Overdue thoughts on Ferguson

On the night the grand jury of Ferguson made its decision, everyone’s first course of action was to leap to their laptop screens. I, too, was tempted to jump on the bandwagon, but I stopped myself. Did I really have enough information to make an informed conclusion? For months, public opinion has been based on speculation whereas only the jury had been granted access to structural evidence. As much as I disagreed with the final decision, I had to wonder: could it be that something brought up in court had turned the tables? I didn’t feel comfortable indiscriminately *liking* all of the profound statuses that popped up on my newsfeed (many of which were just paraphrases of one another) -- not because I had any qualms about the value of black lives, but because I did not want to risk discrediting such an important piece of history by being ignorant on the subject matter. There was simply no moral prerogative I could expect to gain from tagging along with the “hashtag advocacy” culture.

In light of the Garner and Brown cases I began to wonder why some white-on-black police brutality cases get more exposure than others, and though I wasn’t really able to come to a definitive conclusion, I can say this: the unfortunate and unwarranted fate of Michael Brown did receive a lot of attention because of the racially charged context, but it was not a respective, isolated episode -- his death marked the boiling point for a population’s intolerance for systematic racism. In other words, I don’t think the shooting necessarily set the bomb, rather, it detonated it. I have to be honest, hearing my classmates repeatedly associate Bigger Thomas sympathies with the situation made me cringe. To some extent, I agree with people who say that we should be giving people like Michael Brown the benefit of the doubt by trying to understand their mindset rather than immediately assigning them a victim complex. Unfortunately, there are people who severely butcher this rationale by going as far as frivolously blaming the dead:

Trayvon Martin should not have been wearing a hoodie.

Michael Brown shouldn’t have stolen Cigarillos.

Eric Garner shouldn’t have been selling loose cigarettes.

As useful it is to take Ferguson as a teaching experience on the continued pervasiveness of systematic racism, I think it’s important for us to distinguish that aspect from the second main protest that has emerged from this incident: the increased militarization of police. To encapsulate this sentiment, I present you with Bob McManus, a bold columnist from the New York Post who commented: “Eric Garner and Michael Brown had much in common, not the least of which was this: On the last day of their lives, they made bad decisions. Epically bad decisions. Each broke the law — petty offenses, to be sure, but sufficient to attract the attention of the police. And then — tragically, stupidly, fatally, inexplicably — each fought the law.” REALLY? Are we supposed to passively condone police abuse of power? Having some respect for differing opinions, I had assumed the Ferguson controversy was a matter of conflicting interpretations of evidence and witness accounts. Come to find out, overt negligence of the Ferguson law enforcement played a significant role in why there are so many holes in the story. Not only did the investigators fail to recover fingerprints on the weapon, but Wilson washed away blood evidence, and the medical examiner did not take any pictures of the body because his camera apparently ran out of battery -- the list goes on. The existence of these critical pieces of evidence could have made all the difference.

Law enforcement continued to disappoint me with their response to civilian protests. Demonstrations across the board from peaceful to violent were met by officers armed in military-grade riot gear, which if you ask me, is very poor strategy in easing the public’s unrest and distrust in law enforcement. If you dress in riot gear, you’re more likely to engage in one, and if you throw in some tear gas (plural chemical equivalent to the chokehold, anyone?), you’re just inviting confrontation. As expected, the protesters returned the crackdown with more aggression, sparking a relentless back and forth cycle that has done nothing but erode the police force’s reputation. Apparently, the Ferguson police department basically managed to flag the area off as a temporary no-fly zone, allegedly because they “feared their aircraft would be shot at”, privately because they didn’t want any news helicopters hovering over any violent protests.