It was only a matter of time:
Two police officers were shot and seriously injured early Thursday near the Ferguson, Mo., police headquarters, an incident that occurred amid ongoing protests in the city.
Just hours earlier, the Ferguson police chief had announced his resignation, a decision that came in the wake of a blistering report from the U.S. Department of Justice. Federal investigators said last week they determined that the city’s police force and court system were racially biased and predatory.
(Washington Post, March 12, 2015)
In fact, that “blistering report” forced the city manager and several other employees to resign as well.
Moreover, federal authorities have declared their intent to hold Ferguson in practical receivership. It shall remain thus while they implement reforms to redress the systemic, race-based abuses that caused such simmering (and now imploding) resentment among Black residents.
Incidentally, it speaks volumes that no less a person than President Obama commented on this report by observing that the “racially biased and predatory” policies it cites are not unique to Ferguson. Policies, I remind you, that had everyone from the White cop on the beat to the White judge in court treating Blacks as nothing more than sources of revenue (i.e.,by routinely ticketing and arresting them on trumped-up charges just to extract fees and fines).
It was also astute of Obama to give notice to other predominantly Black cities with predominantly White police departments that his DOJ could be investigating them next.
Apropos of which, anyone who knows anything about DOJ investigations could or should have anticipated these forced resignations and federal oversight. Hence the forlorn question I posed months ago, when federal authorities first announced their intent to investigate policing in Ferguson:
Why are they still protesting in Ferguson? And who are they?
Frankly, given the misguided and disruptive nature of their ongoing protests, man-bites-dog headlines about protesters opening fire on the police were inevitable.
It’s understandable, for example, that they now feel emboldened to demand the head of the mayor too. But they could do so in a far more orderly and sympathetic fashion by organizing a recall, instead of taking to the streets, invariably at night, which only disrupts traffic, frustrates local businesses, and attracts mischief-makers like moths to a flame. Not to mention that it was the DOJ’s report, not these protests, which forced those resignations.
This compels me to reiterate:
No case of police brutality justifies looting and vandalism. Period. Not least because the anger and frustration among Blacks today pale in comparison to that which simmered among Blacks during the Civil Rights Movement. Yet the only barbarism on display during their protests came not from Black marchers looting and vandalizing stores, when they weren’t taunting the police, but from White cops willfully attacking them as they marched peacefully and non-violently.
Is there any wonder that people (Black and White) have as much contempt for these marauding Black protesters today as they had for those mauling White cops back then?
(“Killing of Michael Brown: as much about Resisting Arrest as about Police Brutality,” The iPINIONS Journal, August 12, 2014)
Better still, I offer this take on an instructive quote from MLK’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” April 16, 1963:
Sadly, these protesters, who claim to be engaged in a new civil rights movement, are just making a mockery of the precedent MLK and others set.
What’s more, the “internal violence of spirit” among so many of today’s shortsighted and narcissistic protesters is such that it seems impossible to separate the wheat (those truly interested in nonviolent protest) from the chaff (those only interested in creating mischief).
Meanwhile, I fear media coverage is only fueling their antics. Therefore, henceforth, I shall do my part by publishing no more commentaries on this tragic but all too common episode in the life of Black America.
Related commentaries:
Ferguson…