Posted on 08/17/2014 2:48:12 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Clashes highlight the divisions at the heart of America’s cities.
Ferguson: The spectacle of American police acting like an occupying army in the St Louis suburb of Ferguson has shocked and baffled outsiders, but there was an explanation, of sorts, in a sleepy, tree-lined street just five minutes’ walk from the mayhem.
Vickie Place is a row of single family homes built in the 1950s. They are modest but spacious, with gardens front and back, plenty of squirrels and a constant buzz from cicadas. The family of Michael Brown, the unarmed 18-year-old African American gunned down by police last Saturday, occupies a cream-coloured house with a peeling door, a broken bell and a tattered chair on the porch.
The teargas and screams from West Florissant Avenue, where mainly white police used military might to cow black protesters, did not reach Vickie Place, just a few blocks away. But a simple fact about the street, and those around it, sheds light on the police mindset: one by one, carload by carload, year by year, decade by decade, in an inexorable, remorseless exodus, white faces, faces like theirs, have vanished. The legacy, for the white officers supposed to police it, appears to be a forbidding, alien, territory. A land of the other. It might as well be Fallujah.
On Saturday the governor Jay Nixon declared a state of emergency and imposed a curfew between midnight and 5am saying the state would not allow a “handful of looters” to endanger the community and that there must be calm if justice is to be served.
“The police don’t like coming here,” said Don Williams, 52, who moved to Vickie Place with his family in 2001. “It was majority white then. Now, almost all black.” The absence of street lighting made everything pitch dark after sunset, intimidating patrols, he said. “We have break-ins but the police barely investigate. They’re not worth nothing.” Opposite the Brown home lives one of the street’s last white residents, Doris McCann, who has lived here for 55 of her 86 years. “It’s a changed neighbourhood. Everyone that’s white moved out,” she lamented.
White flight
White flight is a familiar phenomenon in many countries but the use of armoured vehicles and sniper nests in the height of a Missouri summer has exposed the extent and consequences of segregation in America’s heartland.
For five nights, Saturday to Wednesday, the Ferguson city and St Louis county police departments betrayed hostility, incomprehension and fear as they confronted protesters, heedless that the militarised response had stoked anger and radicalism over Brown’s death.
“I keep my sons shuttered at home because of situations like this. Young black men have targets painted on their backs… this stuff’s been going on for years,” said Kesheara Ross, 26, a protester.
Several factors contributed to the eruption. Brown, it emerged on Friday, had allegedly robbed a convenience store minutes before a police officer, Darren Wilson, apparently shot him several times as he ran away with his arms in the air.
With federal and local investigations under way, the killing’s circumstances remained murky this weekend but there was widespread agreement that the police lost the plot during subsequent peaceful protests. It got so bad Palestinians in Gaza shared tear gas tips with Ferguson’s beleaguered protesters.
Many critics focused on the military equipment. Under a federal programme the Pentagon has offloaded $4.3 billion (Dh15.7 billion) in surplus gear, much of it from Afghanistan and Iraq, to police the US. As Kara Dansky, senior counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, pointed out, to a hammer everything looks like a nail.
Another factor was racial imbalance: only three of Ferguson’s 53 officers are black (94 per cent white, in other words) and only one of six city councillors is black — a product of disenfranchisement and anaemic political mobilisation in a city where two-thirds of the population is black.
Criticism from Barack Obama and protests across the US, including a rally in New York’s Times Square, prompted Democratic state governor Jay Nixon to put Ron Johnson, a savvy African American captain of the highway patrol, a separate police force, in charge of Ferguson. It worked. On Thursday smiling black officers in uniform replaced the snipers and tear gas. By Friday, when humid heat gave way to cool rain, protesters sang and danced. “This is beautiful. It’s what we’ve been wanting to do all week — make our voices heard,” beamed Shelly Grandford, 34.
But trouble resumed on Friday night when a small group broke away from a peaceful crowd to smash windows, throw bottles and loot the store Brown allegedly robbed, although it was a relatively minor confrontation. By Saturday morning calm had returned.
The sense that the worst had passed, however, masked an enduring problem: most of those in uniform inhabit a different realm to the people they are supposed to serve. Ferguson police chief Thomas Jackson alluded to this when he said there was “a community that is at odds with us now”. He added: “Apparently there is this undertow that has now bubbled to the surface.”
‘Under great deal of stress’
Ferguson’s mayor, James Knowles, who is also white, defended his police officers — the ones who waded in looking like Robocop on steroids. “I’m sure they’re under a great deal of stress, and though it does not make it OK, they are human, and I can understand their frustrations as well,” Knowles said.
The union for St Louis county police was unrepentant about its members’ actions before control was ceded to the highway patrol, defending “the decisions made to control the unlawful and often chaotic moments of the previous days”. It said the move to a softer approach “not only did not improve public safety but put officers’ lives in danger”.
The separation of races should in theory be a fading anachronism given that a black man occupies the White House and black artists suffuse mainstream culture. But half a century after the civil rights movement triumphed, the dream of an integrated multiracial society in this sprawl by the Mississippi is largely dead. As black families moved to nicer areas, exploiting newfound freedom, white neighbours fled. “It was gradual but they all packed up. You’ll find them now in St Charles, Chesterfield, Wildwood, Alton,” said McCann.
The new neighbours were friendly and respectful, but she missed the old days. “It’s ‘how are you ma’am?’ but we don’t know each other, it’s not neighbourly the way it used to be.” In contrast to her black neighbours, McCann had a benign view of the St Louis county police. “In general I assume they do the best they can.”
Ron Goff, 67, a retired postman and perhaps the only other white resident of Vickie Place, had little sympathy for black motorists who cried racism when stopped and fined. “Tyres gone, lights out, no insurance, pieces of junk, that’s why.”
Goff said this during a conversation on the front lawn of his black neighbour and friend, Don Williams. Williams shook his head. To him it was obvious: when it came to the law black people did not get a fair shake. A Washington Post report found that of the black people stopped, 92 per cent ended up arrested. Hence the joke about DWB: driving while black.
A recently arrived reporter for a local broadcaster said she had expected to find a melting pot in the city which had incubated Josephine Baker and Arthur Ashe, among others, only to discover that Delmar Boulevard formed a demarcation line known to all: north of it, 98 per cent of the population is black (median income, $18,000); to the south, 73 per cent white (median income, $50,000).
St Louis is far from the worst case. A study last year, using different measures, ranked parts of Buffalo, New York, Cleveland, Detroit and Milwaukee even more segregated. The alienation cuts both ways. In Ferguson many black residents believe only the worst about police, black or white. Johnson, the highway patrol captain, adroitly defused a tense gathering of youths. He shook hands, listened, engaged, flattered. Johnson was black and grew up in the area but represented a hostile, external force. The youths drifted away, peaceful but not placated. “He may be ice, may be cool, but he’s a cop,” said their leader, who called himself Mike. “It’s the company he keeps.”
Young black males are less than 5% of the population but commit 50% of all murders.
You and your damn facts again.
What “segregation”?
And 33% of rapes, 56% of robberies, 32% of burglaries etc etc etc...
Sounds as though some of the black neighbors fled, too. So is it a (voluntary) segregation strictly of race or also of motivation to better oneself?
Blame Whitey? And to think I never once associated the President's constant blame game with his skin color. That will now change.
Ferguson is a classic white flight suburb. Why whites fled from St Louis to Ferguson you can figure out. Ferguson Went from 25% black in 1990 to 67% black today and after these riots the white numbers will drop faster. Where will they flee to?
I cannot confirm but have read that Ferguson’s black population increased mostly via Section 8 vouchers.
Meanwhile in many California neighborhoods Mexicans/Hispanics have pushed out blacks. Even in Compton which was famously black and spawned Ice Cub’s rap group in the early 1990s. His group was NWA -— Niggas With Attitude
Exactly - the story describes how a "mostly white neighborhood" was turned Black over a period of time and now rots and deteriorates and the residents claim others are responsible for their plight - the left-wing brainwashing/enslavement has worked. I've seen it happen first-hand from the late '50s on.
How has this been established in an ongoing investigation? Stopped reading at this point.
So true. The race baiters step in before the FACTS and get the uninformed stirred up, then the stupid president and his racist AG make comments that stirs up more emotion and has very little truth in them.
It is almost like this is just what they want.
We are one major catastrophe from some real chaos all over this beautiful country, simply because agitators flap those stupid gums spewing lies and getting the crowd in an uproar. Of course the looters are just there for the free stuff and could care less about the situation. They would be holding up the 7-11 somewhere if the situation had not occurred.
What does the author of this piece mean by "disenfranchisement?" That minorities were forcibly kept from the voting booths?
Criticism from Barack Obama [...] prompted Democratic state governor Jay Nixon to put Ron Johnson, a savvy African American captain of the highway patrol, a separate police force, in charge of Ferguson. It worked. [...] But trouble resumed on Friday night [...]
So the fact that the local police force is 94% White wasn't a factor after all! Imagine that!
[...] when a small group broke away from a peaceful crowd to smash windows, throw bottles and loot the store Brown allegedly robbed, although it was a relatively minor confrontation.
I bet that the shop-owner wouldn't have characterized that as "relatively minor!"
Ferguson’s mayor, James Knowles, who is also white, defended his police officers — the ones who waded in looking like Robocop on steroids.
Nice "fair" reporting, there!
Summa summarum: This article is extremely biased, fails to report on crucial facts, and blatantly unobjective by using words like "segregation" without emphasizing that it was voluntary.
Regards,
“Overall,” according to the ACLU, “42 percent of people impacted by a SWAT deployment to execute a search warrant were Black,” and yet black people comprise just over 12 percent of the national population.
people of means should be forced to stay in a decaying area for what reason?
Why should we alone have the privilege of supporting those that don't even claim to be American first?
They claim nationality other than American, stop welfare payments and ship em out!
>>“I keep my sons shuttered at home because of situations like this. Young black men have targets painted on their backs… this stuff’s been going on for years,” said Kesheara Ross, 26, a protester.
She is out in the streets over this, but how many young black men have been killed by other young black men in St. Louis metro this year? Why wasn’t Kesheara out in the street then?
I don’t blame her for keeping her sons on a short leash, but her stated reasons for doing so appear very disingenuous. Anyone with a lick of sense knows where the real danger lies.
Mostly of other young black males. But somehow whites, and white police in particular, are the problem. What!?
Turn him around and he was charging the officer and at 6' 4", 292 pounds and after he had already assaulted the cop, he was shot in self defense.
Bring in the clowns, fat al, jesse and eric with the fbi, the justice boys and we have more reasons to blame the conservatives for not voting in the 2012 elections.
Essentially the idiot writer said something could be “too black.”
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