The events in Ferguson, Missouri

Anonus · 2014-08-14 05:25:17

I felt they needed their own thread.

The unprovoked killing of Michael Brown by a police officer spurred a vigil, which somehow turned chaotic. Now the police have descended the town into martial law and tried to seal it off from the outside world - they don't want anyone entering or leaving, there's a no-fly zone over the town...

It's all very troubling.

Salix Babylonika · 2014-08-14 05:38:16

I'm going to bed, but this is a good summary of events if you're unaware as to what's been going on.

Also to correct myself from earlier, apparently Mike Brown's body was left on the street for "only" 4 hours as opposed to the 14 I thought.

lee4hmz · 2014-08-14 11:54:02

I compared the cops to The Goddamn Batman on Twitter a day or two ago. It seems appropriate. :P

Sredni Vashtar · 2014-08-14 12:15:01

The media blackout assertion in that post is inaccurate: Two reporters were indeed taken into custody on absurd claims that they were "resisting arrest" down the street from one of the peaceful protests, probably due to paranoia on the cop's parts in the aftermath of the riot that ensued earlier in the week, but they were released within a few hours and never formally charged and there are still quite a few media personnel on the ground there.

Reuters reports that the police chief claims that the cop who shot Brown had swelling on the side of his face, but then again, the kid's friend says that said cop accosted them before shooting Brown, so it's entirely plausible that he was punched in the line of unlawfully assaulting a civilian. As you are if you come at some kid out of nowhere for supposedly shoplifting from a candy store.

Sredni Vashtar · 2014-08-14 12:41:15

Oh, and let's not forget that a hacker on Twitter released the name of who they claim to be the officer that committed the crime.

On the one hand, I believe that one should be innocent until proven guilty and if this is the wrong name then an innocent man may be threatened, injured, or even killed for being confused with a really monstrous human being; on the other hand, if it is the guy... I don't know what I would do if I knew. That's a really hard, scary question.

Klinotaxis · 2014-08-14 12:52:40

get gassed, practically speaking

anyway while this is terrible i'm getting weirded out by people who seem to be totally floored by this. like i mean, some people are watching this like "how could the police be doing this in america? i've never heard of this happening" and it's so... ignorant? like did your history classes not cover kent state?

someone on irc linked a 1965 NYT including e.g. "What began as as a street corner civil rights rally swelled into a looting, bottle-tossing mob after a white, off-duty policeman in civilian clothes was stabbed by an angry crowd of Negroes" and "One Guard unit opened machine gun fire for 10 minutes on a gang of Negroes who then fled down the street. One Guardsmen said the rioters fired with pistols and at least one rifle".

i'm really not trying to be elitist here but viewing this as an isolated event is basically straight up dumb, i think. i don't think anyone i know is doing that, really, but... just wanted to say that i guess

Crystal · 2014-08-14 12:53:44

This is what I read to catch up. Unlike the Tumblr, it's also being updated frequently...

Otherwise, I don't have anything to add, so I'm going to leave that there I guess.

Sredni Vashtar · 2014-08-14 13:00:46

What worries me is not so much that it is unexpected, but that this is 2014, not 1965 or 1974. We should be at a point in our society where this sort of brutality is not only considered an outrage against humanity, but truly implausible, not just in the "tamer" parts of this country but in all of this country.

But we aren't, because forty or fifty years isn't enough to kill this.

lee4hmz · 2014-08-14 13:50:04

Tzetze: Yeah, this sort of thing happened all the time during the civil rights era. It's just that we didn't have Twitter to cover it live...most people had to read about it in the newspapers the next day.

Aliroz · 2014-08-14 13:55:37

lee4hmz said:
Tzetze: Yeah, this sort of thing happened all the time during the civil rights era. It's just that we didn't have Twitter to cover it live...most people had to read about it in the newspapers the next day.

Tzetze? Which one is Tzetze?

Sredni Vashtar · 2014-08-14 13:56:20

Klinotaxis is Tzetze is Nitya, for future reference.

Klinotaxis · 2014-08-14 14:00:00

i am also as like a god

Salix Babylonika · 2014-08-14 14:02:30

Sredni Vashtar said:
The media blackout assertion in that post is inaccurate: Two reporters were indeed taken into custody on absurd claims that they were "resisting arrest" down the street from one of the peaceful protests, probably due to paranoia on the cop's parts in the aftermath of the riot that ensued earlier in the week, but they were released within a few hours and never formally charged and there are still quite a few media personnel on the ground there.

there are pictures circulating of cops disassembling the Al-Jazeera crew's camera rig.

There is certainly an informal blackout if not a formal one.

glennmagusharvey · 2014-08-14 14:03:19

Some of you might find this piece interesting:

http://thekojonnamdishow.org/shows/2014-08-14/military-tactics-and-reporters-rights-ferguson-mo

Haven · 2014-08-14 14:08:23

anyway while this is terrible i'm getting weirded out by people who seem to be totally floored by this. like i mean, some people are watching this like "how could the police be doing this in america? i've never heard of this happening" and it's so... ignorant? like did your history classes not cover kent state?

This may be too fine a distinction, but I think what sets this apart from Kent State is that that was the National Guard. Now it's the police who have access to sniper rifles, body armor, and fully automatic weapons, which makes a military response almost inevitable since anyone can call the police.

Sredni Vashtar · 2014-08-14 14:09:12

Mo The Show said:
there are pictures circulating of cops disassembling the Al-Jazeera crew's camera rig.

There is certainly an informal blackout if not a formal one.

I'm not surprised, but at the same time they haven't been able to actually force them out or keep them out, and if they were to try... I think that the state or even the federal government would have to step in.

Klinotaxis · 2014-08-14 14:12:29

Haven said:
This may be too fine a distinction, but I think what sets this apart from Kent State is that that was the National Guard. Now it's the police who have access to sniper rifles, body armor, and fully automatic weapons, which makes a military response almost inevitable since anyone can call the police.

I don't mean that it's the same, just that some people seem weirded out by the idea of a US-internal military action, I guess.

the governor maybe doesn't like what's going on, so if anything a guard intervention at this point would not be against protestors, i'm hoping.

glennmagusharvey · 2014-08-14 14:16:22

^ Now I'm wondering whether this will devolve into a local vs. state/national conflict.

What are the political leanings of the local politicians and police force?

Klinotaxis · 2014-08-14 14:17:25

a saint louis alderman (antonio french) was arrested and then released, but i don't know beyond that.

relatedly, i guess some people are thinking ferguson is a small town? it's in saint louis county, that's the department all the cops are in

Sredni Vashtar · 2014-08-14 14:18:40

Klinotaxis said:
the governor maybe doesn't like what's going on, so if anything a guard intervention at this point would not be against protestors, i'm hoping.

Good.

I am finally glad to hear some news coming out of this.

Salix Babylonika · 2014-08-14 14:23:01

thus marking the first time in history where a man with the surname "Nixon" ever did anything good.

Sredni Vashtar · 2014-08-14 14:26:16

There have been others, and even Tricky Dick did a few things right, but that is a good one-liner. Sorry for, uh, stepping on it...

glennmagusharvey · 2014-08-14 15:06:12

edit: possibly offensive -- my intention was a respectful and defiant tribute, but it seems people found it offensive. my apologies. post is hidden behind highlightable text.

Mo The Show said:
I'm going to bed, but this is a good summary of events if you're unaware as to what's been going on.

Also
to correct myself from earlier, apparently Mike Brown's body was left
on the street for "only" 4 hours as opposed to the 14 I thought.

This makes me come up with a variant on an old song:

Mike Brown's body lies a-mould'ring on the street
Mike Brown's body lies a-mould'ring on the street
Mike Brown's body lies a-mould'ring on the street
but his soul is marching on

Sredni Vashtar · 2014-08-14 15:08:20

That's a rather morbid take on it.

Obā-san · 2014-08-14 15:10:49

bruh coming from a position of utter tactlessness even i think that as attempts at levity go you kinda bricked it there

Tre · 2014-08-14 15:11:51

oy vey

glennmagusharvey · 2014-08-14 15:13:29

I actually meant that as a respectful and defiant tribute honoring him, not as levity.

But yeah, sorry if I caused any offense. Duly noted and hidden beneath spoiler..

Sredni Vashtar · 2014-08-14 15:18:44

glennmagusharvey said:
I actually meant that as a respectful and defiant tribute honoring him, not as levity.

But yeah, sorry if I caused any offense. Duly noted and hidden beneath spoiler..

I thought so, which is why I wasn't harsher about it. Still, yeah...

On an entirely different note, this story ties together two things that have been upsetting me in a way that is actually weirdly heartening.

Salix Babylonika · 2014-08-14 15:27:19

The former chief of police appears to have "studied counter-terrorism"
during his tenure as the head of the police department, a fact verified
by a local news report from 2011.

This explains a lot.

Yarrun XIX · 2014-08-14 17:42:01

Who keeps thinking that giving local police military surplus is a good idea

Sredni Vashtar · 2014-08-14 17:46:55

Apparently guys who think that IDF anti-terror methods are acceptable for crowd control.

Klinotaxis · 2014-08-14 17:55:09

the DOD, yes

Sredni Vashtar · 2014-08-14 17:59:13

Should I be surprised...?

Obā-san · 2014-08-14 17:59:49

No.

Yarrun XIX · 2014-08-14 18:07:18

naney said:
No.

Salix Babylonika · 2014-08-14 21:20:18

So, I was out at McDonald's today and the CNN report I saw there seemed to indicate that the state police had basically dispersed the local police, but it's hard to tell, plus tumblr is still circulating stuff from last night primarily.

Klinotaxis · 2014-08-14 21:31:01

sorta

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/08/14/340315497/tear-gas-and-arrests-ferguson-police-and-protesters-face-off

something about police unions, with that last post i wrote, man

Salix Babylonika · 2014-08-14 21:54:19

I hope things calm down there soon.

More than that I hope things change. I read an Al-Jazeera article on life in Ferguson before the riots and it was horrible.

Klinotaxis · 2014-08-14 21:59:00

one of the mcdonalds reporters wrote an article about calmness. he generally seems positive. protestor talking points memo. except for this:

county prosecutor says dumb things, and of course he'd be the one bringing charges on the original killer.

glennmagusharvey · 2014-08-14 22:05:28

https://storify.com/AthertonKD/veterans-on-ferguson

courtesy of The Wanderer, in the The General US Politics Thread on TVT's OTC forum.

Salix Babylonika · 2014-08-14 22:14:39

I kind of feel like that's missing the point. Military antiterrorism tactics shouldn't be being used in an American city in the first place.

Yarrun XIX · 2014-08-14 22:17:30

In the USAF, we did crowd control and riot training every year.
Lesson 1: Your mere presence has the potential to escalate the situation.

Back in Freshman sociology, we had a guest lecturer speak about the nature of escalation come in the week after the pressure cooker bomb in Boston. His stance on all conflict was that, once the cycle of atrocities starts, things basically escalate until one side is too decimated to fight back or someone consciously decides to start backing down.

It seemed so simple, and I wondered why the police and the gridlockers didn't see it.

glennmagusharvey · 2014-08-14 22:22:20

^^ i think that was the point of a number of those quotes -- basically, that the police were doing it wrong, to put it mildly; for example, someone commented that the police didn't even use proper escalation of force or rules of engagement. alternatively, an actual military could have dealt with this better than these police handled it.

just thought it was an interesting read. i still know relatively little about this whole story...kinda late to the party

Klinotaxis · 2014-08-14 22:23:12

Mo The Show said:
I kind of feel like that's missing the point. Military antiterrorism tactics shouldn't be being used in an American city in the first place.

i think the basic idea of expressions like that is saying that the police tactics aren't even "military", they're their own, in some ways more severe, thing. but it is overly cute a post to me.

Yarrun XIX · 2014-08-14 22:43:44

^, ^^: That, and "frig, why do they have better equipment than we do/did?"

Klinotaxis · 2014-08-14 22:51:18

linking my own post, but police unions and foundations seem to be a major factor there

Salix Babylonika · 2014-08-14 22:58:11

my uncle owns some shirts like that

it's really disturbing that they're so common

Klinotaxis · 2014-08-14 23:06:20

like i said, they're the kind of things i expect from high school students in my hick world, but seeing them anywhere near people who are legally empowered to shoot to kill is something else.

Salix Babylonika · 2014-08-14 23:11:09

I've also seen a "Baby Daddy Removal Squad" shirt.

The ones my uncle (who is a police chief) has are not quite as bad, but they're close.

Mandelbrot · 2014-08-15 10:35:39

So the word from Twitter is the suspect's name was revealed; Darren Wilson, from St. Louis PD.

St Louis PD is also revealing that Michael Brown was a suspect in a shoplifting that they're referring to as a "robbery".

ProfessorGator · 2014-08-15 11:07:55

Didn't the store owner say he was innocent of that? Or is this a different case?

The events in Ferguson, Missouri

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