His mother called him "a gentle giant". Yeah! Right! As he smashes the small Asian-American's face into the countertop.
"On the other hand, what could be the level of anger and frustration that would cause a guy who it is said was college bound to destroy his future like that."
Here's as good a guess as any: A large strong body which taught him that he could easily intimidate people, plus major anger issues from growing up fatherless. A bad combo.
As far as "college bound," who claimed that? His 50-year-old great-grandmother? (OK, so I made up that last part). Hey, why stop there? Maybe the local press edited out the part where she added, "And he was going to be a Fortune 50 CEO some day as well, and then President of the USA".
Sorry, but I have a hard time believing that the phrase "college bound" is applicable to a large thug who's just robbed a store and beat up a clerk 1/3 his size, then minutes later dared cops to arrest him by walking down the middle of a street and ignoring all the cop's directives to move over, then smashing the cop's face - breaking several facial & skull bones, then charging the armed cop head-down, full ramming speed. Someone appears to be confusing College Bound with Mortuary Bound ... which is understandable if one forgets the difference between dead minds versus dead bodies.
"It also appears there were many unfair things being done to black people by the local government."
No, I think you read AG Holder's report and accepted it uncritically. It was a bunch of crap. As I recall, all of the "red flags" were nothing you wouldn't find (or find worse examples of) in any other city government in the country, large or small. Eg, 1) "Higher incarceration rates of blacks". Whoopdeedoo. 2) Huge percentage of the black arrests were of young males. Double whoopdedoo. 3) Percentage of officers of color lower than percentage of local residents of color. Yawn. In other words, the same stats you find in all urban areas.
And the DOJ additionally grabbed the Police Dept's email server looking for evidence of illegal actions or at least some kind of malfeasance, and after 1000's of hours of poring through all of them, they breathlessly announced they had found indications of systemic racism, based solely on 2 or 3 emails containing racially-tinged jokes exchanged between two PD employees. Wow! Shazzam!
So yes, if you read the MSM's headlines of Holder's / DOJ's / Obama's report on Ferguson, and believed them, and didn't seek out crucial details from wonderful web resource such as FR, then you very well could have gotten the impression you did.
Actually I was not basing my impressions of racially oriented unfairness in Ferguson on the 3 factors you mentioned. It was something about multiple fines or something like that of women and families. Have to do some checking. My own experience trying to help street vendors in my town was that you could pay the police $5 or $6,000 to harass another vendor off of a favorable corner. They would give 5 or 6 tickets at a time for $50 each (this was in the 1980s and ‘90s.) I also had a vending license selling trade show bought and my own hand made jewelry and crafts. For example you were supposed to have a blue cloth on your table one inch from the ground. If it was 2 inches from the ground you could get a ticket. We worked for years trying to get more reasonable rules. It was Democrats that were doing this to poor working people. It was this kind of stuff I read about Ferguson that struck my interest, not the same old 3 items you mentioned. I never read Holder’s report or other major report or article. Just picked up bits and pieces of reporting here and there.