Discussion for article #226529
This is excellent! Shine a continuous spotlight on Ferguson. Turn up the heat on its elected officials to allow their PD to be replaced in this investigation. Put the county prosecutor on notice that his own case is compromised by the Ferguson PD evidence.
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I remember the Rodney King fiasco; I’ve been beyond shock for a long time.
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Sure, needed to be said.
The fact that it took you this long to figure it out is disturbing tho. This is apparently not new behavior by the police mob, err department there.
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The only thing that will calm things down in Ferguson will be replacing the police chief with somebody trustworthy. I don’t know anything about the St. Louis County prosecutor, but if the locals feel any doubt about his integrity, he should be removed from the case–that is if the state of Missouri has any interest in reestablishing peace and order in Ferguson.
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Hmm…Then why did you and most of the Dems vote against Alan Grayson’s attempt to cut military weapons going to cops ? Did leadership explain to you we can’t upset the defense contractors and police unions ? http://tinyurl.com/pqyyzv4
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From your link:
The most important reason lawmakers might have voted against Grayson’s amendment, however, and they did so in droves (355 said no; 62 said yes — once it finally came to a vote after a failed bid), is that they tend to back anything that sends free federal equipment to cash-strapped locals. That made the Department of Homeland Security’s grant programs for first responders to buy equipment to respond to terrorist attacks so popular for so long, even amid questions about wasteful spending.
Look at the statements from the lawmakers themselves about why they opposed Grayson’s amendment.
“There are many reasons why lawmakers support or oppose bills,” Newman said. “But the correlation between defense industry money and their votes shows is that it’s not only about constituent interests.”
Of course, that vote happened weeks before Ferguson and police militarization were in the headlines, and lawmakers in the debate praised how responsibly the surplus equipment was being used. With the topic now in the spotlight, the level and tenor of constituent interest (and lawmakers’ viewpoints on the program) might have shifted as well.
“Congress established this program out of real concern that local law enforcement agencies were literally outgunned by drug criminals,” Levin said in a news release Friday. “We intended this equipment to keep police officers and their communities safe from heavily armed drug gangs and terrorist incidents. Before the defense authorization bill comes to the Senate floor, we will review this program to determine if equipment provided by the Defense Department is being used as intended.”
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“Rep. Lacy Clay (D-MO), who represents Ferguson, Mo., on Saturday said that he doesn’t trust
the Ferguson police to conduct a fair investigation into the death of
Michael Brown, the black teen who was shot by a police officer.”
Well, thanks for stating the obvious. Waddya suggest for an encore??
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I came across a 61 year old study of police brutality that is still relevant today. The study, “Violence and the Police,” was part of a PhD dissertation by William A. Westley and published in the American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 59, No. 1 (Jul., 1953), pp. 34-41. This paper focuses on how police come to legitimize their illegal use of violence on the citizens they are to protect.
While Westley does not identify the city, he describes it as “a municipal police department in an industrial city of approximately one hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants.”
One important factor is that recognition and promotions come from making lots of arrests, not from maintaining the peace. In Westley’s words, “Patrolmen feel that little credit is forthcoming from a clean beat (a crimeless beat), while a number of good arrests really stands our on the record. To a great extent this is actually the case, since a good arrest results in good newspaper publicity, and the policemen who made many “good pinches’” has prestige among his colleagues.”
There are strong pressures to solve “big crimes.” As one patrolman told Westley, “If it is a big case and there is a lot of pressure on you and they tell you you can’t go home until the case is finished, than naturally you are going to lose your patients.”
And when abuse helps solve a crime, police adopt an “ends justify the means” mentality. Another officer explained to Westley, “There is a case I remember of four Negroes who held up a filling station. We got a description of them and picked them up. Then we took them down to the station and really worked them over. I guess that everybody that came into the station that night had a hand in it, and they were in pretty bad shape. Do you think that sounds cruel? Well, you know what we got out of it? We broke a case in ------. There was a mob of twenty guys, burglars and stick-up men, and eighteen of them are in the pen now. Sometimes you have to get rough with them, see. The way I figure it is, if you can get a clue that a man is a pro and if he won’t cooperate, tell you what you want to know, it is justified to rough him up a little, up to a point. You know how it is. You feel that the end justifies the means.”
There is also a feeling that the courts often let the guilty go free or off with a lenient sentence. As one rookie policeman told Westley, “One of the older men advised me that if the courts didn’t punish a man we should.”
A most revealing bit of data from this study is the question the police answered about when the use of force was legitimate. The wording of the question was, “When do you think a policemen is justified in roughing a man up?” There responses were:
37%Â Disrespect for police
23%Â When impossible to avoid
19%Â To obtain information
 8% To make an arrest
 7% For the hardened criminal
 3% When you know the man is guilty
 3% For sex criminals
Other than “when impossible to avoid” and “to make an arrest” the other categories are not legally justified reasons to “rough someone up.”
The number one justification, a justification over a third of the police legitimized had nothing to do with criminal behavior. After reading the eyewitness reports of Michael Brown’s killing, that might was been what set off officer Darren Wilson. Apparently, Mr. Brown was pulling away from Wilson’s grasp. When he got free, he turned his back on Wilson and walked away. That is when Wilson got out of his patrol car and shot at Brown.
Officer Wilson didn’t follow the advice of one policeman in Westley’s study about how to rough up people who show disrespect, “If there is any slight resistance, you can go all out on him. You shouldn’t do it in the street though. Wait until you are in the squad car.”
The Michael Brown killing is just one of many police killings and beatings of black citizens that have been highlighted in recent weeks. One Ferguson officer was caught on video calling the black protestors “F-ing animals.” But police prejudice is not new. Here are comments from three different policemen in Westley’s study.
“The colored people understand one thing. The policeman is the law, and he is going to treat you rough and that’s the way you have to treat them. Personally, I don’t think the colored are trying to help themselves one bit. If you don’t treat them rough, they will sit right on top of your head.”
“You can’t ask them a question and get an answer that is not a lie. In the South Side the only way to walk into a tavern is to walk in swaggering as if you own the place and if somebody is standing in your way give him an elbow and push him aside.”
“In the good districts you appeal to people’s judgement and explain the law to them. In the South Side the only way is to appear like you are the boss.”
Westley concludes that these attitudes and behaviors exist in part because of the unique nature of the police officers’ job requirements. As a low paying and low status job, this is one way to “improve their social status” both in a psychological sense and for career advancement. The get tough attitude commands some degree of deference from a public fearful of being roughed up. And as noted above, promotions and status within the occupation are based largely on arrests.
For more up to date examples, read Matt Taibbi’s “The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap.”
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Krusher, lots of local folk there have zero confidence in the present set of elected officials esp. the police chief and county prosecutor…
For evidence I submit the following: the cop who shot Brown was hustled out of town and remained unnamed for days, a smear campaign was begun by the chief on the Brown kid by releasing a video the DOJ told him not to release knowing it would taint any jury pool, and finally the chief talked up an award the shooter cop got 6 months ago. Taken together this is a campaign by the FPD to cover their collective asses. And I haven’t even mentioned yet the heavy handed suppression tactics on those initial 3-4 nights.
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And rightfully so. Every story I’ve read regarding this case seems to indicate that the police were more interested in covering things up than doing their jobs.
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No matter the reason for Michael Brown’s death it does’t change what his character was. We can rally against police killing of an unarmed man and demand justice for that, but let’s not pretend that Michael Brown is someone to be lionized. According to reports he had a pretty extensive juvenile record… and if the video from the convenience store actually show him stealing and pushing around a man 1/2 his size, then this isn’t a choir boy. And while I am not going to defend the officer involved in this, when people purposefully aggravate a situation with the police they are ALWAYS going to come out on the losing end. Too bad this kid didn’t learn that lesson before he as shot.
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Typical strawman arguments, Beej; you really are a bore, you know that? Nobody has “lionized” Brown. If you’ve really seen juvenile records according to your wing-nut “reports” let’s see a link to reliable source, because they’re traditionally confidential. And “purposefully aggravate a situation with the police” is typical B.S. from you because that’s what you’re all about. You weren’t there and you don’t know.
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The officer didn’t know any of that when he initially confronted the kid for jaywalking.
Considering the timing of events I’m beginning to have serious doubts that the officer even heard the radio call about a robbery before eventually backing up and getting into an altercation.
There will be a transcript of any radio call with a time stamp. The time stamp on the video is 11:54, Brown was dead by 12:04.
Choir boys don’t usually steal cigars but cigar thieves don’t usually try to wrestle a police officer’s gun away from him either.
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My late father-in-law who died in the early 1970’s was a Boston cop in the 1920’s. He told me that when it came to murder, the task was to pin it on somebody – anybody – preferably some poor, dumb bastard – white, black or “guinea”.
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“…We know we won’t get a fair shake there…”
Haven’t yet, apparently.
I guess black’s 2/3rds majority can’t overcome one conservative any better than a majority Democratic Senate can get past one career Republican bureaucrat.
America used to be about majority rule, not the conservative mission.
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Which has nothing to do with Michael Brown’s death. The manner in which the police view and treat African Americans and the militarization of police forces are two distinct issues.
Michael Brown would still have been shot and killed if the FPD were armed only with revolvers.
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I had three shocks today.
I lunched at a deli, faintly becoming aware of the song playing on the sound system. I could barely hear it, but. Is that…? Is that really…? A women’s voice behind me said the band’s name.
I turned around, and looked into the eyes of a black woman about my age on the far bench of the booth behind me. I said, “I was wondering the exact same thing!” Her husband, gray at the temples and sporting a baseball cap, echoed, “Me too,” as he twisted to look back at me and grin in simultaneous realization.
That was the third surprise.
The first was that this song would be on a “Muzak” system to begin with – pardon the oldster term. The second was that a deli would be playing such a song. And the third was the shock that old black people know really good, esoteric Grateful Dead songs.
Back to the 60s again.
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Perfect description of Beej.
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In all my experiences with the police over the years, the police think they are ALWAYS in the right.
And if it takes a bullet in your head to prove it, so be it.