Again, the purpose of these columns is not to offer well-researched treatises. I'm not a lawyer, neither prosecutor nor defense attorney, and I don't feel like doing that based on contradictory evidence that is presented by both sides of the media divide.
So why did the people of Ferguson, and indeed, of many around the country, react so intensely to this situation, this shooting of a young black man by a police officer?
Because it's the pattern, man.
It's happening again and again, all across the country. From statistics I've seen, on average, at least two black men a week are shot down by police. Unarmed black men.
Are all the African American males shot down as pure as the driven snow? No. They're HUMAN BEINGS. Of any race/ethnicity, the number of saints available to shoot are pretty darn limited.
The Ferguson shooting of Michael Brown does not look good. It smacks of over-aggression, fear and hyper reaction. Whatever Michael Brown did or not, he probably didn't deserve to be pursued and shot at repeatedly.
As painful as it is, there is a process that has to be gone through. You can't arrest people based on a mob's desire (the overwhelming number of whom are protesting peacefully - the kind of civic protest we actually praise when it occurs in other countries). The number of morons looting are small but obnoxious, but it doesn't help when police tactics are centered on disrupting peaceful protest and assaulting the press.
Yes, there MUST be due process. But make no mistake. Many of us, including myself, feel that regardless of what this officer did or did not do, he won't be found guilty. He won't be punished at all, or very severely. Because we have learned the hard way that that is the pattern, man. White cops virtually never go to prison for shooting black civilians.
UPDATE: November 26, 2014. The Grand Jury issued no indictments. It was carefully steered to that conclusion by a prosecutor who was acting more as Darren Wilson's defense attorney. The whole proceeding was designed to give him cover for what he wanted to do in the first place.
Never is the gap and divide in our media coverage more apparent than in the cases of these kinds of crimes and actions.
One media focuses on the victim and what their family and community are going through, and the nobility of the protestors (MSNBC, Al Jazeera for examples).
Another media concentrates on defending the shooter and portraying the protesters as rabid looters, animals that are ready to attack decent civilization everywhere (Fox News, Newsmax as examples). You know...the opposite of the way they treated the Bundy defenders, who had assault weapons trained at Federal officers, and were ready to put women and children in harm's way, hoping they could get a story out of feds killing innocents.
It's the pattern, man.
It happens over and over again. And the dominant conservative media always handles it the same way.
Another African American man was gunned down in St. Louis just a few days ago. Listening to the chief of police, it sounded like a semi-justified killing, if a tad over-aggressive. Okay, I'll buy that. He was wielding a knife and was close to the officers. But then the footage comes out, and blows holes in the basic story the officers presented. The victim was farther away and his hands were down. Not even this case was as clear cut as it was made to initially sound.
I found a compilation of headlines that was stunning in its contrast. How white KILLERS are headlined differently than black victims. The white killer is often portrayed as a nice person, whom nobody is quite sure how he could have done the things he did.
Examples of headlines about white killers:
Santa Barbara shooting: Suspect was 'soft-spoken, polite, a gentleman', ex-principal says - Whitaker Daily News
Ohio shooting suspect, T. J. Lane, described as fine person - Associated press
Examples of headlines about black victims:
Police: Slain Lakeland Teen Had Been Shot Before; Death Possibly Drug-Related - the Ledger
Trayvon Martin was Suspended Three times from School - NBC News.
That is just the tip of the iceberg in the contrast between headlines.
Consider this.
Cousin Bubba, the slightly wild white son of the local well known Furniture Store magnate, on some kind of high, walks out of a convenience store with an energy drink and a pack of Twinkies he did not pay for. The police confront him only to find out Bubba has a knife. Do you think their instinct is to shoot him dead? Do you?
I don't think so.
Thank you, Tom. Very well said. And something I might add. Even if Cousin Bubba mouthed off and the officer confronting him was livid and felt the impulse to shut Cousin Bubba up for good, would he? No. He might wave his gun and scare the @#$%!!! out of Cousin Bubba, but shoot him - shoot, to kill him? Never in a thousand years.
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