I’m going to write about Ferguson, MO for a bit. And this comes with several caveats: Yes, I *know* I’m a white male. I still get to have an opinion on the subject. Being an educated white male who grew up in a primarily African American county and in primarily African American schools, who’s worked in a primarily African American school-system and who’s had good friends in the police force and who in his youth has both had cops and robbers point guns at him, and who’s only ever had a police officer pull the trigger. I’m also a white male who’s lost friends to violence and who does his best to make safe spaces for all at his open mics – I think my opinion is better than many being voiced. Being an educated white male of the internet age, I know that experience and education doesn’t necessarily win out against sheer VOLUME and hysteria – but with all THAT out of the way, here’s my two cents – shared here not because I think it necessarily does anyone any good, but because writing about it all helps sort it out in my head.
And here’s a caveat to the caveat that I think is very, very important and that most people who’ve decided to voice their two cents don’t understand: I wasn’t one of the SIXTY witnesses. I don’t know the facts. I didn’t investigate it. I wasn’t even on the Grand Jury, theoretically in a position to HEAR all the facts. Nope, I’ve been reading news stories from different sources and putting together second and third-hand stories. I don’t know if Michael Brown robbed a store earlier (or if he just had the bad luck to look like and be dressed like a guy who did – I’m also unclear as to whether this was a shoplifting or a holdup), I don’t know if he attacked Darren Wilson. I don’t know if Darren Wilson gunned down Michael Brown from the front or back (forensics says the former, some witnesses say the latter), from inside his car, from outside…. I know I don’t have all the facts. And importantly, 99.9999% of those people who care to have an opinion on this shooting don’t have all the facts either.
Bear with me as I check my math –let’s pretend we’re just talking about people tweeting and Facebooking and reporting and blogging, there are about 175,000,000 people discussing Ferguson today (to put that in perspective, that’s 2% of the world’s population) – let’s say all of those 60 witnesses were absolutely sure of what they saw and saw it in context. Now, let’s pretend that the Saint Louis Police Department had every single one of their 2,000 staff working on this case. Which they don’t. And let’s pretend the Saint Louis courts have an equal number of staff and THEY’RE all in possession of all the facts. Which they aren’t. And let’s pretend like every single one of those 4,060 people went home and told every member of their 2.54 member households every single detail about the known facts accurately which they didn’t… so let’s PRETEND that those 10,312 and a half people all have the “real” story…
Sorry. My number was off. 99.999941% of the people who are voicing their opinion don’t have all the facts. Optimistically speaking. And beyond that, that means they’re listening to the story from someone else who (probably) doesn’t have all the facts and beyond that (probably) has an agenda.
What the Hell’s my point? My point is that the shooting isn’t the issue. You and I? We can probably never know all the facts of the ordeal. The most we’ll ever know is the court-slanted version that’s released, or the version that FOX releases, or the Aljazeera version or the NPR version. We can put all those together and hope for the best, but even that army of investigative reporters doesn’t equal the TRUTH. The issue is how we respond, who we trust, and how complacent we are about what all of this means.
And what you’re doing about it.
It’s not the actual shooting of Michael Brown that disturbs me. His death is a horrible thing – and one can point to one side of the evidence and be so disgusted that a cop would just shoot an unarmed black kid out-of-hand or you can point to the other side of the evidence and be horrified that a young black teenager would be dumb enough to assault an armed police officer in broad daylight and think there’d be no consequences. The truth is probably somewhere smack in the middle exhibiting bias and stupidity on behalf of both parties.
I bet a lot of police shootings are exactly that. And I want to know more. How many people DO get killed by cops every year?
… The Washington Post reports that though 27 cops were killed in the line of duty last year (2013) there are no “official” records kept on how many civilians are killed by police officers…
Why the HELL isn’t that a number I can just look up? “Federal officials allow the nation’s more than 17,000 law enforcement agencies to self-report officer shootings. That figure… hovers around 400 “justifiable homicides” by law enforcement each year.” Yeah – “self-reporting” is maybe good enough for showing our tips on our income taxes, but for reporting people shot or tazed or beaten to death by police officers? Various independent groups and “independent trackers”, “primarily journalists and academics who study criminal justice” feel the number’s closer to a thousand people a year. (I feel like such a round figure, especially reported as “per year” since both the deaths of polices officers and the overall homicide rate in the country have dropped dramatically – the former by about 30% in the last year, the latter by 50% since the 90s – is kind of Why the HELL isn’t that a number I can just look up? “Federal officials allow the nation’s more than 17,000 law enforcement agencies to self-report officer shootings. That figure… hovers around 400 “justifiable homicides” by law enforcement each year.” Yeah – “self-reporting” is maybe good enough for showing our tips on our income taxes, but for reporting people shot or tazed or beaten to death by police officers? Various independent groups and “independent trackers”, “primarily journalists and academics who study criminal justice” feel the number’s closer to a thousand people a year. (I feel like such a round figure, especially reported as “per year” since both the deaths of polices officers and the overall homicide rate in the country have dropped dramatically – the former by about 30% in the last year, the latter by 50% since the 90s – is kind of irresponsible, but goes a long way towards pointing to the fact that “self-reporting” is NOT a satisfactory way of viewing the problem).
Now, I Love looking at numbers. I Love statistics and I Love big pictures. And I think that though both the civil rights movement and the criminal justice system have sputtered, stopped and choked and started again off-and-on over the 200+ years of America’s existence – I DO believe we’re generally headed in the right direction. We have a long way to go, but we’ve COME a long way as well – and to deny our progress is to deny and undermine the value of every Judy Shepard and Martin Luther King and Frederick Douglass and Rosa Parks – to say we’ve gotten nowhere is to say our martyrs have meant nothing. And to cease our forward progress, growing mired in distrust and hatred and rioting and revenge is to make the deaths of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown and the 14 kids who’ve been killed by law enforcement in the last WEEK meaningless.
(http://www.cjcj.org/news/8113 – an interesting article talking about percentages and deaths by “legal intervention” as known by the CDC – Native Americans are more likely to be killed by a cop than a black man and the rate of African Americans killed by cops has fallen by 70% since the 60s – again, important to see progress, but I’d argue that this doesn’t fit a salable narrative that plays into the hands of both news organizations that need to sell papers and clicks as well as a prison industrial complex that is invested in keeping for-profit prisons rolling smoothly)
I don’t find the riots disturbing. I don’t find the lack of indictment disturbing. Terrifying and distressing in that order, but not disturbing.
No, what’s disturbing is the reporting. Let’s go back to eyewitnesses. With the shooting itself – you’ve got a couple of cameras and sixty witnesses –it translates into 70 hours of testimony for a Grand Jury to sit through. But with the riots going on right now in Ferguson? There should be thousands of witnesses. Newspapers are gleefully reporting about the chaos and people are quoted as having heard HUNDREDS of gunshots.
The only thing I hear from friends in Saint Louis is quotes of the above reports but that “everything is quiet here”. Phone calls, interviews, emails, tweets and texts… everything’s calm where everyone’s reporting, but they hear shit’s going down around the corner.
It sure sounds like people are responding a lot more sensibly and a lot less interestingly than expected.
And then there’s the thing that’s REALLY disturbing. The timing of the announcement of the non-indictment. And the police presence. Or lack thereof. If you release the news in the morning, we’ve got a whole day of sunshine and probably peaceful protesting. We digest the news and we discuss it. You release the news at night and we all go to bed only to wake up to hear about Ferguson on fire. If you read the captions on the pics, a lot of the pictures of fires aren’t FROM Ferguson. They’re just accompanying the headline. By this afternoon, despite reports of hundreds of shots fired, mass rioting and cops being killed in their cars, there’s apparently only one known injury – and that was from a carjacking in the area.
Oh – and the reported “throwing bottles at police” brings imagery of glass shattering off of riot gear. By now this has been downgraded to “some threw water
bottles at police”. Very, very, very different.
We don’t discuss the salient facts. We discuss the rioting and chaos. And beyond that, despite a “state of emergency” and the reported presence of the National Guard – 12 buildings burned and rioting was ALLOWED? I’m hearing an awful lot that the cops / National Guard came and cleaned up the mess, but didn’t lift a finger to deal with the actual chaos on the streets.
Here’s a great breakdown from the Washington Post about “known facts” about the Brown case – http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/11/25/get-completely-caught-up-on-whats-happened-in-ferguson/ – it sites a lot of sources and is a great resource if you just can’t understand why there’s any question about the shooting (but oh GOD don’t read the comments). It didn’t happen in the middle of the night. It happened in broad daylight. It didn’t happen sans witnesses. It happened in front of lots
people who have conflicting views of what they saw. And like it or not, though we Live in a nation where someone can be convicted and crucified by the press and the public, by Twitter and Facebook – we STILL Live in a country where we’re innocent until proven guilty.
Of course, Michael Brown will never get a trial. And with the decision not to pursue a court case, now neither will Darren Wilson. And even if the latter was “only doing his job” he’s decided to quit. But the feds are looking at putting the Ferguson Police Force on trial, and the public eye is (until something shiny comes along) at least temporarily on the fact that police violence is under-reported and difficult to pin down.
And so what are you doing? The media would have you Live in fear because it fits their narrative and it keeps you clicking and sells ads. That’s their job. The NRA would like to keep BB guns lookin’ the same because if a kid gets shot holding one it means you probably ought to buy a REAL gun to protect yourself…. The cops would have you Live in caution and when you turn around, turn around slowly and keep your hands visible at all times because it makes their job easier. And a black kid on the street would rather you just not look at him like he’s going to steal your cigarillos. Sort of like a white kid. They also shoplift.
Last night I had an amazing young black artist come out and spew a LOT of anger about the system and his fears into a mic into a mostly (if memory serves almost exclusively) white room and we weren’t afraid of him and he knew he wasn’t angry at US and I think that’s positive. And he’s getting a degree in government. And ten years down the line he’s probably going to be doing great things and in twenty years our civil rights picture will probably be a little better than it is now. And yes, it’s going to be a harder fight for a young black kid who gets caught up in the legal system than a young white kid. And the cards are stacked against both of them if they’re young and dumb on top of it. But I don’t believe that’s an excuse to stop what we’re doing and throw our hands up and scream. It’s a reason to keep trying our damndest.
If I had a wish list as to what I’d be asking for in the wake of all of this?
Screw anything where police get to police their own. More direct oversight of police
forces across the nation. Yeah, that’s enlarging the federal government, but I think that most cops are good people just trying to do their job and that bad policing is generally a core of rottenness and that’s not going to be solved from the inside of said rottenness.
Stupid decisions were made in the wake of the shooting. Right from the top. And a stupid leader leads to a stupid force.
