At 2:26am GMT on Tuesday 25th November, a white man stood, calm-faced, at a lectern and delivered the news the whole country had been dreading. Darren Wilson, the Ferguson, Missouri police officer, who in August this year, shot and killed unarmed teenager Michael Brown was not charged for his offence.
The fireworks started almost immediately. Cop cars set on fire, stores looted, gunshots ringing out. Riots stated – at least according to some.
But, what is a riot? The word is unfairly negative and cynical as, in it’s very nature, it suggests a rising up at the powers that be. If that is the case – who could blame them? When a member of a community gets shot by a man supposed to be protecting them – how should the community react? Angrily? Peacefully? Does it really matter?
Well, if the St Louis Police department is anything to go by, then neither. They cannot see any legitimate reason for them to take any issue at all (aside from the fact they they get to wear all their cool new Riot Gear!) In fact, as they made very clear, the people of Ferguson were very naughty last night, and they are very disappointed.
The use of riot gear is a clever tactic from the Ferguson police. While the protests are more symbolic of systemic distrust than truly violent, the use of excessive police force makes them seem far worse than they might be with no police intervention. The idea that an unarmed man should be shot dead and those who fight for his justice should be criminalised by those who committed the offence, is a twisted logic indeed.
The Ferguson unrest shows a growing resentment at the police force as well as the huge distrust and suspicion at the legal system. Darren Wilson not being charged means he will not get a trial. In any situation a man who has shot dead another surely deserves at the very least to go to court?
This follows the arrest this morning of ‘Cop-watcher’ David Whitt, a Ferguson resident who had been teaching the community how to safely and legally monitor local police activities. He was arrested for obstructing traffic. It is this behaviour which is most frightening to the public. This arrest is clearly suspect at the very least. Yet even knowing this, the public have little chance of enforcing change. It is how it is, as many would say. The cops are the cops, don’t bother them and they wont bother you.
But they shouldn’t be bothering us. They should, in fact, be doing the opposite. They should be helping and protecting us. Surely, when a person becomes a policeman and inherits a huge amount of power and authority, they should be held to an infinitely higher level of responsibility that the average person. So surely, when Darren Wilson shot a member of the community he was supposed to be protecting, he should have been scrutinised to the greatest possible extent and been tried in a public trial. Yet that didn’t happen and thus, in a nutshell, the American people’s mistrust of the police.
There is another part of this case. That is, why did the police officer choose to kill Michael Brown? He is a highly trained professional, he would have been under far less scrutiny if he had aimed for his leg, brought him down and made the arrest, especially if, as reports suggest, Brown was running away from him.
The answer, I believe, lies at the heart of people’s distrust of the US legal system. It is perfectly summed up by this post on the Uber drivers network – uberpeople.net [sic]:
I carry a S&W Model 60 in .357 Magnum. 5-shot, 2-1/4″ revolver. Should be 100% legal in California. Very reliable, packs a huge punch and is very concealable and safe and simple to use. I would also recommend never shooting to wound. Always shoot to kill. This is because self defense generally requires a fear of your life or great personal injury. For this reason, people who fire warning shots go to prison because the prosecutors claim if they had sufficient fear, they would shoot to kill because that is their only option.
The reply from another forum member read simply [sic]: “Good Point, Shoot to Kill. Leave no witnesses, stay out of Jail.”.
Scarily, it is not inconceivable to imagine this exact thought going through Wilson’s head before he opened fire. Having decided to take the shot, and knowing that there were no cameras on him, the few people on the street would no doubt try to testify, but as young black teenagers, their testimony would likely be taken with more than a pinch of salt. Thus it leaves him with the choice of shooting the man in the leg and having to face his statements and having a living opposition to police brutality, or shooting him dead, knowing that there was unlikely to be enough evidence to convict in the current US legal system.
Whether Wilson was right or wrong still remains largely unknown. Yet, it is interesting the lengths that the Ferguson police went to sully Brown’s name. First, a week later, a CCTV video was released showing a man claimed to be Brown shoplifting. While entirely irrelevant to the case, once out in the public sphere, the knowledge, for some consciously, others subconsciously, coloured their perception of Brown. Similarly, weeks later, reports came in saying a post mortem had shown traces of marijuana in his system.
And so protests continue in Ferguson. Throughout History, we have been shown again and again that the only sure fire way to stop the status-quo is by taking a stand. In Ferguson, they are standing against the police. Many others around the country stand with them.
