Unsurprisingly, calls for the arrest of Officer Darren Wilson only became more restive yesterday, after lawyers for Michael’s parents released results of an autopsy they commissioned, which show that Wilson shot him at least six times.
More importantly, here’s the truly poignant way these lawyers used CNN’s coverage of their release to reinforce his mother’s (understandable) anger and frustration:
What else do we need to give them to arrest the killer of my child?
But those demanding justice for Michael seem to be doing so in a parallel universe. After all, despite dealing with cases of far more national importance (like prosecuting terrorists), everyone at the Justice Department seems focused on justice for Michael. Nothing betrays this focus quite like no less a person than Attorney General Eric Holder ordering a third, federal autopsy and promising to visit Ferguson this week to pay his respects and meet with Michael’s avengers in person.
Not to mention President Obama using his bully pulpit – on more than one occasion – to give voice to their concerns; albeit in a fair-and-balanced manner that most of them are too insolent and ignorant to appreciate. Indeed, these protesters seem oblivious to the fact that Obama is not their granddaddy’s president; Holder is not their granddaddy’s attorney general; and Capt. Johnson is not their granddaddy’s Bull Connor.
For what it’s worth, I’m on record predicting that Wilson will be charged with use of excessive force in some degree … and rightly so.
Therefore, with the wheels of justice already grinding at an unprecedented rate for Michael, you have to wonder why people are still protesting in Ferguson. Because, frankly, their shouts of “no justice, no peace” ring hollow – given that they seem so intent on perverting the course of justice and disturbing the peace. Only this intent explains why they defied a 12-to-5 a.m. curfew just to provoke confrontations with the police.
Never mind reasonable suspicions that the only people engaging in confrontational protests are unemployed thugs – who can afford to march up and down the streets all day, and wreak havoc at night … as a smokescreen to loot. I suspect they’ve never felt so important and influential, and I shudder to think what untenable precedent they’re establishing….
After all, these protesters are having such anarchic sway that they’re aping the spectacle of inmates running the asylum:
In a news conference about 1:20 a.m. Monday, Johnson said Sunday’s unrest began at 8:25 p.m. when police responded to reports of gunshots near Canfield, the street where Brown was killed. At 8:56 p.m., hundreds of protesters marched toward a police staging command post in a parking lot near a Target…
‘There were multiple additional reports of molotov cocktails being thrown, police were shot at, makeshift barricades were set up to block police, bottles and rockets were thrown at police,’ Johnson said. ‘Based on these conditions, I had no alternative but to elevate the level of our response.’
(Washington Post, August 18, 2014)
Now bear in mind that the Johnson being quoted here is none other than Capt. Ronald Johnson of the Missouri Highway Patrol. He, you recall, is the law-enforcement officer who the governor sent into Ferguson to lead efforts to quell these confrontations between protesters and police – not only because Johnson grew up there, but because he’s Black.
Sure enough, protesters initially greeted Johnson with hosannas, which he seemed to revel in as he marched the streets with them, looking like a proverbial Black Moses leading his people to the Promised Land. Johnson even stood up in a packed church on Sunday and apologized for Wilson. But he uttered nary a reproachful word about all the rioting, or about the brazenly provocative practice of protesting in the streets throughout the night. He may have even unwittingly encouraged these mindless protests when he ended his homily by saying that he looks forward to seeing folks back out there.
No doubt this explains the look of personal disappointment, if not humiliation, on Johnson’s face as he gave his news conference, emulating the White police chief he replaced by bemoaning the ongoing wanton lawlessness and defending the ongoing police crackdown. Even worse, the protesters who greeted him like Moses are now – just 72 hours later – treating him like Judas….
But perhaps nothing indicates how much the inmates are running this asylum quite like the governor responding to protesters defying the curfew by hastily lifting it. Never mind the contradiction, or potential for even greater turmoil, inherent in the governor simultaneously deploying the National Guard to do what Johnson and his state police have clearly failed to do: restore, and maintain, law and order.
The irony, of course, is that, when protests erupted in Ferguson 10 days ago, most Americans were more shocked by images of local policemen looking like U.S. soldiers than by images of protesters looting and vandalizing local businesses. Now real soldiers (looking more White than Ferguson’s practically all-White police force) are riding in to the rescue? But, far from shocking, this blurring of the line between law enforcement and the military did not even surprise me:
As I channel surfed the wall-to-wall coverage of the manhunt for the one who got away, the only things I saw moving were thousands of policemen looking like an invading army of Robocops as they went about the seemingly impossible task of searching house-to-house to find their man.
(“Manhunt for Marathon Bombers Turning Boston into Theatre of the Absurd,” The iPINIONS Journal, April 19, 2013)
Apropos of which, Ferguson has become a theatre of the absurd – complete with the-sky-is-falling reporters doing more to fuel the protests than to cover them, while using selfie-camera angels to ensure that they are featured as much as the protesters. There’s no denying that these protests would burnout overnight if the media lights, which have been inflaming them like adding fuel to fire, were suddenly turned off.
And don’t get me started on the smattering of (White) professional protesters doing all they can to get arrested just to have another notch on their resume of civil disobedience.
But the more distressing absurdity for me is political activists like Rev. Al Sharpton making Michael, an alleged menacing thief, the face of the fight against police brutality – just as political activists like Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. made Rosa Parks, a woman above reproach, the face of the fight against segregation.
Moreover, not enough people are stressing the instructive fact that marches during the Civil Rights Movement evoked so much sympathy and respect because they were marked by the police attacking the marchers, not by the marchers attacking the police … and looting, which in this case is evoking nothing but racial animus and contempt. What’s more, you’d be hard-pressed to find a single day of protest back then that had people taking to the streets at night … for obvious reasons.
With that, I shall end this commentary on the manufactured outrage the killing of Michael Brown has wrought by reiterating my plea for young Black men to stop making confrontations with the police and resisting arrest rites of racial passage in America today. But, if they insist on doing so, I have no problem with the police (even White ones draped in military garb) using any means necessary to restore, and maintain, law and order.
There would be fewer of these fatal encounters between Black men and White cops if more (unemployed) Black men became cops to police their own communities. I mean, am I the only one who was struck by the contrast between the Black men looting and vandalizing and the predominantly White cops trying to restore, and maintain, law and order in this predominantly Black community…?
In fact, this suburb of St. Louis, Ferguson, is almost 70 percent Black, yet it’s being served by a police force that’s over 95 percent White. Perhaps, instead of leading St. Louis Blacks in hackneyed chants of “No justice, no peace,” Reverend Al Sharpton should turn and shout at them “Stop looting! start policing!”
(“Killing of Michael Brown: as much about Resisting Arrest as Police Brutality,” The iPINIONS Journal, August 12, 2014)
Related commentaries:
Manhunt for marathon bombers…
Michael Brown was a thief…
Killing of Michael Brown…