The recent events in Ferguson, Missouri, have played out in a way that only Quentin Tarantino could have imagined.
Tarantino’s films, which are very violent, often tell their story from more than one perspective. Scenes are not shown in the usual order. Key information is presented after the fact, reversing whatever conclusions one may have drawn up to that point. It’s not possible to fully understand what’s happened until the final scene.
Ferguson is, sadly, real life, but if it were a movie, it would probably be in its second hour right now. Here’s what is believed to have happened, in roughly the order in which it became known.
• On August 9, policeman Darren Wilson told an 18-year-old man not to walk in the street. The young man walked toward him. Wilson, from inside his car, shot him at least six times.
• The young man, Michael Brown, was unarmed.
• The policeman, like nearly all of the police in Ferguson, is white. The young man, like two-thirds of the community where he lives, was black.
• Wilson said Brown had tried to reach for his (Wilson’s) weapon.
• The main witness to the shooting says Brown had put his hands up and said, “Don’t shoot.”
• The main witness to the shooting is a friend of the victim.
• Citizens have staged nightly protests against the will of the police, often chanting, “Hands up! Don’t shoot!”
• Some looting has occurred. Some local people have also protected businesses from being looted.
• As in other US cities, the police are “militarized”, using vehicles and equipment given to them for free by the Defense Department.
• Police have shot tear gas at journalists, have arrested several and have beaten up at least a few of them.
Mean guy or nice kid?
• The media showed a photo of Brown in which he looked thuggish.
• Brown’s family showed a photo in which he looked like a nice kid.
• Just before the incident, Brown and his friend had left a convenience store, where Brown had allegedly shoplifted a box of cigars. Footage from a store camera shows that Brown has a huge physique. He is seen pushing someone aside as he leaves the store.
• Additional footage shows that Brown probably paid for the cigars and may have been pushed first.
• In 2009, in a case of mistaken identity, four Ferguson police officers arrested a black man, Henry Davis, beat him up, then fined him $3,000 for bleeding on their uniforms.
• In 2011, Ferguson police used a Taser three times on a mentally ill man, killing him.
• Tuesday night, police officer Ray Albers pointed his semi-automatic weapon at protesters and threatened to kill them if they did not step back. He was immediately suspended from duty.
• In nearby St. Louis, a (black) shoplifter, Kajieme Powell, was shot nine times on Tuesday afternoon after taunting police while carrying a knife. Some of the 150 protesters who gathered at the scene shouted, “Hands up! Shoot back!”
• Some protesters admit to having traveled to Ferguson from other places, such as Chicago.
• Police say that among the protesters are individuals carrying loaded guns.
• After a curfew was unsuccessful, the governor of Missouri called in troops from the National Guard.
Several dimensions
As you can see, there are several dimensions to this; they’re being interpreted along the fault lines of race, respect for authority or lack thereof, militarization of the police, the correct or excessive use of force, interpretations of available evidence and the handling of such evidence.
Comparisons have been drawn to the Rodney King incident of 1991, but also to other incidents this year in which unarmed black teenagers were killed by white policemen. In New York, Eric Garner was choked to death; his crime had been selling cigarettes on the sidewalk. In Los Angeles, Ezell Ford was shot after being pulled over in traffic.
The mayor of Ferguson has promised to recruit black police officers, but that will take time. Petitions are circulating to require police officers to wear cameras in order to capture all such incidents on video. Civil-rights activist Jesse Jackson has told the citizens of Ferguson to take control of the matter in the next election.
The Justice Department has begun an investigation into the Michael Brown shooting; Attorney General Eric Holder was in Ferguson yesterday to hear as many sides of the story as possible. However, the federal grand jury is not expected to have all the evidence until mid-October, and it could be months after that before a verdict is handed down.
The way journalists are being arrested, attacked, threatened and lied to as they try to cover the story makes it hard to side with the police on this one. With new facts coming out daily, however, we’ll have to wait till the end to know what really happened.
Update, August 26: Hundreds of people attended Brown’s funeral on Monday.
Both sides are recognizing that the courts will have the final say over what happened. Supporters of police officer Darren Wilson have raised nearly $400,000 for possible legal fees and the cost of him and his family to move to another city. Supporters of Michael Brown, the young man who was shot, have raised $250,000. Wilson remains suspended but on full pay.
Are racial stereotypes at work in Ferguson? NPR reports: “Data from the Missouri state attorney general’s office show that black drivers are stopped in Ferguson in disproportionate numbers, even though Ferguson police are more likely to find contraband when they stop white drivers.”
The Huffington Post has identified the police officer, Justin Cosma, who mistreated journalists from The Huffington Post and The Washington Post. Cosma and another officer, Richard Carter, are in the middle of a lawsuit for alleged violence against an unarmed 12-year-old boy in 2012. Similar allegations concern officer Eddie Boyd III, who left his police job in St. Louis, only to be hired in nearby Ferguson.
By contrast, in Dresden, Germany, on Monday, police tried for six hours to convince a moose to leave an office building before using a tranquilizer gun. No need for violence or real bullets, despite the size of the moose.
