posted by corb at 10:34 AM on August 21, 2014 [17 favorites]

Of all the things that have happened this week, it's odd at first that somebody falling back on "we didn't mean this racist thing to be racist" somehow makes me just as pissed as everything has. But it really does.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 10:35 AM on August 21, 2014 [4 favorites]

Prosecutor #BobMcCulloch's full statement, "not walking away" from #michaelbrown case:
posted by Artw at 10:35 AM on August 21, 2014

see, it's the context that makes it ok. silly me.

Jesus christ, what an appalling letter.
posted by rtha at 10:36 AM on August 21, 2014 [6 favorites]

see, it's the context that makes it ok. silly me.

It's not like he directly referenced the supposed looting - the "famous" looting on the scene was that of the liquor store. His reference to a big screen tv meant he was drawing on racist tropes unrelated to actual news he was "attempting" to reference.

Not that his argument held any water to begin with, but it's a particularly poorly reasoned response.
posted by sallybrown at 10:37 AM on August 21, 2014 [8 favorites]

Prosecutor #BobMcCulloch's full statement, "not walking away" from #michaelbrown case:

Why is that in all caps?
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 10:39 AM on August 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

Another Jacobin article on the subject: Who is an “Outside Agitator”? (this one is by Richard Seymour; the earlier one on the subject was by Douglas Williams)
posted by Noisy Pink Bubbles at 10:41 AM on August 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

"I could see how you might think it's racist if you didn't know the context, so just in case you don't, let me explain it to you: The context is they're black."
posted by Flunkie at 10:42 AM on August 21, 2014 [34 favorites]

Why is that in all caps?

CAUSE HE'S REALLY NOT WALKING AWAY AND HE WANTS TO MAKE SURE WE KNOW IT!!!! MAYBE IF HE USES CAPS LOCK WE'LL ALL STOP BOTHERING HIM ABOUT IT, OK!!!
posted by sallybrown at 10:42 AM on August 21, 2014 [6 favorites]

A journalist for Al Jazeera talks about why he will not be returning to Ferguson, citing the appalling behaviour of other journalists treating Ferguson like a media spectacle:

I wish he named networks, but I can understand why a working journalist wouldn't.

see, it's the context that makes it ok. silly me.

The context would be what was actually looted. AFAIK nobody is missing a plasma TV.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 10:46 AM on August 21, 2014 [2 favorites]

I do sort of wish that the president would not golf every day. I mean, I understand the man needs a vacation, but the picture ops every day....
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 10:48 AM on August 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

Artw: "Prosecutor #BobMcCulloch's full statement, "not walking away" from #michaelbrown case: "

Whoops, somebody doesn't understand "the appearance of impropriety", which could be an issue regardless of the outcome of the case.
posted by boo_radley at 10:51 AM on August 21, 2014 [3 favorites]

Eminem, Ice Cube and Korn Team Up with Anonymous to Call For Global Revolution hmm
posted by jeffburdges at 10:54 AM on August 21, 2014 [2 favorites]

Whoops, somebody doesn't understand "the appearance of impropriety",

I once had someone threaten to sue me for using that phrase to describe their improprietous actions.
posted by OmieWise at 10:54 AM on August 21, 2014

hey guys, for some awesomesauce (and god knows we need it), check out #blackopencarry! Also a picture of some awesome WOC carrying to keep the community safe and police out.
posted by corb at 10:57 AM on August 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

Why is that in all caps?

BOB MCCULLOCH IS ACTUALLY THE ONE SENDING YOU ALL THE OBAMA EMAILS NOT YOUR GRANDMOTHER
posted by desjardins at 10:58 AM on August 21, 2014 [12 favorites]

Eminem, Ice Cube and Korn Team Up with Anonymous to Call For Global Revolution

in a moment of surreal hysteria and emotional exhaustion, I find myself desperately hoping that the Korn in question is the Japanese Iron Chef judge and not the nu-metal band.
posted by KathrynT at 10:58 AM on August 21, 2014 [5 favorites]

After what I saw last night, I will not be returning. The behavior and number of journalists there is so appalling, that I cannot in good conscience continue to be a part of the spectacle.

So I was wondering, how many of the journos are there just to get their "I was arrested in Ferguson" badge?

Don't get me wrong, a strong, independent media is essential, but it looks to me like there are a lot of vultures there now.
posted by bonehead at 11:01 AM on August 21, 2014 [2 favorites]

The test for appearance of impropriety is whether the conduct would create in reasonable minds a perception that the ~~judge’s~~prosecutor's ability to carry out ~~judicial~~prosecutorial responsibilities with integrity, impartiality, and appropriate temperament is impaired.

Missouri Supreme Court Rules, Rule 2-1.2, Comment 5.

Yes I understand that the rules governing prosecutors is not the same as that governing judges. But it's a pretty damn good rule to follow either way.

Fun fact: apparently in Missouri a litigant in a civil or criminal case gets 1 free recusal of a judge! Source.
posted by Lemurrhea at 11:01 AM on August 21, 2014

Eminem, Ice Cube and Korn Team Up with Anonymous to Call For Global Revolution

Old news, not related to Ferguson
posted by Noisy Pink Bubbles at 11:03 AM on August 21, 2014 [3 favorites]

Whoops, somebody doesn't understand "the appearance of impropriety"

Can't remember who said it (and I'm not going to googlecheat to make myself look smarter): "Justice must not only be done, but must be seen to be done."

Quite possibly a misquote but the point remains.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 11:05 AM on August 21, 2014

corb: to keep the community safe and police out

Yeah, here's the thing. An armed militia made up of community volunteers isn't a replacement for a police force that respects the community it's policing and is accountable to the government that people elected. The fact that we don't have the latter now in Ferguson doesn't make the case for the former any stronger.

If anything, adding more guns to the mix is just going to make the itchy trigger fingers of these cops even itchier. Not really problem if there are enough armed community members to shoot all of the bad cops dead, but I don't see that as a just outcome, either.
posted by tonycpsu at 11:06 AM on August 21, 2014 [12 favorites]

I'm waiting for the day a protestor restrains an agitator and the protestor is charged with assaulting a police officer.
posted by ryoshu at 11:07 AM on August 21, 2014 [9 favorites]

Eminem, Ice Cube and Korn Team Up with Anonymous to Call For Global Revolution

Phewww! For a second there, I thought Ben & Jerry's was announcing a new flavor.
posted by Atom Eyes at 11:07 AM on August 21, 2014 [13 favorites]

Meet Sgt. Mike Weston
posted by RedShrek at 11:09 AM on August 21, 2014 [4 favorites]

We are fucked, we are completely fucked as a nation, and I don't see it getting better in my lifetime, if ever.

There is a lot to be discouraged about, that is true. But I still believe that the long arc of history bends toward justice. Slavery is over. Internment camps are gone. Jim Crow laws have been rescinded. Today's young Americans are the most diverse, least prejudiced generation in our history. There's a lot of work left to do, and the effective propaganda of the reactionaries makes it a challenge to make headway in some circles of society. But even if it's two steps forward and one back, I think we're are going to make it. Modern social networking makes it easier than ever to see outcries of hatred and prejudice, but that doesn't mean there are more of them. They are dying out. My grandkids will live in a different world. We'll get there.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 11:09 AM on August 21, 2014 [13 favorites]

Gordon Hewart. The original is: "The answer to that question depends not upon what actually was done but upon what might appear to be done"

I know it only because this is something every public servant needs to have engraved in their heart. It's an essential piece of the public trust, not just limited to the courts. There may be some broader applicability in Ferguson too.
posted by bonehead at 11:09 AM on August 21, 2014 [2 favorites]

I'm waiting for the day a protestor restrains an agitator and the protestor is charged with assaulting a police officer.

That was mentioned upthread by Joey Michaels.

Thanks, bonehead! (I think that may be the first time in my life I've ever used those words in that order uninsultingly.)
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 11:12 AM on August 21, 2014 [4 favorites]

Meet Sgt. Mike Weston

If you can't control yourself on social media, why should anyone trust you to control yourself when you carry a badge and a gun?
posted by rtha at 11:14 AM on August 21, 2014 [8 favorites]

Just sent to the editor of the Columbia Tribune -

To the Editor:

I am writing to express my displeasure with Gary McCoy's cartoon which appeared in your paper on August 19th (for your reference, it is here: http://www.cagle.com/2014/08/ferguson-rioting/ ).

A friend of mine wrote a similar complaint, and received a response in which he was urged to "look at the cartoon in context". I would in turn urge you to look at your stance in the context of the rest of the country's response to the tragedy as a whole; there are scores of Americans who are all too willing to write off ALL the protestors as looters, and when considered in that context, McCoy's cartoon doesn't comment on looting alone, it serves to them as "proof" that the protestors can be ignored.

I also note that of the three persons depicted in the cartoon, the MAJORITY of them are advocating looting. The "context" one could draw from that is that the majority of those protesting in Ferguson are themselves looters - which is absolutely not the case. And yet, it is what McCoy's cartoon depicts.

Perhaps there is indeed a discussion to be had about looting during protests - but this is a discussion to be had in a much less volatile context. The casual reader is not going to remember the "context" of the editorial page from several days ago, they are only going to be reading each cartoon in the "context" of what is happening in that day's paper. And thus, the message they would draw from McCoy's cartoon - a day in which Ferguson still was suffering from violence - is that "the majority of protestors are looters".

I would urge you to consider the "context" for the content of each of your issues more closely, as well as considering the "context" of your replies to the public.

The only reason I couldn't sign off with a "snap up" is that I don't know how to type that.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 11:16 AM on August 21, 2014 [42 favorites]

The only reason I couldn't sign off with a "snap up" is that I don't know how to type that.

The More You Know ☆彡
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 11:24 AM on August 21, 2014 [8 favorites]

I'd have gone with an ASCII middle finger, but that's me.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 11:24 AM on August 21, 2014 [4 favorites]

┌∩┐(◣_◢)┌∩┐

hth
posted by ryoshu at 11:29 AM on August 21, 2014 [12 favorites]

Would you have a good idea, then, about how to refer to the small handful of loose cannon protestors who pull that kind of loose-cannon shit? Because on the one hand I absolutely don't want to contribute to a protest-tone-argument thing, but on the other hand I want to be able to call out butt-cranks like this. I nearly got myself trampled to death at a march outside the RNC in 2004 when a group 20 feet behind me set fire to a dragon puppet in the middle of the march and everyone panicked and started running because holy shit 15-foot-tall fireball.

I think that the point is that this is internal stuff that needs to be handled either by people on the ground (ie, if people in Ferguson start kicking these folks out) or amongst activists when the heat isn't on. (Just like all those ask mefi questions where one is advised to sit down when everyone is calm.) It's very, very difficult to determine from the outside in the heat of the moment just who is an "outside agitator" doing something stupid and I think that people who are not on the ground should stay away from taking sides in the "outside agitator" narrative the vast majority of the time.

I think that for me as a white anarchist, this is a reminder that we need to get more of this stuff out in the open among anarchists and up for discussion. I can't take away someone's anarchist card if they go down to Ferguson and act the fool, of course, and I don't want to get into a "no true Scotsman" argument about anarchism, but I want at least the anarchists I work with to be very clear that this kind of opportunism is not acceptable, and that it's de facto racist, and that a "revolution" fomented without the consent of the revolutionees is not one worth having.

I think it is a matter of really on-the-ground stuff, and there aren't any easy answers. It seems like it breaks down into multiple issues, though - there's stuff that's merely dumb (like stupid protest tactics in the moment) which can be addressed at the level of "don't set things on fucking fire in the middle of the parade, what do you think will happen" and stuff that is deeply intellectually problematic, like "if we run around in a chaotic situation and break shit, we will intensify the situation enough that, like, a revolutionary scenario will emerge and this is our job as anarchists".

I also think, though, that it's important to keep focused on the big issue. I think that this In defense of looting essay makes a lot of good points, the best of which is some documentation of several racist murders where no one paid any attention to giant peaceful marches but the minute something got broken, the media were everywhere. We live in a society where sometimes the only way to get any attention at all is to attack property - no one gives a shit about people, but if you steal a TV...

Again, if you are on the ground it makes absolute sense to be like "get out of here, stop throwing things and doing dumb shit". If you are working on long term tactics and strategy stuff, it makes sense to figure out just how you think social change happens be thoughtful about working with people whose ideas differ very dramatically from your own. I am just very wary of the kind of rhetoric that focuses on property destruction and petty lawbreaking on the part of protestors. It always, always risks derailing the conversation.

(I mean, I will be glad to talk fool decisions made by activists...though setting a large thing on fire in a crowded area seems to trump almost everything else I've witnessed.)
posted by Frowner at 11:30 AM on August 21, 2014 [18 favorites]

I am just very wary of the kind of rhetoric that focuses on property destruction and petty lawbreaking on the part of protestors. It always, always risks derailing the conversation.

Which is why most protestors are against it, and the police will do it themselves absent any idiots.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 11:34 AM on August 21, 2014 [2 favorites]

I think that for me as a white anarchist, this is a reminder that we need to get more of this stuff out in the open among anarchists and up for discussion. I can't take away someone's anarchist card if they go down to Ferguson and act the fool, of course, and I don't want to get into a "no true Scotsman" argument about anarchism, but I want at least the anarchists I work with to be very clear that this kind of opportunism is not acceptable, and that it's de facto racist, and that a "revolution" fomented without the consent of the revolutionees is not one worth having.

Awesome. And I know the word "awesome" gets tossed around so much it sounds cliche, but your response really did impress me because I do think exactly this about a LOT of groups; it's a failing that a lot of groups have, a reluctance to rein in their more nutbar fellows; but it's absolutely important, because they're making the group look bad to outsiders. (I hope it doesn't feel like I'm singling anarchists out - I think this of theists, honestly, as well as Democrats and Republicans and feminists and, and and and....)

I will be glad to talk fool decisions made by activists...though setting a large thing on fire in a crowded area seems to trump almost everything else I've witnessed.

Hooboy. Yeah. Fortunately the media response was to treat it like a lone isolated incident in the middle of a march that was overwhelmingly peaceful; but yeah, there was a point where I had the fleeing crowd rushing at me on one side and the flying wedge of cops in riot gear rushing at me on their way to the fire on the other side and there was a panicked scramble around the cops and taking shelter in the doorway of Macys' and yeah, that kinda stays with you....
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 11:38 AM on August 21, 2014 [2 favorites]

(Oh, and in case it's not clear, Frowner - I'm more critical of tactics than politics anyway. I know the overwhelming majority of protestors of ANY group and stripe don't do this, and am more about "I don't care what it is you are demonstrating about, just don't be a dick about it.")
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 11:41 AM on August 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

I do sort of wish that the president would not golf every day. I mean, I understand the man needs a vacation, but the picture ops every day....

Perhaps this is his version of the "Daniel Radcliffe wears the same outfit every night to frustrate Paparazzi"
posted by DynamiteToast at 11:43 AM on August 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

Huey P. Newton Gun Club and Black Panthers march on MLK Blvd.
posted by whyareyouatriangle at 11:44 AM on August 21, 2014 [6 favorites]

Demilitarizing the police is not an option. What is? - "Because the United States has a per capita gun ownership rate that is one of the highest in the Western world, the police must also be heavily militarized."

The United States is in what can be thought of as a "high equilibirum" society with regards to violence: we accept a lot of potential and actual state violence in policing (see: the equpping of MRAPs and military-derived crowd-control measures) , and we also accept a significant amount of potential and actual personally-enacted violence (see: the Second Amendment). Other societies are "low equilibrium," that is, they have neither the heavily armed police, nor the high regard for personal violence. I'm reminded of the graph of a false vacuum.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 11:48 AM on August 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

Disarming the police is not an option. I don't see why that extends to taking away their combat fatigues and tanks. The United States is a violent country, but it's the kind of violence that you need handguns to counter, rather than tanks and grenades.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 11:54 AM on August 21, 2014 [9 favorites]

As an outsider the suspiscion about that supposedly unbreakbale cycle is that you guys keep it going because on some level you kind of like it.
posted by Artw at 11:56 AM on August 21, 2014 [5 favorites]

On police violence, there seems to be a similar resignation to the status quo with regards to mass shootings. "It's bad, but what can you do?"
posted by monospace at 12:03 PM on August 21, 2014

The United States is a violent country, but it's the kind of violence that you need handguns to counter, rather than tanks and grenades.

Exactly. The argument about the police being "out gunned" supposes that they're using the same tactics as the criminals (or the military.) Unfortunately, as we've seen with the "empty the clip" choices they are making, that appears to be the case.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 12:03 PM on August 21, 2014

Corb has exactly identified how the police think about the population and criminals. There absolutely is an "other" to them and they just can't let themselves see an "other" as anything nuanced or even human. Some people are good citizens and then there are capital C criminals. Those judgements made are almost instant and what color a person is, what he's wearing and what street he's on all factor into that decision whether to pull up next to a kid walking in the street and saying "hey buddy, you're blocking traffic. Could you get on the sidewalk for me?" Or to flash lights and siren and pat the kid down. It's all black and white to police. They don't even think about the "criminal" having a mom who loves him, or that he likes to read Sports Illustrated or likes pizza. That would make the criminal human and maybe a little more like themselves.
posted by hollygoheavy at 12:03 PM on August 21, 2014 [10 favorites]

Antonio French just tweeted a bunch of photos of kids learning at the Ferguson Library and it is so heartwarming, y'all.
posted by Phire at 12:06 PM on August 21, 2014 [3 favorites]

Corb has exactly identified how the police think about the population and criminals. There absolutely is an "other" to them and they just can't let themselves see an "other" as anything nuanced or even human. Some people are good citizens and then there are capital C criminals. Those judgements made are almost instant and what color a person is, what he's wearing and what street he's on all factor into that decision whether to pull up next to a kid walking in the street and saying "hey buddy, you're blocking traffic. Could you get on the sidewalk for me?" Or to flash lights and siren and pat the kid down. It's all black and white to police. They don't even think about the "criminal" having a mom who loves him, or that he likes to read Sports Illustrated or likes pizza. That would make the criminal human and maybe a little more like themselves.

They also don't think of themselves as criminals.
So every action they take however criminal is always fair and legal.
posted by fullerine at 12:12 PM on August 21, 2014 [7 favorites]

Police raid Ferguson church for third time.

Who are they looking for, I wonder?

Or is it just part of their terrorism of the community?

I hope whatever groups were meeting there have found someplace else. I hope they have lookouts and escape routes.
posted by emjaybee at 12:22 PM on August 21, 2014 [5 favorites]

KatherynT,

Another way to be active is to talk about the issues about and surrounding Ferguson online. I'm also in a place where I can't physically protest, so I've taken to Twitter.

I know that there's a lot of criticism of 'internet activism' and 'slacktivism', but in case cases, it can be effective. I've been forwarding info on Twitter, that my friends may not know. Since I've been following the Reddit Live thread, watching the Livestreams, and following the #Ferguson tag on Twitter, I have access and the energy to sort out the info, and pass it along. It's *something*, at least.

It may not be marching in the streets and/or attending a vigil, but I know that people like that I'm passing info along, as that's what I'm good at. Others are doing letter writing, writing in blogs, etc.
posted by spinifex23 at 12:24 PM on August 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

"It is not the RCP that these liberals are scared of. Only a fool would believe that eight to ten sectarians from Hyde Park have the power to tank a demonstration as large as the ones occurring in Ferguson. But these empty protestations from liberals do have a very clear purpose: separating people of color from a spirit of revolutionary community-building and anticapitalist politics."

This is bullshit, but frankly, it's what one should expect from a publication titled Jacobin. Of course they're going to support the idiotic machinations of self-declared revolutionary radicals and bristle at any criticism thereof. They didn't institute a Reign of Intelligent Anti-Capitalist Comity after the 1789 Revolution.

It's bullshit for a couple of reasons:

1) "Revolutionary community building" is still imperialist if imposed from the outside. There's no clear indication that the people of Ferguson want the RCP there, and specifically, there's a clear indication that the RCP tactics have not been welcomed by the people on the ground. There's jerkoff motions of justification for that (false consciousness), but the complaints have not been about revolutionary community building and anti-capitalist politics, they've been about egotistical outsiders imposing their view of the vanguard on the people of Ferguson.

2) "Liberals" are echoing complaints from people on the ground. Arguing that's because liberals are scared of revolution and trotting out the hoary MLK letters is a bullshit ad hominem argument that exposes the bankruptcy of a lot of "radical" "anti-capitalist" politicking.

3) Likewise, draping that in the mantle of Bayard Rustin? Fuck you, man. Bayard Rustin specifically wrote about the need to move from protest to politics, and while he was a socialist, he had no real truck with militants. Of them, he writes: "For such a strategy they substitute militancy. But militancy is a matter of posture and volume and not of effect." Rustin's conception of the "revolutionary" was rooted in revolution as a turning-over, a remaking of institutions to reflect a broad justice, both racial and economic. It was not a "revolution" of throwing bottles in the street.

4) Further, seeing this as rejecting what intersectionality is supposed to stand for is asinine. You know what? Some leftists are assholes, and some of their political programs are fucking stupid and dangerous. Rejecting those people is not rejecting intersectionality — intersectionality isn't a public pool that has to let everyone with swim trunks in. If your dedication to the intersection of police brutality, race and class is to foment violence in the name of "revolution" that is deaf to the needs of the people you're nominally serving and likely to leave them worse off than without your intervention, then fuck your "intersectionality."

I am someone who believes that non-violence is a deliberate tactical choice, as is political violence. But that means that when you want to use it, you have to use it with both the consent of your peers and with a clear calculus of risks and outcomes. These RCP assholes, and this Jacobin asshole, are posturing with the empty rhetoric of "radical" "revolution" and it's not a failure of liberalism to call them out — it's a failure of intelligence not to.
posted by klangklangston at 12:29 PM on August 21, 2014 [31 favorites]

As an outsider the suspiscion about that supposedly unbreakbale cycle is that you guys keep it going because on some level you kind of like it.

I live in the US and hate gun culture. I have heard every argument for why I'm supposedly wrong, and I still persist in thinking that we would all be better off with extremely strict gun control and regulation.

That is either a very rare and unpopular opinion, or it's a somewhat unpopular opinion combined with a big groupthink factor that makes it seem rarer than it is.

Gun ownership leads to easier homicide and suicide and accident. If there is a gun in your home, you are more likely to be killed by a gun than if there is not -- that is fact. "Home defense" doesn't work -- 12% of American own guns for the sole reason of self-defense, but guns are used in defense in 0.69% of violent crimes. (And in 80% of those 0.69%, the "defender" was a police officer.)

As I see it, gun ownership leads to more fear, and more escalation. And that leads to more police with more guns so they can outgun the citizens (and the "terrorists" and drug dealers and whatnot). It leads to more gun sales, which leads to more political power in the hands of gun lobbyists. And that leads to making it less socially acceptable to propose the idea that maybe we shouldn't have all these guns and maybe the cops shouldn't either.

I was pretty surprised to learn that cops in Britain still don't carry guns as a matter of course, but call for armed backup when necessary. In the America we are used to, that seems ridiculous. But I'm just going to guess that the frequency of injury or death of British police is lower than in the US.
posted by Foosnark at 12:30 PM on August 21, 2014 [22 favorites]

I don't know if you have all seen those "why atheists/libertarians/etc. should care about Ferguson" articles that have been popping up recently, but I find them extremely strange. Who doesn't care about what's happening in Ferguson?
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 12:32 PM on August 21, 2014

Who doesn't care about what's happening in Ferguson?

Racists.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 12:33 PM on August 21, 2014 [22 favorites]

People with the privilege not to and without the clear demonstration of why they should get involved.
posted by klangklangston at 12:34 PM on August 21, 2014 [22 favorites]

Who doesn't care about what's happening in Ferguson?

Comfortable white people.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 12:35 PM on August 21, 2014 [19 favorites]

Who doesn't care about what's happening in Ferguson?

Oh my god apparently so many people
posted by penduluum at 12:35 PM on August 21, 2014 [30 favorites]

CNN viewers.
posted by Artw at 12:38 PM on August 21, 2014 [3 favorites]

Douglas Williams' article rhetorically pits the RCP against bloggers on sites like The Daily Beast and Gawker and comments by Governor Jay Nixon, and ignores the role of local organizers in the protests and their annoyance at groups from out of town trying to co-opt local protests to promote political agendas unrelated to fighting police brutality and harassment in Ferguson, and celebrities they see as just dropping by for photo ops.

I'd like to quote Frowner:

... this does not mean that a bunch of lose cannon protesters should just waltz in and do whatever the hell they like. People who have no lived connection to a place or to the group protesting don't know enough about what is needed or about the situation on the ground to do anything but perhaps arrive and try to plug in to the action that best matches their abilities and beliefs.

I'm quoting this because this is exactly what organizers on the ground in Ferguson have been complaining about. I'd also like to quote Awkward_Duck from a few days ago:

White anarchists who DEMAND I continue to put my black body in harms way so they can see the world burn aren't here for my liberation.

(Awkward_Duck's not from STL either, but she's been volunteering with a local group, not working at cross-purposes to local organizers. There's a difference.)
posted by nangar at 12:39 PM on August 21, 2014 [15 favorites]

more Omnivore: about Ferguson, which includes:
The Normalization of the Extraordinary, America's Racial Divide, Charted, and Why Obama Can't Go There
posted by the man of twists and turns at 12:39 PM on August 21, 2014

Who doesn't care about what's happening in Ferguson?

Fascists and crypto-fascists.
posted by entropicamericana at 12:44 PM on August 21, 2014 [4 favorites]

If only Ryan Schuessler stayed to help expel the bad journalism presences the way the protestors expelled agitators. Call them out and force them to be respectable or GTFO. Instead he leaves, which is his privilege.
posted by rhizome at 12:45 PM on August 21, 2014

Hmm...

Jim Hoft’s Unsourced Claim That Officer Darren Wilson Had an “Orbital Blowout Fracture of the Eye Socket”

And one more point while I’m at it; Hoft writes:
This comes from a source within the Prosecuting Attorney’s office and confirmed by the St. Louis County Police.
If that’s true, it’s highly disturbing that the St. Louis prosecutor’s office and the St. Louis County police department are leaking information to a far right hateblogger known for his unrelenting dishonesty, who uses a white supremacist hate group as a source.
posted by Artw at 12:49 PM on August 21, 2014 [12 favorites]

Source w/ detailed knowledge of investigation denies Officer Wilson suffered fractured eye socket - @JulianCummings #Ferguson
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 12:50 PM on August 21, 2014 [7 favorites]

Who doesn't care about what's happening in Ferguson?

People who have a vested interest in not examining their own racism and privilege, who go beyond not caring to outright aiding and abetting racist white cops in propagating lies. People who feel guilty and uncomfortable in their whiteness—but don't know how to move from discomfort to deconstruction. People who aren't self-reflective enough to realize what specific feelings they're having, but just want to make them go away.
posted by limeonaire at 12:51 PM on August 21, 2014 [11 favorites]

After Ferguson Violence, McCaskill to Lead Senate Hearing on Militarization of Local Police Departments
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 12:54 PM on August 21, 2014 [11 favorites]

This thread is still way too active to do the vaguely-related-followup-links thing, please. Thanks.
posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 12:56 PM on August 21, 2014

This has been bugging me. Why was a St. Ann police officer armed with an assault rifle and let loose on protestors in Ferguson? Who was paying for his (over)time? Ferguson taxpayers? St. Ann taxpayers? St. Louis County taxpayers? Is there an agreement betweeen local police forces to assist in this sort of thing? How do they bill that out?
posted by ryoshu at 12:57 PM on August 21, 2014

Who doesn't care about what's happening in Ferguson?

Malky Mackay
posted by fullerine at 12:58 PM on August 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

Anyone saying that conservatives and racists don't care about ferguson are wrong. They do care. They are thrilled that a white cop shot a black man. If you think I'm joking, go visit movement conservative media's websites or read their twitters. Here's a taste.

breitbart.com's headline is "6 times black americans jumped to racial conclusions".

most of the op-eds on townhall.com deal with ferguson, asking important questions like " What About 'Black-on-Black Crime'?"

Conservative author Ben Shapiro, with 75k twitter followers, writes:

"Good news! Our impartial chief law enforcement officer is here to help indict a white cop w/o evidence because black race-baiters demand it."
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 12:59 PM on August 21, 2014 [5 favorites]

emjaybee: "Police raid Ferguson church for third time."

Did the police have warrants here? Was martial law declared in Ferguson?
posted by boo_radley at 12:59 PM on August 21, 2014 [3 favorites]

MisantropicPainforest: breitbart.com's headline is "6 times black americans jumped to racial conclusions".

Oh my god I so want someone to make a "Jump to Racial Conclusions" mat a-la Office Space.
posted by tonycpsu at 1:00 PM on August 21, 2014 [8 favorites]

emjaybee: "Police raid Ferguson church for third time."

Did the police have warrants here? Was martial law declared in Ferguson?

potential housing code violation. serious bizniss.
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 1:02 PM on August 21, 2014 [2 favorites]

"The Sleepy Road Near Our National Conversation on Race"

This is a good piece, except that they got the name of one of my longtime friends' parents wrong. But I'm still proud of his parents for just being who they are in this piece—and for caring.
posted by limeonaire at 1:05 PM on August 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

> Anyone saying that conservatives and racists don't care about ferguson are wrong. They do care. They are thrilled that a white cop shot a black man

A very conservative friend of mine just posted this to Facebook: Some Neighbors Are Headed to Ferguson Today. The Reason Will Warm Your Heart. Other than the Upworthy-esque headline, I'm not seeing the down side to this.
posted by The corpse in the library at 1:08 PM on August 21, 2014 [2 favorites]

Ferguson: A Failure Of Empathy: What struck me about this exchange, beyond the inappropriateness of the venue, was his assumption that our mutual whiteness meant I would agree with him.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 1:09 PM on August 21, 2014 [5 favorites]

Why was a St. Ann police officer armed with an assault rifle and let loose on protestors in Ferguson?

Practice. At Occupy Oakland there were officers there from cities and counties from miles around. Cynically, it would be to get in on the fun, but practically I'd say the reason is the same reason why these departments shouldn't be militarized in the first place: their home jurisdictions simply do not have the kinds of events where Afghanistan-plus equipment is ever used.
posted by rhizome at 1:10 PM on August 21, 2014 [2 favorites]

Other than the Upworthy-esque headline, I'm not seeing the down side to this.

I, for one, simply refuse to reward those headlines with so much as a click, so a summary would be nice.
posted by rhizome at 1:12 PM on August 21, 2014 [4 favorites]

Other than the Upworthy-esque headline, I'm not seeing the down side to this.

I can:

Six months from now, rather than go visit those same small business folk again, the people who are taking part in this "buycott" will all sniff and say "WalMart is cheaper, why would I go all the way there?"
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 1:13 PM on August 21, 2014

rhizome: "
I, for one, simply refuse to reward those headlines with so much as a click, so a summary would be nice."

A "buycott"???
posted by boo_radley at 1:15 PM on August 21, 2014

> I, for one, simply refuse to reward those headlines with so much as a click, so a summary would be nice

Fair enough. Basically: some conservative people from neighboring towns are organizing a shopping trip to Ferguson.
posted by The corpse in the library at 1:16 PM on August 21, 2014

Oh lordy. Buycott. It's something the Ladies Who Lunch brigade would do. Bless their hearts, they mean well....
posted by dejah420 at 1:16 PM on August 21, 2014 [2 favorites]

boo_radley: "A "buycott"???"

"If police instruct them not to shop, he said, they’ll refrain."

I... I see.
posted by boo_radley at 1:18 PM on August 21, 2014

> It's something the Ladies Who Lunch brigade would do

It's being organized by a man, if that makes a difference. WTF?
posted by The corpse in the library at 1:19 PM on August 21, 2014 [2 favorites]

Why was a St. Ann police officer armed with an assault rifle and let loose on protestors in Ferguson?

I know there's some kind of agreement but I've been having trouble finding details. Apparently officers from 15 different departments were called in, including St. Charles, which is in a different county.
posted by Foosnark at 1:19 PM on August 21, 2014

Is there an agreement betweeen local police forces to assist in this sort of thing? How do they bill that out?

Yes, it's called a mutual aid agreement. A town would generally have one with all their neighboring towns, and any larger organizations nearby.
posted by smackfu at 1:21 PM on August 21, 2014

I can't believe I'm finding myself defending conservatives and a member of the Heritage Society, but here I am. I think it's great that people from neighboring towns are deliberately coming in to support local businesses during a time when it would be easier for them to, yes, go to WalMart.

Sure, it would be great if they always shopped there and WalMart didn't exist and these people were working for social change. But spending money at a business that has its windows boarded up is a good thing to do, and they don't deserve mockery for it.
posted by The corpse in the library at 1:22 PM on August 21, 2014 [13 favorites]

The buycott does seem to be a nice gesture of support, but I have to wonder, what's the makeup of the people who own the local businesses in Ferguson?
posted by kitcat at 1:24 PM on August 21, 2014

I think it's heartening to see that people who would usually not pay attention or who would pay negative attention are taking a step in the right direction, even if they're still extremely far off the path and even if the step is very small. Not because they're going to solve the problem. Not because they deserve a cookie for opening their eyes a smidge. Because it shows SOMETHING is getting through here. It's like...whatever the opposite of the canary in the coal mine is.

So maybe we can take a hard pass on the easy mockery ("ladies who lunch," really??).
posted by sallybrown at 1:27 PM on August 21, 2014 [11 favorites]

I'm guessing that the shoppers are going to be lunching at the brewhouse and shopping in the antique stores mentioned in the npr piece that limeonaire linked upthread. Those people they're supporting are white and not at all down with the protesting. So not really heartwarming for everyone.

I guess that's my guess, too, although I'm happy to be wrong. But these people aren't going to make a sustained difference, anyway. It's like the thing in "You've Got Mail" where Meg Ryan's store goes under anyway. You need sustained community support to stay in business.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 1:31 PM on August 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

Wilson was taken to the hospital after the shooting. He had xrays which came back negative. He was treated for a swollen face. #ferguson
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 1:32 PM on August 21, 2014 [2 favorites]

Oh please. First off - I think many of us are rolling our eyes at a "buycott" because it smacks of upper middle class white people's misplaced "empathy," not for the kid who got murdered, or the people whose civil rights are continually trampled by racist policing and police violence, but for all those nice middle class shopkeepers whose *stuff* got ruined. It smacks of white privilege and misplaced priorities. Watery, with just a smack of ham.

Also, the whole "Ladies who Lunch" thing is a pretty established cultural reference, and is really about socio-economics, not gender.
posted by stenseng at 1:32 PM on August 21, 2014 [6 favorites]

oh ffs, you guys are driving me crazy with this nitpicking. if local businesses are forced to leave because they've gone bankrupt, they take their tax revenue with them. Would you rather see Walmart there?
posted by desjardins at 1:35 PM on August 21, 2014 [2 favorites]

If the "buycott" helps buoy local businesses through a post-crisis downturn in spending, that's good enough for me.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 1:36 PM on August 21, 2014 [10 favorites]

Missouri Editor Says This Ferguson Cartoon Was Not Intended To Be Racist: While the image has been taken down from the Tribune's online edition, the cartoon is syndicated and has remained posted elsewhere, such as TownHall.com.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 1:37 PM on August 21, 2014

Those people they're supporting are white and not at all down with the protesting.

I wouldn't assume that the business owners on South Florissant Road don't support the protesters. I think a lot of them do, and I haven't really seen anything specific that says otherwise. The people who live around West Florissant Avenue are part of their clientele too.
posted by limeonaire at 1:37 PM on August 21, 2014 [2 favorites]

desjardins, what proof do you have that few conservatives shopping at these stores once is going to have any affect on their stability?
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 1:38 PM on August 21, 2014

I'd like to see them get haircuts at the local black barbershop. Not joking, I want those conversations to happen.
posted by naju at 1:38 PM on August 21, 2014 [18 favorites]

desjardins, I'd LOVE to be proven wrong about the buycott folk. I'm recognizing a little too much of the same kind of "token gesture and then revert to form" mindset that has plagued the post 9/11 response; you make a gesture to look good, but then you're back to your old habits.

Granted, though, I may be seeing that in the buycotters precisely because I've seen it elsewhere, and may just be a cynical bastard. I hope I'm wrong.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 1:44 PM on August 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

Missouri Editor Says This Ferguson Cartoon Was Not Intended To Be Racist

It probably wasn't intended to be stupid, either, and managed to accomplish that, too.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 1:46 PM on August 21, 2014 [14 favorites]

limeonaire, maybe you're right since the quotes in the article seemed to be from residents who were patrons of the businesses in that area of Ferguson, and not from business owners. I don't think that too many people from "down there" are having dinner in that coffee shop though.
posted by hollygoheavy at 1:47 PM on August 21, 2014

Maybe the buycotters can come up with some sort of magnetic ribbon for their cars to show support too.
posted by stenseng at 1:47 PM on August 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

Missouri Editor Says This Ferguson Cartoon Was Not Intended To Be Racist

Following a link from there to Romenesko's blog, I see this:

I admit I didn’t anticipate the reaction. I’m responding to complaints, most of which have come through the Twitter universe, by asking them to consider the context. On three of the preceding four days our editorial page featured local cartoons about the Michael Brown tragedy, the militarization of the police response and a likeness of Lady Justice with six bullet wounds.

The editorial cartoon yesterday accompanied a Rich Lowry column about the unfortunate presence of looters and how that is not a legitimate form of protest. Provocative yes. Racist? Certainly not in intent.

Apart from the first line that's word-by-word what quonsar got. So this editor is not only clueless, tone-deaf, but also a lazy copy-paster.

(Not that I necessarily blame him for not writing a personal note to everyone, but it feels really messed up that he's presumably sending out mass-replies that are ostensibly handcrafted. I can't quite articulate it.)
posted by Phire at 1:52 PM on August 21, 2014 [6 favorites]

you know, sometimes people don't know exactly what to do, and they do what they know how. is the buycott the best thing ever? is it the top thing that Ferguson needs right now? probably not. is it actively harmful? no.

if you've been doing more than just posting on mefi and/or twitter, good for you, if you haven't, then you have no place criticizing anyone on this buycott thing.
posted by desjardins at 1:54 PM on August 21, 2014 [9 favorites]

"Send this asshole the bedbug letter."
posted by Sticherbeast at 1:55 PM on August 21, 2014 [2 favorites]

My cynical and unsupportable reaction to the news that he was just treated for a swollen face was that he had smacked himself after doing something so stupid.
posted by klangklangston at 1:59 PM on August 21, 2014 [3 favorites]

Ideally it would have been someone higher up in the precinct who slapped his fool face.
posted by elizardbits at 2:02 PM on August 21, 2014 [8 favorites]

Other than the Upworthy-esque headline, I'm not seeing the down side to this

It's a solution to the libertarian concerns, certainly.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 2:03 PM on August 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

I don't think that too many people from "down there" are having dinner in that coffee shop though.

I think both Ferguson Brewing Company and Cork Wine Bar have a robust clientele from all over the area, including "down there" (or more accurately "over there"). And I've seen protesters (black and white) who've specifically mentioned going to Cork Wine Bar to unwind during all of this.

For more info, this article has a list of restaurants on South Florissant Road that closed for a day after the events of that first Sunday night. I wouldn't judge them that harshly for doing so.

Although it does look like Corner Coffee House is carrying those yard signs, so maybe it's a secret hotbed of hate? I don't know.
posted by limeonaire at 2:03 PM on August 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

My cynical and unsupportable reaction to the news that he was just treated for a swollen face was that he had smacked himself after doing something so stupid.

So much for the violent beat down that left him half unconscious.

Something something wait for facts something.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 2:03 PM on August 21, 2014 [4 favorites]

Look, the buycott is a little dopey-sounding and the article kinda condescending

Many damaged businesses in Ferguson boarded up broken windows and doors but remain open for business. Because many of the storefronts are covered with plywood, some local customers aren’t aware that the shops are open; they may confuse store hours written on the makeshift “windows” with graffiti.

But so what? It's all passed and gone in six months? Also so what? That's six months from now. In the mean time an area that needs sales gets sales and a bunch of people who have only seen this area on tv at its worst (at least recently) get a look at reality.

This is a dangerous place to be a nose sometimes.
posted by phearlez at 2:04 PM on August 21, 2014 [3 favorites]

Ideally it would have been someone higher up in the precinct who slapped his fool face.

"Hold still, this way we can say you went to the ER."
posted by sallybrown at 2:06 PM on August 21, 2014 [13 favorites]

It's not at all beyond the realm of possibility that the cop punched HIMSELF in the face after the murder. Helps his story.
posted by agregoli at 2:08 PM on August 21, 2014 [5 favorites]

How long do we have to wait until 'the facts are in'? a week? two weeks?
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 2:12 PM on August 21, 2014 [2 favorites]

As long as they can manage.
posted by Artw at 2:15 PM on August 21, 2014 [3 favorites]

People who don't realize there could be a different version than the one where Mike Brown was the aggressor as well as why that is problematic.

Look, it doesn't fucking matter. It doesn't matter if Brown shot Wilson's mother in the face, then grabbed a nearby Uzi and threatened to shoot up a kindergarten before being shot. What the police are doing in Ferguson to protesters would still be fucking wrong. There's no rule that says that protesters have to be right to have their civil liberties respected.
posted by corb at 2:22 PM on August 21, 2014 [41 favorites]

Kids attending impromptu community school at the local library. #TeachForFerguson
posted by audi alteram partem at 2:38 PM on August 21, 2014

"Why you should always videotape cops"
posted by lkc at 2:42 PM on August 21, 2014 [9 favorites]

So apparently, there is a free speech zone in Ferguson (ohmyfuckinggod fuck free speech zones, what the living fucking hell).

So here comes the truly ironic part: the free speech zone is padlocked off, so no one can use it.
posted by el io at 2:45 PM on August 21, 2014 [3 favorites]

This has become a meme on my social media feed while i was sleeping; apparently shooting a white families dog is 1000x worse than shooting a black families son.

A lot of details are the same. Small suburbs police force, etc.
posted by emptythought at 2:46 PM on August 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

Radley Balko makes the point in his book that he can talk about police violence against people ad nauseam and the audience response isn't nearly as outraged as when he talks about police violence against dogs (which actually happens frequently).

Make of that what you will.
posted by Noisy Pink Bubbles at 2:50 PM on August 21, 2014 [4 favorites]

People care more about dogs getting shot than white people being shot. It's weird (and I say that as someone who donated to the Puppycide documentary), but typical. There's even some website that tells you if the dog is okay in a movie so you don't have to go see it and see a fictional dog come to harm. Doesn't mean they're not racist and/or apathetic, but this dog thing runs deep.
posted by phearlez at 3:02 PM on August 21, 2014 [4 favorites]

Ok, firstly y'all...I have made no bones in the past about the fact that half of my people *are* Ladies Who Lunch. While I do not spend much time doing it, I do have been known to drop in to a DAR meeting or two and get people all riled up to do something progressive.

I was gently rolling my eyes, in a distinctly Southern and LWL way, about the class differential in the solution proposed.

Secondly, Yes, all dollars going into that economy are good dollars. That doesn't stop this from being a field trip of economically advantaged going to "visit" the economically disadvantaged. It's voyeuristic do-goodery. It is barely disguised nobless oblige. And I know, because I come from those people. That's why I said "bless their hearts, they mean well." They do! They really, really do!

They just have no idea why I would roll my eyes and call it tone deaf.
posted by dejah420 at 3:04 PM on August 21, 2014 [12 favorites]

Oh god. The thought actually crossed my mind after the Brown killing that the racists would be outraged by a dog getting shot. But not a POC. Gross. To the cops every dog is a pitbull and every black person is thug/animal/killer.
posted by futz at 3:11 PM on August 21, 2014

Who doesn't care about what's happening in Ferguson?

“We’ve made extraordinary progress” in race relations, Obama said on Monday,

It's an unpleasant distraction for a man who worked hard to place himself in a position no other person of his race is. That's why I don't automatically have respect for "The First Whatever To Become Whatever".
posted by oneswellfoop at 3:13 PM on August 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

White-on-white murder in America is out of control
posted by Artw at 3:15 PM on August 21, 2014 [5 favorites]

from el io's link:

“The attorney general came to court via phone and announced that there was an alternative speech zone that was being set up,” Tony Rothert, the legal director of the ACLU of Missouri, told msnbc. That satisfied the judge, who agreed it was a close call but denied the ACLU’s request to block the policy.

Why the hell are the courts still okay with fenced in "free speech zones"? The supremes should have outlawed this shit a long, long time ago.

America is a free speech zone.

(sorry, I know that's a worn-out cliche by now, but I'm repeating it because apparently the entire judiciary branch of our government still doesn't get it.)
posted by marsha56 at 3:15 PM on August 21, 2014 [2 favorites]

Evidently, we have the right to speak, but not the right to be heard.
posted by feloniousmonk at 3:22 PM on August 21, 2014 [2 favorites]

Why the hell are the courts still okay with fenced in "free speech zones"? The supremes should have outlawed this shit a long, long time ago.

They did, but only for anti-abortion protesters.
posted by dirigibleman at 3:23 PM on August 21, 2014 [11 favorites]

Ferguson. Over one week in. From Anti-State STL, who appear to be anarchists of the local variety.
posted by Noisy Pink Bubbles at 3:23 PM on August 21, 2014

They appear to be idiots.

Pretty sure that's written by a cop, or an idiot that's been nowhere near Ferguson. On the vague off chance that it is someone on the scene I hope they kick his ass out.
posted by Artw at 3:30 PM on August 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

"It's a solution to the libertarian concerns, certainly."

Much as I love bagging on libertarians for how racial and economic divides like this are a totally predictable outcome of their economic philosophy, the "libertarian concerns" that I've seen voiced have been much, much more about the militarization of the police and draconian response to the protestors. I'm a bet meh on my libertarian pals who are using this to tubthump about how this means we need fewer gun laws, but overall libertarians are on the side of the angels with this.
posted by klangklangston at 3:34 PM on August 21, 2014 [2 favorites]

That blog looks like it was written by a cop who studied up on anarchists first by watching a couple episodes of The Young Ones.
posted by anemone of the state at 3:37 PM on August 21, 2014 [10 favorites]

The biggest thing that I learned from that Yglasias VOX article about white-on-white crime was that the Capitol has a Jefferson Davis statue. What the actual fuck? Time to melt that fucker down.
posted by klangklangston at 3:38 PM on August 21, 2014 [7 favorites]

@AntonioFrench:
Disturbing to hear so many people urging others not to call the police anymore. They say it's not worth the risk of getting someone killed.

We already had trouble getting people to be witnesses to crimes. But never anything like this. We have a lot of work to do to rebuild trust.
posted by Artw at 3:38 PM on August 21, 2014 [4 favorites]

Who the fuck drinks shots of gin, anyway?
posted by Artw at 3:39 PM on August 21, 2014 [4 favorites]

The police have a lot of work, but that's their problem.
posted by rhizome at 3:40 PM on August 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

What the actual fuck? Time to melt that fucker down.

Melt it down and replace it with a statue of Jefferson Davis Hogg
posted by elizardbits at 3:43 PM on August 21, 2014 [5 favorites]

(these may have both been linked before, but seriously...)
Compare and Contrast.
posted by oneswellfoop at 3:49 PM on August 21, 2014 [2 favorites]

Artw:

"Who the fuck drinks shots of gin, anyway?"

*sheepishly raises hand*

(but only if it's Monkey 47 or Bruichladdich's Botanist)
posted by Hairy Lobster at 3:56 PM on August 21, 2014 [5 favorites]

klangklangston: "I'm a bet meh on my libertarian pals who are using this to tubthump about how this means we need fewer gun laws, but overall libertarians are on the side of the angels with this."

Certain flavors of libertarian. I have several thoughtful libertarian Facebook friends who are certainly on the side of the angels, which is a bit relieving to see.

The less thoughtful, Cliven Bundy supporting libertarians have been noticeably quite on this issue.
posted by brundlefly at 3:56 PM on August 21, 2014

(but only if it's Monkey 47 or Bruichladdich's Botanist)

The looters are going for the small-batch artisanals!
posted by Artw at 3:59 PM on August 21, 2014 [13 favorites]

Disturbing to hear so many people urging others not to call the police anymore. They say it's not worth the risk of getting someone killed.

I wonder if people would consider setting up local teams of trusted volunteers specially trained in conflict resolution. If there's a problem in your neighborhood, you call them first, instead of the cops. It might empower people to see that they can solve their own problems, instead of always calling in macho gun-toting authoritarians who don't even live in your neighborhood.

Perhaps churches could play a role in this. While it might not be possible to pay people to do this in the beginning, in areas with high numbers of unemployment, could it be something that unemployed people could gain a sense of self-worth and satisfaction from doing?

I realize that this is a terrible, terrible situation for people to be in, that they feel its too dangerous to call the cops, but given that this is the case for many, is it time to look for other solutions? If something like this were successful, could cops take a lesson?
posted by marsha56 at 4:01 PM on August 21, 2014 [3 favorites]

May 15, 1967

1 We want freedom. We want power to determine the destiny of our Black Community.
2 We want full employment for our people.
3 We want an end to the robbery by the white men of our Black Community.
4 We want decent housing, fit for shelter of human beings.
5 We want education for our people that exposes the true nature of this decadent American society. We want education that teaches us our true history and our role in the present day society.
6 We want all Black men to be exempt from military service.
7 We want an immediate end to POLICE BRUTALITY and MURDER of Black people.
8 We want freedom for all Black men held in federal, state, county and city prisons and jails.
9 We want all Black people when brought to trial to be tried in court by a jury of their peer group or people from their Black Communities, as defined by the Constitution of the United States.
10 We want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice and peace.
posted by whyareyouatriangle at 4:05 PM on August 21, 2014 [10 favorites]

Oh god. Why did I look at the comments on the Go Fund Me for Darren Wilson? I require brain bleach.

I just donated to the fund to feed school children in Ferguson because I'll be damned if that cop gets more money than they do while I stand idly by. The comments here are making me cry too, but for the opposite reason.
posted by chatongriffes at 4:09 PM on August 21, 2014 [3 favorites]

(but only if it's Monkey 47 or Bruichladdich's Botanist)

The looters are going for the small-batch artisanals!

They're trying to acquire weapons of mass drunkenness.
posted by homunculus at 4:13 PM on August 21, 2014

"GoPro video footage by St. Louis Post-Dispatch staff photographer David Carson during his embed with the St. Louis County Police tactical team on Monday night. At about 2:45 in the video, police come under fire and respond with tear gas."
Go behind the scenes with police tactical team in Ferguson
posted by whyareyouatriangle at 4:15 PM on August 21, 2014

Compare and Contrast.

You know, whether or not one believes it likely that Darren Wilson is guilty of legal homicide, how in the fuck can anyone think he deserves a charity paycheck of over $160,000 for killing an unarmed teenager? I just wish I could go through life never, ever meeting any of these people. I don't even want to try to understand what the hell is wrong with them.
posted by crayz at 4:15 PM on August 21, 2014 [18 favorites]

HuffPo Live: What Ferguson Means To Revolution & Race
posted by Noisy Pink Bubbles at 4:24 PM on August 21, 2014

GoPro video footage by St. Louis Post-Dispatch staff photographer David Carson during his embed with the St. Louis County Police tactical team on Monday night. At about 2:45 in the video, police come under fire and respond with tear gas.

Watching it this is such horseshit. Someone throws something and then they order everyone to disperse (to where? they're peaceful and allowed to continue protesting). At 2:09 when all that's happened is like one dude threw a shoe at a cop car, commander cop says to other cops:

commander cop: if we fire gas, [motions group 1] you're gonna take this section back, [motions group 2] we're gonna take the middle section, the other state guys are taking the quikserv lot. so if you wanna start here and work your way back that's fine, we're gonna take this side of quiktrip forward to autoshop

other cop: when are we deploying?

commander cop: as soon as we say it one more time. you'll know it. trust me

Then commander cop walks off and no more than ten seconds later some sort of shots or fireworks go off and it all goes down. Ermm. Setup?
posted by crayz at 4:25 PM on August 21, 2014 [18 favorites]

It looks like on that support Darren Wilson page, some people just donated to be able to make comments, which is the weirdest way of protesting I've ever heard of.
posted by corb at 4:27 PM on August 21, 2014 [3 favorites]

Yeah, I don't want to get to conspiracy-theorist on this, but don't they tend to arrest, rather than embed, reporters? It seems a little funny they'd have one with them.
posted by uosuaq at 4:32 PM on August 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

Oh lord I wouldn't believe a cop if he told me the sky is blue. Of course that reporter is there to help them lie, whether he knows it himself or not.
posted by elizardbits at 4:35 PM on August 21, 2014 [11 favorites]

A father talks to his son about Mike Brown #Ferguson
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 4:38 PM on August 21, 2014

uosuaq: See embedded 'media' in the military. If done properly (from the military's perspective) they not only present the narrative from the military (or cops viewpoint in this case, although distinctions can get blurry), but the embedded media starts to form friendships with the folks they are embedded with.

Even if the media wants to try to be objective (not so much in the gulf wars, obviously) the fact that they eat with, go out on patrol with, and spend free time with the soldiers ensures that they will start to have the perspective of the soldiers.

Compare that with how the military has treated non-embedded military - literally treating them like combatants and firing on their positions - particularly if the media is non-US media.

It seems as if there are strong parallels to the military's handling of press and the cops handling of press. Of course the military is more professional (ie: they have professional propagandists who are intelligently creating these policies) whereas the cops tend to be more ad-hoc; but with similar results.
posted by el io at 4:39 PM on August 21, 2014 [2 favorites]

Reporter, panicking: Shots fired! Shots fired!
(Absolutely no one reacts, plan proceeds on cue)
posted by naju at 4:43 PM on August 21, 2014

The cops in no way act like they are under fire. There are some bangs, someone says "shots fired!" Like it's nothing and then they randomly open fire on the crowd.

The bangs do sound more like gunshots than the grenade launchers the cops are using, so there's that.

The logic of the cops' actions have no internal consistency. A cop as so scared for his life that he fired on an unarmed man, running away, who (as far as we've had evidence to say) had done no harm to him.

But then someone "fires" on you, and you advance towards it? People are throwing molotov cocktails, but you don't take steps to arrest them?

There are no burn marks, there are no gunshot wounds among the cops, there's nothing to indicate that any of these supposed assaults are anything other than the thinnest of pretense to use violence against unarmed protestors.

You would think that there would be evidence supplied at some point, but instead we have a laughably slapped together molotov cocktail that seems like it was taken out of a prop department.
posted by codacorolla at 4:49 PM on August 21, 2014 [13 favorites]

instead we have a laughably slapped together molotov cocktail that seems like it was taken out of a prop department.

Please. I build props. If I were building a prop molotov cocktail, it would be more convincing than that. Amateurs!

*sniffs with smug designer superiority*
posted by Joey Michaels at 4:59 PM on August 21, 2014 [10 favorites]

Over $160,000 raised to cover legal expenses for a cop who killed an unarmed man and has yet to be arrested or charged with anything. On the plus side, I'm not pissed off about the mashed potato guy anymore.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 4:59 PM on August 21, 2014 [14 favorites]

Don't think this has been posted above:

Elon James White on Al-Jazeera getting horribly, horribly patronized by the anchor while the other person just loves talking about how social media is changing everything.

"There's no problem that this is how you solve it."
posted by Lemurrhea at 5:02 PM on August 21, 2014 [3 favorites]

I understand that, el io. I was only saying that even someone who trusts the cops might be able to find it a little suspicious that instead of teargassing or arresting this reporter, they took him with them, and then lo! gunshots! This isn't a long-term "embed reporters, make friends with them, get biased coverage" type campaign, though.

Does anyone know if guns firing blanks sound realistic enough to pass for guns firing actual bullets?
posted by uosuaq at 5:05 PM on August 21, 2014

You would think that there would be evidence supplied at some point

I know- how hard would it have been for them to go take a shot at one of those riot shields themselves, just so they could show it off? The lack of evidence for any of the stuff they claim is almost insulting, like they just don't care what we think...

A cop as so scared for his life that he fired on an unarmed man, running away, who (as far as we've had evidence to say) had done no harm to him.

Or 2 cops terrified of a slightly agitated guy with a steak knife 10 feet away from them... I just can't get my head around the police idea of 'macho'. These brave, warrior souls in the thin blue line... shit scared of anything that doesn't immediately kiss their ass. Somehow they're badass tough guys who get to constantly say they feel threatened by, they live in terror of, um, black people in general.

in my fantasy world that I'd like to live in, other cops would be calling these guys, well even in my fantasies they'd probably say 'pussy.' But 'coward' works just fine.
posted by hap_hazard at 5:06 PM on August 21, 2014 [2 favorites]

Jabari Asim: Tell The World The Facts - " Just as intriguing as the story is the continuing battle over who gets to tell it."
posted by the man of twists and turns at 5:08 PM on August 21, 2014 [3 favorites]

Does anyone know if guns firing blanks sound realistic enough to pass for guns firing actual bullets?

I work in backstage for a theater, and we're doing West Side Story right now. Yes, a gun firing blanks does sound very realistic. A blank still has the gunpowder in it, there's just no projectile. (There might be more to it than that; I'm sure someone who knows more about guns can weigh in on that...). You can get quarter loads or half-loads, which have different amounts of gunpowder, depending on how big of a boom you need. If someone was listening carefully, though, I think a real gunshot would have more of a "crack" sound as the bullet moves through the air. The Vice guys even talked about hearing something whistle past them. But, boom-y gun noises on camera with a directional mic? I'm pretty sure there's no way for the lay listener to tell the difference. (I don't know what they can do with computers and the audio files.)
posted by Weeping_angel at 5:16 PM on August 21, 2014 [3 favorites]

Noisy Pink Bubbles: “HuffPo Live: What Ferguson Means To Revolution & Race”

It took an obnoxious amount of ScriptNo and Ghostery fiddling to get this blasted page to work, not to mention having to nuke cookies from the last hour afterwards because it killed my MeFi cookie somehow, but it is well worth all of that and the half-hour it takes to watch this discussion.
posted by ob1quixote at 5:18 PM on August 21, 2014

I was actually watching the Vice feed when they heard gunfire. I don't remember hearing the actual reports, but I definitely heard the whistling noise they attribute to bullets. I don't think any of the so-called non-lethal rounds are fast enough to make that kind of noise, so I thought it was gunfire, but I'm no expert and certainly could be wrong.
posted by feloniousmonk at 5:23 PM on August 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

There's ONE bullet, but nobody knows where it is because the cops stole it. I don't know, could it embed in someone's head like that if someone was dumb enough to fire it straight up into the air?
posted by Artw at 5:24 PM on August 21, 2014

I don't know, could it embed in someone's head like that if someone was dumb enough to fire it straight up into the air?

Yep. The key here is whether it remains in a ballistic trajectory and doesn't tumble.

Fire a bullet straight up and it will tumble on the way down, losing much of its energy to aerodynamic drag. But if you don't fire directly up... at some point, the bullet will hit with considerable force.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 5:28 PM on August 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

Oh for fuck's sake...
There's a FB "event" going around to wear blue in support of law enforcement...on Monday, the day of Mike Brown's funeral.
posted by notsnot at 5:47 PM on August 21, 2014

There's a FB "event" going around to wear blue in support of law enforcement...on Monday, the day of Mike Brown's funeral.

I suggest if you see anyone clearly wearing blue in support of this cause on Monday you stop, face the person and put your hands up.
posted by crayz at 5:55 PM on August 21, 2014 [47 favorites]

Man, why blue? 98.79% of my wardrobe is blue.

Now, I'll have to wear khakis and a green shirt and go to work as a tree.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 6:01 PM on August 21, 2014 [18 favorites]

> Blue porch lights

180 degrees in hue from thin-blue-line-blue is pretty close to bug light orange/yellow. Don't know about wearing that color, though.
posted by morganw at 6:02 PM on August 21, 2014

I have two black cats so guess what color most of my wardrobe is.
posted by desjardins at 6:03 PM on August 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

Now, I'll have to wear khakis and a green shirt and go to work as a tree.

Be sure to tell everyone "I am Groot."

I will do my best to wear red or black Monday. (Do I even have any black non-tshirts that aren't long-sleeve or have Anubis shliling for a fake absinthe brand on them? I may have to go shopping.)
posted by Foosnark at 6:03 PM on August 21, 2014 [3 favorites]

I suggest if you see anyone clearly wearing blue in support of this cause on Monday you stop, face the person and put your hands up.

And make their fantasy come true.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 6:09 PM on August 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

And make their fantasy come true.

Only in a stand your ground state.
posted by Talez at 6:14 PM on August 21, 2014

You could print "Fuck da Police" on a blue shirt, or better yet a blue necktie, Pogo_Fuzzybutt.
posted by jeffburdges at 6:20 PM on August 21, 2014

I'm partial to uosuaq's "FCC the Police", myself.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 6:31 PM on August 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

Monday will be such an appropriate occasion to wear my Star Trek Red Shirt.
posted by oneswellfoop at 6:32 PM on August 21, 2014 [5 favorites]

sio42: That was in April, but I suspect the reason the people of Ferguson didn't protest because of that shooting is because he didn't live there.
posted by Joey Michaels at 6:37 PM on August 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

It looks like on that support Darren Wilson page, some people just donated to be able to make comments

just what i was wondering when i read this one:

$5
Seeyih Aigh
4 mins ago
Thank you for defending our great country from a big guy.
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 6:39 PM on August 21, 2014

Who the fuck drinks shots of gin, anyway?

Like, half of Quebec.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 6:44 PM on August 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

I'm less concerned about the $160,000. All that tells me is they got 1600 racist assholes to pony up $100 each. For a murder rap with this much attention, $160,000 won't get you a ham sandwich, and that's assuming it's not a scam to begin with.

People overtly wearing blue on Monday are fine by me as well. Now I'll know definitively whose opinions not to take seriously.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 6:48 PM on August 21, 2014

TheWhiteSkull: I hope it's a scam. I'd rather see the money go to a scammer than the cop.
posted by el io at 6:51 PM on August 21, 2014 [4 favorites]

Actually, if I were in Ferguson, my T-shirt wouldn't say "FCC THE POLICE", it would say:

DON'T SHOOT
I'M WHITE
posted by uosuaq at 6:52 PM on August 21, 2014 [8 favorites]

Who the fuck drinks shots of gin, anyway?

Everyone in Airstrip One.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 7:00 PM on August 21, 2014 [2 favorites]

he can talk about police violence against people ad nauseam and the audience response isn't nearly as outraged as when he talks about police violence against dogs (which actually happens frequently).

Yeah, we had the same experience here where what finally caused a press investigation into a Worcester Police officer who had wrongly arrested and badly beaten a number of people for years was when he killed a family dog while on a routine call.
posted by rollbiz at 7:01 PM on August 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

Oh god. There is no incident report. What a crock.
posted by Justinian at 7:02 PM on August 21, 2014 [4 favorites]

That makes me physically ill.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:08 PM on August 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

Wait, so if there's no incident report, what the hell was this thing they gave the ACLU? Or is that just St. Louis County's incident report, I guess?
posted by limeonaire at 7:09 PM on August 21, 2014

Theory is that the dude called a lawyer immediately and did not submit an incident report for 5th amendment reasons.

That should cause him to lose his job immediately as far as I'm concerned. Whether he gets indicted or not should not matter for that.
posted by Justinian at 7:09 PM on August 21, 2014 [21 favorites]

NBC is reporting that Wilson will be able to look at all the evidence now before telling his story, officially.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:11 PM on August 21, 2014 [3 favorites]

popo scan
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 7:11 PM on August 21, 2014

Where is this being reported?
posted by Joey Michaels at 7:11 PM on August 21, 2014

(Duh, NBC, sorry I didn't read more carefully roomthreeseventeen)
posted by Joey Michaels at 7:12 PM on August 21, 2014

Here, apparently.
posted by limeonaire at 7:12 PM on August 21, 2014

NBC Link
posted by Joey Michaels at 7:13 PM on August 21, 2014

Wait, now I'm totally confused. That link says:

The St. Louis County police department presumably did file an incident report, but any such documents will not be made public until a grand jury investigating the officer-involved shooting concludes its investigation, according to officials from the office who briefed NBC News on the case.

But...the ACLU released what was supposedly St. Louis County's incident report on the shooting. It was basically blank. Is NBC missing that info, or is there another St. Louis County police report on the shooting in existence?
posted by limeonaire at 7:16 PM on August 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

I keep trying to come up with something more clever to say than "These fuckers" but I got nothin.

These fuckers. Shut them all down. Every fucking corrupt and/or incompetent piece of shit cop. Out.
posted by emjaybee at 7:22 PM on August 21, 2014 [2 favorites]

I wonder if that was a typo and they meant the ferguson incident report.
posted by zug at 7:22 PM on August 21, 2014

Wait, so if there's no incident report, what the hell was this thing they gave the ACLU? Or is that just St. Louis County's incident report, I guess?

Yeah, the NBC story is saying that there's no incident report filed with Ferguson PD because they turned over the case immediately to St. Louis County PD, who wrote up their own incident report. That's the document the ACLU has.

But...the ACLU released what was supposedly St. Louis County's incident report on the shooting. It was basically blank. Is NBC missing that info, or is there another St. Louis County police report on the shooting in existence?

I think the going theory is that the ACLU got a heavily redacted copy of the incident report, which is why pretty much the only info it has is Mike Brown's name. That would jive with the NBC story saying St. Louis County hasn't released the full report. Though the wording of the story implies NBC doesn't actually know if such a report even exists, in which case they may not be aware of the ACLU's copy.
posted by chrominance at 7:23 PM on August 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

I think the going theory is that the ACLU got a heavily redacted copy of the incident report, which is why pretty much the only info it has is Mike Brown's name. That would jive with the NBC story saying St. Louis County hasn't released the full report. Though the wording of the story implies NBC doesn't actually know if such a report even exists, in which case they may not be aware of the ACLU's copy.

The way they have made it sound on NBC is that there is nothing else, and that report is all there is, and there isn't anything redacted. No idea if that's true.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:26 PM on August 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

What chrominance said would kind of make sense, though. So thanks, chrominance. I just spent the last four hours trying to fix my phone, which broke this morning, so things aren't necessarily making the most sense to me now!

Which is why now is the perfect time to try rooting my phone for the first time so I can back up the internal memory! Woo!
posted by limeonaire at 7:27 PM on August 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

fuckers are gonna play this whole thing out nice and slow, say nothing, and sometime in october prosecutor will decline to prosecute saying he doesn't believe he could get a conviction.
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 7:27 PM on August 21, 2014 [7 favorites]

Forgive me if I missed this upthread, but has no one posted this call for gofundme to cancel the "Support Officer Wilson" fundraiding drive it's hosting (currently nearing $200k)? It's not entirely clear cut, but it looks like there's a plausible argument for cancelling all those pledges as a violation of the site's terms of service.
posted by nobody at 7:32 PM on August 21, 2014 [16 favorites]

“Rewrite: Bad police reporting by the NYTimes”—The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell, 20 August 2014

Lawrence O’Donnell criticizes The New York Times for not finding eyewitnesses to the Michael Brown killing that back up police claims of what happened.

posted by ob1quixote at 7:34 PM on August 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

I think St. Louis County produced a report, most of which was redacted, that was released earlier, but Ferguson apparently did not, because the Ferguson participant (Wilson) didn't write one. Is that right?
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 7:34 PM on August 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

I don't like the professional white background, but nevertheless I'd totally be in favor of making it metafilter's default on Monday.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 7:34 PM on August 21, 2014 [20 favorites]

Forgive me if I missed this upthread, but has no one posted this call for gofundme to cancel the "Support Officer Wilson" fundraiding drive it's hosting (currently nearing $200k)? It's not entirely clear cut, but it looks like there's a plausible argument for cancelling all those pledges as a violation of the site's terms of service.

Brilliant. Done and done.
posted by CommonSense at 7:38 PM on August 21, 2014 [6 favorites]

I ████ the police.
posted by C'est la D.C. at 7:44 PM on August 21, 2014 [4 favorites]

From what i saw when roomthreeseventeen posted it, the two pages of the PDF of the St. Louis County incident report were all there were.
posted by ob1quixote at 7:44 PM on August 21, 2014

popo scan

You can access the same stuff at RadioReference without all sorts of distracting ad bullshit.
posted by rollbiz at 7:49 PM on August 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

Is Holder on scene, or not?
posted by Trochanter at 7:51 PM on August 21, 2014

You can access the same stuff at RadioReference without all sorts of distracting ad bullshit.

I have been using AdBlock for years. I am blissfully unaware there was any advertising.
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 7:56 PM on August 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

I heard Holder in a radio interview today talking about Ferguson and he sounded pretty choked up and sincere.
posted by futz at 7:59 PM on August 21, 2014

anonymous group lays 60 plus yards of roses at #MichaelBrown #Ferguson memorial; community lights candles in memoriam

(don't think that was posted before, but anyway it's a beautiful picture)

From the Vox twitter list, people are marching tonight, maybe not a lot of them - dozens? It looks calm, good - Jesus, I can't imagine how exhausted they must all be, personally I can't even follow this thread constantly, stuff makes me too angry, it's probably bad for my heart. But I am glad that people are at least not getting gassed now.
posted by hap_hazard at 8:00 PM on August 21, 2014 [13 favorites]

I cannot fucking believe that beyond everything else, the whole Mt. Everest of willful incompetence that we've been watching for two weeks now, that they've got the brass fucking intestines to say that the officer who KILLED someone in the street didn't bother to file a narrative report.

I don't know why after basically fourteen straight days of indignities this is the thing that makes me want to fucking punch a hole in something, but lo.
posted by rollbiz at 8:00 PM on August 21, 2014 [19 favorites]

I don't think there is greater evidence that Mike Brown died needlessly than the Wilson's lack of a police report.

He knows he fucked up, his boss knows he fucked up, everyone around him knows he fucked up.

Like a teenager who dinged up dad's car, he racing to find someway to make it better, make it not his fault, make it go away.

I'm sure he's a nice guy. Good neighbor. Loves his kids and his wife.

Good people who fuck up and kill people go to prison. Really good people, those with a well developed sense of honor will admit they fucked up and take their licks.

The measure of this man's character diminishes every day he continues this charade. He might get away with it, but the cost to us as a people and to him...

I doubt it is worth it.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 8:07 PM on August 21, 2014 [25 favorites]

Very nice idea, nobody, reported.

I'm still enjoying the idea that anarchist actuaries could make the insurance required to operate a police force prohibitively expensive by accurately assessing the long term risks.
posted by jeffburdges at 8:16 PM on August 21, 2014 [8 favorites]

The American Correctional Association Ushered Me Out of Its Convention With Armed Guards (via)
posted by jeffburdges at 8:22 PM on August 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

Savage Minds:
On Being Fed Up: Blackness, Resistance, and the Death of Michael Brown
Thinking about Michael Brown and the African Burial Ground

Michael Brown was only 18 years old; he was unarmed and shot multiple times. I am exhausted by this news.

I cannot find words to express how such blatant racism makes a parent feel. It does not matter what we do for our children, it does not matter how educated we are, or what our politics are or really anything. What matters is the color of our skin. My heart goes out to Michael Brown’s parents and to parents world-wide who have the misfortune of having to contend with a child who has been shot for no reason other than for being different. In this case, it is not just about being different – it is about contending with a heritage of enslavement, the resultant race politics, and issues around police brutality in the United States.

posted by the man of twists and turns at 8:33 PM on August 21, 2014 [4 favorites]

Ms. Lauryn Hill released a sketch of a song of hers, dedicated to Ferguson: Black Rage.
posted by Lemurrhea at 8:34 PM on August 21, 2014 [2 favorites]

Or 2 cops terrified of a slightly agitated guy with a steak knife 10 feet away from them...

Butter knife.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 8:35 PM on August 21, 2014 [16 favorites]

Broken link there, Lemurrhea. This one works.

Powerful stuff.
posted by tonycpsu at 8:54 PM on August 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

Feels like these protests are dying over the last two nights, probably in no small part because the people protesting are still unlawfully being ordered to constantly keep moving.

It's good that less people are getting hurt, but it feels like we're about to lose on the topic of justice once again. It feels like maybe all any police department will have to do from now on is just conceal all of the facts except the ones that benefit them directly for about two weeks, going forward.
posted by rollbiz at 9:13 PM on August 21, 2014 [10 favorites]

Twitter @ChristinaKSDK: Ferguson resident takes picture with a retired Philadelphia police captain #ferguson #peace

Looks like this guy: Former Philadelphia Police Captain Ray Lewis Joins With Occupy Wall Street Protestors

Mr. Lewis showed up in uniform carrying signs imploring New York City cops to join the protests. “NYPD Don’t Be Wall Street Mercenaries,” one read.

I was really hoping to see active police officers join the protest in Ferguson.
posted by Golden Eternity at 9:14 PM on August 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

Even if they aren't fired or officially punished, coworkers who treat you like shit can make your life miserable. And that real question at the back of your head - if I am really in trouble, will they show up ?

I saw the same thing in the Marines. Espirit de corps can be a powerful force for unit cohesion, but it can cut both ways.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 9:28 PM on August 21, 2014 [5 favorites]

Has the butter knife thing been confirmed?
posted by zug at 9:44 PM on August 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

hey i took a long break for my sanity but came back to recommend this dog pool party video for cheer
posted by ghostbikes at 9:58 PM on August 21, 2014 [5 favorites]

ghostbikes: “hey i took a long break for my sanity but came back to recommend this dog pool party video for cheer”

That's such a great video. Thanks. A friend turned me on to Startled Cats as a sanity break and that's worked pretty well for me too.
posted by ob1quixote at 10:09 PM on August 21, 2014 [6 favorites]

see also: pudgy puppy learns to jump
posted by elizardbits at 10:18 PM on August 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

Artw: Pretty sure that's written by a cop, or an idiot that's been nowhere near Ferguson. On the vague off chance that it is someone on the scene I hope they kick his ass out.

Projecting from personal experience here, but the vast majority of total morons and assholes i've met have been of the local anarchists/crust/gutter punk persuasion. I've been to a bunch of protests, the big occupy that happened here, etc and hung out in spaces they regularly do... and ugh.

I'll take the sometimes misogynistic or ironically racist nerds every time if i have to choose. At least they're willing to clique off and avoid the assholes and idiots. There's some element of the whole anarchist/punk ethos that's "we have to include everyone including the actively destructive/negative" people that you almost don't see anywhere else, and there are actively, intentionally shitty/predatory people who just want to stir shit or inflict their fuckeduppedness on people and situations who absolutely prey on that fact.

I've seen it a lot in the people who intentionally cause shit at protests or are just violent, people who harass women, and even rapists who just end up sticking around because no one will really "throw them out". I can count on one hand the number of times i've actually heard of someone getting kicked out of the local "scene" and not being welcome at all the usual gathering places. And it took a fucking ridiculous amount every time. Like tons of instances of being violent to people everyone liked, or close to ten people coming forward saying their were sexually assaulted, or whatever.

I can't think of any other "scene" that's as opposed to 86ing people who are bad news and obsessed with being inclusive to the point that it's actually harmful. And as far as i can tell, it's this way nationwide with that type of person. The loudest idiots just get free reign.
posted by emptythought at 10:53 PM on August 21, 2014 [10 favorites]

Yeah, looks like Wilson lawyered up pronto. And if you ever needed more proof that the rest of the STL PD needs to be torched to the fucking ground:

Shaun King:

(1) It is now being reported that fellow officers and the union lawyer for the @stlcountypd told them to NOT complete one. At all. Nothing.

(2) Not only did Officer Darren Wilson NOT complete an incident report on the murder of Mike Brown, NO OFFICER completed a report. ZERO.

(3) Furthermore, the report they were forced to give to the @aclu_mo was just written on this past Tuesday & includes nothing but a date/name.

He also makes this excellent, chilling point:

In essence these 5,000 donors to Darren Wilson are telling you and I that they are celebrating a lynching. This is not a new thing. It's old
posted by Phire at 11:14 PM on August 21, 2014 [54 favorites]

crayz: You know, whether or not one believes it likely that Darren Wilson is guilty of legal homicide, how in the fuck can anyone think he deserves a charity paycheck of over $160,000 for killing an unarmed teenager? I just wish I could go through life never, ever meeting any of these people. I don't even want to try to understand what the hell is wrong with them.

And the thing is, it's not like he needs that for his legal defense. Correct me if i'm wrong, but in a criminal trial against a cop they get defended by either the department/city/counties lawyers or ones hired by the union right?

So these are basically white supremacist solidarity bucks, no? like "Hey, i think what you did is right sorry you're having to hide in fear from this crazy mob of animals" or whatever.

Maybe someone can start a gofundme to buy me some more WTF, because i'm running dry at this point.

On preview, what Phire posted. This is the digital version of the cheering crowd at a lynching.
posted by emptythought at 11:22 PM on August 21, 2014 [10 favorites]

klangklangston: This is bullshit, but frankly, it's what one should expect from a publication titled Jacobin. Of course they're going to support the idiotic machinations of self-declared revolutionary radicals and bristle at any criticism thereof. They didn't institute a Reign of Intelligent Anti-Capitalist Comity after the 1789 Revolution.

I recommend reading the article and considering the other things published by the Jacobin. You'll notice the author doesn't even like the RCP (and takes a moment to criticize them), but is making a broader observation about the erasure of black radicals and political engagement. Your reaction is a little ridiculous. I'm sorry you're offended by people who think that radical change is necessary, and that racism AND capitalism are both bad, and it would be silly to have a revolution that only addressed one of those things.

It's possible that all this highly emotional news and discussion is making us extra snippy...
posted by moink at 11:31 PM on August 21, 2014 [2 favorites]

The fuck?! The more I hear about the police force, I'm wondering why we even let these people lawyer up, withhold evidence, protect information, etc, etc. This is not a private citizen, it's a public servant carrying out his job. We are his employers and should be able to review his performance, regardless of whether there are legal issues pending. Internal investigations = public investigations if you are a public servant.

Why were he and his partner just standing around after the incident? They should have been snapping dozens of photos of Wilson & Brown, taking testimonies, gathering data - and if that's another dept - they should have been bringing those guys in .. and the FUCKING AMBULANCE. You don't flip burgers; you work for us, and we deserve better.
posted by p3t3 at 11:46 PM on August 21, 2014 [16 favorites]

I am beginning to think that more than a few of the officers in the Ferguson PD are in the kkk or are associated with other white supremacist groups. I am also thinking that perhaps there is or was a deliberate strategy by white supremacist groups to infiltrate police departments throughout the US.
posted by yertledaturtle at 12:03 AM on August 22, 2014 [4 favorites]

"I cannot fucking believe that beyond everything else, the whole Mt. Everest of willful incompetence that we've been watching for two weeks now, that they've got the brass fucking intestines to say that the officer who KILLED someone in the street didn't bother to file a narrative report. "

Since their policy had been to allow officers to write (or not) the reports of complaints against them until they got caught beating the shit out of an innocent black dude, I am not at all surprised that they'd extend that policy to incident reports that could expose them to murder charges.
posted by klangklangston at 12:09 AM on August 22, 2014 [5 favorites]

emptythought, you could replace a few words in that and describe any number of communities-- I'm in geekdom, and I know it applies in a gaming, sci-fi and comics. It happens with atheists and I'm pretty sure it happens in kink scenes, the military and church communities. The missing stair problem and the geek social fallacies are both concepts that describe it. I mean, yeah, I know there are asshole anarchists and I've seen their community shelter them. But I also see that phenomenon writ large across all manner of communities, from sheltering pedophiles in the Boy Scouts to refusing to kick that asshole out of a gaming group.
posted by NoraReed at 12:16 AM on August 22, 2014 [4 favorites]

Nora, the difference is that none of those groups declare their raison d'être as being specifically against the sort of behavior that gets concealed in those other groups. And not just against the behavior itself, but being all for calling it out.

It's like shielding arsonists in a fire department. It's an entire deeper, more depressing level of bad when doing that same in-group crap is putting against the basic tenets of why you're a group in the first place.

this is a bit of a derail though, so meh.
posted by emptythought at 12:34 AM on August 22, 2014 [2 favorites]

"I recommend reading the article and considering the other things published by the Jacobin."

OK, already did, so…

You'll notice the author doesn't even like the RCP (and takes a moment to criticize them), but is making a broader observation about the erasure of black radicals and political engagement."

Right, by conflating RCP with socialists broadly and by co-opting black civil rights leaders to bolster that claim.

" I'm sorry you're offended by people who think that radical change is necessary, and that racism AND capitalism are both bad, and it would be silly to have a revolution that only addressed one of those things."

And here you make the same error that Jacobin did, assuming that because I'm criticizing that article that I'm offended by the intersection of anti-capitalism and anti-racism. I'm not; that's an idiotic charge given that my rebuttal focused on how Jacobin mischaracterized both the complaints about the RCP and the opinions of the "radicals" they were nominally lauding. Bayard Rustin was against racism and capitalism writ broadly (both you and Jacobin seem to be playing pretty loose with distinctions between communist and socialist too), but like I pointed out, his revolutionary timescale was decades and involved working within existing institutions to more justly apportion power. That's "radical" only in the most dishwater sense, and certainly not in the sense that the RCP or Jacobin should be using it. He recognized militancy as a symptom, not a solution.

The historical resonance of "outside agitators" is unfortunate, but that doesn't justify another round of hackneyed Ochs references or ignoring the voices of black leaders on this, both historical and contemporary. Maybe lingering guilt over the whole Richard Wright thing?

(And Communists have generally been bad for socialism in America, and for many civil rights and labor groups, and it's embarrassing when leftists fail to acknowledge that as a legitimate complaint. It's like pretending the Rosenbergs weren't spies.)
posted by klangklangston at 12:37 AM on August 22, 2014 [8 favorites]

they've got the brass fucking intestines to say that the officer who KILLED someone in the street didn't bother to file a narrative report

Last Friday, when the Ferguson Police Department did its press-packet-and-unrelated-video news dump, they told reporters that Wilson had fired "four to six shots."

I remember thinking that was weird. Surely Wilson, having discharged his weapon, had been made to file a shooting incident report that same day. And surely the department, when documenting the crime scene, had attempted to identify where each and every one of those bullets went.

Instead, it seems a hell of a lot like "four to six shots" means, "we're too incompetent to have kept track of how many bullets our officer fired, and we let everyone skip out on the paperwork, and we didn't do anything at the scene, so the world may never know."
posted by evidenceofabsence at 12:37 AM on August 22, 2014 [26 favorites]

Dorian Johnson, the guy with Brown when things went down and key witness, was charged with filing a false police report back in 2011. That's... not good for chances of successful prosecution.
posted by Justinian at 1:07 AM on August 22, 2014

Ok, if they didn't file a report by design and didn't even investigate the incident, surely there's a few laws that they broke as a department? I mean, doesn't it sound like there's a conspiracy or obstruction charge in there somewhere?
posted by Joey Michaels at 1:29 AM on August 22, 2014 [5 favorites]

Hopefully we'll get some more details and analysis tomorrow of what exactly the reports about there being no incident report mean. Did they just skip that part entirely? Or did they call in the County police immediately and those guys filed a report? Or what?

It does sound rather bad based on the details so far. But maybe there's a piece of the puzzle missing. Maybe.
posted by Justinian at 1:35 AM on August 22, 2014 [1 favorite]

I read that he didn't file an incident report for 5th Amendment purposes. So, as I think it's reasonable to assume that Mr. Wilson isn't going to be returning to the Ferguson PD in any capacity, both for this failure to adhere to procedure and for the impossibility of him cultivating anything other than animosity from the people he is representing authority over, what remains is negotiation, both via the courts and a jury, and the police union. Everything the city and state are doing is based on creating some tenable position by which they are able to keep this incident from splashing onto the department(s) as a whole, as well as Nixon's political career.
posted by rhizome at 2:21 AM on August 22, 2014 [3 favorites]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure if I ever told my boss "I didn't write that report you asked me to because it might have criminally implicated me in crimes", that that would be the end of our employment relationship.
posted by el io at 2:27 AM on August 22, 2014 [30 favorites]

I'm of a mind that police officers who commit crimes in the context of their duties should not be afforded 5th amendment protections if those protections ensure they cannot be prosecuted. Which is a bit odd since I think everyone should enjoy the same rights if we're going to have rights at all.

Which is where mechanical reports (ie, cameras, etc) can do their job. But, yeah, never going to happen.

This does all have the feeling like we, the American People, have lost.
posted by maxwelton at 3:11 AM on August 22, 2014

Did you read about the 5th amendment thing somewhere else? Because I was just spitballing, I don't want to end up quoted on friggin' CNN or something.
posted by Justinian at 3:15 AM on August 22, 2014 [1 favorite]

I could hardly be worse than their other sources I guess.
posted by Justinian at 3:16 AM on August 22, 2014 [7 favorites]

I wonder how easy it would be to wedge phony rumors into the media conversation.

"RPT: NO INCIDENT REPORT FILED BECAUSE LOOTERS HAVE STOLEN ALL THE PENS AND TYPEWRITERS IN FERGUSON. ORAL TRADITION ALL THAT REMAINS. GATHER AROUND OLD MAN WILLIKINS FOR TALES OF THE BEFORE-TIME."
posted by Sticherbeast at 3:25 AM on August 22, 2014 [59 favorites]

The 5th Amendment non-incident reporting thing was evidently on Lawrence O'Donnell's program Thursday.

I'm of a mind that police officers who commit crimes in the context of their duties should not be afforded 5th amendment protections if those protections ensure they cannot be prosecuted. Which is a bit odd since I think everyone should enjoy the same rights if we're going to have rights at all.

It could be an interesting counterpoint to Felony Disenfranchisement and the loss of 4th Amendment protections by some convicts and parolees, where a person who is empowered by the state to commit what would be felonies is required to personally provide full accounting of their actions on (and perhaps off, given history) duty.
posted by rhizome at 3:31 AM on August 22, 2014

I think we've got a better picture of what Wilson's side of the story (and defense if it comes to that) will be after today. As far as I can tell it's:

1) Brown took part in a strong-arm robbery 10 minutes before the shooting. The penalty in Missouri is 5-15 years. This was in his mind when Wilson approached in his car.
2) There was a struggle at the window of the car (this is more or less corroborated as far as I can tell) in which Wilson received a head injury (this is not).
3) Brown began to flee and Wilson exited the car with his weapon drawn in fear for his own safety after the struggle. Wilson orders Brown to stop. Brown turns.
5) MAGIC HAPPENS?
6) Brown charges Wilson, is shot repeatedly, and is killed.
7) Dorian Johnson, with both motive to lie and a history of lying to police (was charged with filing a false police report in 2011) gives a self-serving false account of events to the media which plays it all over the place. His testimony thus cannot be believed.
8) Other witnesses begin to come forward but their testimony is tainted by exposure to Johnson's in the media and cannot be relied upon. They are not giving independent testimony only parroting back Johnson's with minor changes.

I think that's the way they will play it. I'm not saying it's true only that it seems like what will form the basis of Wilson's potential defense. There's still a pretty big A MIRACLE OCCURS at step 5, though, to get Brown to charge an armed police officer while unarmed. What could they argue? His fear of arrest for the convenience store thing was so great he would rather attack an armed cop? I don't know. And who knows how many shots were actually fired, whether any were fired inside the car, or any number of others things which could complicate matters. But the police' version is starting to take shape.
posted by Justinian at 4:25 AM on August 22, 2014 [5 favorites]

But, isn't the video of Brown in the convenience store available?
The one which pretty much completely rules out point 1?
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 4:34 AM on August 22, 2014

Metafilter - as someone watching this from another country (and our media is over it and back to local issues) thank you very much for the heartfelt commentary. Seeing the visceral reactions displayed in these two threads has helped me to contextualise this tragic and complex issue(s) in a manner that I do not think would be possible from any other source. Well done - truly the best of the 'net.
posted by dangerousdan at 4:36 AM on August 22, 2014 [21 favorites]

1) Brown took part in a strong-arm robbery 10 minutes before the shooting. The penalty in Missouri is 5-15 years. This was in his mind when Wilson approached in his car.

The Department has already publicly admitted that Wilson either did not know at all about the robbery at the time he approached Brown, or did not have any suspicion Brown was connected to it. The reason Wilson made contact with Brown was jaywalking.

Dorian Johnson filing a false police report is not going to damn this prosecution. Something else very well might, but there are at least 3 other witness to corroborate Johnson's story, whose stories were recorded either contemporaneously with events or immediately afterward. One key here will be whether the witnesses are able to maintain the versions of events they first told someone with a camera or first recorded online.
posted by sallybrown at 5:05 AM on August 22, 2014 [1 favorite]

The Department has already publicly admitted that Wilson either did not know at all about the robbery at the time he approached Brown, or did not have any suspicion Brown was connected to it. The reason Wilson made contact with Brown was jaywalking.

Yes, read #1 again. The hypothetical defense will be about Brown's state of mind, not Wilson's.

Dorian Johnson filing a false police report is not going to damn this prosecution. Something else very well might, but there are at least 3 other witness to corroborate Johnson's story, whose stories were recorded either contemporaneously with events or immediately afterward. One key here will be whether the witnesses are able to maintain the versions of events they first told someone with a camera or first recorded online.

Again, read what Justinian wrote. He is speculating about what the defense will look like, not whether it will be successful.
posted by OmieWise at 5:15 AM on August 22, 2014 [1 favorite]

But, isn't the video of Brown in the convenience store available?
The one which pretty much completely rules out point 1?

Plus they'll actually be able to get the clerk to testify as to what happened instead of depending on silent video.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 5:28 AM on August 22, 2014 [2 favorites]

(3) Furthermore, the report they were forced to give to the @aclu_mo was just written on this past Tuesday & includes nothing but a date/name.

Seriously the report says "Date/Time Entered: 08/19/14 09:46 TUESDAY" for a homicide that occurred 10 days earlier?

Isn't this the point when the FBI is supposed to roll in and arrest all these badge-wearing criminals? Are not a significant number Ferguson/St Louis public officials now guilty of aiding and abetting a homicide?

I feel like the tiny part of my brain still holding memories from public school civics class is on the verge of melting and oozing out of my ears.
posted by crayz at 5:49 AM on August 22, 2014 [33 favorites]

Has the butter knife thing been confirmed?

I was trying to track that down myself. The only real sourced description of the knife I could find was this: "Chief Sam Dotson said the knife was like a steak knife." The butter knife thing seems to be sourced to unnamed eyewitnesses.
posted by smackfu at 5:56 AM on August 22, 2014 [1 favorite]

Well, of course we should just take Chief Dotson's word for it.
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 6:27 AM on August 22, 2014 [4 favorites]

The only real sourced description of the knife I could find was this: "Chief Sam Dotson said the knife was like a steak knife." The butter knife thing seems to be sourced to unnamed eyewitnesses.

This is reading like a nightmare-world take on that scene from Crocodile Dundee.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:34 AM on August 22, 2014 [2 favorites]

How Al Sharpton became Obama’s go-to man on race.: Sharpton said his critics ignore just how much time and experience has matured him. “I’ve grown to appreciate different roles and different people, and I weigh words a little more [carefully] now. I’ve learned how to measure what I say,” he said. “Al Sharpton in 1986 was trying to be heard. I was a local guy and was like, ‘Y’all are ignoring us’... That’s not the case now.”
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 6:43 AM on August 22, 2014 [2 favorites]

But we are dealing with a new breed of youngster. They say, ‘You better not spit on me.’"

Well, yeah. You'd better not spit on me. This is a statement that is literally true in 100% of situations.
posted by schmod at 6:50 AM on August 22, 2014 [8 favorites]

Flowers in the street for Mike Brown
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 6:54 AM on August 22, 2014 [2 favorites]

I think the FPD is pretty fucked up, but the idea of 5th amendment protection for the police report does seem solid. In the military, I could plead the fifth to get out of making a sworn statement about an incident. My commanders would be beaucoup pissed, but forcing someone to self incriminate is not a path many want to go down.
posted by corb at 7:00 AM on August 22, 2014 [1 favorite]

If they pull that shit off and keep their jobs then it permenantly breaks all US police forces - none of them will have to face consequences for bad actions ever. That's a pretty bad situation.
posted by Artw at 7:04 AM on August 22, 2014 [10 favorites]

Claiming the 5th as an excuse not to write a police report is incredibly dangerous territory, I think. I am not a lawyer or a constitutional scholar, but I just don't foresee this going well.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:05 AM on August 22, 2014 [10 favorites]

Can someone explain (or point me to it if I missed it upthread) how a cop gets both immunity because cop and also can plead the Fifth for something done on the job? I don't understand how that works.
posted by rtha at 7:07 AM on August 22, 2014 [7 favorites]

Are they ALL claiming the fifth? Because it certainly seems so.
posted by Artw at 7:09 AM on August 22, 2014

Sharpton said his critics ignore just how much time and experience has matured him. “I’ve grown to appreciate different roles and different people, and I weigh words a little more [carefully] now. I’ve learned how to measure what I say,”

Well, it's good to know he's moved beyond the days of verbally disparaging Jews, white people and trying to incite racial tensions so thoroughly that riots ensue and people die. Has he apologized to Stephen Pagones? To Harry Crist Jr.,'s family? To the city of New York for the entire Brawley hoax? Just wondering aloud here.

Sharpton's an opportunistic, self-aggrandizing racist. The national civil rights movement deserves a better leader than that asshole.
posted by zarq at 7:10 AM on August 22, 2014

but the idea of 5th amendment protection for the police report does seem solid. In the military, I could plead the fifth to get out of making a sworn statement about an incident. My commanders would be beaucoup pissed, but forcing someone to self incriminate is not a path many want to go down.

Then they should lose their job there and then. Especially for police, the are sworn officers of the law. If they are unwilling to swear that they have not broken the law, they should get fired immediately.
posted by OmieWise at 7:12 AM on August 22, 2014 [11 favorites]

I don't know if I actually think that's a good idea, but that's my knee jerk response. I haven't thought through all the ramifications. But it does seem to me that while one's constitutional rights shouldn't be abridged, one does not have a constitutional right to a job (unfortunately).
posted by OmieWise at 7:14 AM on August 22, 2014 [1 favorite]

It's been pretty clear they'd launched a civer-up rather than an investigation from the get go, but I'd saw that as something they were trying to do quietly but fucking up at - now you're telling me they have a legal peroogative to do this that other police could copy?
posted by Artw at 7:15 AM on August 22, 2014 [2 favorites]

how a cop gets both immunity because cop and also can plead the Fifth for something done on the job?

Not a lawyer, but how I understand it is police have qualified immunity. Which means they get immunity for their actions if they do something that is turns out to be illegal, but wasn't clearly illegal at the time. Murdering someone is clearly illegal, so no immunity.

Honestly I don't see not filing a police report as invoking your right against self-incrimination, it's just refusing to do your job. Don't want to file that police report because it might incriminated your self? Fired. You have a right not to self-incriminate, but no right to not do your job.
posted by papercrane at 7:16 AM on August 22, 2014 [2 favorites]

'This Fight Begins In The Heart': Reading James Baldwin As Ferguson Seethes
Black Body: Rereading Jame Baldwin's "Stranger In The Village"
posted by the man of twists and turns at 7:16 AM on August 22, 2014 [1 favorite]

Chief Sam Dotson said the knife was like a steak knife

Perhaps in the way that a butter knife is like a steak knife?
posted by crayz at 7:20 AM on August 22, 2014 [2 favorites]

more Omnivore: The roots of Ferguson, includes:
“Sounds familiar”: The revolution in #Ferguson
Dead or in Jail: Ferguson and the Bounty on Black Life

Some were surprised by Ferguson, while others insisted there was no reason to be surprised. America has long profited by the murder of people of color—overseas and at home. What is striking about Ferguson is its succinctness: the army tanks topped by snipers, the dozens of local policemen in military gear, and the rows of unarmed black men and women, some holding signs, almost all holding their hands up: waiting to be shot or arrested, yet hoping against probability to stay safe. In Ferguson we see the collapse of the urban economy and the boom of the defense industry all in a single shot. What we see, in fact, is the buoying of our economy, and the enrichment of the 1%, at the expense of human lives, lives like Michael Brown’s. This is the family portrait of late-stage American capitalism: our weapons, deployed all over the world, have no targets left but ourselves.

It’s racism, not “principled conservatism”: The South, civil rights, GOP myths — and the roots of Ferguson
posted by the man of twists and turns at 7:23 AM on August 22, 2014 [12 favorites]

Investigators have received statements from six women, and one woman is scheduled to provide a statement, Citty said. The chief said all the victims are black women between the ages of 34 and 58

ah, law enforcement in the Dirty South. if they ain't shootin' 'em, they're rapin' 'em.
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 7:29 AM on August 22, 2014 [3 favorites]

The Prosecutor in the Michael Brown Case Must Go - Robert McCulloch should step aside, precisely because the case is so murky
posted by Artw at 7:30 AM on August 22, 2014 [2 favorites]

Dorian Johnson, the guy with Brown when things went down and key witness, was charged with filing a false police report back in 2011. That's... not good for chances of successful prosecution.

Charged with or convicted? I'm not positive, but I would doubt that any evidence of him being charged with a crime could be included at a trial.
posted by Lemurrhea at 7:30 AM on August 22, 2014 [1 favorite]

Cover Story: Eric Drooker’s “Ferguson, Missouri”
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:32 AM on August 22, 2014 [5 favorites]

The other question I see is- why are those cops alone? There should be a partner to call them on shit.
posted by corb at 7:32 AM on August 22, 2014 [2 favorites]

In the military, I could plead the fifth to get out of making a sworn statement about an incident. My commanders would be beaucoup pissed, but forcing someone to self incriminate is not a path many want to go down.

Do you know what the logic was for allowing that? My understanding was that the UCMJ kind of trashes a number of your constitutional rights, so why not pleading the fifth, too?
posted by hoyland at 7:33 AM on August 22, 2014

Maybe this is movies, but should there not be some kind if formal invoking if the fifth? IE not just pausing the tape of the narrative whenever you think you've done something a bit dodgy?
posted by Artw at 7:37 AM on August 22, 2014 [1 favorite]

No parent should have to worry about their kid being gunned down. #HandsUpFriday
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:37 AM on August 22, 2014 [1 favorite]

Also why the fuck isn't ENTIRE POLICE DEPARTMENT PLEADS THE FIFTH all over the news?
posted by Artw at 7:38 AM on August 22, 2014 [3 favorites]

Artw, because they haven't, yet. I actually don't see anyone aside from NBC reporting the lack of the incident report. It seems like speculation still.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:39 AM on August 22, 2014

> Charged with or convicted?

He plead guilty to giving a false first name.

During the summer after his first semester at Lincoln, Johnson was charged with a misdemeanor after giving police a false first name after he was arrested on suspicion of theft. He later pleaded guilty.

St. Lous Post-Dispatch

Honestly this comes off as just dirtying up a witnesses (especially since other witness accounts match up to what he said.) Reporting that the star witness was charged with filing a false police report sounds a lot worse then he gave a false name to the police once.

Honestly, knowing what I now know about the Ferguson PD, I'd probably give them a fake name too if I was a black teenager.
posted by papercrane at 7:45 AM on August 22, 2014 [24 favorites]

MO State Troopers buy net, ball & hoop it up w/ kids on Ellison Dr. in #Ferguson
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:47 AM on August 22, 2014 [1 favorite]

A MIRACLE OCCURS at step 5, though, to get Brown to charge an armed police officer while unarmed.

Not only that, but to have him drop dead at 35 feet after 6+ rounds are fired.

But we can math that out. Someone well trained can fire 6 rounds in 2 seconds. The fastest NFL player can run 40 yards in 4 seconds.

So Brown, according to Wilson, began charging from a distance of 100+ feet away, and was was dropped dead, 2 seconds later, at 35 feet.

To do this - Officer Wilson had to put 6 rounds in a ~7 inch cluster on a fast moving target from a starting distance of 30 yards.

It simply doesn't comport with physics.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 7:48 AM on August 22, 2014 [11 favorites]

OK, time to recap and update our list. (As our high-school marching-band director always said on the field: "Look where you are, and look where you're going.") Here's the initial list of 20 pieces of information we didn't have:

1. Darren Wilson's record from his years with the dissolved Jennings police department
2. Any of Wilson's disciplinary records that aren't in his Ferguson Police Department file
3. All video of the shooting from the cellphones that were confiscated by police
4. The police reports directly pertaining to the shooting of Mike Brown
5. The percentage of Ferguson police officers who actually live in Ferguson
6. What happened in the conversation leading up to the shoplifting incident
7. What tests the medical examiner did to find Mike Brown had marijuana in his body
8. Why purchased body and dash cameras weren't in use, and when they will be
9. Why Darren Wilson hasn't been detained—and whether police know his whereabouts
10. Why no ambulance was called when Mike Brown was shot
11. Why a nurse on the scene was not allowed to help when Mike Brown was shot
12. Why Mike Brown's body was left on the scene for four hours after he was shot—and what else was found there
13. What role Charter and AT&T had in censoring local cable and Internet last weekend during initial protests
14. Who's astroturfing Twitter with "Michael Brown is GUILTY! Forget that thug and stop being bitches!"
15. Darren Wilson's medical records for any medical treatment he got after the incident
16. Who leaked the "traces of marijuana" result to the press
17. Any definitive evidence that protesters actually did throw Molotov cocktails at police
18. The names of the officers who've threatened they would shoot reporters each night
19. Accounts of what happened in the convenience store from customers or employees present
20. Any evidence that shoplifting video was in fact released in response to a FOIA request

As of Wednesday, we only had info re: No. 8 that there were in fact just two body cameras and two dash cameras collecting dust (so the department will have to buy more, you know, sometime, if it's still around by then); a partial answer to the first part of No. 9 (St. Louis Public Radio says police don't have to arrest Wilson—um, great reporting?); some vague claims I've seen from people on Facebook re: No. 10 (that an ambulance did come, but apparently no one saw it?); and some tiny bullshit on No. 17 (there's like one New York Times video showing a seeming Molotov cocktail and one questionable St. Louis County police photo that's been tweeted).

Since then, re: No. 4, the ACLU managed to get this basically blank St. Louis County Police Department report, and we learned that there likely isn't a Ferguson police report. Re: No. 15, we don't have actual medical records yet, but a source has told CNN (Daily Mail link) that Wilson had a swollen face, but X-rays came back negative for any additional injury. Re: No. 18, we learned (partly thanks to Anonymous) that Lt. Ray Albers of the St. Ann police was one of the officers threatening reporters, and he was suspended. We still don't know the names of many others, though.

Is there anything else we should add to the list at this point?

Thanks again to everyone who's continued to tweet and talk about this stuff, correct misinformation as you see and hear it, and push for more info to be released.
posted by limeonaire at 7:48 AM on August 22, 2014 [18 favorites]

The historical resonance of "outside agitators" is unfortunate, but that doesn't justify another round of hackneyed Ochs references or ignoring the voices of black leaders on this, both historical and contemporary.

Or phrased another way - why are we comfortable criticizing the people of Ferguson being policed by a group of people who do not look like them and don't reflect their community but we're anti-change if we think the same thing should be true about who controls/drives their protests?
posted by phearlez at 7:49 AM on August 22, 2014 [3 favorites]

Why is there reverse racism against brick-throwing tourists?
posted by Artw at 7:57 AM on August 22, 2014 [5 favorites]

Justice Ginsburg: America Has A ‘Real Racial Problem’
posted by audi alteram partem at 7:58 AM on August 22, 2014 [10 favorites]

Further proof that we should give Ruth Bader Ginsberg unilateral benevolent dictator powers and just let her run the whole damn thing.

And also someone work on on a solution for immortality for her while we're at it.
posted by Phire at 8:01 AM on August 22, 2014 [13 favorites]

@sokareemie: .@gofundme This is a screenshot of the link that was removed by 4chan
posted by Artw at 8:03 AM on August 22, 2014 [1 favorite]

20. Any evidence that shoplifting video was in fact released in response to a FOIA request

This may be effectively impossible to disprove, depending on FOI law in MO. When I was subject to FOI in Virginia one of the training points was that a FOI request does not have to come in writing; a verbal request is sufficient. A quick search doesn't tell me whether MO is similar.

Now, a verbal request is dumb, as it's unverifiable if the person getting the request doesn't pony up. Further, there's no requirement to fill it immediately. So smart folks submit things in writing with some sort of return receipt.

BUT, for the sake of "I had to release it" they may be able to claim they had one or more verbal requests and they satisfied them this way in a "hey look how complete and transparent we are being" gesture. Is it disingenuous bullshit? Sure. But that's kind of their SOP now, right?
posted by phearlez at 8:03 AM on August 22, 2014 [2 favorites]

In Ferguson we see the collapse of the urban economy and the boom of the defense industry all in a single shot.

Those two are tied closely together. Most of the small municipalities in that area were originally built as housing for defense industry workers.

McDonell Douglas (before being purchased by Boeing), a stone's throw from Ferguson, laid off 12,000 workers in the 90s, and some much smaller defense contractors in the area also shut down.

Boeing, of course, is doing great, but it didn't hire 12,000 people back.

Also, F-15 production would have shut down in 1994 if Congress hadn't approved selling them to Saudi Arabia. (Ugh.) That would have meant another 8,000 workers laid off. Even with sales to SA, Israel and South Korea, the line is most likely going to shut down in 2019 IIRC.
posted by Foosnark at 8:06 AM on August 22, 2014 [3 favorites]

(And of course not long after MD fell apart, so did TWA, and St. Louis was the TWA hub. And Ford closed a plant nearby as well.)
posted by Foosnark at 8:07 AM on August 22, 2014 [3 favorites]

limeonaire, this may be too small of a point to make your list, but I'd like to know who provided the bogus info about "12 witnesses supporting Wilson's account" to Christine Byers of the Post-Dispatch and convinced her to Tweet it.

Was she duped, or was she complicit? Either way, she probably shouldn't be on the police beat for a big city daily. The former suggests her BS detector needs serious recalibrating, and if it's the latter, she may only be fit for duty as a Fox News-style propagandist.
posted by Nat "King" Cole Porter Wagoner at 8:10 AM on August 22, 2014 [13 favorites]

4chan, that bastion of all that is terrible about humanity, is apparently partially behind the success of the Darren Wilson fundraiser. There's a concerted call-to-action to get as many donations and as many eyeballs on the campaign as possible, to spread "butthurt" among "SJWs".

I'm gonna have to go ahead and raze that site to the ground.
posted by Phire at 8:11 AM on August 22, 2014 [1 favorite]

That's a really good item for the list, Nat "King" Cole Porter Wagoner. I definitely don't think it's too small of a point.
posted by limeonaire at 8:12 AM on August 22, 2014 [2 favorites]

SJW = SOCIAL JUSTICE WARRIOR

those kids really need to get back to fapping and leave Ferguson for the adults.
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 8:16 AM on August 22, 2014

If there were adults in Ferguson, we wouldn't be here.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 8:17 AM on August 22, 2014

If I’m reading this right, @aclu_mo, it’s *possible* police didn’t take Wilson’s statement til after he saw autopsies http://www.aclu-mo.org/
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:17 AM on August 22, 2014 [1 favorite]

Fatal Confrontation Heightens Tensions in Staten Island Police Precinct: “It was a lot of killing; I understand why the cops would be out here,” said Mohamed Jenkins, 24, who was waiting near an overflowing water fountain for his turn on the basketball court on a recent Thursday afternoon. “But this is where I had my first fight, my first kiss. They stop me in my own home, it’s outrageous. To them, everyone is a gangbanger.”
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:20 AM on August 22, 2014

#HandsUpFriday
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 8:22 AM on August 22, 2014

Where Are the National Democrats on Ferguson?: The nationwide slump in violent crime should mean that trend isn’t limited to New York. The declining threat of crime and the cost of imprisoning so many people has created space for politicians, especially Republicans, to endorse policies aimed at reducing incarceration.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:26 AM on August 22, 2014 [1 favorite]

#HandsupFriday Because my white (passing) son's life is not worth more than Michael's and he'll never have to do this
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:29 AM on August 22, 2014

Ranking that gofundme from highest donation provides a list of people who willing named themselves in public with views I strongly oppose.

Since most of the highest donations appear to be from "anonymous", I am puzzled exactly how this would help in the goal which you state.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:31 AM on August 22, 2014

If I’m reading this right, @aclu_mo, it’s *possible* police didn’t take Wilson’s statement til after he saw autopsies http://www.aclu-mo.org/

If true, this is so completely outrageous as to beggar belief. But then, my belief is already fully beggared at this point.
posted by OmieWise at 8:32 AM on August 22, 2014 [1 favorite]

SMH: Riot cops ready for Sharpton rally on Saturday.: Hundreds of cops have been ordered to bring their “hats and bats” — helmets and old-school wooden nightsticks — to the Rev. Al Sharpton’s march against police brutality, sources said Thursday.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:32 AM on August 22, 2014 [5 favorites]

From KWMU, aka St. Louis Public Radio, the local NPR affiliate:
Ferguson When And Where: An Audio Map
"Here, we recap the events since the shooting and give you the context on a map."
posted by Nat "King" Cole Porter Wagoner at 8:33 AM on August 22, 2014 [2 favorites]

SMH: Riot cops ready for Sharpton rally on Saturday.: Hundreds of cops have been ordered to bring their “hats and bats” — helmets and old-school wooden nightsticks — to the Rev. Al Sharpton’s march against police brutality, sources said Thursday.

Oh, God.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 8:34 AM on August 22, 2014 [3 favorites]

Hundreds of cops have been ordered to bring their “hats and bats” — helmets and old-school wooden nightsticks — to the Rev. Al Sharpton’s march against police brutality, sources said Thursday.

Today in "Not The Onion!"
posted by crayz at 8:35 AM on August 22, 2014 [10 favorites]

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure if I ever told my boss "I didn't write that report you asked me to because it might have criminally implicated me in crimes", that that would be the end of our employment relationship."

Congrats, you work for a more responsible and less racist employer than the Ferguson PD!
posted by klangklangston at 8:36 AM on August 22, 2014 [6 favorites]

That's great, Gotanda, though I hate that I just copy/pasted it because I figure I'll need it in the future.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 8:37 AM on August 22, 2014

Police often provoke protest violence, UC researchers find

"The violence that turns a small-town protest into a fiery national spectacle like the one that has played out this month in Missouri is often unwittingly provoked by police, according to researchers at UC Berkeley.

The research team, which studied clashes between police and activists during the Occupy movement three years ago, found that protests tend to turn violent when officers use aggressive tactics, such as approaching demonstrators in riot gear or lining up in military-like formations."

"Unwittingly"? Dunno about that. It almost always seems witting to me.
posted by rtha at 8:38 AM on August 22, 2014 [31 favorites]

“hats and bats”

So quaint. From another time.
posted by Trochanter at 8:38 AM on August 22, 2014 [1 favorite]

Congrats, you work for a more responsible and less racist employer than the Ferguson PD!

As achievements go that's like being taller than the midgets in Wizard of Oz.
posted by phearlez at 8:49 AM on August 22, 2014

Is there a firm source on that 5th Amendment thing?
posted by KathrynT at 8:50 AM on August 22, 2014

trying to find people online found on the gofundme campaign listing is getting uncomfortably close to doxxing, please drop it.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 9:00 AM on August 22, 2014 [4 favorites]

Grand jury in Michael Brown case: 3 black members, 9 white: The grand jury is hearing evidence in the Michael Brown shooting death has one black man and two black women on the panel, and six white men and three white women.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 9:05 AM on August 22, 2014 [1 favorite]

If ferguson is 2/3rds black, how can the jury only be 1/4 black?
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 9:11 AM on August 22, 2014 [2 favorites]

Same reason this whole mess started in the first place?

Plus the DA subtly throwing the case while counting on the first point?

That said, given how many white faces I saw in photos of the protests, I'm not so sure his apparent strategy will work.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 9:13 AM on August 22, 2014 [1 favorite]

Because, 5th Amendment? (Let's just use that to excuse everything.)
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 9:13 AM on August 22, 2014

"Because fuck you", I would assume.
posted by Artw at 9:14 AM on August 22, 2014 [4 favorites]

The grand jury is county, right?
posted by rollbiz at 9:14 AM on August 22, 2014 [1 favorite]

Its not a jury, it's a grand jury.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 9:14 AM on August 22, 2014

If ferguson is 2/3rds black, how can the jury only be 1/4 black?

Grand Jury is sourced from the entire county
posted by asockpuppet at 9:14 AM on August 22, 2014 [1 favorite]

Are felons also prohibited from jury duty?
posted by corb at 9:15 AM on August 22, 2014 [2 favorites]

If ferguson is 2/3rds black, how can the jury only be 1/4 black?

Marginal Revolution stated there was an average of 3 warrants/household in the city so I suspect disenfranchising voters/juries is a culprit.
posted by mathowie at 9:15 AM on August 22, 2014 [6 favorites]

ah ok that explains it
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 9:15 AM on August 22, 2014

"If ferguson is 2/3rds black, how can the jury only be 1/4 black?"

The grand jury is probably a county-level government function and uses a county-level pool. (Then you have questions of where they get their pool -- registered voters? drivers licenses? property records? -- which can influence the makeup.) And of course juries are relatively randomized, small selections of people from within that pool, so you can have odd statistical outliers in any individual jury (I saw a jury seated that was 12 women, no men -- not an unusual case, just the way the jury call worked out that day, there were way more women in the pool than men and only women ended up seated); the more important question would be the makeup of all grand juries over the course of a couple years.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 9:15 AM on August 22, 2014 [1 favorite]

If ferguson is 2/3rds black, how can the jury only be 1/4 black?

Well, for a start, if they pull grand jurors from registered voters, it'll probably skew more white than the population as a whole due to the systematic disenfranchisement of black men in particular. Second, I think grand juries sit for a while, so they tend to skew towards older, retired people (I think it's easier to beg off a grand jury because it's definitely a long commitment), which may or may not reflect the general population. Then there's the question of how many grand juries are available at once and did the steer this case to an unusually white jury. Basically, it could be random noise, it could be symptomatic of systemic problems or it could be shenanigans related to this specific case.
posted by hoyland at 9:18 AM on August 22, 2014

corb
From here:

A: A person is eligible for jury service if he or she is a United States citizen; at least age 21; a resident of the county or city unless serving in another county by order of the court; not convicted of a felony unless restored to civil rights; and able to read, speak, and understand the English language.

Active military, judges, and persons who the court or jury commissioners find incapable because of mental or physical illness are ineligible to serve. (Sections 494.425, 494.505.)
posted by asockpuppet at 9:20 AM on August 22, 2014

I think the FPD is pretty fucked up, but the idea of 5th amendment protection for the police report does seem solid.

Maybe for Wilson but NO WAY IN HELL for any of the other officers. They were supposed to be there investigating the incident and filing reports on their investigation.

If they weren't there for that reason, then WHY IN THE HELL WERE THEY THERE AT ALL.

Of course, we know the answer--to cover up evidence, obfuscate, keep medical care away from the victim, intimidate potential witnesses, etc etc etc. We know that.

But as a police force, they can't just say that. A number of officers spent several hours that day milling around and 'investigating'. So if it is indeed true that there is NO REPORT AT ALL from all of that 'investigating', honestly the entire police force from top to bottom should be fired and then prosecuted immediately. They're not even making the slightest effort to appear that they are investigating impartially.
posted by flug at 9:26 AM on August 22, 2014 [20 favorites]

When I saw the above about the felony I thought that must just be a narrow reading, as I knew voting rights are restored. Nope.

B . RESTORATION OF RIGHTS/REMOVAL OF DISABILITIES
The right to vote is automatically restored upon final discharge from sentence, including probation or parole (unless the crime was connected to the exercise of the right of suffrage). Mo. Rev. Stat. 5 115.133(2). The right to hold office is restored upon completion of sentence (unless the crime was connected to the exercise of the right of suffrage). Mo. Rev. Stat. 5 561.02 1 (2), (3). Felons are permanently disqualified from jury service, unless pardoned. Mo. Rev. Stat. 5 561.026(3).

That's some seriously disenfranchising bs right there. You get convicted, do your time, but that means you never are on a jury again? Do not rehabilitated people count among your peers?
posted by phearlez at 9:40 AM on August 22, 2014 [5 favorites]

How is it even constitutional to deny voting to anyone?
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 9:41 AM on August 22, 2014 [4 favorites]

Ugh, if you need your day further ruined you can check this 1992 DoJ document on the rights denied to felons and how they can get them restored. Delightfully the MO felon has to get a pardon (not even a removal of limitations which presumably is a lower bar and what we have here in VA) to get back jury duty but firearms possession is automatically restored after five years.
posted by phearlez at 9:45 AM on August 22, 2014 [5 favorites]

How is it even constitutional to deny voting to anyone?

It's not...

is unfortunately not the real answer according to the courts.

And with disenfranchised felons entering the thread as a topic, you might just want to check your "Mike's Hot Buttons" cards because somebody has to be pretty close to a bingo.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 9:49 AM on August 22, 2014 [6 favorites]

Better that you shoot somebody than vote for a candidate that might better serve your community.
posted by Joey Michaels at 9:49 AM on August 22, 2014 [3 favorites]

The USA really has this big Thing about who are 'real' citizens and who aren't, doesn't it?
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 9:52 AM on August 22, 2014 [18 favorites]

Jay Nixon has never issued a pardon in office. He has only issued one death penalty commutation to life.
posted by asockpuppet at 9:52 AM on August 22, 2014

Due to racist/classist laws and sentencing disparities, felons tend to be predominantly poor and/or minorities. Poor and/or minority voters tend to vote for Democratic Party candidates. Hence, Republicans *love* disenfranchising felons and striking them from the voter rolls.
posted by stenseng at 9:53 AM on August 22, 2014 [1 favorite]

I think a less sinister read is, as we're discussing over in the voir dire thread, people aren't exactly chomping on the bit to pull jury duty. I can't think of a single organization working on it, in fact.
posted by corb at 9:53 AM on August 22, 2014

Justice for Mike Brown Can't Wait for Justice for His Killer Cop

In focusing predominantly on Wilson, we risk either treating him as a scapegoat or a bad apple — neither of which is helpful. Even if Wilson receives a lengthy sentence and a murder conviction (again, unlikely), the argument that this will put an end to police impunity or will deter future cop violence is naively hopeful, at best. Equally, any arguments that defend most police as "the good guys" containing just a few "bad apples" like Wilson ignore the rampancy with which police around the country discriminate against minorities. Cops can't have it both ways. They choose to wear the uniform and enjoy the authority accorded to them as a group — a uniform whole — and then demand to be individuated. Police are a force. They can't choose exemption from that as and when they are recognized as a force for ill.

Young black men in this country are harassed, arrested, and killed by the police for no more than having black skin. If all cops are maligned for the violence their uniform has come to represent, I see no problem with that. No one has to be a cop.

I basically agree with her. The priority needs to be on activating a political movement that can achieve the critical mass necessary to fix policing and local governance nation wide. The movement can not rest on the outcome of this particular case. And police brutality is just a symptom of the real problems demanding political and economic solutions and building strong communities:

From Protest to Politics: The Future of the Civil Rights Movement (Bayard Rustin)

Negro youths have no need of statistics to perceive, fairly accurately, what their odds are in American society. Indeed, from the point of view of motivation, some of the healthiest Negro youngsters I know are juvenile delinquents: vigorously pursuing the American Dream of material acquisition and status, yet finding the conventional means of attaining it blocked off, they do not yield to defeatism but resort to illegal (and often ingenious) methods. They are not alien to American culture. They are, in Gunnar Myrdal's phrase, “exaggerated Americans.” To want a Cadillac is not un-American; to push a cart in the garment center is. If Negroes are to be persuaded that the conventional path (school, work, etc.) is superior, we had better provide evidence which is now sorely lacking. It is a double cruelty to harangue Negro youth about education and training when we do not know what jobs will be available for them. When a Negro youth can reasonably foresee a future free of slums, when the prospect of gainful employment is realistic, we will see motivation and self-help in abundant enough quantities.

posted by Golden Eternity at 9:54 AM on August 22, 2014 [12 favorites]

Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon's Political Ambitions Tested
posted by Artw at 9:56 AM on August 22, 2014

"We didn't even know our kids' names yet," said Deborah Rogers, who teaches English and reading to 7th and 8th graders at the school. "We hadn't given schedules out yet. But we had to sit down and have a serious conversation on race."
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 9:57 AM on August 22, 2014 [2 favorites]

My Police Reform Agenda

Mandatory, tamper-proof dash and body cams, paid for by the Federal government

Mandatory review of all weapons discharges by higher level authority (that is, a city police officer would be reviewed by the state, the state by the federal government) with statutory oversight given automatically to the DOJ if they choose to exercise it

"Tactical" (SWAT) units must be under the direct control of the state government, not localities and must its officers must be trained.

Funds for widespread training on:

Dealing effectively with emotionally disturbed people

The rights of citizens to supervise and photograph the police if they do not interfere. ( NYPD just sent out a memo to this effect)

Reform of the process for restoration of civil rights after a felony conviction, with a view toward more-or-less automatic reinstatement for non-violent felons after a reasonable period of time.
All contact with police must end with a receipt giving the identification of the officers involved, the number of the civilian review board and some indication as to the reason for the stop. (this is one of the recommendations in this report commissioned from the RAND Corporation by the NYPD. )
It would be great if you guys could stop shooting so many people too.

posted by shothotbot at 10:01 AM on August 22, 2014 [43 favorites]

I cannot believe the gofundme page is still up. Feel free to complain about it here.

Here's what I wrote, if you need inspiration, or can't stop being so angry that all your words are just iterations of what the fucking fuck, you fucking fucks.

This: http://www.gofundme.com/supportofficerwilson is applauding a virtual lynching. The officer, if he ever comes out of hiding, will be defended by the police union. This cop shot a kid, went into hiding, refused to file a report on what he did, and you guys are allowing a fund raiser as an "atta boy, way to kill them niggers!" that was started by 4chan: https://twitter.com/phirephoenix/status/502834931530481664

Have you lost all sense of right and wrong? Your stated policies would seem to be in direct contravention of what you are allowing here.

If this fund is allowed to continue, I will actively work to make sure that nobody I know uses your business in the future, as well as making sure to link to it constantly to show how your company is willing to support a reward pool for killing unarmed American citizens. I will remark and remember who the founders, supporters and VC of your company are, and I will boycott and publicly call them out as well. This is obscene.

Shame on you. You are enabling the worst of humanity. You are doing a bad thing, and you have the power to stop doing it. Please stop doing it.

posted by dejah420 at 10:05 AM on August 22, 2014 [23 favorites]

My Police Reform Agenda

Putting perfume on a pig, really. The main problem is the drug war, the for-profit prison/slave-labor system, and civil forfeiture.
posted by empath at 10:06 AM on August 22, 2014 [12 favorites]

My Police Reform Agenda

All service weapons need to be "fingerprinted" ahead of time, too, storing a discharge so rifling can be compared in any shooting incident.
posted by phearlez at 10:09 AM on August 22, 2014 [6 favorites]

The main problem is the drug war, the for-profit prison/slave-labor system, and civil forfeiture.

The drug war may be moving slowly in the right direction and regardless of those laws, I think police reform is necessary as well.

I forgot about the civil forfeiture issue. So: nothing seized by police shall go directly or indirectly into police budgets.
posted by shothotbot at 10:10 AM on August 22, 2014 [3 favorites]

I've always felt the rule against felons serving on juries is in place to help avoid jury nullification (which is very much legal, for those here who go on to serve on criminal juries). People who have been to prison or otherwise in the system might be less inclined to send others there.
posted by sallybrown at 10:15 AM on August 22, 2014

people aren't exactly chomping on the bit to pull jury duty. I can't think of a single organization working on it, in fact.

I'm actually surprised there aren't-- jury duty is often a hardship for people, since few workplaces are flexible enough to allow for a longer trial (or, for part-time shift workers, it might mean the end of your jobs) there are childcare/family care concerns, and not all courthouses are close to cheap public transportation. I have a lot of spare time now, but no way to volunteer my services now as opposed to later, when I will not. I don't know what the solution is, but I feel like there have to be ways to make jury selection and jury support systems better than they are now.
posted by jetlagaddict at 10:16 AM on August 22, 2014 [2 favorites]

Reform of the process for restoration of civil rights after a felony conviction, with a view toward more-or-less automatic reinstatement for non-violent felons after a reasonable period of time.

80% of states have this already (though many make offenders wait all the way through parole and probation, like Missouri) and I'm not sure I get why violent felonies make a difference on voting. We believe in rehabilitation or we don't. Restricting firearms based on violence tracks very reasonably, but what about a violent felony means someone shouldn't get to pick their mayor?
posted by phearlez at 10:17 AM on August 22, 2014 [1 favorite]

POLITICO's Cartoon Carousel: The nation's cartoonists' take on the week in politics
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 10:19 AM on August 22, 2014

people aren't exactly chomping on the bit to pull jury duty. I can't think of a single organization working on it, in fact.

My GF just got called to jury duty for the first time and she is so excited. She literally filled out the form as soon as she got in the house and mailed it. I have a feeling that she is going to be disappointed.
posted by empath at 10:26 AM on August 22, 2014 [5 favorites]

count me in as another outlier who REALLY wants to be called for jury duty. everyone i've mentioned this to thinks i'm nuts.
posted by ghostbikes at 10:27 AM on August 22, 2014 [2 favorites]

I've done it. It was a fucking blast!
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 10:29 AM on August 22, 2014 [1 favorite]

But it does seem to me that while one's constitutional rights shouldn't be abridged, one does not have a constitutional right to a job (unfortunately).

It does get a bit more complicated when the job is from the government. The 14th amendment comes into play: "nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." This means you get a hearing at the very least before getting fired.
posted by smackfu at 10:29 AM on August 22, 2014 [1 favorite]

I work from home and usually have no pressing deadlines and a strong interest in justice, bring on the civic duty.
posted by The Whelk at 10:30 AM on August 22, 2014 [2 favorites]

Next Week's New Yorker cover
posted by KathrynT at 10:35 AM on August 22, 2014 [10 favorites]

dejah420, I borrowed your words and sent an email to gofundme. Hopefully it helps.
posted by palomar at 10:37 AM on August 22, 2014 [1 favorite]

To add on to that wish list, I'd like to see a list of clearly established bad actions that lead automatic disciplinary action if an officer is caught on camera. Arresting or threatening to arrest someone for filming, yelling "stop resisting" at a compliant subject, etc.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 10:41 AM on August 22, 2014 [8 favorites]

Seconding dejah420, I urge all to write to gofundme in an effort to withdraw the "Support Officer Darren Wilson" campaign.

Darren Wilson campaign: http://www.gofundme.com/supportofficerwilson

Contact page: http://www.gofundme.com/mvc.php?route=contact/form&pid=199_Other&t=donation_page_question&url=SupportOfficerWilson

Gofundme terms: http://www.gofundme.com/terms

Specifically, under Prohibited Activities:
"You may not use the GoFundMe service for activities that:

violate any law, statute, ordinance or regulation

relate to sales of … (c) items that encourage, promote, facilitate or instruct others to engage in illegal activity, (d) items that promote hate, violence, racial intolerance, or the financial exploitation of a crime."

Also, here is another contact link that goes to gofundme's media department: http://www.gofundme.com/mvc.php?route=contact/form&pid=605_I_would_like_to_contact_GoFundMes_media_department
posted by whyareyouatriangle at 10:42 AM on August 22, 2014 [2 favorites]

The campaign is up to $232,060 and increasing by the minute.
posted by whyareyouatriangle at 10:43 AM on August 22, 2014

palomar, dejah420 - if you don't get a response you might want to excise or redact that one quote since a lot of spam filters are pretty aggressive about hate words.
posted by phearlez at 10:43 AM on August 22, 2014 [2 favorites]

My feedback to Gofundme:

I am shocked and appalled that you are allowing the fundraiser at http://www.gofundme.com/supportofficerwilson to continue. You are deliberately and knowingly supporting racist actions--the comments speak for themselves. In addition, you are making money off racist actions, for which you should be ashamed.

To quote from your own Terms & Conditions:

"(d) items that promote hate, violence, racial intolerance, or the financial exploitation of a crime" are prohibited. This may not be the sale of an item, but this fundraiser supports and promotes hatred, violence, racial intolerance, and the financial exploitation of a crime; as a police officer, Darren Wilson's defence will be paid for by his department, the county, the state, his union, or some combination of the above. He is currently on leave with full pay, therefore he is profiting from this racist fundraising.

To quote further from your T&C:

"You agree by becoming a User or Donor that you will not:

1) Use sexually explicit content, obscenities, copyrighted material, or abusive/hateful language in any area of the site"

All you have to do is read the supportofficerwilson page to see endless egregious violations of your own service conditions. In addition:

"GoFundMe.com has the right to, though will not be obligated to, in GoFundMe.com’s sole discretion, to remove any content or block any individual or entity for any reason. "

If this racist fundraiser is allowed to continue, I will personally work to ensure that no person I know will ever use this site. I will also be contacting each and every one of the media outlets you are so "proudly featured in" to ensure the entire public is aware of your support for racism.

The choice is yours. You can choose to do the right thing and remove and repudiate the racist fundraiser, or you can allow it to continue and be known for what you are.

Yours most sincerely,

For reference, the media outlets that Gofundme is "proudly featured in" are: Forbes, USAToday, FastCompany, The New York Times, CNN, Bloomberg, Newsweek, npr, Mashable, and Time. I'm currently digging up links for the appropriate people to contact at each outlet.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 10:44 AM on August 22, 2014 [13 favorites]

Meet the gofundme team.

Ahhh…
posted by whyareyouatriangle at 10:47 AM on August 22, 2014 [18 favorites]

emptythought: "Correct me if i'm wrong, but in a criminal trial against a cop they get defended by either the department/city/counties lawyers or ones hired by the union right?"

An argument can be made that a police or union lawyer has the best interests of the police/union at heart rather than the defendant.

Joey Michaels: "Ok, if they didn't file a report by design and didn't even investigate the incident, surely there's a few laws that they broke as a department? I mean, doesn't it sound like there's a conspiracy or obstruction charge in there somewhere?"

I don't really have a problem with an officer who has potentially committed a crime invoking either their 5th amendment rights or their right to remain silent. However here in BC when a officer kills someone they bring in officers from another city to investigate. And those officers are going to fill all the appropriate paperwork. The investigators still work for the RCMP so it's not ideal but at least they are unlikely to be directly involved. Does that not happen in the US?

Is pleading the 5th a legal admission of guilt? Or is it just considered by the community to be an admission of wrong doing?
posted by Mitheral at 10:49 AM on August 22, 2014

The problem is that techically, it's not a crime until it's adjudicated so, and the language of the funding call itself is pretty mild.
posted by corb at 10:49 AM on August 22, 2014 [1 favorite]

Meet the gofundme team.

Ahhh…

*light bulb*
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 10:54 AM on August 22, 2014 [1 favorite]

Up $2,000 in the last 10 minutes.
posted by whyareyouatriangle at 10:55 AM on August 22, 2014

Is pleading the 5th a legal admission of guilt? Or is it just considered by the community to be an admission of wrong doing?

It is absolutely not an admission of guilt, though it's perceived that way by society. The fact that it's vastly in the interest of authority to cultivate that perception should not be overlooked.

The basic right to remain silent - pleading the 5th - is also the core reason why you don't have to answer police questions. Or even engage with them at all unless being detained against your will. That's in no way an admission of guilt, despite the common "well if you don't have anything to hide" nonsense, and can't be used against you by officers when you do it, or against you on the stand. Both of those things in theory, of course.
posted by phearlez at 10:56 AM on August 22, 2014

I can't see comments at all on the Support Officer Wilson page. Are they removed or do I probably have them blocked with something I didn't know I'd installed?
posted by shakespeherian at 10:56 AM on August 22, 2014

Man, every single woman on that gofundme page except Kelsea the "Storyteller" is in a role related to "Happiness."

(I know some men are too, just...urgh).
posted by sallybrown at 10:57 AM on August 22, 2014 [7 favorites]

Pleading the 5th is a tacit admission of guilt. Same as section 7... b or c I think of the Charter. The only reason to invoke the 5th is because if you didn't, you'd incriminate yourself. Legally AFAIK it's supposed to carry no value judgement, but in reality it pretty much means "I'm guilty but obvs I'm not going to say it."

I should note, on preview: I'm referring to testimony in court, not what phearlez is talking about.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 10:57 AM on August 22, 2014

I can't see comments at all on the Support Officer Wilson page. Are they removed or do I probably have them blocked with something I didn't know I'd installed?

Hm. this is a new thing. I could see the comments twenty minutes ago. Is their response to merely turn comments off? Also, someone just now donated $500.
posted by whyareyouatriangle at 11:00 AM on August 22, 2014 [1 favorite]

Posted to gofundme, as "Press Inquiry". Suggested they ask the only two non-white members of the GoFundMe team what they think of this.
posted by anthill at 11:00 AM on August 22, 2014 [11 favorites]

Pleading the 5th is a tacit admission of guilt.

I'm not a criminal law expert, but I think you can plead the fifth if your answer would incriminate you in any way, so it's not necessarily a tacit admission of guilt in the case at hand (and it's certainly not a formal admission of guilt, as you noted).
posted by sallybrown at 11:01 AM on August 22, 2014

I'd also like to point out (I do not believe this is doxxing as it is an association) that the "Maryland FOP Lodge 70" donated the third highest amount ($1,070). You can sort by amount.
posted by whyareyouatriangle at 11:04 AM on August 22, 2014

Not filing a police report after a shooting seems to me to be along the lines of refusing a breathalyzer after an accident.
posted by feloniousmonk at 11:05 AM on August 22, 2014 [2 favorites]

#gofundyourself
posted by uosuaq at 11:05 AM on August 22, 2014 [11 favorites]

Pleading the 5th is a tacit admission of guilt.

This is incredibly far from the truth. Defendants in criminal cases almost never testify, guilty or no, and everyone is advised to say nothing to the police in a criminal investigation if there is even the slightest chance they could be under suspicion.
posted by empath at 11:06 AM on August 22, 2014 [4 favorites]

This is the first time I have ever wished a crowdfunding campaign was a scam.
posted by papercrane at 11:06 AM on August 22, 2014 [3 favorites]

‘MAD’ takes aim at police militarization with Rockwell homage
posted by Artw at 11:07 AM on August 22, 2014 [6 favorites]

We don't talk about Kickstarter campaigns under progress, I don't feel like we should talk about this one.
posted by empath at 11:07 AM on August 22, 2014 [1 favorite]

Most of my knowledge about the 5th comes from that old video Don't Talk to Police, so my perspective is very limited. I believe he he says that you don't need to have any specific criminal activity in mind when you take the 5th. He claims to be a lawyer, FWIW.
posted by fivebells at 11:08 AM on August 22, 2014

As a result, Wilson’s account of what happens will remain confidential unless it is presented by a prosecutor, Schellman said.

“We will not release it,” said Schellman, who noted that this is the county’s normal procedure. “This isn’t any different than a typical larceny from a local convenience store.”
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 11:08 AM on August 22, 2014 [2 favorites]

Canned response to my complaint to GoFundMe:

Thank you for bringing this to our attention. We will be investigating the page and taking appropriate action. If you have any further information to add to your report, please simply reply to this email.

In addition to the report you have submitted to us, we encourage you to contact law enforcement officials in your area if you believe this user is committing fraud or breaking the law in any way.

We will follow up with you only if we have any further questions.

Regards,

GoFundMe Trust and Safety Team

posted by Lexica at 11:08 AM on August 22, 2014

No, it's not, empath. If you are not incriminating yourself, pleading the 5th isn't meaningful at all, so why do it? The only time to invoke it is if saying anything could incriminate you. Thus, tacit admission of guilt to something.

This is a really different case than discussing ongoing Kickstarter campaigns, unless you somehow think that discussing this campaign on MeFi will somehow result in more donations? If so, I am disappoint.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 11:09 AM on August 22, 2014

“We will not release it,” said Schellman, who noted that this is the county’s normal procedure. “This isn’t any different than a typical larceny from a local convenience store.”

Wow, fuck this guy.
posted by sallybrown at 11:10 AM on August 22, 2014 [14 favorites]

Cripes, I hope you're never on a jury judging me, fffm. This is a very narrow and wrong reading of use of the right to avoid self-incrimination. Remaining silent lest you incriminate yourself is not applicable only to the charge in question; you might be asked for testimony that would be held against you in an entirely different way. I see sallybrown just said this.

Remember, the tools to protect the righteous can be used by the wicked too. The right to avoid self-incrimination is hugely important to the disadvantaged who could be dragged into an interrogation room or court on the most nonsense of reasons. To say that refusing to answer questions is an admission of SOMETHING is to say that it's okay for police to poke into every aspect of your life just because they can come up with some probable cause to hold you for a short time.
posted by phearlez at 11:10 AM on August 22, 2014 [14 favorites]

In addition to the report you have submitted to us, we encourage you to contact law enforcement officials in your area if you believe this user is committing fraud or breaking the law in any way.

Hahahahahaha.
posted by Foosnark at 11:11 AM on August 22, 2014 [18 favorites]

No, it's not, empath. If you are not incriminating yourself, pleading the 5th isn't meaningful at all, so why do it? The only time to invoke it is if saying anything could incriminate you. Thus, tacit admission of guilt to something.

That's so wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Wrong.

Plenty of perfectly innocuous and legal things could potentially incriminate you. You're an idiot if you don't plead the 5th most of the time whether or not you are guilty of anything.
posted by Justinian at 11:12 AM on August 22, 2014 [10 favorites]

Given 4chan's involvement, I wonder how many chargebacks GoFundMe is going to be dealing with. That may be the angle to get it shut down: credit card processors take a very dim view of large volumes of chargebacks.
posted by feloniousmonk at 11:12 AM on August 22, 2014

A friend of mine told me the other night that the shop owner had released further video indicating that Brown came back and paid for the goods, or something. I'd be pretty surprised, since it hasn't shown up here, but has that video shown up anywhere?
posted by fivebells at 11:13 AM on August 22, 2014

No, it's not, empath. If you are not incriminating yourself, pleading the 5th isn't meaningful at all, so why do it? The only time to invoke it is if saying anything could incriminate you. Thus, tacit admission of guilt to something.

With all due respect, you're not american and don't appear to know how the american legal system works.

When the police say "You have a right to remain silent", they are referring to your fifth amendment rights. They mean it when they say it, and you should exercise it immediately. Anything you say to the police, even seemingly innocuous statements, could be used as evidence in a criminal trial. There are all kinds of cases where the police have used the testimony of innocent people to convict them of crimes, up to and including forcing them to sign false confessions.
posted by empath at 11:14 AM on August 22, 2014 [15 favorites]

Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.

Never say anything without your attorney present.
posted by Pudhoho at 11:15 AM on August 22, 2014 [5 favorites]

FFFM! Phearlz! You must chill!
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 11:16 AM on August 22, 2014

Incrimination is not guilt. Anybody who thinks that somebody who pleads the Fifth must be "guilty of something" is somebody who does not understand what self-incrimination is, whether it's you yourself or some stand-in for the public.
posted by Sticherbeast at 11:19 AM on August 22, 2014 [1 favorite]

PEOPLE. Last donation received was 19 minutes go. And the image of Wilson has been removed.

If you click donation you see: "Donations are Complete! The organizer has stopped donations."
posted by whyareyouatriangle at 11:19 AM on August 22, 2014 [2 favorites]

Young activists in Ferguson pose for #HandsUpFriday. (If you've been following this on twitter, you'll recognize a lot their usernames.*)

T-shirt maker for a revolution, video by Amy Nelson and Aymann Ismail.

*I want to say something, but I don't know what to say. Something like: the future will suck less because you exist. And that's not really adequate.
posted by nangar at 11:20 AM on August 22, 2014

Given the work Wilson and his colleagues have done to undermine any possible legal action against him, I hope coverage of these events doesn't get derailed into legal minutiae avoiding broader ethical & policy questions dealing with systemic racism.
posted by audi alteram partem at 11:21 AM on August 22, 2014

Oh. new campaign here (and linked from the original) https://www.gofundme.com/OfficerWilsonFundraiser
posted by whyareyouatriangle at 11:21 AM on August 22, 2014

If you click donation you see: "Donations are Complete! The organizer has stopped donations."

That's probably because they reached their $250k goal, no? :(
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 11:22 AM on August 22, 2014

It will, audi alteram partem. You know it will. Racism is dead in America, remember? Therefore nothing about this could possibly be motivated by racism. That's going to be the story.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 11:22 AM on August 22, 2014

Was there a comment section at the bottom of the page, or were those 'comments' actually updates which you can toggle on and off?
posted by Pudhoho at 11:25 AM on August 22, 2014

No, it looks like they just figured out they'd have to pay taxes on it. New fundee is a tax exempt charity so they can keep the full money.
posted by corb at 11:25 AM on August 22, 2014 [5 favorites]

Nearby school district bans teachers from talking about Ferguson.
posted by dejah420 at 11:27 AM on August 22, 2014

Nearby school district bans teachers from talking about Ferguson

Depending on which opinions the teachers were spouting about this, I don't feel too strongly that it's a bad thing.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 11:29 AM on August 22, 2014

No, it looks like they just figured out they'd have to pay taxes on it. New fundee is a tax exempt charity so they can keep the full money.

Yeah, well you know, a lot of times taxes are spent on people who aren't like me, and we can't have that.

(proceeds to explode)
posted by CommonSense at 11:30 AM on August 22, 2014 [1 favorite]

Saw this on my Facebook "trending" from USA Today: "Calm restored in Ferguson, support for officer builds" - that latter part referencing the GoFundMe campaign as the "support". Absolutely shameful work, USA Today.
posted by crayz at 11:30 AM on August 22, 2014 [8 favorites]

Nice catch, whyareyouatriangle and corb. Let's keep an eye on the new fundraiser and see what shakes out.
posted by Strange Interlude at 11:31 AM on August 22, 2014

Here is the official statement on the first page:

Good Afternoon,

We (being the admins of the page) began this GoFundMe site after our Facebook page “Support Darren Wilson” grew and we saw that there was a need for an online donation site for those who wanted to donate. We set up this GoFundMe page and it quickly gained enormous support for Officer Darren Wilson. Then, once we located the local charitable foundation, Shield of Hope (a non-profit organization), that has been designated as the authorized charity for donations on behalf of Darren Wilson, we began working together to have a GoFundMe page set up to collect and disburse donations for Officer Wilson through the Charitable Foundation. Unfortunately, to do so requires us to end collection on the current page that you are viewing now. GoFundMe does not allow transfer of existing campaigns, even to charities. Please know that all funds received from our events, this GoFundMe site and our TeeSpring campaign will be donated to Officer Darren Wilson, and in the future, donations will still be donated to Officer Wilson, but will be tax deductible for donors as well. Shield of Hope is a Certified Charity on GoFundMe, is available via public search with GoFundMe, and has been designated by the IRS as a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization.

With the creation of a new page, the donation amount shown will initially reset to zero. Please do not confuse this with the current donation amounts received on this page. Shield of Hope has offered to post all funds received from this GoFundMe page, our TeeSpring page and our rally/t-shirt funds collected on the street on their site indicating they have received these funds from us, once we are able to send those funds to the Foundation. This will allow all of our supporters to confirm that funds collected on this page were sent to the correct place for Officer Darren Wilson.

We will continue to operate the “Support Darren Wilson” Facebook page and TeeSpring page independently. If there are any other changes, we will post updates via our Facebook page. We will also still be available for direct contact for any questions, clarification and t-shirt sales.

The Ferguson Police Department has requested that all donations that supporters may wish to mail be made payable to “Shield of Hope” and mailed to Shield of Hope, 9620 Lackland Rd., St. Louis MO 63114.

New GoFundMe site through Shield of Hope: https://www.gofundme.com/OfficerWilsonFundraiser

Mailing Address for All Mail in Donations:
Shield of Hope
9620 Lackland Road
St. Louis, MO 63114
Phone Number: 314-423-8003

Contact E-mail Regarding T-shirts and questions about the original GoFundMe page: istand4darren@gmail.com

Shield of Hope PayPal link: https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=35A4G6STMS3KW

As a group, "Support Darren Wilson" is comprised of many people who want to give others the opportunity to support Officer Darren Wilson during this time. Some of us have never met Officer Darren Wilson while others are close family friends or even family themselves. The funds collected through GoFundMe and through TeeSpring along with our fundraisers on the ground will be going directly to Officer Darren Wilson through the non-profit Shield of Hope. These funds will be used to cover potential legal fees, relocation and living expenses of both Officer Darren Wilson and his immediate family.

We truly hope that everyone who has donated understands the transition. If not, please reach out to us. We do not want this to become a hindrance of the support Officer Darren Wilson is receiving.

Thank you for your understanding. We truly appreciate your time, efforts, prayers, kind words and donations. It means more than you could possibly know.

God Bless
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 11:33 AM on August 22, 2014

Anything you say to the police, even seemingly innocuous statements, could be use as evidence in a criminal trial. There are all kinds of cases where the police have used the testimony of innocent people to convict them of crimes, up to and including forcing them to sign false confessions.

And it's important to remember that part of the reason it exists is that you may end up incriminating yourself regarding entirely unrelated to the matter at hand. As the well-known "Don't Talk to Police" video above points out, you can get yourself in hot water by making perfectly innocuous statements about legal activities that later lead people down the path to messing up your life.

Spreading the idea that refusing to incriminate yourself is a sign of guilt helps the machine by discouraging people from acting in their own interest. If the machine was a well-oiled racially-neutral operation I might think this wasn't so bad. But it's not. And for every Wilson who uses the right to avoid self-incrimination there's thousands of Dorian Johnsons who get pinched and grabbed on inaccurate suspicion - and later released - who should not be shamed into cooperating with fishing expeditions and thereby harming themselves.
posted by phearlez at 11:33 AM on August 22, 2014 [10 favorites]

With all due respect, you're not american and don't appear to know how the american legal system works.

A lot of that going around. Last night I saw a report about how LA was"getting it right" sine the Rodney King affair, which involved the police chief going to some community meeting and talking with the public. Among the publlc was one intense middle age white woman going on about some allegedly misbehaving cop. She demanded that he be arrested, indicted, and convicted.

This is why defense attorneys are allowed to disqualify jurors.
posted by IndigoJones at 11:35 AM on August 22, 2014

We (being the admins of the page) began this GoFundMe site after our Facebook page “Support Darren Wilson” grew and we saw that there was a need for an online donation site for those who wanted to donate.

I think opinions would differ as to whether there truly was a need for this.
posted by limeonaire at 11:35 AM on August 22, 2014 [1 favorite]

Contact E-mail Regarding T-shirts and questions about the original GoFundMe page: istand4darren@gmail.com

I wonder what would happen if I asked them "are you aware that the momentum on the original GoFundMe page was coming from a bunch of internet troublemakers on a site called '4chan' that didn't care anything at all about Darren Wilson but were just trying to stir up trouble? Are you certain you still want your cause associated with people like this?"
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 11:37 AM on August 22, 2014 [1 favorite]

It will, audi alteram partem. You know it will. Racism is dead in America, remember? Therefore nothing about this could possibly be motivated by racism. That's going to be the story.

Trying to stay positive. Of course the mainstream media isn't going to focus on racism given their history. But that media narrative needs to be challenged just as the post-racial mindset needs to be countered with protests, education and interpersonal conversations.
posted by audi alteram partem at 11:37 AM on August 22, 2014 [1 favorite]

the "God Bless" really makes the whole thing.
posted by empath at 11:41 AM on August 22, 2014 [12 favorites]

I've emailed a couple of news outlets, tweeting to others. Gofundme should be publicly shamed for allowing this to continue.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 11:43 AM on August 22, 2014 [2 favorites]

I wonder what would happen if I asked them "are you aware that the momentum on the original GoFundMe page was coming from a bunch of internet troublemakers on a site called '4chan' that didn't care anything at all about Darren Wilson but were just trying to stir up trouble? Are you certain you still want your cause associated with people like this?"

4chan is not one homogenous place. This support came from /pol/, which I assure you overwhelmingly supports Wilson, and was not merely acting out of pique.
posted by Sticherbeast at 11:44 AM on August 22, 2014

So, the new fundraiser says it's Shield of Hope, which is connected to the Vegas police, because it's a local charity to Vegas. I'm on the phone with Detective Hernandez, media officer for the LVPD, who says they have nothing to do with it, and don't know why Shield of Hope would be the charity of record.

The page has changed, and has added a MO address, and tax id #. I'm going to try and track the ID down.
posted by dejah420 at 11:47 AM on August 22, 2014 [23 favorites]

Saginaw sheriff dumping military vehicle made fun of by HBO comedy show

"I made the decision about a month ago to decommission that vehicle," Federspiel said, noting he did it based on financial concerns due to unforeseen maintenance costs.

While the military was to provide any needed parts, Federspiel said he still had to pay for a specialized mechanic to install the parts, along with insurance and fuel for the vehicle.

When Saginaw County Commissioners asked him to look for cost-saving measures before setting the budget in July, the MRAP was the first thing to go, he said.

The decision also came because Federspiel decided to direct funds from drug forfeitures into the county's general fund, he said. He previously planned to use drug forfeiture funds to pay for any costs associated with the MRAP and did so during the installation of a new starter and a new locking mechanism for the door since the vehicle has been in Saginaw County.

When drug forfeiture funding was put into the county's general fund, Federspiel said it created a situation in which taxpayers might have to fund some of the costs of the MRAP, which also prompted him to send it back to the Army.
posted by Artw at 11:47 AM on August 22, 2014 [8 favorites]

ACLU of Missouri:

Ferguson is still hiding information regarding the fatal shooting of Michael Brown. It is long past time for the Ferguson Police Department to begin building public trust and the first step is to release a complete copy of the incident report.

•On Aug. 12, the American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri asked the Ferguson Police Department to release the complete incident report for the Aug. 9 fatal shooting of Michael Brown. After the request was denied, the ACLU filed a Missouri Sunshine Law suit on Aug. 15.

•On Aug. 20th we received the St. Louis County Police Department's incident report, which only includes barebones information and lacks any narrative description of what occurred. The county report classifies the shooting as a homicide.

•The report from the St. Louis County Police reveals a time discrepancy which further suggests there is much the public doesn’t know. The county report shows a 43 minute delay before anyone called the county police and another 47 minute delay before the county police arrived on the scene.

•The following day, Aug. 21, the ACLU received the Ferguson Police Department's incident report. It was redacted, and also lacked any narrative description of what occurred.

It is deeply troubling and unacceptable that the two incident reports we’ve received completely lack any detailed information of what happened when Officer Darren Wilson encountered and then shot an unarmed Michael Brown. Two weeks after the shooting, this demonstrates a continued lack of transparency and adds to confusion about the events of the day. We still do not have what should be publicly available information about the police shooting of Michael Brown.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 11:48 AM on August 22, 2014 [23 favorites]

A friend of mine told me the other night that the shop owner had released further video indicating that Brown came back and paid for the goods, or something.

The original video that the police released has a second angle, besides the footage showing the confrontation at the door. Some interpret it as him paying after being refused a sale due to lacking ID, but it's not very clear what is happening.
posted by smackfu at 11:49 AM on August 22, 2014

Shield of Hope is not exclusive to LV. There's a MO chapter listed as a 501(c)(3) at Charity Navigator
posted by phearlez at 11:50 AM on August 22, 2014

Would it be this Shield of Hope, registered in Missouri? Here is its most recent filing.
posted by limeonaire at 11:51 AM on August 22, 2014 [1 favorite]

This is the organization using the "Shield of Hope" name:
http://www.nonprofitfacts.com/MO/Fraternal-Order-Of-Police-Lodge-15-Charitable-Foundation.html

(found by searching for the tax id #352397876 from the gofundme donation page)
posted by whyareyouatriangle at 11:53 AM on August 22, 2014 [2 favorites]

Also, you can write a "review" of the charity on that page.
posted by whyareyouatriangle at 11:54 AM on August 22, 2014 [1 favorite]

Bet that option vanishes right quick.
posted by Pudhoho at 11:55 AM on August 22, 2014 [1 favorite]

"Thank you so much for your generous offer and support of the Ferguson Police Department.

The only charity that the officer has endorsed so far is through the Shield of Hope Foundation of the Fraternal Order of Police. Checks may be made payable to:

Shield of Hope
9620 Lackland Rd
St. Louis, MO 63114

In the memo line, please put “Officer D. Wilson Fund” and every dime collected will go directly to him.

Again, thank you for your support.
P.O. Tim Zoll

Public Affairs Officer
Ferguson Police Department
222 S. Florissant Rd.
Ferguson, MO 63135
tzoll@fergusoncity.com
Description: Small Ferg Patch 2012 "

http://theerant.yuku.com/topic/69291/LEGAL-FUND-for-Ferguson-PD-Officer-Darren-Wilson
posted by whyareyouatriangle at 11:57 AM on August 22, 2014 [19 favorites]

Yeah, the "Fraternal Order of Police, Lodge 15 Charitable Foundation" name is listed in Missouri's corporations database as the previous name of the Shield of Hope I linked above.
posted by limeonaire at 11:58 AM on August 22, 2014 [1 favorite]

So the FPD's public affairs officer, in his official capacity and using his city-provided email, is fund-raising for the defense of an alleged murderer.

Man, this civil rights complaint is going to write itself!
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 11:59 AM on August 22, 2014 [75 favorites]

Ok, Tax ID is registered with IRS, and leads to the SLFOP, Lodge 68.

So, the St. Louis cops are raising money for Officer Wilson, and doing it under wraps so it's not obvious that they're doing it, rather than just coming right out and saying it, they're doing it under a community service charity.
posted by dejah420 at 12:00 PM on August 22, 2014 [25 favorites]

When the police say "You have a right to remain silent"

The police don't actually say this (usually), even when arresting you, even when interrogating you. That's only on cop shows to convince you that they're the good guys and that they follow "the rules."
posted by Noisy Pink Bubbles at 12:00 PM on August 22, 2014

Separating Conservatives from their money is apparently pretty easy.

I mean, they keep talking about waiting for all the facts to come in, but they are very evidently, not.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 12:01 PM on August 22, 2014 [3 favorites]

In Ferguson, young demonstrators are finding it’s not their grandparents’ protest: "“We were trained when we marched. We were taught if they spit on you, just wipe it off and continue marching. But we are dealing with a new breed of youngster. They say, ‘You better not spit on me.’"

And yet, when it was the older generation, just protesting at all was the equivalent of, like, throwing a tear gas canister back at the cops. It's like you go from the first gay rights demonstrators parading around in suits and dresses with pre-made signs that say "treat homosexuals as individuals" to the Stonewall Riots to Act-Up protesting in the cathedral. Militancy is different in different situations.

I would hate to see a narrative emerge that was either "civil rights protesters did it right, not like the kids" OR "old people have bad ideas".

I think many people have a false image in their heads of the civil rights movement, as if what happened was that people asked nicely and marched politely in a circle, and then white people just asked them all in to tea. Civil rights protesters in suits and dresses were just as dehumanized by the media and their white neighbors as the young kids are today for different reasons. The social meaning of tactics changes over time.
posted by Frowner at 12:02 PM on August 22, 2014 [40 favorites]

Yeah I suspect the venn diagram of people saying "we have to wait for the facts" and "support officer wilson" donors is one circle encompassing the other. Wait for the facts that we assume will always be in favor of the white officer!
posted by phearlez at 12:03 PM on August 22, 2014 [1 favorite]

When the police say "You have a right to remain silent"

The police don't actually say this (usually), even when arresting you, even when interrogating you. That's only on cop shows to convince you that they're the good guys and that they follow "the rules."

Bullshit. That's Miranda.
posted by asockpuppet at 12:03 PM on August 22, 2014 [11 favorites]

On Aug. 20th we received the St. Louis County Police Department's incident report, which only includes barebones information and lacks any narrative description of what occurred. The county report classifies the shooting as a homicide.

The county report classifies the shooting as a homicide.
The county report classifies the shooting as a homicide.

I mean, this is kinda big, right? Or am I just naive?
posted by inigo2 at 12:03 PM on August 22, 2014

@mollycrabapple: "payment processor @WePay, which pulled a sex worker's medical fundraiser, looks fine with processing funds for killer cop Darren Wilson"
posted by Strass at 12:05 PM on August 22, 2014 [10 favorites]

emptythought: "Correct me if i'm wrong, but in a criminal trial against a cop they get defended by either the department/city/counties lawyers or ones hired by the union right?"

Mitheral: An argument can be made that a police or union lawyer has the best interests of the police/union at heart rather than the defendant.

From what I gathered during the Johanes Mehserle case, there is a fork in the police-defense road:

1. The officer's and the police/union's interests are aligned, the officer is required to comply with the department's and the union's investigation process, and defense (and I believe 'paid suspension') depends on the officer submitting to this process.

2. The officer's and the police/union/prosecutor's interests are *not* aligned, the officer refuses to make a statement to their department/union, does not receive defense, and is suspended without pay. Officer hires their own lawyer.
posted by rhizome at 12:05 PM on August 22, 2014

I mean, this is kinda big, right? Or am I just naive?

No, it doesn't mean anything, I don't think. He wasn't convicted.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 12:05 PM on August 22, 2014

Homicide just means one guy killed another guy. It says nothing about whether the shooting was justified or not.
posted by Justinian at 12:05 PM on August 22, 2014 [4 favorites]

I think they just mean that in the most literal way possible: a human was killed. We don't know how it happened, or if we do, we're not going to tell you.
posted by limeonaire at 12:06 PM on August 22, 2014

I mean, this is kinda big, right? Or am I just naive?

Not naive, but it's not that big, either. Any time a person kills a person, it's a homicide, whether it's legal or not. Unless there's something very peculiar about how MO does things, in and of itself this doesn't mean much for us. Of course a human killed Brown. It's not as if a quokka pulled the trigger.
posted by Sticherbeast at 12:06 PM on August 22, 2014

Bullshit. That's Miranda.

It is. And it's said to people a lot less often than most people think. It's not even necessary to say to a suspect they're questioning if they already feel they have what they need to make a case w/o the suspect's testimony.
posted by phearlez at 12:07 PM on August 22, 2014 [3 favorites]

Bullshit. That's Miranda.

Hasn't this entire Ferguson thread been an exercise in observing how infrequently police follow proper procedures?

(Also, see phearlez's comment -- "Miranda" means a different thing than most people think it means. And even that is under attack from congress. Sigh.)
posted by Noisy Pink Bubbles at 12:14 PM on August 22, 2014

per @awkward_duck there's some sort of press conference soon. Will post a link if I see one.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 12:16 PM on August 22, 2014

(Also, see phearlez's comment -- "Miranda" means a different thing than most people think it means. And even that is under attack from congress. Sigh.)

Yeah, the big thing to mention that I should have added is that Miranda is important before interrogation. So in the sense of what you claimed, NPB, about when they are interrogating you - you're wrong, they absolutely must mirandize you to use almost anything you say. (exceptions - and there are may - are listed at the bottom here)

BUT, what we think of as "interrogation" is a lot wider than what it is legally. They are not interrogating you at any point where you're not being detained. And the supremes are CONSTANTLY subverting basic common sense about what constitutes a person's reasonable belief that they can walk away from a conversation.

And as I said, all of it doesn't matter if they are willing to just go with what they have on you already. When you're pinched right in the middle of cutting open that bank vault they may decide to chat you up with no Miranda. What do they need your testimony for? Or in so many of the cases in Ferguson during the protests, let's say, what do they care if they think you're going to have the charges dropped and they just wanted to get you off the street for a while?
posted by phearlez at 12:22 PM on August 22, 2014 [2 favorites]

Huh. The definition for homicide I got was "the deliberate and unlawful killing of one person by another; murder.". Thanks for the clarification.
posted by inigo2 at 12:24 PM on August 22, 2014

I mean, this is kinda big, right? Or am I just naive?

Medical examiners classify deaths according to e.g. natural causes, suicide, or homicide (possibly other gradations depending on jurisdiction). A homicide classification would be normal in the case of gunshot wounds as the cause of death, but the DA still has to decide on that classification whether to press criminal charges, which is what the grand jury is doing. All it means in this instance is that the ME is saying "No, this man did not crumple over into lifelessness due to a bolt from the sky (more seriously, from say a natural heart defect or narcotic overdose, but due to actions taken by another human being."

Since the ME has no powers to actually press charges and prosecute anyone, it is not kinda big.
posted by dhartung at 12:25 PM on August 22, 2014

*rage*

The MSM is complicit in guiding the public narrative. This from SFGate:

Brown's shooting set off more than a week of racial unrest and protests. Those demonstrations have quieted in recent days, and on Thursday Gov. Jay Nixon ordered the Missouri National Guard — which had been called in to try to quell violence in the streets of Ferguson — to being withdrawing from the area.

i saw no "racial unrest", no confrontations between the races. there was some looting and burning one night early on, and nothing before or since. and outside of that the only violence on the streets i saw was all being carried out by stormtroopers in riot gear. *RAWR*
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 12:26 PM on August 22, 2014 [36 favorites]

The definition for homicide I got was "the deliberate and unlawful killing of one person by another; murder.".

Indeed. But the whole nut of what we've been discussing here is whether there is a self-defense justification for that killing (yes, I prefer that term in this particular context). Does that help? In that question the ME ruling has very little influence.
posted by dhartung at 12:28 PM on August 22, 2014

I don't know what the solution is, but I feel like there have to be ways to make jury selection and jury support systems better than they are now.

It involves paying jurors a living wage, plus an extra allowance if they are the caregivers to people, plus transportation costs, plus food costs. It also obliges employers to continue to hire people and not penalize them for being on jury duty (wrt vacation pay, seniority, shifts, etc). This is very expensive, which is why it won't happen.
posted by jeather at 12:30 PM on August 22, 2014 [2 favorites]

The first definition in the Shorter OED is: 1. The killing, by a human being, of a human being.
posted by OmieWise at 12:31 PM on August 22, 2014 [1 favorite]

Someone should start up a gofundme or whatever to "Support Officer Wilson's Constitutional Right to a Fair Trial", with the small print mentioning that all funds will go to the ACLU, which in fact will defend the rights of people to fair trials.
posted by Flunkie at 12:31 PM on August 22, 2014 [34 favorites]

Homicide.

homicide
n. the killing of a human being due to the act or omission of another. Included among homicides are murder and manslaughter, but not all homicides are a crime, particularly when there is a lack of criminal intent. Non-criminal homicides include killing in self-defense, a misadventure like a hunting accident or automobile wreck without a violation of law like reckless driving, or legal (government) execution. Suicide is a homicide, but in most cases there is no one to prosecute if the suicide is successful. Assisting or attempting suicide can be a crime.

See also: justifiable homicide manslaughter murder self-defense suicide

posted by phearlez at 12:32 PM on August 22, 2014 [1 favorite]

I'm on to contribute for that, Flunkie. Anyone have an ACLU contact who can help with the particulars of making it go direct to them and no funky tax situation?
posted by bitter-girl.com at 12:32 PM on August 22, 2014

The ACLU wouldn't do it; they're very strict about how they fund raise.
posted by dejah420 at 12:37 PM on August 22, 2014 [5 favorites]

I will remind everyone that if gofundme stopped taking legal defense donations because a crime had been alleged, that will affect more people than just this guy, including people where it is their only chance of hiring a competent defense lawyer.
posted by corb at 12:37 PM on August 22, 2014

I would urge you to look at some of the comments that accompanied the donations to Wilson's "legal defense" and see if you still think that this funding drive is really about his ability to hire a defense lawyer.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 12:39 PM on August 22, 2014 [17 favorites]

Don't be disingenuous. That is not at all why people are angry with gofundme.

Plus, all of his legal bills will be carried by his department, the county, and/or his union. This 'fundraiser' is rewarding a lynching and nothing more.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 12:41 PM on August 22, 2014 [14 favorites]

Ironically I think all the protestors would like to see him have a "fair trial" too.
posted by Artw at 12:41 PM on August 22, 2014 [1 favorite]

Yeah, uh, I'm not concerned about the implications with gofundme.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 12:41 PM on August 22, 2014 [1 favorite]

Related?

Court OKs Barring High IQs for Cops
posted by Joey Michaels at 12:43 PM on August 22, 2014 [9 favorites]

Darren Wilson Gofundme campaign has become hub of racism and hate
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 12:47 PM on August 22, 2014 [8 favorites]

Court OKs Barring High IQs for Cops

Also not The Onion.
posted by Foosnark at 12:49 PM on August 22, 2014 [19 favorites]

The original video that the police released has a second angle...

Ah, I bet that's what he was thinking of. Thanks, smackfu.
posted by fivebells at 12:55 PM on August 22, 2014

Pierce: The Body in the Street

I keep coming back to one simple moment, one ghastly fact. One image, from which all the other images have flowed.

They left the body in the street.

Dictators leave bodies in the street.

Petty local satraps leave bodies in the street.

Warlords leave bodies in the street.
...
Bodies are not left in the streets of the leafy suburbs. The bodies of dogs and cats, or squirrels and raccoons, let alone the bodies of children, are not left in the streets of the leafy suburbs. No bodies are left in the streets of the financial districts. Freeze to death on a bench in the financial districts and you are whisked away before your inconvenient body can disturb the folks in line at the Starbucks across the street. But the body of a boy can be left in the street for four hours in a place like Ferguson, Missouri, and who knows whether it was because people wanted to make a point, or because nobody gave a damn whether he was there or not.

posted by tonycpsu at 12:56 PM on August 22, 2014 [53 favorites]

Court OKs Barring High IQs for Cops

The big brain am winning again! I am the greetest!
posted by one more dead town's last parade at 1:00 PM on August 22, 2014 [4 favorites]

I wonder what a campaign for departments to repudiate Jordan v. New London would look like. After all, the decision doesn't say they have to reject smart people.
posted by rhizome at 1:07 PM on August 22, 2014 [1 favorite]

The defense of the donation page is really reminiscent of the defense of George Zimmerman's donation stuff. As I recall, the same people were making the same concerned arguments. It's almost like the shooting of an unarmed African American man raises all those concerns whenever it happens.
posted by OmieWise at 1:09 PM on August 22, 2014 [4 favorites]

I'm not saying the donations are pure interest in legal defense. I'm sure a lot of those giving are straight up racists. What I'm saying is that there's no clear cut justification that doesn't fuck other people as well.

Disclaimer, I guess, right now I know activists raising legal defense money there to defend against bullshit police charges.
posted by corb at 1:17 PM on August 22, 2014

Given that there are no charges against Darren Wilson, and no likelihood of charges at this point, that seems like a very different situation than someone raising funds to defend themselves against ACTUAL charges. To argue otherwise would be rather disingenuous.
posted by palomar at 1:22 PM on August 22, 2014 [10 favorites]

palomar, they are basically giving him prize money.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 1:24 PM on August 22, 2014 [12 favorites]

corb: What I'm saying is that there's no clear cut justification that doesn't fuck other people as well.

This has no basis in fact unless you're asserting that we must arrive at a unified one-size-fits-all principle that can't ever change based on the details of the case.

In reality, gofundme is a private company that exercises discretion in how it enforces its terms of service. These terms of service explicitly call out racial intolerance and hate as things they can terminate campaigns for. All people are doing is using their right of free speech to tell gofundme that they believe this campaign promotes racial intolerance. gofundme then exercises its due diligence in investigating the claim. As long as the violations of the TOS are legitimate, and there's no evidence that gofundme is being discriminatory in how it enforces those terms, I don't see what the problem could be.
posted by tonycpsu at 1:28 PM on August 22, 2014 [13 favorites]

they are basically giving him prize money.

more like "bounty."
posted by Floydd at 1:29 PM on August 22, 2014 [10 favorites]

It's not a defense fund. It's a bounty.
posted by dhartung at 1:32 PM on August 22, 2014 [13 favorites]

I think the fundraiser is gross and the people donating to it obviously have at best over-the-top authoritarian tendencies and more likely are just racist. I don't think there was any harm in asking GoFundMe to cancel the fundraiser given the lack of any actual charges in the case - that for sure was potentially a big pile of money in exchange for shooting a black person. Now that they have involved the PBA as a shell at least it's not personal enrichment for Wilson.

And as said above, GoFundMe can shitcan this one fundraiser without being bound like this is some sort of legal precedent. I'll concede that it would be a bad precedent, even for cases where charges have not been filed - you may have good reasons for employing a lawyer even before any charges are filed. But GoFundMe can do what they like.

Honestly, GoFundMe is just gross by itself. Their skim off the top is completely disproportionate to what they provide - that 5% doesn't even cover transaction costs and their transaction service is too expensive too. This is one of the few times I thought that was a good thing, though the fact that 1/20th of the racist money goes to a crappy org is poor consolation. And that gross percentage is no doubt exactly why they're not taking a stance on this.
posted by phearlez at 1:34 PM on August 22, 2014 [3 favorites]

"The big brain am winning again! I am the greetest!"

NOW I AM LEAVING EARTH FOR NO RAISIN
posted by klangklangston at 1:41 PM on August 22, 2014 [6 favorites]

phearlez: "Their skim off the top is completely disproportionate to what they provide - that 5% doesn't even cover transaction costs"

Yeah, their 5% turns into 8% as soon as you look at the details. Almost 10% for charities. Which is a ridiculous overhead.
posted by dejah420 at 1:59 PM on August 22, 2014

You'll note in the information shared by roomthreseventeen that the GoFundMe campaign is for "potential legal fees, relocation and living expenses." It is expressly not for actual current legal fees (though this fact might be lost on folks donating who may well think that Officer Wilson is languishing in a cell waiting summary execution by the ACLU).

I think "reward" or "bounty" accurately reflects what is going on.
posted by Joey Michaels at 2:10 PM on August 22, 2014 [4 favorites]

So, this is going to pay for his condo in mexico (relocation fees).
posted by el io at 2:18 PM on August 22, 2014

We were talking about restaurants in Ferguson earlier and how they've responded to all of this. I was happy to see this coverage on my own publication's dining blog today about how they've weathered all of this—and supported the protesters and community members, many of whom work at those businesses. (In some cases, they've stayed open by serving the police, and in other cases, they've seen their business hurt by police presence—it's not in the story, but I heard earlier that at least one restaurant that just opened there has been basically blocked in by police all week.)

The story also mentions something I'd forgotten about: the fact that two tornadoes had hit Ferguson in the past few years. Add that to the list of hardships people there have endured. There are still tarps on roofs up there.
posted by limeonaire at 2:30 PM on August 22, 2014 [2 favorites]

we must arrive at a unified one-size-fits-all principle that can't ever change based on the details of the case

Oh hey, you just defined libertarianism!
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 2:42 PM on August 22, 2014 [3 favorites]

And there was that really bad storm just the week before the shooting that over turned trees and knocked power out to some parts of North County for more than a day, limeonaire. Ever noticed how the power company usually seems to be able to get the power back on in other parts of STL in a couple of hours, but somehow always gets to NoCo last?
posted by BlueJae at 3:02 PM on August 22, 2014 [1 favorite]

Article in Colorlines on Black Feminists Responding to Ferguson. Summarizes a few different articles, making connections to reproductive justice and mothers losing their children to violence, and to the murders of trans black women, among other topics.
posted by gingerbeer at 3:12 PM on August 22, 2014 [1 favorite]

we must arrive at a unified one-size-fits-all principle that can't ever change based on the details of the case

Oh hey, you just defined libertarianism!

There's plenty of ideologies that are inflexible. Libertarianism has it's unique frustrations, but I'm not sure this is one of them. And plenty of awful ideologies can have practitioners whose perspectives change as new facts come in.
posted by el io at 3:30 PM on August 22, 2014

OK, so this is via The Guardian. I don't know if I consider this dox'ing or not. This is an hour long video where the police officer who pushes Don Lemon in this video refers to Black people as "perverts", gay people as "sodomites", and Obama an illegal immigrant.

I honestly, honestly believe that people have the right to these opinions, even public servants. But I worry that these are the attitudes tat contribute to the killings of unarmed children.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 3:32 PM on August 22, 2014 [6 favorites]

OK, this is very confusing. ACLU just uploaded this, and claims they previously left off the last three pages by accident?
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 3:37 PM on August 22, 2014 [1 favorite]

I honestly, honestly believe that people have the right to these opinions, even public servants.

They have the right to their opinions. No one has the right to express them without facing any consequences. I don't really give a shit about (for example) what Donald Sterling thinks about black people, but I sure as shit care what public servants say because I'm paying them to do their job without bias.
posted by desjardins at 3:38 PM on August 22, 2014 [19 favorites]

Officer Page demonstrates via his words that he doesn't actually believe in the rule of law. A police officer who proudly professes that he serves a law that is above the laws of state and country shouldn't be charged with enforcing those laws.

Now, when religious police are introduced into the United States to make sure that we're all behaving like good, proper Christians, I think Officer Page would be a fine candidate.
posted by Joey Michaels at 3:42 PM on August 22, 2014 [2 favorites]

roomthreeseventeen: "Here is the Guardian article."

I am honestly a little sick to my stomach after reading this
posted by Strass at 3:50 PM on August 22, 2014 [2 favorites]

OK, this is very confusing. ACLU just uploaded this, and claims they previously left off the last three pages by accident?

Oh great, so that's still nothing, but now we'll hear about how ACLU is hiding stuff forever.
posted by Artw at 3:53 PM on August 22, 2014 [1 favorite]

I am honestly a little sick to my stomach after reading this

That guy is absolutely representative of the majority of cops in the US. At least the part I'm from.
posted by junco at 3:55 PM on August 22, 2014 [4 favorites]

So that cop (Dan Page) is a:) racist, b:) theocratic, c:) an 'oathkeeper', d:) thinks Obama is from Kenya, e:) homophobic, f:) hates everybody (his words)

But for gods sake, if any of us try to allege that the situation in Ferguson has anything to do with race relations we are 'race baiters'.

With typical transparency:

After viewing the video clip, the Guardian asked a St Louis County police spokesman repeatedly throughout Friday to confirm that Page was indeed a police officer who had worked on the protests. The spokesman initially said: “I don’t recognise the name.”

posted by el io at 3:59 PM on August 22, 2014 [25 favorites]

Jesus. I am more than little bit sick to my stomach. I have no words at the moment. Just a roil of negative feelings.
posted by futz at 4:01 PM on August 22, 2014

Hmm. So maybe a couple more answers in the last few comments? This adds another name, Dan Page, to No. 18 (the list of officers who threatened people), and the rest of the St. Louis County report released to the ACLU (with more verbose details in this USA Today timeline) partly explains No. 10, why no ambulance was called after the shooting. But still the question remains, why was EMS staging for four hours? And if an ambulance was nearby, why was Brown's body loaded into a police SUV?

The thing I fear, though, is that a few token racist fucks will be relieved of duty while the pressure's on, but the larger problems won't be addressed, and after a while people will stop paying attention to the aftermath.
posted by limeonaire at 4:07 PM on August 22, 2014 [5 favorites]

Damn, I just watched that Dan Page video. He is clearly unfit to be a police officer. Listen to his opinion on domestic violence. He considers domestic disputes a waste of police officer time. "If you don't like each other that much just kill each other and get it over with ... Don't be wasting cops time, just shoot each other and get it over with."

HOW IS HE ALLOWED TO BE A POLICE OFFICER WHEN HE HAS SUCH DISRESPECT FOR THE LAW?
posted by Arbac at 4:15 PM on August 22, 2014 [24 favorites]

palomar: "Given that there are no charges against Darren Wilson, and no likelihood of charges at this point, that seems like a very different situation than someone raising funds to defend themselves against ACTUAL charges. To argue otherwise would be rather disingenuous."

If Officer Wilson isn't already incurring legal fees and associated costs he's an idiot for not calling a lawyer as soon as the shit hit the fan. Even if that lawyer just said "trust your union lawyer".

BlueJae: "Ever noticed how the power company usually seems to be able to get the power back on in other parts of STL in a couple of hours, but somehow always gets to NoCo last?"

I'm going to guess NoCo is the older and poorer part of town? If so everything else being equal this makes sense from a pure greatest good point of view. Older electrical infrastructure is going to fail more and in more interesting ways (especially if service is overhead rather than underground). More customers will come back on line faster if you start with the easier fixes. And from a purely financial point of view more affluent neighborhoods are probably going to consume more power on a per customer basis.

Or it could be a racial and class bias but there are potentially reasons it's just good triage.
posted by Mitheral at 4:23 PM on August 22, 2014 [1 favorite]

I'm sure he thinks he respects the law just fine - those people just don't fall under its jurisdiction.
posted by merelyglib at 4:31 PM on August 22, 2014 [1 favorite]

Yeah, Florissant Valley was one of the first places in this area to be settled—note the French influence in the name, and the Spanish influences in some of the architecture.

But still...there's a reason I wrote this note to self on a Post-it months ago: "North gets ignored."
posted by limeonaire at 4:47 PM on August 22, 2014

Are we sure that it is only a few token racist fucks at this point?

*magic 8 ball says...................no*
posted by futz at 5:06 PM on August 22, 2014 [5 favorites]

The surreal nature of the money in support of the officer weirdly reminds me of Calley from Mai Lai:

Of all the soldiers who faced the My Lai court martial, William Calley was the only man to be convicted. Damned by the evidence of men he led, in 1971 he was found guilty of 22 murders and sentenced to life with hard labour; but then events took a twist which today seems almost as incomprehensible as the massacre itself.

Instead of dismissing Calley as a cold-blooded killer, the majority of ordinary Americans accepted his claim - that he was simply a patriotic soldier, faithfully acting out his duty - and viewed him as a heroic martyr.

Even in the peace movement some were willing to believe he was merely a lowly scapegoat for the real architects of the war: a theory Oliver Stone will doubtless explore.

Nixon sensed which way the wind was blowing and within a few days, Calley was quietly transferred from the tough military prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, to house arrest in a comfortable apartment at Fort Benning, Georgia, where was able to drink alcohol and entertain his girlfriend.

He served three years there before being paroled in 1974 with a tacit presidential pardon.

Free to resume his life at 31, Calley ditched the girl who had loyally stood by him during his years in custody, and married Penny Vick, the daughter of a wealthy jeweller in Columbus, Georgia.

Their wedding was the society event of the year. They were serenaded by the local sheriff, a baritone, and guests included the Mayor of Columbus and the judge who granted his liberty.

The newlyweds moved into a smart, detached bungalow, and Calley qualified as a master gemmologist. When his father-in-law retired, he took over the reins of the lucrative family business - a position beyond his dreams before he served in Vietnam.

By all accounts, Calley was accepted without question as a pillar of the community. link here.

His life sentence, however, was met with nationwide protest, most of whom believed that Calley showed a courageous allegiance to his country. The "Free Calley" movement painted the Lieutenant as the scapegoat for the government's failed policies in Vietnam and influenced the political atmosphere in Washington with effective protests. "The Battle Hymn of Lt. Calley" sold 200,000 copies, 5,000 telegrams were sent to the White House on the subject, flags in Florida were lowered to half mast, Army veterans turned in their medals, and car bumper stickers across the country demanded, "Free Calley."

Under mounting pressure from the public, President Richard Nixon intervened on April 1, 1971, and ordered Lieutenant Calley released from the army stockade and placed under house arrest. Calley's sentence was reduced the following August, and reduced again in April of 1974 when he returned to the stockade. When he was released on parole on November 9, 1974, Calley had served a total of four months in a stockade, despite being found guilty for the deaths of 22 Vietnamese civilians. 2nd link here

We are good at rationalizing, suppressing and even fetishizing the god awful. So, I am not surprised at the support for the police officers from a population that has been trained for decades in the civic religion.
posted by jadepearl at 5:06 PM on August 22, 2014 [68 favorites]

Wow. Probably like my son will remember me weeping and angry about Ferguson, I remember my mother weeping and angry about Mai Lai. I had no idea that's how it turned out.
posted by dejah420 at 5:26 PM on August 22, 2014 [11 favorites]

It hadn't dawned on me to ask this until right now, but is it SOP for police departments to not write up reports when they shoot somebody? I'm assuming that its normal for a report to be written and for this situation to be abnormal, but maybe I'm just being naive.
posted by Joey Michaels at 5:31 PM on August 22, 2014

St. Louis County Police statement on Officer Page.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 5:35 PM on August 22, 2014 [1 favorite]

"How it turned out" includes the perpetual association of Calley's name with an egregious war crime in the historical record. Yeah he got off easy individually, but not with honor.

I think Ferguson's Finest can rest assured they will be similarly long remembered for the spectacle they have presented for the last two weeks.
posted by spitbull at 5:36 PM on August 22, 2014 [4 favorites]

St. Louis County Police statement on Officer Page.

I can't wait until they suspend or fire the guy, but even this strongly worded statement is more than they've said after one of their officers shot an unarmed person multiple times at distance (from what I knew last). They won't even get why people will be abuzz.
posted by cashman at 5:41 PM on August 22, 2014 [4 favorites]

Rm317, or someone, could you post the FB statement?
posted by futz at 5:45 PM on August 22, 2014

Yep:

Some of you may have already seen the video of the St. Louis County Police Officer speaking off-duty at an Oath Keepers event. If you haven't we are sure you will in the coming days as news circulates the release of the video.

Chief Jon Belmar was notified of this video's existence today and upon a abbreviated viewing of the video was disturbed by the conversation being had. Chief Belmar does not expect this kind of rhetoric from his officers, just like they don't expect it from him.

Chief Belmar, on behalf of the St. Louis County Police Department, would like to apologize to the community, anyone that video has or will effect, and to the other hard working officers on the detail with the officer in question because they deserve better than that. While the officer has never been involved in an officer involved shooting, the statements made about killing are unacceptable and not what we are about as a Department.

We hold our officers to a high standard of honor both on and off duty. While we as a department do not have an issue with officers expressing themselves, this was disturbing and unacceptable. The officer is a 35 year veteran of this department and has been deployed numerous times in military service. He had passed the evaluations upon returning from deployment and there was no indication of this attitude.

Chief Belmar would again like to apologize to anyone this video has offended and aska any videos of this nature be reported so we can take proper action against any officer not meeting our standards.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 5:48 PM on August 22, 2014 [7 favorites]

That is some terrible writing in desperate need of a proofreader. Among other things...
posted by futz at 6:05 PM on August 22, 2014 [1 favorite]

Okay, I've read that statement over twice now, and while I see it says Chief Belmar is disturbed by Page's statement, he does NOT say that he will be taking any action against Page.

So, how disturbed is he really?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:06 PM on August 22, 2014 [2 favorites]

by the way, the comments are pretty much worth reading on that FB post - lots of questioning how someone can work for that department for 35 years and somehow his racism and gun-ho attitude can not be detected

surely that wasn't the only time he made comments like that
posted by pyramid termite at 6:07 PM on August 22, 2014 [8 favorites]

The nonprofit shares the same address as the police union. When asked whether Missouri unions were supporting the GoFundMe account, a representative for the state Missouri Fraternal Order of Police told BuzzFeed “that account is run by Lodge 15.”
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 6:09 PM on August 22, 2014 [5 favorites]

hmmm - so how many tear gas canisters can 250k buy?
posted by pyramid termite at 6:14 PM on August 22, 2014

roomthreeseventeen: "The nonprofit shares the same address as the police union. When asked whether Missouri unions were supporting the GoFundMe account, a representative for the state Missouri Fraternal Order of Police told BuzzFeed “that account is run by Lodge 15.”"

That's what limonaire and I said upstream. She ran the corp check in MO, and I ran the tax ID at the IRS.
posted by dejah420 at 6:20 PM on August 22, 2014 [11 favorites]

Holy shit, no police officer should be allowed to be this insane. No one this insane should be allowed to own a gun period:

in 2015 events are gonna start happening that will transform the world into this [shows new world order] ... this is gonna happen, it cannot be stopped. you gotta start teaching your children. you need to get that 5, 6 year old and teach them their birth certificate, and you need to start pounding it into them. you gotta make your mind up to man up or get out. lead, follow or move! this is serious business. there's gonna be a lot of blood folks, because you're looking at one 60 year old man who's not gonna go along with it. been there done that. if I die I go to heaven - what are they gonna do kill me? hell I died a long time ago ... the world has been broken down into 10 regions ... by 2020 this will be in effect. the United States will be subdivided into 10 regions. everything is 10. everything is 10. okay?

posted by crayz at 6:23 PM on August 22, 2014 [19 favorites]

In case your wondering what brand of crazy '10 regions' is, it's this brand of crazy.
posted by el io at 6:28 PM on August 22, 2014 [14 favorites]

is it SOP for police departments to not write up reports when they shoot somebody?

Good god no! My son has brought that up himself. He said that he and "almost" all the other cops he knows will try not use their tasers, guns or batons because when they do, he said the paperwork is extreme. In fact yesterday while we were talking about this very situation, he got an email from work about a report he filed 6 weeks ago that was kicked back by the lieutenant that reviewed it requesting he be more detailed about something (he couldn't go into anything specific, obviously). He was irritated it took them 6 weeks to ask for more information.
posted by hollygoheavy at 6:30 PM on August 22, 2014 [8 favorites]

Hoo boy, kicking off your Israel-invasion prophecy with "if you know eschatology, and I hope that you do ..." is exactly how I like the people with a monopoly of violence in my society to be talking!
posted by crayz at 6:32 PM on August 22, 2014 [8 favorites]

Thank you, Hollygoheavy. It sounds, then, like the absence of paperwork is just as fishy as it sounds.
posted by Joey Michaels at 6:32 PM on August 22, 2014

In case your wondering what brand of crazy '10 regions' is, it's this brand of crazy.

That's exactly what I was wondering
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 6:36 PM on August 22, 2014

Oh man, starting at about 46:28...
posted by dejah420 at 6:36 PM on August 22, 2014 [1 favorite]

That is a lot of crazy is what.
posted by rtha at 6:39 PM on August 22, 2014 [2 favorites]

I sent an email complaint to gofundme but find myself wishing anonymous would also take an interest in gofundme.
posted by aliksd at 6:46 PM on August 22, 2014 [4 favorites]

Yeah, where's anonymous when you need them?
posted by Golden Eternity at 6:49 PM on August 22, 2014

Isn't there some significant overlap in the Anonymous and 4chan crowds, or is that in the past and/or apocryphal?
posted by limeonaire at 6:52 PM on August 22, 2014 [1 favorite]

you need to get that 5, 6 year old and teach them their birth certificate, and you need to start pounding it into them.

what does that even mean?
posted by desjardins at 6:52 PM on August 22, 2014 [3 favorites]

Presumably, you'll need your U.S. American birth certificate to get into heaven because St. Peter won't let any Kenyans in and he knows a fake certificate when he sees it.
posted by Joey Michaels at 6:54 PM on August 22, 2014 [18 favorites]

you paste your kid's birth certificate onto a wooden paddle and ...
posted by pyramid termite at 6:55 PM on August 22, 2014

Crayz, is that a video of a Ferguson cop?
posted by futz at 6:56 PM on August 22, 2014

St. Louis County.
posted by rollbiz at 6:57 PM on August 22, 2014

Your white american birth cert.
posted by futz at 6:57 PM on August 22, 2014 [1 favorite]

futz, he is a St. Louis County cop.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 6:58 PM on August 22, 2014 [1 favorite]

Thanks. Sorry for all the questions. Watching video eats up my monthly gig quickly.
posted by futz at 7:01 PM on August 22, 2014

I think the Redemption Movement is what he's referring to.
posted by Jeanne at 7:02 PM on August 22, 2014

I'm really very surprised at these cops being so blatantly public on social media about their political views. My son isnt allowed to have pictures of himself in uniform on his personal FB page and has asked his family and friends to not post pictures of him in uniform on our pages. The police dept has an official FB page and they will post pictures of various officers in uniform doing things, but they really do not want their employees spouting off craziness while appearing to be a cop. Also, my son and all the guys he works with keep their FB, twitter and instagram on lockdown.
posted by hollygoheavy at 7:03 PM on August 22, 2014 [11 favorites]

He can have his FB open if he wants, he just can't put pictures of himself in uniform on it. He keeps it private because he doesn't want people knowing what his wife and son look like, if that makes sense.
posted by hollygoheavy at 7:13 PM on August 22, 2014

Yeah, where's anonymous when you need them?

On 4chan spewing racial slurs and feeling awful clever about it?
posted by evidenceofabsence at 7:58 PM on August 22, 2014 [7 favorites]

Wow. Probably like my son will remember me weeping and angry about Ferguson, I remember my mother weeping and angry about Mai Lai. I had no idea that's how it turned out.

I remember all those cities on fire during the summer of 1967, the screen of our portable Zenith, stout as a drug store safe, flickering like science fiction.
Police clad in their blues, topped by construction helmets, toting shotguns at port arms; the National Guard and their battle rifles. Burnt out homes and stores collapsed into the street. Bodies.
Television crews, reporting live, fleeing. More bodies. Tanks. Every city a tinderbox...

Bill Calley is a cheap-jack, shit-ass punk, the small-time war criminal who sacrificed a few years for all of the crimes committed by Nixon & his war junta.
Those years of incarceration were nothing compared to the horror the U.S. government inflicted upon Viet Nam, Cambodia, Laos, etc...

I recently celebrated the 40th anniversary of the demise of Nixon with an enormous slug of gin. I tossed my head back and cackled with insane glee.
Then Mrs. Hoho reminded me that Calley and Henry Kissinger are still alive - enjoying the good life somewhere in America --
along with the entire gang of grifters and profiteers that destroyed Iraq, then skulked off smirking like rich teenagers who know
they will never be required to pay for anything they've broken, even an entire continent.

It was summer in Seattle. Too many 90 degree days for the transplants. The Navy aerobatic team ripping up the sky with their powerful jets...
What was once a free-for-all celebration the entire city welcomed had been converted into yet another money-net for the downtown businessmen.
Mrs. Hoho and I both had our fill of summer in Seattle. We determined our best course of action was to get drunk and heckle the tourists disgorged from the cruise ships.
Why not? We're both old and fat enough to meld in with the crowd. Seattle has its own special way of dealing with 'mixed couples', especially when the man is black.
But not the two of us. Not tonight. We grabbed a sack of whiskey and beer from Kress, then wandered back across that tracks that carry the oil cars
that will someday dive off the rails and incinerate everything within a 9 block area, including the tourist center of Seattle, and probably us as well if we're home.

There were no trains that evening, and the cruise ship piers were empty. There weren't any idling police boats to board and joyride. There was no fun for us tonight.
We climbed the steps leading through the Market toward home, handing off the the bottle of whiskey to a slim hobo who was minding his own business.
We were prepared for a quiet night of fat, happy slumber. No silly interruptions of lust and the door locked against cats.

But when we entered the apartment, we encountered Esme, who had connected a live internet feed from the Mac to the big screen with an HDMI cable.
A cop had gunned down another black man for no reason other than he didn't comply with whatever silly orders the cop had issued.
Then the police left his body in the street for several hours like a dead dog with no explanations or apologies.

While we were out, the tinderbox had ignited. Ferguson was on fire...
posted by Pudhoho at 8:11 PM on August 22, 2014 [31 favorites]

I'm really very surprised at these cops being so blatantly public on social media about their political views.

It's terrible, but not unusual. Here in NYC, there's an online forum for cops called Thee Rant that's infamous for its overt, over-the-top racism. Not linking, because NSFL.
posted by evidenceofabsence at 8:17 PM on August 22, 2014

Oh yeah, we have that here in Chicago too. It's a blogspot site called Second City Cop. bleargh.
posted by tivalasvegas at 8:21 PM on August 22, 2014

It's been mentioned before, but these are jaw-dropping photos by photographer Alex Garland documenting the Seattle black man, Raymond Wilford, who was pepper-sprayed by a mall cop for trying to get past a confrontation caused by a white dude (who was not apprehended or sprayed). Everyone's face is clearly visible; nothing has apparently been done about it.
posted by emjaybee at 8:29 PM on August 22, 2014 [20 favorites]

It's crucial we pry off the woodwork and examine what racists say. It's crucial we witness, firsthand, their words and their desires.
These individuals are not evil. They are frightened little people who shout everything you wish did not exist.
Do not be afraid, do not turn your face away from them.
Do not ignore them, attempt to shutter them away from yourself because you think you are better...

This is how the holocaust was allowed to happen: all of the people who could have mattered turned their faces, curled their lips and pretended these people don't exist.
Next thing you know they're on your doorstep with their laws, and the guns to enforce them.
posted by Pudhoho at 8:45 PM on August 22, 2014 [4 favorites]

What I've Learned from Two Years Collecting Data on Police Killings

The biggest thing I've taken away from this project is something I'll never be able to prove, but I'm convinced to my core: The lack of such a database is intentional. No government—not the federal government, and not the thousands of municipalities that give their police forces license to use deadly force—wants you to know how many people it kills and why.

I heard an interview yesterday or the day before about this lack of national database, and the guy they were talking to was like, yeah, it's weird how fragmented and inconsistent the data is! And I was screaming at the radio THAT IS ON PURPOSE THEY DO THAT ON PURPOSE IT IS NOT A MYSTERY.
posted by rtha at 9:03 PM on August 22, 2014 [57 favorites]

(Is the video that crayz linked to above the same "officer" Page video that was mentioned earlier? Thanks. )
posted by futz at 9:13 PM on August 22, 2014

And is there a transcript?
posted by futz at 9:14 PM on August 22, 2014

What I've Learned from Two Years Collecting Data on Police Killings

A noble yet daunting undertaking.
Worth noting - the project has it's own website:
http://www.fatalencounters.org/
direct link to donate page

And he's also asking for help on the research end (refer to the article above).
posted by p3t3 at 9:30 PM on August 22, 2014 [10 favorites]

I heard the same interview that you did Gotanda and agree with your assessment FWIW.
posted by futz at 9:39 PM on August 22, 2014 [1 favorite]

That was the interview, Gotanda! I had the same sense you did, about the between-the-lines stuff.
posted by rtha at 9:55 PM on August 22, 2014 [1 favorite]

And when I say execute I don't mean the cops are executing[...]

This backtracking is so ridiculous. So profoundly ridiculous. It was right there in front of you, dude. The words passed your lips.
posted by moink at 10:29 PM on August 22, 2014

A second gofundme is open with an additional $45,911 in contributions earmarked for Wilson. The total of the two gofundme's presently stands at $280,821 including a presumably significant $553 one in the name of Alfred C. Sharpton, Jr. Sadly, this money comes from 6,955 of my fellow Americans. I am appalled and bewildered.
posted by Anitanola at 10:49 PM on August 22, 2014 [4 favorites]

Gotanda was quoting someone else moink.
posted by futz at 10:50 PM on August 22, 2014

I am appalled and bewildered.

Crazification Factor

Obama vs. Alan Keyes. Keyes was from out of state, so you can eliminate any established political base; both candidates were black, so you can factor out racism; and Keyes was plainly, obviously, completely crazy. Batshit crazy. Head-trauma crazy. But 27% of the population of Illinois voted for him.[2] They put party identification, personal prejudice, whatever ahead of rational judgement. Hell, even like 5% of Democrats voted for him. That's crazy behaviour. I think you have to assume a 27% crazification factor in any population.[3]

posted by the man of twists and turns at 11:01 PM on August 22, 2014 [8 favorites]

I think the one thing Wilson could do to possibly win me over would be to accept all these racist donations, then give all the money to the Brown family and the Ferguson community.
posted by p3t3 at 11:02 PM on August 22, 2014 [2 favorites]

So what is going on in Ferguson tonight? Is no one paying attention because it is peaceful? No violence = no media attention?
posted by futz at 11:29 PM on August 22, 2014 [1 favorite]

If it bleeds, it leads.
posted by Justinian at 11:31 PM on August 22, 2014

God bless the attention span of the american media.
posted by futz at 11:33 PM on August 22, 2014

I think the one thing Wilson could do to possibly win me over would be to accept all these racist donations, then give all the money to the Brown family and the Ferguson community.

Oh hahahahahahhahah HA HA HA HA HA - cough cough cough cough cough, hahahahahHAHA HA HA AHHAA

HA HA HA HA HA HA.

Maybe in the first few seconds after he murdered Mike Brown this guy felt a twinge of remorse, but after all of his brother officers, his union and the DA supporting him?

hahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahhah Ha Ha Ha

Wilson, at this point genuinely believes he saved his community when he murdered Mike Brown.

Sorry, you're asking a moral weakling to return a bonanza which he is by now convinced he is entitled to.
posted by Pudhoho at 11:49 PM on August 22, 2014 [7 favorites]

Yeah, I don't seriously think that would or could happen. It was more of a "how cool would that be?" thought; it's more fun to think about than the depressing reality.
posted by p3t3 at 11:52 PM on August 22, 2014 [2 favorites]

Apparently there were about 100 people across the street from the police station about an hour ago, this many cops calmly faced off against them, and photographers still there too. Not sure about Big Media, guessing they'll be at the rally Sunday though-

Families of Trayvon Martin and Oscar Grant to join Michael Brown's parents on Sunday at a rally to call for peace: http://lat.ms/1BMMCSC

posted by hap_hazard at 11:59 PM on August 22, 2014 [3 favorites]

I expect that Wilson will never again work as a law enforcement officer, so there's that. He won't be able to keep working for Ferguson, assuming the Ferguson PD continues to exist, as the inevitable civil rights lawsuit and settlement will include a stipulation that he be removed. He'll be too toxic for any professional police force to hire him, and he'll have it made for a while anyway on the fatuous crypto-racist lecture circuit, probably on a double bill with Page. Look for him to emerge on FOX around 2018 or so as "Policing Expert Dennis Wilson", where he'll have the fig leaf of representing a two-bit think tank. These guys do nothing if not take care of their own.
posted by dhartung at 12:01 AM on August 23, 2014 [6 favorites]

I shd say I don't know who 'animal new york' is, but those three were all retweeted by Antonio French, so I figure they're legit.
posted by hap_hazard at 12:03 AM on August 23, 2014

Pudhoho, give p3t3 some credit. Jeez.
posted by futz at 12:11 AM on August 23, 2014

You wildly misinterpreted his comment.
posted by futz at 12:16 AM on August 23, 2014

The only charity that the officer has endorsed so far is through the Shield of Hope Foundation of the Fraternal Order of Police. Checks may be made payable to:

FYI, this comment was linked on tumblr and has gone viral with over 800 notes.
posted by NoraReed at 12:22 AM on August 23, 2014 [8 favorites]

I shd say I don't know who 'animal new york' is, but those three were all retweeted by Antonio French, so I figure they're legit.

Never an FPP, but they've been mentioned in comments or vias since '06.
posted by dhartung at 12:38 AM on August 23, 2014

People were wondering upthread about the 4chan-related promotion of the Darren Wilson gofundme. The guy on twitter who first mentioned that, Shaun King, has posted a screenshot from the relevant board (He was linking to it yesterday, it's on /pol if you want to go there and... no, you don't. )

If you feel that you have any remaining faith in humanity that might be thereby put at risk, I'd advise you not to look at either the screenshot or that board (where you'd have to find a new thread anyway- the shot shows the thread as being 'part 79', so they're disappearing very quickly)

In the screenshot, there are several links to the gofundme in question and some others, as well as a calls both to target Shaun King for exposing them, and to attempt to discredit Anonymous with 'SJW' types via a fake, racist announcement.

So, I guess my point if there is one, besides that people suck much harder and with more malice than I usually like to admit to myself, is that despite the proximity of their origin, these dudes ain't Anonymous, and apparently regard them as a threat. And I hope they're correct to do so, because fuck all this.
posted by hap_hazard at 1:17 AM on August 23, 2014 [2 favorites]

another st louis area police officer suspended - used his facebook page to call protesters "rabid dogs" and asked "Where is a Muslim with a backpack when you need them."

he was one of those called in to police ferguson
posted by pyramid termite at 3:47 AM on August 23, 2014 [6 favorites]

About electoral politics in Ferguson:

'Would Michael Brown still be here if we voted for the right people?', Chris McGreal, The Guardian.

Ferguson’s White City Leadership Must Change, Charles D. Ellison, The Root.

In Ferguson, a movement builds for political engagement, Zachary Roth, MSNBC.

Sorta related:

The other side of Ferguson and its message of support, Errin Whack, Fuson.

posted by nangar at 4:45 AM on August 23, 2014 [8 favorites]

Antonio French: Missouri GOP leader calls Ferguson voter-registration drive 'disgusting' http://on.msnbc.com/1vcX9SK via @maddow
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 5:16 AM on August 23, 2014 [3 favorites]

Look for him to emerge on FOX around 2018 or so as "Policing Expert Dennis Wilson", where he'll have the fig leaf of representing a two-bit think tank. These guys do nothing if not take care of their own.

Yes, we cannot forgot that because Darren Wilson murdered a black kid, he is a hero in many people's eyes. He's set up to ride that lucrative gravy train of CPAC, Fox News, and conservative talk radio.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 5:31 AM on August 23, 2014 [8 favorites]

pyramid termite: "another st louis area police officer suspended - used his facebook page to call protesters "rabid dogs" and asked "Where is a Muslim with a backpack when you need them."

he was one of those called in to police ferguson"

These cops that are saying shit like this? This is only the ones dumb enough (or brazen enough, or both) to say it publicly, on record.
posted by notsnot at 5:41 AM on August 23, 2014 [3 favorites]

Well, not a hero as such but a victim. Another poor victim of the liberal media bias. The right loves to see it self as victims of the culture wars and takes on 'victims' as heroes. I think that's the key to fund raising.

The right wing funding machine is set to wring as much money out of its base as possible. Think of it as a welcoming casino full of slots that a comfy bus brings you to. About the same level of gratification.
posted by readery at 5:41 AM on August 23, 2014

Ferguson protests prove transformative for many: It's become apparent that anyone who has played a contributing role in this city's unsteady vortex has been reshaped in it.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 5:45 AM on August 23, 2014 [1 favorite]

A journalist laments the atrocious behavior of the press at Ferguson:

I WILL NOT BE RETURNING TO FERGUSON
posted by flapjax at midnite at 6:29 AM on August 23, 2014 [4 favorites]

"I mean, it paid three hundred and fifteen million dollars for the Huffington Post, millions of which Arianna Huffington, who has been tweeting about Ferguson a lot, personally received? Why can't the Huffington Post, an organization once valued at nearly a billion dollars, just like, hire Mariah Stewart, who seems like a nice person?"
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 6:51 AM on August 23, 2014 [6 favorites]

Self-Segregation: Why It's So Hard for Whites to Understand Ferguson: Overall, the social networks of whites are a remarkable 93 percent white. White American social networks are only one percent black, one percent Hispanic, one percent Asian or Pacific Islander, one percent mixed race, and one percent other race. In fact, fully three-quarters (75 percent) of whites have entirely white social networks without any minority presence. This level of social-network racial homogeneity among whites is significantly higher than among black Americans (65 percent) or Hispanic Americans (46 percent).
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:11 AM on August 23, 2014 [6 favorites]

Ferguson's Experience Offers Lessons on Integration: Mrs. Golliday's eight-mile journey from a poor, black section of St. Louis to a then predominately white suburb was part of a national migration that reshaped the landscape of American poverty. African-Americans left behind political infrastructures built over generations and took up residence in communities where the governments are sometimes less able to meet their needs.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:26 AM on August 23, 2014

St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Lessons from Ferguson: We earned this

The anger that simmered and then exploded in Ferguson has its roots in something more than a white cop from a force that doesn’t look like its community killing ... an unarmed black kid.
...

It’s easier to focus on distracting details of a shooting, or political battles between a governor and a prosecutor, and safe in our suburban enclaves, turn the page on Ferguson and pretend it was all a hazy hallucination.

This was not and is not a dream.

posted by nangar at 7:27 AM on August 23, 2014 [9 favorites]

Thanks for that link, nangar. Excellent editorial.
posted by GrammarMoses at 7:41 AM on August 23, 2014

Some Ferguson Protests Start To Look Like “Occupy”: They’ll stay “as long as it takes.”
posted by andoatnp at 8:01 AM on August 23, 2014 [1 favorite]

He'll be too toxic for any professional police force to hire him

I'm sure Arpaio would hire him in a red hot second.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 8:13 AM on August 23, 2014 [10 favorites]

Forget getting hired, there are plenty of places in the US where he could successfully run for office.
posted by elizardbits at 9:21 AM on August 23, 2014 [16 favorites]

Aw man. That Post-Dispatch editorial was going great until it suddenly, incongruously veered off into praise for Paul McKee's NorthSide Regeneration project.

The city’s choice to compete among others in the St. Louis region is the former Pruitt-Igoe site, located in the center of Paul McKee’s NorthSide Regeneration development. NorthSide is the first and only large-scale proposal in the city’s recent history to bring massive public and private investment to a community that has been ignored.

McKee, if you guys don't know about him, is a rich white developer who grew up not far from Ferguson in Overland, but now lives in the tiny, extremely well-off municipality of Huntleigh, out in West County. He's like the poster child for white flight, making his money building suburbs for rich people out west, such as the created-out-of-whole-cloth, creepily named WingHaven. Then he decided to focus his attentions on North County and north St. Louis with NorthPark and the NorthSide Regeneration project, respectively, in what has felt like a completely misguided, paternalistic attempt at cadging tax credits off of the state to impose his utopian vision upon areas where people already live.

If anything, the editorial instead should have mentioned NorthPark, a McKee project that has actually built something and gained some traction in North County, with companies like Express Scripts adding jobs to the area by opening offices there. The controversial NorthSide Regeneration project, on the other hand, has had a terrible effect on largely abandoned areas of North City that were already being homesteaded and revitalized by a generation of home buyers. This story from 2009 has more info on how that happened and how people there feel about it. (TLDR: Not good.) There's a reason why the name "McKee" is a charged one on the lips of those who live in North City.
posted by limeonaire at 9:30 AM on August 23, 2014 [14 favorites]

Revved Up - How Al Sharpton became Obama’s go-to man on race.

After huddling with Brown’s family and local community leaders, Sharpton connected directly with White House adviser and First Friend Valerie Jarrett, vacationing in her condo in the exclusive Oak Bluffs section of Martha’s Vineyard, not far from where President Obama and his family were staying. Obama was “horrified” by the images he was seeing on TV, Jarrett told Sharpton, and proceeded to pepper him with questions as she collected information for the president: How bad was the violence? Was it being fueled by outside groups—and could Sharpton do anything to talk them down? What did the Brown family want the White House to do?

posted by Golden Eternity at 9:39 AM on August 23, 2014

i watched that dan page video last night. i dont know when this was taken but i think this is him?
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 10:06 AM on August 23, 2014 [2 favorites]

Autopsy of 22 year old man that was handcuffed and shot in the chest in the back of a cop car is ruled a suicide
posted by futz at 10:13 AM on August 23, 2014 [13 favorites]

That is obscene. They're not even pretending... a gun he had hidden in his pants? Have cops suddenly stopped patting down suspects on arrest? Jesus fucking christ I hate people.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 10:18 AM on August 23, 2014

Brittney Cooper (essays linked above) is organizing a Freedom Ride to Ferguson.

On preview: Autopsy of 22 year old man that was handcuffed and shot in the chest in the back of a cop car is ruled a suicide

I just... Jesus. I'm out of words.
posted by scody at 10:18 AM on August 23, 2014 [11 favorites]

Autopsy of 22 year old man that was handcuffed and shot in the chest in the back of a cop car is ruled a suicide

"The family is puzzled as to how he could have shot himself in the chest with his hands cuffed behind his back."

I can't even.
posted by Weeping_angel at 10:21 AM on August 23, 2014 [13 favorites]

@Yamiche: Parents of #MichaelBrown and #TrayvonMartin will be together Sunday at a 5 pm CT Peace Rally.
posted by Golden Eternity at 11:05 AM on August 23, 2014

"Shot... in the chest with his hands cuffed behind his back"

Can you say "Execution", boys and girls?

If you think that's "an isolated incident", you haven't been paying attention for the last 4 decades.
posted by oneswellfoop at 11:07 AM on August 23, 2014 [2 favorites]

Re: the huffington post hiring reporters-- aol has a lot of money and is investing a lot into expanding the huffington post. But huffington post itself basically breaks even at best. If they started paying a bunch of reporters full time salaries, they'd lose money. You can can say that's not your problem, but they're one of the few large media outlets that consistently pushes a leftist point of view.
posted by empath at 11:19 AM on August 23, 2014

limonaire and dejah420's discovery is all over my tumblr and twitter with links to this thread. All of journalism got scooped on this one.
posted by pajamazon at 11:52 AM on August 23, 2014 [11 favorites]

Can you say "Execution", boys and girls?

I'd say that's the most likely explanation, but suicides in custody do happen sometimes as a result of careless frisking (Trigger warning [no pun intended]: link contains a video of a man shooting himself in the head.) And police have made a pretty strong case that it's possible to shoot one's self in the head while cuffed. I don't have cuffs or a gun replica, but when I half-assedly try the same experiment in that second video with a pen, I'm pretty convinced that I could shoot myself diagonally through the heart from under my left shoulder blade and out through my right breast while cuffed.

I'd guess the autopsy's online somewhere. It would be interesting reading.
posted by fivebells at 12:01 PM on August 23, 2014 [3 favorites]

Vice says the entry wound was in the front of his chest.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 12:52 PM on August 23, 2014 [3 favorites]

I think the explanation is that the coroner is involved in a criminal conspiracy after the fact. Unfortunately the family can't afford an independent autopsy (a funding page is located in the vice article).

Ferguson wasn't some strange aberration, but rather part of a very long pattern in this country.

Cops can murder and get away with it. Usually with very few to complain about it (what can be done, after all?).
posted by el io at 1:11 PM on August 23, 2014 [9 favorites]

The consequences of a “confrontation” with cops

Via.
posted by homunculus at 1:33 PM on August 23, 2014 [4 favorites]

Artist Mary Englebreit, possibly one of the least controversial artists ever, did a painting and is selling prints of it to benefit Michael Brown - and has gotten enormous blowback.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 1:41 PM on August 23, 2014 [13 favorites]

Mary's print is gorgeous. I have no idea what anyone could find objectionable about it.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 2:06 PM on August 23, 2014 [1 favorite]

Mary's print is gorgeous. I have no idea what anyone could find objectionable about it.

It suggests that there is a systemic problem with racism in society.
posted by jeather at 2:25 PM on August 23, 2014 [24 favorites]

I find it depressing that her print has raised $25,000 for Michael Brown's family while GoFundMe has brought in more than ten times that for the asshole who killed him.
posted by bitter-girl.com at 2:27 PM on August 23, 2014 [11 favorites]

Oh wow. So I finally sat down to write something about Ferguson, and when I just tried to search for someone's place of residence on St. Louis County's website, I got the following message: "The name search is currently unavailable until further notice. We apologize for this inconvenience."

I'm guessing this is meant to foil the doxxers—but it's also incredibly inconvenient to people who use that as a resource on a daily basis. It also raises real issues of transparency. This is an interesting development.
posted by limeonaire at 2:57 PM on August 23, 2014 [9 favorites]

Mary's print is gorgeous. I have no idea what anyone could find objectionable about it.

In a follow-up Facebook post (inexplicably removed and deemed “offensive” by the social media platform)...

Apparently Facebook has objections. Anybody wanna go look for some 'pro-police' posts that they DIDN'T take down? It should only take a minute or less. Just Reason #347 why I'm glad I deleted my Facebook account.
posted by oneswellfoop at 3:32 PM on August 23, 2014 [4 favorites]

I find it depressing that her print has raised $25,000 for Michael Brown's family while GoFundMe has brought in more than ten times that for the asshole who killed him.

Yeah. I want to buy a print, I just have to wait for payday.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 3:32 PM on August 23, 2014

The Two Very Different Worlds of Ferguson
The white community is worried about the city’s image. The black community wants justice.

Seems like it would be a good idea for the "Friends of Ferguson" to meet with the folks at Greater St. Mark Missionary Baptist Church.

Another Ferguson Cop Goes Off On Social Media; Threatens To Punch The US Attorney General

So this will be the fifth Ferguson cop to be suspended?
posted by Golden Eternity at 3:40 PM on August 23, 2014 [6 favorites]

"Friends of Ferguson"

With friends like that...
posted by oneswellfoop at 3:43 PM on August 23, 2014

So this will be the fifth Ferguson cop to be suspended?

At this rate the Ferguson PD will achieve racial parity in a month or so.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 3:57 PM on August 23, 2014 [5 favorites]

Obama orders review of police use of military hardware: official
posted by Artw at 4:05 PM on August 23, 2014 [4 favorites]

That is a St. Louis County police officer and an earlier one suspended was a St. Ann officer. Correct me if I am wrong but no Ferguson officers have been suspended.
posted by mlis at 4:05 PM on August 23, 2014

From Mary Engelbreit: Facebook took down my post , saying it was offensive!

WTF FACEBOOK ?!?!?!?!?

How could any sane decent human find anything the least bit objectionable about Mary Engelbreit's moving image ?!?!?

WTF ?!?!?

No, seriously, WTF ?!?!?
posted by marsha56 at 4:08 PM on August 23, 2014 [5 favorites]

Facebook got complaints from racists and they quickly moved to protect the fragile feelings of those racists.
posted by Joey Michaels at 4:14 PM on August 23, 2014 [19 favorites]

"...when I just tried to search for someone's place of residence on St. Louis County's website, I got the following message: 'The name search is currently unavailable until further notice. We apologize for this inconvenience.'"

Not to worry. I'm sure the functionality remains available to the police and other state authorities.
posted by klarck at 4:28 PM on August 23, 2014 [2 favorites]

Facebook got complaints from racists and they quickly moved to protect the fragile feelings of those racists.

As hard as it is for me to understand how anyone could object to this, I really can't understand how Facebook could acquiesce to their demands. Hell, I see tons of offensive shit on Facebook all the time. But, Mary Engelbreit's picture, really ??
posted by marsha56 at 4:30 PM on August 23, 2014

It's been hard watching this from just outside the STL metro. People are talking about this, but I'm not sure that includes the usual racist white trash idiots (Hoosiers in the local vernacular (sorry Indiana)).

I quit FB during Gaza/MH17 and am so glad I didn't go back. With the loss of Robin Williams, the unmasking of the police state (for non-radical white people), and crazy religious wars; the last thing I want to know is how the idiots I went to high school feel about it.

/rant
posted by schyler523 at 4:32 PM on August 23, 2014 [2 favorites]

it was the follow up post where she complained, civilly, about racist comments, that was deleted by facebook

she's reposted it on her timeline - and over a 1000 people have shared it and posted it on theirs, including me

that's the first time in years i've posted ANYTHING to facebook
posted by pyramid termite at 4:32 PM on August 23, 2014 [7 favorites]

Facebook got complaints from racists and they quickly moved to protect the fragile feelings of those racists.

In stark contrast to gofundme, who, while they did disable comments, and thank god because they were seriously egregious, has been bravely standing up for their own right to make $25,000ish, and counting, from the racist d-bags contributing to the black-kid-killer du jour.
posted by hap_hazard at 4:34 PM on August 23, 2014 [1 favorite]

I don't have video to back this up, but it's appeared on a few Twitter feeds: The mayor of #Ferguson said "the gremlins come out at night time and that's when the chaos breaks out"
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 4:41 PM on August 23, 2014

A Body’s Timeline: 4 Hours on a Ferguson Street
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 4:42 PM on August 23, 2014 [2 favorites]

With all the recent hubbub about Facebook collecting information, including 'psychographics' about its users, the best explanation for this action is that they have a private rating system for 'quality' users that diminishes the influence of the "Social Justice Warriors" and increases the influence of people... like those who objected to Engelbreit.

Re: the #mayorofferguson... "the gremlins come out at night time and that's when we mobilize the trolls and goblins" But seriously, is that any surprise from a man who officially Supports His Local Police?
posted by oneswellfoop at 4:47 PM on August 23, 2014

it was the follow up post where she complained, civilly, about racist comments, that was deleted by facebook

she's reposted it on her timeline - and over a 1000 people have shared it and posted it on theirs, including me

Oh, you're right, pyramid termite. I'm wrong. The image is still on her timeline along with an additional post that contains a link to a radio interview that she gave about it. While I'm still upset that they deleted her followup post, at least Facebook didn't delete the image itself.

My bad. I misunderstood the events here. Apologies to everyone for spreading around my own misunderstanding.
posted by marsha56 at 4:49 PM on August 23, 2014

In stark contrast to gofundme, who, while they did disable comments, and thank god because they were seriously egregious.

I thought the racist comments accompanying the donations to the murderous police should have stayed. It made it crystal clear to outside observers who exactly was supporting the killer cop.
posted by el io at 4:55 PM on August 23, 2014 [16 favorites]

It drives me up the fucking wall how much evidence we've gotten of the utter corruption and depravity of the various police officers and departments involved and there will most likely never ever be consequences for the likes of Page or Zoll. I feel utterly helpless.
posted by Phire at 4:57 PM on August 23, 2014 [6 favorites]

(Well, Page has already gotten suspended, but is that much more than a paid vacation?)
posted by Phire at 5:08 PM on August 23, 2014

A Black-led protest is shutting down a major intersection in DC and it's awesome. #DCFerguson #Ferguson #MikeBrown
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 5:57 PM on August 23, 2014 [6 favorites]

It made it crystal clear to outside observers who exactly was supporting the killer cop.

Well it's problematic. It was instructive to see that kind of stuff- it's not in my regular (IRL or internet) environment. So going from a place where conversation is about much more abstract kinds of racism- microagressions, learned TNC articles about historic patterns of organized economic oppression etc- to seeing people talking about 'animal control officers' was eye-opening.

But honestly, at this point, I find that I have no real idea how widespread this stuff really is, given that people trying to get attention for blatantly offensive stuff, are... disproportionately noticeable. (and when I saw the comments, which was after gofundme said they were going to remove them, but before they did- could have been a CDN/caching issue I guess- there were like 1 comment per 15-20 donations. So even then it wasn't obviously a slam-dunk DONATIONS = RACISM thing. Although I assume it was almost entirely racist anyway.)

And also, there's the problem that those /pol/ dudes are, as far as I can tell, real racists, but also basically trolls. This is a redacted quote from one of those threads about the gofundme, taken from 4chanarchive.org/pol

THE PLAN:
Cause as much butthurt as possible. This will cause news agencies & SJWs to spread the campaign [stupid racist simile removed] making it known far and wide. All their hate will result in pro-Wilson folks hearing about it & donating money, causing even more SJW ass-pain, which is our ultimate goal.

and I imagine they have something there... the whole reason /pol/ can exist is because nobody cares what they think, so the comments on that gofundme, and the attendent publicity, is a rare propaganda/trolling opportunity for them.

So really I don't know anymore, I can see your point but I still don't know.
posted by hap_hazard at 6:01 PM on August 23, 2014 [3 favorites]

The extreme racism may be trolling or isolated to small circles like the Ferguson PD, but "Joe the plumber" level of racism is dominating social media. "All that looting and not a single pair of work boots stolen," or whatever. It's depressing. I suppose part of it comes from the political/cultural division/war in yhe US. I'm not sure this is such a bad thing, though. By coming out in full support of Officer Wilson's lynching of Mike Brown conservativism may be hoisting itself on its own pitard, if that is the appropriate cliche, considering demographic changes, younger voters, and how it is activating the progressive base.
posted by Golden Eternity at 6:34 PM on August 23, 2014 [1 favorite]

Artist Mary Englebreit, possibly one of the least controversial artists ever, did a painting and is selling prints of it to benefit Michael Brown - and has gotten enormous blowback.

Ugh, wll now I have to go buy one. It's a lovely image with a sentiment I support, obvs, but I kinda wish it left off the "In the USA" and was going to pass on it for that reason.
posted by phearlez at 6:49 PM on August 23, 2014

@WesleyLowery: At one point tonight, Michael Brown protesters chanted "hands up, don't shoot!" Darren Wilson supporters responded: "Shoot! Shoot! Shoot!"
posted by Golden Eternity at 7:24 PM on August 23, 2014 [8 favorites]

Bullet bucket challenge for Ferguson, from Orlando Jones.
posted by rtha at 7:26 PM on August 23, 2014 [8 favorites]

At one point tonight, Michael Brown protesters chanted "hands up, don't shoot!" Darren Wilson supporters responded: "Shoot! Shoot! Shoot!"

Fucking hell...
posted by naju at 7:26 PM on August 23, 2014 [3 favorites]

At one point tonight, Michael Brown protesters chanted "hands up, don't shoot!" Darren Wilson supporters responded: "Shoot! Shoot! Shoot!"

Is there video of this?
posted by Flunkie at 7:41 PM on August 23, 2014 [3 favorites]

Wesley Lowery has been pretty reliable, I see no reason to doubt him.
posted by desjardins at 7:49 PM on August 23, 2014

Darren Wilson supporters responded: "Shoot! Shoot! Shoot!"

NEWS FLASH!! - jesus christ has returned to ferguson - police declare emergency, send supporters to break into local lumber store for 2x4s and nails
posted by pyramid termite at 7:58 PM on August 23, 2014 [3 favorites]

Ferguson is what America looks like.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 8:17 PM on August 23, 2014 [1 favorite]

This piece by The Washington Post on Darren Wilson's background is excellent.
posted by limeonaire at 8:27 PM on August 23, 2014 [14 favorites]

Also fabulous: St. Louis Post-Dispatch photographer and "da man wit da chips" reunite.
posted by limeonaire at 8:33 PM on August 23, 2014 [2 favorites]

Ferguson is an example of a police department staffed predominantly with white officers, many of whom live far away from, and often fail to establish trust with, the predominantly black communities they serve.

They don't serve the black community. They serve the white community. Their job is to stop the black community from bothering the white community first, and extract court fees from them second. If they actually served the black community, this whole thing wouldn't have happened.
posted by empath at 9:04 PM on August 23, 2014 [33 favorites]

The Psychopathy of Racism - "Black eyewitnesses don't mean shit."
posted by the man of twists and turns at 9:06 PM on August 23, 2014 [9 favorites]

The Washington Post backgrounder is good. That being said, I hope to goodness that I'm not ever subject to that level of scrutiny (I mean, I'm a wonderful person and all, but microscopes suck).

I have called him a killer and a murderer, and I stand by those words... But there isn't anything damning that has been posted about the killer cops background, his social media utterances, anyone that's had a negative interaction with him in the past.

Unlike the 4+ cops that have been suspended since this all began.

And perhaps that is what is be the frightening and terrifying thing about this - he wasn't particularly overtly racist, nor brutal (according to public records anyways). By all apparent accounts, he was an average cop.

That is what's terrifying.
posted by el io at 9:15 PM on August 23, 2014 [12 favorites]

From the sound of things I wouldn't trust any records from his previous post.
posted by Artw at 9:18 PM on August 23, 2014 [2 favorites]

Yeah, there's this:

Robert Orr, the former Jennings police chief who retired in 2010, said of Wilson: “He was a good officer with us. There was no disciplinary action.”

I don't trust the utterances of the chief of a corrupt and disbanded police force, nosiree.
posted by limeonaire at 9:22 PM on August 23, 2014 [11 favorites]

limoinaire: I don't trust his utterances either, but when you've got a literally team of WashPost reporters trying to dig up dirt on you and find nothing of substance... There's a chance that there isn't much there to find.
posted by el io at 9:24 PM on August 23, 2014 [1 favorite]

There's not a lot to find on the current situation either, TBH. Cops in that region are well practiced in not recording things.
posted by Artw at 9:28 PM on August 23, 2014 [1 favorite]

I bet there's more to find. They haven't dug up the records from the disbanded Jennings force yet, which are buried either somewhere in the St. Louis County Police Department archives or somewhere in Jennings. That might take some waiting for a FOIA request. Nor have they been able yet, as far as I've seen, to get access to connect any dots with those records the Ferguson force kept from before 2010, when disciplinary records weren't kept in individual officers' files. And good luck with that one, 'cause the Ferguson Police Department has been less than forthcoming with useful info.
posted by limeonaire at 9:29 PM on August 23, 2014 [2 favorites]

And the point is well taken that even if he is just an "average cop", with no dirt to find, average cops are in themselves horrific monsters from what we've seen following this event.
posted by Artw at 9:36 PM on August 23, 2014 [9 favorites]

Yup, Artw, that's what I was getting at.

Essentially 95% of cops give the remaining 5% a bad name.
posted by el io at 9:38 PM on August 23, 2014 [10 favorites]

Metafilter: average cops are in themselves horrific monsters
posted by Justinian at 9:38 PM on August 23, 2014

They serve the white community. Their job is to stop the black community from bothering the white community first, and extract court fees from them second. If they actually served the black community, this whole thing wouldn't have happened.

There is no greater sign of this than the lack of police records of what allegedly happened there.

White police have to answer to white constituents who pay their salaries. And yeah, they still get away with too much, but it is something. The cops in Ferguson are all "We do not GIVE A FUCK what you [n] think or say or do, WE DO NOT ANSWER TO YOU." and then they prove it by everything we have seen in the past two weeks.

And the white power structure in MO is going to let them - if you think AG Whitey McHonkyTonk is gonna actually prosecute this thing you are bonkers. He'll go through the motions, but fuck all will actually occur. The feds are better odds - as they usually are in these cases, but even then, with heavy cover under the Lily White Ferguson PD, they may not have much to go on.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 9:53 PM on August 23, 2014 [7 favorites]

@Empress_Orit: Police are agitating the crowd...now saying we can only film if we have press cards #Ferguson

I guess the cops want to have a teargas party again tonight.
posted by Artw at 9:57 PM on August 23, 2014

When crowds are protesting against the actions of the police, those same police should not be involved in crowd control. It's a conflict of interest, and asks impractical amounts of maturity and professionalism from people who are seeing people yell against them in a heated environment.

They should automatically have to recuse themselves and turn it over to the national guard ASAP.
posted by msalt at 10:11 PM on August 23, 2014 [11 favorites]

I'd be nervous about cameras too. The last few days have shown that if you talk yeah on camera, you get punished. What fun is oppressing folks if you can't talk shit too?

America makes me nuts sometimes. Here's hoping things don't get ugly tonight.
posted by Joey Michaels at 10:17 PM on August 23, 2014

As far as the lack of damning details in that WaPo story about Wilson, Wesley Lowery calls it "our first attempt at a deep dive on Darren Wilson", so it's not intended to be definitive, and I don't think anybody will be surprised if/when more stuff surfaces.

Somebody else on twitter is claiming 2nd-hand that pro-Wilson marchers today were armed; I wouldn't be surprised but jesus I'm already just about tired of thinking about those people. Which I guess is white privilege, not having to think about those people if I don't want to. Fuck.

Re: community, a nice (StL native, I didn't know) Dick Gregory quote here -in an img, so I'll transcribe-

We do not live in a community. A community is where you control your cops, you control your education, you control your banks, you control your businesses.

We live in a hood, and a hood is something you put on your head when you're trying to hide something.

Amother image, of the front page of Sunday's StL Post-Dispatch, just a big graphic breakdown of local "communities'" percentage of black residents vs black cops. Ferguson looks like kind of an outlier, but there's a lot of bad ratios in there, unsurprisingly.
posted by hap_hazard at 10:19 PM on August 23, 2014 [6 favorites]

Did the gofundme revelations garner any national news attention?
posted by futz at 10:36 PM on August 23, 2014 [1 favorite]

GoFundMe campaign for Ferguson shooter drowns under racist commentary
posted by XMLicious at 10:39 PM on August 23, 2014 [1 favorite]

I don't think so; this New York Times story from earlier doesn't mention that Tim Zoll of the Ferguson police was connected to the fundraising.
posted by limeonaire at 10:39 PM on August 23, 2014 [1 favorite]

pro-Wilson marchers today were armed

Well, they may be pro-Wilson, but they aren't stupid. They've seen what the cops there do to unarmed people.
posted by el io at 10:42 PM on August 23, 2014 [8 favorites]

Man. This standoff right now is tense. I hope everyone here is watching the #Ferguson hashtag, because it looks like the Reddit "live" feed is now anything but, and apparently the media have left. Someone needs to bear witness.
posted by limeonaire at 10:44 PM on August 23, 2014 [1 favorite]

limonaire: any livefeeds left? no offense to twitter, but watching tweets doesn't cut it for bearing witness.
posted by el io at 10:46 PM on August 23, 2014

"We [the Ethical Society of Police] definitely support the protest." - [The Other] Darren Wilson on Racism in the St. Louis Police Force
posted by lz at 10:49 PM on August 23, 2014 [5 favorites]

I think Twitter's good enough; there are lots of photos and Vines to get glimpses. I haven't been checking out livestreams 'cause they kill my connection, alas.
posted by limeonaire at 10:51 PM on August 23, 2014

My list and desjardins's, mostly journos and local activists, both seem to indicate calming, emptying streets.
posted by dhartung at 10:52 PM on August 23, 2014 [1 favorite]

Yeah, the people who are there right now are saying that the media has been ordered out again and/or has mostly left, and a lot of the local activists who were there for the past two weeks aren't out tonight. It was calm earlier, but right now it appears to be tense again. Check out @deray's feed. Edit: Sounds like it's getting a little calmer now.
posted by limeonaire at 10:54 PM on August 23, 2014

From the WaPo article:

Experts on police shootings say the investigation, including the grand jury deliberations, will focus on whether Wilson had a reasonable perception of being threatened with bodily harm. The experts say it does not matter how many bullets Wilson fired. Police are trained to shoot at the center of mass and stop the threat.

“If it’s an imminent threat of serious bodily harm, yeah, you become the judge, jury and executioner,” said Alpert, the University of South Carolina criminologist.

Yeah, but is there any law or legal recourse to keep the police from goading and provoking citizens to act in threatening ways? From the chilling video of the Powell shooting, and from the numerous other stories surfacing recently, this seems to be a big part of the problem. They're acting in the polar opposite manner of what you'd expect for a job centered around "keeping the peace."
posted by p3t3 at 10:56 PM on August 23, 2014

I think it's going to come down to whether there really are other as-yet unidentified to the public witnesses who support Wilson's position and contradict the public stories we've heard so far. If there are there's probably no reasonable likelihood that he'll be convicted of anything or charged with a federal crime. If there are not he will be indicted.
posted by Justinian at 11:02 PM on August 23, 2014

roomthreeseventeen: "Michael Brown and the Danger of the Perfect Victim Frame: Today, if we are to believe law enforcement and personal responsibility-loving politicians such as President Obama, black victims of white racism must still, as Colvin put it, “fit the profile.” Their victimhood is only supposed to matter if their lives are pristine."

Rosa Parks syndrome. Rosa Parks wasn't a tired old lady not trying to cause any trouble but just wanting to rest her legs. She was tired of racism and decided to make a stand. She presented a better profile than others who had stood their grown before, so she was presented as the first even though she wasn't.

The narrative — that she was merely tired — is a sticky one, and appealing in its time I think because it makes her a pawn of circumstance rather than an agent of her own destiny.

People always say that I didn't give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn't true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old, although some people have an image of me as being old then. I was forty-two. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in. [qtd in WikiPedia]

I'm personally pretty sick of the disgusting narrative in the US around who is and isn't "deserving" of a decent life. Only the "deserving" poor should get food stamps or welfare. Only people who never break the law deserve to not be shot at or beat by the police. Only people with jobs or money deserve to die of old age rather than of a lack of health care.
posted by Deathalicious at 11:40 PM on August 23, 2014 [48 favorites]

Guys, under the #Ferguson tag on FB, there are some people saying Michael Brown has manslaughter on his juvenile record. Is there any truth to this, or is it just more racist trolling?
posted by suburbanbeatnik at 2:50 AM on August 24, 2014

From what I can tell, those rumors are stemming from one source, who isn't seeming terribly credible.
posted by a box and a stick and a string and a bear at 3:17 AM on August 24, 2014

Yeah, that one source site linked just above is a nasty piece of work. I need a shower after reading that.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 3:23 AM on August 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

And anyway, all these hideous people screaming about juvenile records and whether Brown stole a fucking pack of cigars and whatnot… are you fucking kidding me? Whatever juvenile record he might have had, if any, is COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT. Cops aren't supposed to murder people in the street, either for stealing a pack of smokes or for having a juvenile criminal record.

What the fuck is wrong with all these people? God, they're disgusting.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 3:26 AM on August 24, 2014 [33 favorites]

They have to show he "wasn't like them" but not in that way, in the pretend-I'm-not-a-horrible-racist way.
posted by fullerine at 3:55 AM on August 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

The father of Mike Brown has asked that people call off all protests tomorrow, the day of his son’s funeral.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:47 AM on August 24, 2014 [2 favorites]

Here is the New Yorker cover story, "Bullets and Ballots."
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:07 AM on August 24, 2014

That WaPo article is mostly a puff piece, but did anybody else catch this:

Behind closed doors, meeting once a week, a grand jury has been hearing evidence about the shooting from St. Louis County Prosecutor Robert McCulloch. He has said he does not expect the grand jury to finish its deliberations until October.

Once a week? McCullough has been claiming all along that they're moving forward as fast as they can. That's as fast as they can convene a grand jury? Bullshit. They're hoping to outlast the protestors and then quietly drop the case.

As this situation has continued to unfold, it's become clear to me that the chance of getting justice in this case is damn near zero. IF they indict (which is a huge if), they have to clear the unusually high self-defense legal bar. If they convict, the judge has to give him meaningful time behind bars, something that has not happened in most other police cases.

But I don't even think they're going to get as far as trial. I think they're going to do everything in their power to avoid having a "moment" that will regalvanize the protestors. I now expect the grand jury to drag on and on and on, with no official announcements coming from Ferguson. They're going to outwait the media attention and go right back to the status quo.
posted by zug at 8:10 AM on August 24, 2014 [4 favorites]

Metafilters own but account disabled Rory Marinich
16 August
A BRIEF MICHAEL BROWN/FERGUSON FAQ:

Q: What's going on?
A: A cop murdered a kid and his department is trying to cover up for him.

Q: Is any other part of this story important?
A: No.

=========

EXTENDED FAQ:

Q: But what about the convenience store thing?
A: Not important. A cop murdered a kid and his department is trying to cover up for him.

Q: All's I'm saying is, what IF Brown really assaulted a convenience store clerk?
A: We'll have time to talk about the appalling criminality of shoplifting and shoving people after we talk about the part where a cop murdered a kid, and then his department tried to cover up for him.

Q: I heard some protestors were trying to loot liquor stores.
A: Things go to shit when the institutions in charge of maintaining civility and order completely fucking fail to do so. A cop murdered a kid and his department is trying to cover up for him. That is literally a failure of civilization.

Q: How about—
A: A cop murdered a kid and his department is trying to cover up for him.

No further questions, because this is really not that difficult of a situation, unless you want to ask "How the fuck is this happening in the United States of America in 2014?". (The answer to that question, depressingly, is that we aren't nearly as enlightened a people as we like to tell ourselves. Turns out lazily idling about and telling ourselves how great it is that all our problems were solved decades ago doesn't actually make all those problems go away.)
posted by adamvasco at 8:11 AM on August 24, 2014 [105 favorites]

Melissa Harris-Perry open letter to TIME magazine.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 10:14 AM on August 24, 2014 [7 favorites]

@thereaIbanksy
#HandsUpDontShoot
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 10:32 AM on August 24, 2014 [7 favorites]

roomthreeseventeen: "The father of Mike Brown has asked that people call off all protests tomorrow, the day of his son’s funeral."

This would be great, I mean...

“We just want a moment of silence that whole day. Just out of respect for our son.”

Can you imagine - all of us, standing by Michael's parents and community, by our silence. Refusing to speak online anywhere (I know IRL you can't really do that unless you wanna get fired or something, and well that's a choice I know I personally can't make but others may be able to), but imagine if all of us online went silent tomorrow. Everyone who opposes police brutality just stops all online communication for a complete day.

Do you think people would find it strangely silent? As if "We are all Mike Brown"?
posted by symbioid at 11:00 AM on August 24, 2014 [3 favorites]

On that Time piece...don't read the comments. The, "he was a thug robber" narrative has totally been accepted by all the commenters. So once again, it's all headed to nothing. People will get bored, forget, and we'll be back to business as usual. Sigh
posted by Windopaene at 11:51 AM on August 24, 2014 [2 favorites]

Is Rory's most excellent FAQ posted anywhere else? I'd hate to put load on the server by sharing a deep link to comment #2599 in this longboat thread.
posted by tonycpsu at 11:59 AM on August 24, 2014 [3 favorites]

Melissa Harris-Perry is a goddamned national treasure.
posted by klangklangston at 12:22 PM on August 24, 2014 [8 favorites]

I think people are focusing on Brown's criminality in part because other people are letting and encouraging them by vehemently denying it.

People may say that it doesn't matter what Brown did, but they're still trying to argue that grabbing someone by the throat/shirtneck is no big deal, totally not assault, etc. They're comparing it to average shoplifting, when it's a snatch and grab. And so pedants like me get into arguing about it, not because it Matters to the shooting (other than speaking to Brown's motive) but because the facts are being wrongly presented.

It doesn't matter whether Brown was an angel or a devil if your interest is in ensuring Wilson is fairly judged for shooting him. The only area in which it matters is in degree of tragedy, which affects nothing and thus has no need to be unified.
posted by corb at 12:22 PM on August 24, 2014

On White People, Solidarity, and (Not) Marching for Mike Brown

This is pretty good. "Don't co-opt" and "Don't marginalize the people you're fighting for" are important things to hear right now for white allies. I searched Twitter for "#Ferguson and white allies" to see whether there was more out there on this, and there's a lot.

In the case of St. Louis, it really got me thinking to hear some say that white allies shouldn't focus on class in their arguments—I've focused on it because it's what I know, and because I think it really does play a role in things in St. Louis. But I also understand how focusing on that could be seen as minimizing the larger message about racism and racial profiling. I've tried to mention class in the context of saying that in St. Louis specifically, classism and racism are inextricably woven together—and I do think that one way to get white folks from St. Louis and North County to get this is to remind them of all the times they've felt lesser-than or looked-down-upon for being from St. Louis or North County specifically, to evoke empathy and understanding.

There's a lot to reflect on and humble oneself in thinking about, though. And as the initial link notes, this process of reflection isn't supposed to be comfortable.
posted by limeonaire at 12:38 PM on August 24, 2014 [2 favorites]

Huh. I figured the people focusing on Brown's "criminality" were just a bunch of racist shitbags, since what they're focusing on is a falsified rap sheet.
posted by palomar at 12:38 PM on August 24, 2014 [19 favorites]

Just because they're racist shitbags doesn't also mean they can't also be pedantic.
posted by Joey Michaels at 12:49 PM on August 24, 2014 [2 favorites]

When we say #BlackLifeMatters, please don’t butt in with your blind privilege

Yes Human life matters. However you have to see us as humans and equals before you can truly appreciate that our life and voices matter. Unfortunately, in this 21st century many of us are still fighting for the inalienable human right to be seen and considered as humans and equals.

posted by audi alteram partem at 12:53 PM on August 24, 2014 [4 favorites]

corb: I think people are focusing on Brown's criminality in part because other people are letting and encouraging them by vehemently denying it.

Ah, yes, the verbal equivalent of "stop punching yourself."

You don't possibly expect anyone to believe this shit, do you? That, if people who are currently pointing out that Brown's crimes are irrelevant were to stop making that argument, that the people who are trying to use his putative crimes to justify his death would stop doing so?

Tell me you don't believe this.
posted by tonycpsu at 12:55 PM on August 24, 2014 [25 favorites]

Interview with Edward Crawford, the guy who threw the tear gas back (also known as @eyeFLOODpanties)
posted by desjardins at 12:58 PM on August 24, 2014 [9 favorites]

Oh wow. He works a block from me!
posted by limeonaire at 1:03 PM on August 24, 2014

I've tried to mention class in the context of saying that in St. Louis specifically, classism and racism are inextricably woven together

Many of the most racist internet commentors are probably from working class backgrounds. Some American racism seems to me to possibly have roots in class-based resentment. There are a couple of incidents in my life that occur to me.

I was visiting an old family friend in Germany and remember him describing how angry his father used to get at the school teachers relaxing in the cafe across the street from their repair shop. "Why aren't they working?" So there is a long history of urban working class and rural/agricultural working class resentment against perceived to be bogus middle class "jobs" - teachers, bankers, bureaucrats, lawyers, etc. that are invented so the bourgeoisie can maintain their social position. Of course some of this may have to do with "Protestant work ethic" or whatever as well.

I was in Atlanta and overheard a couple of white guys talking about a security guard at one guy's company. "All he does is stand there all day." "Is he black?" "Yup." And this seemed like such a similar attitude, but here projected on African Americans possibly supported by welfare or whatever instead of an upper middle class.
posted by Golden Eternity at 1:25 PM on August 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

I think Frowner said it well in the first thread:

I think in the US we're trained to separate race and class, as if "racism" were purely driven by misguided emotions and not by greed and the hunger for power. The cops themselves may be driven by all kinds of gross racist psychic sludge, but keeping black people down is part of keeping working people down. Black people may be at the bottom of the heap, but if the bottom of the heap gets pushed down, everyone else goes down too.

And if everyone gets used to low-intensity war against black folks, it won't take too much to get used to low-intensity war against any other poor group.
posted by limeonaire at 1:31 PM on August 24, 2014 [13 favorites]

Ferguson elected abusive policewoman to city council

This is also very interesting.
posted by limeonaire at 1:57 PM on August 24, 2014

St. Louis journalist Sarah Kendzior talks about media coverage of Ferguson on WYNC's On the Media.
posted by nangar at 2:00 PM on August 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

Many of the most racist internet commentors are probably from working class backgrounds.

"The hostility between the whites and the Blacks of the South is easily explained...[B]oth are plundered by the same plunderers...and [hostility] was incited on both sides by the poor whites and the Blacks by putting enmity between them. They divided both to conquer each."
-- Frederick Douglass, 1866
posted by scody at 2:01 PM on August 24, 2014 [32 favorites]

The governor has different ideas than I do of what constitutes 'justice'.

Nixon told CNN he's confident "justice will be served" in the case, but he suggested it's a possibility that no charges will be filed.

posted by el io at 2:03 PM on August 24, 2014

Many of the most racist internet commentors are probably from working class backgrounds.

"The hostility between the whites and the Blacks of the South is easily explained...[B]oth are plundered by the same plunderers...and [hostility] was incited on both sides by the poor whites and the Blacks by putting enmity between them. They divided both to conquer each."
-- Frederick Douglass, 1866

Reminds me of Only a Pawn in Their Game. Because, at best, Darren Wilson is only a minor player in part of a terrible game.
posted by Partario at 2:07 PM on August 24, 2014 [2 favorites]

Oh my God, this is amazing. This is so good.

VICE Canada: We hung out with the kids of Ferguson to find out what they think about what's happening in their town.
posted by limeonaire at 2:50 PM on August 24, 2014 [17 favorites]

Interview with Edward Crawford, the guy who threw the tear gas back (also known as @eyeFLOODpanties)

Sorry, @eyeFLOODpanties is the photographer, not the subject. Great photo, great interview, though.
posted by maudlin at 2:59 PM on August 24, 2014

Oh, damn, sorry, that's my mistake. Of course he was the subject. (It's been a long weekend.)
posted by maudlin at 3:01 PM on August 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

Bullets and Ballots - " Yet it’s more useful to think of Ferguson as a microcosm, or even a precursor, than as an outlier. Defending the city from the onslaught of negative publicity, Brian Fletcher, a former mayor, assured reporters that there was nothing particularly hostile or unique about it. “What happened here could’ve happened anywhere,” he said. Indeed, that is the concern."
posted by the man of twists and turns at 3:17 PM on August 24, 2014

So I lost it at work last week. I was behind the ~~back dock~~ official smoking area, smoking a cigarette with one of the few black men who work for my company. I put a feeler out by saying something like "what's going on in Ferguson is really insane." He looked at me warily, probably not sure if I meant that the police were out of control or if those uppity n-gers needed to learn their place. He carefully said, 'Yeah, pretty crazy."

Then I let it all out. I told him that I was sorry that America was a place where a young black man can get executed and left like a dog in the street for jaywalking. I told him that I was sorry that the lynch-mob was alive and well in America. I told him that I was sorry that Darren Wilson will never see the inside of a prison cell. I told him that I was sorry that he had a fair chance of getting shot every time he got pulled over. I told him that I was ashamed of myself for thinking that I was a progressive non-racist, since it was 3 pm and the only two black people I had interacted with that day were him and the lady who served me my sausage egg mcmuffin that morning. I told him I was sorry that I was laying all of this at his feet; that it wasn't his job to absolve me of my sins as a representative of all black folk everywhere. Then I, a fat white middle-aged man, started to cry.

He and I weren't close friends, but he put his arm around my shoulder and said, "You don't have to apologize to me. You didn't shoot Mike Brown. If you want to do something about it, give some money to the ACLU or the Southern Poverty Law Center or whoever you think will help. There's a group getting together food for those kids there. Tell your friends, especially those racist-ass facebook friends from high school, that you think what happened was wrong. Don't be afraid to make some friends who aren't white. Don't vote for racists. And then -- the most important part -- teach your kids the difference between right and wrong. Let them make some friends that aren't white, too. That's all you can do. That's all any of us can really do."

I still feel bad for dumping on him like that. It wasn't fair to him. But I do feel better that I let it out.

I've been trying to take his advice. I've lost 11 FB friends so far.

Fuck them. Fuck all racist motherfuckers everywhere.
posted by double block and bleed at 3:31 PM on August 24, 2014 [115 favorites]

The interview that limeonaire posted is great. The kids are so awesome. It's so cute when they start playing with the (white female) interviewer's hair. I was kind of hoping they'd braid it. Anyway, watch it as an antidote to reading racist comments.
posted by desjardins at 3:36 PM on August 24, 2014 [2 favorites]

What are people hearing about What Comes Next? I've seen and felt a new awareness and anger among so many of my friends and I'm hoping more than just a "national conversation" comes out of it.
posted by wemayfreeze at 4:18 PM on August 24, 2014 [2 favorites]

Oh gods. Now I have seen everything.

WTF.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 4:22 PM on August 24, 2014 [8 favorites]

Ferguson Police Officer Justin Cosma Hog-Tied And Injured A Young Child, Lawsuit Alleges, Reilly & Alman, HuffPo.

(It seems like Ferguson may have had a thing for hiring officers who'd had misconduct problems in other districts.)
posted by nangar at 4:29 PM on August 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

Ferguson: We'll hire anyone! (As long as you're white.)
posted by desjardins at 4:30 PM on August 24, 2014 [3 favorites]

el io: "limoinaire: I don't trust his utterances either, but when you've got a literally team of WashPost reporters trying to dig up dirt on you and find nothing of substance... There's a chance that there isn't much there to find."

For the record, WaPo says Wilson's father can't be found. I discovered who Wilson's father is and who he works for by the Sunday after the shooting. I just don't see any purpose in outing him. He didn't raise the cop in question, and doesn't deserve the full glare of the media crawling all over him.

A few of us here on Mefi figured out who was behind the gofundme before anyone in the media.

WaPo is great and all, but just cause they can't find something, doesn't mean something isn't there.
posted by dejah420 at 4:41 PM on August 24, 2014 [15 favorites]

As far as what happens next in Ferguson, I'm getting my impressions of that mostly from the Vox twitter list which was linked 1000 or so comments back, I'm not sure by whom. It seems like people on the ground there are pretty energized, there are like 400 people at the Peace Rally right now where Trayvon Martin's parents just spoke, there's stuff like this -

Currently on the phone with Harry Belafonte support and sustainability is on the way to North County

Of course I don't know, it seems like it was a radicalizing moment for many, and of course the consequences of that won't show up in a twitter feed, like, today.

I just read this huffo piece that's about "what next," and need to blockquote some of it.

Walter Rice, 75, has been seen regularly confronting heavily armed officers wearing combat gear as he carries an enormous American flag. He was out on Thursday night outside of the Ferguson Market & Liquor, where Brown allegedly stole some cigarillos shortly before his death.

Rice told officers to stop using their military gear on the protesters. “I’m not going to stop talking," he said. "You guys take this shit home, and I demand that. I demand that you take this stuff home. Otherwise, you’re going to see this old sergeant lay down here and die. I’m 75 years old now. I've been through worse shit than this. I will lay my life down, let you run over me if you want. I will die here. So just take this stuff home. Take it home. That’s all."

There's a Newsweek piece on Mr. Rice here. He's my hero.
posted by hap_hazard at 4:51 PM on August 24, 2014 [36 favorites]

I have been thinking a lot about how the cops said that the protesters had to keep in motion. That would have excluded me from being able to protest. Is anyone aware if a lawsuit has been filed in regards to that?
posted by futz at 5:00 PM on August 24, 2014 [3 favorites]

That Vice interview with the kids left me chocked up. Check it out.
posted by Joey Michaels at 5:04 PM on August 24, 2014 [2 favorites]

futz: the 1st amendment is pretty robust these days in regards to print/video speech*, but actual 'on-the-streets' protesting it's very nearly dead**.

*these rights may not apply if you call your Abrahamic god 'Allah'

**street protesting rights are pretty strong if you are trying to harass women attempting to get reproductive health services
posted by el io at 5:17 PM on August 24, 2014 [11 favorites]

The ACLU did file a suit, but the Ferguson cops said they were creating a "free speech zone" so that non mobile protestors could gather there, so the judge did not grant the ACLU an injuction. Subsequently, the Ferguson cops never ungated or unlocked the fences to the so called FSZ, ergo, those who could not keep moving were unable to participate.
posted by dejah420 at 5:23 PM on August 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

Autopsy of 22 year old man that was handcuffed and shot in the chest in the back of a cop car is ruled a suicide

"The family is puzzled as to how he could have shot himself in the chest with his hands cuffed behind his back."

It's terrible that I know I've linked to this song before, but well here we are:

"There must be something magic down in those holding cells,
cause there's stuff that happens there that just don't happen nowhere else.
Healthy people dying from a sudden heart attack,
men who hang themselves with their hands tied behind their back.

There's lots of good and brave police, it must be true I guess.
It's brave to work with a murderer sipping coffee by your desk."
posted by Lemurrhea at 5:41 PM on August 24, 2014 [7 favorites]

> What are people hearing about What Comes Next? I've seen and felt a new awareness and anger among so many of my friends and I'm hoping more than just a "national conversation" comes out of it.

In Ferguson, HealStL is registering voters, trying to put together a slate of candidates for next April's municipal elections, and starting to collect signatures as a first step in an effort to recall the the mayor. I think they have a good chance of success, given the level of anger and interest in local government there is right now in Ferguson.

I think the rest of us need to be asking ourselves questions about our own local governments and our own engagement (lack of engagement) with who controls the local school boards and police departments and what they do. At least, these are questions I've been asking myself way over here on the East Coast. (My town isn't Ferguson, but our government isn't very representative either, and that affects the way they treat poor, black, and working class residents, including me and my neighbors.)
posted by nangar at 5:51 PM on August 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

Yeah I'm thinking we need some strong talking points and policy recommendations to reduce police violence and bring accountability to law enforcement. A solid platform for change that we can all advocate for in our communities and nationally.

Frmr. Seattle police chief Norm Stamper has some good ideas.
posted by wemayfreeze at 5:59 PM on August 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

"Y’all know what that Ferguson police department is doing. They have started with the key witness already going thru their name and record and finding any little thing to discredit them."
posted by lz at 5:59 PM on August 24, 2014 [5 favorites]

Obama Orders Review of Military Hardware Distributed to State and Local Police
not quite bringing down the banhammer, but a little shimmer of hope.

EDIT:
damn, beaten to the punch. >_<
posted by xcasex at 6:01 PM on August 24, 2014

lz: Those allegations sound plausible, but is there any evidence backing that up, or is it just an assertion on tumbler?
posted by el io at 6:04 PM on August 24, 2014

el io: No evidence, it's just something that was brought up after the reports saying Dorian Johnson's credibility is now tainted due to his prior arrest. I am not sure they will tackle any of the other eyewitnesses, but I won't be surprised if they try to.
posted by lz at 6:09 PM on August 24, 2014

I am not sure they will tackle any of the other eyewitnesses, but I won't be surprised if they try to.

I'd be surprised if they didn't.
posted by immlass at 6:36 PM on August 24, 2014

Those allegations sound plausible, but is there any evidence backing that up, or is it just an assertion on tumbler?

i read that the key witness had been accused of giving a false first name to police a few years ago - a nice little piece of info released to discredit him in the eyes of those who are looking for anything to discredit the story

the corruption and dirtyness of the police is something else in that town
posted by pyramid termite at 6:44 PM on August 24, 2014

If those police have taught me anything in these past couple of weeks of protest, it's the correct answer to "what's your name?"

"FUCK YOU!"
posted by el io at 6:47 PM on August 24, 2014

el io, I believe the actual correct phrase is "Go fuck yourself."
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:08 PM on August 24, 2014 [2 favorites]

Ferguson's Angry Young Men
posted by desjardins at 7:12 PM on August 24, 2014 [4 favorites]

... don't read the comments.
posted by desjardins at 7:17 PM on August 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

"Officer go fuck yourself"

I love that the journalist actually said that to the cop.
posted by futz at 7:17 PM on August 24, 2014 [2 favorites]

The support for Darren Wilson has me shaking with rage:

Rally organizer: 'We are Darren Wilson' (Youtube)
posted by magstheaxe at 7:38 PM on August 24, 2014

That Vice interview with the kids left me chocked up. Check it out.

"People just want to be heard." Yeah.

Also, loved the kid being shocked that his friend said a bad word, 'Pieces of crap.'

And the littlest one at the end saying "love your granny."

!!! No dry eyes here.
posted by sweetkid at 8:18 PM on August 24, 2014 [2 favorites]

I am pretty tapped out charity wise, but I have certainly spent a lot more time contemplating the uneasy racial divisions in my town lately. The guy who sold me my car had some digs to make about Section 8 inhabitants when we test drove through a poor neighborhood. I cringed inwardly but said nothing...it's an old habit, there are a lot of dudes like him around. I'm used to ignoring ugly racism in everyday conversation, and timid about making a scene.

I think that needs to change.
posted by emjaybee at 8:40 PM on August 24, 2014 [15 favorites]

emjaybee, you stole the words right out of my mouth. I was about to comment that several times this winter I was snowed in for days and neighbors that I barely knew came to my rescue. They tried to clear my driveway, jump my battery, and drove me to the grocery store. Terrific, right!? Nope. I sat through anti Obama tirades and worse. I tried a few gentle counterpoints but not much else. I still feel icky and shamed.
posted by futz at 8:57 PM on August 24, 2014 [5 favorites]

My husband and I have started having our dialogues about racism around our kids. I don't know what I thought I was protecting them from. but like, in a reality TV show where all the white people line up behind the white person and all the PoC line up behind the black person? yeah, I'm not keeping my unease about that to myself any more. At the very least, I'm going to call that racial sketchiness out in front of my kids, make it part of the everyday conversation instead of just a handful of "teaching moments."
posted by KathrynT at 9:07 PM on August 24, 2014 [3 favorites]

Rally organizer: 'We are Darren Wilson'

Yep, there's a LOT of them, and my greatest fear is they're going to start seeing the rest of us as "honorary n****rs" long before we get any real control over them.
posted by oneswellfoop at 9:38 PM on August 24, 2014 [2 favorites]

The 'impressive' thing about the Darren Wilson supporters is how they recast all of this. First of all Darren Wilson is a victim. Then, on top of it, his fucking supporters are all victimized. And afraid. And brave. Literally afraid for their lives.

Holy fucking shit. It boggles the mind.
posted by el io at 9:43 PM on August 24, 2014 [3 favorites]

They're bravely afraid for their lives. Their unique courage takes the form of shouting "we are filled with fear. "
posted by Joey Michaels at 9:53 PM on August 24, 2014 [6 favorites]

They are afraid of people not like themselves. And they want somebody else to Shoot First on their behalf. It's a sad, sick way of thinking, but not limited to these particular people.
posted by oneswellfoop at 9:58 PM on August 24, 2014 [3 favorites]

NYT: Schools in Ferguson Area Prepare for an Emotional Opening Day
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 10:07 PM on August 24, 2014

Yeah I've commented a couple of times in these threads about that fucking weird combination of fear, self-pity, and bravado, but I'm still having a hard time getting my head around it. I wonder how much overlap it has with the common-these-days attitude on the Christian right, that somehow they're a beleaguered, persecuted minority here in the US. With cops, and cops' families, I guess it is true- they're a minority, and generally speaking, people don't like cops, so they've got to stick together, I guess. Not that that excuses stuff like this or anything.

Anyways, this all just made me think of one of my favorite pieces of music from the last few years, the Ry Cooder song Lord, Tell Me Why.

(It's the sort of thing that, if you just looked at the lyrics, it's so straight-faced that you might take it at face value. But if you hear it, I think it's pretty obvious and funny. Anyways, it made me feel better for a minute.)
posted by hap_hazard at 10:16 PM on August 24, 2014

From the sound of things, especially talking to 4chan users (I know, but its where a lot of the money came from to support Darren Wilson unfortunately), there are a few things Darren Wilson supporters are set on:

1) Mike Brown, being a heavier set, taller man, charging at an officer meant that the officer was only fending himself when he shot him.
2) The altercation at the cop's vehicle left Wilson seriously hurt.
3) The surveillance video released of the "alleged" robbery only proves the point that Mike Brown is huge and intimidating and not a force to be reckoned with.
4) The owner of the Ferguson Market only refused to say it was Mike Brown in the tapes because he was scared of the community burning down his store (like QuickTrip and they point at the graffiti "snitches get stitches" that was aired on tv).
5) By the time Wilson could do anything, Brown was already charging at him from a distance, so use of something like a taser would have been ineffective since the suspect needs to be in close range.
6) Cops are always right and always do the right thing, rather trust a cop than a kid that thinks he can shove around a shop clerk.
7) There are apparently several witnesses that back the cops claim (they point at the "overheard conversation" in the back of one video that was released earlier on) so they think that it further proves the cops innocence.
posted by lz at 10:35 PM on August 24, 2014

'We are Darren Wilson'

That must be horrible.
posted by Artw at 10:42 PM on August 24, 2014 [3 favorites]

Worst version of Guardians of the Galaxy ever.
posted by brundlefly at 11:25 PM on August 24, 2014

We Are Vermin.

Yecch. Indeed they are. Just added a link to a song of mine to the comments on that YT clip that they'll just love. Haha!
posted by flapjax at midnite at 5:17 AM on August 25, 2014

Mike Brown’s shooting and Jim Crow lynchings have too much in common. It’s time for America to own up, Isabel Wilkerson, The Guardian.
posted by nangar at 5:35 AM on August 25, 2014 [10 favorites]

Yeah, I hear that, Seymour Zamboni, I do. But the continued and steadfast denial of racism and overt racist aggression (even to the point of actually defending and celebrating institutionalized lynching) that these people maintain makes it difficult, sometimes, to avoid that kind of extreme rhetoric. Because, hey, people die because of this kind of thinking, this belief system.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 6:11 AM on August 25, 2014 [2 favorites]

The only area in which it matters is in degree of tragedy, which affects nothing and thus has no need to be unified.

I'm not sure I understand. Is it less of a tragedy for a "snatch and grab" guy to get murdered by a police officer? What other things mitigate the tragedy? Do you think his parents are aware of the list, or is it only people who generally defend the right of gun-toting murderers to be gun-toting murderers?
posted by OmieWise at 6:12 AM on August 25, 2014

Yeah, I hear that, Seymour Zamboni, I do. But the continued and steadfast denial of racism and overt racist aggression (even to the point of actually defending and celebrating institutionalized lynching) that these people maintain makes it difficult, sometimes, to avoid that kind of extreme rhetoric. Because, hey, people die because of this kind of thinking, this belief system.

I agree, and I'll go further and point out that toxic beliefs, even sincerely held beliefs, aren't anywhere near the same thing as being Black. While I generally think it's good not to diminish the humanity of other people, I think there's a limit and it isn't a failure of liberalism or our own humanity to reach it.
posted by OmieWise at 6:17 AM on August 25, 2014 [7 favorites]

Not vermin. Terrorists. That's what lynching is. It's killing young black men symbolically to intimidate all black communities and persons more generally. These Wilson supporters are invested in the fruits of terrorism and communal punishment and enforced apartheid. They see themselves as its beneficiaries. The America they want to protect is no less draconian than the Islamic State, or Milosevic's Serbia, built on an ideology of brutal exclusion and marginalization of all but the elect ethnic/religious group. A cult of historical victimhood and grievance and a worship of authoritarian and violent leaders completes the image.

Terrorists. Banal, evil, scared, weak, mean terrorists.

And the temptation to go Godwin on their sorry fascist asses is very strong. So l will leave it at that.
posted by spitbull at 6:29 AM on August 25, 2014 [68 favorites]

^ Very well put, spitbull.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 6:55 AM on August 25, 2014

Political Research Associates' Rachel Tabachnik story on Officer Dan Page's extremist background and a 2013 profile of the associated Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association:

CSPOA’s stated mission is to train sheriffs and police, and then “local governments will issue our new Declaration to the Federal Government regarding the abuses that we will no longer tolerate or accept,” according to the CSPOA website. “Said declaration will be enforced by our Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers. In short, the CSPOA will be the army to set our nation free.”

posted by audi alteram partem at 7:38 AM on August 25, 2014 [5 favorites]

Michael Brown didn't do anything as a teen that I didn't — but only one of us got killed: don't think I've ever heard a story where someone like me was killed and then proclaimed to the world to have been no angel. Angels, it turns out, are pretty rare. But if you look the right way, you don't need to be one to survive into adulthood.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:43 AM on August 25, 2014 [8 favorites]

"Innocent until proven guilty."
"It seems kind of one-sided. I mean the other side’s already got him convicted and he hasn’t had a say.”
"We’re out here to support... [him] ...because he don’t have a voice.”

Oh, I'm sorry, you thought they were talking about Michael Brown?

Nope.
posted by entropicamericana at 7:49 AM on August 25, 2014 [3 favorites]

Here's the 3rd graf from the NYT article on Mike Brown. and the 3rd graf from the RS article on the Boston bomber.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:01 AM on August 25, 2014 [8 favorites]

NYT, you're starting to be indistinguishable from parody.
posted by Phire at 8:21 AM on August 25, 2014 [7 favorites]

Follow the #ideservedit hashtag for folks tweeting all the reasons the NYT would call them "not an angel" if they were shot by cops.

‏@kungfulasers If cops kill me, remember I smoked pot. I smoked the most when I was working 2 jobs & putting myself through college. @nytimes #ideservedit
posted by emjaybee at 8:43 AM on August 25, 2014 [3 favorites]

I was reflecting on the "no angel" theme that has been circulating, and I was thinking of my (almost all white) high school friends. Every single one of them did drugs (mostly pot, also LSD and coke). Every. Single. One. A few dealt pot and coke. Some drove under the influence, or otherwise drove recklessly. Some shoplifted or otherwise stole (e.g. from their parents). Some got in fist fights, one guy ended up in the hospital. I was in the car when someone backed into a fence, enough to damage it and the car, and drove off.

No one was ever arrested, for anything. A couple speeding tickets, but that's it. No one was an angel. I came close; I only got drunk once before I was 21 and tried pot once (didn't like it).

We all eventually went to college, and I lost track after them after that, but there were no consequences for any of that.

I was pulled over with 3 friends in my car (for rolling through a stop sign). I was not under the influence of anything. My friends probably had pot on them. One friend flipped off the officer as he walked up to my car and yelled Fuck The Police. I can't even imagine how that would have gone if we were black. At a minimum, the car would have been searched and I would have been responsible for any drugs that were found. At worst, my confrontational friend would have been beaten or shot.
posted by desjardins at 8:44 AM on August 25, 2014 [18 favorites]

[Derail] but of interest Ferguson Rings Familiar in Brazil.
posted by adamvasco at 8:58 AM on August 25, 2014

New York Times defends Michael Brown Jr. ‘no angel’ characterization
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 9:01 AM on August 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

Until yesterday I'd never heard of the 1917 East St. Louis Massacre.
posted by mubba at 9:05 AM on August 25, 2014 [3 favorites]

Here's my curated Ferguson twitter list again - pretty good coverage of the Mike Brown funeral going on now, some live stream links therein
posted by desjardins at 9:06 AM on August 25, 2014

I was on board with the "humanize the Tsarnaaevs" thing because there was so much demonization and so little "wait, how did a kid like that get so radicalized" in the narrative.

Meanwhile, nobody needs to go hunting for "wait, what if Mike Brown wasn't a perfect human being?" stories. By putting the focus there you're not being contrarian, you're throwing in with a very vocal contingent of racists and authority-worshipers.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 9:20 AM on August 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

roomthreeseventeen: "New York Times defends Michael Brown Jr. ‘no angel’ characterization"

Dave Zirin : "You know who we all know "dabbles in drugs and alcohol"? Maureen Dowd. As for Michael Brown, I guess we just take @nytimes word for it."
posted by boo_radley at 9:26 AM on August 25, 2014 [9 favorites]

That paragraph made me groan, but overall I thought the NYT piece was more or less even-handed and gave me a positive impression of Mike Brown. Of course, I don't need a positive OR negative impression of the victim here. His character is not material to what happened. I'm more interested in learning that Darren Wilson was no angel, that his department has a deeply troubled history. That's what matters here, not whether Michael Brown made rap songs with curses in them.
posted by naju at 9:33 AM on August 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

It's pretty clearly an example of a writer getting carried away by the possibilities of the nut graf. "Hey, I can talk about this story of him vowing to mend his ways after he saw an angel - and then in para 2 highlight how unlike an angel he was!" Which is what Alison Mitchell says to Erik Wemple in that WaPo blog post.

But sometimes it's better style to avoid that kind of partial anadiplosis, and I think this is probably one of those times. And that the people complaining about it are not missing the stylistic intent, but rather seeing it and not thinking of it as valid.
posted by running order squabble fest at 9:44 AM on August 25, 2014 [5 favorites]

Remarks of Attorney Benjamin L. Crump at the Funeral of Michael Brown, Jr.: But as we pay our final respects to Michael Brown, Jr., we declare today that he was not 3/5’s of a Citizen, he was an American Citizen, because we hold these truths to be self evident that all men are created equal. And because of these truths, we will not accept 3/5’s justice for Michael Brown, Jr, we demand Equal Justice for Michael Brown, Jr.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 9:48 AM on August 25, 2014 [23 favorites]

It really doesn't matter if Mike Brown was a hard-core thug or spent all his free time volunteering to help little old ladies across the street. He didn't deserve what he got in either case.

Does anyone remember from a while back the school massacre that didn't happen when the school secretary calmly talked and listened to the gunman? She talked him out of doing it and got him to surrender his weapons. She was completely unarmed and in grave peril. She used her common sense. She used her empathy. She saved a lot of kids from dying. She is more of a hero than any police officer I've ever heard of. If she could do it, they can at least try. Shooting someone should be the absolute last option where all others have failed.
posted by double block and bleed at 9:54 AM on August 25, 2014 [31 favorites]

roomthreeseventeen, thank you for all your posts, insight, links and information. Very much appreciated.
posted by cashman at 9:56 AM on August 25, 2014 [4 favorites]

I found it: Antoinette Huff was the school secretary who talked Michael Hill into laying down his AK-47.
posted by double block and bleed at 10:00 AM on August 25, 2014 [5 favorites]

Man, the "no angel" line keeps eating me, and I think I've figured out why. It's not that nobody's an angel—of course no one is, we can all list off stupid irresponsible shit we got up to as kids—it's that almost nobody even says someone's an angel.

It's that just about the only person who is going to literally call a teenager an angel is that teenager's mom in a period of grief. "He was my angel" is something you say about your kid who you've lost. It's the kind of thing you say at a funeral.

It's Michael Brown's funeral today, and yesterday the NYT put up a piece that made space early on for what amounts to a refutation of no one other than the mother of the boy being buried.
posted by cortex at 10:01 AM on August 25, 2014 [85 favorites]

I wanted to ditto what cashman said. I'm trying to keep following what's happening as I'm also having work pile up that I have to get through, so this thread is keeping me informed without my having to monitor the #Ferguson hashtag on Twitter 24/7. Thanks again to roomthreeseventeen and everyone else.
posted by limeonaire at 10:03 AM on August 25, 2014

Just in case anyone in this thread is too pleased with the current state of the American judical and police system: Is there a case that this whole system punishes people before they do something wrong just because they might do it?
posted by shothotbot at 10:12 AM on August 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

I know it's from the CATO Institute, but they've been researching and documenting police misconduct since around 2009. They have a twitter feed that is just shocking because of the sheer volume of reports.
posted by dejah420 at 10:17 AM on August 25, 2014 [3 favorites]

@SeanMcElwee is comparing the NYTimes article to articles that NYTimes has written about terrorists and serial killers.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 10:40 AM on August 25, 2014 [2 favorites]

Opinion: Making sure Ferguson never happens again
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 11:06 AM on August 25, 2014

I don't think I've seen a link to this so far. Apparently a news team hired a special-ops team to protect them while in Ferguson: Special Ops Contractors & Former Navy SEALs Run Successful Operation in #Ferguson

The team's conclusion? @AsymmetricUSA: Safe tour - job complete -on direct observation seems media has made protestors out to be more bloodthirsty than they are
posted by Lexica at 11:57 AM on August 25, 2014 [9 favorites]

Protests erupt as Chicago PD guns down a black teen on west side (I haven't delved into the story any further than this at this point.)
posted by desjardins at 12:10 PM on August 25, 2014

[pictures of blood in the storify i just linked, no images of dead bodies]
posted by desjardins at 12:13 PM on August 25, 2014

Chicago Trib: Two dead in separate police-involved shootings
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 12:15 PM on August 25, 2014

Apparently a news team hired a special-ops team to protect them while in Ferguson

Just a mild editing note: Asymmetric and companies like it don't provide special-ops teams -- they provide bodyguard teams that are heavily staffed by special-ops veterans. It's a slightly different skillset, with the common elements of recognizing danger and reacting appropriately to it instantaneously (in an environment where "appropriately" will almost never include "by firing off thousands of rounds because the other side is trying to kill you"). I worked for a company like Asymmetric, and we washed out a lot of highly decorated special-ops guys because they just couldn't make that transition.
posted by Etrigan at 12:16 PM on August 25, 2014 [9 favorites]

Besides Michael Brown, Whom Else Does The New York Times Call “No Angel”?: Convicted murderer and rapist Clayton Lockett is also, to be sure, “no angel.”
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 12:22 PM on August 25, 2014 [3 favorites]

Lexica: “ Special Ops Contractors & Former Navy SEALs Run Successful Operation in #Ferguson”

I'm not certain I'd take anything the man The Wonkette has dubbed The Stupidest Man on The Internet has to say at face value. He seems to draw the opposite conclusion to the people from Asymmetric he's reporting about. They appear to think the risk was majorly overblown by certain media outlets, including, one presumes St. Louis area resident and Stupidest Man on The Internet, Jim Hoft.
posted by ob1quixote at 12:23 PM on August 25, 2014

BET News Special: Justice for Ferguson: The Shooting of Michael Brown
posted by lz at 12:26 PM on August 25, 2014

@OBS_StL: WashU students stand in support of #JusticeForMikeBrown #HandsUpWalkOut #HandsUpDontShoot
posted by Golden Eternity at 1:02 PM on August 25, 2014 [3 favorites]

Handprints from the family on the casket
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 1:07 PM on August 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

Asymmetric Solutions has expanded on that tweet on their Facebook page. An excerpt:

We normally do not comment on this side of our work. At suggestion of our client who felt our position was unique, our public message was one of frustration that someone who would typically call upon us to escort them to Baghdad, Kabul, etc. would feel the need to ask us to take them into a suburb of St. Louis, our own wonderful city. It is tragic that things have degenerated to this point. The metro area is our home and we believe the coverage of St. Louis and this incident by major media is fueling the issue unnecessarily for their own benefit.

In our time inside the Ferguson area, we came into ancillary contact with numerous demonstrators and protestors who did not seem to have any commitment to violence or chaos, but only wanted to peacefully have their opinion heard or report on the matters at hand. It seems a few bad actors are being treated as the whole.

We strongly support The US Constitution and have sworn an oath to it. The First Amendment Rights to assemble and speak and print are not limited to only pretty, popular, or mainstream opinions. They are among the most sacred things that are to be protected by Government. A free society is not always a convenient or easy society.

Law and order is important. Rioters and looters should be arrested and prosecuted. They cannot be used an excuse for the Governor to unnecessarily detain or arrest a peaceful press or lawful demonstrators. The Government has a duty to defend those liberties with the same vigor in which they defend private property from theft and destruction.

posted by maudlin at 1:16 PM on August 25, 2014 [34 favorites]

NYT Public Editor's Journal: An Ill-Chosen Phrase, ‘No Angel,’ Brings a Storm of Protest
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 1:23 PM on August 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

Handprints from the family on the casket

Fuck, that kid was born the year I graduated high school.
A lot of fucking nonsense this is, this bloodthirsty fucked up country.
posted by lkc at 1:26 PM on August 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

lkc, Michael was the exact same age as my cousin Sam, who is starting his orientation at college this week. So freaking young.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 1:27 PM on August 25, 2014

I found it: Antoinette Huff was the school secretary who talked Michael Hill into laying down his AK-47.

God, that 911 call

He says he has nothing to live for ... he says he should have just gone to the mental hospital instead of doing this ...

and then when he says he should commit suicide she tells him he shouldn't - she understands, she tried committing suicide last year after her husband left her, but she's much better now

after more talking he decides to surrender and he tells her he's sorry, and she tells him:

it's gonna be alright sweetie. I just wanna let you that I love you though, and I'm proud of you. it's a good thing that you gave up and don't worry about it. we all go through something in life

posted by crayz at 1:38 PM on August 25, 2014 [7 favorites]

FiveThirtyEight: There Are Millions Of Michael Browns In America
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 1:48 PM on August 25, 2014 [8 favorites]

I read that as, "FiveThirtyEight: There Are Just As Many Michael Browns in America as Burrito Joints"
posted by rhizome at 2:02 PM on August 25, 2014

OK, fine. Let's talk about 'black-on-black' violence.

Perhaps the problem here is that many of the people who ring the black-on-black crime alarm when it suits them are the very ones who aren't paying much attention to the communities where these lives are being lost. Perhaps they are the the ones who aren't listening. Because if they were, they would understand that the disproportionate black murder rate and the targeted, violent policing of black people that fueled Ferguson's protests are directly related. In fact, they are symptoms of the same disease.

Actually, it does matter that Michael Brown was going to college

By extension, Brown’s character matters to all parents of black children, now reminded that the effort they put into conscientious parenting could be of no consequence because some jackbooted deputy might shoot them dead in the street without cause or restraint.

It can only reinforce the idea that black people have no power over their own lives.

In this way, racism is a lot like terrorism. Acts of terrorism committed against a few members of a society can still affect the broad majority by making them bear the psychic burden of knowing that their essential personhood is a subject of debate. Likewise, although most black men and women won’t experience racism in the incredibly violent way that Brown, Martin, Garner and McBride did, those deaths extract a large mental toll: Even if you aspire to greatness, you can die on any given Saturday.

posted by the man of twists and turns at 2:17 PM on August 25, 2014 [20 favorites]

Perhaps the problem here is that many of the people who ring the black-on-black crime alarm when it suits them are the very ones who aren't paying much attention to the communities where these lives are being lost.

We have a new winner in the contest for best use of "perhaps" as a scalpel.
posted by Etrigan at 2:20 PM on August 25, 2014 [2 favorites]

Re: Columbia Daily Tribune cartoon.

A coworker of mine that is also a Mizzou grad drove to Como and gave the Tribune hell for a half an hour. The editor offered her a job.

Expect the editorial cartoon quality to improve.
posted by schyler523 at 2:27 PM on August 25, 2014 [35 favorites]

schyler523 if you know details it'd be fun to hear what points your coworker brought up that made such an impression on the editor.
posted by twist my arm at 2:30 PM on August 25, 2014 [3 favorites]

lkc, Michael was the exact same age as my cousin Sam, who is starting his orientation at college this week. So freaking young.

Mr. Brown is the same age, and dimensions as my son.

I kinda don't understand the complaints about the protests. White people don't value their kids, I guess, because if this had happened to my son the way it has happened in Missouri, well, I....

Which is to say I admire the Parent's restraint and wish I was capable of such grace.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 2:42 PM on August 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

Pogo, I think the problem isn't that white folks don't value their own kids, but rather that they don't value black kids.
posted by Tknophobia at 2:46 PM on August 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

Tknophobia:
Right, since they don't kill white kids like that, there must be something wrong with Brown, and they need to unearth it.
posted by lkc at 2:58 PM on August 25, 2014 [3 favorites]

Eighty Years Of Fergusons; But if much of America has forgotten the circumstances of earlier urban rebellions and the devastating consequences for the communities in which they took place, the people of Ferguson, whether consciously or unconsciously, tried to anticipate them. When police forced protesters to keep moving in the sweltering Missouri heat, residents pooled their resources and handed out free water to marchers. When the police shot tear gas into the crowd, protesters showed up with gallons of milk. When town officials delayed the start of school, teachers held classes in the public library. When late night protests descended into bedlam, Ferguson residents woke up early the next morning to clean up the damage.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 3:22 PM on August 25, 2014 [10 favorites]

Lawyers Ask Ferguson Mayor to Grant Amnesty for Nonviolent Warrants, Fines

"The City of Ferguson has more warrants than residents"
posted by Artw at 3:50 PM on August 25, 2014 [5 favorites]

0oh god, the comments, the comments,,,, *barfs*
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 4:11 PM on August 25, 2014

Eighty Years Of Fergusons

That was a good article from Adam Serwer, not something I would have expected from Buzzfeed.
posted by nangar at 4:24 PM on August 25, 2014

When worlds collide - Orlando Jones turned the bucket challenge into a comment on Ferguson.

He's been getting some shit for it. From two directions - one being the "how dare you co-opt the bucket challenge for something else" front, and the other....well.

I actually have been following him on Twitter just for the sheer he's-a-wiseass factor, and saw this when he first did it. He's taken to retweeting these "comments" to his own Twitter feed, and after two days I just had to turn off his retweets because I was getting too angry.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:35 PM on August 25, 2014

I thought Orlando Jones's bucket o' bullets was smart and very much to the point.

In general, I had to stop reading the #Ferguson tag: It brought home to me (way too late) that Twitter is just one big comment thread. Oy.
posted by GrammarMoses at 5:03 PM on August 25, 2014 [2 favorites]

not totally up on my cosmology but pretty sure anyone shot is "no angel" because angels can't be killed by bullets
posted by klangklangston at 5:08 PM on August 25, 2014 [9 favorites]

I hope that somebody at the NY Times is taking a look at the #IDeservedIt hashtag.

"Also, I didn't like spinach."
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 5:17 PM on August 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

Ta-Nehisi Coates: Michael Brown's Unremarkable Humanity
posted by the man of twists and turns at 5:25 PM on August 25, 2014 [9 favorites]

“When youthful mistakes turn deadly,” Eugene Robinson, The Washington Post, 25 August 2014

To be young, male and black in America means not being allowed to make mistakes. Forgetting this, as we’ve seen so many times, can be fatal.

posted by ob1quixote at 5:50 PM on August 25, 2014 [10 favorites]

This Is How Police Treated Residents of the Apartment Complex Where Michael Brown Was Killed

Wow. A black man approached officers blocking off the street in the time immediately after Mike Brown was killed, and he was shot with rubber bullets. A white woman approached the blockade after that, and she was simply asked to turn around. Wow.
posted by limeonaire at 8:21 PM on August 25, 2014 [10 favorites]

Well, according to the article, it wasn't immediately after Brown was killed, it was four days later. I think that's important because the police presence had already escalated dramatically in Ferguson, so while horrible, it's less surprising.
posted by desjardins at 8:45 PM on August 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

Ahh, good call. My reading comprehension has apparently suffered... It's hot in her(r)e.
posted by limeonaire at 8:47 PM on August 25, 2014

They're playing audio which purports to be of the shooting now. Sounds like a cluster of shots, a very brief pause, and another cluster of shots. It's hard to say exactly how many shots but by tomorrow I'm sure the Internet Detectives and/or the news media will have analyzed it and gotten a very good idea of the number.

The guy who recorded it sounds like he was skyping his girlfriend or something. Heh.
posted by Justinian at 8:50 PM on August 25, 2014

Hey, New York Times- how's that search for the WMDs coming? Judith Miller turn up anything yet? Maybe a bunker full of Sarin? Or some yellow cake? A warehouse full of VX? Some weaponized anthrax perhaps?
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 8:51 PM on August 25, 2014 [3 favorites]

Justinian: Who's "they"? Are you saying there is audio of Brown's shooting?
posted by desjardins at 8:55 PM on August 25, 2014

Apparently, though it's unverified.
posted by limeonaire at 9:01 PM on August 25, 2014

“New audio of Michael Brown shooting?”—CNN Tonight, 25 August 2014

P.S. 10 or 11 shots.
posted by ob1quixote at 9:03 PM on August 25, 2014

CNN remains awful.
posted by desjardins at 9:10 PM on August 25, 2014 [5 favorites]

I'm not sure we actually learn anything useful from that audio although I'm sure much hay will be made out of the tiny pause. But you can fit that into either narrative without any problem.
posted by Justinian at 9:34 PM on August 25, 2014

Oh, and sorry I should have specified I was seeing it on CNN in the first place. I was busy pondering whether the fact that CNN had it first meant it was fake or only probably fake.
posted by Justinian at 9:35 PM on August 25, 2014 [4 favorites]

desjardins: "CNN remains awful."

Well, yeah. If there's one thing we can all agree on, it's that CNN remains awful.
posted by dejah420 at 9:36 PM on August 25, 2014 [6 favorites]

The White Skull Hey, New York Times- how's that search for the WMDs coming? Judith Miller turn up anything yet?

Hey, The White Skull, Judith Miller was a disgrace and her cheerleading for the Iraq War during 2002-2003 is a stain on the Times.

I guess you haven't heard about some of the other international reporting the NYT has done since then?

2012 Pulitzer Prize Winner International Reporting
Awarded to Jeffrey Gettleman of The New York Times for his vivid reports, often at personal peril, on famine and conflict in East Africa, a neglected but increasingly strategic part of the world.

2011 Pulitzer Prize Winner International Reporting
Awarded to Clifford J. Levy and Ellen Barry of The New York Times for their dogged reporting that put a human face on the faltering justice system in Russia, remarkably influencing the discussion inside the country.

2009 Pulitzer Prize Winner International Reporting
Awarded to The New York Times Staff for its masterful, groundbreaking coverage of America’s deepening military and political challenges in Afghanistan and Pakistan, reporting frequently done under perilous conditions.

2006 Pulitzer Prize Winner International Reporting
Awarded to Joseph Kahn and Jim Yardley of The New York Times for their ambitious stories on ragged justice in China as the booming nation's legal system evolves.

2014 Pulitzer Prize Winner Breaking News Photography
Awarded to Tyler Hicks of The New York Times for his compelling pictures that showed skill and bravery in documenting the unfolding terrorist attack at Westgate mall in Kenya.

Top Ten Works of Journalism of the Decade, 2000-2009
The faculty of New York University's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute, together with a group of distinguished outside judges, has selected "The Top Ten Works of Journalism of the Decade in the United States."

#5 C.J. Chivers (reporter), Dexter Filkins (reporter) and Tyler Hicks (photographer) The New York Times, 2003-2009

Ongoing reporting from the front lines in Iraq and Afghanistan. These journalists provide honest, detailed and evocative accounts of soldiers and marines on the battlefields of the war, often while putting themselves in harm's way.
posted by mlis at 9:38 PM on August 25, 2014

That super makes up for pushing the 'Maybe this black kid didn't totally not deserve to get shot in the street by his government' narrative
posted by shakespeherian at 9:43 PM on August 25, 2014 [18 favorites]

Such a difficult thread to engage with other mefites. In an exchange about the international reporting of the NYT that is your takeaway, shakespeherian?

I certainly don't think it makes up for it but I was not making the case that it did. Not sure how you got there.
posted by mlis at 10:11 PM on August 25, 2014

Looks like the NYT is no angel either. Still a lot better than many news sources out there.
posted by futz at 10:23 PM on August 25, 2014 [2 favorites]

Not sure why you're bringing up the NYT's record on international reporting, when that has absolutely nothing to do with the subject of this thread or the reason that many people in this thread are angry with the NYT right now.
posted by palomar at 10:23 PM on August 25, 2014 [12 favorites]

Maybe let's just not have a fight about NYT's general history of reporting in here beyond the specific scope of the Ferguson stuff.
posted by cortex at 10:23 PM on August 25, 2014 [5 favorites]

A good point about hearing audio of how many shots were fired: Ferguson's PD lied through their teeth about another very important fact. Chief Belmar stated "It was more than just a couple, but I don’t think it was many more than that." Again. 10-11 shots, way more than "a couple". Pretty sure they'd know exactly how many shots were fired after receiving the weapon. 6 out of those shots actually hit Brown. One went through the window of a resident's house (said eye witness Piaget Crenshaw), so obviously a danger to more than just Brown himself to have a police officer firing rapidly into a residental area. Also note how quick everything happened, reminds me of exactly how they killed Kajieme Powell, but just my opinion I suppose.

-----

I really want to air one of my biggest grievances about the Ferguson PD, because its been chewing at me for days now. I noticed that they clearly give nothing about their community.

1) Their community, which was already not doing too well, is clearly suffering from every single thing that has happened since the shooting of Mike Brown. Their fundraising could be to feed children. Their fundraising could help the community rebuild its broken stores. Instead, they chose their fundraising to be for Officer Darren Wilson's "legal fees" (he hasn't even been arrested) and "relocation fees" (I guess they already assume he wont find himself in prison).
2) No transparency with the community what-so-ever. Every single step they have taken up to this point has to keep the community in the dark. They lie through their teeth about every part of this investigation. They don't even provide a police report of the incident. Even lied about how long the officer had been on the job (Read the correction made at the bottom of the article.) Even the simple fact of taking off names and badges only to "protect the officers" clearly shows that their main concern is with the police and not their community they serve. Even though when people do look up the police officer once he gives his name, they only find out his spotty past (which would not personally surprise me they did a very good job of trying to cover Darren Wilson's as well while they waited about a week to release his name). So I guess they have total legit reason to be afraid of giving their name to someone with access to google.
3) Only officer that has walked with the community in their protests has been "the black" Missouri Highway Patrol Capt Ron Johnson. Even when Police decided to involve themselves in the community by handing out food, Ferguson police remained completely uninvolved. Where, yes, it might have been a completely bad idea for them to have shown up to try their damn hardest to work with the community and mend relationships. I guess.
4) Instead of actually trying to confront the looting of stores and apprehending those involved, they decided to punish the entire community as a whole. IE: putting a curfew on the protestors was their punishment, it had no effect on people already more than happy to break the law by looting. Telling protestors where and when and how they can protest. Telling protestors their right to assemble was unlawful. Throwing teargas at protestors without any warning (there was a time when police decided to throw teargas at a road full of people while talking into a loudspeaker that didn't even amplify their voice enough to be heard by anyone).
5) They confused the protestors even as they tried their hardest to obey and be compliant (at least in the end I know they tried very hard to be good and the community leaders tried extra hard to keep everyone in the right state of mind as they police got threatening). I don't have links to these incidences because I witnessed this happening & being discussed while they were being streamed, but I can name off a couple:
a) A member of the press (I AM MIKE BROWN; KARG Argus Radio) was trying to follow police directions to a safe location behind a building but was confronted by conflicting directions and force even after he asked multiple times for them to be clear. They even pointed their "less than lethal" weapons at him several times even after he tried to be compliant with them on several occasions.
b) the group of protestors being told to clear the McDonald's parking lot, then 15 mins or so later all of them being kettled into the parking lot, several arrested very violently, then the group being told to go to a nearby empty lot Officer:"this is your place to protest all night" AnonOps & Some press:"are you sure we can stay here?" Officer:"yes." Second officer 5 minutes later:"MEDIA MUST LEAVE. IT IS NOT SAFE FOR YOU."
c) BrownBlaze's videos on YT if they are still there will clearly show how conflicting police were while things got nasty the first couple of nights.
d) The incident with the reporters in McDonalds.
There was even an interview with a community leader about this issue and I wish it was up somewhere for me to show, she was very on point about how the police tried to confuse the crowd while giving conflicting instructions just to stir the pot.

I just.. Well, I am sure there are so many more points I have about this. I'm tired so I will end my rant here. But... well, ok, isn't the whole point of being an officer to stand up for your community, protect & serve? How does this police force stand to gain their community's trust back now? They're not. There just is no way this will play out in their favor, right?
posted by lz at 11:46 PM on August 25, 2014 [59 favorites]

Inside sources have emailed me something rather dubious about @GovJayNixon— Shaun King (@ShaunKing) August 26, 2014

Im told that @GovJayNixon is being told that the case against Wilson is nearly impossible to win. Because of this...— Shaun King (@ShaunKing) August 26, 2014

. @GovJayNixon doesnt want to appoint a special prosecutor AND LOSE b/c he will bear the burden so he has left it up to McCullough.— Shaun King (@ShaunKing) August 26, 2014

posted by lz at 12:00 AM on August 26, 2014 [4 favorites]

Wow, lz, excellent comment !! I agree with all your points. Still waiting for that "favorite this a thousand times" pony.
posted by marsha56 at 12:03 AM on August 26, 2014

marsha56: I'm a little lost on that one, sorry.
posted by lz at 12:11 AM on August 26, 2014

marsha56: I'm a little lost on that one, sorry.

lz, a pony is a term often used here at Metafilter meaning "extra feature". So marsha56, by saying what she did, is indicating that she wishes there was a pony here at Metafilter that would allow her to give your comment 1000 favorites, instead of just the one she's allowed. Her comment, then, was a glowing compliment offered toward your comment!
posted by flapjax at midnite at 12:27 AM on August 26, 2014 [6 favorites]

I say this as a resident of STL and having been here a decade. If there is not so much as a trial, may the riots continue and I will be there to stand up as a minority with the rest of my people.

Unless there is absolute proof at this point, I do not care. There is very little that the PD can provide that makes any sense at this point.
posted by lizarrd at 4:26 AM on August 26, 2014 [6 favorites]

Some of the costs of these police forces are huge. From here:
"Pine Lawn is 96 percent black, and its per capita income a measly $13,000. In 2013 the city collected more than $1.7 million in fines and court fees. That same year, the affluent west-county suburb of Chesterfield, with a population of 47,000 (about fifteen times bigger than Pine Lawn) and a per capita income of $50,000, collected just $1.2 million from municipal fines, according to statistics compiled by the state."
That works out to 3-4% of the total income of Pine Lawn going to fines and fees, compared to 0.05% for Chesterfield. It makes it even harder to justify how little is being given back to these communities.
posted by quercus23 at 5:13 AM on August 26, 2014 [9 favorites]

Hmm, lets see our community has a poverty problem. How can we help them? I know, first we'll fine the shit out of them. Then we can repave the roads, allowing them to drive around more, then we can pull them over for even more tickets and fines.. Use that money for something else. What were we trying to do again?...
posted by p3t3 at 5:32 AM on August 26, 2014 [2 favorites]

What were we trying to do again?...

Shame them into working harder, because that's all getting out of poverty really requires. Not access to better K-12 education, not access to better nutrition, not access to affordable health care. Just... more grindstones.
posted by Etrigan at 6:34 AM on August 26, 2014 [9 favorites]

Oh, y'all...you know the best part? The best part is that these cops are going to get paid Three MILLION dollars in overtime pay.

Repression pays well.
posted by dejah420 at 6:41 AM on August 26, 2014 [14 favorites]

flapjax at midnite: Oh! Thank you for clarifying. That makes sense.

quercus23: Their $300,000 fund raiser isn't for their PD, its for Darren Wilson.
posted by lz at 6:46 AM on August 26, 2014

How does this police force stand to gain their community's trust back now? They're not.

I've been wondering about this. What do you do if it turns out that a particular police department has gone completely off the rails?

It's routine for politicians to talk about "our failing school systems" -- about whether public schools are working, and what to do about it. But there are literally zero Google results (until this comment is posted) for "our failing police departments." We accept that school systems can be "successful" or "failing"; that they can be ranked; that some are much better than others nearby; that some require heroic intervention efforts; that some are dangerous.

What would it look like if we started holding police departments to the same standards as public schools?
posted by jhc at 6:49 AM on August 26, 2014 [17 favorites]

The Poorest Corner Of Town: Ferguson itself, however, is about two-thirds black and is largely integrated internally. It is not particularly poor. Its median household income is about $35,000, well below the national mark of about $50,000, but ahead of many neighboring communities. In the north end of the city, which features some large, handsome homes, household incomes are close to the national average. Nearly 60 percent of Ferguson residents own their own homes. Most of the city looks nothing like the tinderbox of poverty and segregation that Americans have come to know in the two weeks since Brown’s death.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 6:56 AM on August 26, 2014 [5 favorites]

Why Civil Rights Groups Are Calling For The Ferguson Prosecutor To Step Down
posted by Artw at 7:07 AM on August 26, 2014 [1 favorite]

Police Often Provoke Protest Violence, UC Researchers Find.

An interesting read, though it didn't have any real exploration of less-aggressive methods for the police to use at protests. I would like to see some solid, testable methods that we could push police forces towards using rather than what they're doing now.
posted by emjaybee at 7:08 AM on August 26, 2014 [4 favorites]

I’m black, my brother’s white … and he’s a cop who shot a black man on duty
posted by Artw at 7:11 AM on August 26, 2014 [16 favorites]

Artw, thanks for posting that. Very complicated, I wish he could have gone into more detail.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:16 AM on August 26, 2014

That's heartbreaking.
posted by Drinky Die at 7:18 AM on August 26, 2014

"The Poorest Corner Of Town" is an excellent, really detailed article. Casselman's really made an effort to get to know the place. I wish that was more common.
posted by nangar at 7:26 AM on August 26, 2014 [1 favorite]

I kinda don't understand the complaints about the protests. White people don't value their kids, I guess, because if this had happened to my son the way it has happened in Missouri, well, I....

If that shit suddenly started happening in white neighborhoods we would BURN EVERY FUCKING THING DOWN TO THE GROUND and salt the earth. What is amazing in America is that there's not a full-stop riot every single day. Actual riots, not this protest with occasional shenanigans that the media wants to call a riot in Ferguson.
posted by phearlez at 7:36 AM on August 26, 2014 [4 favorites]

I have wondering about the basically wall to wall support politicians give the police compared to the military. Even the Congressional Black Caucus has call for reform of the NCAA but not of national police reform. The military have to suffer though years of a crap VA system and endure a suicide epidemic. What gives?

Police are a local function, and it takes a tremendous amount of effort to change thousands and thousands of local PDs. Just look at how much effort was involved in No Child Left Behind and Common Core and suchlike, and you can see how difficult it is to engender real change. There are even more police departments and sheriff's departments and highway patrols (all enforcing at least slightly different laws) than there are school districts, and every one of them is zealously guarded not just by the unions, but by the politicians who want to keep them under their purview.
posted by Etrigan at 7:37 AM on August 26, 2014

White people would have the political power to change things, they wouldn't get to the rioting stage. That's the thing, people always say that rioting doesn't help anything...and it doesn't. But it's something people do out of anger that nothing can be done.
posted by Drinky Die at 7:39 AM on August 26, 2014

What is amazing in America is that there's not a full-stop riot every single day. Actual riots, not this protest with occasional shenanigans that the media wants to call a riot in Ferguson.

Well, this is the devious side of American exceptionalism. Just like low-paid smart English-major bookstore workers, Americans think that they are special so the things that happen to them are not like those same things happening to someone else. The murder rates in Baltimore may be as high as those in Karachi, but the former is just business as usual while the latter is an extreme and extremely dangerous place. Once you add in a quality if life for even poor Americans that in most cases still allows for bread and circuses, riots become pretty hard to gin up.
posted by OmieWise at 7:53 AM on August 26, 2014 [3 favorites]

This new Pew poll from yesterday suggests a majority of young Americans don't think the police do a good job of either treating races equally or using appropriate force. I don't know how to reconcile that with the earlier poll asking whether race was a factor in Brown's shooting. (Both polls asked for the youngest adult in the household on landlines.)
posted by mubba at 7:58 AM on August 26, 2014 [1 favorite]

So, Darren Wilson is holed up somewhere and presumably isn't doing any work, at least not for the Ferguson PD. Assuming no charges are ever brought, how long can they pay him for not doing his job duties? At some point they have to let him go, right?
posted by desjardins at 8:11 AM on August 26, 2014

At Michael Brown's Funeral, Little of His Life and Much About His Death

To My Son
Dear Son,
I don't understand why you were chosen by God
I know He knows what He is doing because
God Almighty doesn't make mistakes.
So that's why you were called home
I think of you day and night just wish
I was there to save you from harm.
I always told you I will never let nothing happen to you.
And that's what hurt soooooooo much that
I couldn't protect you but we love you.
I will never let you die in my heart.
You will always live forever
Your dad and best friend.
You old dude, that's what you called me.
-- Michael Brown Sr.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:13 AM on August 26, 2014 [9 favorites]

Alright, so any politician who makes serious reform suggestions for the police is suddenly going to see a lot of police union fundraisers working for their opponent. What if someone put out free (or deeply discounted) tuition at any accredited state school psychology department for anybody in that uniform? Maybe it's wishful thinking but would teaching a decent percentage of police about cognitive biases, group think, mental illness, and all of that stuff help? Would the police unions agree that furthering education along the social worker track would be useful to their work?
posted by sandswipe at 8:37 AM on August 26, 2014

I don't know about elsewhere, but here (Seattle) the Police Union seems to primarily exist to enable police brutality, so no.
posted by Artw at 8:41 AM on August 26, 2014 [4 favorites]

A few good links from Twitter this morning:

1. How much did the clashes in Ferguson cost and who will pay?

2. I’m black, my brother’s white … and he’s a cop who shot a black man on duty

3. The Poorest Corner of Town

That last one...Ben Casselman's been reading MetaFilter, maybe! Or just got a ton of great sources. It's pretty good.
posted by limeonaire at 8:44 AM on August 26, 2014 [3 favorites]

limeonaire, you definitely have good taste, since those have all been posted in this thread.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:46 AM on August 26, 2014 [4 favorites]

Ahhh hell. Man. Good call, roomthreeseventeen. Shoulda previewed! I'm thinking actually maybe I just opened up a bunch of tabs from here and didn't notice where I clicked from. Agh. That's embarrassing. I'm gonna...go do my work now.
posted by limeonaire at 8:48 AM on August 26, 2014 [1 favorite]

"White people would have the political power to change things, they wouldn't get to the rioting stage. That's the thing, people always say that rioting doesn't help anything...and it doesn't. But it's something people do out of anger that nothing can be done."

Yeah, but it ain't quick either.
posted by klangklangston at 8:59 AM on August 26, 2014

. @GovJayNixon doesnt want to appoint a special prosecutor AND LOSE b/c he will bear the burden so he has left it up to McCullough.— Shaun King (@ShaunKing) August 26, 2014

I think a plausible read on this is that this info has been leaked specifically to give the impression that the governor 100% wants to see an indictment and a guilty verdict, whereas he's probably actually torn between different political winds (which itself would perfectly explain why he'd try to avoid appointing a special prosecutor, but acknowledging that ends up looking cowardly).

But I suppose after the past six years, I'm kind of tired of thinking that tries to posit what a politician "really" wants to do, when what they are doing is counter to that.

In fact, would anyone looking for a guilty verdict hold the governor to blame if he appointed a special prosecutor and it was clear the special prosecutor was working strenuously for justice, even if a jury ended up acquitting? It's much more plausible that the governor is afraid that appointing a special prosecutor would immediately cost him the support of all the police forces statewide.
posted by nobody at 9:04 AM on August 26, 2014 [3 favorites]

How are teacher's unions vilified while police unions are lionized? Police groups are the only junk calls I continued to get after I had my landline on the Do Not Call list, there was no stopping them And there's tons of folks that will donate to police causes just to get some kind of sticker they can put on their car in order to curry favor or something.

I read the vile Second City Cop blog occasionally if I need to be reminded of how racist cops are. Chicago cops (or wannabes) can comment anonymously, and it's pretty much pure hate. My daughter has recently gone through some horrific things and was really helped by some good cops, so she has been giving thought to switching from nursing to law enforcement. I understand that we need good cops, but I am very afraid of how she will be changed.
posted by readery at 9:04 AM on August 26, 2014 [7 favorites]

What if someone put out free (or deeply discounted) tuition at any accredited state school psychology department for anybody in that uniform? Maybe it's wishful thinking but would teaching a decent percentage of police about cognitive biases, group think, mental illness, and all of that stuff help?

The problem is that education doesn't necessarily lead to enlightenment nor does access to that stuff necessarily help if there's no policy in place. Look above for the links I posted about the programs for police officers under the CIT program. They're there already. But when you consider that the racist whackjob had been through the training you have to wonder if it's not seen as a joke that will let them get off the street for a week, paid.

Certainly the dispatch isn't making sure to send only competent CIT-certified officers or you wouldn't have had those dudes roll up on a mentally ill man and shoot him within 20 seconds.

Optional offerings that doesn't get priority and pressure aren't going to do the job,
posted by phearlez at 9:06 AM on August 26, 2014

> I don't know how to reconcile that with the earlier poll asking whether race was a factor in Brown's shooting.

The poll results aren't actually that different. Ferguson shooting "raises important issues about race": black 80%, white 37%. Rating police performance as "poor" on "treating racial and ethnic groups equally": black 70%, white 25%.

Percentages were higher when respondents were asked about this specific case, but the disparity is about the same. There's also probably an issue of a lot of white people not seeing racial bias as an issue with their own police force or police in general, but recognizing that racial bias in policing is an issue in Ferguson, if they've been following the story closely, while a lot of black people have had very different experiences with police.
posted by nangar at 9:13 AM on August 26, 2014

In fact, would anyone looking for a guilty verdict hold the governor to blame if he appointed a special prosecutor and it was clear the special prosecutor was working strenuously for justice, even if a jury ended up acquitting? It's much more plausible that the governor is afraid that appointing a special prosecutor would immediately cost him the support of all the police forces statewide.

The other downside of this is McCulloch giving Wilson a preview of all evidence that might be used against him, without forcing Wilson to settle on any particular statement, so he can tailor his defence to the evidence should the FBI take action against him.
posted by Artw at 9:45 AM on August 26, 2014 [2 favorites]

I read the 'No Angel' piece. Brown's Mom had to provide a receipt to prove he didn't steal an iPod. What? My son pulled a lot of crap as a teenager. It was difficult and scary. He got busted for having a beer when he was underage, he got busted for driving without a license, he didn't get busted for a bunch of stuff that I don't want to detail, but it was non-trivial. He's white. He's alive (and thankfully gotten his shit together). Not being an angel is no reason to get killed. I think the article was trying to draw a picture, but it focused on the negative and vilified Black culture - rap? really? and the writer can't see his own racism. Shame on the Times.
posted by theora55 at 10:08 AM on August 26, 2014

How are teacher's unions vilified while police unions are lionized?

Teacher's unions = tenure. People don't like the idea of tenure, because they think there's a much higher chance that lazy people will milk it than bad administrators will fire good teachers for no reason (the idea of firing senior, more expensive teachers generally doesn't come up). Plus they think that teachers only work nine months out of the year and six hours a day anyway, so they clearly don't need that much protection. And teaching is seen as an easier job -- anyone could be a teacher, but it takes real courage to be a cop.
posted by Etrigan at 10:11 AM on August 26, 2014 [5 favorites]

Argh, forgot to add: police unions aren't lionized. Most people are only faintly aware that they exist.
posted by Etrigan at 10:13 AM on August 26, 2014

In fact, would anyone looking for a guilty verdict hold the governor to blame if he appointed a special prosecutor and it was clear the special prosecutor was working strenuously for justice, even if a jury ended up acquitting?

It strikes me that appointing a special prosecutor would be beneficial specifically in the case there are no charges brought or an acquittal.

More generally, appointing a special prosecutor is all political upside for Nixon regardless of the outcome of the trial, and allowing a prosecutor (seen by many as biased) to proceed is downside for Nixon whatever the final outcome.

Here is my analysis:

CURRENT PROSECUTOR/LOSE CASE
If charges are not filed or the officer is charged by acquitted, there will be a firestorm of "County Prosecutor McCullough was biased, Nixon did nothing about it and that is why there were no charges/acquittal." In other words, Governor didn't do his job and that led to negative outcome.

Outcome for gov=bad.

CURRENT PROSECUTOR/WIN CASE
If the case is brought and won by McCullough) Gov. Nixon doesn't get any of the credit because he didn't do anything to help make that positive outcome happen.

Outcome for gov=not good.

SPECIAL PROSECUTOR/LOSE CASE
But if Nixon appointed a special prosecutor and there are no charges, there is much more the outcome of "The Gov did his best to ensure an impartial process." Some people will still think the outcome wasn't what they wanted, but at least the Gov gets credit from them for TRYING to create a more impartial process.

Outcome for gov=better than if he did nothing.

SPECIAL PROSECUTOR/NO CHARGES
And if the impartial/outside prosecutor does find no reason to bring charges, that is going to be FAR more convincing to people that the lack of charges is actually justified. So he will win at least some people over to the side of 'Governor did his best to create an impartial process to investigate thoroughly and that led to the correct outcome.'

Outcome for gov=better than if he did nothing.

SPECIAL PROSECUTOR/OFFICER CONVICTED
Obviously the governor looks like a genius to Mike Brown supporters in this situation. But even to the 'other side' - if the case actually gets to this point and there is enough evidence to convince a jury, then there will be enough evidence to convince a big chunk of the general public, too. And again, the Gov ends up looking good by creating the environment where the truth can come out via an unbiased and impartial process etc.

Outcome for gov=good.

In short, appointing a special prosecutor appears to be all up-side and no down-side for the Governor. He comes out looking better whatever the final verdict.

Not appointing the special prosecutor, he comes out looking worse, regardless of the final verdict.

And, this applies to both the "Michael Brown supporters" and the "Officer Wilson supporters". Both are going to be more favorable to the Governor if he appoints a special prosecutor, regardless of final outcome.
posted by flug at 10:15 AM on August 26, 2014 [2 favorites]

Teacher's unions = tenure. People don't like the idea of tenure, because they think there's a much higher chance that lazy people will milk it than bad administrators will fire good teachers for no reason (the idea of firing senior, more expensive teachers generally doesn't come up). Plus they think that teachers only work nine months out of the year and six hours a day anyway, so they clearly don't need that much protection. And teaching is seen as an easier job -- anyone could be a teacher, but it takes real courage to be a cop.

Imagine a whaaaaaaa- rising forever throughout this paragraph.
posted by Artw at 10:17 AM on August 26, 2014

I'm just going to chime in at this point, and say that probably the most disappointing thing about this whole episode for me, has been to see the straight-up racism of my fellow Missourians and fellow Americans come to the forefront.

I guess I've been aware of the latent racism since we moved here and while house shopping, our real estate agent delicately started talking about 'ethnic' neighborhoods, and which were and weren't. And we heard stories of friends of friends who were just straight-up old-school unabashed southern racists. And we found out within a few months of moving here that our town was set up as one of the white-flight outposts (very similar to Ferguson 30-40 years ago; and also similar in that the racial mix has changed dramatically over the past 20-30 years--we're now one of the few Missouri communities that is actually mixed in similar proportions to the state as a whole, rather than 95% white or 95% black). And that the police department had a very recent history of extensive "driving while black" traffic stops and similar harassment of 'outsiders' with a painfully obvious racial overtone. And so on.

But, you know, you hope that a few decades of actual integration and daily, completely normal contact at school, work, and so on, would have a positive effect on people.

It's just disappointing to see virulent hatred and racism that is barely concealed--or not concealed at all--come to the fore and dominate the thinking of so many people. I know it's not everyone--but it sure is a LOT of people. Far more than I imagined.

I like to think that we can do better.
posted by flug at 10:31 AM on August 26, 2014 [7 favorites]

NFL star Antonio Cromartie puts Brown's name on his jersey.

There was a shooting of a black guy by cops last night in Dallas. Now, he kidnapped his kids, threatened his girlfriend, was armed, and led cops on a high-speed chase (with the kids in the car I think), so working up sympathy for him is not going to happen.

However, when they interviewed a neighbor, an older black man, he had tears in his eyes and said "This just keeps happening. I'm tired of it! Tired!" and I thought, wow, that is definitely about Ferguson. This crime has stirred up a lot of old feelings in a lot of people.
posted by emjaybee at 10:39 AM on August 26, 2014 [1 favorite]

Totally missed the CIT information posted earlier in the thread and I hadn't ever heard of this kind of training before. I used to assume something like this existed, but....you've all seen the videos. If it really does exist in St Louis, enrollment rates are apparently low enough as to be somewhat less than effective.

From skimming a few of the articles I also don't think CIT goes far enough. One week of training in how to deal with the mentally ill with occasional meetings? It sounds like the bare minimum that should be offered before anyone is allowed to go out on patrol. The errors we're seeing are pretty fundamental, and a week of training for a tenth of the force isn't necessarily going to be enough to correct what is obviously a deep cultural problem. I'm talking about working towards a percentage of police officers getting four year degrees that include training on cognitive biases, statistical sampling, and scientific best practices for long term treatment of various disorders in addition to going way in depth into the kinds of things a CIT course might bring up. Context for the situations "those people" find themselves in when the police show up. Like a GI bill for cops, basically. Maybe get departments to tie advancements and raises to percentage of degree completed if not enough people are interested in free education. But then I've always been one of those educational utopians who thinks the everyone deserves a degree or two and things would go smoother if everyone got a chance at serious education, no matter how many unethical ivy leaguers I hear about.
posted by sandswipe at 10:52 AM on August 26, 2014

"Nothing to everyone" is defiantly what Nixon is going for, may all his cowardly dreams collapse.
posted by Artw at 10:53 AM on August 26, 2014 [3 favorites]

EXCLUSIVE: DASHCAM VIDEO CLEARS NJ MAN
Why do people think Police are upstanding people who do no wrong?
posted by lz at 10:54 AM on August 26, 2014 [22 favorites]

Why do people think Police are upstanding people who do no wrong?

Steady diet of Cops and fictional TV shows and movies where the few bad apples are rapidly excised by the upstanding heroes.
posted by Etrigan at 10:57 AM on August 26, 2014

Just watched the video lz linked to. I'm hitting "holy shit" burnout.

At this point, if I hear a cop yelling "stop resisting!" I assume it's 99% likely they're beating the crap out of somebody who's done nothing to deserve it and isn't resisting in any way.
posted by Lexica at 11:07 AM on August 26, 2014 [17 favorites]

wow. that video lz posted seems to reveal a couple of elements i now wonder if cops deploy as a matter of routine: repeated "stop resisting", repeated "don't grab my gun", shouted loudly even when there is no resisting and no grabbing for guns. officer wilson made a claim about resisting and an attempt to get his gun. fuck me running.
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 11:09 AM on August 26, 2014 [35 favorites]

It's the cop cheat code -anyone using it should be considered a liar until proven otherwise.
posted by Artw at 11:13 AM on August 26, 2014 [12 favorites]

Interesting to note, an investigation by Bloomfield PD's scandal plagued internal affairs division had found no wrongdoing by officers.

Because it's "normal".
posted by Artw at 11:20 AM on August 26, 2014

“Amid furor over killing, Brown's family seeks solace,” Yamiche Alcindor, USA Today, 26 August 2014

While the country has remained fixed on the vivid, tear-gas laden confrontations between police and angry residents in Ferguson, Brown's family has been trying to cope with the media spotlight and a world without their son. The family granted a USA TODAY reporter exclusive access to Michael Brown's funeral and memorial services.

posted by ob1quixote at 11:21 AM on August 26, 2014

"stop resisting", "don't grab my gun",...

It all really translates to "stop existing in my world"
posted by Hairy Lobster at 11:25 AM on August 26, 2014 [1 favorite]

The impression I get from reading Ben Casselman's article that roomthreeseventeen linked to, and Errin Whack's article on Fusion earlier, is that a lot of white people in Ferguson are pretty liberal. They're proud of living in a diverse community. They're proud of their farmers' market offering local produce. They're proud of their town's micro-brewery, wine bar, and artisanal bakery. They're oblivious to how their elected government treats non-white residents because that doesn't affect them. A lot of them are still oblivious after two weeks of protest. (It's not the case that all white people in the area have been oblivious of course; there were a fairly decent number of white people showing up at protests even in the first few days when almost all protesters were local.)

Ferguson is not an outlier. Ferguson's liberals are like liberals everywhere. A lot of us live in places that are kind of like Ferguson. We need to be asking ourselves some questions.
posted by nangar at 11:27 AM on August 26, 2014 [21 favorites]

Why do people think Police are upstanding people who do no wrong?

Because most middle-to-upper class white people do not have any negative interactions with the police, and those are the people who control media messaging and politics.

I mean, based on what I've personally observed in real life, as a white middle class woman, cops are friendly and helpful. Even the ones who have given me speeding tickets. (I got out of one by bursting into tears!) I have literally never had an experience with a cop that was worse than "mildly annoying."

I wouldn't know any different if I didn't listen to people sharing their negative experiences. A lot of people don't listen, or they discount the experiences of others.
posted by desjardins at 11:34 AM on August 26, 2014 [13 favorites]

I mean, based on what I've personally observed in real life, as a white middle class woman, cops are friendly and helpful. Even the ones who have given me speeding tickets. (I got out of one by bursting into tears!) I have literally never had an experience with a cop that was worse than "mildly annoying."

I've also gotten out of tickets by crying and looking helpless, even when I rear ended another car by accident (my car was completely damaged, the other car wasn't thankfully). I've also worked with police in a community service job and have witnessed a lot of good police officers trying to take care of misguided teenagers of all race.

But.. this really doesn't mean I live in a fantasy world and believe police officers are without fault and are immune to corruption/greed/brutality.

Though I do think most people choose to be blind to whats going on around them because it doesn't effect them personally.
posted by lz at 11:40 AM on August 26, 2014 [1 favorite]

phearlez: "If that shit suddenly started happening in white neighborhoods we would BURN EVERY FUCKING THING DOWN TO THE GROUND and salt the earth. "

But white people, we don't really do much rioting. We go through proper channels, because we have some faith that blatant wrongdoing will actually be punished. We can afford to be all polite.

While victims of police brutality are certainly disproportionately people of color, certainly there have been white people subjected to dreadful injustices. But can you seriously imagine rioting in the streets over such an incident? I was raised in a pretty ordinary largely-white middle-class suburb, and I can't imagine that.
posted by desuetude at 11:50 AM on August 26, 2014 [1 favorite]

Because most middle-to-upper class white people do not have any negative interactions with the police

Pretty much this. Back in my miscreant years, when I was poor white trash doing poor white trash things, the police were openly and flagrantly abusive jackasses.

Even now, whenever I interact with a LEO, I wonder - am I going to get the good citizen happy to do his job cop, or am I going to get Roidy McShitbrain who is just looking for a reason to bust someone up ?

It seems to me that small town cops are the worst, especially if they have been on the force a long time. If you're a cop who is good at being a cop, you'll move up and out to greener pastures and better pay. But if you're a shitheel who likes The Authortay, you'll stay in your small pond with your tiny dick and your penchant for petty violence.

I think it is well established which career track Mr. Wilson was on.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 11:52 AM on August 26, 2014 [11 favorites]

Is Eric Holder Trying to Railroad Ferguson Cop?
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 11:53 AM on August 26, 2014

When you "fit the description."
posted by empath at 11:55 AM on August 26, 2014

Is Eric Holder Trying to Railroad Ferguson Cop?

Are you invoking Betteridge's Law? Because this is an obvious hit-piece.
posted by zombieflanders at 11:59 AM on August 26, 2014

Betteridge's Law? Yes.
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 12:02 PM on August 26, 2014 [1 favorite]

The NLPC article just linked has a different approach on the word "fact" than I do, but it's almost worth it for the words, "radical egalitarian ideal of justice." Oh, you!
posted by droomoord at 12:04 PM on August 26, 2014

Yep, so many of my friends on Facebook completely can't imagine protesting or rioting. I've deliberately been seeking out some of my smartest friends from high school, people who were among the top 330 students in my state back when we met, in the hope that I would find them understanding. But I've consistently been disappointed to find them saying protesting is "irrational" or that they only condone "legitimate protests," whatever those are. There are all of these thin dividing lines, all of these small signifiers, in the way they talk about this.

But I've been trying to be patient as I talk them through thinking about the words they use, being less judgmental, and broadening their perspectives on this, trying to get them to understand the back-against-the-wall feeling that leads people to protest and/or riot. In some cases it's felt like trying to describe breathing on land to someone who has only ever breathed underwater. Some people have changed their minds during our discussion—when, say, their pastors said something on the subject. Me challenging them hasn't seemed to make any difference—and I guess that makes sense, since as studies have shown, being challenged on your deepest convictions often leads to them becoming stronger.

Come to think of it, maybe that's why I feel like my side of these arguments is getting stronger...
posted by limeonaire at 12:07 PM on August 26, 2014 [4 favorites]

The NLPC article just linked has a different approach on the word "fact" than I do, but it's almost worth it for the words, "radical egalitarian ideal of justice." Oh, you!

Is that when you actually investigate crimes even when they are by someone you like against someone you don't?
posted by Artw at 12:07 PM on August 26, 2014

#Ferguson cops claim they have no records of arrests of journalists
posted by Artw at 12:09 PM on August 26, 2014 [6 favorites]

They don't have a record of a lot of things, huh?
posted by limeonaire at 12:10 PM on August 26, 2014 [10 favorites]

Of course they don't have records! If you don't keep records, you don't have records! Duh!
posted by rtha at 12:10 PM on August 26, 2014 [2 favorites]

Also, if you don't arrest someone, then it doesn't count, right? Like, just detaining them is okay! And no records!
posted by rtha at 12:11 PM on August 26, 2014 [1 favorite]

Actually seems like "Missouri State Highway claim they have no records of arrests of journalists." That's the trouble with having so many police departments involved on the ground.
posted by smackfu at 12:17 PM on August 26, 2014 [3 favorites]

But white people, we don't really do much rioting. We go through proper channels, because we have some faith that blatant wrongdoing will actually be punished. We can afford to be all polite.

I think this is an important point. Rioting is an expression of powerlessness. By contrast, not-rioting is an expression of consciousness of power.

I got threatened the other day by some guys in my neighborhood because I asked them nicely to quiet down (at midnight). One guy followed me down the block (we were on opposite sides of the street) spouting abuse. I calmly walked home and called the cops -- because I know I can. I was a little alarmed at their quasi-roid-rage response but the thing is I always knew I would "win" because I define winning as getting peace and quiet. I don't know what their victory conditions were in their minds but I really think I won the argument. Knowing that I can deploy the power of the police like that (as far as I know, the cop just talked to them, nobody was arrested or roughed up) is something that is part and parcel of being white and middle class (in America). I don't need to riot.
posted by dhartung at 12:21 PM on August 26, 2014 [10 favorites]

"Police Apologist Bingo"
posted by lz at 12:23 PM on August 26, 2014 [6 favorites]

Meanwhile in tangentially related news, the backlash to the backlash continues apace…

“Backlash Against Police Militarization: Implications for the U.S. Coast Guard?,” LCDR Craig Allen, USCG, USNI Blog, 26 August 2014
posted by ob1quixote at 12:24 PM on August 26, 2014 [1 favorite]

Yep, so many of my friends on Facebook completely can't imagine protesting or rioting.

I'm not going to go out and riot because I have stuff to lose. But I can imagine doing it, and I'm not going to sit here and make judgements on people that do it.
posted by empath at 12:41 PM on August 26, 2014 [3 favorites]

I'm not going to go out and riot because I have stuff to lose. But I can imagine doing it, and I'm not going to sit here and make judgements on people that do it.

I think you stated something very important when you say "I have stuff to lose". I don't think at this point anyone in Ferguson feels like they have anything to lose.
posted by lz at 12:47 PM on August 26, 2014 [5 favorites]

Yeah, see, the old friends I've been looking up on Facebook basically refuse to countenance the notion that protesting could be useful or productive. And these guys are supposedly some of Missouri's best and brightest—but they're using their powers of argumentation to argue others out of their rights.
posted by limeonaire at 12:47 PM on August 26, 2014

“Color Matters, Even in San Francisco,” Jason Boyce, The Bold Italic, 01 August 2013 [via]

When observed by others, I am Schrödinger’s Black Man, existing in a constant state of potential criminality. Am I committing a crime at this moment or merely capable of it? Is my walk suspicious because I lack the gait that neighbors expect while I am walking? Or do I look suspicious because I “look” suspicious and because other characteristics serve merely to reinforce that impression?

posted by ob1quixote at 12:53 PM on August 26, 2014 [3 favorites]

Bit of relevant silliness.
posted by sandswipe at 12:56 PM on August 26, 2014 [2 favorites]

Heh, yes. I mean, I have a friend I've spoken with just a little about Ferguson, and although he seems broadly to accept that injustice was done, he greeted things like Officer Gofuckyourself with opinions like, "I'd probably be tired of people if I was a cop, too." Weird blind spot.
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 1:16 PM on August 26, 2014

Why do people think Police are upstanding people who do no wrong?

Because we're taught from preschool age that the police are here to help us. If you're lost, find a policeman and he will help you find your mom. If a stranger tries to talk to you, yell for a policeman and he will keep you safe. As you get older and are in school, the classmates dad that comes in for career day, well, he's obviously a nice guy.

When a cop is killed on duty, there is a huge outcry and lots of mourning and the funeral is carried live on tv and discussing his life and career trajectory and the family he leaves behind. Must be a good guy.

If you live in a white(r) neighborhood that has few unit callouts, the most you might see of the police is the occasional drive by as he's cruising around during his shift. Maybe you'll get a ticket sometime, but if you're white and not a dick right off the bat, it's not a bad experience.

It's only when you know cops personally, a family member joins the force or your neighbor you bbq with, you realize that they're regular people with the same bad attitudes and prejudices and world views as a lot of other people. Not all of them joined the police force in order to further some greater good for society. The difference is, they have a little bit of power and a gun, which makes them Billy Badass in their minds.
posted by hollygoheavy at 1:20 PM on August 26, 2014 [2 favorites]

I've taught my children to look for a grandma or a mom with kids if they ever get separated. More because of the lack of LEO in a given place than them being assholes. But works well for both reasons.....
posted by pearlybob at 1:25 PM on August 26, 2014 [3 favorites]

But white people, we don't really do much rioting.

Only when our hockey team loses or our favorite pedophile-enabling college football coach is fired. Or just because it's Halloween.

You know, the important stuff.
posted by desjardins at 1:25 PM on August 26, 2014 [27 favorites]

Also-I know I've been pretty negative sounding about police in this thread and especially considering my son is a member of a large police force in the southeast. I have to say, while my son changed a lot since becoming a cop, having some points of view that make me wince, he's actually a good and honest cop. Our police force, shockingly enough, has tended to investigate situations like this pretty even handedly. Also, the police unions that are in place here are kept busy trying to protect the pay scales and pensions from being drained by a city council that keeps cutting taxes.
posted by hollygoheavy at 1:30 PM on August 26, 2014 [1 favorite]

and honestly, it's not race, it's disparity. white people riot all the time in other countries.
posted by desjardins at 1:30 PM on August 26, 2014 [2 favorites]

Because we're taught from preschool age that the police are here to help us. If you're lost, find a policeman and he will help you find your mom. If a stranger tries to talk to you, yell for a policeman and he will keep you safe. As you get older and are in school, the classmates dad that comes in for career day, well, he's obviously a nice guy

That and cops really do have to deal with the armpits of society. The people who won't restrain their dogs, the domestics, the drunken fistfights, deranged homeless people and those sovereign citizen tax evader types.

A good cop on your worst day is worth his weight in gold - and I have several relatives who are cops that are like this. They honestly want to help and believe in community service. Despite what you hear, even from me, these cops do exist. They aren't that rare.

But as we see in Ferguson, lots of cops are bad. Sometimes it's a single loony in an otherwise OK department, sometimes it is a result of the culture from the Mayor on down.

There need to be reforms. Police, like other functions of government, can be done well or done poorly. I don't understand why some people are so content with low standards of behavior from cops.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 1:31 PM on August 26, 2014 [7 favorites]

But white people, we don't really do much rioting.

Only when our hockey team loses or our favorite pedophile-enabling college football coach is fired. Or just because it's Halloween.

Don't forget the Cicero Race Riot. Sometimes all it takes is for a single black family to move into an all-white neighborhood.
posted by Strange Interlude at 1:39 PM on August 26, 2014 [7 favorites]

“The character assassination of Michael Brown,” Mervyn Marcano, Al Jazeera America, 26 August 2014
posted by ob1quixote at 1:41 PM on August 26, 2014 [2 favorites]

4 Weird Decisions That Have Made Modern Cops Terrifying: Cracked article with an annoying click-bait title, but overall a good read.
posted by Weeping_angel at 1:43 PM on August 26, 2014 [6 favorites]

You've got to wonder - when cops beat the shit out of someone who isn't resisting on dashcam like that, do they even know they are doing it? Or are they so wrapped up in their cop-world view of things that they think their actions are actually proportional? They were certainly in no hurry to turn over that video, but they didn't destroy it either - did they actually know the degree to which they'd fucked up?
posted by Artw at 1:51 PM on August 26, 2014 [1 favorite]

But white people, we don't really do much rioting. We go through proper channels, because we have some faith that blatant wrongdoing will actually be punished. We can afford to be all polite.

There have been plenty of direct actions for social/economic justice in the American labor movement that involved white people (that is to say, aside from race riots and sports riots) and which were either characterized as riots or were actually provoked into riots by the police (sound familiar?). Take, for example, the Haymarket Affair, the Colorado Labor Wars and the Ludlow Massacre, or the Flint Sit-Down Strike, or the Harlan County Strikes. But this is just the tip of the labor history iceberg.

The eight-hour day, the five-day work week, the right to form a union, a living wage, workplace safety regulations -- all of these things that have been eroded and outright stolen from working people over the past few decades were things that countless thousands of people of all colors literally fought for, and in some cases, literally died for. Our labor history has been systematically erased, but that doesn't mean it didn't happen.
posted by scody at 1:55 PM on August 26, 2014 [48 favorites]

did they actually know the degree to which they'd fucked up?

Oh, they know exactly the degree to which they fucked up, which is "minimal." What are the consequences of this? A bit of bad publicity and some guy they don't care about isn't going to jail? Internal review already cleared them and we all know there won't be criminal charges, so their fuckup hasn't blown back on them at all.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 2:00 PM on August 26, 2014 [3 favorites]

A good cop on your worst day is worth his weight in gold - and I have several relatives who are cops that are like this. They honestly want to help and believe in community service. Despite what you hear, even from me, these cops do exist. They aren't that rare.

Hmm... Yes, I certainly can believe that there are plenty of cops that individually do many fine things on a day-to-day basis. Even in Ferguson.

The problem, I think, is of cop culture. This is the culture where 'good' cops stand by as they know bad cops are doing bad things. If you think the 'no-snitch' culture of the streets is bad, it's 10 times worse if you are a cop... Cops do not snitch on other cops (well, very rarely, and with devastating consequences when they do).

If we had a healthy cop culture, there would be cops demanding his resignation (from Ferguson), loudly complaining on network TV that the killer cop didn't follow any procedures and gave them all a bad name. There would be an outcrying from police around the nation that Ferguson was giving them a bad name.

But no, instead the 'good cops' may do their individual jobs well enough on a day-to-day basis, but are enabling all the bad cops with their silence.

This makes the 'good cops' bad cops.
posted by el io at 2:04 PM on August 26, 2014 [26 favorites]

el io:

"But no, instead the 'good cops' may do their individual jobs well enough on a day-to-day basis, but are enabling all the bad cops with their silence.
This makes the 'good cops' bad cops."

QFT.
Good cops cease to be good cops the moment they choose to look away or actively protect bad cops instead of exposing and stopping them.
posted by Hairy Lobster at 2:13 PM on August 26, 2014 [8 favorites]

Oh, and just to follow up on the the Harlan County coal miners strikes: I strongly urge anyone who's interested to watch the documentary Harlan County, USA. Quotes from the strikers reveal some parallels with protesters in Ferguson that are, well, striking: "They're treating us like we're animals, dogs. But we aren't. We're American citizens." "All of our life we've been kicked around. We've been put in jail, and shot at. We've had dynamite thrown at us. And then you don't want us to have nothing." "[The police] are violent. Well, by god, you fight fire with fire." "If I get shot, they can't shoot the union out of me." (Note that while most of the miners and their families are white, there are black miners as well. The police and mine owners, it probably goes without saying, are exclusively white.)
posted by scody at 2:23 PM on August 26, 2014 [5 favorites]

The problem, I think, is of cop culture.

I think structurally we put law enforcement into environments that classically have many characteristics identified with groupthink. To be clear, it's not unique to police officers. NASA management famously had a problem with this leading up to their shuttle disasters. A lot of departments recognize this and do work to minimize that form of isolation. But there's multiple disturbing signs that Furgeson police have long-standing conflicts with the community. One figure floating around seems to suggest that "driving while black" is a problem with absurd numbers of traffic stops, traffic-stop escalation, and higher fines than surrounding communities with similar SES.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 2:30 PM on August 26, 2014 [6 favorites]

Someone wanted some extra details on the coworker that confronted the Columbia Tribune. She walked in and asked to talk to whomever was in charge of editorial cartoons. She was shown to a conference room where people were already discussing the cartoon, since she was hardly the first critic. She asked them to defend their decision, allowing that as an editorial there is quite a bit of wiggle room. They mentioned context but allowed that it was likely in bad taste. I high fived her.

Another, different coworker of mine is the wife of a detective on the STL County PD. She's taken the last two weeks off since her husbands schedule has become totally messed up and not predictable. She visited recently to say hi and pick up necessities. It was striking to hear all of the misinformation and outright lies she believed. This was a person I loved working with and respected. It will be very difficult to reconcile things.

Another coworker is a black man that grew up in Ferguson. He's since moved away, but his mom still lives there. We've had some frank conversations. He and previously mentioned coworkers were close. I doubt that will remain.

I live in a rural exurb of STL and am not even going to try to initiate dialog with neighbors. I know better.
posted by schyler523 at 2:51 PM on August 26, 2014 [14 favorites]

Culture in any police force is top down - the police chief or sheriff sets the tone for what's acceptable and what isn't. If the chief in Ferguson digs his heels in and isn't resigning, then publicly signals to close ranks in a press conference, that's what the rest of the force will do. I also think the fact that Ferguson seemed to have an open door "we'll take all the bad cops that can't get a job anywhere else" has led to a force that is seemingly stacked with employees who have some pathological tendencies.

Yes, there's a cop culture, just like there's a military culture and a politician inside the beltway culture and a medical culture (ER staff have very very sick gallows humor). Not every cop and not every police force in every town is full of cops just looking for reasons to harass and kill people they don't like. I honestly believe most forces are 70/30 weighing on the good guy side. Believe me, the good guys know who the bad ones are and do keep an eye on them. Also, (if my son is to be believed), not everything that happens internally makes it on the news. There are situations that are handled in what we would all agree would be the fair, just and correct way and those don't make the 6 pm news cast.
posted by hollygoheavy at 2:53 PM on August 26, 2014 [1 favorite]

> "They're treating us like we're animals, dogs. But we aren't. We're American citizens."

She Will Not Comply
Don’t tell me I have the right to assemble as an American citizen and then tell me I got to walk
A walk is not an assembly
A walk is a walk
A march is a march
Standing is standing
I have the right to stand in one place if I want to
but I’m going to move just like this to shut y’all up
because I know y’all’s tactics.
You want to wear people out?
You’re not going to wear me out.
more

You know clickbaity articles about laws against low-hanging pants. Funny, right? Yeah, those are more tools of oppression. Loitering laws, no sleeping, no sitting, no hoods up, no pants low, stop-and-identify? Just ways around the 14th amendment, usually. My top 10-percenter town? No loitering laws and a specific provision for stationary picketing on the outer 1/3 of a sidewalk.
posted by morganw at 3:26 PM on August 26, 2014 [4 favorites]

My brother-in-law is a cop, and I saw him at a family event this weekend. We didn't discuss Ferguson or anything, but what got me is that when I saw him I felt a sudden little tremor of fear/disgust and had to make myself relax and do the family hug thing.

I mean, I know his politics are conservative and all, but I have never felt fear of him. After spending two weeks on the Ferguson thread, though, I wonder about him and who he is when he's out patrolling with his gun and badge. How would I know if he's no better than these cops? It's not something I would see, unless he ended up getting recorded.

So if you're wondering what damage not punishing the bad cops does, there's one; it makes those of us related to cops have to wonder what kind they are. If the friendly face they show hides something scary and wrong. Because if it does, chances are it will go unpunished and covered up.
posted by emjaybee at 3:44 PM on August 26, 2014 [7 favorites]

Video shows police shot Ohio man on sight as he leaned on toy gun in Walmart, attorney says.
posted by Joey Michaels at 3:55 PM on August 26, 2014 [15 favorites]

The 4 Weird Decisions That Have Made Modern Cops Terrifying blog post at Cracked has been removed. I couldn't even find it on Google cache.

Our labor history has been systematically erased, but that doesn't mean it didn't happen.

But scody, that hardly invalidates the point that rioting ("direct action", etc., and much labor protest above and beyond heavily-regulated picketing) comes as a result of gross inequity in power. In fact, it reinforces it.

If everyone would read desuetude's entire comment, or at least this relevant graf, I think that point was in fact being made -- it was not a racial or cultural judgement.

But white people, we don't really do much rioting. We go through proper channels, because we have some faith that blatant wrongdoing will actually be punished. We can afford to be all polite.

Internal review already cleared them and we all know there won't be criminal charges, so their fuckup hasn't blown back on them at all.

Actually, in the video that lz linked to, the cops did face actual criminal charges. Which the guy's lawyer attributes 100% to the video surviving attempts to disappear it.

laws against low-hanging pants. Funny, right? Yeah, those are more tools of oppression.

This gets into an area that is really fraught and troubling even for, if you will, allies against racism. I live in a neighborhood that has both historic homes, multi-generational family homesteads, and increasing numbers of rental properties, part of which attracts a growing African-American population. We had a period of really high crime including gang activity and open-air drug dealing. It's still out there, just a lot less blatant than it used to be. IME the pants thing is very similar to wearing gang colors in that it signifies ownership of territory, if you will (and I'm trying to speak objectively here), precisely because it's a bit of a raspberry to authority and probably more generally white and middle-class cultural norms. The question that is presented to me as a neighborhood activist is how to reconcile my desire to be welcoming to all creeds and colors, et cetera, and how to prevent crime, keep people feeling safe, and maintain property values. Because the more property values sink, the more people sell to slumlords (unfortunately, I have seen just how effective blockbusting must have been in places like Chicago and St. Louis), and the more criminal activity pops up and feels bold enough to operate openly. Lather, rinse, repeat. (I'm not speaking hypothetically, as my prior comment noted: I was threatened physically and implicitly just last week; I've been mugged, feet from my own property; I've been attacked on my porch by a guy who gave me a concussion; and my mother was punched by a drunk last month, after she told him not to urinate on our property.) I can definitely see how a baggy pants law is almost exclusively going to be used against African-American youths (or young adults even), but I have, unfortunately, a wealth of experience that tells me the choice of wearing baggy pants is closely associated with other stuff ranging from mere nuisance (being noisy in the street, say) to felonious (gangs, drugs, witness intimidation, etc.). And I can tell you that of my neighborhood group, I'm by far the most educated and progressive on these topics. It's an ongoing struggle. I can't imagine how much easier it is for people who don't even sense that they are succumbing to prejudice. Easier to sleep, I'm sure.

Where it figures back into this discussion is that after things got better and stayed that way for a while, I very deliberately chose this year to dial back my hair-trigger response and try to just accept some stuff. The reason is that it was turning me into a person I didn't like so much, and as someone above stated, like the cops who see us at our worst and have a hard time maintaining a humanist attitude. Of course, I did try to approach these guys last week and ask them to be not so loud, and that worked so well I had to call the cops on them after all, so I'm back to assuming that it's better I call the cops in the first place and not give them a target. This is why I have some sympathy for the cops (not to mention the fact that I really believe we have a much more professional force in my city) -- if you constantly deal with criminals, it has a corrosive effect on your personality over all, a kind of low-level PTSD. So I can definitely see that. I think you need a good chief (like we do) and an overriding ethos to make sure that doesn't happen to you, and a lot of departments just aren't going to have that, especially the smaller ones.
posted by dhartung at 4:41 PM on August 26, 2014 [5 favorites]

This link to the Cracked article seems to work.
posted by Sticherbeast at 4:48 PM on August 26, 2014 [2 favorites]

But scody, that hardly invalidates the point that rioting ("direct action", etc., and much labor protest above and beyond heavily-regulated picketing) comes as a result of gross inequity in power. In fact, it reinforces it.

Of course, and I don't think my post suggests any such invalidation -- in fact, my point was to reinforce it. What I am arguing against is the idea that white people only take part in race riots or sports riots, and otherwise resort to peaceful/polite means to air our grievances. What this idea misses is the entire notion of class struggle, and that even though all white people enjoy white privilege, not all white people enjoy class privilege.

Indeed, I would argue that one of the major effects of the the labor movement having been beaten back over the past 30+ years is that doing so has undermined class consciousness. And class consciousness can actually cut against racism -- because it means that a white worker starts to see that he has more shared interests with his fellow black or Latino worker and not with his white boss.

If we still had a strong, radicalized labor movement in this country, I would argue that there is a good chance we would be seeing a different national reaction to Ferguson.
posted by scody at 4:51 PM on August 26, 2014 [12 favorites]

Around 40 miles away from me, in the small town of Ottawa, Kansas, cops shot Joseph Jennings, an eighteen year old, on Saturday. The kid was mentally ill and just a couple of days before, the police assisted in preventing his suicide.

The call to the police was because the kid was being erratic in a hardware store parking lot and might have had a gun. However, he was apparently unarmed. The cops shot him while the kid's foster father was within arms reach, but the father was prevented from going to his foster son's side. The man could have had a chance at stabilizing the situation and taking the kid home, but the police decided to shoot instead.

I wanted to mention this particular shooting because the eighteen year old victim was white. I wish the selfish, clueless, and sometimes racist white people, who have been so dismissive about Ferguson, would realize a trigger-happy police force is bad for them too.
posted by honestcoyote at 5:18 PM on August 26, 2014 [12 favorites]

Cracked changed the title from "The Bizarre Story of How American Cops Became Stormtroopers" then changed the url from http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-bizarre-story-how-american-cops-became-stormtroopers/ A little too close to home for even the observant url-watchers to see.

The more you seriously look at American History the clearer it becomes that Black Americans as a group have always been less likely to turn violent than White Americans, even with far more provocation.

As one who realized long before Mefi's Own Jscalzi pointed it out that my group, "Straight White Male" is the Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is, I have accepted that 'my people', as a group, are only better than the Loyal Germans of Nazi Germany by a matter of degree ("It Can Happen Here" and does, just not as often), and the individual "being a good guy" does not absolve you (or me) of all responsibility for the actions of our group. Of course, if you payed attention to World History, no nation, race or group has ever risen to Domination without denying the humanity of those outside their group, and in the process, abandoning a lot of their own humanity. Still, We Straight White Men are the Kings of the World, and it is Good to Be the King, no matter how many peasants must be murdered to protect your position.

I hope the events of recent weeks finally makes a lot more people like me realize that, as the 'support group' proudly proclaims, "We Are All Darren Wilson", and we should all be totally ashamed of ourselves.
posted by oneswellfoop at 5:22 PM on August 26, 2014 [7 favorites]

And class consciousness can actually cut against racism -- because it means that a white worker starts to see that he has more shared interests with his fellow black or Latino worker and not with his white boss.

Just before the Detroit Race Riots in 1943, 25,000 workers walked out of a Packard plant because three African-Americans were promoted to line jobs. Three.

A voice with a Southern accent barked over the loudspeaker, "I’d rather see Hitler and Hirohito win than work next to a [N-word]."

When you're near the bottom, getting to look down on someone else is a powerful force.
posted by Etrigan at 5:30 PM on August 26, 2014 [18 favorites]

Mittens, Not M4s: What Ferguson Police Really Got from the Pentagon's 1033 Program

So apparently there are three car cameras and two body cameras in Ferguson—and none of those fancy weapons and armored vehicles we saw on display, or at least none through the 1033 program.
posted by limeonaire at 6:08 PM on August 26, 2014 [1 favorite]

Tef Poe On Ferguson, His Hometown: "The Mike Brown Rebellion Has Begun", Riverfront Times.
posted by nangar at 6:59 PM on August 26, 2014 [2 favorites]

When you're near the bottom, getting to look down on someone else is a powerful force.

Absolutely: again, Frederick Douglass identified this 150 years ago with his observation about the plunderers "dividing both to conquer each." This is true of blacks and whites being pitted against each other in competition for jobs and resources; it's true of native-born and immigrants being pitted against each other on the same basis; it's true of men and women being pitted against each other. And yes, it's also certainly true that unions are not a magic bulwark against racism; what Marxists call mixed consciousness certainly persists, even among organized workers. The UAW in particular is practically a textbook case of mixed consciousness within the labor movement. It was one of the first major unions to organize blacks at all, and by the mid-'40s, half a million black workers were organized in the UAW and other CIO unions, which forged connections with the NAACP and, later, other civil rights organizations.

At the same time, the leadership of the UAW became increasingly conservative (particularly under Walter Reuther, who became president in 1946), and while the union was happy to organize black workers, they often resisted promoting blacks on the shop floor and within the higher ranks of the (national) union leadership, which obviously sent a mixed message within the union to white workers, given the UAW's (and the CIO's) official pro-civil rights positions. And, of course, the wider systemic racism of the United States could not help but be reflected in labor unions -- Jim Crow in the South, de facto segregation in the North, segregation in the armed forces until after WWII, etc.

In Detroit, these contradictions/tensions eventually led to the forming of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers in the late '60s, who organized (and were supported by a segment of white workers) to gain new concessions not only from the automakers but also from the older, all-white union leadership. (A good book about the movement and the intersection of class/race and radical politics is Detroit: I Do Mind Dying.)

That said, the "divide both /conquer each" tactic isn't always successful, as the example of the biracial New Orleans dockworkers movement starting around 1902 demonstrates. And even in the UAW, the resistance to black workers being positioned "above" white workers was not universal; many UAW locals elected black union members to their bargaining committees and executive boards, and Local 212 in particular helped push for the desegregation of bars and restaurants near the factories. More broadly, the CIO's radicalism and policy of interracial solidarity had a measurable material effect on improving ecomonic conditions for both blacks and whites.

So yes, I would say that even as racism continues to divide us, there is nothing inevitable about white and black workers remaining divided, and a number of the labor struggles of the past 20+ years (such as the Staley lockout in Decatur, IL, in the early '90s) have happened with the explicit recognition by both union leadership and membership of the importance of reclaiming racial solidarity as both a principle and a strategy. So to bring this derail back to Ferguson, I would argue that if we want to fight racism (and it appears that more or less everyone participating in this thread is unified in that desire) then one of the ways we have to do it is by arguing against racism not just on a moral or even political basis, but also on this basis of class, in our own workplaces, families, etc., by pointing out who really benefits from these divisions.
posted by scody at 7:45 PM on August 26, 2014 [15 favorites]

Ah, delightful. The Ferguson City Council postponed its first meeting since the shooting, which would have been today, citing the need for a larger venue and that its priority is the safety and well-being of residents. It will apparently be sending out postage-paid comment cards to every home in Ferguson and putting them in public places.
posted by limeonaire at 7:46 PM on August 26, 2014 [1 favorite]

Will there just be a single checkbox for "[_] Wait until all the facts are in"?
posted by Artw at 7:49 PM on August 26, 2014 [1 favorite]

Probably worried some ne'er-do-wells would show up and try and start something from the open rear hatch of their MRAP
posted by cortex at 7:49 PM on August 26, 2014

I hadn't seen this posted either: Darren Wilson Was Low-Profile Officer With Unsettled Early Days. Apparently Wilson makes $45,302 a year. Also, the chart in there has some interesting info—apparently in 2013, Ferguson was a total outlier in Missouri in terms of the number of arrest warrants issued per 1,000 people.
posted by limeonaire at 8:14 PM on August 26, 2014 [2 favorites]

"and I guess that makes sense, since as studies have shown, being challenged on your deepest convictions often leads to them becoming stronger. "

Yeah, the way to win on that is empathy: What would you do if the cops shot your son? Because almost all of those reactions that people have about how Brown is guilty are ones they wouldn't apply to their kid.

"They wouldn't shoot my kid."
"But what if they did?"
posted by klangklangston at 8:54 PM on August 26, 2014 [6 favorites]

John Stewart takes a stab at Fox regarding Ferguson and racism.
posted by lz at 9:02 PM on August 26, 2014 [6 favorites]

Seems like some PDs are now trying to rebuild trust with their communities, esp. the black youth?
posted by lz at 11:03 PM on August 26, 2014

I accidentally dropped this in the previous thread without seeing taz's comment -- that one can be nuked, I'll send a note...

Because the consequences of "no justice no peace" don't tend to fall on young white women. Maybe I have an incorrect understanding of it as a slogan, but it seems closer to a battle cry than to a simple chant of protest, and it feels inappropriate to me for a white person to take up that battle cry at a vigil that was organized as a peaceful gathering prompted by racist violence perpetrated by white supremacist state action.

I'm pretty sure it's a statement counteracting the privileged, who might consider a state of "peacetime" with foreign enemies to be a relaxing affair while the underprivileged within their "peacetime" society are in a constant struggle.

I see it as saying that living without justice is like living in a state of war and constant uncertainty. See Chiraq v. Iraq, South Central LA, Watts, etc. It's not so much a threat as a statement expressing the anxiety of being overlooked in what was once a "post cold war, post racial" era.

It's often paired up with:

"Know Justice, Know Peace."
posted by aydeejones at 11:11 PM on August 26, 2014

That Jon Stewart piece riled me the fuck up...I've been sick or out of town for the past two weeks and it feels like a time warp -- what blows me away is that Fox News is using Mark Fucking Fuhrman, the "N-Word Perjury OJ Simpson Cop Guy" as a commentator on why Michael Brown deserved to get shot.

But the whole thing pissed me off incredibly; part of it was that Fox News is so wretchedly offensive just to look at and take in, it's like rocket fuel for old racist assholes, and now that I'm familiar with the word "concern troll" holy shit, Bill O'Reilly cut his vacation short just to tell us how mad he is about the protests! Conservatives have that concern trolling on lockdown. When liberals express concern they might seem exaggerated (and often end up proving validated by history) but they aren't being total disingenuous dicks about it. OK, that's mostly some angry in-group ranting but MARK FUHRMAN the guy who made the phrase "N-Word" a household...phrase.

Fuck that guy
posted by aydeejones at 11:23 PM on August 26, 2014 [15 favorites]

See also: G. Gordon Liddy and Oliver North getting their own talk shows (maybe not at this moment, but I've heard them both in my AM listening pre-Spotify days).

One of them completely undermined the shit out of democracy, the other undermined the shit out of more than just democracy, and then Mark Fucking Fuhrman. At least G. Gordon Liddy isn't called in as a special commentator on wiretapping and Ollie North isn't called in as a special commentator on foreign affairs and shady intelligence service tactics. Oh wait, this is the part where I become Jon Stewart on the Daily Show and it cuts to segments where G. Gordon Liddy is called to comment on wiretapping and Oliver North shares his opinions on curtailing the heroin trade without ruining the livelihoods of opium farmers.
posted by aydeejones at 11:27 PM on August 26, 2014 [2 favorites]

"Ah, delightful. The Ferguson City Council postponed its first meeting since the shooting, which would have been today, citing the need for a larger venue and that its priority is the safety and well-being of residents."

This is the right decision -- sometimes you can even get a slap on the wrist warning you of potential Open Meetings Act violations if you don't accommodate an unusually large crowd -- and moving the venue typically requires 48 hours notice. But they really should have thought of it in plenty of time to move the venue because this is not a surprise large crowd and they've had two weeks.

It can be shockingly difficult to find an appropriately large venue ... most are sports arenas/gymnasiums and are acoustically very poorly suited to public meetings, and people get very upset when they're already het up and then can't hear anything. You also generally have to provide amplification equipment and broadcast equipment (radio, public access cable, webcast) and sometimes your general powerpoint technology and whatnot. It also has to be reasonably accessible to people using public transit, in wheelchairs, etc., and has to have adequate parking.

The safety issue that's legitimately a concern isn't the safety of the council -- they're fine -- but that I guarantee some racist asshole is going to get up at public comment and say something incendiary and racist and get a reaction, and in a crowded, hot public meeting where people's butts are sore from sitting on bleachers in a high school gym and the acoustics are poor and distorting people's shouted instructions/reactions/etc., that can get out of control really fast. What usually happens is the council tries to cut off a speaker who's engaging in hate speech or defamation of private citizens, he keeps shouting, and has to be escorted out by the police.

The right thing to do would be have the councilmembers go out individually (so as not to violate OMA notice requirements) to "listening sessions" around the city on the night the meeting would have been, and use the opportunity to provide expanded access and more opportunity to comment.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 5:51 AM on August 27, 2014 [7 favorites]

> Fox News is using Mark Fucking Fuhrman, the "N-Word Perjury OJ Simpson Cop Guy" as a commentator on why Michael Brown deserved to get shot.

How does that even happen?

Next we'll here from former police officer and convicted felon, Mark Fuhrman. Mark, you've said before that dragging black men into an alley and beating and them is a great tension reliever...

Seriously, who would think this guy had anything of value to add to the conversation.
posted by papercrane at 6:06 AM on August 27, 2014 [1 favorite]

Michael Brown's Mom Laid Flowers Where He Was Shot—and Police Crushed Them

Not sure if its true but wow, I wouldn't put it past them after all the crap I've seen them do.
posted by lz at 6:39 AM on August 27, 2014 [3 favorites]

Apparently lots of police departments that get these military weapons just up and lose them. Oopsie!

Fusion has learned that 184 state and local police departments have been suspended from the Pentagon's "1033 program" for missing weapons or failure to comply with other guidelines. We uncovered a pattern of missing M14 and M16 assault rifles across the country, as well as instances of missing .45-caliber pistols, shotguns and 2 cases of missing Humvee vehicles.

I think even Barney Fife wouldn't lose (steal?) a Humvee.
posted by emjaybee at 6:41 AM on August 27, 2014 [2 favorites]

Fox News is using Mark Fucking Fuhrman, the "N-Word Perjury OJ Simpson Cop Guy" as a commentator on why Michael Brown deserved to get shot.

After the break, we'll be talking to David Duke about the political landscape in St. Louis. Stay tuned!
posted by desjardins at 7:29 AM on August 27, 2014 [2 favorites]

Apparently lots of police departments that get these military weapons just up and lose them. Oopsie!

So it would be reasonable to expect the same media outlets that got all hot and bothered about the (largely trumped-up) "Fast & Furious" ATF operation to be equally livid about hundreds of state & local PDs just "losing" hand-me-down military hardware, right? Right?
posted by Strange Interlude at 7:45 AM on August 27, 2014 [10 favorites]

an M-14 rifle, which the Hall County Sheriff's Office of Georgia lost track of for ten months. The weapon was lost in May of 2013, and was subsequently found in July 2014

Why would we come to any conclusion other than that this weapon was sitting in a cop/chief's personal funtime arsenal? I mean, I guess "we have so poor an inventory control system that it could be in our lockers w/o us knowing for sure, even when we were looking for it" is a possibility but it's not like "stupid or corrupt" are either flattering options.
posted by phearlez at 7:58 AM on August 27, 2014 [1 favorite]

What I would like to see is another 'What We Know' breakdown about the protests. I was out of town with little access to media during the first 9 days. At one point I was given a ride by someone that was listening to conservative talk radio and there was constant riot reports with talk of armed insurgence and molitov cocktails. I was shocked but only when I again had access to wifi did I even find out about Michael Brown being shot.

But were there even molitov cocktails? Were any police injured? Were police cars riddled with bullets (that's what I think I heard on the radio in Montana)? I saw that the picture of a protester throwing a molitov cocktail was actually just lobbing back a tear gas canister.

If most of what was reported on Fox News and other conservative outlets was bullshit, this needs to be refuted, right? My worry for my country is that we all are just choosing to hear the news we want to hear, getting father apart every year. The people that soak up the neo-fascist shit that Dan Page and his ilk are spewing about the end times are plain scary.
posted by readery at 8:01 AM on August 27, 2014

Readery: The police released photos of molotov cocktails that they recovered from the back of some truck within the third day of "riots". I haven't seen traces of molotov cocktails (usually they start fires in the street) and I've only seen one photograph of protestors from Chicago trying to light one (it was unsuccessful) within the second day of the "rioting".

No police were seriously injured. I think the only report I've seen has been "According to police, four officers were injured when they were struck by rocks and bottles at various times throughout the night.". But according to police is a terrible statement since they freely lie about how many protesters and jurnos were arrested and fail to even write reports about them. I also highly doubt officers were hurt by rocks and bottles while being head to toe dressed for combat.
posted by lz at 8:11 AM on August 27, 2014 [1 favorite]

Nobody has produced evidence of a molotov "in the wild" - either a picture of a lit cocktail or of a fire started by one. We've seen a picture of a liquor bottle with a rag in it that police said they took from a protester.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 8:11 AM on August 27, 2014 [4 favorites]

I fucking give up. For serious.
posted by tonycpsu at 8:13 AM on August 27, 2014 [15 favorites]

How in the hell do you "lose" a Humvee? Does it fall in between the sofa cushions or something?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:15 AM on August 27, 2014 [1 favorite]

But Police Benevolent Association lawyers representing Weems continued to insist that the officer’s actions did not cause Towns to die.

It's a mystery!
posted by Artw at 8:19 AM on August 27, 2014 [2 favorites]

How in the hell do you "lose" a Humvee? Does it fall in between the sofa cushions or something?

Somebody accidentally parked it a garage and then forgot where they put it.
posted by nangar at 8:21 AM on August 27, 2014 [1 favorite]

How in the hell do you "lose" a Humvee? Does it fall in between the sofa cushions or something?

You start a shoving match with the local stevedore union, and then they steal it and start shipping it around the world for a few months. Happens all the time.
posted by DynamiteToast at 8:27 AM on August 27, 2014 [23 favorites]

2 cases of missing Humvee vehicles

I didn't even know they were sold by the case, just six-packs.
posted by FelliniBlank at 9:02 AM on August 27, 2014 [2 favorites]

Michael Brown's Mom Laid Flowers Where He Was Shot—and Police Crushed Them

Not sure if its true but wow, I wouldn't put it past them after all the crap I've seen them do.

No, that definitely did happen—did you see the photo Antonio French tweeted, as reposted in that article? The candles and flowers laid down at the memorial were completely crushed into the ground when police rolled in with dogs and firepower. What I hadn't heard, that's new to me in that article, is the part about at least one police officer letting his dog urinate on the spot where Brown died. That is so incredibly disrespectful, it boggles my mind!
posted by limeonaire at 9:13 AM on August 27, 2014 [10 favorites]

limeonaire: I'm sorry I wasn't clear; I meant the first half of the article about them letting a dog urinate on Brown's memorial. I do know they ran over the memorial thanks to French's tweets though. Which in itself is extremely disrespectful and I can understand them getting upset about it.
posted by lz at 9:23 AM on August 27, 2014 [1 favorite]

Yamiche Alcindor is doing an ama on reddit, if anyone has any questions (and wants to give her an alternative to the questions about mike brown's "guilt" or the necessity of her being there).
posted by nadawi at 9:24 AM on August 27, 2014

we are living in a fucking nightmare.
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 9:24 AM on August 27, 2014 [9 favorites]

Fusion has learned that 184 state and local police departments have been suspended from the Pentagon's "1033 program" for missing weapons or failure to comply with other guidelines. We uncovered a pattern of missing M14 and M16 assault rifles across the country, as well as instances of missing .45-caliber pistols, shotguns and 2 cases of missing Humvee vehicles.

You know, I'd be willing to bet a lot of money that if you asked the officers at those police departments about voter fraud or welfare fraud, you'd get full on rage-face invectives spewed about "those people" wasting taxpayer money and being lazy and stupid, destroying the country and the democratic process etc etc.

Ask them about those missing weapons and supplies, and I'm guessing you get ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ in response.
posted by lord_wolf at 9:56 AM on August 27, 2014 [15 favorites]

19 Observations From Michael Brown’s Funeral
posted by oakroom at 10:15 AM on August 27, 2014 [4 favorites]

Fusion has learned that 184 state and local police departments have been suspended from the Pentagon's "1033 program" for missing weapons or failure to comply with other guidelines. We uncovered a pattern of missing M14 and M16 assault rifles across the country, as well as instances of missing .45-caliber pistols, shotguns and 2 cases of missing Humvee vehicles.

This bothers me.
pistols and shotguns are dime a dozen, but the m16 being an assault weapon is quite worrysome and the m14 is a preferred sharpshooting weapon.
are they just being suspended from the "1033 program" or are there any further investigations being made?

on preview, the humvee isnt an inconspicuous vehicle, how the gosh darnit do you lose a car that's about as easily recognizable as a metaphysical sherman tank?!
posted by xcasex at 10:19 AM on August 27, 2014

From the article, one humvee was stolen and recovered, the other was intentionally sold by the department (and later recovered.)
posted by smackfu at 10:29 AM on August 27, 2014

The Parable of the Unjust Judge or: Fear of a Nigger Nation

"We live under a state that is at best, indifferent to our problems, and at worst, actively seeking to destroy us. It is good and right that we hound the state into giving us justice, but blacks cannot delude themselves into thinking that the state will ever become justice. There are no laws that can be passed or reforms that can be pursued that will allow us to stop being vigilant. There are no victories that will bring us peace. We will never be able to pound our swords into plowshares, because we will always have to be prepared to fight. Dr. King, our beautiful prophet, was wrong. The arc of the moral universe does not lead anywhere in particular, not in this life. If it bends towards justice, it is only because it is pulled that way by our constant effort, by our unceasing straining and sweating and shouting.

I wish I were ending this comment with answers or at least encouragement, but I have none to offer. I just have a list of things that I know. I know that I have never called the police, and if in future I do, it will be because I have reached the furthest of last resorts. I know that I am taking steps to learn how to arm myself for the protection of my loved ones and my community. I know that I will always vote “not guilty” if I am on a jury prosecuting a non-violent drug offense. I know that I will always oppose any expansion of the state’s power to harm and jail its citizens. I know that I will be going to community meetings and protests and vigils and organizing sessions and memorial services for the rest of my life. I know that one day I will tell my child, if I am blessed enough to have one, that the world is afraid of them, and that the police are not to be trusted. I know that one day, that child will tell her own child the same thing. And yet, I know that I still have enough hope to want to bring children into this world, broken as it is. That is something."
posted by naju at 10:40 AM on August 27, 2014 [22 favorites]

Lo-Fi St. Louis post on youtube: Billy Bragg at the Royale in Solidarity with Ferguson
posted by scody at 11:00 AM on August 27, 2014

Want your world rocked? About to give you a real, red pill, blue pill moment. Dont say I didnt warn you. pic.twitter.com/AA0X7TbM8X— Shaun King (@ShaunKing) August 27, 2014

The police ARE NOT SWORN TO PROTECT YOU. That phrase is a myth. 10 cases all the way to the Supreme Court confirm it. pic.twitter.com/aZFZUwPPCi— Shaun King (@ShaunKing) August 27, 2014

Study the Castle Rock Supreme Court case. Google it. Painful, ugly story. Police are not obligated to protect individuals. Thats law.— Shaun King (@ShaunKing) August 27, 2014

The Castle Rock vs. Gonzales Supreme Court ruled that "Protect & Serve" is a mission statement, but not a legal obligation or oath.— Shaun King (@ShaunKing) August 27, 2014

The Supreme Court ruled that police are not actually obligated to protect citizens from harm. Its an aspiration, but not an obligation.— Shaun King (@ShaunKing) August 27, 2014

Gonzales called 911 @ 7:30 pm, 8:30 pm, 10:10 pm, and 12:15 am on June 23, and visited the police station in person at 12:40 am on June 23.— Shaun King (@ShaunKing) August 27, 2014

Her ex-husband, during that time, took her kids and killed them. Supreme Court ruled police DO NOT HAVE TO RESPOND legally to protect.— Shaun King (@ShaunKing) August 27, 2014

Well thats eye opening...
posted by lz at 11:03 AM on August 27, 2014 [6 favorites]

Conceptually related, although not about the police: the DeShaney case.
posted by Sticherbeast at 11:07 AM on August 27, 2014 [1 favorite]

we are living in a fucking nightmare.

As lz's last comment demonstrates, we've been living this way for a long time, some of us are just now 'waking up' to the nightmare (and others will stay asleep; for them, it's more like a wet dream).
posted by oneswellfoop at 11:15 AM on August 27, 2014

After all the years of "Cops" camera crews making the police look good, one of them is killed... by police gunfire.
"The World-Herald has learned that at least 30 shots were fired at the Wendy’s near 43rd and Dodge Streets.
Officials said it appears the only shots fired came from police."
schadenfreude is a hell of a drug
posted by oneswellfoop at 11:28 AM on August 27, 2014

After all the years of "Cops" camera crews making the police look good, one of them is killed... by police gunfire.

I'm sure he deserved it. After all, odds are pretty good that he was no angel.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 11:45 AM on August 27, 2014 [2 favorites]

Castle Rock is a complex soup of awful. Bear in mind that Gonzalez had a restraining order against the kids' father, which he violated by taking them without permission. The Supreme Court ruled that she had no concrete legal interest in the enforcement of that order. It was, legally speaking, a suggestion. Police could enforce it or they could not, and she had no right to complain if they chose "not."
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 11:48 AM on August 27, 2014 [4 favorites]

STL County Council approves 1 mil to help Ferg Residents
posted by lz at 12:40 PM on August 27, 2014

"The image of a white, tall, and burly police officer parading a small black child in handcuffs through the halls of the school is burned into memory."
posted by lz at 12:44 PM on August 27, 2014 [5 favorites]

Pogo_Fuzzybutt: "I'm sure he deserved it. After all, odds are pretty good that he was no angel."

Well he was spending a lot of time hanging out with an armed group of thugs with a history of violence. You do the math.
posted by brundlefly at 12:45 PM on August 27, 2014 [6 favorites]

From Iz's link above: Missouri KKK Adopt-A-Highway sign

I'm pretty sure that if I ever saw a road sign like that in my home state (Ohio), I'd pull the car over and kick that thing down immediately.

Also, when did the state of Missouri start referring to itself as a "realm"? I'm familiar with the whole state/commonwealth distinction, but I've never heard the term "realm" used in relation to a U.S. (small-s) state before. It sounds like there should be wizards and dragons wandering about. And apparently there are.
posted by Strange Interlude at 12:56 PM on August 27, 2014

The police ARE NOT SWORN TO PROTECT YOU.

and these cases are one reason why so many people insist on having their 2nd amendment rights respected
posted by pyramid termite at 12:58 PM on August 27, 2014 [1 favorite]

i made the huge mistake of going to the metapedia main web page - ugh, ugh, ugh - please do not link to them
posted by pyramid termite at 1:02 PM on August 27, 2014 [1 favorite]

How in the hell do you "lose" a Humvee? Does it fall in between the sofa cushions or something?

Somebody accidentally parked it a garage and then forgot where they put it.

Happened in Miami, though not with a humvee. About 300 Priuses. Priui? Priaprisms?

There's always plenty of people willing to wind up about government oversight and paperwork but it's things like this that do a bang-up job of demonstrating that thorough oversight is necessary.
posted by phearlez at 1:13 PM on August 27, 2014

Also, when did the state of Missouri start referring to itself as a "realm"?

Probably never. I'm pretty sure that's Klan terminology.
posted by nangar at 1:14 PM on August 27, 2014 [2 favorites]

Yeah, the Klan has Knights and Wizards and Grand Dragons and on and on. Calling states "Realms" is like the eighth most LARPy thing about them.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 1:34 PM on August 27, 2014 [14 favorites]

Oh, I dunno, pyramid, lots of laughs to read their article on e.g. the Southern Poverty Law Center -- or check out Current Events. There actually isn't an article on Ferguson yet, indicating that they are a small and lonely propaganda operation overwhelmed by the enormity of the conspiracy against them.

To borrow a riff from the comment above, they actually think "We live under a state that is at best, indifferent to our problems, and at worst, actively seeking to destroy us."
posted by dhartung at 1:34 PM on August 27, 2014

In any case, though the KKK in question was initially denied by MoDOT, they appealed all the way to the Supreme Court, which declined to hear the case; a US District Court judge had ruled that Missouri had no constitutional basis to deny the application. The legislature renamed that section of I-55 after Rosa Parks. In 2012, it appears, after multiple attempts by MoDOT to get them to actively participate in the, you know, clean-up stuff that Adopt-A-Highway is all about, they were officially dropped, without objection by the KKK "realm" in question, since the guy who got the whole thing going was no longer participating. I presume that means the signs are no longer in place.

(In other cases, a group of neo-Nazis adopted a stretch near St. Louis that was renamed after Rabbi Joshua Heschel, and a group of Klansmen in Georgia were denied due to safety concerns. So in at least two cases the Missouri state legislature and governor stood in the way, if only for PR reasons.)
posted by dhartung at 1:48 PM on August 27, 2014 [1 favorite]

Thanks for the clarification, nangar + HZSF. For some reason, I assumed that everything on the sign other than the group name was all official Missouri boilerplate. It's become a weird world, and I've stopped assuming that anything remotely normal happens in it anymore.
posted by Strange Interlude at 1:55 PM on August 27, 2014

I'm a tree hugging ecofreak, but I'd have made it a point to collect my garbage and dump it on the KKK section of highway. Clean that up fuckers.
posted by sotonohito at 2:36 PM on August 27, 2014 [4 favorites]

Video shows police shot Ohio man on sight as he leaned on toy gun in Walmart, attorney says.

It Is Never About Race: A Continuing Series
posted by homunculus at 3:59 PM on August 27, 2014 [5 favorites]

As I noted above, Ferguson's W. Florissant Ave. is "the worst type of STROAD imaginable". This is a term invented by urban planner Charles Marohn [previously, previouslier] to describe auto-oriented commercial strips that combine the worst features of streets and roads -- which he separates as respectively, places for people to live, work, and shop, and something that gets people to a different place, aka roads are for moving people. Today (following vacation and an obligation related to his non-profit, Strong Towns, which he is now running full-time), he writes:

What I see with Ferguson is a suburb deep into the decline phase of the Suburban Ponzi Scheme. The housing styles suggest predominantly 1950’s and 1960’s development. We’re past the first cycle of new (low debt and low taxes), through the second cycle of stagnation (holding on with debt and slowly increasing taxes) and now into predictable decline. There isn’t the community wealth to fix all this stuff -- and there never was -- so it is all slowly falling apart.

Decline isn’t a result of poverty. The converse is actually true: poverty is the result of decline. Once you understand that decline is baked into the process of building auto-oriented places, the poverty aspect of it becomes fairly predictable....

Ferguson isn’t all decline, however. They have the now infamous QuikTrip and all the other stroad development types that thrive on places in decline. Multiple car lots – some abandoned – strips malls, drive through restaurants, a Dollar Store and then you have a quarter million dollars of infrastructure supporting these storage sheds. This is an investment that employs nobody, creates little value and doesn’t even use the sewer/water/sidewalk that has been built there at enormous public cost....

When places like this hit the decline phase – which they inevitably do – they become absolutely despotic. This type of development doesn’t create wealth; it destroys it. The illusion of prosperity that it had early on fades away and we are left with places that can’t be maintained and a concentration of impoverished people poorly suited to live with such isolation.

It's an interesting case he makes that the American pattern of development, since the heyday of the modern suburb, creates financial obligations that most municipalities can never catch up on and pay for. (My own city, which has been saddled with a property tax cap by the state, is floating a referendum to add $1.2M annually to road maintenance. Ferguson may or may not have a cap, but its ability to tax is limited by the willingness of residents to move as little as one town over.) Once you get into a cycle of growing expenses, higher taxes, and declining tax base, the people who are left are trapped in a mire of unemployment, poverty and political finger-pointing, and options to fix the problem are especially limited when a town is hemmed in geographically.

Marohn goes into great detail with his critique and admits his inexperience with the broader social and racial aspects of Ferguson's problems, but I think he makes a valuable argument here, summing it up in a phrase as "our platform for building places is creating dynamics primed for social upheaval."
posted by dhartung at 5:07 PM on August 27, 2014 [29 favorites]

“#Ferguson: An American Apartheid,” Goldie Taylor, Faultlines, 27 August 2014
posted by ob1quixote at 5:36 PM on August 27, 2014

Flug, regarding your description of the possible outcomes of a trial vis a vis how they effect Nixon's rep, if you plug your realizations about racism in MO into the equation, I suspect you'll note different perceived outcomes for Nixon. To whit, a conviction by a special prosecutor he appoints will make him look bad to the semi-closeted racists who would see it as the Governor going after "that poor police officer."

Yes, one thing we know about Missouri after recent elections, is that Democrats can't win statewide office in Missouri if they lose the racist vote. The state is pretty evenly balanced between Republican and Democratic voters. So the racist vote might be a pretty small percentage of voters--let's be optimistic and call it just 5%-10% of Democratic & Independent voters*--but it's big enough to make it the swing vote in any election where racial issues come to the forefront for whatever reason.

As a statewide Democratic candidate in Missouri, once you peel off that 5-10% of Democratic & Independent voters, you have no path to reach a 50.1% majority and win. Statewide politicians and candidates are keenly aware of this.

My comments above were assuming rational discussion and rational voters on all sides of the issues. But I fear that once racial issues are introduced, rational thought plays less and less of a role.

I don't have the temerity to hazard a guess of the percentage of racists among Republican voters, but for this purpose it doesn't make any difference, because these voters won't be voting for a Democratic candidate regardless.
posted by flug at 8:22 PM on August 27, 2014 [1 favorite]

St. Louis County Police Chief Defends Aggressive Response To Ferguson Protests

Chief Jon Belmar said Wednesday that in his opinion -- as well as in the opinion of police chiefs around the country -- much of the military-style equipment now used by police is necessary “because we patrol very urban areas.”

"You know, all the black-"
"WHAT?!"
"Uhh, urban, whatever."

Lawyer For Michael Brown And Trayvon Martin Emerges As A Central Figure In Civil Rights Cases
posted by the man of twists and turns at 8:55 PM on August 27, 2014 [3 favorites]

Heal STL has moved into their storefront, and should be officially open for business soon. As noted upthread, they're already selling t-shirts and registering voters.

They have set up what's now just a bare bones website at http://www.healstl.org/. All you can now is sign up to get on the email list, but presumably there will be more coming soon. They're also on Twitter with the handle @HealSTL.

Lastly, if anyone would like to contribute to help get the office set up, there's an Amazon Wish List for the supplies needed: http://www.amazon.com/registry/giftlist/12GRUH9UBVIGY/
posted by Nat "King" Cole Porter Wagoner at 9:22 PM on August 27, 2014 [8 favorites]

Nat "King" Cole Porter Wagoner, you're awesome; I was just clicking back over to post that Amazon list.
posted by limeonaire at 9:26 PM on August 27, 2014 [1 favorite]

Didn't mean to steal your thunder, limeonaire. Let's chalk this one up to "great minds think alike," eh?
posted by Nat "King" Cole Porter Wagoner at 9:32 PM on August 27, 2014 [1 favorite]

Black voters and candidates absent from political process in Ferguson, Errin Whack, Fusion.
posted by nangar at 5:17 AM on August 28, 2014

In Ferguson, Court Fines And Fees Fuel Anger, Joseph Shapiro, NPR.

The NPR story references this report by ArchCity Defenders. [pdf]
posted by nangar at 5:44 AM on August 28, 2014 [1 favorite]

"But white people, we don't really do much rioting. We go through proper channels, because we have some faith that blatant wrongdoing will actually be punished. We can afford to be all polite."

Video of Violent, Rioting Surfers Shows White Culture of Lawlessness
A frightening and violent mob swept through the normally quiet seaside community of Huntington Beach last night following a surfing competition in the area. Businesses were vandalized and looted, portable toilets overturned, and brutal fistfights waged right out in the open. It was an ugly display and a sad day for California. But more than that, it was a reminder that we must begin to seriously consider the values of our thuggish white youth.

(Oddly enough, do make sure to read the comments, they're amazing.)
posted by Blasdelb at 5:49 AM on August 28, 2014 [19 favorites]

That was legitimately incredible, Blasdelb. I'm kind of proud of everyone -- in a Kinja thread, no less -- actually committing to the "bit." Speaking as a former young, white, overprivileged hooligan, this is a story that needed to be written. The great thing about it is even though it's crafted in the form of an Onionesque satire, there isn't a single word of it that's untrue. It's all a matter of what we choose to emphasize in media.
posted by Strange Interlude at 6:11 AM on August 28, 2014

BTW, I just checked my MefiMail and came to the realization that I was the one who dropped the Metapedia link a few comments above. It came up in the Google search results for "Klan ranks" and I linked to it thinking it was an entry from legit Wikipedia. I'm actually shocked at how easily I was tricked into linking to them. Sorry to bring somebody else's evil here; if the mods want to remove the link, I won't complain.
posted by Strange Interlude at 7:45 AM on August 28, 2014

EmpressCallipygos: "How in the hell do you "lose" a Humvee? Does it fall in between the sofa cushions or something?"

Well, whenever the Watchtower people come by the house and ask if I've found Jesus, I tell them that I have, he was behind the couch the whole time...so, I'll check behind the couch, if it's there, ya know...my bad. Sorry.
posted by dejah420 at 7:48 AM on August 28, 2014 [1 favorite]

Golden Eternity: "Fusion has learned that 184 state and local police departments have been suspended from the Pentagon's "1033 program" for missing weapons or failure to comply with other guidelines. We uncovered a pattern of missing M14 and M16 assault rifles across the country, as well as instances of missing .45-caliber pistols, shotguns and 2 cases of missing Humvee vehicles.

I hope Holder is investigating this."

Oh god, I can just imagine the right-wing saying this is part of that whole need for speed or whatever it was called.
posted by symbioid at 8:10 AM on August 28, 2014 [1 favorite]

Here are a few relevant links that I haven't seen above (apologies if I just missed them!):

Detailed Ferguson police report on the convenience store/cigarillo incident. The many details of this report contrast with the nearly complete lack of detail in the Ferguson City Police report of the shooting incident and the St Louis County Police Department report of the shooting incident (the County PD report does have a couple of redacted pages that may include details they are withholding until after the Grand Jury proceedings or trial)
News story on the St Louis County autopsy of Michael Brown (the second of three planned autopsies)
Nice debunking of the fake Officer Wilson Facebook account of the shooting, and the equally fake "Josie" story that was directly based on that fake Facebook account. (FYI we were on top of this on the Metafilter thread several days before the linked article was published.)
Rawstory deals with the supposed orbital fracture of Wilson (sources and evidence indicate there is no fracture; it's just a false story being pushed for obvious reasons) and other unsubstantiated and proven-false rumors being pushed by Wilson supporters

posted by flug at 8:20 AM on August 28, 2014 [11 favorites]

Rawstory deals with the supposed orbital fracture of Wilson (sources and evidence indicate there is no fracture; it's just a false story being pushed for obvious reasons)

I'll add that the rumor that I myself heard first-hand, and that was presented as "this is information from police who are close to the investigation and to Officer Wilson and know what REALLY happened," that was obviously being pushed out hard through a very active rumor mill if I managed to hear it, and that I've hinted at here and there in my MeFi comments but haven't wanted to tell in full simply because it was so obviously a self-serving rumor and not backed up by anything, was in more complete form:

[***WARNING: ACCOUNT PASSED ALONG TO ME AS A RUMOR AND NOW PROVEN FALSE IN EVERY DETAIL] Wilson was severely attacked and beaten by Brown and/or his companion, resulting in a severe fracture to the eye and a broken jaw. The very clear implication, and takeaway reinforced by the person who relayed the story to me, was that Wilson was viciously attacked and forced to defend himself by shooting the attacker. And if that is true, "doesn't that change how you view the whole incident?" [***END FALSE ACCOUNT]

I'm passing this along now just because it is clear to me that this sort of disinformation has had a HUGE impact on public opinion in this incident. So it's worth knowing just what was passed along and thinking about what effect it had and why it was so believable to so many people.
posted by flug at 8:38 AM on August 28, 2014 [3 favorites]

And if that is true

Was this specific phrasing part of the message you recieved? It's part-and-parcel of the disinformation machine, just like "some say" and "we're just raising questions." People remember the story, not the doubt.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 8:53 AM on August 28, 2014

7 Wacky Farts That Can Help Us Understand Ferguson, MO (Cracked, obvs)
posted by dirigibleman at 8:59 AM on August 28, 2014 [4 favorites]

Very similar to the false rumor that Wilson was viciously attacked and thus was forced to defend himself by shooting, is the idea that the 'trouble' in Ferguson was the result of hundreds of out-of-town LOOTERS descending on Ferguson from out of state, bolstered by the police reports showing that a small minority of people arrested in Ferguson are from Ferguson.

These are both notions that I have heard from various friends who know something about the situation but obviously haven't had time to follow it too closely. I'm guessing these false ideas are having a huge effect on public opinion. Both of them carry a lot of weight with people and have the virtue of at least a grain of truth behind them--they are not falsehoods made up out of whole cloth, but rather hugely exaggerated versions of what did happen.

People naturally but incorrectly assume that most of those arrested are looters. This fits our preconceived notions of how these things should work. Police naturally should be spending most of their time dealing with actual criminals and maybe it's not too surprising that the occasional average citizen gets caught up in this, but this has got to be a small portion of the total, right? Wrong . . .

If you're following the situation from afar you naturally have no idea that most of those arrested are peaceful protesters caught up by police, or bystanders who were doing nothing at all, a much smaller number were at worst instigators or agitators among in the demonstrations, and the smallest number of all were actual looters.

Furthermore, most of those arrested are from Ferguson and immediately adjoining communities - maybe 80% of them live within a 5 mile radius and the vast majority are from the St Louis metro area. Just a small sprinkling are from out of state.

Out of pages and pages of arrest listings, just two are 'looters' from out of state. The vast majority of arrests--and nearly all after the police crackdown started August 11th & 12th--are demonstrators from Ferguson or neighboring communities.

FYI, here is a listing of all arrests made in Ferguson from 8/10 through 8/21. An article in Cracked covers this well and has more details and analysis (point #3).

I suspect that one reason these false/greatly exaggerated stories carry so much weight with people is that they do match the preconceptions that many of us have. They are 'just so stories' that make us feel better about what happened. If Brown viciously attacked the officer then the whole thing becomes an unfortunate incident where the police officer didn't have much choice. If a wild and ungovernable pack of looters was burning Ferguson to the ground night after night, police had little choice but to move in with whatever force was necessary to subdue the rioting madmen. And so on.
posted by flug at 9:17 AM on August 28, 2014 [2 favorites]

7 Wacky Farts That Can Help Us Understand Ferguson, MO

If you all thought, as I did, that there was a typo in this link, you would be wrong.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:20 AM on August 28, 2014 [6 favorites]

>>And if that is true

>Was this specific phrasing part of the message you recieved?

Honestly I can't remember if that is the exact phrasing but it certainly was the message. 'Hey, if you knew the real facts of the case like my inside source does instead of the BS the media is giving us, you would understand why he had to do what he did and why it was justified.' Part of the message was very much, that this officer was being unfairly crucified in the press and on social media, and there are facts out there that support his case but that they just can't release publicly. But I'm passing this true information along to you so that you'll be in the in-group that knows the real truth.

Again, those aren't exact words but clearly were the implication given by my friends' friend to her, and relayed by my friend to me.
posted by flug at 9:24 AM on August 28, 2014 [2 favorites]

I'm glad you mentioned that, flug. I'll mention my own instance of these sorts of rumors being passed along. Extremely early on, like within the first few days after Brown was killed, I was told, by someone I trust who grew up in Ferguson, that a friend in law enforcement had told them that Brown had a juvenile record. I mentioned it to no one, because it was a rumor, and because it was told to me in confidence. But it wasn't long before that line independently started making its way around, and even now, you can find a lot of people saying that, minus any evidence.

I'm starting to think that that was the rumor mill getting started, even then—especially since without a court order, any juvenile record Brown might have had is another detail that can't be verified one way or another, and since any juvenile record has no bearing on this case. My friend's friend had to know that they have friends like me in the media.

Frightening, huh?
posted by limeonaire at 9:46 AM on August 28, 2014

Name me the cable news talking head that's better on Ferguson than the cracked farts article.
posted by Artw at 9:53 AM on August 28, 2014 [6 favorites]

This is pretty good, from PolitiFact:

Fact-checking claims about race after Ferguson shooting
posted by limeonaire at 10:14 AM on August 28, 2014

The problem with that Cracked article is that it creates straw men and then knocks them down.

For example: I'm well aware that the looting of the McDonalds took place to get milk for tear gas. But well-intentioned looting is still looting. It doesn't magically become not looting just because the milk is for medical treatment anymore than it would not be looting if it was for hungry children. It is still theft. And arguing that "It's not really a Molotov cocktail unless it's successful, if it fails it's just a bottle" is completely disingenuous. If I try to shoot someone, and fail because of a dud bullet, it doesn't mean I wasn't shooting them with bullets. It means that I had an equipment failure.
posted by corb at 10:44 AM on August 28, 2014

But well-intentioned looting is still looting.

You're right -- intentions don't matter.

If I try to shoot someone, and fail because of a dud bullet, it doesn't mean I wasn't shooting them with bullets.

You're right -- intentions matter.
posted by Etrigan at 10:58 AM on August 28, 2014 [56 favorites]

I'm well aware that the looting of the McDonalds took place to get milk for tear gas. But well-intentioned looting is still looting. It doesn't magically become not looting just because the milk is for medical treatment anymore than it would not be looting if it was for hungry children. It is still theft.

Because property rights always trump all other concerns, at all times, even in a war zone. Pull the other one it's got bells on.

Quick: do a google image search for "looter." What do you see? Who do you see? Why do you think you're seeing who you're seeing? At this point I'm intensely skeptical of anyone who uses, or even, like, thinks the word "looter," because it is a term used almost exclusively to refer to black people. Do you think this term is used almost exclusively to refer to black people because only black people forage for supplies when in a war zone or disaster area? Or do you think there are other reasons why only black people are shown when you search for "looter"?

I'm reminded of this observation from Katrina; when black people forage for supplies in a disaster area, they're called looters, when white people forage for supplies in a disaster area, we're described as finders.

Even if you don't mean the word "looter" that way, it's probably best to avoid it, since it is undeniable that most usage of the word is that way, and as such you sound like you're using it that way every time you use it.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 11:05 AM on August 28, 2014 [15 favorites]

Molotov cocktail count: Zero, remaining zero.
posted by Artw at 11:09 AM on August 28, 2014 [8 favorites]

Oh for crying in my soup. You have got to be joking, corb. There is an ENORMOUS difference between 'smash a window and steal a TV' (looting) and 'oh my fuck I have just been goddamned teargassed by police while being peaceful and I need this burning to stop."

Ugh.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 11:10 AM on August 28, 2014 [12 favorites]

You're right -- intentions don't matter.

You're right -- intentions matter.

brb guys, moving to a state where it's legal to make sweet, sweet love to Internet comments.
posted by tonycpsu at 11:14 AM on August 28, 2014 [22 favorites]

Even if you don't mean the word "looter" that way, it's probably best to avoid it, since it is undeniable that most usage of the word is that way

It's a bit like the word urban. To wit:

St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar defended the aggressive response of police officers in Ferguson, saying the use of tear gas, smoke, and armored trucks was necessary to patrol “very urban areas.”

Ferguson is, if anything, very, very suburban. Take a look at the satellite view of the town--it's street after street of tree-lined suburban streets and low-density suburban strip malls. It's just not urban at all, in the sense of very high population density, huge masses of people living/working on each block, highrises, whatever.

So what does make it "urban" in Chief Belmar's eyes?

It's a code word, is what.
posted by flug at 11:22 AM on August 28, 2014 [41 favorites]

Sent my way by someone who'd been in a previous discussion with me on Twitter:

Video messaging service verifies timing of CNN audio recording
posted by limeonaire at 11:30 AM on August 28, 2014 [1 favorite]

CNN may be factually correct?

/checks headlines. "Missing American hiker's body found"
posted by Artw at 11:35 AM on August 28, 2014

> Ferguson is, if anything, very, very suburban. Take a look at the satellite view of the town--it's street after street of tree-lined suburban streets and low-density suburban strip malls. It's just not urban at all, in the sense of very high population density, huge masses of people living/working on each block, highrises, whatever.

Yeah, I grew up in Florissant, and "urban" is the last word I would use to describe those north county suburbs.

I mean, unless I was speaking in code, I guess.

Relatedly: a disproportionate number of people I went to high school with have migrated to St. Charles. I thought that was weird, and when I asked why, was told that our old neighborhoods had "really gone downhill." That's even less subtle than "urban."
posted by Superplin at 11:46 AM on August 28, 2014 [4 favorites]

It doesn't magically become not looting just because the milk is for medical treatment anymore than it would not be looting if it was for hungry children. It is still theft.

You do know that Javert was not the hero of Les Miserables, right?

Right?
posted by Atom Eyes at 12:01 PM on August 28, 2014 [20 favorites]

This is the kind of crap I'm seeing.

["The Government" wants] to make people think there is racism when bluntly it is extremely non existent. What I find a blessing is that older black people who lived through the civil rights movement don't think racism is prevalent. Only those who are told on a daily basis and never lived through true oppression believe it is so prevalent that all whites are racist by default. Thereby securing a voting base and keeping their thumb on that voting base.

The same person goes on to claim that all of the racist comments on the Wilson donation page were the work of agents provocateurs and that they're not racist, they're "police vs. criminals."

How in the hell am I supposed to even start with somebody like that?
posted by ob1quixote at 12:07 PM on August 28, 2014

I think I'm going to go patrol some "very bourbon areas."
posted by one more dead town's last parade at 12:18 PM on August 28, 2014 [7 favorites]

[I]t's easy to read the terrifying police response to Ferguson, as so many have, as not a local government responding to the voices of the community but rather an occupying force addressing an insurgency of the ineluctable other that needs to be subdued. It's an attitude made more immediate and more horrible by the spontaneity of Ferguson citizens' outrage at Mike Brown's shooting and by the legacy of racial repression in America. But it's an attitude we have accepted elsewhere because it's been expressed more telegenically about less sympathetic groups amid better planned repressive theater.

It's very easy for a wing of the American political population to say that the residents of Ferguson belong in a cage and that events in that town over the last few weeks have confirmed that. It's easy, because they're falling back on the same screaming leitmotif running through 400 years of African-American history. But it's only gotten easier in the last 15 years, because they've been egalitarian enough to throw the rest of us in with it, and for the most part, we've gone quietly.

Jeb Lund in Rolling Stone (!): Insecurity State: The Politics Behind the Drama in Ferguson
posted by RogerB at 12:18 PM on August 28, 2014 [2 favorites]

ob1quixote, you could start with "Stop lying, you idiot, because not a single black person who lived through the civil rights movement thinks that racism isn't everywhere. You idiot."
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 12:21 PM on August 28, 2014 [5 favorites]

How in the hell am I supposed to even start with somebody like that?

You turn them off. Seriously.

Black voters and candidates absent from political process in Ferguson, Errin Whack, Fusion.

Like many other articles, this one expresses some astonishment that local elections are held separately from state and federal elections. Certainly that's the case where I am, and yes, it's associated with low turnout, but I'm not particularly aware of a similar civic and racial dissonance -- which isn't to say there is one. My own city has 2.6% black population -- significantly higher in the last two censuses -- but has now had a black (actually biracial, and native) member of the city council (whom I'm glad to know personally) for about four years, and has elected a black to the school board (the district has roughly 5% black students). Our sister city in the county is the 3rd most African American city in the state, 15%, and recently filled a vacant seat on the council with a black woman, replacing a black member who took a job outside the city. There is also black participation in voter registration in the Democratic Party, so there's no voluntary disenfranchisement, although there is some segregation in function. But we've accomplished this regardless of the fact that elections are in the spring for non-partisan offices such as city council, so I'm really unclear on why that is something being pointed to as a causative factor. It's certainly been that way in my state since at least the Progressive movement of the 1920s (which, by the way, favored non-partisan elections in local government).

This article, however, is the first to identify some structural reasons why participation has been so low in Ferguson. Even though the black cohort must have been growing for some time prior to gaining the majority in the 2000 census, there seems to be a lack of established African-American institutions locally, such as churches, historically a bulwark of black political power, especially in the South. It's interesting that the white council has appointed black members twice (who have then been re-elected), though it's unclear if all such opportunities were taken. In that sense the council fails to be revealed as overtly racist, and even the question of redistricting seems irrelevant since the ward with the largest black population (whose numbers I don't have but which naturally would be even higher than the city's average of 67%) hasn't ever elected a black council member.

Even though there seems to be an active state/federal Democratic Party, it's unclear from this story why they haven't been active locally, because even though we have non-partisan offices here just like Ferguson, a lot of field work for offices like Sheriff and City Council still comes (unofficially, e.g. we can't buy yard signs!) right out of the parties. This disconnect bothers me and I hope that the residents of Ferguson, and those institutions both community and partisan, will be more active -- it's clear they have issues that hey need to address.
posted by dhartung at 1:10 PM on August 28, 2014 [1 favorite]

> I'm well aware that the looting of the McDonalds took place to get milk for tear gas. But well-intentioned looting is still looting. It doesn't magically become not looting just because the milk is for medical treatment ...

The McDonalds had just closed, and staff were still in the store when this happened. The manager told reporters the next morning that the restaurant hadn't been looted. I don't have more details than that, but it sounds like staff and management didn't object to people using the milk for first aid, and nothing else was taken.
posted by nangar at 2:06 PM on August 28, 2014 [13 favorites]

But, you know, McDonalds corporation is probably totally grieving the loss of that milk, and of course unconcerned by the lawful shattering of the window.
posted by Artw at 2:15 PM on August 28, 2014 [4 favorites]

Oh yeah, I'd forgotten that part, nangar. So even though looting is a red bloody herring anyway, this wasn't actually looting. Good lord.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 2:28 PM on August 28, 2014 [1 favorite]

But well-intentioned looting is still looting.

Fuck that noise. If I'm on fire I am totally going to trespass on your property to put myself out in your pool. You can bill me later for the chunks of charred skin & clothing that clog up your filter.

Happily I won't get shown repeatedly on the news as an example of the lawlessness since I'm white, so the courts will just tell you to make it a civil matter and sue me in small claims. That's where those sorts of matters end up (unless there's copyright or trademark involved in which case the feds will deign to make a criminal case), unless the offender is a scary black dude.
posted by phearlez at 2:34 PM on August 28, 2014 [17 favorites]

The manager told reporters the next morning that the restaurant hadn't been looted. I don't have more details than that, but it sounds like staff and management didn't object to people using the milk for first aid, and nothing else was taken.

If in fact they gave it of their own free will, then that is fine, and correctly, as you say, not looting. If a state of duress existed on the manager such that he felt pressured to do so to avoid harm to his building, then while it is not looting, it is still theft by intimidation.

If you do find a link about that, though, I'd be interested in seeing it.
posted by corb at 2:35 PM on August 28, 2014

matt pearce, national reporter for the la times, reported the morning after that the manager said there was no looting

mcdonalds corporate denies there was looting
posted by nadawi at 2:51 PM on August 28, 2014 [15 favorites]

But how can we be sure the McDonald's spokesperson wasn't under duress at the time that statement was made?
posted by Atom Eyes at 2:56 PM on August 28, 2014 [15 favorites]

>But well-intentioned looting is still looting.

Even if it was looting, what is your point? That Cracked's journalistic practices leave something to be desired? Welcome to the Internet.
posted by rhizome at 3:10 PM on August 28, 2014 [1 favorite]

corb's totally reasoned argument has really opened my eyes and changed my mind on this issue... I am now 100% Pro-Looting.
posted by oneswellfoop at 3:13 PM on August 28, 2014 [9 favorites]

corb, I understand the distinctions you're making, but you're being hair-splittingly legalistic about possible harms to the management of the McDonalds when they claim not to be aggrieved. (Yes, it's possible McDonalds management only consented to people using their milk for first aid after people had started grabbing it, but if so, they still seem OK with that.)
posted by nangar at 3:26 PM on August 28, 2014

Yeah, it is certainly not the most pressing of my concerns, nangar. I mostly just got irritated by Cracked's reporting and then pedantic about detail...but then, as noted above...it is Cracked, so I don't know what I was really expecting.
posted by corb at 3:29 PM on August 28, 2014

If your response to Ferguson is to even momentarily express concern about whether or not a McDonald's manager gave protestors permission to use milk to treat tear gas, your take on the gravity of the situation as a whole is slightly askew. Persnickety defense of property rights as the most important thing in a situation wherein:

Cops are shooting kids in the back.
Cops are conveniently forgetting to file incident reports when shooting people.
Cops are shooting a woman in the head and then confiscating the bullet.
Cops are having their dogs piss on a memorial to a kid they've shot.
Cops everywhere are conspicuously failing to denounce the officers and departments responsible for their acts of animalistic barbaric hooliganism.

is myopic to the point of madness. Our police forces have revealed themselves to be the sinister occupying army that the most extreme anti-police activists have always said it is — and you think it matters whether or not a McDonald's manager gave permission to use milk to treat tear gas? That's, um, cray.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 3:42 PM on August 28, 2014 [47 favorites]

metafilter: crying over spilled milk
posted by pyramid termite at 3:48 PM on August 28, 2014 [6 favorites]

To some, property rights are the most important rights.
posted by rtha at 3:56 PM on August 28, 2014 [6 favorites]

Our police forces have revealed themselves to be the sinister occupying army that the most extreme anti-police activists have always said it is — and you think it matters whether or not a McDonald's manager gave permission to use milk to treat tear gas?

Well, I am one of those extreme anti-police activists, so yeah, while I was upset about Ferguson, the thuggery of a police state is certainly not even the faintest bit of surprise to me. And if you'll pardon me, this activity is not even kind of new. So yeah, I think it's okay to discuss even minutiae. I've said my heart out about how much power we allow police, what we ask of police, and how much we're willing to blindly support the state committing violence if it allows the society we prefer to flourish. I don't have any more in me right now about that.
posted by corb at 4:02 PM on August 28, 2014 [1 favorite]

Video of Violent, Rioting Surfers Shows White Culture of Lawlessness...
(Oddly enough, do make sure to read the comments, they're amazing.)
posted by Blasdelb at 8:49 AM on August 28 [10 favorites −] [!]

They are amazing; intense, angry defensiveness* from white OC locals, who are either completely clueless or the most exquisitely subtle trolls I've ever witnessed. It's like Bizarro World.

*Mostly in the pending comments, if you're inclined to take a look.
posted by GrammarMoses at 4:28 PM on August 28, 2014 [1 favorite]

It begins...

Missouri police sued for $40 million over actions in Ferguson protests
posted by Artw at 4:49 PM on August 28, 2014 [11 favorites]

and that's only 6 plaintiffs - there's going to be a flood of suits coming and lawyer fees alone are going to bankrupt the defendants
posted by pyramid termite at 5:16 PM on August 28, 2014 [3 favorites]

But well-intentioned looting is still looting. It doesn't magically become not looting just because the milk is for medical treatment anymore than it would not be looting if it was for hungry children. It is still theft.

So the cameras and cell phones confiscated by the police in Ferguson immediately after the shooting (and during ensuing protests? Not clear on how much they got away with), that's looting and theft too, right? That kinda seems like what an extreme anti-police activist would have to say.

And that didn't even involve good intentions - I doubt the owner of the convenience store got his cameras and recording system seized, but was simply asked for a copy.
posted by XMLicious at 5:35 PM on August 28, 2014 [9 favorites]

This community meeting happening right now in Ferguson sounds really interesting. Apparently Ferguson Mayor James Knowles III has stated that he won't step down. And the Ferguson police have been in the parking lot of the panel checking license plates. @Nettaaaaaaaa has more (and is also speaking at the meeting), and there's more on the #BeyondFerguson hashtag.

I think my mom's at this event, actually, now that I think about it. I think this is what she was inviting me to earlier. But I'm at home with my sick husband, unfortunately.
posted by limeonaire at 6:03 PM on August 28, 2014 [3 favorites]

Wow, this New York Times piece about Twitter's role in Ferguson is terrible.

Similarly, a photograph of a man throwing a tear-gas canister through the air quickly circulated on Twitter. “This man isn’t throwing tear gas AT police but AWAY from children,” wrote one Twitter user, along with dozens of similar tweets. But according to Mr. Pearce, who interviewed the photographer behind the shot, there were no children in the vicinity.

Great reporting there, third-hand, no less, interviewing an L.A. Times reporter, Matt Pearce, about his discussion with the Post-Dispatch reporter behind the shot, rather than talking to Edward Crawford (@eyefloodpanties), the guy actually pictured in the photo, who had already been interviewed three days beforehand about his motives in throwing the tear gas. Crawford himself was the initial person to note on Twitter that he was trying to get the tear gas away from any kids that might be nearby. As he stated (speaking in third person, before it was known that he was "da man wit the chips"), "I don't think "da man wit the chips" was throwing it back at police...i think he was throwing it away frm him nd kids he was standin near."

When Mr. Carson of The St. Louis Post-Dispatch shared pictures on Twitter of a Molotov cocktail found by the police, Twitter users accused him of lying and making it up. One group even perpetuated a hashtag #mythicalmolotov.

First, it's just St. Louis Post-Dispatch, no capital "The." Second, no one said photographer David Carson made up the Molotov cocktail in the bed of the truck; the tweet linked as evidence of that actually says "pics or it didn't happen": "pics of molotov cocktail or it didn't happen." It's worth noting that Carson was embedded with police at one point or another, though I'm not sure whether he was at the time that was tweeted, so that could have colored his interpretation—and interpretation is what people were questioning.

I've still only seen three accounts (beyond a multitude of tossed-off, vague references from police and the media) of any actual Molotov cocktails being spotted during the protests: 1. the questionable pic St. Louis County police tweeted (which may well have been of the one Carson reported seeing), 2. one shot in New York Times video of one, maybe, being thrown, and 3. pastor Renita Lamkin saying in this St. Louis Public Radio story yesterday that she saw a young woman handing a Molotov cocktail to a preteen. So in terms of "pics or it didn't happen," we have one photo from St. Louis County police of a supposed Molotov cocktail and one blurry video from the Times itself of another. Again, great reporting.

And when it comes to breaking news, we should remember that we are often seeing a tale of two Twitters.

Oh, how cutesy. Ugh. Stop using our town for your judgmental riffs on the significance and/or accuracy of social media.
posted by limeonaire at 6:55 PM on August 28, 2014 [10 favorites]

Like they're anything other than absolutely shit at their jobs.
posted by Artw at 7:03 PM on August 28, 2014

"If in fact they gave it of their own free will, then that is fine, and correctly, as you say, not looting. If a state of duress existed on the manager such that he felt pressured to do so to avoid harm to his building, then while it is not looting, it is still theft by intimidation. "

My Christ, did we already solve all the other problems in Ferguson?

This is what happens when moral myopia blinds leads you to value property over people. What a petty and mean complaint.
posted by klangklangston at 8:09 PM on August 28, 2014 [24 favorites]

So when the recording of the actual shots rang came out, one of the racist authoritarians I work with asked, what does it matter. I tried to gather my thoughts...

Considering there was supposedly one shot inside the police vehicle, how does that jibe with a six volley, pause, and then a four-volley?

Second - the police chief straight up said it was four or five shots total. Either he didn't know (incompentence and/or insubordination), or he was lying (malfeasance).

And given six shots hit Mike Brown, were all the hits from the first volley? If so, that makes the second volley both a remarkable degradation in marksmanship, and a completely useless action (since the first volley was apparently sufficient). If it was a mix of shots from each volley, how did the officer get such a remarkable grouping from two separate volleys, ESPECIALLY since he apparently pulled left on all hits?

If it's two from the first and all four of the second volley, it supports the notion of excessive force. There are a couple grazing hits on the right arm that do not fix the arm position at the time of the wound, i.e. they could be from behind. So two from the initial, six-volley graze Mike Brown. He turns around and...four more, two in the arm and two in the head.
posted by notsnot at 8:28 PM on August 28, 2014 [3 favorites]

Belmar told reporters that Brown was shot "more than just a couple [times], but I don't think it was many more than that."
posted by lz at 8:39 PM on August 28, 2014 [1 favorite]

Yes, "civil forfeiture" and seizing of cellphones and cameras is one hundred percent theft, and we should not permit it from jackbooted thugs any more than we should civilians.
posted by corb at 8:56 PM on August 28, 2014

First, it's just St. Louis Post-Dispatch, no capital "The."

Just so you know, this is one of those historical standards which the Times continues to, almost alone these days, hold up. Once upon a time all newspapers were The Metropolis Globe-Sun and Dispatch (or whatever) by default. I was a kid when our local paper dropped the The from its masthead.

Yes, "civil forfeiture" and seizing of cellphones and cameras is one hundred percent theft,

Let's say I agree with you in principle. The law, however, does not, and you shouldn't speak as if it does.

ESPECIALLY since he apparently pulled left on all hits?

I am really not sure there is enough information to draw that conclusion. Brown may have been facing him at an angle, for instance.

This lack of information and certainty is still an indictment about the openness of the investigation. I just don't think speaking in absolute terms about what is essentially speculation and extrapolation is warranted.

As to the Molotov cocktail angle, I think the evidence is clear enough that some small number of persons prepared and transported them to the site of the protests and in at least one case attempted to light. We do know that no police officers were injured by Molotov cocktail induced fire, and that's quite a salient point, but is probably of no interest whatsoever to many observers since the threat of their use is sufficient to justify use of force. There was also a building burned and scattered reports of (possibly ineffectual) fires on roofs which may have essentially been Molotov cocktails. But the idea that they were present or not present, rather than used, or effective, is what is salient in the debate. You are going to get absolutely nowhere with anyone who believes their threat justifies use of force to argue that they weren't "really" being used. Of course it's obscene to taint the entirety of the protests with the (attempted, ineffectual) bad acts of others, but I say to you outside of friendly fora like this you're wasting your time trying to split the difference.
posted by dhartung at 9:19 PM on August 28, 2014 [3 favorites]

These seven charts explain how Ferguson—and many other US cities—wring revenue from black people and the poor
posted by unliteral at 11:14 PM on August 28, 2014 [12 favorites]

Considering there was supposedly one shot inside the police vehicle, how does that jibe with a six volley, pause, and then a four-volley?

Heck, how does it jibe with the original description of Darren Wilson firing his "service revolver?" Chief Belmar is as unreliable a narrator as they come.
posted by rhizome at 11:44 PM on August 28, 2014

notsnot: “Considering there was supposedly one shot inside the police vehicle, how does that jibe with a six volley, pause, and then a four-volley?”

It says that the first shot likely occurred in the moments before the recording started at 12:02:14 PM CDT.

I don't really care to speculate about which shots may have hit or miss.
posted by ob1quixote at 1:01 AM on August 29, 2014

notsnot: “Considering there was supposedly one shot inside the police vehicle, how does that jibe with a six volley, pause, and then a four-volley?”

It could have occurred before the recording started, as ob1quixote notes. But my impression is that the recording started some time before the shots and continued some time after the shots, and they are playing only the relevant few seconds. You'd really need to know all the details about the recording, particularly how long it had been running before the first shot was recorded, to have any idea whether it might have missed the first shot.

If there is an initial shot within the police vehicle, it is possible it is just a few seconds before the other shots, but it is also possible there is a longer pause--maybe 5, 10, 15, 30 seconds?--which could put it before the start of the recording even it it had been going on for a while. It's just hard to say and without actual information we can only speculate.
posted by flug at 5:44 AM on August 29, 2014

First, it's just St. Louis Post-Dispatch, no capital "The."

Just so you know, this is one of those historical standards which the Times continues to, almost alone these days, hold up. Once upon a time all newspapers were The Metropolis Globe-Sun and Dispatch (or whatever) by default. I was a kid when our local paper dropped the The from its masthead.

Oh hell. I hate the prescriptivist, fact-checking-avoiding stance the Times takes on stuff like this. Just call it what it is—that's what I push for at publications I work on. That's just as bad as the house style at my local Village Voice publication to do the opposite and lowercase "the" before any band name that includes it.
posted by limeonaire at 6:05 AM on August 29, 2014 [1 favorite]

Communists Inciting Violence in Ferguson

There was a way better article, for some reason I can't find it now, introducing the people in all the photos that surfaced with molotov cocktails being from a violent activist group out of Chicago.
posted by lz at 6:58 AM on August 29, 2014

Some tweets from a town hall meeting where Mayor Knowles disappoints citizens. Part 1. Part 2.
posted by audi alteram partem at 7:16 AM on August 29, 2014

how does that jibe with a six volley, pause, and then a four-volley

It doesn't, unless it was earlier. Which raises the question - what was Mike Brown doing between that first shot and the last the last volley ?

He died 35 feet from the officer, and according to the story, Brown was charging at him in a drug fueled rage. So, there are about 4 seconds between volleys. It takes ~8 seconds overall.

If Brown was charging at the officer when the first volley began, he would have had to be 200-250 feet away at least. Why is the officer taking such long shots with a sidearm ? Why Did he let Brown get that far away ? What was he doing that whole time ? Why no call for backup ? What was the accomplice doing ? Why the pause (possibly to reload if he had a revolver, but damn, that was a fast reload) ?

The officer's story, so far as we have it, makes no sense, given the evidence at hand. Either his story hasn't been relayed accurately, or he is lying. It cannot have happened as it is described, because it is physically impossible.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 8:02 AM on August 29, 2014 [4 favorites]

Since nothing is in writing, or as far as I can tell has come directly from Wilson, I'm pretty sure he gets a do-over on his story to fit any evidence that comes up in the meantime. Assuming any kind of trial, which is a lot.
posted by Artw at 8:09 AM on August 29, 2014

Why no call for backup ?
Seeing as a second officer arrived within seconds of the fatal shooting, he must have called for backup at some point?
posted by lz at 8:21 AM on August 29, 2014

'I could have been Mike Brown': stories of racial profiling. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The Guardian.

Also: an article about the collaboration.
posted by nangar at 8:52 AM on August 29, 2014 [2 favorites]

Who actually has seen Officer Wilson's 'injury'? All I can find is "a source" and "this news source has photos from the hospital"... but nothing else. And, well, Jackson saying he hadn't seen the injuries when he told reporters that Wilson went to the hospital. Which isn't any help.
posted by lz at 9:00 AM on August 29, 2014

huh, fwiw, i was just reading this plot synopsis to john brunner's The Jagged Orbit (1969) - "The novel is set in the United States of America in 2014, when interracial tensions have passed the breaking point. A Mafia-like cartel, the Gottschalks, are exploiting this situation to sell weapons to anyone able to buy them... Matthew Flamen, a 'spoolpigeon' (a variety of investigative journalist), is struggling to hold onto his job..."

review at SF Reviews:

Moreover, this state of affairs is perpetuated by the powers that be, who find it more profitable to pander to humanity's fears and collective insanity than to help us rise above them. If a riot has to be quelled by taking out whole city blocks with missiles, so be it. Everyday citizens are exploited by arms dealers like the Gottschalks, who promote the idea of security through greater firepower. As one character puts it, "they live off the carrion of our mutual distrust and bribe us with symbols that equate hatred with manhood." This is frighteningly prescient storytelling... Matthew Flamen is a 'spoolpigeon', a sort of tabloid-TV journalist or radio shock jock who chases after rumors and specializes in uncovering the dirty laundry of prominent public figures and corporations for the public's entertainment.

review at SF Site:

Racism, gun violence, drugs, dependence on computers, and mental health figure as key issues in Jagged Orbit, but none really captures centre stage. The novel's central theme is really the more ambiguous concept of isolation: how technology can be used to create and exploit rifts between people. The ensemble cast and a multi-threaded plot (signature elements of Brunner's style) weave together in a way that reinforces the novel's thematic movement from isolation to unification.

Critics also suggest that The Jagged Orbit hasn't aged as well as Brunner's other works. True, its depiction of a United States separated into racially divided city-states more closely represents the anxieties of the late-60s than the current racial climate, where most of the questions swirl around integration rather than separation. However, Brunner's insight into gun violence, drug abuse, and our over-reliance upon technology still feels relevant.

posted by kliuless at 9:11 AM on August 29, 2014 [2 favorites]

St. Louis Post-Dispatch profile of State Senator Maria Chappelle-Nadal.
posted by nangar at 9:42 AM on August 29, 2014 [2 favorites]

Good on Sen Chapelle-Nadal. The time for civility ended when Gov Nixon phoned it in while a bunch of local open-mikers did every possible thing wrong. If sayjng "fuck" in a tweet gets his attention, then she's already done more good than he has.
posted by tonycpsu at 9:59 AM on August 29, 2014 [2 favorites]

These seven charts explain how Ferguson—and many other US cities—wring revenue from black people and the poor

Thanks for posting this, unilateral. This was very helpful for figuring out how to do my own little local audit to compare where I live to Ferguson (by downloading/searching my county's annual financial report). If I'm reading correctly, the City of Ferguson's entire revenue stream is 14% fines and forfeitures, whereas in my own county, it's less than 1%, and only 13.8% of local law enforcement's revenue comes from fines/forfeitures.

I still can't work out how to find data on things like traffic stops, but this is a great jumping off point for what kind of information people should look at if they're trying to take steps in their own community.
posted by deludingmyself at 10:56 AM on August 29, 2014 [1 favorite]

In response to Nadal’s Twitter attacks, Nixon said at a news conference: “I try to put gasoline into the engine of fire engines when I see them, not on the fires that are existing. I find doing that is more productive.”

Wow, could that be more tortured a metaphor? Perhaps it's just his way of saying yes, you're right, I'm a poor communicator.
posted by phearlez at 11:23 AM on August 29, 2014 [1 favorite]

Related: Picking up your kids while being black - more here:
I’m not your brother!: Video reveals police’s stunning double-standard for black Americans - good lord.
posted by madamjujujive at 11:47 AM on August 29, 2014 [4 favorites]

Who Will Pay Reparations On My Soul?

The vulnerability of racially marked bodies to power, particularly police power, and the lack of justice—the singular and persistent evidence of gross unfairness where race and the law intersect—reveals a bloody knot in the social fabric that is as vivid in Ferguson, Missouri today as it was in Baldwin’s Harlem half a century ago. What can be done to end this awful cycle of violence? What still prevents so many blacks from being treated with full humanity—treated, in Baldwin’s words, as men?

posted by the man of twists and turns at 11:51 AM on August 29, 2014

Full audio from last night's public forum in Ferguson is now available here from St. Louis Public Radio. (See audi alteram partem's comment above.)
posted by nangar at 12:09 PM on August 29, 2014

In response to Nadal’s Twitter attacks, Nixon said at a news conference: “I try to put gasoline into the engine of fire engines when I see them, not on the fires that are existing. I find doing that is more productive.”

FYI, fueling a fire truck with gasoline tends to disable it.
posted by indubitable at 12:16 PM on August 29, 2014 [10 favorites]

Officers from St. Ann, Glendale off the job after actions during Ferguson protests

This includes notice of the resignation of Lt. Ray Albers, the officer now notorious for pointing a loaded rifle at protesters.
posted by bonehead at 2:38 PM on August 29, 2014 [7 favorites]

This article says that Lt Albers ("Officer Go Fuck Yourself") has been a cop there since 1994. My hunch is that he's put in enough years for his pension to kick in after his resignation.
posted by rmd1023 at 3:01 PM on August 29, 2014 [3 favorites]

Retiring under suspension, investigation, indictment and/or conviction should drastically affect the amount of pension received. It's a bad loophole.
posted by rhizome at 3:21 PM on August 29, 2014 [1 favorite]

Cop who threatened to ‘kill everybody’ expected to get full pension
posted by Artw at 3:32 PM on August 29, 2014 [2 favorites]

Pappert later apologized for his comments in a prepared statement through his lawyer. Pappert said he was “deeply remorseful” for his comments and said he recognized “that his words were insensitive and hurtful.”

Doesn't get more boilerplate than this. It's not how you own up. its just.. not.

Jiminez said that Albers raising his weapon was “totally justifiable.” Prior to the camera turning on, Albers had had water and urine thrown at him, Jiminez said. He then saw three men with bandanas in the crowd, and one of them had a gun. He then heard gunshots, but not from that gun.

people with bandanas, in a crowd, and saw a gun, then heard gunshots, but not from said guntoting karate-kid?
i've heard better excuses from my fiveyearold.

and then again Jiminez seems like a liar, and not a good one, so he's directly responsible for the culture he grooms within the department.
posted by xcasex at 3:41 PM on August 29, 2014 [1 favorite]

Retiring under suspension, investigation, indictment and/or conviction should drastically affect the amount of pension received. It's a bad loophole.

I agree with the sentiment there, but I kinda wonder if, given that the system so easily abets the sort of behavior he's under suspension for, such a policy might simply enable him to make the whole process more expensive and drawn-out out of spite while still eventually getting the same benefits or even result in him and his lawyers ending up with more money than they would have otherwise. Note that the Jimeniz guy said that if the Ferguson incident had happened at any other time, he and the board believed Albers would have been suspended without pay.

However I don't have any experience with this sort of stuff, so if it could be implemented without such risks I'd be entirely in favor.
posted by XMLicious at 4:24 PM on August 29, 2014

Ben Stein goes full racist/full moron.
posted by Joey Michaels at 5:47 PM on August 29, 2014 [3 favorites]

T-shirt roundup, all with proceeds going to local nonprofits:

1. #HealSTL shirts

2. STL-Style shirts

3. Allriot shirts

Seen any other good ones? Of course, no one has the one I really want.
posted by limeonaire at 5:57 PM on August 29, 2014 [2 favorites]

Joey Michaels: “Ben Stein goes full racist/full moron.”

"Cassius Clay." On top of all his other racist bloviating in this interview, Stein called Muhammad Ali "Cassius Clay." Muhammad Ali hasn't been called "Cassius Clay" in fifty years. What a shitheel.
posted by ob1quixote at 10:14 PM on August 29, 2014 [15 favorites]

I can sympathize with him. I myself had to cut the sleeves off all of my shirts, otherwise I would need a concealed carry permit for THESE GUNS
💪 💪 💪 💪 💪
posted by the man of twists and turns at 10:33 PM on August 29, 2014 [6 favorites]

Of course, no one has the one I really want.

Not entirely true -- the paper's store lets you buy one, though the guy in the photo doesn't want you to do that.

It's a bad loophole.

Speaking as a member of a union family, I'm conflicted. I don't think the agency should be able to pull his pension benefits (or a portion) without due process. After all, pension benefits are earned. In a lot of labor contracts that would require a conviction or a lengthy court proceeding. It should probably be satisfying enough that he is off the force. Maybe in a way think of the pension as allowing that to happen quickly and neatly.

The upside here is that at least some of these communities have actual police review boards and they are prepared to take action, even if just to reduce embarrassment.
posted by dhartung at 11:51 PM on August 29, 2014 [4 favorites]

I didn't bring up the topic of his pension because I don't think he should get it. I was just assuming that if he was that quick to quit, he probably wasn't waiting to hit his pension maturity date, which makes it easier to walk away. Much easier to say "fuck this shit" when you've for something to walk away to.
posted by rmd1023 at 4:03 AM on August 30, 2014

I don't think he should lose his pension. That is pay that he earned with his time.

I do think he should be in jail, though. And I think that because if I pointed a gun at a stranger and said I would fucking kill them, I would go to jail and nobody would give a shit about my made up gun story.

Besides, if his pension is like my pension, he can't draw on it until at least age 55, and even that incurs some penalty. I doubt he will work as a cop again, with google searches being what they are, but who knows. Joe Arpaio or Steven Segal might hire him. And there is always Wingnut Welfare.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 8:42 AM on August 30, 2014 [2 favorites]

Different guy, pogo. This is the guy who just talked about wanting to kill people while he was at some kind of speaking event.

I mean, I agree that he should be in jail, but there's no law we can convict him under, sadly.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:03 AM on August 30, 2014

Besides, if his pension is like my pension, he can't draw on it until at least age 55, and even that incurs some penalty.

All the police pension systems I'm familiar with start immediately upon retirement.
posted by Etrigan at 11:18 AM on August 30, 2014

The protest in Ferguson is going strong today, with estimates of around a thousand people marching and listening to speakers.
posted by limeonaire at 11:31 AM on August 30, 2014 [5 favorites]

Jelani Cobb on On Point, Aug. 28.
posted by nangar at 12:16 PM on August 30, 2014

Washington Post: Ferguson isn’t about black rage against cops. It’s white rage against progress.

The Huffington Post: UN Condemns U.S. Police Brutality, Calls For 'Stand Your Ground' Review
posted by limeonaire at 12:38 PM on August 30, 2014 [8 favorites]

St. Louis Post-Dispatch profile of St. Louis Alderman Antonio French.

Earlier profile in the LA Times.
posted by nangar at 2:10 PM on August 30, 2014 [1 favorite]

Interestingly, it looks like in addition to new body cameras, some of the Ferguson police on the scene today are wearing holstered tasers, though I don't have confirmation for sure that that's what they are. Man. Where were those two weeks ago?
posted by limeonaire at 2:28 PM on August 30, 2014

Sarah Kendzior and Umar Lee wrote a great piece for Politico: After Ferguson. Although they got one thing wrong on the second page: Halls Ferry is not a town. And the Children's Palace pictured on that page was a toy store, then a roller-skating rink called The Palace. I had a birthday party there one year.
posted by limeonaire at 2:42 PM on August 30, 2014 [2 favorites]

Ha, in response to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch announcing that it would seek any juvenile record Mike Brown might have, the Riverfront Times is now seeking any juvenile record Darren Wilson might have.
posted by limeonaire at 3:18 PM on August 30, 2014 [17 favorites]

Oh wow, this is so good, from Jezebel: Whitewashing and the Problem With the Ice Bucket Challenge

Sorry, by the way, if this is becoming the limeonaire show here at the bottom of this thread. But there's still tons of analysis and coverage being published out there of Ferguson, so I figured I'd pass it along as I see it!
posted by limeonaire at 4:20 PM on August 30, 2014 [8 favorites]

No apologies necessary. Thanks for the links, limeonaire.
posted by homunculus at 4:33 PM on August 30, 2014 [6 favorites]

Thanks limeonaire, all is appreciated. I am interested in reactions from all over.

Quote from my eighty four year old mother this morning "Can you imagine if a dog was shot in the street like that? At least half the people that are standing up for the cop wouldn't if a dog was shot and left in the street for four hours. What's wrong with these people?"
posted by readery at 4:34 PM on August 30, 2014 [11 favorites]

limeonaire, I've really appreciated the comments you've posted here. It's been great to hear from you and other MeFites in the St. Louis area in a format that's not limited to 140 characters and not mixed in with random other topics. Thank you.
posted by nangar at 4:51 PM on August 30, 2014 [4 favorites]

Thanks, guys. Two more good ones I saw just now:

Dear Police Officers: Hands Up, Don't Shoot

Getting Ferguson Majority to Show Its Clout at Polls
posted by limeonaire at 4:58 PM on August 30, 2014 [2 favorites]

I think the ice bucket challenge stuff is less about white vs black attention, and more about people who enjoy challenges to make funny videos of themselves vs those who don't. I think a lot of people would be happy to do the Ferguson bullet challenge if they had a bucket full of brass and it was a thing done by more than one person.
posted by corb at 5:20 PM on August 30, 2014

From The Washington Post: At least 6 Ferguson officers apart from Brown shooter have been named in lawsuits, and about 13 percent of Ferguson’s officers have faced excessive-force investigations.

From Newsweek: Ferguson Prosecutor Robert P. McCulloch's Long History of Siding With the Police
posted by limeonaire at 6:34 PM on August 30, 2014 [5 favorites]

Slashdot poll: Should police have cameras recording their work at all times? (results thus far)

Al Jazeera: Protesters rally three weeks after police shooting of Michael Brown
posted by limeonaire at 6:40 PM on August 30, 2014 [1 favorite]

Love in the Time of Tear Gas
posted by the man of twists and turns at 7:45 PM on August 30, 2014 [1 favorite]

Why Ferguson might just prompt real change, David Nather, Politico.
posted by nangar at 6:03 AM on August 31, 2014 [1 favorite]

At least 6 Ferguson officers apart from Brown shooter have been named in lawsuits, Kimberly Kindy & Carol D. Leonnig, Washington Post.
posted by nangar at 6:42 AM on August 31, 2014

Another widely proposed reform, requiring police officers to wear video cameras, may be about to become a reality in Ferguson. Johnson noted that at the community forum Thursday night, Knowles told the audience that the Ferguson police are already training to use body cameras, although there aren’t enough yet for every officer to have one.

For a news story that came out today, this is a little behind—Ferguson officers were already wearing the cameras yesterday, though St. Louis County police weren't. Though what we don't know is whether they were turned on, whether the infrastructure is in place to preserve and store video, etc. Lots of little steps all need to be taken to make this work, including little things like officers consistently wearing their name tags and badges, even when out on assignments they consider controversial.

This is a good piece otherwise, though!
posted by limeonaire at 8:41 AM on August 31, 2014 [1 favorite]

On Common Dreams: Ferguson Everywhere Now. It's one man's account of what he saw inside an armored police van during protests in Ferguson.
posted by limeonaire at 12:01 PM on August 31, 2014 [2 favorites]

Salon: Why acknowledging white privilege is not surrendering to “white guilt”—add this to the canon of "useful reads for white allies."
posted by limeonaire at 12:20 PM on August 31, 2014 [1 favorite]

Michel Martin's NPR piece on the Wellspring Church community forum the other night: Plea To Ferguson's Leaders: To Help Heal, Acknowledge Our Hurt
posted by limeonaire at 12:26 PM on August 31, 2014 [1 favorite]

Anybody with real authority in the area (e.g. not the Mayor) has a foundation of hiding the hurt that black people experience regularly there, not to mention their paycheck being paid by the fines resulting from the inequities. They, especially the Old White Guy law enforcement chiefs, have built their careers on their ability to hide the facts of this situation, and perhaps survive in their positions based solely on these skills.
posted by rhizome at 12:51 PM on August 31, 2014 [3 favorites]

@SadeShawtay: @ShaunKing: Young brothers in Ferguson found this in their yard when they woke up this morning. pic.twitter.com/71o7C1ToOw” straight sick.

@DeMarcusRFNET: @ShaunKing A noose was found on a city worker's truck a couple days ago here in Oakland. And it wasn't the first time ktvu.com/news/news/loca…
posted by Golden Eternity at 2:03 PM on August 31, 2014 [2 favorites]

Cop v. Black Guy
Friend sent this to me. Thought many in this thread would enjoy it.
posted by lz at 5:34 PM on August 31, 2014

So I've seen a few suggestions in this thread and the original one that Darren Brown is basically waiting out the release of information from witnesses so that he can tailor his story to fit the accepted facts. Could someone with more knowledge of police procedure than I explain* if this is actually possible, and for how long he could [have] theoretically hold/held out on telling his side of the events on the record?

I can see how there's the 5th amendment issues regarding him incriminating himself, but how is that squared with the fact that refusing to give a statement of events seems like it would be actively impeding a legal investigation? I'm thinking more in terms of DOJ and other outside agencies; I realize that the Ferguson PD most likely doesn't give a fuck.

*or feel free to link to an article addressing this; I can't imagine I'm the only one curious enough about this to warrant some writing by folks that know about this sort of thing.
posted by a box and a stick and a string and a bear at 5:50 PM on August 31, 2014

Wilson. The cop is Darren Wilson. Brown is the surname of his victim.
posted by rmd1023 at 5:58 PM on August 31, 2014

After reaching $433,000, donations for Ferguson cop halt mysteriously

"Mysteriously"? Okay then.
posted by lz at 6:07 PM on August 31, 2014 [1 favorite]

Wilson. The cop is Darren Wilson. Brown is the surname of his victim.
posted by rmd1023 at 5:58 PM on August 31 [+] [!]

Sorry, some careless auto-pilot typing there. I'm actually surprised that I didn't refer to him as Dan Brown.
posted by a box and a stick and a string and a bear at 6:41 PM on August 31, 2014 [2 favorites]

but how is that squared with the fact that refusing to give a statement of events seems like it would be actively impeding a legal investigation?

It isn't squared: the 5th Amendment takes precedence and suspects aren't required to talk. Obstruction of justice is different.
posted by rhizome at 6:43 PM on August 31, 2014

Officers are receptive to the cameras, [Ferguson Chief Jackson] said. “They are really enjoying them,” he said. “They are trying to get used to using them.”

I'm so glad the police are enjoying them. But hey, whatever it takes to get them to acquire and use the damn things.
posted by limeonaire at 7:14 PM on August 31, 2014

It isn't squared: the 5th Amendment takes precedence and suspects aren't required to talk. Obstruction of justice is different.

So does the 5th amendment taking precedence mean that any potential obstruction of justice is absolutely superceded? I seems like there should be some sort of boundaries established in jurisprudence; otherwise what's keeping people from using the 5th as a blanket rationale for refusing to cooperate with an investigation?
posted by a box and a stick and a string and a bear at 7:28 PM on August 31, 2014

Michael Brown and Dorian Johnson, the friend who witnessed his shooting
posted by Golden Eternity at 7:37 PM on August 31, 2014 [2 favorites]

So does the 5th amendment taking precedence mean that any potential obstruction of justice is absolutely superceded?

Well, you can't destroy evidence or lie under oath or anything like that, but Darren Wilson could never say another word about what happened if he chose. That's what, "You have the right to remain silent..." means. Other than that, it's not clear what you mean by "potential obstruction of justice."
posted by rhizome at 7:43 PM on August 31, 2014

I'm just curious if there's anything stopping literally anyone, in the course of a criminal investigation, from pleading the 5th in order to provide no information whatsoever (aside from professional repercussions, i.e. a cop needing to be able to attest to a sequence of events in order to perform his job duties). It seems like a real roadblock to prosecution, and one that would be open to a lot of abuse (since, presumably, someone wouldn't need to provide detail of why a statement may be incriminating, and therefore would be able to use it at whim).
posted by a box and a stick and a string and a bear at 8:04 PM on August 31, 2014

Does this primer on taking the Fifth shed any light? I don't know for sure.
posted by limeonaire at 8:08 PM on August 31, 2014

What is unusual here is the other possible investigators saying "fair enough, we'll say and do nothing too."

I say unusual, for police it may actually be SOP.
posted by Artw at 8:09 PM on August 31, 2014

Also it's kind of amazing that a cop could do that AND keep their job.
posted by Artw at 8:10 PM on August 31, 2014 [1 favorite]

Well, you can't destroy evidence or lie under oath or anything like that

Nope. Nothing like that would ever happen.
posted by futz at 8:19 PM on August 31, 2014 [1 favorite]

It seems like a real roadblock to prosecution

That's the whole point. We have rights, and using them for their intended purpose isn't "abuse."
posted by bradf at 8:21 PM on August 31, 2014 [1 favorite]

a box...: I think you've lost me, and I'm not a lawyer, and this is getting pretty weedy, and I get the feeling you're sussing out some personal theory, possibly that people should always be required to answer questions from law enforcement.
posted by rhizome at 8:21 PM on August 31, 2014

Systemic silence when confronted with systemic wrongdoing pretty much sounds like "abuse" to me.
posted by a box and a stick and a string and a bear at 8:22 PM on August 31, 2014

Rhizome, I guess I'm just trying to work out the way that the 5th amendment plays into the situation when police circle the proverbial wagons. I can see how it's vaguely off topic, so I'll bow out of the conversation, but if anyone has more light to shed on it, I really am curious.
posted by a box and a stick and a string and a bear at 8:25 PM on August 31, 2014

That's the whole point. We have rights, and using them for their intended purpose isn't "abuse."

"We" don't really have rights when the cops become involved, do we? They decide what our rights are and if they are wrong they are almost NEVER are held accountable.
posted by futz at 8:35 PM on August 31, 2014

Lol. The defense team would subpoena their eye doc if the witness had one. Oh, and they might play a video of a basketball game where most people failed to even register that there was a dude in a gorilla suit in it.

Or, you can just be a POC who is contesting the sworn testimony of a cop. Hardly a slam dunk case.
posted by futz at 8:48 PM on August 31, 2014 [1 favorite]

( i have my white pantsuit on...could someone please give me directions to Fantasy Island?)
posted by futz at 8:55 PM on August 31, 2014 [1 favorite]

sworn testimony of a cop

Your responses are sequentially following mine, but you don't seem to be reading or responding to anything in this thread.

Wilson likely won't be prosecuted, and if he is he won't probably won't be convicted. You're right. The system is completely broken. But it's not because of the 5th amendment. That's what some of us were talking about a minute ago.
posted by bradf at 9:10 PM on August 31, 2014 [1 favorite]

If multiple eyewitnesses testify that they saw a police officer gun down an unarmed man for no reason, and the officer refuses to testify in his own defense, that sounds like a pretty open and shut case for the prosecution. I don't see how that could be construed as abuse of the 5th amendment.

Well, yes, but we don't know if this is the situation as of yet. There may be witnesses who will back up Wilson's case. Wilson may end up testifying if it goes to trial. And so on.
posted by Justinian at 9:18 PM on August 31, 2014 [1 favorite]

Your responses are sequentially following mine, but you don't seem to be reading or responding to anything in this thread.

Reading and responding just fine thanks. My comments aren't a personal attack on you at all. I just disagree with most of what you have said.
posted by futz at 9:39 PM on August 31, 2014

This may be unkind of me but I suspect that what the Ferguson Police are enjoying about the cameras is learning how to turn them off.
posted by Joey Michaels at 9:54 PM on August 31, 2014 [1 favorite]

This may be unkind of me but I suspect that what the Ferguson Police are enjoying about the cameras is learning how to turn them off.

The Ferguson police, like nearly all people, think that they (individually, themselves) do the right thing 99-plus percent of the time. For them, cameras are a good thing because it will show the world A) the ton of crap they have to put up with, and B) how well they deal with that crap.

The first one to get caught/disciplined/vilified for something that happens on his camera feed will be genuinely shocked that people are pissed off by it.
posted by Etrigan at 4:36 AM on September 1, 2014 [8 favorites]

Genuinely shocked that people are pissed off: I look forward to that day. At the same time, I expect cops and their hangers-on will continue dismissing critics as either naive do-gooders or malcontents in league with "bad guys." Confirmation bias is a powerful thing.
posted by GrammarMoses at 5:54 AM on September 1, 2014

I am pretty sure they are smug about the cameras because just like dash cams, footage can mysteriously disappear. They're like "this is what you want to see? lookie here. hope you're all happy now".

Besides, one cop already turned off her camera before shooting a man in the head at a traffic stop. I think that until body cameras can run from clock in to clock out without the control of the person wearing them and be viewed by a 3rd party, they wont be much use.
posted by lz at 6:27 AM on September 1, 2014 [1 favorite]

Counterpoint: Camden Turns Around With New Police Force.

... mostly, the police have changed their culture. Officers have been moved from desk jobs and squad cars onto walking beats, in what Chief J. Scott Thomson likens to a political campaign to overcome years of mistrust.

... No one, least of all law-enforcement officials, is declaring victory on crime: Camden has seen too many promises and rescue packages to be so bold.

Still, the improvements have come faster than anyone predicted. And while the unrest in Ferguson, Mo., has drawn attention to long-simmering hostilities between police departments and minority communities, Camden is becoming an example of the opposite.
posted by RedOrGreen at 9:17 AM on September 1, 2014 [2 favorites]

I suspect that what the Ferguson Police are enjoying about the cameras is learning how to turn them off

naw, they share 'em around over beers and you know, on CopBook. "Lookit 'im squirm when I taze his ass!"
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 12:14 PM on September 1, 2014 [3 favorites]

Oh wow. Traffic on I-270 west near West Florissant Avenue has been stopped by a group of protesters, out of their cars, hands up. Police are pulling up. See more live here.
posted by limeonaire at 2:45 PM on September 1, 2014

Ah, now it's moving again. Can't tell what happened with the protesters.
posted by limeonaire at 2:46 PM on September 1, 2014

In the meantime, a group of teens has built a "Yelp for Cops" app called Five-O. It was in the works for the past six months, and they decided to release it now, in light of what's been happening in Ferguson.
posted by limeonaire at 2:54 PM on September 1, 2014 [3 favorites]

Previously
posted by Golden Eternity at 3:01 PM on September 1, 2014 [1 favorite]

Cool, thanks Golden Eternity. I clearly have not been keeping up with the rest of the blue!
posted by limeonaire at 3:04 PM on September 1, 2014

New York Times commentary: When Whites Just Don’t Get It
posted by limeonaire at 6:53 PM on September 1, 2014

This is an awesome roundup of resources: How to Teach Kids About What's Happening in Ferguson
posted by limeonaire at 9:08 PM on September 1, 2014 [2 favorites]

One of the people raising funds for Darren Wilson, Missouri State Rep. Jeff Roorda (D), who was fired for falsifying police reports, once against his own police chief, introduced a bill in January to exclude the names of police officers involved in shootings from public records unless the officer is charged with a crime. After being fired, he became the police chief of another city in the area, and he is also on the Missouri Board of Public Safety.

Jeff Roorda is currently running for re-election against Dan E. Smith (R). I wonder how Mr. Smith feels about Ferguson.
posted by rhizome at 11:27 PM on September 1, 2014 [4 favorites]

Mike Konczal: The Ferguson Challenge to the Libertarians

It will be a great thing if the horror of what is going on builds a broader coalition for putting the excess of the carceral state in check. But I also think that Ferguson presents a problem for libertarian theory about this situation in particular and the state in general. Their argument is a public choice-like story in which the federal government is the main villain. But this will only tell a partial story, and probably not even the most important one. And, as the deeper story of the town is told, the disturbing economics of the city look similar to what the right thinks is the ideal state. Let's take these in turn.

Bottom-Up Militarization

People on the right are telling a story where the problems of the police are primarily driven by the federal government. As Rand Paul said: "Not surprisingly, big government has been at the heart of the problem." Big government here is strictly a federal phenomenon though, one where "Washington has incentivized the militarization of local police precincts." Paul Ryan's comment on Ferguson is telling: "But in all of these things, local control, local government, local authorities who have the jurisdiction, who have the expertise, who are actually there are the people who should be in the lead." (h/t Digby) The culprits in these criticisms are usually programs, accelerated after the start of the War on Terror, that give military surplus to local police.

But rather than just a top-down phenomenon of centralized, federal bureaucrats, the police violence we see is just as much a bottom-up, locally-driven affair. "Militarized" police equipment didn't shoot Michael Brown, or kill Eric Garner in a chokehold. And aggressive police reactions to protests haven't required extensive military equipment over the past 40 years.

...

The Right-Wing Dream City

If you are a libertarian, you probably have two core principles when it comes to how the government carries out its duties. The first is that people should pay taxes in direct proportion to how much they benefit from government services...

You also probably want as much of what the government does to be privatized as possible...

So what do we see in Ferguson? It's becoming clear that there's a deep connection between an out-of-control criminal justice system and debt peonage. As Vox reports, "court fees and fines are the second largest source of funds for the city; $2.6 million was collected in 2013 alone."

...

This is yet another way in which the growth of market society is wedded to the growth of a carceral state. But thinking through this issue can lead you to interesting places. If you think that this offender-funded system is unfair because the poor don't have the ability to pay for it, you are basically 90% of the way to an argument for progressive taxation. And if you think private parties using coercive power invites abuse, abuses that should be checked by basic mechanisms of democratic accountability, you are also pretty close to an argument for the modern, professionalized, administrative state. Welcome to the team.

posted by tonycpsu at 9:34 AM on September 2, 2014 [17 favorites]

The Huffington Post: What I Heard in Ferguson
posted by limeonaire at 4:39 PM on September 2, 2014 [1 favorite]

The International Association of Chiefs of Police, by the way, publishes “Officer-Involved Shooting guidelines”... The guidelines aren’t about how not to shoot someone, but more about what to do once you have shot someone. The entire document is sort of incredible in its careful consideration of the emotional and mental state of the officer, and its complete silence on the status of the person the officer actually shot.

Alex Pareene: Stop Saying "Officer-Involved Shootings"
posted by GrammarMoses at 7:32 PM on September 2, 2014 [2 favorites]

Justice in Ferguson? Looks like a Longshot... (Tweets by @ShaunKing)
posted by lz at 7:56 AM on September 3, 2014 [3 favorites]

Brittney Cooper: "I am not afraid to die": Why America will never be the same post-Ferguson:

Mike Brown’s death has brought new meaning to local black struggle. His death has come to mean something more, something greater than his life might have been taken to mean, as a poor young black man from a working-class suburb. His death, and officer Darren Wilson’s callous disregard for his life, has made the precariousness of black life visible for a whole new generation of black youth. The precariousness has been made visible and it has been deemed unacceptable – by both the old and the young.

posted by scody at 8:31 AM on September 3, 2014 [2 favorites]

“How St. Louis County, Missouri profits from poverty,” Radley Balko, The Washington Post, 03 September 2014

“How The Ferguson Protests Landed Taurean Russell In Three Different Jails,” Matt Sledge, The Huffington Post, 03 September 2014
posted by ob1quixote at 12:41 PM on September 3, 2014 [4 favorites]

How St. Louis County Missouri Profits From Poverty ...incredible work by Radley Balko.
posted by rhizome at 1:14 PM on September 3, 2014 [4 favorites]

That WaPo link is on the Front Page now, rhizome. (Also… in my comment directly above. :smirk:) As this thread is getting kind of long, I think I'm going to migrate to the new one.

I do want to take this opportunity to commend limeonaire for her outstanding contributions to this thread. My sincere thanks, limeonaire.
posted by ob1quixote at 1:39 PM on September 3, 2014 [6 favorites]

Huh, weird. I could have swore I accounted for previous comments.
posted by rhizome at 1:48 PM on September 3, 2014

desjardins: I was reflecting on the "no angel" theme that has been circulating, and I was thinking of my (almost all white) high school friends. Every single one of them did drugs (mostly pot, also LSD and coke). Every. Single. One. A few dealt pot and coke. Some drove under the influence, or otherwise drove recklessly. Some shoplifted or otherwise stole (e.g. from their parents). Some got in fist fights, one guy ended up in the hospital. I was in the car when someone backed into a fence, enough to damage it and the car, and drove off.

No one was ever arrested, for anything. A couple speeding tickets, but that's it. No one was an angel.

I commented on this in the last thread, but your post really wanted to make me restate it and expand.

The convenience store "strongarm robbery" shown in that video clip is exactly the kind of thing me and my friends not only would have, but did get involved in when we were his age plus or minus a year or two. Go in, try and buy beer, guy tries to id you, you say fuck you and leave your money on the counter and walk out while he tries to stop you(or not).

The friend i most remember doing that is dead.

...From suicide, though.

The police hassled us here and there, but we were brazen assholes just like you described. "Pour out that beer right now" "Ok officer" *pours beer into face and chugs*. We smoked weed right in front of the cops. We drank in public, and just walked away when they showed up ignoring anything they said.

I can't even count the number of memories i have where i would have been arrested, beaten, or possibly even killed if i was black. I've seen how the cops treat brown people in my town. For fucks sake, my mom knew John t Williams.

And i only had one black friend in high school really, but he never did any of that shit. And at the time, i only nebulously understood why. My other friend, who was native american like i am, is a lot more brown than me. He was only a degree more of an asshole publicly and in front of the cops, but he ended with a GPS ankle bracelet and tons of court time and hassle for shoplifting or something.

Us white or white enough looking kids? none of us ever saw the inside of a cop car unless we were getting a courtesy ride home or had called the cops, except for one guy... and he only did because his crazy alcoholic dad called the cops on him for essentially defending himself.

At the time, we just thought that we were really lucky, or really sly, or something and "just knew exactly how far to push it" or whatever. And i mean, we were lucky.

Lucky to look white.
posted by emptythought at 2:52 PM on September 3, 2014 [9 favorites]

I do want to take this opportunity to commend limeonaire for her outstanding contributions to this thread. My sincere thanks, limeonaire.

Aww, thanks, ob1quixote. I really didn't want to make it the limeonaire show around here, but I've had a lot to say about my hometown. I realized about a week and a half ago that between here, Facebook, and Twitter, I'd written like 17,500 words on Ferguson. That's what I do: I'm a magazine editor, so I write through whatever it is that's going on. I spent the Saturday before last distilling all of that into a 3,700-word essay about a lot of things I've mentioned in these threads, plus some experiences I haven't. Then I ran it past colleagues where I work, plus friends of color, to polish it further.

Unfortunately, while the essay is ready to go and I work for a journalism outlet, there isn't really a place for it in my publication's coverage—we work mostly in print, two months out. So I've been gone from the thread a lot the last day or so because in addition to doing my regular work (where we ship a magazine to the printer this week), I've been trying to get in the door at any media outlet that might want to publish that essay. I've sent out eight pitches so far and gotten one rejection and one pass-along to a different department. I'm going to try to send out some more tonight, but if anyone's still looking at this thread and has a good contact to pass along or wants me to send it over, definitely let me know! (I'll add you to the list, after Edward Crawford, of people I really need to buy a drink.)
posted by limeonaire at 5:07 PM on September 3, 2014 [25 favorites]

limeonaire, check your MeMail.
posted by scody at 5:23 PM on September 3, 2014 [6 favorites]

Let us know, limeonaire. I'd love to read it.
posted by nangar at 5:38 PM on September 3, 2014 [4 favorites]

This is a pretty amazing article - AMERICA WITHOUT THE MAKEUP: Artez Hurston’s Ferguson

Harvey and his colleagues quickly found that, without that representation, the municipal court system had spun out of control. “Our clients started telling us all these crazy things that would happen in these courts, and we didn’t believe them because they were so insane,” he recalls. Among the most egregious—and common—violations the Defenders observed: People being hauled before a judge on a minor violation, ordered to pay a fine on the spot without any inquiry into their economic means, and being thrown in jail when they were unable to do so. Canvassing the long lines standing outside St. Louis County municipal courts over the years, the Defenders’ legal team would ask people why they were there. Time and again, Harvey says, they were met with some variation of the same answer: “I’m here because I’m poor and I’m black and it’s about the money.”

According to a white paper report examining 60 of St. Louis County’s 86 municipal courts that the Defenders released last month, the system saddles those who can’t afford lawyers with fines they can’t pay, which frequently result in warrants issued for arrests, which often lead to jail time, which in turn can result in job loss and debt. The process, which hits African-American communities the hardest, tends to repeat itself.

posted by flug at 8:49 PM on September 4, 2014 [9 favorites]

CDC data shows a disparity in how often police send people to the emergency room and an uptick for all races.

It is important to note that approximately 17 percent of the injury data collected by the CDC has no race or ethnicity assigned to the victims. However, even in the case that all unassigned victims of legal intervention injuries were white, the rate of nonfatal injuries to black people by law enforcement would still be over three times higher than that of white people.

posted by phearlez at 8:43 AM on September 5, 2014 [5 favorites]

I also had another random comment on the "driving while minority" thing.

I went to burning man this year, and we took a really weird route that was almost entirely through rural towns. We had checked out various routes we could take and it seemed to be the fastest, with the least passes/elevation changes to deal with.

We're a bunch of, as my dad would say, yay-hoos in an old decommissioned city bus. It's still painted the city colors, still has the route display readout signs... and has holes cut in the sides all over it with beams welded on for a roof deck. And tags all over the outside. And tons of shit tied onto the roof, and bits of rope holding some of the windows shut. It looks SKETCH.

So we're in a safeway parking lot, in fucksville oregon. Everyone except for me, the driver whose turn it is, is shitfaced and buying junk food. We all get back to the bus, and everyones throwing shit at eachother and making monkey noises and generally being a doofus. Then, with half the people outside smoking and yelling and half the people inside drinking and yelling and eating... the cops roll up.

For half a second we're like "oh shit!".

Then we realize they're pulling over a car, that as far as i could tell from happening to be blankly staring out the windshield facing the driveway into the parking lot as it happened, was for maybe rolling the stop sign into the parking lot?

"It's cool guys, they're not here for us"

me: "Yea, it's some shit small town, i bet they're pulling over a brown person for being brown"

Window rolls down. Latino dude with his family. Felt bad for snarking.

Then two other cop cars show up. Seriously? All white cops, of course.

They never arrested the guy, or even made him get out of the car. They just hassled him the entire time we were there. Meanwhile, we pulled out of the parking lot the wrong way, pulled back into it to turn around, almost sideswiped a black truck in the poorly lit parking lot, and derped our way out of there.

They never even looked at us for more than two seconds. Loud, mostly drunken out of state assholes in a weird looking bus. I was totally shocked that one of the redundant cops, or one of the other cops i saw nearby just cruising down the road slowly nearby as if in wait didn't even just follow us for a minute. It was like we were completely invisible.

I guess we were just too white or something?

It was definitely one of those eye opening "damn, we get away with a lot" sort of moments at least for, especially in the context of just hours earlier having been reading up on this and related posts, and DWB shit.
posted by emptythought at 12:25 PM on September 5, 2014 [5 favorites]

Ferguson Police Chief Lied About Why He Released Alleged Michael Brown Robbery Tape: Report

So that answers that.
posted by limeonaire at 8:07 PM on September 5, 2014 [5 favorites]

Photos: Inside Urban Shield, the Convention for Warrior Cops
posted by homunculus at 8:20 PM on September 5, 2014 [3 favorites]

Workers who were witnesses provide new perspective on Michael Brown shooting

Not such a new perspective, though. Two construction workers, "outsiders" (read: white), confirming that Brown had run from the police car after a gunshot, been shot a second time, turned around, put his hands up, then got shot repeatedly by Wilson. In other words, their account is consistent with what neighborhood witnesses have said.
posted by metaquarry at 10:49 AM on September 6, 2014 [7 favorites]

Three Cops Tackle a 100 lb High School Girl for Using Cell Phone. Students React with Protest
posted by jeffburdges at 11:47 AM on September 6, 2014 [1 favorite]

The Mystery of St. Louis's Veiled Prophet—the racist, anti-union origins of the Veiled Prophet organization aren't such a new revelation, as there was a book out a few years ago about that, but it's good that light is also being shed on this.
posted by limeonaire at 12:01 PM on September 6, 2014 [2 favorites]

Teen girl, multiple hit-and-runs, high-speed chase, kicks cop in the head. Not shot.
posted by rhizome at 12:09 PM on September 6, 2014 [4 favorites]

The Miraculous Works Of The Criminal Justice System
posted by homunculus at 1:00 PM on September 6, 2014 [5 favorites]

Brilliant.
posted by Golden Eternity at 3:27 PM on September 6, 2014

I disagree with the left's dismissal of libertarian concerns about militarization, such as Rand Paul comments. Yes, MRAPs themselves do not necessarily make police more violent, and libertarians are dumb for their focus on comedic high ticket price items, but the underlying issue with militarization is psychology.

Cops are being trained to be an occupying force complete with tactics more confrontational than our real soldiers use. All this military training dates back to the war on drugs, but the war on terror made it soo much worse.

It's not that local authorities would fix the problems, but that local authorities with no federal financing, and extremely limited tax bases, might not train useless SWAT teams, especially if drugs were legalized.

We should roll back all funding for law enforcement back to 1970s levels. And any training programs the federal government incentivizes should focus on non-violence. Really, there is no reason for a cop to even know how to handle an automatic weapon.

Also : Why is the Pentagon Giving Grenade Launchers to Police?
posted by jeffburdges at 4:08 PM on September 6, 2014 [2 favorites]

Senator pushes for action on police 'militarization'

Now, that's cool, but why'd ya have to put "militarization" in quotes in the title, USA Today?
posted by limeonaire at 7:27 PM on September 6, 2014 [2 favorites]

Now, that's cool, but why'd ya have to put "militarization" in quotes in the title, USA Today?

Becuase it's USA Today, duh.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 7:47 AM on September 7, 2014 [1 favorite]

Wow, this is something.

@GovJayNixon to help fundraise for Dem state rep [Roorda] who’s helping support Darren Wilson

Link to fundraiser tickets here: https://act.myngp.com/Forms/-1590052143438495744

This pretty much nails down what Shaun King was talking about here.
posted by limeonaire at 12:13 PM on September 7, 2014 [11 favorites]

I guess Gov Nixon decided his political career would benefit by befriending the racists of his state.

Regrettably that's probably true. But I do wonder how his reelection chances look with the (at best) apathy and (more likely) outright opposition of virtually the entire black voting body.
posted by sotonohito at 5:55 PM on September 7, 2014

A few recent and relevant articles:

A White Flight Tour Up West Florissant Ave. to #Ferguson and North St. Louis County
The Suburbanization of Poverty
What We Lost in the Great Suburban Migration, 1966-1999 - review of the chapter on the St Louis region from the book by Ray Suarez
Mapping Decline in the St Louis region

posted by flug at 11:02 AM on September 8, 2014 [4 favorites]

Ferguson quiet, Patricia Bynes prepares for the challenge ahead, Steve Giegerich, St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
posted by nangar at 12:19 PM on September 8, 2014 [1 favorite]

PR FAIL: St Louis Police Try to Boost Community Relations by Fingerprinting Ferguson Children
posted by jeffburdges at 3:13 PM on September 8, 2014 [2 favorites]

Yessss flug. I just came here to post Toby Weiss' "A White Flight Tour". Because this:

Over half of my posts about NoCo brings up St. Louis’ history of White Flight, gently touching on our racism because it’s unavoidable. But it needs to stop being treated as a poorly hidden secret. I no longer wish to be politely genteel about how our racism is determined to destroy North St. Louis County the same way it did North St. Louis City.

Amen. She's on the same wavelength as I am. This is what I posted this morning on Twitter, before I even saw her piece:

Everyone treats white flight as if it's some unstoppable societal force, as if it's not something we should question and call out.

That's the problem here. Everyone gets dismissive when you bring it up, like "Yeah, yeah, I know, white flight is a problem." But no one wants to get down and gritty about it, and no one wants to call out those who flew away from North County. Figuring out how to combat it and what to do when it occurs are essential parts of what we need to do to move forward—as is achieving environmental justice and bringing jobs and attractions to North County so people don't have convenient excuses to move away.
posted by limeonaire at 5:42 PM on September 8, 2014 [1 favorite]

My parents wouldn't let me get fingerprinted as a kid because they thought it was part of the police state.
posted by klangklangston at 5:50 PM on September 8, 2014 [8 favorites]

I'd argue against fingerprinting kids now too, given our current police state. And against using fingerprint based unlock features for phones. I'm fine if a non-government organization wishes to fingerprint kids and send the parents home with the only copy though, which accomplishes everything that fingerprinting kids does anyways.
posted by jeffburdges at 7:26 PM on September 8, 2014

It's OK, I got printed when I was arrested as a teen, so they've still got them I assume.
posted by klangklangston at 7:33 PM on September 8, 2014 [2 favorites]

'When I close my eyes at night, I see people running from tear gas'
posted by limeonaire at 8:26 AM on September 9, 2014 [2 favorites]

Theoretically the cops hand over the print card to the parents at these community events, or so I am told. The last time we were somewhere they were doing them my wife asked if we should get the boy printed. I declined. Both because I am not interested in normalizing that sort of interaction with cops for him and because I just don't see the point.

The standard rationale seems to be "what if he gets kidnapped?" Well, what if he is one of those 400 kids out of the entire nation who are nabbed by strangers? What do prints accomplish for us? I'm way more interested in getting pictures out there - and as a modern child our boy is not remotely lacking for pictures. There are some fairly morbid outsomes/reasons we might want prints, but that would be awful enough regardless and I don't see why I should pre-buy some misery and dirty fingers for that remote outcome.
posted by phearlez at 8:33 AM on September 9, 2014

But no one wants to get down and gritty about it, and no one wants to call out those who flew away from North County.

What would this look like in practice? I'm not sure I understand the concept.
posted by OmieWise at 10:04 AM on September 9, 2014

I don't even know if calling people out is the answer, or what form it would take for sure. I've been trying to sort of work through this in the last day or so since I started thinking about this notion. I guess to me, part of the problem is just acknowledging that there's still a problem. I think a lot of people (and media outlets) have the idea that white flight is a thing that happened in the past, or that only bigoted members of an older generation moved because of these reasons—but younger people are still doing it. I know multiple acquaintances from high school who are still making these choices to move to St. Charles, St. Peters, and Wentzville. This is when it's happening, when a lot of people reach the end of their twenties and start having kids and buying houses—or when our parents get older and they can't stay in their houses any longer, and they move out west to be closer to their kids and grandkids.

There's definitely more to this stage of white flight than just racism—there also is higher crime in North County than in any other part of St. Louis County. Property values are falling for more than one reason—and of course, property values affect school funding, at a time when more students are already moving into that area to get away from districts deemed to be failing. The population is aging. People moved or disinvested in the area to begin with, which started a cycle where companies have moved out of the area, the mall has closed, transit runs less often there... So young people who want access to good food, good schools, good transportation, etc. all start to move away. Then you have the environmental issues, the full extent of which (e.g., whether there's a cancer cluster in North County) no one has even been able to ascertain, in part because of white flight taking residents out of the area...

None of that's really news, but it just seems like a lot of people are waving their hands and saying, "Yeah, yeah, I know about white flight, but what else? And I kind of feel like that is the "what else." We have to address the reasons people are leaving, and to do that, we have to first talk about and acknowledge the fact that people are leaving. Some people get really defensive when you bring that up—so how best to address it? I'm still not sure. But as Weiss says, not talking about it doesn't seem to be the answer anymore.
posted by limeonaire at 11:36 AM on September 9, 2014

How many police shootings a year? No one knows
posted by homunculus at 11:53 AM on September 9, 2014 [3 favorites]

Puzzled Nation Can Remember Name Ferguson, But Not Sure From Where
posted by Cookiebastard at 12:59 PM on September 9, 2014 [1 favorite]

But no one wants to get down and gritty about it, and no one wants to call out those who flew away from North County. Figuring out how to combat it and what to do when it occurs are essential parts of what we need to do to move forward—

How, outside of keeping people bound to certain areas of the land, is it possible to stop white flight while still allowing mobility? And why would you want to? If people don't want to be there, why force them?
posted by corb at 1:32 PM on September 9, 2014

Part of what makes white flight so appealing is that people can continue to use the urban cores as their job centers and playgrounds while not paying in their share of what it costs to sustain the services they use in those urban cores, as well as the roads, bridges, tunnels etc. that they use to get to those urban cores. Raising occupational taxes, gas taxes, etc. is rarely an option, because the very people who are leaving are often hostile to increased taxes, and, in fact, are often fleeing to counties that have favorable tax schemes that allow them to live in an area of low taxation and work and play in an area of high taxation that simply manages not to affect them much.

So a whole lot of people are acting in their rational self interest, but contributing to a sustained downward spiral that hurts not only the urban cores, but the suburban areas as well. This is the textbook case of the tragedy of the commons, and is exactly what government (in this case, basic urban and state-level centralized planning) exists to mitigate. You're well known for your distaste for this, but don't pretend this exact case hasn't been made, in many cases directly to you, and in one case I can remember, directly to you by me.
posted by tonycpsu at 1:41 PM on September 9, 2014 [7 favorites]

You eliminate suburban tax enclaves. Either mega municipalities, or abolish all meaningful levels of government below the state level.
posted by PMdixon at 1:51 PM on September 9, 2014

How, outside of keeping people bound to certain areas of the land, is it possible to stop white flight while still allowing mobility? And why would you want to? If people don't want to be there, why force them?

Well, right. You can't make people be somewhere they simply don't want to be. That's not the solution. The only thing you can do is talk about the problem and take steps to make areas better and more appealing to the people who live there. You can make it so there are jobs that appeal to people who might otherwise move away. You can improve services in those areas so that people can do the things they want to do there, and have the quality of life they want there. You can make sure that any residual contamination is remediated, to take that concern off the table entirely. But before you can do those things, people in positions of power have to decide they're important—and to get to that point, they have to take the problem of white flight seriously, rather than dismiss it as an outdated concern. You see what I'm saying?
posted by limeonaire at 1:53 PM on September 9, 2014 [1 favorite]

but social safety net programs

A vast majority of which are paid for by federal dollars, which means that increased state/local taxes have very little to do with the equation here.

And if you attempt to simply tax them more, then they are more than welcome to vote with their feet to an urban center that won't.

Your positive statement here -- that people can move as they please -- is much more different than your normative question of "why force them?", which was itself a straw man, because nobody's talking about forcing anyone to do anything. All I'm doing is explaining why I support government policies that would reduce sprawl.
posted by tonycpsu at 1:57 PM on September 9, 2014

Oh, okay, yeah, I see what you're saying limeonaire - not that people who engage in white flight need to be punished and dragged back to failing cities by the scruff of their neck, but that policy makers need to be aware that it's happening and try to lure them back. That makes more sense.
posted by corb at 1:58 PM on September 9, 2014 [1 favorite]

actually, what could be done is to make federal matching funds and grants dependent on urban consolidation

of course, that's politically unlikely
posted by pyramid termite at 1:58 PM on September 9, 2014 [1 favorite]

Roads, bridges, tunnels, etc, sure - but social safety net programs, which expand as the city collapses, do not benefit those living in the suburbs.

Sure they do. In most places there is well-understood and well-documented evidence that people "vote with their feet" to get the best social services they can, either by moving, by just walking over some invisible line, by lying about where they live, by targeting wealthier suburbs for crime, or in other manners that all kinds of jurisdictions need to find ways to address.
posted by OmieWise at 1:58 PM on September 9, 2014

The problem is that most of the people who are working in the urban cores do not utilize most of the services of those urban cores. Roads, bridges, tunnels, etc, sure - but social safety net programs, which expand as the city collapses, do not benefit those living in the suburbs.

I mean, I would be surprised if the cost of supporting the road and physical infrastructure of most cities is higher than the cost of supporting the social net, though I think a direct comparison would be pretty hard to draw given different funding sources, state vs. local vs. federal funds, that kind of thing. But also, more generally, a stronger safety net and better educational systems directly benefit local businesses by supporting a better educated and healthier workforce, among other things. A safer city is probably a better business environment. Better transit options allow for less congestion, less pollution, maybe fewer accidents; they're appealing to people along a wide spectrum of the socio-economic scale for many reasons.
posted by jetlagaddict at 1:59 PM on September 9, 2014

I will say, I can't believe it's been a month since Mike Brown died.

.
posted by limeonaire at 2:29 PM on September 9, 2014 [6 favorites]

Hey whatever happened to that guy who shot and killed him? Daryl? Daniel? Something like that?
posted by The Whelk at 2:36 PM on September 9, 2014 [3 favorites]

I caught a quick headline on the TV yesterday that there were (two?) new eyewitnesses accounts but then I never heard anything else about it, nor heard what those accounts reported. So maybe I imagined it.
posted by Justinian at 3:06 PM on September 9, 2014

You weren't imagining it. Here's a link. (I think it's been mentioned upthread already, but it's a long thread.) Two construction workers who were working in the area at the time have mostly confirmed previous accounts.
posted by nangar at 3:39 PM on September 9, 2014

Mike Brown had also stopped by and chatted with them earlier. I'd forgotten that part.
posted by nangar at 4:02 PM on September 9, 2014

Yep, there are now 6 witnesses with identical descriptions. IANAL, but it's seeming like Darren Wilson is in much more trouble than Johanes Mehserle was.
posted by rhizome at 4:59 PM on September 9, 2014

This grand jury thing is such a cowardly move on the DA's part. A total dodge of responsibility. If he doesn't want to indict he should have the guts to say so. If he wants to indict he should have the guts to say that.

The whole Pontius Pilate thing didn't play all that well the first time around. (Note: Darren Wilson is no Jesus).
posted by Justinian at 5:29 PM on September 9, 2014

Ferguson Protesters Deal With Fallout After Arrests

Also, the #Ferguson hashtag is great right now—there's a city council meeting going on there, and the speakers are pretty excellent.
posted by limeonaire at 6:53 PM on September 9, 2014 [1 favorite]

"Hey white people!"

This is excellent, too.
posted by limeonaire at 7:07 PM on September 9, 2014

Petitions for Michael Brown's juvenile records denied
posted by limeonaire at 7:44 PM on September 9, 2014 [1 favorite]

Has anyone in authority even said they know where Wilson *is* at this point? Or has he taken his fundraised money and gone to someplace with a non-extradition treaty with the US so he can somehow manage to get on the Wingnut Welfare train remotely?
posted by rmd1023 at 8:34 PM on September 9, 2014 [3 favorites]

St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Ferguson residents vent anger at City Council meeting
posted by flapjax at midnite at 9:13 PM on September 9, 2014 [4 favorites]

They held that in a CHURCH? As a pre-emptive strike against people doing what...swearing? Fuck that noise. And the council didn't even answer questions? Double fuck that noise.
posted by Purposeful Grimace at 9:42 PM on September 9, 2014 [2 favorites]

Meanwhile, some of the latest police misdeeds in the Bronx...
posted by flapjax at midnite at 3:38 AM on September 10, 2014

"They held that in a CHURCH? As a pre-emptive strike against people doing what...swearing? Fuck that noise. And the council didn't even answer questions? Double fuck that noise."

The church was probably the largest venue with seating and voice amplification they could get. (My board has used high school gyms for unusually large meetings, it is fucking miserable, nobody can hear a thing.) Hopefully it was also convenient to public transit, had adequate parking, and was ADA accessible. Moving a city-council-type meeting for a large crowd is something of a logistical nightmare. Letting the church guy talk before the meeting was a mistake, though.

In general during business meetings of this type, there's no structure in the meeting for taking questions. They're all about funding and ordinances and discussion BY THE COUNCIL MEMBERS is typically limited to the specific items on the agenda, which can only be certain types of items. (You an actually get open meeting act violations if you end up discussing things that weren't on the agenda, in certain ways.)

But again, this shouldn't have been a surprise, and they should have held listening sessions before or after the meeting to give people a place to express all of this and use their empathy faces. (And being escorted out by cops is pretty laughable.)
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 5:31 AM on September 10, 2014 [1 favorite]

Huh, people on Twitter are saying ESPN's E:60: Four Weeks in Ferguson reported that Darren Wilson had allegedly harassed a local high-school football player in the weeks before he shot Mike Brown. The segment aired last night, but I can't find a final version of it online yet, just the trailer.
posted by limeonaire at 7:46 AM on September 10, 2014 [3 favorites]

Exclusive: Ferguson City Attorney Offers Misleading Account of Media Requests

This is pretty bizarre. Apparently Ferguson city officials began to treat many verbal requests for information as open records requests, hanging up routine queries from reporters. And yet they didn't track these requests in any way, it appears. While they surely had a lot of requests to get through from the media, it sounds like things are just completely backwards in that city hall. Maybe that's why they barred people from entering the other day...
posted by limeonaire at 7:59 AM on September 10, 2014 [1 favorite]

I think that in part we're simply seeing the rampant violations of open meetings standards that are apparently universal to small town governments. I used to live in Amarillo TX, a place with around ~200,000 people, and I attended a few city council meetings there just to see.

In the first place, it was difficult, the council held its meetings at 3pm on Tuesday. I suppose just to make it difficult for working people to attend. There was never any debate, there were never any questions, every bill was passed or rejected on first reading by a unanimous vote.

They might as well have had a giant sign that said "this meeting is a bit of performance art meant to simulate a government meeting, we had the REAL meeting earlier at the country club, fuck you if you think we'll let you plebes see how things are really decided".

I can't imagine that in its normal operation the Ferguson city government is any different. The city council there quite obviously has been meeting, in secret, and deciding on what scraps they can throw to the plebes that will get them to settle down for a minimal cost.

I suppose proving a violation of the various open meetings and transparency laws would be not merely incredibly difficult, but also directly hampered by local law enforcement, prosecutors, judges, etc. Which is why in small towns the open meetings laws are a joke.

The Ferguson city council seems to have made the mistake of believing that with the national spotlight still on their city they can get away with a business as usual, meet in secret and then have a fake "meeting" to tell the plebes what they decided in secret, style of doing things. They forgot how blatantly obvious their violations of the transparency laws really are.

I hope they get hung out to dry over this. And I also hope that the population in Ferguson turns out to vote in much greater numbers next election, they've got damn good reason now.

On a related note, mandating that local elections happen in time with national or at least state elections seems like a good way to help prevent the local governments from keeping voter turnout low by scheduling local elections for obscure days (and always a work day, to keep working people from voting).
posted by sotonohito at 9:39 AM on September 10, 2014 [4 favorites]

Analysis: Ferguson Protests Are About Justice But Also About Health And Economic Disparities
posted by limeonaire at 9:44 AM on September 10, 2014

DHS’s mythology about the Boston Marathon bombing

In congressional hearing on police militarization, DHS officials falsely claim police used federally-funded spy gear to locate one of the suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing when, in reality, a private citizen found him in his backyard.
posted by jeffburdges at 10:45 AM on September 10, 2014 [8 favorites]

I don't think this has been linked to yet: The threat of 'big small government':

In the words of former Republican Vice-Presidential nominee Paul Ryan: "Government closest to the people governs best."

The American Conservative's Scott Galupo traces the idea back to Thomas Jefferson, who held that "the concentration of power begets tyranny" and advocated the "dispersal of power throughout multiple levels of government".

But has the police shooting of an unarmed black teenager and the subsequent violent protests in Ferguson, Missouri, exposed this belief as fundamentally flawed? What if local government, closest to the people, can be the most oppressive?

posted by Lexica at 10:56 AM on September 10, 2014 [4 favorites]

Wow, that Boston Marathon bombing piece is amazing, jeffburdges.
posted by limeonaire at 11:06 AM on September 10, 2014

Not only did this DHS official get his facts about the Tsarnaev manhunt embarrassingly wrong, his testimony indicates that many people within the agency hold the same false beliefs.

Yeah, I suppose that's one way to interpret it. I wish reporters and everyone would stop misusing "myth" and "mythology" this way. Myths exist to instruct and explain the abstract though stories and metaphor. What is being discussed here is lying and being wrong. If you need a loftier sounding word try "fabrication."
posted by phearlez at 11:16 AM on September 10, 2014 [11 favorites]

So Basically Everyone Killed By a Cop Is A Criminal, According to the FBI
posted by limeonaire at 11:42 AM on September 10, 2014 [8 favorites]

This is the T-Shirt Company Making Money Off of Ferguson

I posted this upthread, but here are three actually beneficial T-shirt choices.
posted by limeonaire at 12:03 PM on September 10, 2014

13 More 'Michael Brown' Police Killings We've Learned About In The Month Since His Death
posted by limeonaire at 12:32 PM on September 10, 2014 [4 favorites]

‘I've Never Seen Anything Like What I Saw In Ferguson’: VICE News Speaks with a Member of the Amnesty Int'l Delegation to Missouri
posted by limeonaire at 2:58 PM on September 10, 2014 [4 favorites]

Police arrest Ferguson protesters blocking major highway

This is a good article except for the headline—the protesters never managed to block Interstate 70 today, from what I'm seeing, because police basically kettled them into the middle of Hanley Road where it meets the interstate. As many people pointed out earlier, the only people blocking (access to) the interstate were the police themselves, who shut down the eastbound on- and off-ramps there!

Apparently there was also another brief slowdown on Interstate 40 near Forest Park, too, by people in cars—I'm kind of thinking that's how the Interstate 70 shutdown should have been orchestrated, rather than trying to reach the highway on foot, though of course it's easy to armchair quarterback this kind of thing. The images are stunning enough without the highway itself having been shut down.
posted by limeonaire at 5:28 PM on September 10, 2014 [1 favorite]

You’re Nine Times More Likely to be Killed by a Police Officer than a Terrorist
posted by jeffburdges at 8:01 AM on September 11, 2014 [4 favorites]

"I’ve seen all sorts of police brutality videos and encountered my share of costumed folks with entitlement issues. What we experienced just 3 and a half hours from home was nothing short of what I can’t help but consider ‘the next phase’…"
posted by jeffburdges at 8:10 AM on September 11, 2014

You’re Nine Times More Likely to be Killed by a Police Officer than a Terrorist

I'm not. I'm pretty unlikely to even have a negative interaction with a police officer, being a middle class white person. Given how extremely unlikely it is for a huge swath of the population to be killed by cops, and yet that number is still that high, imagine how bad it must be for blacks and hispanics.
posted by empath at 8:49 AM on September 11, 2014 [1 favorite]

I'm not. I'm pretty unlikely to even have a negative interaction with a police officer, being a middle class white person.

I really don't mean this in a snarky way, but I don't understand how people continually calling out things like this is practicing empathy. Is it? Can concern about police brutality/overreach be a shared concern?
posted by sweetkid at 9:01 AM on September 11, 2014 [2 favorites]

On the scene video of construction worker witnesses reacting to Michael Brown shooting
posted by maggieb at 9:17 AM on September 11, 2014 [1 favorite]

“Contingency Plans,” Matthew Cunningham-Cook, Jacobin, 11 September 2014

In a never-before-released thesis, Reagan’s FEMA administrator advocates the potential internment of millions of blacks in concentration camps.

posted by ob1quixote at 9:33 AM on September 11, 2014 [1 favorite]

I'm not literally nine times more likely to be killed by a police officer either, that's just an average across the whole population, obviously cops kill African Americans waaay more often. There are about 5x as many Caucasian Americans as African Americans but cops kill approximately 2x as many Caucasian as African Americans. It therefore appears that an average Caucasian is still *more* likely to be killed by a cop than a terrorist. You're obviously even less likely than average to be killed by a cop, but you've almost zero chance of being killed by a terrorist too, given you wont' enlist in the military.

In fact, car accidents kill only about 2000x more people, but most Americans spend way more than 2000x as much time driving than interacting with cops. Ain't so easy to make a comparison but it's plausible than an average white dude is greater danger from the presence of cops than from being behind the wheel of a car.
posted by jeffburdges at 9:39 AM on September 11, 2014 [2 favorites]

In a never-before-released thesis, Reagan’s FEMA administrator advocates the potential internment of millions of blacks in concentration camps.

Wow is that a gross mischaracterization of what's in that essay. What he actually advocates is programs to reduce racial discrimination and inequality to prevent a mass uprising by blacks (something that was very much possible to consider in the late 60s), and for context, he talks about what a tragedy the American treatment of indians and japanese were. He discusses mass internment of blacks only as an exercise in figuring out the societal and economic costs such an enterprise would entail.
posted by empath at 10:04 AM on September 11, 2014 [1 favorite]

It's actually quite an interesting read -- it's linked from the article. I kind of like reading army war college articles where they spitball how various implausible scenarios might play out.
posted by empath at 10:06 AM on September 11, 2014 [1 favorite]

almost zero chance of being killed by a terrorist too, given you wont' enlist in the military.

The "more likely to be killed by" calculus also kind of depends on who you class as a 'terrorist'. Which kind of seems a derail, but I think the questions about who we consider 'terrorist' is pretty dependent on racist interpretations of people and actions. And certainly our law enforcement policies with regard to potential terrorist threats are heavily racist.
posted by rmd1023 at 10:22 AM on September 11, 2014 [2 favorites]

I'm pretty unlikely to even have a negative interaction with a police officer, being a middle class white person.

I'm not going to put up an argument against relative privilege -- I think it's likely enough that if I *weren't* a white guy I'd have already been beaten and or killed by the police -- but I've somehow had a number of negative interactions with police officers anyway. The most extreme example might be an encounter that ensued when, during a commute, I ended up tailgating an unmarked police car, and when the officer inside pulled me over, he chose to verbally assault me and threaten my life rather than citing me (one could reasonably assume that absent certain privileges there would have been less talk and more action).

But that was probably the exception to the rule for a long time, until I fell down this weird rabbit hole coming to California in 2007 and suddenly it seemed I was a police magnet. At first I thought it might have been the out of state plates, but no, when I switched to CA plates I was still getting stop upon stop."Well, we saw you parked in the hotel parking lot, but you walked over to the restaurant next door, and if we see something weird like that, we're going to check it out." "Oh, we thought we smelled marijuana as your car drove by" (note: the officers in question were probably a football field away and I've never smoked anything). Always with extended interrogation -- "Do you know what day it is? Is everything in this car yours? Do you have anything illegal in the car? Where are you going? Don't you think it's a little odd for you to be walking/driving around this part of town at 8pm at night?" Almost never with citations -- it was always clear that even when there was a legitimate moving violation they could pull me over for, that wasn't the purpose.

For the last two years, it kindof seems like the curse is gone. When I get stopped, it's to be warned or cited for a moving violation and the interaction is courteous and professional. I'm still driving the same car, I don't think I look appreciably different. I do, however, have a full-time middle-class job and something like a routine (by contrast, when I was getting stopped frequently, I was a plucky freelancer with almost no routine other than seeing a girlfriend). I wonder how they can tell. And I wonder how we can make that matter less.
posted by weston at 11:10 AM on September 11, 2014 [2 favorites]

I've occasionally asked police for directions, but actually NYPD cops react scarily even to that, really an exceedingly pathological department.
posted by jeffburdges at 1:02 PM on September 11, 2014

What he actually advocates is programs to reduce racial discrimination and inequality to prevent a mass uprising by blacks (something that was very much possible to consider in the late 60s), and for context, he talks about what a tragedy the American treatment of indians and japanese were.

see also: "if you look at Malcolm X's autobiography, in the middle of the autobiography he talks about when he's about to be conscripted. He goes to the draft board and talks about how he's pro-Tokyo. What he's expressing is this widespread idea that Japan had helped to seed amongst black Americans that Japan was the champion of the colored races, that if Japan defeated the United States, the U.S. Negroes would get a better deal. And I argue in a previous book and I plan to argue in this next book that this is part of the momentum that convinces the rulers in the United States that they need to do something about this problem, because it's inimical to national security to have this dispossessed population in great numbers on your shores that could be easily appealed to by foreign antagonists. And so, therefore, you begin this agonizing retreat from Jim Crow, try to create a black middle class that have a stake in the system, to use that term that was so prevalent not so long ago, and so that they would not be so susceptible to these foreign appeals. And to a degree, that's worked."
posted by kliuless at 1:24 PM on September 11, 2014

I don't understand how people continually calling out things like this is practicing empathy. Is it? Can concern about police brutality/overreach be a shared concern?

Why does recognizing that we melanin-deficient folks catch less shit have to also mean we're not concerned? I don't think the recognition of privilege at all implies one thinks it's all cool.
posted by phearlez at 2:10 PM on September 11, 2014

I think it depends on what you're saying and how you're saying it. By pointing out that something isn't a problem for you as a white person but is for people of color, aren't you recognizing that the problem exists? Isn't that a first step toward addressing it? (I think that's what empath was trying to get at in the comment that spurred this discussion.)

But if you're pointing that difference out by way of saying, "Pff, I don't have problems like that" or "That's not my problem," well then yeah, that would be lacking empathy and would be counterproductive.
posted by limeonaire at 2:33 PM on September 11, 2014 [1 favorite]

They didn't say it didn't apply, and someone who thinks that that means it doesn't apply isn't going to get to, "oh man, that is SCREWED." Recognizing the disparity is a crucial step in creating an alliance.
posted by rhizome at 2:34 PM on September 11, 2014

Just subscript to CopBlock, etc. folks. You'll receive daily stories of police, prosecutors, and judges committing crimes like murder, assault, intimidation, etc. with victims of all races, genders, and ages.

Are cops likely to attack you personally for dumb reasons? All depends on race, activities, etc., but cops do attack similar people regularly enough that you should worry. And all this routine violence, SWAT teams, etc. does not benefit our society in any way.

At present, average whites actually become more supportive of law enforcement when they learn about that it harms minorities, well that probably helped create the Ferguson situation. We address that problem by emphasizing that police abuse impacts everyone, including whites.
posted by jeffburdges at 3:06 PM on September 11, 2014 [3 favorites]

Jeffburdges: In congressional hearing on police militarization, DHS officials falsely claim police used federally-funded spy gear to locate one of the suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing when, in reality, a private citizen found him in his backyard.

This really deserves its own FPP, and needs as much attention as it can possibly get. That is fucking shameful, and also fairly interesting that they'd even try and pull it.

phearlez: Yeah, I suppose that's one way to interpret it. I wish reporters and everyone would stop misusing "myth" and "mythology" this way. Myths exist to instruct and explain the abstract though stories and metaphor. What is being discussed here is lying and being wrong. If you need a loftier sounding word try "fabrication."

I think it's pretty on point. It's like, cult behavior. Make up an entirely different narrative that lionizes what you've done and glorifies your organization. It's like, scientology and general cult stuff from my point of view almost to a T.

It's the self-justifying behavior of bullies after they've done something shitty to make it sound justified, and make anything else they took along with them they didn't need sound justified too. I think mythologizing makes sense in that context.

I'm still waiting for it to start happening with the invasion of iraq, once it's enough in the past that they next generation of kids doesn't really remember it that well.
posted by emptythought at 3:47 PM on September 11, 2014 [4 favorites]

Jesus: Witness in Walmart Police Shooting Now Says Victim Never Pointed Gun. (NB: Gawker link)
posted by lord_wolf at 3:50 PM on September 11, 2014 [2 favorites]

Jeffburdges: I've occasionally asked police for directions, but actually NYPD cops react scarily even to that, really an exceedingly pathological department.

Everyone i've ever talked to in my town whose tried this has gotten at absolute best an angry "why are you wasting my time with this shit" type of response, and at worse harassed. At the precinct near my work, they have a bank-like front counter area where you can go in and talk to a cop in a little booth 24/7.(This previously seemed handy to me if you like, got mugged and didn't have a phone until i realized they don't care about that and will just victim blame you).

Someone i was talking to recently mentioned going in there to ask them how to get somewhere nearby when they were new to town. It was literally two blocks away, but the directions they were given were confusing and they didn't know that(and this was before the era of everyone having a phone with GPS/maps).

The cop got totally enraged and yelled at them, and said something to the effect of "get the fuck out of here, i'm not here for this, don't waste my time".

It seemed way more egregious when they realized how close they really were, and how it was an obvious destination that anyone who knew the area like a cop at that precinct would immediately know, get what someone was talking about, and be able to give them direction in two seconds. But apparently even asking was disrespectful of the cops position and authority and a waste of their limited time to be gods gift to the earth.

The more i see, the more this attitude seems to be universal.
posted by emptythought at 4:02 PM on September 11, 2014 [4 favorites]

The new video that they were playing on CNN today is brutal. Unless there is a whole bunch of evidence corroborating Wilson's story that we have not heard about it will be a travesty if Wilson is not indicted. And remember that's me saying that and I'm as pro-defendant's rights as you'll find.

The DA's crap with the grand jury is abject cowardice and as far as I'm concerned pure dereliction of duty.
posted by Justinian at 4:34 PM on September 11, 2014 [1 favorite]

I should say it is brutal in its implications, not in the video itself. It shows a couple construction workers who witnessed the shooting reacting in its immediate aftermath while they don't know they are being filmed. They are yelling at the cop(s) while clearly raising their hands over their heads as though in shock that Wilson killed Brown while his hands were raised in surrender.
posted by Justinian at 4:35 PM on September 11, 2014 [2 favorites]

I just read that the two guys are not from the area, didn't know any of the parties involved, and are white. The first two clearly matter since it means they have absolutely no skin in the game apart from wanting to tell the truth. The last one shouldn't matter but for a lot of people it unfortunately probably will.

(The heads were blurred out big time on CNN when I saw it so I had no idea what race these guys were when I caught it on TV)

But the fact that they were a couple of disinterested (in a technical sense) outside witnesses is very, very damning. I'm not saying that the other witnesses are not telling the truth, only that it is much harder for a defense lawyer to argue that these guys have an interest in not telling the truth since they are from elsewhere and knew no one involved.
posted by Justinian at 5:50 PM on September 11, 2014

I can feel that, but for what it's worth it's not at all what I got from that comment; seemed more like just an acknowledgement that not only is the state of affairs fucked up in terms of e.g. media coverage of a risk vs. actual likelihood of danger, the distribution of that fucked up risk is also whacked out such that some folks get an even more disproportionately shitty end of the risk stick based on the luck of demographics.

That's it for me. Also, I remember when the "I AM TRAYVON MARTIN" shirts were popular seeing articles, blog posts, and tweets from Black people in response to photos of white people wearing them. Almost universally (as I remember), the response was (roughly) "no you're fucking not!"

As a middle-aged white woman, I'm in basically zero danger of getting shot by some neighborhood watch vigilante who thinks I'm a thug or by some cop who thinks I "resemble the description" of a criminal. When I say that, I'm not trying to diminish the risks my Black neighbors face, I'm trying to respect them. Kind of the same way that if somebody is telling me about having had a child die, for example, I'm absolutely not going to say "oh, I know how you feel, I've had cats die too." That's minimizing and disrespectful. I think it works a lot better if I skip the comparison and the "I understand your experience" (because I don't) and instead listen.
posted by Lexica at 6:52 PM on September 11, 2014 [1 favorite]

I'm not saying that anyone's saying it's all cool, there's just definitely a sense in which people saying "I'm white, this doesn't apply" seems to read as "this is not a shared problem. It's a problem for THEM not US"

I can feel that, but for what it's worth it's not at all what I got from that comment; seemed more like just an acknowledgement that not only is the state of affairs fucked up in terms of e.g. media coverage of a risk vs. actual likelihood of danger, the distribution of that fucked up risk is also whacked out such that some folks get an even more disproportionately shitty end of the risk stick based on the luck of demographics. Not "that's your problem, not mine", but "that's a problem and the worst part is it's not even a problem we all share the brunt of equally because of other intersecting problems".

I hear that, and I don't think it's intentional, but what I feel when I see "there but for being white go I" type comments it just doesn't feel that empathetic to me. In the time since Ferguson, when I talk to white friends about it I mention that as an Indian American I haven't had any negative interactions with police (NYPD, including asking for directions, the time someone broke into my house, carrying my giant backpack past the police backpack checkpoints) , they say things like, "well, you are way more at risk for brutality than I am, as a white person." It just feels like whitesplaining and waving away different perspectives, and honestly it's kind of scary. White people telling me how scared I should be. I haven't had black friends tell me I should be glad I'm not as targeted as them. When we talk about concerns about brutality, it feels like a shared experience, even if I haven't been stopped like they have.

I don't think anyone means ill intent, I just want to further the discussion by pointing out the problems with this and a different perspective on it.
posted by sweetkid at 7:29 PM on September 11, 2014 [3 favorites]

"As a middle-aged white woman, I'm in basically zero danger of getting shot by some neighborhood watch vigilante who thinks I'm a thug or by some cop who thinks I "resemble the description" of a criminal."

Wrong. You're safer than a homeless white female, a white male, or a black female, all of whom are safer than a black male, but cops kill perfectly innocent middle class white women occasionally too.

Is anyone in your household the sort to run a fake twitter? Or piss off someone who might SWAT them? Or go to a protest? SWAT teams do accidentally kill people.

In any case, the "optics of the situation" is that we need white people to feel more threatened by cops than by black people. And truthfully cops are more dangerous than black people! duh!

We maybe shouldn't do this right in black people's face by wearing an "I AM TRAYVON MARTIN" tshirt. Yeah, that's minimizing and disrespectful, now disrespect never bothers me, but really I just don't want blacks to accidentally convince racist whites to tolerate a bit more police brutality by making a stink on twitter, etc.

I want all those fake libertarians to vote against police funding, police armament, the drug war, etc. I want right-wing whites to view current police treatment of blacks as 'the next phase', meaning what's coming for them if they do not act.

It shouldn't be any secret that cops target minorities waay more of course. Indeed, we need the black protestors in Ferguson far more than we need some racist armchair libertarian. We should not go out of our way to disabuse the racists of their concerns however.
posted by jeffburdges at 9:17 PM on September 11, 2014 [4 favorites]

I think it's pretty on point. It's like, cult behavior. Make up an entirely different narrative that lionizes what you've done and glorifies your organization. It's like, scientology and general cult stuff from my point of view almost to a T.

It's true. Cops in MA are now beating their breasts about their "heroic" response to the Marathon bombing, and a number of citizens have bought into it. Others of us recognize the copsterbation as a ridiculous glorification of a classic clusterfuck. It's not surprising that DHS officials believe their techno stuff was instrumental in finding Tsarnov. There were all those after-the-discovery FLIR (or whatever) images of someone huddled in the boat. I forget whether the images were made before or after the cops shot up the boat, but they were no real help. Anyway, the cops have all convinced themselves that their near-hysterical operation was necessary and reasonable. And heroic.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 6:16 AM on September 12, 2014 [1 favorite]

The irony is that it was a guy who noticed a ladder had moved, the tarp on his boat had been disturbed, and a bloodstain on the side of the hull. Old fashioned The Citizens of Greater Boston should absolutely be commended - the cops asked a ton of them, most of it ineffectual, but they came through like champs. Never fearful or cowed, it was more "Yeah, we'll stay inside. Now go get that bum."

The mil-spec cop gear? The FLIR was handy, but not really necessary. The rest of it was probably just useless encumbrance. Modern infantry equipment is designed to allow the soldier to operate away from a forward base while under artillery fire, not kill people more better. The cop fetishization of mil-spec whatever is cargo-cult wankery.
posted by Slap*Happy at 6:47 AM on September 12, 2014

I want all those fake libertarians to vote against police funding, police armament, the drug war, etc. I want right-wing whites to view current police treatment of blacks as 'the next phase', meaning what's coming for them if they do not act.

Rand Paul seems to be pursuing this and I think genuinely sees opportunities to get votes from african americans by doing so. I have no idea if he's going to follow through or not, though.
posted by empath at 7:22 AM on September 12, 2014

jeffburdges: I've occasionally asked police for directions, but actually NYPD cops react scarily even to that, really an exceedingly pathological department.

I've lived in NYC nearly my whole life. Have politely asked cops for directions or assistance many times and never gotten a scary, rude or "exceedingly pathological" response.

Out of curiosity, have you ever lived in New York, long-term? Have any direct experience interacting with the cops you're talking about? Or is your knowledge on the subject gleaned from news reports and anecdotes? Because there are terrible New York cops who do terrible things. The system absolutely protects them and tries its best to keep them on the streets. And I know from experience that our local cops do treat white people like me differently than they do minorities.

But your perspective is very different than mine. That might be the result of white male privilege. But I suspect none of my friends who live here (many of whom are minorities) would expect an "exceedingly pathological response" if they asked a cop for directions.
posted by zarq at 7:31 AM on September 12, 2014 [2 favorites]

I've always gotten help with directions from NYPD cops. I have never had my backpack taken and searched. I've had cops chat with me at 5:30 in the morning when I was the only one at the subway stop waiting for the train to the airport.

My apartment was broken into about 8 years ago, and 11 cops showed up, some minorities, some white. The thieves barely took anything but they broke my door, and my landlord wouldn't send someone to fix it, so the (white) sargeant got on the phone with her and yelled that I couldn't sleep in the apartment with no door. Then she sent someone, but he only spoke Chinese so they called a cop who spoke Chinese to discuss door installation with him. The cops fingerprinted my apartment and called me for weeks to keep me updated on the status of the search for the burglars and my laptop (never got it back, no worries).

I'm not white. I'm not saying all cops are super great and I am 100% sure we have an authority/ brutality issue in this country with police. But the ones I've interacted with mostly seem like people, and I'm not going to let white people tell me I should be more scared of them than I am, because that isn't the best way for me to live my own life based on my own personal experience.
posted by sweetkid at 7:54 AM on September 12, 2014 [10 favorites]

I have also always gotten great direction help from NYPD cops - beat cops know the neighborhood pretty well.

Here is the thing with cops. They are trained to split the world between citizens and crooks. If you resemble what they tend to think of as citizens, you're fine. If you resemble what they tend to think of as crooks, you're not. In high diversity areas, these are not as often based on race as they are on socioeconomic status. In low diversity areas, these are most often based on race as a standin for socioeconomic status.

It is often about race in part because race is a convenient statistical standin for socioeconomic status, IN PART due to racist policies that kept various minorities structurally and consistently poor for decades and centuries. So now it is less about race but broadly tends to have the same impact on low-income minority neighborhoods as though it were just about race, so, functionally indistinguishable.
posted by corb at 10:06 AM on September 12, 2014 [6 favorites]

And on the subject of pro-brutality activism by officers, police unions, etc. :

Seattle Cops Crowdsourcing Legal Battle Against DOJ-Imposed Excessive Force Remedies
posted by jeffburdges at 11:47 AM on September 12, 2014

It just feels like whitesplaining and waving away different perspectives, and honestly it's kind of scary. White people telling me how scared I should be.

I would suggest that there is a HUGE difference between

My making a statement about demonstrable facts of how different my experience of the world is from that of a POC and recognizing that difference.
My telling a POC how to feel or about their experience.

What you're describing people doing is annoying and rude, no question. But when I talk with someone - particularly if they are a person who has the same advantages as myself but perhaps aren't cognizant of it - my acknowledging that I often have an unearned genetic "get out of hassle free card" helps me be a part of telling the world this happens even if you don't see it and I am not okay with this happening even though its not as likely to impact me directly.
posted by phearlez at 11:52 AM on September 12, 2014 [1 favorite]

Maria Cheppelle-Nadal makes a speach about Ferguson in the Missouri state senate.
posted by nangar at 12:10 PM on September 12, 2014

It just feels like whitesplaining and waving away different perspectives, and honestly it's kind of scary. White people telling me how scared I should be.

You are not a black man so just being a person of color (if that's how you're identifying here) is not even close to being the same thing that we're discussing here in this thread.

Huh? This comment feels really inappropriate to me. I'm just sharing my perspective. Is it that I can only talk about this if I'm a black man or a white person who mentions that they have zero chance of harassment? Seriously?
posted by sweetkid at 12:46 PM on September 12, 2014 [6 favorites]

re: fake libertarians - "If you want to create and capture lasting value, writes Peter Thiel, look to build a monopoly"(!) :P

Peter Thiel, technology entrepreneur and investor. AMA...

grade7: Is Palantir a front for the CIA?
PeterThiel: No, the CIA is a front for Palantir.

How A 'Deviant' Philosopher Built Palantir, A CIA-Funded Data-Mining Juggernaut

AT 4:07 P.M. ON NOV. 14, 2009 Michael Katz-Lacabe was parking his red Toyota Prius in the driveway of his home in the quiet Oakland suburb of San Leandro when a police car drove past. A license plate camera mounted on the squad car silently and routinely snapped a photo of the scene... In 2010 he learned about the San Leandro Police Department's automatic license plate readers, designed to constantly photograph and track the movements of every car in the city... "With this technology you can wind back the clock and see where everyone is..."

As Katz-Lacabe dug deeper, he found that the millions of pictures collected by San Leandro's license plate cameras are now passed on to the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center (NCRIC), one of 72 federally run intelligence fusion organizations set up after 9/11. That's where the photos are analyzed using software built by a company just across San Francisco Bay: Palantir. In the business proposal that Palantir sent NCRIC, it offered customer references that included the Los Angeles and New York police departments, boasting that it enabled searches of the NYPD's 500 million plate photos in less than five seconds... Palantir's software, he points out, has no default time limits–all information remains searchable for as long as it's stored on the customer's servers...

Some former Palantir staffers say they felt equally concerned about the potential rights violations their work enabled. "You're building something that could absolutely be used for malice. It would have been a nightmare if J. Edgar Hoover had these capabilities in his crusade against Martin Luther King," says one former engineer. "One thing that really troubled me was the concern that something I contribute to could prevent an Arab Spring-style revolution." Despite Palantir's lofty principles, says another former engineer, its day-to-day priorities are satisfying its police and intelligence customers: "Keeping good relations with law enforcement and 'keeping the lights on' bifurcate from the ideals."

posted by kliuless at 1:23 PM on September 12, 2014 [4 favorites]

The new video that they were playing on CNN today is brutal.

If you haven't seen that video showing the two witnesses just a few moments after the shooting, it is here:

The cell phone footage, released by CNN, of two construction workers at the scene early last month appears to support accounts by other witnesses that Brown was retreating or surrendering when he was shot by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson, legal experts said on Friday.

The video shows one of the men raising his hands immediately after the fatal shooting and shouting, "He had his fuckin' hands up."

The man told CNN he heard a gunshot, then another about 30 seconds later. "The cop didn't say get on the ground. He just kept shooting," said the unnamed contractor. He added that he saw Brown's fatal head wound and repeated that the teenager's "hands were up".

The men told CNN they were 50ft (15m) away when Wilson opened fire. The second man said he saw Brown running away from a police car. The teenager "put his hands up", and "the officer was chasing him". Wilson then fired a shot at Brown while his back was turned.

posted by flug at 12:24 PM on September 13, 2014 [5 favorites]

Ferguson tragedy becoming a farce
posted by homunculus at 2:05 PM on September 13, 2014 [5 favorites]

That's a good link from Dana Milbanks and sums up the situation very well. If McCulloch had the least bit of integrity Wilson would without question be indicted (assuming as always there isn't exculpatory evidence of which we are not as yet aware.) McCulloch could have asked for a hearing before a judge who would have undoubtedly held Wilson over for trial. He could use the Grand Jury as it is typically used which is to indict anything under the sun with the least amount of evidence against it. (Remember, McCulloch decides the sum total of the evidence put befort the Grand Jury and there is no defense presented.)

If McCulloch doesn't get an indictment and then washes his hands of it by pointing at the Grand Jury I don't know what will or should happen. It would be clear there is no justice to be had for the people of Ferguson. I wouldn't blame them at all if they started burning shit to the ground.

Whether or not a conviction could be obtained is a different question to an indictment. But as to the indictment it shouldn't even be a question at this point.

The governor (Jay Nixon - D) is also a coward and I hope people tell him that to his face.
posted by Justinian at 3:35 PM on September 13, 2014 [10 favorites]

Woman shot during protest says police have yet to speak to her
posted by jeffburdges at 10:47 AM on September 14, 2014 [4 favorites]

Kissing while black now a potential crime.
posted by Joey Michaels at 10:48 AM on September 14, 2014 [9 favorites]

Someone should inform the LAPD that anti-miscegenation laws are no longer on the books. Of course that probably won't help with this kind of knee-jerk racism and misogyny.
posted by homunculus at 11:52 AM on September 14, 2014 [1 favorite]

Deadly force is necessary against armed threats unless they're one of ours.
posted by phearlez at 4:28 PM on September 14, 2014 [4 favorites]

PeterThiel: No, the CIA is a front for Palantir.

Thiel is nothing if not ballsy. The problems of Palantir are right there in the name for anybody who has read Tolkien. And if this statement means anything at all (instead of just being a bon mot meant to turn aside the question, which is itself a kind of answer), he's straight up telling people part of his plan is to buy off/co-opt part a key state apparatus that does extensive surveillance, propaganda, and straight-up military force. What's the difference between him and a Bond villain?
posted by weston at 7:59 PM on September 14, 2014 [3 favorites]

Anyone who wants a daily list of great links on this topic delivered straight to your inbox, along with the latest news on protests in Ferguson, sign up for DeRay Mckesson's e-newsletter at thisisthemovement.org. Also check out curated tweets from the #Ferguson hashtag and a link to the e-newsletter archive at hashtagferguson.org.
posted by limeonaire at 9:02 PM on September 14, 2014 [1 favorite]

Oops, it's from 2006, but still..
Cops Beat & Kidnap 12-yo Girl in Front of her Home, Claiming She was a Prostitute
posted by jeffburdges at 9:25 PM on September 14, 2014

About the tensions between the "peacekeepers" and other protesters: Between the Peacekeepers and the Protesters in Ferguson
posted by Noisy Pink Bubbles at 9:42 PM on September 14, 2014

So has Darren Wilson been seen in public yet? Photographed or anything? Or do w still only have the leaked FB photos?
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 10:03 PM on September 14, 2014

Is St. Louis County Prosecutor Robert McCulloch Helping Raise Money for Ofc. Darren Wilson?

This is very interesting. It would be good to have a statement from McCulloch regarding whether he has been involved in The BackStoppers' recent fundraising efforts for Darren Wilson, or whether he has recused himself from those efforts, at very least.
posted by limeonaire at 10:20 PM on September 14, 2014 [1 favorite]

Ferguson’s massive cover-up: How police departments are protecting Michael Brown’s killer
posted by the man of twists and turns at 10:23 PM on September 14, 2014 [9 favorites]

Interesting article, Charlie Grapski looks worth following.
posted by jeffburdges at 1:58 AM on September 15, 2014

Ferguson’s massive cover-up: How police departments are protecting Michael Brown’s killer

Interesting - we've talked about it in terms of being a cover up almost from the beginning, but is this the first media piece to be so explicit about it?
posted by Artw at 6:00 AM on September 15, 2014 [1 favorite]

OK, as mentioned above, I wrote a thing, and now it's out in the world.

The story of North County: How America is in a perpetual state of reconstruction

Fine print: I didn't choose the title (I actually don't think the piece is that much about America as a whole), and there are still a few little edits I've asked the editor to make (like changing the caption on the photo, fixing a paragraph break for correct emphasis, and agh, making the colon in one spot go after the end quotation mark). And the editor may or may not be adding photos I sent. Also, as lizarrd pointed out when he read it, anyone who's read every single comment in these threads may not feel like it's particularly new material; it definitely was distilled from my comments here. But...there it is!
posted by limeonaire at 7:23 AM on September 15, 2014 [22 favorites]

That Charlie Grapski Salon story linked above is the first I've seen laying out the public record of the police's actions regarding departmentally-required information forms and state-mandated public information releases after the shooting was over.

Time and time again, the police departments involved violated their own policies and Missouri state law to avoid recording information about their actions, Grapski says, linking to relevant statutes.

However the grand jury rules on the shooting, and whatever rulings come on the legality of police tactics on the streets in the nights following the shooting, there was another sweeping wave of lawlessness in Ferguson, and it ran right through the Thin Blue Line that is supposed to protect the community, the article points out. Chilling.
posted by Andrew Galarneau at 7:58 AM on September 15, 2014 [2 favorites]

> I wrote a thing, and now it's out in the world.

Excellent. I'm glad you were able to get it published finally. Thanks, limeonaire.
posted by nangar at 8:05 AM on September 15, 2014 [1 favorite]

Loved the piece, limeonaire, but just one small nit to pick: next time: maybe a deep link to the MeFi thread in question instead of to the front page?
posted by tonycpsu at 8:32 AM on September 15, 2014 [1 favorite]

And, heck, this thread ends in four days, so that article would be a great basis for a new FPP.
posted by tonycpsu at 8:33 AM on September 15, 2014

Thanks, nangar and tonycpsu! I almost included the deep link, but I decided not to for a couple reasons:

1. There are like...three threads at this point, and Frowner's comment was actually in the first one, so it was kind of a question of which link to include (even though I know all the threads link to each other).

2. My essay got its start with some of my comments here, so some of the wording is similar, and I didn't really want to get into the whole "Heyyy, wait a minute, someone on this website already said that!" thing. We retain copyright to what we write here, but people have differing takes on what's appropriate in that regard, e.g., whether working out a thought in a paraphrased, pseudonymous comment in a public forum counts as prior publication or self-plagiarizing or something. (For the record, I don't think it does. See also.)

So that's the background on that!
posted by limeonaire at 9:26 AM on September 15, 2014 [1 favorite]

I think I've mentioned this elsewhere, by the way, but kudos again to Frowner for the awesome comment that helped me characterize the issues here.
posted by limeonaire at 9:37 AM on September 15, 2014

“A Nonviolent Uprising,” Shane Claiborne, Sojourners, 15 September 2014
posted by ob1quixote at 10:25 AM on September 15, 2014

Is the Man Tasked with Prosecuting Darren Wilson Actually Raising Money for Him?
posted by jeffburdges at 12:42 PM on September 15, 2014 [1 favorite]

Black Dentist In All-White Practice Forced To Resign Over Ferguson Posts
posted by limeonaire at 12:51 PM on September 15, 2014 [6 favorites]

Is the Man Tasked with Prosecuting Darren Wilson Actually Raising Money for him?

tl;dr of that particular article appears to be "no", not that there aren't massive clouds of shit already swirling around that guy.
posted by Artw at 12:58 PM on September 15, 2014 [2 favorites]

Police kill cosplayer, lie about it.
posted by Artw at 1:58 PM on September 15, 2014 [5 favorites]

good lord ArtW, that is enraging and sad.
posted by sweetkid at 2:05 PM on September 15, 2014

St. Louis Coptalk: KSDK Sponsor Boycott

Apparently this is a forum where local cops discuss various topics, and in this thread they're calling for boycotts of area media that's covering Darren Wilson and the police in ways they don't like.
posted by limeonaire at 4:06 PM on September 15, 2014

That does not look like cosplay. It mentions a local ComicCon last weekend, most cons don't even allow obviously fake weapons. And this is the reason why. From the article:

..his mother Susan Hunt says the “sword” was a blunt-edged vanity version of a Japanese “Katana” sword he bought at an Asian gift shop.

This is a fake katana with a blunt edge. It is designed to look like a real sword. Despite the blunt edge, it can still kill someone quite easily. It is not a toy.

This is a goddam tragedy but I think the lesson here is do not brandish simulated weapons in public. Do not expect the police to be able to distinguish between realistic and real weapons at a glance.

There is a lot more to this story than what was in that ThinkProgress article, which is little more than agitprop. For example, from the local TV news site:

A witness later sent Hunt's mother, Susan Hunt, a photo of police confronting her son just before shots being fired. In the picture, two officers are standing on either side of Darrien. The sword is not visible in the picture. The family believes, based on the limited information they've been given, that at some point during that confrontation, a shot was fired by police. Susan Hunt doesn't know if that shot hit her son or not. But she suspects he then ran toward the Panda Express, where she believes multiple shots were fired and he was struck and killed while running away.

That is an entirely different story.
posted by charlie don't surf at 4:14 PM on September 15, 2014

This is a goddam tragedy but I think the lesson here is do not brandish simulated weapons in public.

The only people who claim this kid was 'brandishing' the prop sword are the cops who shot him in the back and then claimed that he was lunging at them. So take that with a grain of salt.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 4:42 PM on September 15, 2014 [6 favorites]

Not to mention, if someone is "brandishing" a weapon with no real range there's the DON'T BE IN RANGE option. This shit is never going to get better until we start demanding that cops make some marginal effort to de-escalate situations. Nut with a sword? BACK UP.
posted by phearlez at 4:51 PM on September 15, 2014 [3 favorites]

What...the fuck.

Grand jury now has until January to decide whether to charge Ferguson officer

(And my apologies to anyone whose browser freezes from yet another visit to the Post-Dispatch's website and its many popups, pop-unders, and surveys.)
posted by limeonaire at 5:14 PM on September 15, 2014

An incomplete list of non-fake-swords that cops do not usually shoot people for carrying/having on them if they don't "look threatening" (read: black) but that can kill people: baseball bats, most cord of sufficient strength, undercooked meat, most knives, castor beans, a lack of necessary vaccinations, guns, anything flammable, bricks, police batons, automobiles
posted by NoraReed at 5:28 PM on September 15, 2014

Fox News Boss Roger Ailes Treats Cops as His Personal Minions
posted by homunculus at 5:37 PM on September 15, 2014

It is designed to look like a real sword. Despite the blunt edge, it can still kill someone quite easily. It is not a toy.

So what? In a state where you can openly carry a firearm and not even need a permit for that, what does it say that cops decide a person with something that may or may not be a weapon, but definitely isn't one that fires projectiles, is so imminently dangerous that he needs to be shot? In the back?
posted by rtha at 5:37 PM on September 15, 2014 [18 favorites]

Grand jury now has until January to decide whether to charge Ferguson officer

So first thought: What are all those business owners in Ferguson who have thus far refused to take the plywood off their windows (due to the threat of a potential riot if there's no indictment) gonna do now? Second thought, in rapid succession: That's exactly what McCulloch wants. Under the guise of ensuring justice is served, maybe he's seeking to inflict maximum economic damage on North County, both as punishment for an area that got out of line and to inflame people's passions in the meantime.

Alternately, maybe the hope is that people will wind down their protest in the meantime, or that, as with Occupy, the winter will take care of it.

One way or another, we have to work to ensure neither outcome occurs. Apparently some people already have their long johns ready, so that's a start!
posted by limeonaire at 6:01 PM on September 15, 2014 [1 favorite]

That does not look like cosplay

???

The article ArtW linked to includes a picture of Mugen from Samurai Champloo right next to a picture of the young man snapped by a passerby. He pretty much is doing spot on cosplay of Mugen.

Not that I would expect cops in Saratoga Springs to know the character, but it seems pretty odd to flat out declare he wasn't cosplaying.
posted by lord_wolf at 6:09 PM on September 15, 2014

Not to mention, if someone is "brandishing" a weapon with no real range there's the DON'T BE IN RANGE option.

And when he runs off, what about the people who will be in range of his sword? Is everyone supposed to flee, wherever he goes?

In a state where you can openly carry a firearm and not even need a permit for that..

You are arguing that the 2nd Amendment includes a right to bear swords. In any case, if someone is openly carrying a rifle, as is his constitutional right (not that I agree with open carry nuts) and runs off when questioned by police, yeah they're going to shoot him too.
posted by charlie don't surf at 6:23 PM on September 15, 2014

You are arguing that the 2nd Amendment includes a right to bear swords.

It says "arms" which... well... Yeah. Swords are arms - after all the phrase "Take up arms" is far older than firearms.

So, yeah. If you're liberal reading of 2A is that open carry of assault rifles in public is AOK, then so too, swords and long knives.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 6:51 PM on September 15, 2014 [2 favorites]

"Not to mention, if someone is "brandishing" a weapon with no real range there's the DON'T BE IN RANGE option."

The conventional wisdom (which I am not competent to judge) is that within about 25 feet, an amateur perp with a blade (knife/sword) is considerably more dangerous than a gun; you only have to slash in the general area of an artery with a knife, whereas a gun has to be aimed.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 7:29 PM on September 15, 2014 [1 favorite]

And when he runs off, what about the people who will be in range of his sword? Is everyone supposed to flee, wherever he goes?

At this time, there is absolutely no indication that this kid was being violent towards anyone, except for the testimony of cops who have already been shown to be lying. The kid was likely not a threat. Your hypothetical is merely goalpost moving.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 7:34 PM on September 15, 2014 [10 favorites]

Via Sarah Kendzior: In 1992, prosecutor Bob McCulloch was accused of having a personal vendetta against Axl Rose
posted by limeonaire at 7:55 PM on September 15, 2014

The conventional wisdom (which I am not competent to judge) is that within about 25 feet, an amateur perp with a blade (knife/sword) is considerably more dangerous than a gun; you only have to slash in the general area of an artery with a knife, whereas a gun has to be aimed.

Way up above this is associated with something called the Tueller Drill.
posted by XMLicious at 8:06 PM on September 15, 2014 [1 favorite]

I think you can probably find something, some factor, to make each case when considered individually appear less egregious than they are when you consider them collectively.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 8:57 PM on September 15, 2014

Police kill cosplayer, lie about it.

They shot him 6 times. A hail of bullets, similar to Mike Brown and Kajieme Powell.

...the independent autopsy requested by the family showed that Hunt was shot twice in the hip, once in the right wrist, once in the shoulder, once in the back of his left arm and once in the back.

posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 10:02 PM on September 15, 2014 [2 favorites]

I'd think all the fucking cop bullets would be more of a danger to you if you happened to be 25 foot off in the direction this guy was going.
posted by Artw at 6:28 AM on September 16, 2014 [1 favorite]

They shot him 6 times.

They hit him six times. I'd be amazed to find out that they only pulled the trigger six times.
posted by Etrigan at 7:07 AM on September 16, 2014 [6 favorites]

And when he runs off, what about the people who will be in range of his sword?

What about the people in range of the hail of bullets the cops let off? Or, I guess, what everyone else said.
posted by dirigibleman at 8:58 AM on September 16, 2014 [2 favorites]

Another day, another incident report where the video looks nothing like the threat the cops describe.

And when he runs off, what about the people who will be in range of his sword? Is everyone supposed to flee, wherever he goes?

Yes?

I mean, that's the standard the Supreme Court set for them - you don't get to kill someone fleeing unless there's probable cause to believe they're going to hurt someone else. And the fact that they possess a device that can harm someone isn't probable cause. You want to talk about responding to a call where someone has for sure been injured, sure, we can have a more nuanced parsing. But a call for brandishing means "someone told a 911 operator that someone was waving something around."

If some giant Mike Brown sized person - and we've been told over and over that just his sheer size makes him oooooh scary - had been menacing the dude with the sword, would he have been legally in the right to wave it around to protect himself? Apparently. We get told over and over again how useful guns are in deterrent situations; maybe some bystander sees someone do that because they don't understand the situation, so they call the cops. Who show up and gun the person down because they turned and ran

There's a multitude of these situations we're told are perfectly reasonable for private citizens to get themselves into which will also apparently get them gunned down almost immediately by the cops. All because they and you think they need to make sure someone doesn't run off and shogun someone - even though there's no way the cops in these situations were interacting with these folks long enough have any idea if they really intended to stab anyone.

I'd think all the fucking cop bullets would be more of a danger to you if you happened to be 25 foot off in the direction this guy was going.
posted by phearlez at 9:20 AM on September 16, 2014 [5 favorites]

I'd think all the fucking cop bullets would be more of a danger to you if you happened to be 25 foot off in the direction this guy was going.

I remember that shit. All these reports coming in "crazed gunman on a killing spree." No, he killed the one person he wanted to kill, then the cops shot nine innocent bystanders. Apparently being a cop doesn't mean you have decent training in selecting a target and hitting it.

When I see a cop I avoid them. Their presence makes it MORE likely that something bad will happen to me.

Luckily for me, I'm a white female, so they don't see my avoidance as probable cause to murder me.
posted by showbiz_liz at 9:32 AM on September 16, 2014 [1 favorite]

Just to belabor the matter, because I am tiresome like that, let's be super clear about what TN v Garner specifically says about deadly force against a fleeing suspect.

such force may not be used unless necessary to prevent the escape and the officer has probable cause to believe that the suspect poses a significant threat of death or serious physical injury to the officer or others

Probable cause, not the looser reasonable suspicion.
Significant as a qualifier to threat

The fact that we are seeing the general public so often react viscerally when they see video of these encounters speaks pretty well, I think, to the fact that we're not meeting the level of probable cause. People viewing the matter from the outside ask "why did that have to happen that way?" We see these thing from very limited standpoints of hand-held video cameras or security video, so we have a "fog of war" that's just as present but different than that of the responding officers. But we see in those videos other people milling about, apparently untroubled by the disturbed man with his stolen sodas.

If they lack a reasonable suspicion that this person is going to suddenly lunge at them and kill them, why would we believed that trained & armed officers should think it?
posted by phearlez at 9:36 AM on September 16, 2014 [4 favorites]

...prosecutor Bob McCulloch was accused of having a personal vendetta against Axl Rose...

Is this supposed to make us sympathetic towards McCulloch?
posted by Cookiebastard at 9:58 AM on September 16, 2014 [1 favorite]

I don't think it's supposed to make us sympathetic toward McCulloch. The sense I got was that McCulloch was unfairly persecuting Axl Rose for whatever role he thought he had in inciting what became known locally as the Riverport Riot.
posted by limeonaire at 10:01 AM on September 16, 2014 [1 favorite]

Another day, another incident report where the video looks nothing like the threat the cops describe.

Assault aside, isn't it a crime to falsify a police report? There are at least 3 cops there who were witnesses to what happened, and they all colluded to file false reports.
posted by empath at 10:23 AM on September 16, 2014

Is this supposed to make us sympathetic towards McCulloch?

Only if you think that however bad a railroading racist badge-licker McCulloch may be, Axl is worse.
posted by rhizome at 10:38 AM on September 16, 2014

Sorry all, I should have included a HAMBURGER or winky-face or something. Humor as a coping mechanism.
posted by Cookiebastard at 10:44 AM on September 16, 2014 [1 favorite]

We get told over and over again how useful guns are in deterrent situations...

They are very useful in deterring people from continuing to live. It's almost as if they were made for the purpose...
posted by Kirth Gerson at 10:47 AM on September 16, 2014

@empath: Of course it is. But police who file false reports are almost never prosecuted for doing so. Even fines or suspensions without pay for police who falsify reports are rare. Generally what happens is that following an internal investigation the department finds that the officer acted properly and was fully justified in whatever it is they did.

In addition to mandatory cameras on cops, we need some serious penalties for cops lying in reports. Penalties on the order of being fired and banned for life from working in law enforcement.

I'd also like to see similar penalties for cops who repeatedly and ritualistically shout the phrase "stop resisting" when the video clearly shows the person not resisting.
posted by sotonohito at 11:48 AM on September 16, 2014 [10 favorites]

Assault aside, isn't it a crime to falsify a police report

It is! Let's call the...

Aw, crap.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 12:30 PM on September 16, 2014 [10 favorites]

“The Poverty of Culture,” Jonah Birch & Paul Heideman, Jacobin, 16 September 2014

Despite all evidence to the contrary, blaming black culture for racial inequality remains politically dominant. And not only on the Right.

posted by ob1quixote at 1:39 PM on September 16, 2014 [6 favorites]

(before COINTELPRO threw the Panthers off the track of their original noble goal).

Speaking of which: Thousands Of FBI Documents About Civil Rights Era Destroyed By Flooding
posted by homunculus at 1:59 PM on September 16, 2014 [1 favorite]

Huh, speaking of structural neglect in North County: Sewage Spills into North St. Louis County Creek. Lovely!
posted by limeonaire at 4:25 PM on September 16, 2014

Slate: We knew blacks and whites saw Michael Brown’s killing differently. A new poll shows the gulf that divides them is greater than anyone guessed:

Now, thanks to a new survey from the Remington Research Group—based in Kansas City, Missouri—we know. The firm polled 604 residents of St. Louis County on aspects of the controversy, from the shooting of Brown to the police response to protesters. And on most questions, they found a stark racial divide.

When asked if “the shooting of an African American teen by law enforcement in Ferguson, Missouri” was justified, 62 percent of whites said it was, along with 35 percent of blacks. The “noes” were a mirror image: 65 percent of blacks—and 38 percent of whites—said it wasn’t justified.

This, more than any result in the survey, is astonishing. Remember, we know little on the circumstances that led to Brown’s death. At most, we have witness reports, which say Brown had surrendered when he was killed, and the testimony of Officer Darren Wilson, who says he was attacked by the teenager. It’s impossible to say anything for certain, but my hunch is that this divide has a good deal to do with implicit racial bias and the divergent views of law enforcement among whites and blacks.

FWIW these results agree well with my own experiences in talking with people around Missouri. A rather large divide in opinion and people very well set in their opinions.
posted by flug at 9:15 PM on September 16, 2014 [6 favorites]

So, I was talking to a former police officer about the academy, and learned something that seemed relevant. When he was going through, they had a phrase, "Ask, Tell, Make." They were supposed to ask the person once for compliance, tell them, and then use whatever force was necessary to force them to comply. They were also supposed to use force one level above that which the perpetrator was using.

I could easily see how a policy like that impacts badly with urban, particularly minority youth - especially with the studies that show high rates of low grade PTSD in that population.
posted by corb at 9:02 AM on September 17, 2014

They were supposed to ask the person once for compliance, tell them, and then use whatever force was necessary to force them to comply.

And I surely can see no way this will mesh poorly with the constant legal position that say it's perfectly okay for the cops to ask people to do things they are not constitutionally obligated to do, under the presumption that they can simply decline.
posted by phearlez at 9:26 AM on September 17, 2014 [5 favorites]

17-Year-Old Suffers Brain Damage, In Coma After Being Tased By Police
posted by homunculus at 1:29 PM on September 17, 2014 [3 favorites]

Wilson testified for 4 hours before the grand jury today. The fact that he testified is a clear indication that his lawyers have high confidence that they can prevent an indictment.
posted by Justinian at 2:36 PM on September 17, 2014 [2 favorites]

This is a good link roundup from a former St. Louisan: Ferguson, Five Weeks Out and 800 Miles Away. I'm not sure whether all of the linked stories have been linked here.
posted by limeonaire at 3:37 PM on September 17, 2014

Also, here's a great Shaun King Storify on the links between Gov. Jay Nixon and Jeff Roorda.
posted by limeonaire at 3:40 PM on September 17, 2014 [2 favorites]

Wilson made an actual on-the-record statement? Wow.
posted by Artw at 3:49 PM on September 17, 2014

Is grand jury testimony recordable and admissable later? I don't know much about the process.
posted by corb at 4:03 PM on September 17, 2014

Not only is it admissible but any testimony given by the defendant almost always serves to do nothing but undermine the defense. It provides an opportunity to introduce minor inconsistencies which a skilled prosecutor will use to make it appear the defendant is either lying, confused, or misremembering. And if the DA wants an indictment it virtually never prevents an indictment. So there is no upside for a defendant to testify unless the fix is probably in.

Now I'm blanking on the word that means "undermine testimony". It sounds like.. indict... or something. I hate this feeling when a word is right on the tip of your tongue and you can't come up with it.
posted by Justinian at 4:24 PM on September 17, 2014 [1 favorite]

Impeach! It's basically a way to put the defendant on the record in a way which can be used to impeach their testimony later if they testify doing the trial. That's the word.
posted by Justinian at 4:27 PM on September 17, 2014 [1 favorite]

Officer Wilson testifies before the Grand Jury.

If Wilson not indicted, prosecutor vows to release Grand Jury transcripts and tapes.
posted by flug at 4:42 PM on September 17, 2014 [3 favorites]

LOL at "if".

So I guess until then it's being kept super seekret to avoid anyone picking holes in it?
posted by Artw at 4:57 PM on September 17, 2014 [2 favorites]

There's a new thread, based on the Shaun King Storify above. So check it out!
posted by limeonaire at 10:37 AM on September 18, 2014 [1 favorite]

@flug: does that mean that the whereabouts of Wilson are, in fact, known to law enforcement and he hasn't just vanished?
posted by sotonohito at 10:53 AM on September 18, 2014

Of course. There was never a possibility he had simply vanished.
posted by Justinian at 12:22 PM on September 18, 2014 [2 favorites]

I doubt it's much different than when Johanes Mehserle fled to another state. The police knew. I don't think I've read about anybody asking if they knew where Wilson was, though.
posted by rhizome at 12:44 PM on September 18, 2014

I don't know, I think it was a possibility that Wilson could've vanished. He could've just lit out for another state and gone on the lam. We didn't know either way—because law enforcement wouldn't tell us even the barest of details. He testified yesterday, but where is he now? I'm sure police know, but it wasn't at all clear that they did previously.

That was No. 9 on my list of things we didn't know: "Why Darren Wilson hasn't been detained—and whether police know his whereabouts." So I guess I was asking.

Speaking of that list, see also.
posted by limeonaire at 5:18 PM on September 18, 2014 [3 favorites]

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