The government and it's ma$$ media mouthpiece have been turning this into a race issue when it is an issue of tyrannical authority and freedom.
Related:
St. Louis Police Murdered Michael Brown
Time to Calm Down Protest About Brown
It was the authorities who tried to inflame things.
"It looks like we've moved up a stage into critical mass with this Ferguson business. It went on and is probably still going on, past the point where someone higher up in the pecking order should have stepped in and taken over. They let it go on. I see where the governor has now decided to send in other forces. Unmentioned in the mix is the fact that Israeli police advisers have been training the American police for some time....
They say that in Ferguson they were shooting journalists with rubber bullets. They tear gassed an Al Jazeera news crew. They hauled a local politician out of his car and threw him in jail. They beat up and gassed all and sundry. It was a step further than they have ever gone before; unless you hearken back to Ludlow, or any number of the countless offenses performed on one victim, or groups of victims, one after another. Times have changed. Now a new police chief has come into town and is marching with the protestors. Long time FBI snitch and professional agitator, Al Sharpton is on the scene, making things worse and apparently people don't know or don't want to know about him....
--MORE--"
Highway patrol takes over security in Ferguson, Mo." by David A. Lieb and Jim Salter | Associated Press
My printed byline reads Lowery, Markon, and Berman of the Washington Post.
"State troopers in Missouri replace heavily armed force" by WESLEY LOWERY, JERRY MARKON and MARK BERMAN The Washington Post
Ferguson, Mo. - Federal and state officials unveiled a sweeping response Thursday to violent clashes between police and protesters over the shooting death of an unarmed black teenager, with Missouri taking over security operations from local police and authorities agreeing to accept Justice Department help in handling protests.
The Missouri Highway Patrol seized control of a St. Louis suburb on Thursday, stripping local police of their law-enforcement authority after four days of clashes between heavily armed officers and furious crowds protesting the death of an unarmed black teen shot by an officer.
Speaking from Martha's Vineyard, Mass., where he is on vacation, President Barack Obama called for national unity following the police shooting Saturday of Michael Brown, 18, in this St. Louis suburb. "Now is the time for peace and calm on the streets of Ferguson," Obama said. "Let's remember that we're all part of one American family."
I agree with the middle statement. The other things are offensive to me given an administration and government that is a corrupt liar. Sorry.
The intervention, ordered by Missouri Governor Jay Nixon, came as President Obama spoke publicly for the first time about Saturday’s fatal shooting of Michael Brown and the subsequent violence that shocked the nation and threatened to tear apart Ferguson, a town that is nearly 70 percent black patrolled by a nearly all-white police force.
Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. then announced a series of steps his department is taking, including a meeting held Thursday with civic leaders to calm tensions and an escalating civil rights probe in which federal investigators have already interviewed witnesses to the shooting.
Obama said there was ‘‘no excuse’’ for violence either against the police or by officers against peaceful protesters.
All I can think of is the cops wading into Occupy encampments. Sorry.
In unusually blunt remarks, Holder said he was "deeply concerned" about "the deployment of military equipment and vehicles" on Ferguson's streets and that Missouri officials have accepted federal assistance "to conduct crowd control and maintain public safety without relying on unnecessarily extreme displays of force."
This whole thing being exploited to open the door to federal insertion and eventual martial law?
Nixon’s promise to ease the deep racial tensions was swiftly put to the test as demonstrators gathered again Thursday evening, in the neighborhood where looters smashed and burned businesses on Sunday and police repeatedly fired tear gas and smoke bombs.
Even as dozens of protesters continued their campaign near the shooting scene for a fifth day on Thursday, state officials followed the federal lead. Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon announced that the Missouri Highway Patrol would take over security operations in Ferguson, led by Capt. Ronald Johnson, an African American who grew up in the area. "We are going to have a different approach and have the approach that we're in this together," Johnson said.
But Thursday’s protests were a world apart from the earlier demonstrations, with a light, even festive atmosphere and no hint of violence. The streets were filled with music, free food and even laughter.
A hallmark of controlled-opposition coverage.
Occupy was a bunch of stinky bums and misguided young people.
As a result, the heavy riot armor, the SWAT trucks with sniper posts and the gas masks were gone from the streets of Ferguson Thursday night, and Johnson marched with the crowd, eliciting cheers from the protesters. Johnson vowed to not blockade the streets, to set up a media staging center, and to ensure that residents' rights to assemble and protest were not infringed upon. "I'm not afraid to be in this crowd," Johnson declared to reporters.
Oh, readers, the STENCH of EXPLOITATION of this thing is SICKENING!
(Blog editors note: I will only be inserting relevant paragraphs from the Lieb and Salter link sporadically now. Sorry)
Obama's remarks were the most visible step in a rapid coalescence among political and community leaders to tamp down the violence, as images of riot police, tear gas and government intervention provoked a national debate about race and justice that recalled civil rights battles of a half-century ago.
Now WAIT a MINUTE! The ESSENTIAL FACTS here are an AUTHORITY FIGURE GUNNED DOWN an unarmed kid in COLD BLOOD! According to the paragraph above, it is now exclusively black-white and recalls the civild rights era! What a twisted distortion of what happened.
In a sudden burst of interest fueled by photos and video of heavily armed police that swirled on social media, politicians from both sides of the aisle rushed on Thursday-five days after the shooting - to condemn the tactics of the nearly all-white police force in the predominantly African American town.
In other words, AmeriKa looking like those they hurl criticism at was a PUBLIC RELATIONS DISASTER!
Like last year’s Trayvon Martin shooting, social media brought international attention to a tragedy that might otherwise have been known only to the immediate community. Ferguson spawned a proliferation of hashtags and was the dominant subject Thursday on Twitter, Facebook, and other sites.
The reactions were remarkably similar across the political spectrum. Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., for example, called for authorities to "de-militarize this situation," while Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, a likely Republican presidential candidate, condemned "the militarization of our law enforcement" in a Time magazine essay.
Great; however, WHY DID YOU -- the federal government -- GIVE THEM ALL THAT STUFF!
But on the ground in Ferguson, the support from politicians at all levels was met with skepticism, and it was unclear how much effect it would have. Eddie Hasan, a St. Louis resident who helped organize a forum Thursday night at a local Baptist church for young people to voice their concerns, called on elected officials to play a greater role in calming tensions.
"This forum, this chance for the youth to speak out absolutely should have happened sooner," he said. "Hopefully it helps us get some resolution to the issue."
State Senator Maria Chappelle-Nadal, who has been active in planning recent protests and was tear-gassed on Monday, said local and state officials have been woefully absent.
Please wake up, politicians.
"There hasn't been a single white Democrat down here," Chappelle-Nadal, who represents Ferguson, said on Wednesday before Nixon's visit. "Mark my words, the Republicans might start showing up before they do."
Here I am.
Underlying the dispute was the continuing lack of clarity about just what happened Saturday night in Ferguson.
According to a friend who says he witnessed the incident, Brown was walking down a Ferguson street when a police officer in a car ordered him to get on the sidewalk. Brown had his hands in the air to show he was unarmed when the officer shot him multiple times, the friend said.
The police version is that Brown attacked the officer in his car and tried to grab his gun. Ferguson police Chief Thomas Jackson said during a news conference on Wednesday that the officer was struck in the face during the encounter. The side of the officer's face was "swollen," Jackson said, and he was treated at an area hospital.
Well, I have to tell you, I know which version I believe.
Federal investigators are still trying to sort out the conflicting versions of events but are proceeding cautiously and deferring to state investigators for now, a federal law enforcement official said Thursday. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation, said the investigation is a high priority for the Justice Department and FBI but it is far too early to determine if any charges will be brought.
Where the print ended.
Another key source of frustration for residents is that police, after initially promising to identify the officer involved in the shooting, have backtracked because of what they say are threats to his safety.
The lack of specifics about the shooting, combined with anger over the show of police force, has many protesters vowing to continue their campaign. Dozens of people did so on Thursday near the shooting scene and also outside the Ferguson police station.
On the fourth day of demonstrations, the crowds still rivaled the size at comparable points on previous days, with dozens lining the burned-out gas station and half a dozen or so on the center divider-with one man laying face down in the street and the others pointing their fingers like guns at him.
"Hands up, don't shoot!" they declared, words that have been the soundtrack of Ferguson's unrest.
Many residents said that they do not care if elected officials ever show up. "I don't want to see any governors, or any mayors, or even any more cameras," said Derrick Beavers, 32, a protester who said he knew Brown personally. "I want justice."
In Massachusetts, Obama also called on federal officials to ensure "that justice is done."
"There is never an excuse for violence against police or for those who would use this tragedy as a cover for vandalism or looting," the president said, before adding: "There is also no excuse for police to use excessive force against peaceful protests or to throw protesters in jail for lawfully exercising their First Amendment rights."
Occupy, bye-bye.
In concluding his remarks, Obama said that while "emotions are raw right now" in the suburb and accounts of the tragedy differ, "Now is the time for healing, Now is the time for peace and calm on the streets of Ferguson. Now is the time for an open and transparent process to see that justice is done. And I've asked the attorney general and the U.S. attorney on the scene to continue to work with local officials to move that process forward."
Obama did not take questions from reporters after his remarks....
When Johnson took the podium, it seemed clear that things had changed, at least rhetorically. "I understand the anger and fear that the citizens of Ferguson are feeling, and our officers will respect both of those," said Johnson, who has been the head of the highway patrol's troops in the region since 2002.
Johnson vowed that he would be on the ground himself on Thursday night and said he planned to visit the QuikTrip convenience store that has become ground zero for the protesters.
Ground Zero calls up certain images in my mind. How about yours?
--more--"
Ferguson, Mo., tensions flare following disclosures" by Wesley Lowery, DeNeen L. Brown, and Jerry Markon | Washington Post
Great, except today's byline was Vega, Williams, and Eckholm of the New York Times.
WTF?
"Emotions Flare in Missouri Amid Police Statements" by TANZINA VEGA, TIMOTHY WILLIAMS and ERIK ECKHOLM, AUG. 15, 2014
FERGUSON, Mo. — One day after roiling tensions over the police shooting of a black teenager here began to subside, emotions flared anew on Friday as the police identified the officer involved but also released evidence that the victim was a suspect in a convenience store robbery moments before being shot.
Then why were they walking inn the middle of the street just down from the house, and why did I see on the blogs that the store clerk said they were not in the store or didn't do the robbery? Is this backfill bullshit from authority?
Authorities in this restive suburb of St. Louis on Friday began telling their version of the events surrounding the fatal shooting of an unarmed black teenager by a white police officer, but the halting, contradictory nature of the account revived popular anger here and brought criticism from other law enforcement agencies.
The manner in which the police here released the information, which included a 19-page police report on the robbery but no new details about the shooting, led to the spectacle of dueling police news conferences, one led by a white officer who seemed ill at ease and defensive, and the other dominated by a charismatic black officer who expressed solidarity with the crowd even as he pleaded for peace.
Nearly a week after 18-year-old Michael Brown’s death sparked days of protests, police identified the officer who killed him as Darren Wilson, who has six years of service with no disciplinary record. But they provided virtually no information about the officer, instead focusing on linking Brown to a convenience store robbery that occurred just before the shooting.
What was stolen, and did the kids have it on them?
The white officer, Thomas Jackson, the police chief in Ferguson, gave a series of incomplete accounts that sowed confusion about whether the officer who shot the teenager knew he was a suspect in the robbery. The black officer, Capt. Ronald S. Johnson of the Missouri State Highway Patrol, expressed his displeasure with how the information had been released.
At a tense early-morning news conference, Ferguson Police Chief Thomas Jackson said Brown had been the prime suspect in that robbery — in which several boxes of cigars were stolen — and that his description was broadcast over police frequencies just before his encounter with Wilson. Police dramatized the allegation, releasing security camera photos showing a person they identified as Brown towering over and menacing the store clerk, images that were circulated nationwide.
First I've heard of the cigars and all, the kid was unarmed, and the cops are working overtime to put a good spin on this? Stink.
“I would have liked to have been consulted,” he said pointedly about the pairing of the shooter’s identity with the robbery accusation.
Yet, despite the implication that Brown had been stopped because of the robbery, Jackson later appeared to reverse himself, saying at a second news conference that the confrontation ‘‘was not related to the robbery’’ at all. Instead, he said, Brown was stopped because he and a friend were walking in the street.
Oh what a deadly web we weave....
All week, community members had demanded the name of the officer who killed Michael Brown, 18, last Saturday, but when it finally came, it was accompanied by surveillance videotapes that appeared to show Mr. Brown shoving a store clerk aside as he stole a box of cigarillos.
Hours later, Jackson returned again to the robbery theme, telling the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that the officer saw cigars in Brown’s hand and realized he might be the robber.
Oh okay. Then the kid deserved to die! You can't steal cigars! Steal tax loot, fine. Be a bilking banker, okay. Wall Street loot scheme? All set! But grab a handful -- not boxes -- of cigars and blam, blam, blam, blam, blam, blam, blam, blam.
Wasn't the kid going to college in the fall? Why would he jeopardize that for a couple of blunts?
Mr. Brown’s family, their lawyer and others in the community expressed disgust, accusing the police of trying to divert attention from the central issue — the unexplained shooting of an unarmed young man.
The confusion not only did little to calm tensions roiling this community of 21,000 but appeared to further inflame them. Scattered protests continued, and the police actions drew a rebuke from Brown’s family, which accused Jackson of deliberately besmirching the teen’s character.
“It is smoke and mirrors,” said Benjamin L. Crump, a lawyer for the Brown family, of the robbery allegations. “Nothing, based on the facts before us, justifies the execution-style murder by this police officer in broad daylight.”
I led this post with his comments, and I thought it was at night. Wow.
The videotapes seemed to contradict the image portrayed by Mr. Brown’s family of a gentle teenager opposed to violence and on his way to college.
Oh, the family lied. Okay.
‘‘The family feels that was strategic,’’ Anthony Gray, a lawyer for Brown’s family, said during a news conference Friday. ‘‘They feel it was aimed at denigrating their son. It was an attempt at character assassination.’’ Added Eric Davis, a cousin of Brown’s mother: ‘‘It infuriated us.’’
Why not? They already killed his body.
Captain Johnson, who grew up in the area and had been brought in by the governor on Thursday to restore peace after days of confrontations between demonstrators and the police in riot gear and military-style vehicles, said he had not been told that the authorities planned to release the video of the robbery along with the name of the officer. But he sought to calm people down, saying, “In our anger, we have to make sure that we don’t burn down our own house.”
Captain Johnson won over many but also faced skepticism over his role along with anguished questions about who the police really represent and the lack of educational and economic opportunities in Ferguson.
“I find it utterly disgusting,” one man shouted at him. “What am I supposed to tell my people? It looks like you’re a figurehead.”
Gov. Jay Nixon, a Democrat, stood next to Captain Johnson at their news conference and emphasized that the details released Friday were not “the full picture.” He added, “I think the focal point here remains to figure out how and why Michael Brown was killed and to get justice as appropriate in that situation.”
Law enforcement officials typically strive to present a united front, yet Nixon’s decision prompted an unusual public attack from St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Robert McCulloch, who was angered that the move would take control of the scene away from St. Louis County police. ‘‘For Nixon to never talk to the commanders in the field and come in here and take this action is disgraceful,’’ McCulloch told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. ‘‘It’s shameful what he did.’’
St. Louis County Executive Charlie Dooley later said he is leading an effort to remove the county prosecutor from the investigation because of bias. McCulloch is the person who will decide whether state charges will be filed against the police officer.
Later Friday, the Justice Department, which is conducting a separate civil rights investigation into the killing, announced that teams of F.B.I. agents would be canvassing the neighborhood where shooting took place in the next several days.
The day began when Chief Jackson said at a news conference that the officer who shot Mr. Brown was Darren Wilson, who has served four years in Ferguson and two in another local department and had no disciplinary charges. Officer Wilson, who is white, has been placed on leave, and his location is unknown.
But the release of his name was overshadowed by the simultaneous announcement of the robbery allegations, leading to questions about timing and motives.
I don't have any. I can see right through it.
In a later news conference, on Friday afternoon at Forestwood Park, a sports complex in Ferguson, Chief Jackson said that Officer Wilson had not been aware that Mr. Brown “was a suspect in the case” and instead had stopped him and a companion “because they were walking down the street blocking traffic.”
But that only highlighted the central issue: How did an officer’s interaction with an unarmed young man escalate into a deadly shooting?
The videotapes, from an unidentified convenience store, show a tall burly man, identified by the police as Mr. Brown, shoving aside a clerk as he left the store with an unpaid-for box of Swisher Sweets cigarillos. According to a police report, Mr. Brown was accompanied at the store by his friend Dorian Johnson, who was also with him when he was shot.
Now I don't want to be picky, but I was TOLD ABOVE it was boxeS!
Mr. Johnson has admitted being in the convenience store with Mr. Brown and told investigators from the F.B.I. and St. Louis County that Mr. Brown did “take cigarillos,” Mr. Johnson’s lawyer, Freeman Bosley Jr., a former mayor of St. Louis, told MSNBC.
Then it's an open and shut case. Clear the cop and that's that.
Standing near a store that was vandalized during protests this week, Mark Jackson, who has participated in the demonstrations, expressed skepticism about police motives in describing the robbery. “They just want to make the case seem more reasonable on their side,” he said. “But at the end of the day, the man didn’t have a gun, so they didn’t have to shoot him.”
If we were talking about any other place I would agree, but this is AmeriKa. If the lovingly protective security thugs kill you, you deserved it. End of story.
In his afternoon appearance, Chief Jackson sought to explain why the information was released on Friday. “All I did was release the videotape because I had to,” he said. “I had been sitting on it.”
Print ended there.
He said his hand was forced by requests by the news media under public records laws.
Those will have to be done away with.
He acknowledged that he had not alerted the other police departments about the tape. “I should have done that,” he said.
Chief Jackson described Officer Wilson as “a gentle, quiet man” and “a distinguished officer.”
Greg Kloeppel, a lawyer for the union representing the Ferguson police, said Officer Wilson received an award for “extraordinary effort in the line of duty” in February.
The police have not released the official report on the shooting because it is now the subject of federal and local investigations. In the robbery report released Friday, an officer wrote that “it is worth mentioning that this incident is related to” the fatal shooting of Mr. Brown.
After seeing Mr. Brown’s body and reviewing the surveillance video, “I was able to confirm that Brown is the primary suspect” in the robbery, the officer wrote.
That ties it all up then.
Any suggestion that Officer Wilson sought out Mr. Brown and Mr. Johnson because they were robbery suspects, however, was dispelled by the police chief at the afternoon news conference. Adding to the day’s confusion, Chief Jackson told The St. Louis Post-Dispatch later on Friday that while Officer Wilson did not originally approach the two youths as suspects, he was aware of the nearby store robbery.
The officer has said that once he saw cigars in Mr. Brown’s hand, he “realized that he might be the robber,” Chief Jackson said.
After the revelations of the day, the atmosphere in Ferguson on Friday night remained peaceful, though boisterous. Cars clogged streets as horns blared and music played. Hundreds of demonstrators clutched signs and chanted slogans, but many others danced to music. On one street, six people danced atop a white delivery truck.
And a good time was had by all, unlike those icky antiwar or pro-Palestinian protests I never read about.
The police presence was limited. But among the officers on the street was Captain Johnson, who walked among the crowds, posing for pictures and shaking hands.
“I’m pleased with how it’s going,” he said.
Crisis over.
--more--"
It's reverberating all the way out here:
"Mo. teen’s killing reverberates in Boston" by Akilah Johnson, Brian MacQuarrie and Faiz Siddiqui | Globe Staff | Globe Correspondent August 14, 2014
An unarmed black teenager shot dead on a Missouri street. A distraught community protests the killing at the hands of a white police officer. Violent clashes follow between protesters and police, who use tear gas, rubber bullets, and wooden pellets.
Halfway across the country in Boston, black leaders and residents reacted Thursday with anger and sharp questions about the death of 18-year-old Michael Brown in a St. Louis suburb and the aggressive police response to tense, daily protests.
“It’s an outrageous shooting,” said Charles Ogletree Jr., a Harvard Law School professor. “People have just had enough and are not yet over what happened with
That is where the turn-in was, and I stopped reading it. Sorry.
Trayvon Martin,” an unarmed black youth killed two years ago by a Florida crime watch volunteer.
Ogletree, who is black, called for continued rallies but without the violence of Wednesday night, when protesters hurled Molotov cocktails at heavily armed police in Ferguson, Mo.
“There needs to be a lot of noise — nonviolent but forceful — to make it known that we can’t afford to lose another black child,” Ogletree said.
Occupy.
Echoing concerns in Ferguson, blacks in Boston and around the nation are questioning whether an overwhelmingly white police force is prejudging people of color in a Missouri town where two-thirds of the 21,000 residents are black.
Ferguson police have said the officer who shot Brown was assaulted in his cruiser and that a struggle ensued for his weapon. A friend of Brown who was there said Brown was shot on the street with his hands raised. Authorities have not identified the officer.
During lunch at Haley House Bakery Cafe in Dudley Square, some patrons said police treat black men with less dignity than others. “There’s this notion that young black folks are criminals, lack morals, don’t have respect in general for law and order,” said Andre Plummer, 52. “So, police departments around the country seem quick to resort to violence.”
That is true no matter what color you are!
Sheila Emerson, a 68-year-old mother of five, said she thought of her children as she saw reports of the tear gas and rubber bullets. Her children have been stopped by police while driving, often for no apparent reason, she said.
“I feel like my people are being picked on all the time, to be honest,” Emerson said.
Call it the Zionist Jew syndrome.
Edmund Barry Gaither, director and curator of the Museum of the National Center of Afro-American Artists in Boston, expressed concerns with what he called the militarization of police, leaving a “force that looks like ‘Miami Vice’ ” to confront the protesters.
“In a community of that size, there should be a conversation happening without the overwhelming display of police power,” he said.
Meanwhile, people like me who were warning of this for years, blogging about it for years, were ignored, insulted, and attacked. And now here we are.
Boston Police Commissioner William B. Evans said in a statement that “the unfortunate incidents” in Ferguson and one in New York in which a 43-year-old black man died in a police chokehold “remind us of the importance of our obligations to our residents and neighborhoods in the city.”
See: NYC Cops Out of Control
Do bankers smoke cigars or cigarettes?
In Boston, an ongoing dialogue aims to improve relations between the police department and minority communities, said Michael Curry, president of the Boston chapter of the NAACP. The Urban League of Eastern Massachusetts has also been involved in that dialogue, he said.
“They are tough conversations. It’s not always a love fest,” said Superintendent in Chief William Gross, the first African-American in that position. “But at least we’re having conversations before things happen.”
Gross said the department is committed to avoiding the problems in Ferguson.
“Will there be bumps in the road? Yes. Will there be controversial interactions and arrests? Yes. But will the strength of the partnerships hold true?” he asked. “So far, they have.”
Gross would not critique the Ferguson police but did say he was confident that Boston police would find “a peaceful resolution” in such a situation.
Three factors that contributed to the crisis in Ferguson — lack of diversity on the police force, the complaint review process, no sensitivity training for officers — are areas Boston must set right to avoid a similar fate, Curry said.
Only three members of Ferguson’s 53-member police force are black. “When you don’t have diverse perspectives around the table, you get flawed results,” he said. “How do you perceive these young men with braids who are sagging with swag?”
Is that why I'm so goddamn sour on all this shit?
As a college student or a criminal, he wondered.
US Representative James Clyburn, one of the highest ranking blacks in Congress, said Thursday that the situation in Missouri is the result of a growing climate of racial tensions manifesting since President Obama’s election.“It’s clear to me that this is not happening in a vacuum,” he said at a book signing event at Roxbury Community College.
(Blog editor just shakes head at that misbegotten jump-the-shark analogy. Has nothing to do with this at all)
As dusk fell Thursday evening, hundreds gathered on Boston Common and raised their hands in solidarity as they joined in a national moment of silence. They held aloft posters beseeching, “We Are Human Too,” “No Justice No Peace” and “Stop the Brutality.”
It mirrored protests across the country. The propaganda pre$$ flogging proves this is agenda-pushing controlled opposition. Sorry.
In the shadow of the State House, Tanisha Milton, 37, sat atop the Common steps.
“I’m out here to let the people in Ferguson know that we’re here,” she said. “The people in Boston care.”
Leondra Hawkesworth wore on her shirt the face of DJ Henry, a Pace University student from Easton who was shot to death in Mount Pleasant, N.Y., by police in 2010.
“It becomes tiring and painful to see so many young black people killed,” said Hawkesworth, 24. “There’s no solution. There’s no justice being served.”
I know. Gaza, Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Syria, Ukraine, and every other place the EUSraeli empire is f***ing around; however, there are solutions.
The crowd broke into chants: “Justice! For Mike Brown,” “No Justice! No Peace!” Later on, Alexis Martinez, 28, took the megaphone.
“Don’t come at me today telling that this is not about race,” she said. “That’s . . . exactly what it’s about!”
Near the bottom of the steps, she hugged a friend, asking, “When will it end?”
Right now.
--more--"
As usual, I turn to the Boston Globe editorial staff for solutions to everything:
"Arms build-up in Ferguson, Mo., places public at risk" | August 16, 2014
The circumstances leading to the shooting death of an unarmed teenager in Ferguson, Mo., by a local police officer remain under investigation. But the violent aftermath of the shooting clearly revealed a police force that sees itself more like an occupying army than part of the community.
Must be that Israeli training.
Demonstrators took to the streets of Ferguson after the Aug. 9 shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown. Some troublemakers were on hand. But the nearly all-white police force made little or no effort to distinguish peaceful demonstrators from rioters in the small city comprised predominantly of African-Americans. Instead, police responded reflexively with military-style weapons, tear gas, and rubber bullets. Shocking images of police sharpshooters in body armor atop heavily armed trucks were beamed around the world.
But my news section articles really minimized that! I had to hear about the snipers from the blogs!
The poor performance of the Ferguson police is a local issue. But the federal government bears much responsibility for putting military hardware in the hands of this backwards police force, and others like it.
I love the Yankee elitism with which I was raised.
In the years after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, the Department of Homeland Security poured money into police departments large and small for the purchase of heavy body armor, mine-resistant vehicles, and other equipment that serves little purpose other than to counter bombings and other military-style attacks. As Ferguson shows, such war materials are more likely to be used by police to terrorize local populations than to fight actual terrorists.
Something I have been saying for years and years and years, and now it has come true. I failed.
Related: Pittsfield Spitball
Globe was $inging a different tune then.
Civil liberties groups have been warning for months about the arms build-up in local police departments. The ACLU of Massachusetts has met with consistent resistance from police in its effort to get information on heavily armed SWAT teams that are increasingly called on to perform routine police duties, such as serving warrants. The ACLU rightly warns of the “federally orchestrated militarization of local police forces.” National political leaders from both parties are echoing these sentiments.
Well, when the PLAN calls for MARTIAL LAW at some point, you HAVE TO BE READY! That's why government agencies like Social Security are arming themselves as they close down offices.
This government is MAKING WAR on the American people -- just as we told you they would years ago!
It is especially dangerous when Homeland Security and the US Justice Department put military-grade equipment or weapons in the hands of police departments that have slept through decades of lessons on community policing.
Well, it is TOO LATE to get the stuff back now!
All this arming of authority while they have RESTRICTED the CITIZENS RIGHT to BEAR ARMS!
What, you think tyranny wants resistance?
Modern, well-run police departments concentrate on building relationships and treating residents as partners in the fight against crime. When incidents such as a police shooting occur, officers and community leaders join forces to calm the citizenry while the investigation proceeds. Such relationships were nowhere to be seen in Ferguson.
Then they clear the cops months later and everyone has simmered down by then, so no harm, no foul.
Of course, if a private citizen did it defending himself it would be another Zimmerman hate thing.
Calm did not return to the streets of Ferguson until the Missouri governor, Jay Nixon, ordered the well-trained state highway patrol to take command of the situation. Those officers succeeded by communicating with residents, not unleashing powerful weapons.
I guess the cops didn't want to communicate with Occupy.
Meanwhile, federal security officials should stop handing out military weaponry to police forces without restrictions on how it can be used, and against whom.
They should, but they won't.
--more--"
