UPDATE: With a new officer – Ferguson native Ron Johnson, of the state Highway Patrol – put in charge of the police response in Ferguson, things appear to have changed dramatically for the better. Here’s a telling photo, via WaPo’s Wesley Lowery:
And this tweet, from the NYT’s Nick Bilton, compared yesterday’s police presence (left) to today’s (right):
Quite the difference. So, just maybe, Captain Johnson understands what the police are actually supposed to do. Here’s hoping.
This photo looks to be from somewhere overseas, maybe Afghanistan, right down to the blue sky and camo pants.
But it’s from Ferguson, Missouri. As is this one:
… and this one:
Meanwhile, the police still have not released the name of the officer who killed Michael Brown, earning the ire of even the National Review, who went on to describe the police in Ferguson as “ridiculously militarized suburban police dressed up like characters from Starship Troopers and pointing rifles at people from atop armored vehicles, i.e. the worst sort of mall ninjas” (and when law enforcement has lost National Review…). Furthermore, two reporters (one from the Washington Post, the other from Huffington Post) were arrested last night for … well, for doing their jobs. Check out some video here of the cops preventing WaPo’s Wesley Lowery (formerly of the Globe) from using his video camera inside a restaurant where nothing was happening. Totally unacceptable.
The situation in Ferguson is badly out of control. Missouri’s Governor has finally stepped in, apparently to relieve St. Louis County police of all duty, which hopefully should help matters somewhat.
President Obama just offered some comments on Ferguson. He said that the Department of Justice and the FBI will independently investigate Brown’s death, and generally urged for calm and for respect for the right to peaceful public protest. He did not take questions.
SomervilleTom has long been asking for answers about the increasing militarization of police. Clearly, he has been right in doing so. There doesn’t seem to be any reason why Ferguson couldn’t happen anywhere, including here.
I appreciate the acknowledgment, and I’m glad to see this on the front page. I’m appalled that this is happening anywhere in America.
This could have been Massachusetts. I hope that we all redouble our efforts to ensure that it does not.
the Marathon bombing story a year or so ago. What went on that day and night was martial law for all practical purposes. The images of the police incursions could have been Afghanistan, but for the modern housing and contemporary vehicles. Does “Shelter in place” jog any memories?
…There was a bombing and a gunfight and improvised explosive devises being tossed wantonly around… As well as a very intensive manhunt for a remaining perp who had demonstrated himself to be dangerous and who had participated in cold-blooded murder (both in the initial bombing and in the murder of a police officer) and attempted murder (during the gunfight) . So, the comparisons with Afghanistan are bi-directional… You can argue that the police response to all that was ‘disproportionate’ but the distance between what was properly proportionate and dis-proportionate, in the instance of the marathon bombers, can’t be all that great.
I don’t think, however, anybody paying attention can really argue that the response of the local police in Ferguson is anything but wildly disproportionate… So, I’m not certain why you would make the comparison between “shelter in place’ and Ferguson…
It is precisely because local police have been militarized that they reacted as if Boston/Watertown was Afghanistan. The elder suspect HAD murdered three people months earlier in Waltham — there was no lockdown, even though there are strong indications that the FBI knew about it.
If we insist that our authorities be POLICE, rather than military, then outrages like the Watertown and Ferguson would be far less likely to happen. POLICE might have locked up Tamerlan Tsarnaev had the FBI revealed what it already knew about him. That would have avoided the entire episode — no assault weapons and tanks necessary.
Your argument presumes its conclusion. You seem to assume that local police are militarized, seemingly ignoring the reality that that alone explains why they act the way they do — in both Ferguson and Watertown. Afghanistan is an excuse, not a cause.
In my view, we should be CALMING ourselves rather than fanning our hysteria. Had we done more of that after 9/11, the entire world might be a better place. When we frame “terrorism” as a war, we then end up with a militarized war-time culture — in the case of the “war on terror”, fighting a war that we cannot win (every “victory” against “terrorists” recruits 100 more “terrorists” for each one we kill).
On March 1, 1954, Puerto Rican separatists launched a terrorist attack in the US Capital. Thankfully, President Eisenhower did NOT declare a “war on terror”. We can only imagine what might have happened if George W. Bush and Don Cheney had been in office.
It is surely time for Restraint in US domestic and foreign policy.
…
If Watertown was an overreach (and I’m not willing to say it was) it was an overreach by not that much. There was reason to be cautious. So I’m not willing to put it in the same category of ‘outrage’ as, decidedly, Ferguson is.
the militarized reaction in both places. A response that has become less rare with each incident. I don’t accept that kind of response in either case.
As I watch this unfold, I can barely believe my eyes.
The silence from most of our government is really disconcerting. I mean, it wouldn’t actually be helpful to have John McCain out there blaming Obama, but we don’t even have that.
I can’t help but think of last April 19, here. If that had lasted two or three days, what would have happened?
David,
Agree with your general point.
Also props to Som Tom.
Where I disagree, David, is your view of National Review. They and many others on the right had been making this point before Ferguson.
Example, this in April.
Example, this in July.
Rodney Balko, probably the leading writer on this topic, did most of his work while at Reason Magazine, and it’d always be prominently linked to at Instapundit.
It’s not exactly the self-image we like to have as a nation when American cops tear-gas an Al Jazeera television crew and then dismantle their equipment. Nor when twitter lights up with solidarity messages from Gaza, advising people on how to protect themselves from that tear gas.
It’s not just the National Review, either. Some of the militia people who supported Clive Bundy were sending messages of support to the citizens of Ferguson as of this morning, and while I can’t disagree with their assessment of local law enforcement’s behavior, that by itself is a huge danger sign. Things should never reach a point where your mushy political moderates are on the same side as militant, heavily-armed extremists; that’s a place where very bad things happen to civil society.
Balko’s book was the one I mentioned on the other thread, and why I was careful to restrict this criticism to Republicans and/or “right-wingers” rather than ideological libertarians.
As it happens, libertarian criticism of police excesses tend to receive more media attention in Bundy Ranch situations, rather than in Ferguson situations. That creates media “opinions” like this, which is just simply false and unfair.
It’s the fake ones that confuse people, I suspect. Of course, the writer of that article jumped the gun a bit: both Amash and Paul have now made strong public statements on the issue.
But it can be hard to tell the difference between actual, consistent libertarians and right-wing types whose views occasionally coincide with those of libertarians. Rand Paul is a good example of a libertarian-of-convenience, actually — he comes out with these statements on militarization of police, or on surveillance, when it serves to distinguish him from the pack of ultraconservatives who want to be on the Republican ticket for 2016, but when you look more closely there he is making speeches in favor of personhood amendments. And if everyone in the DC media environment goes around calling him a libertarian anyway, I can see where people saturated in that environment would begin to think of other right-wing authoritarians who happen to oppose the government as being libertarians, too. It may be wrong, but it’s an understandable error.
Libertarians believe that the role of government is to protect life and property, so if you believe that a fetus is life you can believe protection thereof is an appropriate government function. Obviously there are libertarians who don’t believe a fetus is life and therefore come down on the side of government should let the mother decide.
Abortion is always a complicated issue, I think, that tends to confound classification like this.
I think that mimolette is essentially right about how Republicans are easily confused with libertarians, often deliberately, by just about everyone else.
I am often somewhat sympathetic to libertarian arguments– not so much because I think government is tyranny or enjoy the literary effluvia of Ayn Rand, but because I err on the side of skepticism that almost any “Government Program,” or any large bureaucracy for that matter, can competently function. But I do not consider myself an ideological libertarian–first, because I do not necessarily wish to eliminate government in the places where it does actually work, just because “government is tyranny” and two, because there are circumstances in which government must function in order for civil society to exist, and three because libertarians are the utter dupes of the right wing. The right trots out the libertarians during Democratic administrations, and then kicks them to the curb during Republican administrations. That makes libertarians dupes.
So, I’ve just written and deleted a whole long screed on libertarianism and why I would argue that those anti-abortion libertarians are merely libertarians of convenience, and not real libertarians at all. But since abortion is an emotionally-charged issue, and not really at the heart of anything we’re discussing here, I’m going to exercise some self-control and not post it. Not today, at least, and not in connection with this particular discussion.
But I hope you save and post later.
They have a website that explains the view.
http://l4l.org
As noted here on Tuesday, Sen. Warren tweeted critically about this issue. Rep. Justin Amash has now done the same. And today, Time published an article by Sen. Rand Paul. He comes at the issue from a more conservative POV, but many of his conclusions complement those of liberal critics. Plus, that an MSM mag would publish a Republican senator calling to demilitarize the police seems like a big deal.
http://time.com/3111474/rand-paul-ferguson-police/
Paul quotes a few conservative pundits (inc. Glenn Reynolds writing, oddly enough, in Popular Mechanics!) who take the same position. Between this and “even the NRO”, it seems the Balko-type warnings about police power are gaining traction on the Right.
And in some other interesting places. Here’s a piece from the video game site Kotaku, addressing the topic of militarized police in video games. It’s good to see a video game critic treating the topic maturely, instead of drooling over shoot ’em up action.
Oh, and he posts a pic of the same turquoise shirt guy jimc showed on Tuesday, from a different angle. It was even worse than we thought!
http://kotaku.com/soldier-cops-are-giving-games-like-battlefield-an-image-1620511782
OK then.
We’ve seen enough from Sen. Warren that I trust her to be on the right side of this, and to follow it up with votes and action. I’m not ready to dismiss tweets from other public figures as necessarily being instances of hashtag activism that won’t ever be followed up on by real-life constructive action, or at least, not yet.
But I have to share your more general skepticism; twitter often reminds me of the Tom Lehrer song, with its desert-dry conclusion: Ready, aim, sing!
Link
(And there has been some doozies.)
“I am deeply concerned that the deployment of military equipment and vehicles sends a conflicting message.” Really? Maybe more a message of conflict rather than a “conflicting message”?
Where did the military weaponry come from? Hint: Santa didn’t bring them. You ship billions of dollars of war equipment to police, have Israelis train the users, and not think the stuff will be used? The police are in the very least going to justify the maintenance costs. It isn’t “Protect and Serve” anymore. It’s more “Us Against Them”.
I understand the state police are replacing the local police. Let us see some change in situation for the better.
“A riot is the language of the unheard.” –Martin Luther King, Jr.
…at this point I’m having trouble pushing images of Tiannamen Square out of my head.
n/t
Report
Are returning veterans with military rather than law enforcement training ending up in our police ranks too?
that law enforcement is a big career for veterans.
That said, if these guys in Ferguson had at a little more military discipline and training, then maybe they wouldn’t be firing off flash grenades and tear gas right and left.
It’s always been the case that war veterans migrate to police forces, and often get preference in hiring. This has not always had sanguine effects. Returning veterans of the Philippine conflict were the first to use waterboarding as a police interrogation technique in the US. They learned it in the war.
Getting ready for the apocalypse, or just a bit worried that someone’s getting off the reservation? yikes!
Not justifying it, just thinking about the ‘why’…
It’s all over twitter tonight that the situation seems completely different today. Police control shifted to the highway patrol tonight.
From Wesley Lowery:
Also, should be noted that the new person in charge of police activity in Ferguson is black.
There are a lot of cops in Ferguson will be collecting unemployment checks by this time Monday.
Among them the entire “leadership” of the force and anyone who stated anyone without cause, including (but I doubt limited to) the officers who arrested the reporters.
Then buy every remaining and newly hired cop a pair of Google Glasses. They should be videoing anytime they pull someone over or arrest someone. That should go for the entire country.
That would really help define the term “Glasshole.”
But yeah, many of those cops need to be unemployed (at least). That’s one of the biggest problems with police forces and their unions – the bad apples are never held accountable.
Many on the right cite how difficult it is to fire bad teachers, and even though this is grossly overstated, they don’t share that same outrage for when violent and abusive cops remain on the force.
In New Orleans, but somehow an NOPD officer managed to shoot a driver in the head on Monday during a traffic stop and it didn’t even get put into the log. The entry said the cop went to the hospital with a bruised hand, no mention of the shooting. No clue what happened with the camera. This is ridiculous.
…but don’t Google Glasses have privacy implications? Also is the word “stated” in your second line above by any chance an autocomplete error? I can’t make any sense out of it.
a camera on one’s body and Google Glass? Why does one have a ‘privacy implication’ and the other doesn’t?
When people are in public, there are cameras rolling. That’s been true for a very, very long time now.
So I submit any questions about privacy implications can be answered with no.
Yup. Sorry about that.
It should read “arrested without cause.”
and I’m not opposed to requiring police to wear cameras, but it is different.
A. Private fixed location cameras filming public spaces (security cameras)
B. Public cameras filming public spaces (security cameras)
C. Private movable cameras filming public spaces and private spaces to which the camera operator is affirmatively granted access (iPhones)
D. Public movable cameras filming public spaces, private spaces to which the camera operator is granted affirmatively granted access, and private spaces which the camera operator uses the implied threat of force to access (cops with wearable cameras).
Implied threat of force? You bet. How many people allow the cops to “have a look” without a search warrant because they’re afraid to say no? Hell, if I’m driving in my car it’s only a police officer who can pull me over, shine a flashlight into my car and its occupants, and film the whole thing. Nobody else.
Again, I’m not arguing against cops with cameras. I am arguing that it is in fact quite different because law enforcement isn’t an observer of the situation, it interacts with the situation, and has authority that other agencies don’t have.
…that Google Glasses were more than just cameras, but could actually tell you information about what you are looking at beyond what you see with the naked eye.
is basically putting some of the functionality of your phone onto your head.
It does absolutely nothing that you can’t already do with your phone anyway, should you decide to strap your phone to your head.
Here’s a great contrast of yesterday and today. Yesterday’s warzone bullies replaced with actual humans.
https://twitter.com/nickbilton/status/500066239528448001
This is important, way more important than the petty thins they have argued over so far.
http://www.masslive.com/politics/index.ssf/2014/08/ag_candidate_warren_tolman_mau.html
n/t
The current AG has said absolutely NOTHING, nor has she been asked in any forum that requires a response.
In early June, we at BMG discussed the disturbing phenomena of BlackWater-style mercenary armies being organized here in Massachusetts, claiming to be “private corporations” and therefore exempt from civilian oversight.
NO mainstream news organizations picked up that story. NONE of the candidates, including the current AG, have made any comment.
We are setting the stage and writing the script for our own Massachusetts version of Ferguson, and nobody will talk about it. We had a dress rehearsal on April 19, 2013 — all went smoothly. Lots of the participants got to shoot their guns, all the pooh-bahs got to look strong and courageous, and the Massachusetts population celebrated the imposition (albeit temporary) of martial law with only a little squawking. So much for our commitment to freedom, democracy, and civil liberties.
We talk about party loyalty and “Democratic” principles — we ignore the reality of our own Fergusons in places like Springfield, Lawrence, New Bedford, Lowell, and far too many others.
The current AG is silent. Perhaps a reason for her silence is that she has a long record of supporting and encouraging the same kind of militarization that bore fruit in Ferguson. Her assistant, now running to replace her as AG, appears to be cut from the same cloth.
Crickets.
If last year’s manhunt had not ended Friday night, and the lockdown continued … how long before people started defying it? And then what?
has a research base, and it doesn’t support militarization as a first step. The Madison Method, and it involves police talking to and coordinating protests with protesters. St. Louis evidently didn’t get the memo.
http://www.fbi.gov/stats-services/publications/law-enforcement-bulletin/august-2012/crowd-management
http://www.policeone.com/Crowd-Control/articles/3361291-The-Madison-Method-for-crowd-control/
With the dismissal of the dysfunctional local police and their replacement by professional state police, thing seem to be calming down. I feared the worst. Insertion of DHS which is always looking for a fight, visit by rent-a-riot Sharpton to fan the flames, Lon Horiuchi act-alikes. Perhaps now is the time to think about the other police departments with similar problems. Our own in particular.
Does anyone else feel embarrassed when our politicians chide other governments on their human rights records? Shouldn’t we clean our own house?
“Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer, but the right answer. Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past. Let us accept our own responsibility for the future.” –John F. Kennedy
I don’t like your cheapshot at Al Sharpton.
The police killing of Eric Garner is even more egregious than the tragedy in Ferguson, and IS captured on video. The public statements of Mr. Sharpton regarding that have been necessary and appropriate.
But they would have more credibility if they came from just about anyone else, especially in NYC.
You tread dangerously close to revealing the surely unconscious racism (that almost all Anglos share) that makes these situations so very difficult to manage.
The very reason why Al Sharpton is seen as divisive is because he DOES have credibility — ENORMOUS credibility — among people of color. He speaks truths that minorities live each and every day.
When you speak disparagingly of Mr. Sharpton’s credibility, you almost surely mean (without saying so) his credibility among white people.
There is a pronounced difference, and the responses to Mr. Sharpton spotlight that difference.
Al Sharpton. If it weren’t for the Tawana Brawley incident, I don’t think I would. On the other hand, I agree with most of what Sharpton says and 25 years is a long time to hold a grudge.
The phrase “rent-a-riot” may have been intended to be funny, but it misses the role that African American clergy play in the the African American community, one that I’m not intimately familiar with, but know exists.
Sharpton has zero credibility with me, stemming largely from a few instances in NYC in which I think he proved himself to be the opposite of credible.
If others place a great deal of trust in him, so be it. Others place a great deal of trust in Fox News. Doesn’t change anything about what either one actually is.
I do not believe he will contribute to the de-escalation of violence in the present crisis. That just isn’t what he does. But he will get on TV though.
… I don’t know to what extent a man can escape calumny when he stands up and says things people don’t wish to here. Maybe Al Sharpton isn’t as smart or as visionary as MLK Jr (who also dealt with calumny) but I’m quite sure he is as courageous… Starting with the courage to risk looking a fool to serve…
I’ve largely stayed out of this whole discussion becoming known as ‘Ferguson’ because I just don’t know where to start… between militarized police and another dead black man… but you’ve provided what might be as good a place as any by your allusion to the Rev. Sharpton.
Al Sharpton bridges two worlds and those two worlds are black and white. The black world sees things like ‘Ferguson’ all the time.
All. The. Time.
Everyday.
The white world would see these things also, if they looked. But they don’t wish to look and so ‘Ferguson’ is a one off with no relationship to Trayvon Martin, Clayton Lockett, Jordan Davis, Clyven Bundy, reparations and Donald Sterling…
And Sharpton is one of the few people willing to go directly into the white world and say, deliberately, ‘this shit is real. It happens all the time. It’s happening right now.’ For people who don’t want to believe him, he’s a huckster and a charlatan, which gives them license to ignore what he’s saying. Isn’t that convenient?
Al Sharpton doesn’t “fan the flames”. He’s trying to tell you there’s a fire and you don’t want to believe him. Of course, when you are undeniably confronted with the fact of heat, smoke, fire and char you turn around and blame him… That, too, is convenient.
But I get you when you say,
I’m comfortable with my intentions, but I feel like I’ve swung and fouled off a lot of my comments. Maybe I’m out of practice.
I was born the same year Tawana went down, but I buy the fact that he didn’t know it was a fabrication-and had it not been-it would’ve been a very serious problem. He has credibility since he is unafraid to call a spade a spade and tell it like it is. He is also a profoundly powerful orator, I would still say his speech at the 2004 DNC was the best of the bunch that year-including the one that made Barack Obama a household name. Granted, I saw Sharpton’s live on the floor-but it made a powerful impression. He has been speaking extemporaneously on these subjects and commanding large audiences since he was 8 years old standing on a soapbox. That’s Daniel Webster and William Jennings Bryan shit right there, a unique talent. And I might add he calmed down the community by all accounts by pleasing the organized church based protestors to non-violent resistance. The only people pointing guns during this whole thing were white men wearing blue uniforms.
of Sharpton’s actions, and the fact that they were based on a lie. Tawana Brawley accused specific innocent people of rape. Sharpton and Alton Maddox were claiming there was a coverup in Duchess County. , and they were found guilty of defaming the prosecutor and fined substantially.
I’m willing to forgive, but like Chappaquidick, it leaves a bad taste in people’s mouths.
was worse than the Tawana Brawley incident.
Sharpton’s demeanor or my tolerance. There was a time Sharpton made me cringe, and that if I wanted to listen to an ordained civil rights leader I’d go with Jesse Jackson. Sharpton seems more mainstream now, especially on (because of?) his MSNBC show, though there are times he does still seem awfully quick to find a camera.
…and I haven’t been convinced it’s worth much, Darren Wilson is the name of the officer who shot Michael Brown.