Tensions in Ferguson

In the wake of the killings of several unarmed black men by police in 2014 —and the recent, high-profile shooting death of Walter Scott in South Carolina — there’s been a rush to figure out how often something like this happens in America. The problem, as several writers have found, is that no one collects data that answers exactly that question. There is no national database that police departments are required to submit a record to when they complete an investigation after a police officer shoots a civilian.

The FBI does collect some data. Many have reported that the FBI’s records say there were 426 “felons killed by police” in 2012. In August 2014, Vox obtained FBI records that go beyond the raw number of police-involved homicides and reveal details about the victims and the circumstances surrounding their deaths. The data offers an important look at what the FBI knows about people killed by police in America.

On December 20, New York City Police Department officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos were killed while sitting in their patrol car.

While the officer’s deaths are still under investigation, a few details about the suspect, Ismaaiyl Brinsley, a 28-year-old black man who killed himself in a subway station after Liu and Ramos were shot, have been reported. Police say he posted a photo on Instagram with this caption on the day of the shooting: “I’m putting wings on pigs today. They take 1 of ours … let’s take 2 of theirs.”

On Monday night, the nation’s eyes were on Ferguson waiting for the grand jury’s decision on the killing of Michael Brown. Brown’s death, and finding justice in it has captured the attention of this country. One of the ways people reacted to the decision, and one of the ways we communicate today was on social media.

This map shows the number of geo-tagged tweets mentioning Ferguson, and the dramatic rise activity — peaking at the point where it was announced and people were coming to the realization that officer Darren Wilson would face no charges for killing Michael Brown:

How would American media cover the news from Ferguson, Missouri, if it were happening in just about any other country? How would the world respond differently? Here, to borrow a great idea from Slate’s Joshua Keating, is a satirical take on the story you might be reading if Ferguson were in, say, Iraq or Pakistan.

FERGUSON — Chinese and Russian officials are warning of a potential humanitarian crisis in the restive American province of Missouri, where ancient communal tensions have boiled over into full-blown violence.

Tear gas is a chemical weapon that the Geneva Convention bans from use in international warfare. Multiple journalists have reported its use the night of November 24, 2014, during the protests that erupted after a grand jury did not indict white police officer Darren Wilson in the shooting and killing of black teenager Michael Brown.

But tear gas was confirmed to be used during protests in Ferguson last summer immediately following the Brown shooting, a move that alarmed experts.

Available eyewitness accounts of the killing of Michael Brown by Ferguson, Missouri, police officer Darren Wilson are pretty consistent on a crucial detail: after Wilson started to fire, Brown turned toward him with his hands up. The officer continued to shoot until Brown fell to the ground.

Wilson’s full version of events is still unclear. The day after the shooting, St. Louis County police chief Jon Belmar relayed Wilson’s description of the incident only up to the point that Wilson started shooting. We don’t know exactly what Wilson told investigators Brown was doing immediately before the officer fired the final shots. And in the eyes of the law, that missing piece might be the most important part of the story.

The US Department of Justice will investigate the entire Ferguson Police Department for civil rights violations, following the August 9 shooting of Michael Brown by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson, the agency announced on Thursday.

The investigation, which will run at the same time as ongoing local and federal investigations into Wilson and the shooting of Brown, will look at whether the police departments have systematically violated the civil rights of local minority communities. The Justice Department, through the the Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) Office, will also help the St. Louis County Police Department change its policing practices, including policies and training regarding use of force.

Here’s what we know in one chart:

There’s no word yet on the request filed by the Riverfront Times, a St. Louis weekly newspaper, for the juvenile records of Darren Wilson.

Through the 1033 program, the federal government has geared America’s local police departments with military-grade equipment — ranging from airplanes to bayonets — worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

NPR combed through the transaction data for the program to find out where the equipment went and what kind of gear was involved. Since 2006, the Pentagon distributed more than 79,000 assault rifles, 205 grenade launchers, nearly 12,000 bayonets, nearly 4,000 combat knives, 50 airplanes, 479 bomb detonator robots, and much more to America’s local cops.

Mother Jones’s Mark Follman provides new insight into the tense relationship between the black community in Ferguson, Missouri, and local law enforcement following the shooting of Michael Brown. He reports that shortly after Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson shot and killed the 18-year-old on August 9, Brown’s grieving mother helped set up a makeshift memorial at the site of the shooting. Police then reportedly ran over the memorial with their cars, and at least one officer let his police dog urinate on the memorial site.

From Mother Jones:

Jon Stewart was on vacation for the past couple weeks as the protests in Ferguson, Missouri, played out. Naturally, he returned to The Daily Show Tuesday night with a few things to say about the issue.

Besides getting in a few shots at Fox News for its dismissive coverage of Ferguson, Stewart also makes a larger point: For many black Americans, the police shooting and killing of Michael Brown is so scary and upsetting because they feel it could happen to them, their own sons, or their husbands. Everyday discrimination, whether implicit or explicit, is still a constant reality for minorities.

Will Ferguson, Missouri, police officer Darren Wilson ever be prosecuted for shooting Michael Brown?

Since August 9, when Wilson shot and killed Brown, an unarmed teenager, protesters have taken to the streets of the St. Louis suburb and cities around the United States to insist that Wilson be charged in Brown’s death. Their demand, emblazoned on T-shirts, inked onto handmade signs, and voiced in chants of “no justice, no peace,” speaks to a widely held fear that the courts and police will be more interested in protecting the rights of a white police officer with no disciplinary record than the rights of a black 18-year-old.

The New York Times’s description of Michael Brown as “no angel” has prompted a swift, critical reaction from other media outlets, including Vox, and various people on social media.

Alison Mitchell, national editor for the Times, defended the term in conversations with the Washington Post’s Erik Wemple:

The memorial service for Michael Brown, the 18-year-old killed by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson on August 9, is today. Watch the event below, courtesy of WIBW.com:

Shortly after 18-year-old Michael Brown was shot at least six times by police officer Darren Wilson, his corpse left on the pavement for four hours in a pool of his own blood, his mother gave a harrowing interview to a local St. Louis TV station KMOV.

“Do you know how hard it was for me to get him to stay in school and graduate? You know how many black men graduate? Not many,” she said desperately, her voice rising in anger. “Because you bring them down to this type of level, where they feel like they don’t got nothing to live for anyway. ‘They’re going to try to take me out anyway.’”

The incident reports for the Michael Brown shooting contain no new information, with many potential answers about the shooting either redacted or left out completely.

The reports detail who was involved in the shooting and where it happened. Neither explains the lead-up to the event, how it played out, or why. They don’t include officer Darren Wilson’s side of the story.

Here’s the cover of next week’s New Yorker, drawn by artist Eric Drooker.

Ferguson, Missouri, police officer Darren Wilson, who shot and killed Michael Brown on August 9, did not have a broken eye socket after his encounter with Brown, an anonymous source “close to the investigation” told CNN’s Julian Cummings:

Reports that Wilson had fractured his eye socket also originated from an anonymous source, so it’s hard to compare the credibility of the two nameless informants.

How is it possible to have so many cases? The simple answer is for-profit policing, as The New School’s Jeff Smith explained in a previous interview. “These municipalities are not well-funded, they don’t have big tax bases, and a lot of the shopping centers, movie theaters, and big stores have gone out of businesses. Consequently, they’re strapped for cash,” Smith said. “As a result, places like Ferguson get almost a quarter of their municipal budget from traffic-related fines. Other places have even higher percentages.”

The ArchCity Defenders’ report supports this point. It found fines and court fees are the city’s second largest source of revenue, making up $2.6 million, or about 10 percent of Ferguson’s 2013 budget.

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On August 9, Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, was killed by a police officer named Darren Wilson in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson, Missouri. Eyewitnesses to the shooting report that Brown was killed while attempting to surrender, but police say that Brown assaulted the officer before the shooting.

We may never really know what happened in the three minutes between when Michael Brown was stopped for jaywalking and when he was shot and killed by Officer Darren Wilson.

But we do know what happened on Tuesday during the 23 seconds between when St. Louis police arrived and when 25-year-old Kajieme Powell was shot and killed on Riverview Blvd. We know because police released the video. Powell walks around the sidewalk and a small grass embankment. He ignores police warnings to drop his knife. He advances on police at a normal speed, his arms swinging at his sides. And he is shot nine times, including while on the ground.

Video released by the St. Louis Police of the August 19 shooting of 25-year-old Kajieme Powell, just miles away from the protests in Ferguson, raises questions about whether events transpired as police initially claimed.

St. Louis Police Chief Sam Dotson had told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that Powell “pulled out a knife and came at the officers, gripping and holding it high,” yelling “Shoot me now, kill me now.” Police said he was shot when he was “two or three feet” away from the officers.

This morning, NPR reporter Shereen Marisol tweeted this photograph of the St. Louis County Courthouse in Clayton, Missouri, where a grand jury has just begun to hear evidence about the shooting of unarmed teen Michael Brown by police officer Darren Wilson:

This picture of police tape and armed officers blocking the courthouse is perhaps one of the most chilling images to come out of the Ferguson protests. The message to the people outside could not be clearer: “You are not welcome here. This place is not for you. It is for us.” And messages matter, especially at times like this.

The situation in Ferguson is very tense. But it seemed particularly tense for one police officer on Tuesday night, who aimed his rifle at protesters while shouting obscenities and death threats before being told to calm down by what appear to be fellow officers:

If a non-officer did this, it would be a crime.

The protests in Ferguson, Missouri, have captivated the nation in the past week and a half. Much of that, some experts argue, is because the small town’s problems represent racial tensions that are rippling through the nation as a whole.

Jeff Smith is a professor of politics, advocacy, and urban policy at the New School and former Missouri State Senator from St. Louis. He recently wrote a New York Times op-ed on the roots of the unrest in Ferguson. As he notes, the problems in Ferguson — racial tensions resulting from conflicts between the black community and the established white power base — are emerging all over the country as black people move out of the cities and into the suburbs. I talked to Smith on Monday about his op-ed and the political and demographic history of the St. Louis area.