'We need to communicate. That's key. But we need justice for Michael Brown'

[umbertino]

Showdowns between police and protesters give way to efforts to change life in Ferguson, but locals fear more unrest if the officer who shot Michael Brown is not indicted. Chris McGreal reports

 

 

 

•  
• • Chris McGreal in Ferguson

 

• theguardian.com, Sunday 24 August 2014 17.47 BST

 

 

 

Ardester Williams is writing to Barack Obama the old-fashioned way, with paper and a postage stamp, to tell the president about the day in June when he shot a man.

 

“He was swinging at me, and he was much bigger than I was,” said the 73-year-old security guard at a Ferguson clothing store. “I had to draw my gun and shoot him. But I shot him in the foot. I’m writing to the president to tell him that the whole concept of police training is backwards. They should train them to shoot people dead as a last resort, not the first.”

 

A little further down West Florissant Avenue, Shiron Hagens is staffing a tent on a part of the street that just a few nights ago was clouded by tear gas and smoke from a burning convenience store, as protesters and the police clashed over the killing of Michael Brown. She is registering local residents to vote, in part to raise support for a petition to recall Ferguson mayor James Knowles, a white Republican, after he said that the upheaval of the past two weeks was not about race.

 

“There’s a mistrust right now,” she said. “The way to overcome mistrust is to talk. But there’s no way to have a conversation when you have a mayor who says there’s no race issue here. Michael Brown died because he was black.”

 

Across the road, Ken Goins, a St Louis attorney for 23 years, is advising people on their rights to protest peacefully.

 

Nightly showdowns between protesters and police along a short section of West Florissant avenue have given way to a flood of initiatives – some individual, some collective – which seek to use Brown’s death to change the police, politics and life of Ferguson. The anger is not diminished, but directed differently.

 

It has spurred a campaign to get Ferguson residents to vote in order to shift the balance of power in a city with a black majority but a white mayor and council. Other groups are pressing for the police to be required to wear body cameras, and for the local force to be demilitarised after it responded to the protests with armoured vehicles and snipers.

 

There is a new initiative to recruit more black policemen.

 

 

But for all of this, there is also a sense of limbo as Ferguson residents await what they regard as the crucial test – will the police officer who shot Brown, Darren Wilson, be indicted by a St Louis grand jury for unlawfully killing the unarmed 18-year-old?

 

Williams doesn’t have much confidence.

 

“Look at the make-up of the grand jury – nine whites and three blacks,” he said. “They don’t intend to do anything about Michael Brown’s death. That’s what’s so poor. That cop, he’ll be back on the streets as a cop again in 60 to 90 days.”

 

It has been said that a decent prosecutor can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich, because the procedure is so weighted in favour of the state. So the assumption among many in Ferguson is that if Wilson is not charged it will be because the city’s prosecutor, Robert McCulloch, has not made it happen.

 

“I know that cop is innocent until proven guilty, but if Bob McCullough is not seen to be trying to get an indictment it is going to cause a very serious situation here,” said Laverne Mitchom, a retiree wearing a Michael Brown T-shirt. “I don’t have confidence in the grand jury because I don’t have confidence in Bob McCullough. He is very supportive of the police. He has a history of that.”

 

The lack of confidence in a prosecutor who has close ties to the police – his parents, brother and other relatives worked for the St Louis force, and his father was shot dead in the line of duty by an African American man – runs so deep that several groups have pressed the state’s governor to take him off the case.

 

“We want him removed,” said Andreal Hoosman, a member of the board of the St Louis National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP). “We requested that the governor remove him. The governor said that is for McCulloch to decide. We don’t have confidence in him.”

 

Missouri’s governor, Jay Nixon, has declined to back McCulloch but refused to appoint a special prosecutor in his place, as many in Ferguson want to see. That has drawn accusations of weakness against Nixon from McCulloch and his critics.

 

Maria Chappelle-Nadal, a Missouri state senator who has been active in Ferguson over Brown’s killing and the subsequent protests, accused Nixon of being missing in action because he has refused to take decisive action.

 

Goins, who along with other lawyers was offering free advice to people on West Florissant avenue on their rights in dealing with the police – he reckoned many of the recent arrests at the protests over Brown’s death were unlawful – said he had little confidence in the investigation of the shooting.

 

“There’s been a lack of transparency through the whole investigation,” he said. “When someone shoots that raises questions and the public has the right to ask them. The police department has a duty to answer them, and so far it hasn’t.”

 

 

On Canfield Drive, where Brown was shot six times including in the head, the police handed out food parcels to residents at the weekend in a gesture of goodwill. Some appreciated it, some did not.

 

“I wonder what those cops are really thinking,” said Robert Kean, 29, next to the memorial to Brown where scores of red roses have been laid in a line down the middle of the street. “They’re here because they were told to come and make things look better. They didn’t suddenly start to love us. I bet it really screws them up inside to do this. But we’ll know if things have changed when we can walk down the street after dark without being stopped.”

 

Ron McBride, 48, was more forgiving.

 

“They’re trying, which is something. We need to communicate. That’s the key. But we need justice for Michael Brown, and handing out food doesn’t bring that,” he said.

 

There’s particular disillusionment over the manner in which a part of St Louis’s white population has rallied to support Wilson, raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for the police officer.

 

“It’s like hitting the lottery,” said a man who gave his name as Walter G. “You kill a black and make $200,000. If he had gone to Montana and shot an elk he would have had to pay for it. Here he can paid to shoot a black.”

 

Mitchom, too, was disappointed that some white people have sided with Wilson, saying it was a way of denying there is an issue with how the police deal with black people.

 

“We’re not surprised at that, but America has got to stop pretending that these things aren’t happening. My nephew is a policeman in St Louis. I know all policeman aren’t bad. There’s good and bad. But when there is bad he needs to be held accountable,” she said.

 

Mitchom said in some ways she felt the US hasn’t really changed at all.

 

“When Martin Luther King was assassinated, they sent state troopers to my high school in east St Louis. We didn’t do anything, but they assumed we would because we were African American. Then our teacher, a white woman, told us that we have to remember one thing: ‘The white people have the guns.’

 

“To see snipers on top of iron vehicles pointing guns at us in our own community was like going back to that. They were ready to do harm to unarmed citizens. That was devastating to me. I have six grandchildren. I’m worried that we’re seeing the clock turned back.”

 

Mitchom said she was worried that the efforts at peaceful change, including the efforts at cooperation between the police and Ferguson residents, would give way to yet more confrontation if the grand jury does not indict Wilson. She is not alone.

 

“There’s a lot of emotion in this community,” said Chappelle-Nadal. “They feel if they don’t get justice, everything will just erupt. Do they want it? Absolutely not. But they fear that if people don’t get justice that it will.”

 

 

 

Demonstrators walk and display signs during a peaceful protest on West Florissant Avenue. Photograph: Michael Thomas/AFP/Getty Images

 

 

 

 

Ferguson Mayor James Knowles III (L) speaks to a participant during a peaceful rally in Canfield Apartments. Photograph: Michael B Thomas/AFP/Getty Images

 

 

 

 

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/24/ferguson-residents-michael-brown-shooting

[John in Kuwait]

A lot of protesting about some punk thug they wouldn't have given the time of day to if he hadn't been killed.

[RVWITHME]

When a guy (of any race) robs a store and proceeds to beat a cop and the cop kills him, justice HAS been served.

 

The fact that the so-called "victim" was black and the cop was white was just an excuse to raid, loot and pillage.

 

Now, when a Black cop shoots and kills an unarmed White guy, why is it that you don't hear a peep from the MSM???

 

Here's a couple of links and there are dozens more, but finding anything on MSM is like locating a needle in a haystack.

 

http://www.conservativerefocus.com/blog5.php/2014/08/22/african-american-police-officer-shoots-unarmed-white-victim-in-utah-media-ignores

 

http://freedomoutpost.com/2014/08/black-cop-killed-innocent-white-man-utah-press-silent/

 

More to the other point, WHY is it that the whites didn't take to the streets and loot every merchant in town?

Edited August 24, 2014 by RVWITHME

[Whatshername]

Does anyone think there would be this kind of outrage if Brown had been killed by another black man (even an officer)?  

Of course not.  Why is that?

In the absence of reason... all that matters is that a WHITE cop shot a BLACK man.  Doesn't matter why and no one seems willing to hold Brown responsible for his own actions that day. 

If what we've learned is true and Officer Wilson shot Brown in self defense, will the outrage subside?

Doesn't sound like it.  

Nope... No justice for Officer Wilson.  He needs to be made an example of so that the next white cop that finds himself in that kind of situation, thinks twice before doing his job or defending himself.  How many calls would the police respond to in the black community if their hands were tied this way?  It would be anarchy.  Be careful what you wish for...

Apparently JUSTICE is in the eye of the beholder.  And they need justice for Michael Brown... such a lovely young man... and whatever you do... don't confuse them with the facts.