Several witnesses saw this go down, yet none of them pulled out their cellphones?
Honestly, it’s way past time to address the heavy militarization of local police and their over zealous response. We shouldn’t miss an opportunity to defang the Gestapo.
We’ve got to be our own leaders and not adopt the “They was dissin me” attitude. Bring police back into the fold and create a society that needs less of them.
Why the surprise? What else can be expected from a culture that would use the excuse of winning/losing a major sporting event to overturn & burn cars, loot and set on fire businesses and turn neighborhoods into looking like the aftermath of a direct hit by a category 6 hurricane?
We don’t really know what the facts are, other than that a cop shot a black teenager, but that doesn’t seem to matter.
Like the cop who murdered Andy Lopez in Santa Rosa and the DA who refused to send it to a Grand Jury???
Why is it bad to protest against the government for a redress of wrongs?
I don’t get it. Did the author take a similar stance on Cliven Bundy?
We used to be a nation of laws. Those laws were EQUALLY APPLIED and offered little protection for those who did wrong, even if they were a rich man, a politician, or a police officer. That is no longer the case. We have consistently applied different standards to different people and that is resulting in people taking into their own hands, the "justice" that should be served by the law.
Corruption, across the board, regardless of political party, is what is killing this nation. Period.
I agree with you, Mene. That is the civilized & rational response. And that is the situation we are in. They are “breaking down” our society at it’s roots.
To caipirabob- Do you ever wonder if the purpose (or part of it) is to create a conflicted dichotomy that manipulates us into shifting our disapproval from antisocial behavior to those whose role it is to curb antisocial behavior? e.g. People are supposed to hate cops & “empathize” with the “oppressed”. (oh BULL!)
Imho, that’s a foolish mistake. Neither one rationalizes the other, but it gets so tangled up trying to figure out who “started” it- many people are getting confused.
We’re supposed to be confused because that makes us more vulnerable to manipulation.
I'll agree with half that. People used the death of the young man as an excuse to loot and pillage and that is inexcusable. But to criticize people for peacefully protesting when they believe an injustice has been done? I see nothing wrong with that and I applaud them for taking their stand and making their feelings known. If we cannot protest our government when we believe they are in the wrong then we forfit our First Amendment rights.
If the people in Ferguson were wrong in peacefully assembling to oppose what they see is an injustice on the part of the law then wouldn't the same be true of those who rallied to support Cliven Bundy?
I suspect there is a lot more to this than meets the eye. For example, *every one* of the initial batch of rioters and looters who were arrested were “not from there”.
At the same time, out of a local police force of 30, with just 3 black officers, it is very apparent that the vast majority of police are “not from there” as well.
The population of Ferguson, MO, is 21,203. So perhaps the best response would be to keep outsiders out. That is, cordon off the city, and encourage outsiders to leave and not come back.
Their city council should hold several gatherings, such as town hall meetings. Because only 3 of their 30 man police department are black, they should seriously consider hiring a large number of black policemen, while laying off white policemen, until there is at least a 50/50 racial balance.
This might be done with a minimum of discomfort, by swapping police with a nearby city with an abundance of black officers. Since they are in a suburban area, they are surrounded by other cities, so in either case, officers would not even need to relocate, just drive another mile or two to their new jobs.
It s all bull sht from here on out.
I will pray for police to not be converted to let the looters loot in socialist display of redistribution, but given how the feminists of the IRS and gays have gotten the upper hand in cowering and black mailing the police in America to share proceeds, the outlook is bleak.
Looking at the outside of USA world a person can see many countries/cultures that display the same societal behavior as some areas with their cultures in the USA. It takes me back many years when the Nobel prize winner Shockley wrote about different cultures/people having different societal bell curve distribution curves. He was ostracized from the science community along from the general populace. He never claimed that there were never any overlapping of the separate curves as to good and bad. He was just making the case that there are inheritable differences eg. Oriental, Anglo-Saxon, African . Going back thousands of years it was recognized that there were inherent cultural differences. Even Mohammed built his religion on this fact. The integration of people’s inherent differences with intentions much like the Tower of Babel did not fuse a one world society. We in the USA are experiencing Shockley’s bell distribution curves and do not recognize such along with the consequences.