There was no trial.
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In my humble opinion, thereâs nothing quite like the mentality of Missouri, especially in the St. Louis area. For some, whatever the opinion is, it is set in concrete and it is highly intolerant of alternative opinions. When I visit I feel like I am entering a giant brain cramp. St. Louisans frequently self segregate, not just by race or class, but by opinion, outlook, point of view. In St. Louis people frequently ask you what school you went to: they mean what High School - this tells them a lot about you. How they interact with you begins with that. Theyâll throttle back the intimacy based upon that⌠If you werenât born there, you will be viewed as a foreigner by some for decades - and the level of intimacy scaled back accordingly.
If you move to St. Louis, your friends will be others who have recently moved there, until you have lived there at least 4 years.
You might think that many St. Louisans are racist, but its even more parochial, more narrow than that, in my view. I lived there from the time I was 5 (the entire time of my gradeschool and high school years I often felt like I was a foreigner) until I went to University, then came back 5 years later and lived there another 20 years, with a couple of 2 year breaks and traveled frequently as a consultant. I havenât lived there since October 2006. On a certain level they are very polite and kind. But on another level, some St. Louisans wonât interact with you if you are from outside their neighborhood, their parish, their clan, suburb, etc⌠It might just be the most parochial place on earth, but I did extensive consulting work through out Ohio, and most of Ohio south of the Great Lakes (by about 75 miles) seems to be very culturally similar to St. Louisans: I thought of it as I-70 corridor culture - settle mostly by Germans in the 1840s - From Wheeling West Virginia to past St. Louis. The area of the Great Lakes was settled differently.
I was a geography major and history fanatic. All my life I wanted to visit Europe. I could never find a friend who was the least bit interested in going. I ended up making several trips on my own. But of course it is more parochial than that. I had a boss who lived in West St. Louis County (rather posh), who wouldnât go with me to call on a business in North St. Louis County (where Ferguson is located). Some of these people never leave West County to go down town, and would never go if it wasnât for the Cardinals, let alone leave the town, let alone leave the state, let alone leave the country: âwhy would you want to do that?â is the words or vibe I used to get. Why would you want to go to Europe?
Unfortunately for me I miss the familiarity of being there, all my childhood memories, growing, with my brothers, sister, parents, family, but when I go back I canât stand the brain cramp i run into, that I feel. I find it suffocating. Canât live with it, canât live without it.
Itâs worth pointing out that itâs not all like this, and not all bad. First of all Iâve said âsomeâ people, not all, but the behavior I described here is not untypical. Also, St. Louisanâs are famous for their charity, on a per capita basis, Iâve heard it said they give more generously than most. Two people can be standing next to each other, one has a parochial framing of the world, the other might not, but you have no way of knowing who does, who doesnât, whether they are aware of it (probably not), and so on. Parochial St. Louisans donât want to deal with stuff out side their immediate vicinity, because they never have, they lack the skills to do so. They expect the police to do that.
Parochialism means that people are basically ignorant of what goes on outside their immediate vicinity. I think in St. Louis, that ignorance of what goes on outside oneâs immediate vicinity, can lead to fear of whatâs out there beyond oneâs immediate vicinity. St. Louis, then, expect the Police to protect them from some of that. They donât want to deal with that, they donât want to look at it, they just want the police to stand between them and that. Putting a policeman on trial then would create a fundamental problem affecting some of these peoples mentality and sense of security. I wonder if the Prosecutor comes from this cultural milieu in St. Louis. If so, putting a policeman on trial fundamentally undermines St. Louis parochialism. Many are fundamentally unequipped, unskilled to transcend parochialism and would vehemently resist doing so. They feel safe in their own world. Figuring out the outside their parochial world is too much work at best and frightening at worse. They are not against justice they just donât want to deal with what is outside their vicinity. The violence in Ferguson is only going to harden and intensify the parochial instinct. This also will only intensify reliance upon the police to sustain parochialism which means it makes it less likely that police will be held accountable for misuse of power. Iâm still trying to characterize how St. Louis is different than the rest of the nation and itâs race problem is different than the rest of the nation. It also means that one can assume that blacks in St. Louis have a much rougher go in transcending the head wind racism as they make their way through life, in education, their careers, and other aspects of life. One friend of mine in St. Louis said the only time a typical St. Louis is disarmed by a black is if they are wearing a uniform - police, fireman, postman, night watchman, whatever, it signals something to them, and if not in a uniform, then in a suit, but thatâs less disarming than a uniform - he was just joking, making fun of St. Louisan racism at the time, but I think thereâs an element of truth in it. Itâs hard to get you armâs around. I think all of this should result in a level of anger in the black community greater than outside of St. Louis, because frankly its more rigid than what you might find in, say in Alabama, where racism is the only issue. Parochialism is vastly more complex issue.
I donât have any hard facts or anything, this is just how St. Louis has always struck me. My family was originally from Chicago and there was definitely a massively different vibe between the two cities, one being much more inviting and inclusive and the other being the opposite of that.
I donât know if others familiar with St. Louis would agree with my assessment or if any of this helps you to make sense of what you hear and see coming out of St. Louis now. On the surface St. Louis looks like any other Midwestern city. Iâm telling you it is not. Below the surface St. Louis is different, it is distinct. (I suspect that Cincinnati is quite similar because it was settle by the same people at the same time, and Cincinnati is famous for its intransigent conservativism).
I donât think the events in St. Louis are identical to those from the South, or for instance, Florida. The events in St. Louis are not driven so much by historical racism as they are by historical parochialism, of which race is only one manifestation of parochialism. St. Louis has some big, big problems regarding race, but they are different than the rest of the country, I think, because those problems are embedded inside a bigger condition of parochialism that, if race differentiation did not exist, people would not think of as a problem. St. Louis has strong and extensive amount of parochialism and no one in St. Louis would think that is a problem, that just happens to be how they are. But racism is a problem, but in St. Louis racism -which is a problem- is inside of parochialism which isnât a problem, and you canât fix the race problem without eliminating the parochialism and getting rid of that is kind of like trying to take Confucianism out of East Asia societies. I think that parochialism is a result of the Germanâs that came in the 1840s and 1850s. I donât think the racism in the South or other parts of the country is quite like it is in St. Louis. I would suggest that the mentality is more rigid in St. Louis than in the south, but not for reasons of race, but for reasons of parochialism, of which race is only one minor manifestation, and there is not sense that parochialism is an evil, but racism is. In other parts of the country you can solve racism without having to deal with parochialism, but in St. Louis you canât solve the manifestations of racism without solving parochailism and I donât think anyone acknowledges parochialism (if you live inside it, you are unaware that your thinking is framed by it - meaning many St. Louisans who are parochial donât even know that they are, or that it is bad for some reason), let alone acknowledges parochialism as a problem.
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More like he was working over time not to get an indictment. He needed to recuse himself as everyone said.
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The public must demand that the police wear body cameras. We have the technology to provide video documentation whenever deadly force is used, itâs unconscionable that we donât require it. When you consider the total cost of just one incident in Ferguson, we could have equipped countless police departments with bodycams instead.
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I presume the Grand Jury were only told what they needed to know to let Wilson off .
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Prosecutors as a rule like to have high conviction rates, but prosecuting cops for killing black teenage boys may be a bridge too far.
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Probably his name was picked from the hat with the threat that if you blow this, you are fired. So he now keeps his job for not doing his job.
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Informed: I too am a career (retired, state) prosecutor, and yes, the DAâs press conference was unusual. That said, the transcript of Wilsonâs testimony, all 80 pages, is available. http://i.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2014/images/11/24/darren-wilson-testimony-snippet.pdf
He testified Brown came into the car and punched him and then, when the officer unholstered his weapon, (and still in the vehicle) Brown grabbed it and twisted it toward the officer. Photos show injury to Wilsonâs face.
I have not yet found the lab reports to determine if Brownâs DNA is on the weapon. Although regional differences vary, I believe Brownâs behavior would be a death wish in most communities, regardless of his race. If this incident results in all cops wearing body video cameras it will be a step forward⌠toward a more perfect union. Based on Wilsonâs testimony, if it is to be believed, I doubt the Brown family will prevail in a wrongful death action. I did find it curious that according to Wilson, their STOP is to not require an officer to sit down and write a report, immediately following an incident. Thatâs strange.
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I am still not clear on this pointâŚ
Did that grand jury hear from any of the 6âŚ7âŚ8⌠eyewitness who came forward right after it happened,all with the same story. That Micheal Brown had his hands up,and was trying to surrender when he was shot dead. Some of them even had audio,and video tape of the incident. If not this the worst corruption,and miscarriage of justice I have ever seen in my life.
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They heard from all witnesses, and as stated many of them changed their stories after forensic evidence was released, and may said they actually did not see what happened, but that they just repeated what they heard. Meanwhile there are several witnesses who never changed their stories and back up Wilsonâs account. WP had also reported they were black. ALL of this testimony will be released, and any of the witnesses who gave bogus stories are welcome to be interviewed by the media.
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clearly a robbery. not justified to shoot the kid but this was a strong-arm shoplifting robbery.
ââŚA total of 12 shots were firedâŚâ
At an unarmed boy, who was innocent.
Clearly unclearâŚ
Clearly only to those with an agenda
I understand your post. I, too, grew up in a very parochial city â Mobile, AL â and have similar feelings about it. The mindset of my high school facebook friends is so narrow, as if they havenât gone out to see any of the world. And their vilification of both Barack and Michelle Obama reveals how deeply racist they are.
Well, I found the lab report re: DNA on the weapon, but now, I canât decipher itâŚIf there are any DNA analysts out there, please post. The sample is Item # Q19. Thanks.
I saw the transcript. It certainly did not read like an examination of someone a prosecutor is attempting to indict. None of the officerâs answers were challenged by the prosecutor. All of the questions were either opened-ended questions, inviting the officer to tell his story as a narrative, or the questions were leading, suggesting to the officer what answer he should give. In your experience, did that read like any prosecutorial examination of the target of an indictment?
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The prosecutor said many things that made it clear that he was skewing the story to back up the results he got. One was when he said that Mike Brown grabbed a handful of cigarellos. The entire world saw exactly what he grabbed. He never wanted an indictment and he decided there should not be one from the beginning. That much is clear. So what is true is still completely unknown because we have no reason to trust the results of this grand jury. I am furious with the prosecutor for presenting this so late in the evening and for grandstanding the way he did which just further enraged so many of us. I have to believe that it was deliberate but I suppose he could really just be that ignorant.
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12 people from Ferguson made this decision no one else they were free do what they wanted and justice was served like it or not
Do you think Brown punched the police officer in the head while the officer was still in his car?