If anyone thought the Obama administration planned to sit on the sidelines during the riots in Ferguson, Mo., those thoughts ought to be dispelled by now. Last Wednesday, Attorney General Eric Holder visited the suburban St. Louis community. Evidence suggests his ulterior motive was to conduct the groundwork for a criminal indictment against a white police officer, Darren Wilson, who on August 9 shot to death a local black youth, Michael Brown. All credible evidence reveals that Wilson, far from being a trigger-happy "racist" cop, had acted in self-defense. Brown sucker-punched Wilson, tried to take his gun, and then, after walking away, violently charged at Wilson, prompting the latter to use his gun. Holder is no model of impartiality. Upon arrival, he stated at Florissant Valley Community College: "I am the attorney general of the United States. But I am also a black man."
When it comes to judicious and objective law enforcement, the U.S. Department of Justice during the Obama years is about the last place one would want to look. This July, I reviewed a new book, Obama's Enforcer: Eric Holder's Justice Department (Broadside), for National Legal and Policy Center. Co-authored by John Fund and Hans von Spakovsky, respectively, a syndicated columnist and a Bush-era counsel to the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, the book is a meticulous polemic against the abuses of power during the Obama/Holder years. Holder, who had been deputy attorney general during the second Clinton administration, has made it his mission to bend or break the law in order to achieve his radical egalitarian ideal of justice. It is a radicalism laden with a sense of racial payback. It is no coincidence that President Obama and Attorney General Holder are allies of Al Sharpton, who himself arrived in St. Louis about two weeks ago for an extended stay. They, like Sharpton, are possessed of a belief that whites bear a special burden of atonement and sacrifice. Part of this mentality carries an assumption that when accused of a crime against a black, a white should be accorded an implied presumption of guilt. It is safe to say that Holder wants a conviction. The only issue is how to get it.
The U.S. Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division, which is poring over potentially incriminating evidence, long has been a career booster rocket for young lawyers supportive of affirmative action, selective prosecution of hate crimes, and other approaches to law that favor nonwhites over whites. The division often hires its staff attorneys directly from radical nonprofit legal groups. Achievement of social equality, even at the expense of liberty and rule of law, is the goal. Under President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder, the DOJ has ramped up its egalitarian mission to unprecedented heights. This was to be expected. As the Fund-Spakovsky book details, and as I argued back in November 2012, Holder has never been objective. For him, partisan politics takes precedence over fealty to the Constitution and common sense, especially when race enters the picture. He operates from an assumption in which white-run America is still "racist" and in need of redemption. Thus, the Department of Justice routinely bends, exaggerates or ignores facts in deciding if and how to prosecute a case. An outcome unfavorable to a particular black, or blacks generally, is to be avoided even if evidence warrants such an outcome.
Holder's handling of the situation in Ferguson, Missouri, a community of roughly 20,000 persons in the northern suburbs of St. Louis, is fully in line with this pattern. Still smarting over his inability (so far) to find a way to file federal hate crime charges against George Zimmerman, a neighborhood patrol volunteer rightly exonerated by a Florida state jury for defending himself with lethal force against an unprovoked attack by large, violent black teenager, Trayvon Martin, Holder badly wants a white trophy defendant. In this way, he symbolically can try all of white America. He believes he has such a person in Officer Darren Wilson, a six-year Ferguson cop. Originally, the local police department was reluctant to release his name, but pressure from black rioters and their enablers, like Al Sharpton, broke that resolve. As a result, his life may be in danger. It is almost unthinkable that an attorney general, regardless of political views, could express no support for Wilson, not to mention the rest of the Ferguson police force.
In a recent interview, Obama's Enforcer co-author Spakovsky expressed the view that Wilson's rights are expendable in the eyes of Holder and other top DOJ officials. "Eric Holder has completely politicized the Justice Department," Spakovsky noted. He explained what is at stake:
That should concern every American. I don't care what their political background is because that is a threat to everyone's liberty and everyone's freedom when that kind of power is used for political purposes. I am fearful that they [Holder and his people] will try to pursue a federal case even if there's evidence to justify it, because of the fact that they really see everything, including Eric Holder, through the prism of race even when race is not a factor in a case or an incident.
In the Holder construction of reality, Michael Brown, a harmless 18-year-old, college-bound lad was murdered by Officer Darren Wilson because of his race. At his funeral service yesterday, thousands of mourners, including the parents of Trayvon Martin, poured into the Friendly Temple Missionary Baptist Church in St. Louis. A parade of speakers remembered Brown fondly; one called him a "gentle soul" possessed of a deep and growing faith in Christianity. Mindful of the emotionally-charged atmosphere, such language flies in the face of overwhelming evidence that Brown was anything but gentle. Indeed, it would have been Wilson's funeral had he not fired off several rounds at Brown.
Let's take a closer look at the key material details of this incident, which triggered nearly two weeks of rioting by local and outside blacks, resulting in more than 150 arrests. While this covers some of the same ground as my Ferguson article of last week, additional details have emerged since then. All serve to exonerate Officer Wilson.
Brown had established himself as a criminal even before his encounter with Wilson. Brown's defenders are peddling the line that he had "no prior criminal record." This claim, even if true, is highly disingenuous. Its sole purpose is to establish Brown's innocence, and hence, Wilson's guilt. Immediately prior to the police encounter, hidden video footage showed that a black male identical in appearance to Brown stole roughly $50 worth of cigars from a nearby convenience store, an act which at the very least qualifies as petty larceny. On his way out of the store, Brown then shoved and terrorized a diminutive store clerk attempting to prevent his shoplifting. These are crimes. As for his apparent lack of a criminal record, he likely did have one - as a juvenile. While juvenile criminal justice policies vary by state, most crimes committed by minors, save for the truly heinous ones, typically are shielded from public view and/or expunged from the record once the minor becomes a legal adult. Given that Brown was only 18 at the time of his death, he had virtually no time to amass any adult convictions.
Officer Wilson did not behave in any way that justified a violent response. Wilson was driving his patrol car slowly through a Ferguson neighborhood when he encountered Brown and a companion walking in the middle of a street. Without being bellicose, Wilson asked the pair to move to the sidewalk. This was a reasonable request. Police across the country behave similarly in such a situation. It's a matter of public safety. There is no reason to believe Officer Wilson's request had anything to do with the race of the pedestrians. Even if it was, there is something more basic here. When a police officer issues a directive of any sort, it is the responsibility of the civilian to comply unless he can explain why he can't. Brown and his friend, Dorian Johnson, didn't move to the sidewalk because they couldn't. They didn't move because they wouldn't. Brown in particular took offense. For him, obeying a request by a white cop somehow constituted a symbolic surrender to the enemy. Brown perceived the request as something "done" to him. Thus, he had to exact immediate revenge.
Michael Brown assaulted Wilson, not the other way around. Newspaper and web articles sympathetic to Brown routinely refer to him as "unarmed." The use of that word is thoroughly misleading. Thousands of crimes are committed in the U.S. each month without the benefit of a gun, knife, blunt object or other weapon. Hands and feet can be lethal to an intended victim, especially when the assailant is large. And at 6'4," 292 lbs., Brown resembled an NFL linemen. Al Sharpton memorialized him as a "gentle giant" during a St. Louis press conference a week and a half ago. The "giant" part he got right. The "gentle" part he got wrong. Brown, rather than comply with a simple request, suddenly charged toward Wilson while he was sitting in his squad car and then cold-cocked him. The sucker-punch created an orbital blowout fracture in one of Wilson's eye sockets. Then, Brown reached in and tried to steal Officer Wilson's service revolver. The intention, quite obviously, was to kill him. Fortunately, Wilson, still conscious and possessed of his faculties, was able to wrestle Brown and protect his gun.
Officer Wilson had every reason to use his weapon against Brown. Self-styled "anti-racist activists," apparently unfamiliar with the nature of police work, are enraged that Wilson used his gun against Brown, and worse, fired off six rounds that hit Brown. They also insist that Brown was shot while in the process of surrendering and had been hit at least once in the back. This, they say, constituted a police murder. The facts say something else. It was Brown who was the attempted murderer. Remember, he already had: 1) brutally sucker-punched Wilson; and 2) attempted to steal Wilson's service revolver with the obvious motive of killing him. Having just committed two felonies against a cop, plus an assault against a convenience store clerk, Brown wasn't finished. Still in full-rage mode, after walking away from Officer Wilson's patrol car, he then wheeled around and charged full speed at Wilson. Wilson knew he had to act within the next few seconds. He pulled out his gun and shot Brown, hitting him repeatedly but failing to slow Brown's attack. It was the sixth shot that killed Brown. Despite the guerrilla theater taunt by demonstrators - "Hands up, don't shoot" - there is no evidence that Officer Wilson fired any shots while Brown was stationary and raising his arms in surrender.
A local autopsy showed that all six bullets hit Brown from the front. Two anonymous sources from the St. Louis County Medical Examiner's Office, under fear of reprisal, stated on August 18 that Brown had six gunshot wounds to the head and chest and that every bullet hit the front of his body. In addition, they said, Brown had marijuana in his system. County Medical Examiner Mary Case released the results to state prosecutors late on August 15. She was most cooperative. "I welcome anyone who wants to do additional autopsies," she said. "Michael (i.e., forensic pathologist Michael Baden) is someone I know, and I think highly of the Armed Forces also. I'm not upset at all." In all, there have been three autopsies, including one performed by the Pentagon on orders from Attorney General Holder. None so far has pointed to a "police murder."
None of this apparently mattered to hundreds of blacks, and a few white supporters, who gathered at a local Ferguson gas station to stage their revolt against a "racist" killing. The following two weeks resulted in spontaneous marches, rallies and looting. Nor did facts matter when some rioters put the torch to a pair of convenience stores. For them, this was Ground Zero for a revolution, or at the least, meaningful reforms - a real "people's democracy."
Attorney General Eric Holder has intimated, at least by his actions, that his sympathies lie more with Michael Brown than with the cop who defended himself from him. For one thing, he expressed no concern for the safety of Darren Wilson, who may have to go into hiding for a long time. And second, he is using this sequence of events to denounce what he sees against pervasive bias against blacks. Waxing autobiographical in his speech at Florissant Valley Community College, he remarked: "I think about my time in Georgetown - a nice neighborhood of Washington - and I am running to a picture movie at about 8 o'clock at night. I am running with my cousin. Police car comes driving up, flashes his lights, yells ‘Where you going? Hold it!' I say, whoa, I'm going to a movie." None of this qualifies as harassment, racially-based or not. I myself, more than once, have been stopped by cops based on unfounded suspicions. A brief, cogent explanation goes a long way in clearing the air. Whether "fair" or unfair," when a police officer makes a request of a pedestrian, there is no reason to manufacture a violent showdown.
Holder is primed for an indictment. He told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in an online message that he's assigned 40 FBI agents to the case, plus numerous prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney's Office in St. Louis. He added that hundreds of people have been interviewed. That's a whole lot of firepower for what amounts to an act of police self-defense. His friend and confidante, Al Sharpton, has weighed in several times during his extended visit. At an August 17 rally in Ferguson, Sharpton said it was despicable to release a robbery report naming Brown as a suspect before his burial, failing to grasp that what was despicable was the robbery itself. The shooting death, he added, was a "defining moment for this country." At the same rally, his close friend, Martin Luther King III, insisted local prosecutor Bob McCullough should recuse himself from the case in favor of a special prosecutor. And the black Missouri Highway Patrol captain, Ron Johnson, appointed by Governor Jay Nixon to serve as a peacemaker, may have added to the conflaguration when he stated: "We need to thank Mike (Michael Brown) for his life. We need to thank him for the change that he is going to make." He added: "And I will stand and protect you. I will protect your right to protest." Apparently, Officer Wilson's right to defend himself from an attacker is off the table.
Attorney General Holder's visit to St. Louis, rather than defuse a tense situation, if anything, has escalated it. For it raised the hopes among the faithful that federal criminal charges are just down the road. Should a grand jury decline to indict Wilson or some other white scapegoat - and prosecutors will use every tactic in the book to secure an indictment - many local blacks will assume that dark racist forces stood in the way of justice. Another riot at that point would be difficult to contain. If a grand jury does indict, however, then mobs-in-waiting will expect a conviction. A conviction via plea bargain, but with a light sentence, would not be good enough. And quite obviously, neither would a not-guilty verdict in the event the case goes to trial. Let's be blunt: Anything short of a conviction and a severe prison sentence is likely to result in more rioting - and not just in the St. Louis area.
Aside from criminal action, a civil suit, and likely more than one, is a certainty. The Brown family attorneys, Benjamin Crump and Daryl Parks, both black, are experts in the art of shaking down "racist" targets under the guise of achieving moral justice. At an August 17 rally in Ferguson, Crump declared: "We know that this was an execution." Reality check: This was an attempted execution by Michael Brown against a good cop with an unblemished record. Crump & Parks are the same duo that represented the parents of Trayvon Martin. They will exhaust the discovery process until they can find a smoking gun and thus extract an exorbitant out-of-court settlement from as many parties as possible. A predominantly black jury - the kind these shysters seek - raises the odds of victory. Race, not evidence, is what matters to them and the juries to whom they would like to play. Their friend, Al Sharpton, announced at that rally that a class-action lawsuit would be filed on behalf of Ferguson protestors claiming to have been tear-gassed - never mind that this was a riot, not a mere "demonstration." And at Michael Brown's funeral service yesterday, Sharpton bellowed before a cheering crowd: "America, it's time to deal with policing. We are not the haters. We're the healers."
The prospect for a fair and peaceful resolution to this crisis is anything but good. If the Justice Department really were committed to rule of law, things might be different. But that is not the case. The department views rule of law as impediment to social justice. If Attorney General Holder really wanted to prove his commitment to race-blind impartiality, the field is rife with examples of white victims of black crime. This past April near Dover, Delaware, a group of black youths on a school bus beat an innocent white student sitting alone, capturing the moment on cell phone video. The bus driver did not intervene at all. Perhaps Eric Holder will. But don't count on it.
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