Opinion

Opinion and analysis about the Michael Brown shooting and the Ferguson riots

Profound sadness can only begin to summarize the indescribable heartache rippling across the country in the wake of two grand juries deciding not to indict the two police officers in the killings of unarmed African-American men, Michael Brown and Eric Garner. But undaunted typifies the resolve of the NAACP and millions across the world who will not allow these tragic events to dissuade us from pursuing justice. 
I learned that a grand jury declined to indict NYPD Officer Daniel Pantaleo in the Garner case while on our 134-mile "Journey for Justice" from Ferguson to Jefferson City, Missouri. At that point, our marchers were trudging up icy hills with boots often filled with bloody and blistered feet. 
For seven days, from sunup to sundown, protesters joined us as we marched through harsh weather for the cause of justice. We called for reforms of police practice and culture across the country. 
Racial epithets were thrown our way from passersby, but we marched. A mob shattered the window of our support bus after some threatened to shoot us, yet we continued. And after marching 134 miles, we were in no way tired. 
In no way was our trek from Ferguson to Jefferson City designed to be a solution. It was a continuation of the many demonstrations designed to make clear to the country and the world that the NAACP and our allies will not stand down until we see systemic change, accountability and justice in cases of police misconduct. 
That march is completed, but we as a nation must continue to march forward. We march to arrive at a day when my two teenage sons and black men and women across this nation will be judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin. We march forward to establish a national ban on racial profiling and an end to the overaggressive "broken windows"-style of policing that has become common in communities of color. We press on to achieve a criminal justice system that holds officers accountable for their misconduct and strengthens police departments to work with residents to keep all communities safe. 
Today young black men are 21 times as likely as their white peers to be killed by police, according to the news organization ProPublica, and about 1 in 4 young black men said he had been treated unfairly in dealings with the police, according to a Gallup poll. 
The NAACP, throughout its 105-year history, has stood at the forefront of combating policies and practices that undermine the civil and human rights of law-abiding people. In fact, it was founded to combat lynching, which was often done by law enforcement officials aided by mobs. 
Having nearly ended lynching in the last century, we can and must end profiling in this century. Since our inception, black lives have mattered. Indeed all lives matter. As the NAACP "Born Suspect" report on stop-and-frisk abuses shows, profiling is based not only on race, but also religion, sexual orientation and ethnicity -- making it all the more morally and legally unacceptable. 
As we approach a new year, we have a resolve to move forward and we need your help. Join us in calling on our local, state and federal elected leaders to advance systemic reform and fundamental change in how policing is conducted throughout our communities, which includes requiring police to use body cameras, revising the equipping of police with military hardware, promoting diversity on the force and ending the use of major force in cases involving minor offenses. 
While we are frustrated and deeply disappointed, we know that these grand jury decisions do not mean crimes were not committed in Staten Island or in Ferguson, and it does not mean we are done fighting. 
Cornell William Brooks is president and chief executive of the NAACP.

Commentary

OPBRO12

Undaunted, we march forward to demand police reforms

Opinion: We march to demand police reforms

NAACP Cropped

As the curtain closes on the latest episode of "Ferguson," the media series, it is fair to wonder whether events might not have spiraled out of control to the extent they did had the media settled on another topic. 
Ebola, say. Remember that one? 
I'm not the first to wonder or comment on the media's role in contributing to events, but some further clarifications seem warranted in this case. 
First, as always bears repeating, The Media are neither the same animal nor equal. Think Tom Brokaw and Al Sharpton. Or, TMZ and "60 Minutes." 
In practical terms, the differences are obvious: People in print media observe and relay what they have witnessed, leaving readers to visualize with their own intellectual resources. It's little wonder so few still read anything longer than a tweet. Why exert oneself when tasty news niblets are just a tap and a scroll away? 
And which do you suppose captures the attention of rioters, looters and grandstanders? Certainly not the guy scribbling on a skinny notebook. 
Thus, when we talk about media, we're really talking about television. To the extent that people clown, plunder or pillage for attention, media presence does make a difference. Cameras not only capture the action but in some cases may well prompt the action. This doesn't mean the media shouldn't be there -- or that media folks really want things to go awry to spike ratings, as some have suggested. 
Except, of course, some do. A bad day in America is a good day in the newsroom. Thus it has always been and shall be. The symbiotic relationship between viewer and the viewed makes it so. What would you rather watch, after all? A congressman standing alone in the House chamber, talking to himself and a C-SPAN camera, or "Lethal Weapon"? 
Still, for the most part, producers and reporters are doing their jobs, trying to bring up-to-date information to the public about events and issues that people are most likely to care about. The first person to contract Ebola in the U.S. was of paramount interest and entered into every sentient individual's conversation for weeks. It deserved wall-to-wall coverage. 
But did Ferguson? Acknowledging that race continues to challenge us and that too many unarmed African-Americans have been shot by white police officers -- or, in the case of Trayvon Martin, by a non-officer playing one in the movie in his head -- there is still some muddle to the emphasis placed on Ferguson. 
To what might we attribute it? "Reliable Sources" host Brian Stelter noted the surge in CNN's ratings the night the grand jury announced that no charges would be brought against police officer Darren Wilson in the fatal shooting of Michael Brown. This should come as no surprise. CNN, where I was once employed, always enjoys a ratings spike during breaking news events. 
And, yes, by the time the announcement was made, America tuned in. I happened to be in a restaurant bar when verdict time arrived. The whole place fell silent as patrons assumed their best "Cheers" bar positions and listened raptly. 
Everyone cared! 
Was it because a white police officer fatally shot a black "unarmed teenager," otherwise known as a 6-foot-4, 290-pound adult (though at 18 still a teen), who, the officer told the grand jury, punched the cop through his car window and tried to grab his gun? 
It's a compelling story, to be sure. But the intensity of interest was in no small part driven by certain media outlets and "journalists," such as the agenda-driven Rev. Al, who talked of little else in the months since the August shooting. This relentless coverage, combined with the repeated use of photos showing a much-younger Brown, surely contributed to public contempt toward media. 
Finally, what ultimately happened in Ferguson was but a brief incident compared to the weeks-long preamble of speculation that took place across cable news shows. How many times did you hear show hosts asking guests, "What do you think will happen?" "Do you think Ferguson residents will heed the call for calm?" "How bad do you think it will be?" 
The media may not have caused events to spiral out of control in Ferguson and, to be fair, Sharpton may well have a legitimate role in shining a light on racial injustice. But when activists posing as journalists have television shows through which they stoke passions -- and when certain media decide to magnify issues not in the name of justice but, let's face it, for ratings -- then journalism has a problem. 
And that means America has a problem.

OPPARK03

The Ferguson media circus

Opinion: Not all of the media deserve blame in Ferguson

Reactions to the news that Ferguson, Missouri, police Officer Darren Wilson will not face criminal charges in the death of black teen Michael Brown have once again laid bare America's enduring racial tensions -- but they also have exposed deep and stark political hostilities. We live in a world of two narratives: one left, one right, both polarized and equally simplistic. 
Some on the left see the case as so clear-cut -- the cold-blooded killing of an African-American teen by a racist cop -- that even debating it is wrong. Author and blogger Greta Christina stated upfront that she was not willing to have a "civil debate" on "whether police should be able to shoot unarmed black men with their hands in the air." When a black male reader commented, "I felt the same way until hearing tonight his hands may not have been up and black witnesses said he charged," Christina responded with an unprintable insult and told him she was blocking him from her page. 
Meanwhile, some on the right argue that liberal commentary on Ferguson promotes a dangerous moral relativism in which there is no objective truth, only conflicting perception shaped by race. Syndicated columnist Dennis Prager calls for "moral clarity," arguing for a stark either-or approach: Either the facts show that Wilson is guilty, or they show him to be innocent. 
Unfortunately, short of a video recording, the truth may not be easy to establish. In this case, conflicting and changing eyewitness testimony is a shocking reminder of how subjective accounts of reality often are. We still don't know for certain who initiated the struggle between Brown and Wilson. Wilson's claim that he feared for his life at the hands of an angry, adrenaline-powered Brown is itself a matter of subjective -- and, many say, racially biased -- perception. 
The underlying issues of crime, race and police behavior are even more complex. Young black males indisputably commit violent crime at higher rates than any other demographic, and this plays a role in the dynamic between the police and the black community. But this does not invalidate claims that blacks are harassed by police for no good reason. In Ferguson, in particular, there seems to be a pattern of police using low-income African-Americans as a source of revenue via fines for petty infractions. 
While left-wing rhetoric often amounts to an indictment of whites -- University of Pennsylvania religious studies professor Anthea Butler has described Brown as a sacrifice to the "god of white supremacy" -- conservative rhetoric can skirt dangerously close to assigning collective guilt to blacks. Appearing on "Meet the Press" recently, former Mayor Rudy Giuliani made a legitimate point about the link between police presence in black neighborhoods and high rates of crime; but he crossed a line in telling NBC contributor Michael Eric Dyson, "Why don't you cut it down" and adding that "white police officers wouldn't be there if you weren't killing each other." It's a safe guess that Dyson, a sociology professor at Georgetown University who is African-American, is not killing anyone and cannot contribute to reducing crime. 
The facts in Ferguson, and the facts of race relations in America, do not lend themselves to simple explanations. Unfortunately, our political discourse does not handle nuance well. Polarization can turn ugly, between right-wingers who describe Brown as a thug who deserved to die and left-wingers who gloat over the fact that the wife of the newly married Wilson will have to fear for her life. 
We are a long way from racial and political healing. Common decency would be a good start. 
Cathy Young is a regular contributor to Reason magazine and Real Clear Politics.

Columnists

Cathy Young

OPYOU02

Coarse emotions don't help the Ferguson discussion

Young: Emotions don't help Ferguson debate

nyFERG - cropped

OK, fine. Let's talk about "black on black" crime. 
That, after all, is where the conversation seems to inevitably turn whenever one seeks to engage a conservative on the American habit of shooting unarmed African-American boys and men. So it was exasperating, but nowhere near surprising, to see former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani go there last week on "Meet the Press." 
Asked by NBC host Chuck Todd, during a discussion of the Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson, Missouri, about the fact that African-American communities like that one are often served by snow white police departments, he offered some perfunctory words about the effort to produce more representative cop shops. But then Giuliani took a sharp turn off topic and into the brambles. "I find it very disappointing," he told Todd, "that you're not discussing the fact that 93 percent of blacks in America are killed by other blacks. . . . I would like to see the attention paid to that that you are paying to this." 
There followed a sharp exchange with another panelist, author and professor Michael Eric Dyson, which produced this parting shot from the mayor: "The white police officers wouldn't be there if you weren't killing each other." 
Somehow, he managed not to call Dyson "you people." In nearly every other respect, Giuliani's words reeked of a paternalistic white supremacy unworthy of a former mayor of America's largest city -- or even a sewer worker in its remotest Podunk. But again, this has become the go-to "reasoning" for those on the right -- Sean Hannity, Lou Dobbs, Rush Limbaugh -- when asked to give a d -- -- n about the killings of unarmed black boys and men. 
That formulation is false for multiple reasons. 
In the first place, being concerned over the shooting of unarmed black men hardly precludes being concerned over violence within the African-American community. Giuliani and others suggest a dichotomy where none exists. 
In the second place, they ignore the obvious: When black people commit crimes against black people, they face prosecution, but when police officers (or certain neighborhood watchmen) commit crimes against black people, they face getting off with little if any punishment. 
In the third place, what exactly is "black on black" crime? 
Do black people kill one another? Sure they do. Ninety percent of black murder victims are killed by black assailants. 
But guess what? White people kill one another, too. Eighty-three percent of white victims are killed by white assailants. See, the vast majority of violent crime is committed within -- not between -- racial groups. Crime is a matter of proximity and opportunity. People victimize their own rather than drive across town to victimize somebody else. 
So another term for "black on black" crime is crime. 
But there is crime and there is crime. 
Redlining, loan discrimination and predatory mortgages have stripped generations of wealth from the African-American community. What is that if not robbery? 
The Republican Party practices policies of voter suppression. That's the assault and battery of African-American political rights. 
Mass incarceration criminalizes the very existence of black men and boys. That's the rape of equal justice. 
Unarmed people are killed by those who are purportedly there to protect and serve them and the "just us" system looks the other way. That's the murder of basic human rights. 
It is touching that Giuliani and others are so concerned about black on black crime. But African Americans have also been long oppressed by what might be called "America on black" crime. 
When do you suppose they'll be ready to talk about that?

OPPIT30

Let's talk about 'black on black' crime

Opinion: Let's talk about 'black on black' crime

nyPara28_protest - cropped

I wrote a column on Friday about the riots in Ferguson. It basically said what others have: High crime rates in African-American communities are the problem, so leave the cops alone -- a sentiment I mostly believe. 
But a story my father told his young children kept me from pressing "send." 
It happened at a men's store on Madison Avenue in the 1950s. My father was eyeing jackets on the racks when a black gentleman walked in to do the same. Within seconds, the manager was tailing the man conspicuously. 
My father's a good person. And he has a sharp antenna for the feelings of his fellow man. So he stayed close to the other shopper in the unlikely hope that he might believe the manager was tailing both of them. 
When the manager was called to the register, my father tugged on the man's sleeve and whispered conspiratorially: "I've had it with these jerks" -- as if white people are followed all the time, too. "Tell ya what we do. You put your hands in your pockets like it's a stickup and we rush the register together. Just before we get there, I hit the ground and shout, 'Waste 'em Eddie! Just for laughs. Whaddya say?" 
"What did he say, Daddy? What did he say?!" we children asked. But, alas, we were disappointed. The man thought my father was nuts, justifiably perhaps, and hurriedly left the store. 
Thinking of that reminded me of failing to catch a cab near City Hall in the 1980s. I was with black friends, and vacant cab after cab ignored my outstretched hand. I was obtuse to the reason why -- for about the first dozen cabs. 
Then I thought of the British Virgin Islands, where I worked as a reporter in my 20s. The islands were predominantly black, and I recall feeling a few glaring eyes myself. But I also remember sneaking into a fancy resort to swim on Sundays, and only once being ejected -- the time I brought a black friend. None of the all-black staff dared throw me out when I was solo, even though I'm pretty sure they all suspected me of trespassing. 
I think they thought I might be somebody, or related to a somebody, and they didn't want to risk offending me. They didn't fear that of my friend. 
That's gotta hurt. 
William F. B. O'Reilly is a Republican consultant who worked on the Rob Astorino campaign for governor.

William F. B. O'Reilly

OPORE01

Whites might see racism, but we don't feel it

O'Reilly: Whites might see racism, but we don't feel it

Racism iStock Cropped

When was the last time you heard of a grand jury decision causing a riot? Well . . . never. That's because grand juries are obscure relics of past practice, not designed to bear the full weight of a politically and symbolically important decision like the nonprosecution of police officer Darren Wilson for the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. 
The decision by St. Louis County Chief Prosecutor Robert McCulloch to put the issue neutrally before the grand jury was intended to create a sense of public legitimacy for whatever result followed, and also no doubt to deflect blame from the prosecutor's own exercise of discretion. It failed on both counts - and with good reason. 
The grand jury has its origins in a medieval English practice: the king, through his sheriff, would order a group of people to appear and report to the authorities the combination of rumor and common knowledge concerning who had committed a crime and needed punishing. The classic history of English law describes it this way: "The ancestors of our 'grand jurors' are from the first neither exactly accusers, nor exactly witnesses; they are to give voice to the common repute." The practice developed into an institution that validated accusations and therefore commenced prosecution. In the era when private individuals could bring criminal charges, the grand jury was a useful check on allegations, assuring that they had enough substance to go forward before the accused would be brought to the dock. 
The Founding Fathers believed that grand juries had another use: blocking the government from bringing wildly unpopular prosecutions. In the grips of the republican spirit, the state ratifying conventions insisted on putting the grand jury into the Bill of Rights. That's why the federal government still uses them - and a big reason that roughly half the states use grand juries in some form. 
Since the 18th century, however, things have changed. There are no more private criminal prosecutions. And because the grand jury hears only what prosecutors want it to hear, it no longer functions as a meaningful check on their authority. According to the maxim, prosecutors can indict a ham sandwich if they really want to do it. Protection from wrongful prosecution now belongs to the stage of the jury trial, not the grand jury. 
All this background is necessary to explain why it was so strange for the prosecutors in Ferguson case to announce that they were going to present evidence to the grand jury and then let it make up its own mind. Prosecutors never treat the grand jury that way. They present a case to the grand jury only if they are actively seeking to prosecute - then they show the jury the prosecution's side of the case, and direct the jury to indict if there is probable cause to go forward. 
The St. Louis County prosecutors were trying to be clever, repurposing an ancient institution for the contemporary political situation. They seemed to think that, because the grand jury members are drawn from the public, they would create public validation for whatever outcome the grand jury reached. 
Yet public validation of ordinary jury trials depends on the public having heard the evidence. The Constitution provides that criminal trials be held publicly, precisely so that the citizenry knows what's going on. Grand jury proceedings are held in secret. That must've appealed to St. Louis County prosecutors, who sought to avoid a media circus. But releasing a summary of the grand jury transcripts afterward is a far cry from a public trial. Secret evidence was unlikely to produce public validation - as, in fact, it did not. 
To make matters worse, the American public understands that a jury must convict beyond reasonable doubt, and that as a result, some guilty defendants are inevitably acquitted. We might not always like it, as the Rodney King verdict reminds us. But at least we understand the rules of the game. 
The grand jury, on the other hand, is supposed to present a true bill based on probable cause. The standard is so low that a grand jury refusing to go forward is essentially saying that there was no plausible basis for the case in the first place. 
Not having seen the evidence, we the public unsurprisingly find it shocking that the shooting of an unarmed man by a police officer should not give rise to at least the probability of a crime. 
By bringing the case to the grand jury in this highly unusual way, the prosecutors were also trying to avoid taking responsibility for a decision either to prosecute or not to go forward. It's easy to understand the impulse: Prosecutors would've been criticized for either decision. What could be more appealing than putting the issue to a group of citizens and treating them as a stand-in for the public? This impulse was seriously misguided, as the riots show. The jury is not the polity - it's just a random selection of people who don't bear responsibility for enforcing the law. In the modern era, the job of law enforcement belongs to police and to prosecutors. When the police are under investigation, we need to see the prosecutors making and defending a rational decision on their own. 
Prosecutorial discretion is an enormous power, as President Barack Obama recently demonstrated in another context by his executive order on immigration. To trust prosecutors with this judgment, we need to see them owning the decisions they make. 
Deflecting responsibility to a grand jury can't solve the problem - and in Ferguson, it didn't. 
Noah Feldman, a Bloomberg View columnist, is a professor of constitutional and international law at Harvard University.

OPFELD26

Ferguson prosecutor subverts grand jury's history

Opinion: Grand jury decisions rarely cause riots

nyprotest cropped/mk

The story of America is race. And its bitter fruits are on display again in Ferguson, Missouri. &nbsp; After centuries of grappling with poisonous relations between those of different skin colors, it sometimes feels that we’re no closer to bridging that gaping divide. Race is our country’s core issue, the one big thing we simply can’t resolve, and it’s at the core of so many of our lingering problems — like education, housing and, yes, justice. &nbsp; St. Louis prosecutor Robert McCulloch’s announcement Monday night that a grand jury decided not to indict white police Officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of black teen Michael Brown set off a paroxysm of rage in Ferguson and protests around the country that continued yesterday. Some of the images from Ferguson were sadly familiar — buildings and police cars in flames, tear gas billowing across roiling streets, windows shattered, looters emptying stores. We can, and do, condemn that violence. But we can, and must, understand the context in which it took place. Otherwise, we’ll remain locked in our viper’s nest of distrust and hatred. &nbsp; The truth is that residents in Ferguson were not reacting only to this decision. Nor were protesters in Los Angeles, Atlanta, Oakland and Chicago, nor the marchers who threw fake blood on New York City Police Commissioner William Bratton in Times Square. We view moments like Ferguson through our personal prisms, and for many, those prisms contain events that spawned emotions that still are raw. &nbsp; Millions of black Americans once drank from “colored” fountains and went to “colored” schools. Driving-while-black is still justification for being pulled over. Black men are far more likely to be arrested and sent to prison than white men. And they’re far more likely to be shot by police officers. &nbsp; For many blacks, the decision was another entry in a long ledger stretching from Rodney King to Amadou Diallo to Trayvon Martin. Next up: the Staten Island grand jury looking at the Eric Garner case. &nbsp; McCulloch’s announcement — after an incomprehensible preamble that succeeded only in putting nothing to rest — followed long-standing complaints from residents of mostly-black Ferguson about the way they’ve been treated by their mostly-white police force. Some of the protesting might have played to the dozens of cameras present, and some might have been opportunistic looting, but much of the rage clearly was real. And much had to do with the fact that another police officer would not face any consequences for the death of another black man. &nbsp; The tension was evident even in the face of President Barack Obama, our first black president, as he pleaded for calm. &nbsp; We don’t pretend to know exactly what happened on Aug. 9, or whether the grand jury’s decision was the correct one, or whether Wilson was justified in shooting Brown. Perhaps two ongoing federal Department of Justice investigations can provide more clarity. &nbsp; What we do know is that once again we are reminded of our sad legacy of race relations, and that if we fail to heed this latest lesson and resolve our differences, we’ll be condemned to wallow in them forever.

VPFERG25

Editorial: Race relations – America’s tragic challenge

Editorial: Race relations – our tragic challenge

Ferguson - cropped

Pay close attention. Because if you want to learn how to properly out-slick, crisis-manage and manipulate burgeoning social justice movements, this is how you do it. 
That was the big lesson drawn from the draining weeks of knife-slicing tension. Ferguson just wrote a textbook on how governments can time, script and engineer racially charged grand jury announcements. 
As significant as the no-indict decision itself was, the grand takeaway was how the Missouri state political machine brilliantly managed the highs and lows of verdict expectations. Not only was the process long, but it was one suspiciously bumbling leak after the other. Not only did it string an anxious public along with mythical dates from one week to the next, but media propaganda teased news tickers into a corrupted jurisprudence of lost faith. 
In this masterful, tortuous stretch of peel-the-Band-Aid off slowly, St. Louis County prosecutor Robert McCulloch engineered one of the most effective snow jobs in recent memory. And then launched a smug blame-social-media diatribe that masqueraded as a news conference. He was preachy, finger-wagging, putting folks in their place to pimp the notion that "see, the system does work - now shut up and go home." 
As a result, this became a textbook on how you cut off frustrated people of color at the pass. It's a telling commentary on the state of things that we cynically called the verdict before it officially dropped. We knew it was going to happen. But equally fascinating was how the process jerked the public's chain while shrouded in the fake semblance of unbiased deliberation. The timing betrayed any sense of institutional innocence, from the duration of deliberation, to the leaks to the elaborate state-of-emergency planning. Missouri police and military assets deployed with a no-shots show of force, eager to contain hands-up disruptions before they boiled over. 
Looking at it more closely, peering past the rage of a non-indictment, it all comes into focus. There's little official evidence, but there's a molding bread crumb pile of clues. Any sniffing onlooker could easily believe the verdict was known for some time. That this jury (in the age of TMZ breaches and social media mavens) kept it this tightly wrapped is testament to old-school secrecy. 
There was nothing organic or sudden despite the preachy platitudes about jurors "extremely engaged in the process." It was Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon's nervous dispatch of National Guard assets that seemed to give it away. The late Monday-night primetime, pre-Thanksgiving timing of the announcement seemed professionally mapped for a workday public settling in for football and wings. Many backpacking millennials who would've spent a fall weekend busing to Ferguson are now gearing up for Thanksgiving turkey and table debates with bigoted uncles over sweet potato pie. 
Nor can protesters or any "bad actor" agitators itching for a fight stand outside long enough when much of the country, like Ferguson, is bundling up for a chilly polar vortex. Here we find early winter freeze is law enforcement's best friend with officials watching the thermometer as closely as they were watching protesters. As the grand jury kept deliberating, the weeks turned colder and the embattled St. Louis suburb was consistently cold enough to keep the most committed from risking hypothermia. Just like Occupy Wall Street, cold air gives police a long break from those sweaty summer clashes of August. 
And by the time a burst of warmer spring breezes set in, everything will be the same. Sign-waving activists once fixtures on West Florrisant Avenue will have either moved on to the next badge-of-honor bungee jump or will be absorbed by nonprofit ventures. Others will be deeply immersed in the governor's cleverly constructed "Ferguson Commission," a bureaucratic Venus fly trap laid out as a blue ribbon decoy. 
By this time next year, Ferguson's white mayor and all-white (save one) city council will continue presiding over their majority-black suburban plantation. Economic disparities will persist, and local governments will continue preying on the poor for traffic fines to keep their budget balanced. No recall elections will have ever been mounted - it should've happened by now - and young know-it-all activists lacking political savvy will have missed golden opportunities to field candidates, fund-raise and crush the status quo. 
No one, of course, had expected the tragic killing of Michael Brown to metastasize into an epic post-Civil Rights era clash between police and protesters. Once it did, we unraveled the rotten pistachio nut of race recurring like a bad cancer. 
Predictable bursts of reaction, from the peaceful to the violent pop-off, will be met by well-equipped police in waiting. But, while the heat from calls for justice might thaw the frigid night air, the next day, month and year will find it right back where it all started. 
Ellison is a veteran political strategist and frequent contributor to The Root. He is also Washington correspondent for the Philadelphia Tribune and chief political correspondent for Uptown magazine.

OPELLISON25

How to outmaneuver Ferguson riots

Opinion: How to outmaneuver Ferguson riots

USA FERGUSON  - cropped /lii

It turned out we didn’t need to know what the verdict was in the Michael Brown case in Ferguson, Missouri, to confront some ugly facts and emotions. 
In the afternoon came word that the grand jury considering the fatal police shooting of the 18-year-old had reached a decision. The cable news channels began to roll out talking heads, and show video of Ferguson. They&nbsp;pictured the streets where nothing had been announced, and shared learned analysis of the&nbsp;big thing&nbsp;that&nbsp;hadn't happened&nbsp;yet. 
And then the preparations for potential violence began in Ferguson, and the speeches from the governor and other politicians, and the worrying of Americans who remember past riots, and the worrying of other (or the same) Americans who remember black men gunned down and cops uncharged. 
As I write this it is nearly 8 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, meaning the announcement of the decision is about an hour away. But I don’t think we’ll know much more after the announcement, because we know so much now. We know we are a nation with a nearly 400-year history of racial strife. We know each of these racially charged incidents, those that involve cops and those that don’t, from Rodney King to Trayvon Martin to Abner Louima to Michael Brown, take their place on the timeline of American race relations. 
Brown was shot and killed by police officer Darren Wilson on Aug. 9. The shooting brought on huge protests and the wildly militaristic overreaction to the protests by the cops shocked the nation. 
So there is a grand jury. And deliberations. And the politicization that always accompanies such situations. 
It seems like we’re not getting anywhere with race relations anymore. It seems like progress has stopped. It seems like every time something like this happens so many people pick sides based on who looks more like them, who earns more like them, who lives more like them or talks more like them. 
It will&nbsp;be hard to judge the grand jury decision once it is released. I won’t have heard the evidence. That’s true of everyone else, too, but many will judge the decision as right or wrong, instinctively, the minute it is announced. And there may be violence. And there may not. 
But in the hours building up to the announcement, as we watched the news and worried and waited and discussed it all on Twitter and Facebook and, in many cases, took our pre-assigned and pre-decided sides without a whit of information, I felt I was learning quite a bit. 
We are a terrified nation, scared of “the other.” We are an angry nation, sure that “they” are getting away with something. We are a frustrated nation, feeling unheard and convinced that the other side always gets the megaphone. 
We are a devastatingly divided nation, because of our history, our behavior and our prejudices. 
Regardless of the decision. Regardless of the response to the decision. &nbsp;

Lane Filler

OPFIL24

Decision on race in America is in 

Filler: Decision on race in America is in

Wednesday, Oct. 22

Ferguson Oct. 22, 2014 -- cropped lt

Appearing on "Meet the Press" on Sunday, Rudy Giuliani asked why protesters upset about a white police officer's fatal shooting of a young black man in Ferguson, Missouri, this summer don't pay more attention to violence blacks perpetrate against other blacks. 
"White police officers wouldn't be there if you weren't killing each other," he said. 
As mayor of New York City, Giuliani was instrumental in implementing and popularizing the "broken windows" theory of policing, which holds that cops should aggressively police even minor infractions to create an atmosphere of obedience to the law. 
This strategy, many critics feel, leads to distrust and violence between police and citizens. 
As mayor, Giuliani faced intense criticism from the black community in New York City over accusations of police bias against African-Americans, and he clashed sharply with black leaders repeatedly. 
Nationwide, following the Ferguson shooting, a poll found that 80 percent of blacks thought that Brown's death raised important questions about race, while about half of whites said race was getting too much attention. 
To understand why people see this case in such divergent ways, it's important to keep in mind that America is still a very different place for whites and blacks. 
-- Blacks are much more likely to be arrested than whites. In Ferguson, police are about three times more likely to arrest blacks than people of other races, according to an analysis by USA Today, which is more or less typical for the thousands of jurisdictions where the newspaper examined arrest records. 
-- About one in four blacks have been convicted of a felony nationwide, compared to about 8 percent of the population as a whole. Among black men in particular, the fraction is fully one third. 
-- Unemployment among blacks is about twice the rate among whites. 
-- Many whites live in diverse neighborhoods, but blacks are now twice as likely to live in segregated neighborhoods. An analysis of Census data by The Washington Post found that about 28 percent of blacks live in neighborhoods where at least 85 percent of residents are also black. 
We could debate the causes of these disparities at length. The important fact is that for whites, both economic opportunity and evidence of racial progress are abundant, and police are largely an unobtrusive, perhaps welcome symbol of security. Many blacks, on the other hand, live in neighborhoods that haven't changed much in the past 40 years. They interact with law enforcement and the criminal justice system on a regular basis, and work is hard for them to find. 
That's why whites are able to believe that discrimination is now rare but that bias against whites is now a greater problem than bias against blacks -- a view that blacks do not share. These numbers are also part of the reason that Brown's death is inspiring such passionate and irreconcilably different opinions on both sides.

OPGIU24

Ferguson shows America is a very different place for whites and blacks

Opinion: U.S. is a different place for whites and blacks

Ferguson Nov. 19, 2014 -- cropped

Police departments shouldn't be equipped like armies. But the Ferguson, Missouri, police department looked like one recently when officers in full body armor and military-style vehicles fired tear gas and trained assault weapons on people protesting after a police officer shot and killed black teen Michael Brown, whose funeral was Monday. 
Armies wage war. Police are supposed to keep the peace. That distinction was blurred dangerously in Ferguson by the provocative display of military hardware, much of it made available by the federal government. Some protesters looted stores. A few threw rocks and Molotov cocktails. There was scattered gunfire. But the oppressive response by militarized police aggravated rather than cooled tensions. 
Department of Defense programs have funneled more than $5 billion in weapons, vehicles and other hardware to police in the United States since 1997. The Nassau County Police Department got gear including Humvees and a mine-resistant vehicle; the Suffolk County Police Department got Humvees, heavy-duty cargo trucks and more. There are situations when such equipment can be put to good use. Among them are terrorist attacks and natural disasters, like this month's flash flood, when Suffolk police in Humvees rescued motorists trapped by rapidly rising water. 
But the indiscriminate flow of military equipment should be reined in. President Barack Obama has ordered a review of the programs. Congress is gearing up for hearings and legislation. The type of equipment available should be limited. Do police really need 14-ton "mine-resistant ambush-protected" vehicles designed to withstand roadside bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan? Police should have to document a clear need for the equipment they seek. And restrictions should be imposed on how it can be used. 
Police shouldn't be outfitted for war. The people they are sworn to protect and serve are not the enemy.

VPCOPS26

Editorial: Use discretion in arming our police

Nassau County Police MRAP /ts cropped

The turmoil in Ferguson, Missouri, provides a textbook example of what officials should not do when police kill an unarmed black teen. 
Almost a week after Michael Brown was shot, the public still wasn't officially given the name of the officer who pulled the trigger. There was no official account of what happened and why. For days as protests swelled and turned violent, state and local elected officials were conspicuously absent instead of working tirelessly to cool passions. 
Police responded to mounting protests by creating a war zone. The streets were flooded with armored vehicles, officers were clad in body armor and camouflage. High-powered assault weapons were pointed at the protesters and the media. Some were hit with tear gas and stun grenades. Two journalists were arrested while eating and charging cellphones at a McDonald's. 
This provocative response escalated a confrontation already roiled by race in the St. Louis suburb where two out of three residents are black, but practically all the police officers are white. The events were magnified by social media, including more than 6 million tweets, and by Wednesday the dramatic scenes were being streamed live around the world. 
After talking with Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon On Thursday, President Barack Obama called for badly needed balance when he said there is never an excuse for looting and violence against police -- or for police to use excessive force against peaceful protesters. Nixon finally seemed to take charge by putting the state highway patrol in charge on the streets. The FBI and the U.S. Department of Justice are doing parallel investigations with local law enforcement. The facts will eventually come out. 
But to win the public trust, and not just in Missouri, officials have to trust the public with information. Racially charged killings can't be dismissed as isolated incidents. There's an intolerable pattern nationally of unarmed black men dying at the hands of police. Fair adjudication of each case is critical. So is finding a way to avoid such senseless deaths.

VPFERG15

Editorial: Bring justice to Ferguson, Missouri

453583588 - cropped

What a disappointment. Officials have retracted their promising report that voter registration surged by more than 3,000 in Ferguson, Missouri since August 9, when the fatal shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed black 18-year-old, by a white police officer touched off sometimes-violent protests. 
The St. Louis County Election Board now says only 128 new people registered. The original figure turned out to be the number of previously registered voters who had re-registered to change their address or other personal information, Rita Days, St. Louis County's director of elections, said. 
That's still good news for democracy, although not as much as I hoped. Racial unrest in Ferguson has underscored how much elections matter. Although 67 percent of its 21,000 residents are black, the mayor and five out of six council members are white, and only three members of its 53-person police force are African-American. 
Yet shortly after liberal organizers set up voter registration booths near where Brown died, Matt Wills, the Republican National Committee's executive director for Missouri, expressed outrage. "Injecting race into this conversation and into this tragedy," he said to the conservative Breitbart News, was "disgusting," "completely inappropriate," and "fanning the political flames." It is better to fan political flames, I would say, than to ignite real ones. Democracy fails when civic engagement is weak. In our system, if you feel misruled it is not only your right but your civic obligation to vote the old rascals out, even at the risk of voting new ones in. 
Otherwise you leave the choice up to other people who may not have your community's best interests in mind. 
Ferguson's tragedy has put a spotlight on a situation that is hardly unique. Mostly black cities with mostly white councils are a fact of life in scores of American cities, particularly in the South, according to a recent New York Times report. 
Professor Jessica L. Trounstine, a political scientist at the University of California, Merced, has found the most common reasons include voter apathy in low-visibility local elections, transient populations and lack of information about the candidates and election days. 
Off-year election turnouts tend to be older, more white and include more homeowners than the voters in presidential election years. 
Ferguson's racially tilted government, many reasonably believe, reflects a similar disparity in voter turnout in its local elections. Blacks and whites had very similar turnout rates in Ferguson in the 2012 presidential year, according to an analysis by the Washington Post and the Catalist data-collection organization; however, white Ferguson residents in the April 2013 municipal elections were three times more likely to vote than the black turnout rate, which was only 6 percent. 
Ferguson matters, then, not only as a racial tragedy unfolding in news media, but also as a symbol of what The New Republic's editor Franklin Foer recently called "boom times for provincial autocrats" across the country. 
As much as some politicians howl about "big government," Ferguson raises larger questions about threats to liberty posed by small governments. 
One well-known example highlighted by the Ferguson unrest was the militarization of local police, causing local peace officers to look and behave more like an invading army. 
A less visible menace is posed by what Professor Trounstine calls "political monopoly," unobstructed one-party rule that leaves incumbents and their cronies free to abuse the privileges of their safe seats. 
The most egregious example of this era of virtually unchallenged state and local abuses, as Foer argues, may be civil-asset forfeiture. Intended originally to go after drug lords and the like, civil-asset forfeiture allows law enforcement in many states to seize a person's cash or property without ever charging him or her with a crime. 
All the authorities have to do is claim they believe the property was acquired illegally. Although this tactic is often used legitimately, horror stories include a SWAT team raid on a party at the Contemporary Art Institute of Detroit in May 2008. 
Guests were knocked to the ground and forced to hand over their cars. Their offense? Partying in a space that wasn't properly permitted. 
Justice Department investigators are looking into a similar abuse in Ferguson, where police processed an average of three warrants for each household. Millions in fines and court fees were collected from the city's poorest residents to fund various city operations. 
Those are the same sort of residents who are least likely to turn out and vote in local elections. I expect their future turnout to improve significantly. 
Or, as the Rev. Al Sharpton told local residents after Brown's death, their abysmal voter turnout "is an insult to your children." I don't often quote Rev. Sharpton, but in this case he's right on point.

OPPAGE09

Page: Small town tyrannies preserve race inequities

Opinion: Small town tyrannies preserve race inequities

Ferguson meeting -- cropped

Let us move forward with focused meaning and faithful mission until true justice is attained for slain black men like Eric Garner in Staten Island and Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri ["Our trust of police takes a beating," Opinion, Aug. 26]. 
We must not sit idly by and allow the present-day racist system of "justifiable homicide" to be accepted. There will never be any justification for these killings. We must move forward and make a difference. 
We can move forward by developing more jobs for our youth, by pushing positive and progressive education for young people, and by building and funding youth centers in our most troubled communities throughout the nation. This needs to happen one community at a time until we make the true difference that is needed for this present age and present stage. 
No police officer should ever operate as judge, jury and executioner. Thank God for the many positive and progressive police officers who protect the public every day. 
The Rev. Arthur L. Mackey Jr., Roosevelt 
Editor's note: The writer is the senior pastor at Mount Sinai Baptist Church Cathedral in Roosevelt.

Letters

OPLTR04D.WEB

Letter: Can't sit idly by as police kill

453851584 -- cropped

When I was a small child, something called "the suburbs" kept snatching away my friends, like a monster hiding under the bed, but worse. Over time, I've come to appreciate why my friends moved. The urban neighborhoods of my Brooklyn youth were a little rough around the edges, and they didn't offer growing families much in the way of elbow room. I couldn't fall asleep without the sweet sound of sirens blaring, but not everyone felt the same way. The suburbs have long been a welcome refuge for families looking for a safe, affordable place to live. 
But for many Americans, the suburbs have become a trap. This week, Radley Balko of The Washington Post vividly described the many ways bite-sized suburban municipalities in St. Louis County prey on poor people. Towns too small or too starved of sales tax revenue to sustain their own local governments stay afloat by having local law enforcement go trawling for trumped-up traffic violations, the fines for which can be cripplingly expensive, and which only grow more onerous as low-income residents fail to pay them. Those who can afford lawyers know how to massage a big fine into a smaller one. Those who can't dread their run-ins with local police, who often come across less like civic guardians and more like cash-thirsty pirates. The resentment and distrust that follows is, according to Balko, crucial for understanding the recent unrest in Ferguson, Missouri. 
Could it be that the problems plaguing St. Louis County reflect a larger failure of fragmented local government? Would these problems go away if, say, St. Louis simply absorbed all of these petty fiefdoms? I doubt it. The deeper problem is that the low-density suburbs of single-family homes that are common in this part of Missouri, and indeed across the country, are fundamentally inhospitable to those who find themselves at the bottom of the economic ladder. 
You might be wondering why poor families are moving to the suburbs in large numbers - the number of suburban poor grew more than twice as quickly as the number of urban poor between 2000 and 2011 - if they are such hard places for poor people to get ahead. Part of it is that as middle- and high-income households moved to the suburbs, the low-wage workers who look after their children had little choice but to follow. Then there is the fact that as America's most productive cities experience a revival, gentrification is displacing low-income families to outlying neighborhoods and towns. 
Before we can understand what makes some suburbs so miserable, we first have to understand what makes others succeed. The most successful suburban neighborhoods fall into two categories. First, there are the dense and walkable ones that, like the most successful urban neighborhoods, have town centers that give local residents easy access to retail and employment opportunities. These neighborhoods generally include a mix of single-family homes and apartment buildings, which allows for different kinds of families and adults at different stages of life to share in the same local amenities. The problem with these urban suburbs, as Christopher Leinberger recounts in his 2009 book "The Option of Urbanism," is that there are so few of them, and this scarcity fuels the same kind of gentrification that is driving poor people out of successful cities. 
The other model for success can be found in sprawling suburban neighborhoods dominated by households with either the time or the resources to maintain single-family homes and to engage in civic life. As a general rule, the neighborhoods in this latter category don't allow for apartment buildings or townhomes on small lots. They implement stringent local land-use regulations that keep them exclusive, and they attract families that tenaciously defend the character of their neighborhoods. 
There are many differences between these two models. But the most important one is that denser suburbs can accommodate family diversity relatively well while sprawling suburbs simply can't. Living the low-density lifestyle requires that you either be rich in money or rich in time and skill. 
Think about it this way. The typical postwar suburb was built to meet the needs of two-parent, single-breadwinner families. They were full of single-family homes that were rarely built to last, and their chief amenity was privacy, which generally meant a decent-sized lawn. Maintaining these houses was a heroic endeavor, but the division of labor implied by two-parent, single-breadwinner families meant that it was not an impossible one. Indeed, the very fact that maintaining these homes was such a chore made them precious to their owners, for whom they were a store of wealth as well as a place to live. 
Last summer, Slate contributor Matt Feeney argued that Detroit, his hometown, had declined so dramatically because it was "a virtual monoculture, residentially speaking - a city of detached, owner-occupied, single-family homes." Feeney describes the many ways Detroit, which grew up in the age of the automobile, is unique. Yet many aspects of his diagnosis apply to many other American cities. Threats to property values were not taken lightly, a fact that helps illuminate why fights over court-ordered desegregation and demographic change more broadly proved so ferocious so often. Renters might react to demographic change with relative equanimity, knowing that even if it had negative consequences, it wouldn't endanger their biggest investment. Homeowners felt they couldn't afford not to panic. Balko describes an eerily similar dynamic in the St. Louis suburbs, with eerily similar results: round after round of white flight, each one of which leaves a suburban ghetto in its wake. 
Since the initial rise of the suburbs, families have changed. Married couples with children have fallen from 42.9 percent of all households in 1940 to 20.2 percent of all households in 2010, while married couples without children have fallen from 33.4 to 28.2 percent of all households. Single parent families have also increased, of course, from 4.3 percent to 9.6 percent. The most dramatic change has been the steep increase in one-person households, from 7.8 to 26.7 percent of the total. 
Families have also been transformed by rising female labor force participation, with women now serving as the sole or primary wage earner in four in 10 U.S. households with children. In the years before the intelligence and creativity of women were being harnessed by employers, much of it had been devoted to keeping neighborhoods livable and safe. Underemployed men have not, suffice it to say, stepped up to fill this role. 
Viewed through this lens, the problem we face is clear: Much of our built environment still bears the imprint of the postwar era, despite the fact that the families that were characteristic of that era are no longer dominant. A single-family house built for a mother, a father, and a pair of kids is not a terribly attractive option for a single adult, nor is it affordable when we factor in the cost of upkeep. Such a house might be more appealing to a working single parent, who might welcome the space, yet he'd either have to carve out the time to maintain his little slice of heaven, or he'd have to earn enough to outsource the work of doing so. And then there is the small matter of affording an automobile, and the inevitable traffic fines that come with it. 
Late last month, Charles Marohn, an engineer and urban planner, wrote an essay on Ferguson that centered on, of all things, the bleakness of its many parking lots and the monotony of its buildings. One of Marohn's central arguments is that it is far easier to finance the maintenance of a street that serves, say, multi-story buildings with retail shops on the ground floor and apartments above than it is to finance a cul-de-sac that serves a small handful of houses, as the former generates far more revenue. To be sure, if the cul-de-sac links together million-dollar homes in pristine shape, this problem is not a problem at all. If it instead serves families that struggle to maintain their homes, or houses that are abandoned, the problem can get ugly fast. Roads need upkeep. Upkeep costs money. If property or sales taxes aren't enough to pay for upkeep, you can take on debt, you can ask for money from the state or federal government, or, like cities across St. Louis County, you can find creative new ways to leech away cash from your most vulnerable citizens. 
There is no straightforward way out of this suburban trap. It certainly wouldn't hurt to welcome more housing development in expensive cities, or to discourage unsustainable development by at the very least not subsidizing it. But the first step toward solving this suburban crisis is recognizing that it is in fact a crisis. Just ask the people of St. Louis County. 
Salam, a Slate columnist, also writes for the National Review. He is the co-author, with Ross Douthat, of "Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream."

OPSALAM05

Salam: How our suburbs got poor

Opinion: How our suburbs got poor

Suburbs cropped

An information war is being waged in Ferguson, Mo., each salvo meant to shape public perceptions of Michael Brown and Darren Wilson. 
Through this war we've learned that the 18-year-old Brown had marijuana in his system when he was killed, suggesting he was of poor character, and that police officer Wilson shot Brown six times, a use of force that could seem reckless or excessive. 
We've been told that Brown was a "gentle giant" who would have started attending classes at a technical college this month, but we've also seen a grainy convenience-store video in which he does not look gentle. We have seen a video of Wilson receiving an award, looking professional and happy, but we've also heard about him cursing at a Ferguson woman who had been maced, weeks before the town began to smolder. 
Such snippets and images are efforts to shape public opinion about these men. They could influence St. Louis County Prosecutor Bob McCulloch as he weighs whether to bring charges against Wilson. They could also influence the potential jury pool, showing prejudicial evidence that may not be admissible at trial. 
In an information war, the news media is deployed as a weapon, our collective mind becomes a battlefield, and biases are land mines waiting to explode. 
I feel confident stating that neither Brown nor Wilson is an angel - because no one is. But that doesn't matter, because the two men have been reduced to symbols. Information wars suggest that character is destiny and that character is knowable, as if a handful of snapshots or tweets constitute an autopsy of the soul. They are waged in all kinds of legal battles, from civil suits to contract negotiations to public divorces. 
But when there's a black victim involved, the information takes a different and predictable turn: The victim becomes thuggified. This is an easy leap for many minds, given the widespread expectation of black criminality. If you become nervous when you see a young black male approaching on the street, it is not hard to convince you that a kid who was shot was not one of the "good ones," that he was scary and maybe did something to deserve it. 
Information wars thrive on America's empathy gap - the way some people struggle to see any kinship or shared humanity with strangers who don't look like them. 
So after 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was killed in Sanford, Fla., on Feb. 26, 2012, people were told that he had been suspended from school, that he had written graffiti, that he had smoked marijuana. As a result, many saw him as a thug - even though many non-thugs have been suspended from school or gotten high, and those are not violent acts. More important, none of that sheds any light on what happened the night George Zimmerman shot him. 
In 2009, after 22-year-old Oscar Grant was fatally shot by a police officer named Johannes Mehserle while he was restrained at a BART station in Oakland, Calif., we learned that, three years earlier, Grant ran from officers after a traffic stop. 
Similarly, in 1991, after Rodney King was beaten by several Los Angeles police officers, we came to know that 63 days earlier, he was paroled after a robbery conviction. 
Did such facts justify Grant's death or King's pain? Of course not. But they subtly signal that these guys aren't good guys. It's as if a black person must be a perfect victim to escape being thuggified, an angel with an unblemished history in order to warrant justice. The burden of the perfect victim suggests that only impeccable resumes may qualify for protection under the law and the support of the community. 
We all remember Rosa Parks and how she earned sainthood status within America's civil rights mythology: On Dec. 1, 1955, Parks refused to give up her seat on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Ala., and became an icon. But Parks was not the first to defy the rules. Nine months earlier, 15-year-oldClaudette Colvin refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus. 
In an interview last year with Democracy Now, Colvin said that when the cops arrived and ordered her to get up, "it felt like Sojourner Truth's hands were pushing me down on one shoulder and Harriet Tubman's hands were pushing me down on another shoulder, and I could not move." So they pulled her up and jailed her. Colvin sued and became one of the five plaintiffs in Browder v. Gayle, a desegregation case that would reach the Supreme Court. In November 1956, the court ordered the end of bus segregation in Alabama. Parks was not involved in that suit. 
But Colvin did not become an icon of the civil rights movement. In a March 2009 interview, she told NPR that civil rights leaders at the time thought Parks would be a better symbol for the movement. Parks "was an adult," Colvin said. "They didn't think teenagers would be reliable." She also speculated that Parks had the right look for the part. "Her skin texture was the kind that people associate with the middle class. She fit that profile." By "texture," she meant color, politely tapping into deep and painful associations between light-colored skin and acceptability. 
Also, shortly after her arrest, Colvin became pregnant. She gave birth the same month as Parks's historic arrest. It's clear why the civil rights leaders did not want to coalesce around an unmarried teen mother. She was not a perfect victim. Her life and image could have distracted from the message. I understand that there was a movement to shepherd and that the wrong standard-bearer could have kneecapped it. 
But when individuals arrive in the court of public opinion, or in a court of law, the burden of being a perfect victim in order to receive justice is impossibly heavy. It doesn't allow for human fallibility. Is there any information from your past that could make you look bad? Any photo that, taken out of context, could portray you as someone you don't recognize? Most of us have something in our pasts we would not want revealed. And for black Americans, those facts too often are used to suggest that victims of injustice don't deserve justice, because they weren't some sort of credit to their race. In a nation where police often approach black communities with a dragnet, stopping and frisking everyone, marking as many black men as possible with a record, it would be hard to find a black male who looks like an angel. 
But it doesn't matter whether Brown was an angel. He was young and growing and human, and he made mistakes. That's OK. 
The real question is not: Was Brown a good kid? The real question is: How are police officers supposed to treat citizens? 
California Attorney General Kamala Harris, a former prosecutor, has put it well: "Our penal code was not created just to protect Snow White." Michael Brown was not perfect. But few of us are. And that does not speak to whether we deserve to die. 
Touré, a co-host of "The Cycle" on MSNBC, is the author of "Who's Afraid of Post-Blackness?: What It Means to Be Black Now."

OPTOURE25

Touré: It doesn't matter if Michael Brown was a good kid

Opinion: Who cares if Brown was a good kid?

453759770 cropped

We've had plenty of rhetorical villains since the fatal police shooting of a black teen in Ferguson, Missouri, grandstanders stirring up fear in vengeful tones, and we've ha violence and looting, mostly by nonresidents taking advantage of a tragedy to enrich themselves. But we've had heroes, too, and, at the young man's funeral, we had calls for engaged citizenship and a stop to community disruption. 
Healing may be on the way. 
"Show up at the voting booths," said Eric Davis, a cousin of the slain Michael Brown, addressing Ferguson blacks at the service. While he said more voting would thus let others know "we have had enough," there is another way of looking at it, namely that it is a mode of self-governance, not just observer-governance, of assuming responsibility, of cooperatively sharing in decisions that matter. 
It hasn't been happening. While blacks constitute 67 percent of Ferguson's population, just 7 percent bother to vote in local elections, and so it's no wonder that the mayor and most members of the city council and school board are white. A funeral oration is not enough to change that. There need to be numerous energetic organizers out there, and some note it would help as well to have the local elections coincide with national elections when the turnout is many times higher. 
Even with all of that, it's the quality of candidates that counts, and there's the never-ending need to hold them accountable by paying attention to what they do and speaking up when there's good reason. If the police department needs changing, you can then make it happen. 
Another topic at the funeral was the looting and rioting. Bishop Edwin Bass of the Church of God in Christ has been quoted as saying it was "imperative" to avoid it, powerfully explaining that now was a time "to immerse the family in the warm affection and abiding peace of the beloved community." What ought to be mentioned, too, is that the Ferguson riots afflicted blacks themselves. African-American poverty activist Robert Woodson has pointed out that the damage has included lost equity in homes, closed businesses, interruptions in bus services and thousands of children missing school for two weeks. 
It could have been worse. Someone who has kept the situation more in hand than it might have been is Capt. Ronald Johnson of the Missouri Highway Patrol, a black commander assigned by Gov. Jay Nixon to strive for Ferguson orderliness after the shooting. He has done such an impressive job that a New York Times story says "he has redefined leadership in crisis: equal parts police official, preacher, mediator and neighbor, unafraid to convey his inner conflict, unafraid to cry." Just seeing him interviewed on TV makes you understand that the Ferguson story has brought us heroes others should do their best to learn from. 
For still another heroic healer, look to Gail Babcock, a retired white Ferguson resident who in one sense is not retired at all. Mentioned in several news accounts, she is hard at work with a nonprofit organization that serves young people of all groups by teaching them, helping them have fun, involving them in community life and assisting with such issues as paying off court fines. She is especially concerned at the moment with locating counselors to assist them in coping with the shock of recent events that she herself finds disturbing. 
It is through such factors as all of these - political awakening, spiritual calm, character showing itself and civic responsibility - that communities cohere and ultimately thrive. Ferguson and similar communities may need still more, such as increased family stability, improved education and poverty programs empowering the poor to self-rescue, but it is worth our attention that something dreadful has already been followed by signs of hope. 
Jay Ambrose is an op-ed columnist for McClatchy-Tribune.

OPAMBROSE27

Ambrose: 4 signs of possible healing in Ferguson

Living in Ferguson -- cropped

The shooting and subsequent rioting in Ferguson, Missouri, like the killing of Trayvon Martin or countless incidents before it, will not produce a "national conversation" on race. If Americans can elect a black man president without ever having such a conversation - we've done so twice - we're not about to have one over the umpteenth violent death of a young lower-class black male. 
Regardless, a conversation - on any topic - requires shared predicates and vocabulary. You can't have a conversation about global warming with interlocutors who contend that thousands of scientists around the globe, speaking different languages and working for different governments and unaffiliated institutions, are co-conspirators in a vast enterprise for no apparent gain. You can't have a conversation about government's impact on the economy with people who believe that the federal government spent $800 billion - dropping it from helicopters or otherwise - without creating a single job. 
And you can't have a conversation about race with people who believe that claims of racism are inherently bogus, or who have convinced themselves that Democrats, the president very much included, intentionally encourage black dependence on government for political reasons. The common denominator among those views is a crude form of denial - a refusal to acknowledge the legitimacy of experience outside the universe of talk-radio claptrap. 
David Frum's new article in Foreign Affairs echoes Tom Edsall's insight that contemporary politics has become a do-or-die battle over diminishing resources, with older, whiter, conservative Americans determined to prevent the flow of government benefits away from them and toward a younger cohort. For some conservatives, that contest is defined by race. 
Here is how Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg summed up the racial anxiety of evangelical and tea party Republicans (whose perceptions were starkly different from those of moderate Republicans) in focus groups he conducted: "Their party is losing to a Democratic Party of big government whose goal is to expand programs that mainly benefit minorities." Thus the crucible of Obamacare. In effect, legions of conservatives have reasoned that the Affordable Care Act is not a response to a problem previously addressed by every other advanced nation; nor is it the culmination of a more than half-century-long project of the Democratic Party - one that began back when segregationist Democrats controlled the Senate. Instead, they conclude, it is an effort designed to generate dependency and transfer wealth from whites to browns. 
In a 2013 poll, 61 percent of white conservatives and 56 percent of whites ages 65 or older agreed that discrimination against whites would increase due to rising racial diversity. That's hardly grounds for a warm embrace of a multiracial future. As Edsall and others have noted, political scientists have found an increase in racial resentment among white conservatives since Obama - the nation's demographic change incarnate - was elected. 
In a May YouGov poll, only 14 percent of Republicans deemed past discrimination a "major factor" in lower average wealth levels among blacks. (Aggressive impediments to wealth creation were a major theme of Ta-Nehisi Coates's essay that same month.) Only 8 percent of Republicans agreed that discrimination "in getting a quality education" is currently a problem for blacks. 
Consider that. In a nation where even middle-class wealth is often inherited, and the fortunes of Rockefellers, Fords, Kennedys and Mellons are famously known to endure through generations, 45 percent of Republicans said that 250 years of enslavement followed by more than a century of legally and socially enforced economic and political disenfranchisement are simply "not a factor" impeding black wealth creation. 
Another 35 percent of Republicans polled said that the history of discrimination was only a "minor factor." So 350 years of official discrimination followed by decades of diminishing, but still discernible, racism produced no great economic ills. 
You can impose all the caveats on this you like. Blacks, too, possess varying degrees of racial animus. And liberals, of course, have their own blinders, delusions and prejudices. But a belief that white advantage in American society - including a median household wealth gap of around 20-to-1 between whites and blacks - is exclusively a product of the character failings of blacks is a kind of lunacy. Americans frequently dismiss turmoil in the Middle East by noting that religious and tribal tensions there were centuries in the making. But here, massive barriers to black success disappeared when Lyndon Baines Johnson signed civil-rights legislation? 
Two months after Obama's pivotal, political March 2008 speech on race, Washington Post reporter Kevin Merida wrote a story about Obama campaign volunteers encountering explicit racism while soliciting support. When Merida sought comment from the campaign, it responded with a bromide about "the core decency, kindness, and generosity of Americans from all walks of life." The deflection was political, yet honest in its way. Indeed, we are mostly a decent, kind and generous folk. Just don't try to have a conversation with us about race. 
Francis Wilkinson writes editorials on politics and domestic policy for Bloomberg View.

OPWILKINSON27

Wilkinson: Obama will never have a conversation on race

532541085 cropped

In our justice system, an individual is presumed innocent until proven guilty ["Thousands rally," News, Aug. 24].
This seems to apply to everyone, unless that person happens to be a police officer accused of killing a person from a minority group. The facts about the Michael Brown shooting are surely not known yet, but the residents of Ferguson, Missouri had to put up with nightly violence and destruction of property by those who claim they are protesters. These people are anarchists using an excuse to loot, steal and commit violence.
I'm not trying to exonerate the police officer involved. If the evidence leads to wrongdoing, let the legal system proceed, and let the officer have his rights under our system of law. But instead, we are left with weak political leaders who do not have the courage to stand up and call out these anarchists for what they really are.
David Regina, Nesconset 

<h3>Good water quality for economic health</h3>

Contrary to the letter from the developers group Association for a Better Long Island, protecting our drinking and surface waters has become a focus for civic organizations in my area, and from what I read in Newsday, for residents throughout Long Island ["Green bill would have hurt economy, Aug. 11].
In addition to efforts to protect our water and develop new technology to improve septic systems, we also need better regulations to stop the ongoing contamination that causes beach closures, algae blooms and loss of fishing habitats.
For those reasons, I was pleased to learn that Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone and our representatives on eastern Long Island have made water quality a priority. Now we look to our elected leaders to act and provide the oversight and funding necessary to clean up our water and plan for a more resilient future.
Sadly, it seems we rarely plan and protect in the first place, always assuming that we will be able to find the money to repair once something is broken. In the case of Long Island's water quality that may not be an option. We can't afford to wait. Our economy, environment and the health of our residents depend on it.
Andrea Spilka, Eastport
Editor's note: The writer is president of the Southampton Town Civic Coalition and a board member of the East Moriches Property Owners Association. 
At the very moment when 50,000 tons of hazardous building materials were found dumped illegally at a children's playground, in a wetlands area and in a new housing complex for returning Iraq veterans, it took some gall for the Association for a Better Long Island to suggest that somehow we need less government oversight of the construction community.
I would submit that smart growth toward a sustainable Long Island is far preferable to the unbridled and unregulated growth that has led to today's mess. We could choose business as usual, with the lobbyists, the political action committees and campaign contributions shutting down any legislation that seems to threaten the status quo. Or we could truly build a better Long Island, one where our children and grandchildren will want to live. 
Marshall Brown, Manhasset 

<h3>Discouraged by two in gubernatorial field</h3>

Shame on the 63 percent of people who say they don't have enough information to say anything about Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo's disbanding of the Moreland Commission to Investigate Public Corruption ["What controversy?" News, Aug. 12].
And to the 16 percent surveyed who said the governor's actions were "inappropriate but not a crime," are your heads anatomically misplaced?
Cuomo took office on the promise to end the circle of corruption and ethical lapses in Albany. Toward that end he set up the Moreland Commission to investigate. So far, so good. But the commission was disbanded when his allies came under suspicion and his interests were at risk.
He desired to pass his state budget, but the votes were not forthcoming, so he traded disbanding the commission for the requisite votes. So there went the commission -- the endemic political corruption and lack of ethics be damned.
So, wake up Long Island and the rest of our great state of New York. Among those running are two unworthies -- Cuomo and the Republican Rob Astorino, who is a staunch supporter of the party of no, those who have brought to us the most useless Congress in modern memory.
So, get involved, people, and stop acting like a horde of lemmings following some inept leader to our own destruction.
Richard M. Frauenglass, Huntington 

<h3>Dead alligator photo inappropriate</h3>

Showing a family proudly displaying the record-sized alligator it brutalized for five hours is nothing to celebrate or applaud ["Monster catch," News, Aug. 19]. Rather, this hubris and arrogance toward other living creatures should cause us to reflect on our treatment of and compassion for others that share this planet.
Michael S. Lesman, Merrick

OPLTR26.WEB

Letter: Looting isn't a proper response

Since the Aug. 9 shooting death of Michael Brown, the nation and the world have witnessed the unrest that has gripped Ferguson, Mo. At the core of these demonstrations is a demand for answers about the circumstances of this young man's death and a broader concern about the state of our criminal justice system. 
At a time when so much may seem uncertain, the people of Ferguson can have confidence that the Justice Department intends to learn - in a fair and thorough manner - exactly what happened. 
On Wednesday, I was in Ferguson to be briefed on the federal civil rights investigation that I have closely monitored since I launched it more than one week ago. I was to meet personally with community leaders, FBI investigators and federal prosecutors from the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division and the U.S. Attorney's Office to receive detailed briefings on the status of this case. 
The full resources of the Department of Justice have been committed to the investigation into Michael Brown's death. This inquiry will take time to complete, but we have already taken significant steps. Approximately 40 FBI agents and some of the Civil Rights Division's most experienced prosecutors have been deployed to lead this process, with the assistance of the United States Attorney in St. Louis. Hundreds of people have already been interviewed in connection with this matter. On Monday, at my direction, a team of federal medical examiners conducted an independent autopsy. 
We understand the need for an independent investigation, and we hope that the independence and thoroughness of our investigation will bring some measure of calm to the tensions in Ferguson. In order to begin the healing process, however, we must first see an end to the acts of violence in the streets of Ferguson. Although these acts have been committed by a very small minority - and, in many cases, by individuals from outside Ferguson - they seriously undermine, rather than advance, the cause of justice. And they interrupt the deeper conversation that the legitimate demonstrators are trying to advance. 
The Justice Department will defend the right of protesters to peacefully demonstrate and for the media to cover a story that must be told. But violence cannot be condoned. I urge the citizens of Ferguson who have been peacefully exercising their First Amendment rights to join with law enforcement in condemning the actions of looters, vandals and others seeking to inflame tensions and sow discord. 
Law enforcement has a role to play in reducing tensions, as well. As the brother of a retired law enforcement officer, I know firsthand that our men and women in uniform perform their duties in the face of tremendous threats and significant personal risk. They put their lives on the line every day, and they often have to make split-second decisions. 
At the same time, good law enforcement requires forging bonds of trust between the police and the public. This trust is all-important, but it is also fragile. It requires that force be used in appropriate ways. Enforcement priorities and arrest patterns must not lead to disparate treatment under the law, even if such treatment is unintended. And police forces should reflect the diversity of the communities they serve. 
Over the years, we have made significant progress in ensuring that this is the case. But progress is not an endpoint; it is a measure of effort and of commitment. Constructive dialogue should continue - but it must also be converted into concrete action. And it is painfully clear, in cities and circumstances across our great nation, that more progress, more dialogue, and more action is needed. 
This is my pledge to the people of Ferguson: Our investigation into this matter will be full, it will be fair, and it will be independent. And beyond the investigation itself, we will work with the police, civil rights leaders, and members of the public to ensure that this tragedy can give rise to new understanding - and robust action - aimed at bridging persistent gaps between law enforcement officials and the communities we serve. Long after the events of Aug. 9 have receded from the headlines, the Justice Department will continue to stand with this community. 
As we move forward together, I ask for the public's cooperation and patience. And I urge anyone with information related to the shooting to contact the FBI by dialing 800-CALL-FBI, option 4. 
Eric H. Holder Jr. is attorney general of the United States. He wrote this for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

OPHOLDER20

Holder: My promise to the people of Ferguson

Capt. Ronald Johnson -- cropped

It was the middle-class suburb of Ferguson that boiled over last week, but to the rest of the world this was a St. Louis crisis. 
Folks in Los Angeles and London aren't going to listen to our explanations about the city-county split and 91 independent county municipalities. All they know is that greater St. Louis has some problematic relationships between black and white, and between police and the community. 
All of St. Louis needs to work on healing those relationships. And when we begin that process, we can't ignore some festering economic issues. 
St. Louis is not only one of the most segregated large metro areas in the U.S., it also has an unusually large economic gap between black and white. The unemployment rate for African-Americans here is about three times as high as the rate for whites. 
According to census figures from 2012, 47 percent of the metro area's African-American men between ages 16 and 24 are unemployed. The comparable figure for young white men is 16 percent. 
Those figures should be just as shocking as the images of armed police confronting unarmed demonstrators, yet we take them for granted. 
What's more, poverty is more of a multigenerational phenomenon in St. Louis than elsewhere. A study called the Equality of Opportunity Project ranked us fourth from the bottom among 100 large cities on something called relative mobility, which compares the prospects for people born at the bottom and the top of the income distribution. 
In more mobile places such as San Jose or Seattle, a person born poor is twice as likely to move up the income ladder as a person born into the same circumstances in St. Louis. 
I should pause here to acknowledge that the demonstrations in Ferguson weren't about jobs or lack of economic opportunity. People took to the streets out of anger over a young man's death, and the protests grew when people felt their basic human rights were being disrespected. 
Still, I can't help but think the anger was intensified by a feeling of powerlessness, and it's hard to ignore the ways in which the economy of the past few years has been hard on north St. Louis County. 
North County was the epicenter of the area's foreclosure crisis, and house prices in Ferguson are down 37 percent from their peak in 2007, according to Zillow. That's a lot of vanished wealth. 
"People didn't just wake up one day and say, 'We're angry,'" says Chris Krehmeyer, president of the nonprofit group Beyond Housing. "Being angry was the result of years of frustration." Jamie Fogel, a researcher with the Equality of Opportunity Project, says that segregated housing and underperforming schools are among the things that are highly correlated with a lack of economic mobility. So is sprawl, measured by the percentage of people who drive 15 minutes or more to work each day. 
He's just described St. Louis, hasn't he? Todd Swanstrom, a professor of public policy at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, says he wasn't surprised to see an angry crowd take to the streets in North County, although not necessarily in Ferguson. 
"The city of Ferguson is not an extreme case of poverty, but it certainly is a case of rising poverty and segregation," Swanstrom said. "Usually St. Louis is not at the cutting edge, but in terms of the suburbanization of poverty, we are." 
If police tactics were the spark that set off the explosion in Ferguson this week, then poverty and hopelessness were the tinder. Those in charge of the police can begin the healing process, but it won't be complete unless we tackle the deeper economic issues too. 
David Nicklaus writes for the St. Louis Post Dispatch.

OPNICKALAUS19

Nicklaus: Poverty and homelessness at the root of Ferguson protests

Opinion: Poverty at the root of Ferguson protests

Police Shooting Missouri -- cropped

In physics, a unified field theory is an attempt to explain with a single hypothesis the behavior of several fields. Its political corollary is the Cupcake Postulate, which explains everything, from Missouri to Iraq, concerning Americans' comprehensive withdrawal of confidence from government at all levels and all areas of activity. 
Washington's response to the menace of school bake sales illustrates progressivism's ratchet: The federal government subsidizes school lunches, so it must control the lunches' contents, which validates regulation of what it calls "competitive foods," such as vending machine snacks. Hence the need to close the bake sale loophole, through which sugary cupcakes might sneak: Foods sold at fundraising bake sales must, with some exceptions, conform to federal standards. 
What has this to do with police, from Ferguson, Mo., to your hometown, toting marksman rifles, fighting knives, grenade launchers and other combat gear? Swollen government has a shriveled brain: By printing and borrowing money, government avoids thinking about its proper scope and actual competence. So it smears mine-resistant armored vehicles and other military marvels across 435 congressional districts because it can. 
And instead of making immigration policy serve the nation's values and workforce needs, government, egged on by conservatives, aspires to emulate East Germany along the Rio Grande, spending scores of billions to militarize a border bristling with hardware bought by previous scores of billions. Much of this is justified by America's longest losing "war," the one on drugs. Is it, however, necessary for NASA to have its own SWAT team? 
A cupcake-policing government will find unending excuses for flexing its muscles as it minutely monitors our behavior in order to improve it, as Debra Harrell, 46, a South Carolina single mother, knows. She was jailed for "unlawful neglect" of her 9-year-old daughter when she left her, with a cellphone, to play in a park while she worked at a nearby McDonald's. 
Resistance to taxation, although normal and healthy, is today also related to the belief that government is thoroughly sunk in self-dealing, indiscriminate meddling and the lunatic spending that lards police forces with devices designed for conquering Fallujah. People know that no normal person can know one-tenth of 1 percent of what the government is doing. 
In Federalist Paper 84, Alexander Hamilton assured readers that although the proposed Constitution would increase the power of a distant federal government, this government would be inhibited by scrutiny: "The citizens who inhabit the country at and near the seat of government will, in all questions that affect the general liberty and prosperity, have the same interest with those who are at a distance, and ... they will stand ready to sound the alarm when necessary." Not now, when five of the nation's richest 10 counties, ranked by median household income, are Washington suburbs, parasitic off the federal government. The people who write the regulations of school lunches must live somewhere. 
Darin Simak, a first-grader in New Kensington, Pa., who accidentally brought a toy gun to school in his backpack, turned it in to his teacher. School administrators then suspended him because the school has a "zero-tolerance policy." What children frequently learn at schools is that schools often are run by biological adults incapable of common-sensical judgments. 
"We simply cannot allow toxic things to be in our schools," said a spokesman for the Texas school district that confiscated the suntan lotion of a 10-year-old who then became sunburned on a school trip. Students, the spokesman explained, "could ingest it. It's really just a dangerous situation." Not as dangerous as entrusting children to schools run by mindless martinets. 
Contempt for government cannot be hermetically sealed; it seeps into everything. Which is why cupcake regulations have foreign policy consequences. Americans, inundated with evidence that government is becoming dumber and more presumptuous, think it cannot be trusted to decipher foreign problems and apply force intelligently. 
The collapse of confidence in government is not primarily because many conspicuous leaders are conspicuously dimwitted, although when Joe Biden refers to "the nation of Africa," or Harry Reid disparages the Supreme Court's Hobby Lobby decision as rendered by "five white men" (who included Clarence Thomas), Americans understand that their increasingly ludicrous government lacks adult supervision. What they might not understand is that Reids and Bidens come with government so bereft of restraint and so disoriented by delusions of grandeur that it gives fighting knives to police and grief to purveyors of noncompliant cupcakes.&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp; George Will's email address is georgewill@washpost.com

OPWILL21

Will: Cupcake theory explains all from Ferguson to Iraq

USA PROTEST MIKE BROWN - cropped

The killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and the heavy-handed police tactics that have followed point to a growing problem in this country: the threat of a police state that endangers not only public safety, but democracy itself. 
After the fatal shooting of the unarmed 18-year-old Brown by Ferguson officer Darren Wilson, local law enforcement descended upon the city like an occupying force, complete with military weapons, tear gas, rubber bullets and armored personnel carriers. 
Police assaulted peaceful, nonviolent protesters, arrested Antonio French, an alderman in nearby St. Louis, and tear-gassed Missouri state Sen. Maria Chappelle-Nadal. 
And police were hard on reporters, too, arresting several, confiscating the equipment from one of them, and even threatening to kill another. The militarization of the police is not unique to Ferguson. 
Thanks to a federal program called 1033, the government authorized the distribution of $4.3 billion in surplus military materials to local law-enforcement agencies. The equipment includes items such as pistols, automatic rifles, flash-bang or stun grenades, silencers, armored drones and MRAPS (Mine-Resistant Armored Protected vehicles) used in Iraq and Afghanistan. 
Police departments that want an MRAP need only fill out a one-page form. 
According to a report from the American Civil Liberties Union, "War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing," federal programs provide police officers with wartime weapons and tactics, which they use disproportionately on communities of color, and with no public debate or oversight. Most of these assaults are drug raids on people's homes. 
"The militarization of American policing is evident in the training that police officers receive, which encourages them to adopt a 'warrior' mentality and think of the people they are supposed to serve as enemies, as well as in the equipment they use," the report says. 
Between 2010 and 2013, St. Louis County law-enforcement agencies received 12 5.56 mm rifles and six .45-caliber pistols from the Department of Defense. Most recently, Ferguson received two military vehicles, a trailer and a generator under the program. 
And in recent years, the St. Louis County Police Department and the St. Louis Police Department -- along with local, state and federal agencies -- have received counterterrorism training by the Israeli National Police and Israeli Defense Force, which have years of experience occupying Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza and suppressing their rights. 
Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) has introduced legislation (the Stop Militarizing Law Enforcement Act) that would prohibit the transfer of certain military-grade equipment from the Pentagon to your neighborhood cops. 
Police are community servants, not mercenaries. And when they view the community as a wartime enemy, then we are truly approaching a police state. 
We must demilitarize the cops now.

OPLOV21

Love: The threat of a police state

453575526 - cropped /hj

Here are four tips for young reporters willing to learn from the mistakes of those caught up in the events of Ferguson, Mo. 
-- Learn how to cover a story without becoming the story. 
-- If you want to express opinions, become an opinion writer. But as long as you're a reporter, keep your opinions to yourself. 
-- If you slip up and give your opinion, expect people to attack you. So develop a thick skin. 
-- When there's a riot and a police officer tells you to move, just move. Don't debate, disobey and taunt the officer and get it on tape so you can tweet it or put it on your website. Do as he says. Because at that moment, although you may not want to admit it, his job is more important than yours. It has life-and-death consequences. 
The last item comes from the fact that, aside from being a journalist, I am the son of a cop. That brings common sense. 
With reporters being threatened, arrested, manhandled, berated, shot with rubber bullets and pelted with tear gas projectiles, it is tempting to declare that law enforcement officers in Ferguson are waging a war against the media. 
Yet, even thinking this way shows that many reporters have lost their way in covering this story. They seem to think it's all about them. Some protesters have figured that out, which is why many of them are now harassing and cursing at reporters -- demanding, for instance, that journalists distinguish between residents concerned with police violence and outsiders intent on causing mayhem. 
If there were a war by police against members of the media, it would certainly make for a good story -- one that reporters would love to tell. This won't come as news to most readers, but there is nothing that journalists like better than talking about themselves, their work or their industry. 
The story is also believable given that the law enforcement contingent doing riot control -- Ferguson police officers, St. Louis County sheriff's deputies, Missouri Highway Patrol officers -- has acted with reckless disregard for public safety. The fact that the officers are outfitted with military-style equipment, and that they're being so heavy-handed with protesters, has only created more chaos. So has the fact that, until recently, there didn't seem to be any strategy for dealing with the protests; the cops appeared to be making it up as they went along. As to where people could stand -- the street, a sidewalk, a parking lot -- to peacefully protest, the rules changed on a whim. No wonder Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon called in the National Guard. 
And yet, the trouble is -- judging from much of what has been written, said, photographed and tweeted by journalists, along with protesters and onlookers on the scene -- there doesn't appear to be any evidence to back up the claim that officers are targeting journalists. The police in Ferguson seem to be treating journalists just as badly as they're treating everyone else. No better, no worse. 
This brings us to the heart of the issue. Some reporters are furious that they're not getting special treatment as members of the media. Because they're being accompanied by a cameraman, or have press credentials hanging around their necks, they expect deference from police officers. No such luck.&nbsp; 
Consider a recent episode involving CNN reporter and anchor Don Lemon. While doing a live shot for the network, Lemon and a crowd of maybe a dozen protesters were told by a police officer to move off the street and onto the sidewalk. The journalist complied but also objected, insisting that he and the crowd had been standing in the street for hours and no one had said anything to them. 
"Now you see why people are so upset here," Lemon said into the camera. "Because we have been here all day. ... We're on national television. So imagine what they are doing to people [who] you don't see on national television, the people who don't have a voice like we do." 
Those who "have a voice" should be careful not to say the wrong thing. Americans already have contempt for the media. Let's not give them more reasons to feel that way. 
Navarrette is a nationally syndicated columnist.

opnavarrette

Navarrette: Journalists in Ferguson don't deserve special treatment

Opinion: Journalists should get out of the way

Ferguson Journalist Arrested Cropped

Why did the Ferguson Police Department leave the body of Michael Brown uncovered in the hot street after a police officer killed him? If you want to know why African-American men and women in Ferguson, Mo., are so upset, put yourself in their place for a moment. 
All you need to do is look at the cellphone video of Brown lying in the middle of the street - in broad daylight - face down with a long trail of blood coming from his body. 
In video shown on CNN, a woman is heard screaming: "Who the - - did it? Who the - - did it?" Other people are heard screaming, "Where is the ambulance? Where is the ambulance?" After Brown was shot six times by Officer Darren Wilson on Aug. 9, Brown's body lay in the street for hours. He was not covered up for some time. His body was not taken to a hospital or morgue. Brown's body just lay there, surrounded by yellow tape. 
People are angry because animals often are treated with more respect when they are hit by a car. 
Even if the Ferguson police did not want to disturb the crime scene, they at least should have put a barricade around the body so that children couldn't see what happens when six bullets tear into a person. 
The results of a second autopsy released Sunday shows that the 18-year-old was shot twice in the head and four times in the arm. There was no indication that Brown had been in an altercation, which seems to contradict the statements of Brown's friend, who said the officer grabbed Brown's neck with one hand and shot him with the other. 
I realize that the Ferguson department is small, but that doesn't excuse the obvious missteps. To make matters worse, Ferguson is 70 percent black, but the police force is nearly all white. Blacks in town make up more than 80 percent of all vehicle stops and 85 percent of all arrests. Before Brown's shooting, there were numerous complaints of racial harassment by law enforcement. 
I have received a number of emails from people saying that my columns on this issue have been to "blame whitey" for the shooting and that when blacks kill blacks, it does not generate nearly the same outcry from the black community. 
My take is this: I'm not blaming anyone, but it looks suspicious when dozens of unarmed black men are killed or die in police custody every year. When there are shootings in the black community, the police often do a good job of rounding up the shooters, charging them and sending them away to prison for years or even life. The same cannot be said when police officers kill unarmed people in custody. When that happens, it usually is passed off as a "training issue," and seldom are police officers prosecuted. 
The family of Dontre Hamilton, 31, who was killed by a Milwaukee police officer in downtown Milwaukee on April 30, may be a case in point. Hamilton's family still wonders if any charges will be filed after the death of their loved one. Hamilton was shot 15 times, his family has claimed, by the officer after an altercation. His family said Hamilton had a history of mental illness. Some of the family members took part in a march over the weekend to protest police brutality. 
From 2006 to 2012, a white police officer killed a black person at least twice a week in this country. In the past decade alone, hundreds have lost their lives to police. 
Bottom line: The Ferguson Police Department has bungled the Brown case. And now with a tighter curfew and calls for the National Guard, things don't seem to be calming down. 
People should make their voices heard on this. But they have to do so in a reasonable fashion. Rioting is a terrible response and only harms the community. The people who are rioting in Ferguson need to understand that and put an end to lawlessness. 
But the rest of America needs to understand something else: why there is so much anger among blacks in a place such as Ferguson. It's because black people are dying at the hands of police and then sometimes are treated no better than road kill. 
That's why folks are so angry. It's why they have a right to be angry. 
James E. Causey writes for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

OPCAUSEY19

Causey: It's no surprise black people are angry in Ferguson

Opinion: It's no surprise black people are angry

Ferguson Cropped

While Newsday and many other media outlets saw fit to sensationalize the seemingly tragic shooting in Ferguson, Missouri, by making it front-page news for weeks, isn't it ironic that as autopsy facts and eyewitness testimony come to light, the story can only be found on Page A7 ["Witnesses, data are said to back Ferguson cop," News, Oct. 23]? 
I'm hardly surprised. Facts that will likely lead to the exoneration of a police officer are never as appealing as an opportunity to inflame racial tensions or bash the police. 
Dominick A. Barone, Seaford &nbsp;

OPLTR04B.WEB

Letter: Reporting on Ferguson cop lags

ferguson cropped / mg

Opinion and analysis about the Michael Brown shooting and Ferguson

amNY

Newsday

Opinion and analysis about Ferguson

Opinion Columns

Opinion Rail Module

As human fighters become obsolete, how will that change calculations?

Drones do not hasten the end of war

Late Fed chairman's legacy one of tremendous highs and lows.

Greenspan was on a pedestal, until the big crash

The Democratic contests were a whole different ballgame on LI than in the city.

NY primaries set unique stage for November clashes

A memory of my father and father-in-law was at once comforting and sobering.

When fathers linger after they're gone

Flyer sent to Democratic voters "attacks" one candidate, but not the other.

GOP meddles in Dems' CD1 primary

Opinion Article Bottom Module

Most universities will end up competing harder for high-schoolers.

This demographic cliff is reshaping universities. Cities are next

Postponing treatment is almost always worse.

Social Security and Medicare's insolvency dates don't matter. Insolvency does

It took guts to sign this document, knowing the consequences of failure.

Musings: The Declaration set a historic blueprint

Musings: Alzheimer's is my new reality

Musings: Masking up is a personal choice

Sign up for the Viewpoints newsletter

Viewpoints Newsletter Widget

There are reasons to celebrate, amid deep polarization, divisions and disappointment.

As America turns 250, see our many truths

Opinion Video Playlist

Ronkonkoma Hub parking, Social Security, U.S. Open fans, addiction

There is still time to get this right, despite the president.

Bipartisan housing bill stunt must end

The Point is Newsday Opinion's daily newsletter inside the local, city and state political scenes.

CD3 primary numbers don't add up, one campaign says

The number of annual births in the U.S. is down about 16% from its 2007 peak.

Public schools are failing to prepare for fewer kids

The future of algae is blooming in many good ways.

Don't blame algae for the Reflecting Pool mess

Gov. Hochul must sign the one-year moratorium into law.

New York needs data center pause

Contrasting presidencies, affordable housing

How Suffolk Dems' party fight played out in primaries

Banning asylum seekers is unpopular and a political nonstarter for Democrats.

Democrats still need an immigration plan. This could help.

"The word 'affordability' is a fake word, made up by the Democrats," Trump says.

Trump's economic pivot isn't coming. He's made that clear.

App Nativo Ad Unit Slot

Opinion - megaslot

Nassau County and Suffolk County editorials, columns, guest essays, cartoons, letters and more.

Opinion Columns

Stay logged in.