Why Ferguson?

Why are people picking on Ferguson? Ferguson has a much lower homicide rate than Los Angeles, Chicago, or New York and Lord knows its lower than in St. Louis where the homicide rate is almost ten times as high which goes a long way to explain why people have moved from North St. Louis to Ferguson in the first place.

It’s hard to come up with reasonable statistics but my quick estimates suggest a half dozen black men are killed by the police in Oakland, California every year while I think Michael Brown may have been the first man of any race to have been killed by a Ferguson policeman. There’s a hardly a pattern of abuse there, at least not a pattern of abuse that isn’t less severe than in dozens of places around the country.

And that doesn’t even consider whether Darren Wilson’s action was justifiable or not. The grand jury apparently decided it was.

It’s a question I’ve asked before and never received a coherent answer for: what policy change would prevent similar incidents in the future? Disarm the police? Prohibit black people from moving into white neighborhoods? Declare union contracts null and void and change the demographics of the police force so they’re the same as that of the resident population at every census?

19 comments… add one
  • ... Link

    The new battle line:

    The new threat: ‘Racism without racists’

    Seriously, every white person is automatically a racist until blacks have all the money and can do whatever the Hell they want whenever the Hell they want to. Talk about moving the goalposts….

  • PD Shaw Link

    Listening to St. Louis radio on my brief commute is a tale of a different Ferguson. The broadcasters see Ferguson (and some of the nearby cities) and models of integrated communities, different than other parts of the metropolitan area. Places where you will see adults of different races playing baseball on the same team. They talk about something being destroyed (without pointing fingers, the callers do that).

  • PD Shaw Link

    Ferguson (and some of the nearby cities) AS models of integrated communities.

  • PD Shaw Link

    I’ve linked to this summary of peer-reviewed studies
    before, but most studies don’t find suspect race relevant in police use of force:

    “Similar to studies examining other criminal justice decision points, the race/ethnicity of the suspect occupies a considerable amount of research attention. This is particularly salient in the context of force due to the historically contentious relationship between minority communities and the police. The empirical evidence is mixed on this issue, but several studies documented that a suspect’s race/ethnicity did not influence whether an officer used force during an encounter (Engel et al., 2000; Lawton, 2007; McCluskey et al., 2005; McCluskey & Terrill, 2005; Morabito & Doerner, 1997; Phillips & Smith, 2000; Sun & Payne, 2004). Importantly, some of these findings were consistent across multiple models; for example, Engel et al. (2000) estimated nine models and race/ethnicity was not statistically significant in any of the analyses. Similarly, Phillips and Smith’s (2000) findings of no race/ethnicity effect were consistent across two models, and Sun and Payne (2004) derived the same finding across three models. Moreover, Terrill (2005) examined behavioral sequences between the suspects and officers in his sample and reported that suspect race/ethnicity did not affect whether an officer skipped levels on the force continuum or increased or decreased the amount of force they used during an encounter.

    “In spite of the strong evidence suggesting that a suspect’s race/ethnicity does not influence police use of force, some studies have reported contradictory findings. For example, Terrill and Mastrofski (2002) found that non-white citizens were more likely to be subjected to some form of force than their white counterparts (see also Terrill et al., 2003). Moreover, several other studies have found that suspect race/ethnicity produced mixed results, depending on the model that was estimated. Garner et al. (2002) discovered that Black suspects were more likely to have force used against them in situations of compliance, but race/ethnicity was not a factor in encounters involving resistance. Several other studies have also produced mixed results (Kaminski et al., 2004; Paoline & Terrill, 2004, 2007; Schuck, 2004; Terrill et al., 2008). For instance, Terrill and Reisig (2003) initially reported that minority suspects were more likely to have force used against them than white suspects; however, when neighborhood contextual factors were introduced into the model, suspect race/ethnicity no longer retained significance.”

    More relevant is the suspect’s gender (male), whether he is under the influence of drugs or alcohol, and degree of resistance given.

  • steve Link

    You can’t reduce the risk to zero, but you should be able to reduce it. I would suggest that police need to know they can and will be held accountable. Most cops are good, but I don’t think there is any evidence that they are morally superior. They are subject to the same sins as the rest of us. If you have whole states were a cop has never been charged for a bad shooting, that strongly suggests something is wrong when it comes to them being held accountable.

    Next, let’s demilitarize them. Violent crime is way down. They are safer than ever, yet they keep armoring up. Then, let’s insist on better and more uniform training. Let’s have fewer no-knock raids. Let’s decriminalize drugs. Finally, let’s have more research into non-lethal methods of restraint.

    I would also suggest that an attitude change needs to take place, but I don’t know how to do that. Some police seems o have adopted the “1%” rule, i.e., that if there is even the tiniest chance that they might be at risk they should shoot first. Some kid waving what is probably a toy gun around at people for 20 minutes probably has a toy gun. You can shoot first on the chance it is a real gun, but then you are going to shoot an awful lot of kids until you get to one with a real gun.

    Steve

  • steve Link
  • TastyBits Link

    @steve

    The House, Senate, and President were controlled by Democrats. I guess they forgot to stop funding the War on Drugs. I guess they were too stupid to figure out how to repeal civil forfeiture. They had no idea that it was constitutional to allow the states to handle local criminal matters.

    Here is a wild and crazy idea: Allow black people into rich white liberal communities. Allow black children to attend the same schools as rich white liberal children. It will never happen because rich white liberals do not want blacks around them. Hence, the Democrats REFUSED to do anything about the police when they could.

    The majority of white people have pre-judged young black males, and this includes white liberals. They find them scary. Young black men cultivate a scary image because it is helpful. I know because I do it myself. If you look scary, people tend to leave you alone. The other people can learn the hard way.

    The problem with a wanna be thug is that they do not know how far to take the look. There are no bad asses. There are only people who are more trouble than they are worth. These are what might be called a “bad ass”. When you back off, it is not out of fear. It is because of respect. You think that you would win, but it would be long and bloody.

    A wanna be thug thinks they can just beat the crap out of anybody, and that makes them dangerous. A wanna be thug thinks that robbing a store for a pack of cigars is a good idea. A wanna be thug thinks that trying to takes a cops gun after robbing a store is a good idea. A wanna be thug thinks that rushing a cop after trying to take his gun after robbing a store is a good idea.

    Michael Brown is dead because of the decisions he made. Had he made different decisions, he would have been in a jail cell. If the Ferguson PD were like NOPD, he would get a foot in his ass for having a smart mouth, but he would be alive and suing for police brutality.

    In my opinion, Officer Wilson initiated the encounter really badly. This is based upon my experience, but that experience is from thirty years ago in a city with a far higher crime rate. For the time and place, he may have initiated it perfectly, but I doubt it.

    Unless Officer Wilson planned to murder Michael Brown, it does not matter how he initiated the encounter (criminal case). Michael Brown did not have any right to take a police officer’s weapon because he initiated a police stop badly.

    Anybody with an IQ above average could figure this out, and liberals love to inform everybody how they are the smartest people in the whole wide world. (They must be because anybody that disagrees with them is as dumb as a bag of rocks.) Either liberals cannot figure this out, or they are trying to divert attention.

    This is all to divert attention from white liberal’s refusal to associate with blacks. White privilege means never having to live, shop, eat, or send your children to school with a large number of black people, and the few that you do associate with will be kept under control.

    “Mr. Rich White Liberal tear down that wall.”

  • The majority of white people have pre-judged young black males, and this includes white liberals. They find them scary.

    It isn’t just white liberals. A remark from Jesse Jackson:

    There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery. Then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved…. After all we have been through. Just to think we can’t walk down our own streets, how humiliating.

  • TastyBits Link

    Jesse Jackson has been around too many rich white liberals, and their thinking has rubbed off on him. Actually, he is no longer familiar with young black males, and he cannot tell who is who. Unfamiliarity breeds suspicion, and the only way to become familiar with young black males is to be around them.

  • steve Link

    In theory blacks can enter white liberal neighborhoods. In reality, most don’t have the income to do so. Not that practical an idea. Having black kids go to the schools will mean busing. Last I talked that idea over with the family they didn’t really like that very much. Besides, i am not sure how much difference it would make. I think all of the literature points towards needing very early intervention to make a difference. By the time they get to school, it is probably too late. That is, if your idea is to alter the behaviors of black kids. If you are looking to alter the behavior of white kids, i.e. expose them to more blacks that would ok by me if you can figure a way to do it. Not sure how it will stop black kids from getting shot since I don’t think most cops are exactly liberal elites.

    Once you get past the stereotyping, and look at the serious writers, I think it is pretty clear that most people are inclined to believe that once Brown reached for the gun, the shooting was justified. However, a lot of people think that it was (probably) handled poorly up until that point. It does matter how you initiate encounters. While that does not give the criminal the right to do whatever they want, it should not let the police off the hook either.

    Steve

  • jan Link

    If you look scary, people tend to leave you alone.

    That observation, Tasty, reminds me of the big, old, faded blue, rusty, dented panel work truck my husband and I drove around in for years. To make matters even more intimidating, it had a bad muffler that frequently popped off, especially during any acceleration, sounding very much like loud gun shots. People used to scurry around us all the time, not wanting to be around a vehicle that had nothing to lose should we collide with each other.

    Of course, my husband’s wild curly hair, long mustache, sitting next to me with long hair in a denim work shirt, made us appear like a low-life, irresponsible couple who belonged in such a truck. We used to laugh, though, to be so ‘untouchable,’ feared, by all the conventional people, first peering at us, as they then sped off to get as much distance between us and them as possible.

    Appearances can oftentimes be deceptive……

  • jan Link

    I think it is pretty clear that most people are inclined to believe that once Brown reached for the gun, the shooting was justified. However, a lot of people think that it was (probably) handled poorly up until that point.

    It is often said that “hindsight is 20/20.” In the Wilson/Brown confrontation, it’s easy to say Wilson should not have pursued Brown, as it led to Brown being killed. However, what if Wilson had stayed in the car, waited for back-up, and Brown, in a heightened state of rage, fresh off of roughing up a store owner, intimidating a cop, ran off and beat up some bystander who might have gotten in his way. How would Wilson have been judged then? Would he have again been criticized, except this time for not giving chase, allowing a large, out-of-control young man even more leeway to possibly hurt more people?

    IMO, it’s hard to always exactly gauge the right protocol to use when events are sudden, happening in split second intervals. That’s why athletics watch and analyze post game tapes of themselves to see what they can improve on, since real time tactical plays are more of a flash point reaction, rather than a crystal-ball prescience that if you do this then that will certainly happen. A by-product of Ferguson, will be that all cops will have to wear body cameras as standard equipment, just so such replays can be available in police scenarios, giving clearer and more undisputed video evidence in order to either counter or support witness statements.

  • TastyBits Link

    @steve

    In fact, black young men can piss blood for a week because they were beaten in the kidneys for entering liberal white neighborhoods. Am I supposed to believe that it is an accident that certain neighborhoods are designed with lots of cul-de-sacs and no through streets, and the ones that can afford it have built fortress walls.

    The police that are doing all these shootings are being paid by somebody. Am I supposed to believe that all the white liberals have no idea that they are paying for these racist cops. Unbelievable.

    All the studies that point to their being no benefit to black children mixing with white children were done by whom? I thought so.

    The simple solution would be to force all communities to have 10% housing for low income and poor people. They could then go to the same schools, and if too many students were going to private schools, vouchers could be provided. The poor black families would live within the gates, and wherever the rich white liberals move, they would follow.

    While white conservatives will complain, the millennial generation will solve that problem. The coming demographics will ensure that the racists cannot win. Unless, it turns out that there are more racists than we knew existed.

    There are cases where the police should be prosecuted, but this is not one of them. There are numerous cases where police shoot people because they thought the person had a weapon, and these should be prosecuted. A civilian will be prosecuted for killing somebody because he mistook a comb for a knife, but a police officer trained to know the difference between a comb and a knife gets off. Furthermore, the civilian should not be expected to act with nerves of steel while the policeman is allowed to act cowardly.

    At one time being a law enforcement officer meant having a pair of balls. You knew the risks. If you wanted a safe job, you would have been a bus driver. Today, a bus driver risks his life every time he combs his hair, and if he is a young, black bus driver, he had better not drop his wallet or hold a cellphone.

  • There are cases where the police should be prosecuted, but this is not one of them.

    That’s half of my view. Maybe the other half of what I think about this subject can be expressed by stating THE OPPOSITE of what I think:

    An effective and moral method of securing necessary change is destroying and looting the homes, cars, and businesses of black people who had nothing to do with killing Michael Brown.

    If you justify the actions of the rioters in any fashion including the president’s clumsy statement the night of the grand jury’s announcement, that’s the position you’re taking, at least implicitly.

  • steve Link

    1) The idea that only white liberals live in gated communities and in cul-de-sacs is laughable.

    2) They are paid by white people, conservative and liberal, as well whatever taxes minorities pay. However, if you want to spread the idea that only liberals pay taxes, have at it.

    3) Lots of literature, including by minority scholars. Again, it is not clear that mixing after very young ages does much for the black population. It might for the white. I don’t know those studies, if they have been done.

    4) “There are cases where the police should be prosecuted, but this is not one of them.”

    I have never said that. Easy straw man to knock down. I said that once they engaged, i.e. Brown went for the gun, it was probably legal and correct to shoot the guy. What I have said all along is that the cop probably mishandled it up until then. To the best of my knowledge incompetence is not prosecutable for something like this, so I am not advocating for it.

    5) “The simple solution would be to force all communities to have 10% housing for low income and poor people. ”

    Fine with me. Have no idea how you can make that happen or how it would even be legal. It also ignores the Nobel economist (name?) who showed that people actually self-segregate most of the time, so I am not sure how much minorities of any sort will really like living only in communities where they make up 10% of the population. If nothing else it would mean giving up voting power for the most part. (not that their reps do that much for them.)

    Steve

  • PD Shaw Link

    My kids attend public schools with racial-desegregation busing. I had been gravitating toward the view that this was not helping. If, as I think steve suggests correctly IMHO(*), children are not entering the public school system with the same preparation for learning, you do run the risk of re-enforcing differences in a way that might increase disengagement by middle school years. Busing usually means shipping poor kids to nicer parts of town, to take advantage of safer neighborhoods and newer facilities, but then the poorer parents are that much less likely to be involved in the school in terms of stopping buy and chatting with teachers.

    The Atlantic article about re-segregating the Tuscaloosa schools changed my mindm Segregation Now. There are no villains in the piece, though the re-segregation movement had necessary support of well-healed African-Americans. And somewhere in the mix we have the rights of teachers to switch to better jobs, people to move to other cities, and foreign business to be uncomfortable investing in cities under desegregation orders.

    It’s a good article, better than Coates’ semi-accurate racial history in favor of a policy he is too afraid to state.

  • jan Link

    Rich Lowry gave some common sense pointers, regarding how to act and handle police encounters, during this morning’s appearance on Meet The Press:

    “Don’t rob a convenience store. Don’t fight with a policeman when he stops you and try to take his gun. And when he yells at you to stop, just stop.”

    They’re applicable to everyone, anywhere, all the time.

  • TastyBits Link

    @steve

    The Nobel Committee awarded President Obama the Peace Prize. So, it must be an opposite prize. The Nobel economist is the one least likely to know anything about economics.

    White liberals are the ones running around claiming everybody and everybody is racist. If they are going to live like Klansmen, I am going to call them out.

    “Self-segregate” is just another way of saying that “the colored folks like to be around other colored folks.” I am sure that is real popular at the Klan rallies.

    People self-segregate because they are not comfortable, and in white majority settings, many black people are not comfortable because they fear doing something that will be labeled “acting black”. If you are concerned about a promotion or bonus, you do not want to be the black guy who fits whatever stereotype the person in charge might have.

    I could write several volumes on this subject, but it would be a waste of time.

    You would not like my housing plan. I would mandate attached units to each house over a certain square footage, but there are some other plans out there.

  • jan Link

    I read a portion of PD’s posted “Segregation Now” article, while bookmarking it to read the rest later. IMO, while the intentions of busing to achieve racial desegregation are good, more often than not the results are mixed to disappointing.

    Displacement of kids, out of their neighborhoods, forcing them into a “better” environment will only work if the child wants and is self-motivated enough to take advantage of what is being offered them. In fact, their motivation has to be higher than most just to compensate for the longer travel times — to and fro — and the socioeconomic adjustments that have to made. Also, kids who don’t want to or can’t adapt, don’t feel like they fit in, will act out, instead. Even those who do adequately adjust tend to hang out and interact in the comfort zones of their own cultural peer groups. You see this all the time in K-12 schools, where students self-segregate during unconfined times — lunch and walking between classes.

    There’s something more, it seems, to desegregation than simply forcing institutions to mix up the color ratios. Barriers are better broken down between people when common ground, value systems, fair play, considerations for each other, high expectations etc. are equally distributed, mindfully practiced, and voluntarily supported by teachers, students, parents and the community at large. IOW, color blindness is genuinely achieved, for longer terms, when color is not the main qualifier — rather actions and behavior are accentuated, as well as an implementation goal of common good for all.

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