racism in ferguson? what racism?!?!

HuffPo |  The mayor of Ferguson, Missouri, says there's no racial split in his community and that nearly all residents would agree with him, despite over a week of violent clashes between protesters and police over the death of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager fatally shot by a white police officer.

"There's not a racial divide in the city of Ferguson," Mayor James Knowles said Tuesday in an interview on MSNBC's "NewsNation" with Tamron Hall. "That is the perspective of all residents in our city. Absolutely."

He later put the level of community support "in the 95th percentile" in terms of how local leaders have been responding to the situation.

A visibly perplexed Hall pressed Knowles on how he could say that, given the week's events: a militarized and mostly white police force has been turning up nightly -- with tear gas, armored vehicles and rubber bullets -- to counter a group of mostly peaceful black protesters furious about the lack of answers surrounding Brown's death. In a city that is 67 percent black, just three of the city's 53 officers are African-American, and reports have found a high incidence of racial profiling. In 2013, 86 percent of Ferguson police stops and 92 percent of their searches were of black people, according to a 2013 report from the Missouri attorney general.

Knowles conceded that more needs to be done to diversify the police force. But he pinned the nightly violence on the streets on a small group of people and said it isn't representative of the community of roughly 22,000.

"The city of Ferguson has been a model for the region about how we can transition from a community that was predominantly white middle-class to a community that is predominately African-American middle-class," Knowles said. "We're all middle-class residents who believe in the same shared values. Those are the things we've been focusing on."

the reality evasion and normotic denial battleships just got sunk...,

Fist tap John Kurman

how the rest of the world sees uhmurkah's shitty drawls....,

WaPo |  In many ways, the chaotic situation in Ferguson, Mo., seems like something that shouldn't happen in America. As WorldViews has noted, many of the hallmarks of the conflict are reminiscent of scenes from the Arab Spring and the Ukraine crisis – our former colleague Max Fisher has even wondered how American journalists would cover Ferguson, if only it weren't happening "here."

There are plenty of foreign journalists reporting on Ferguson, however, and for them, Ferguson is international news. Their coverage of the shooting of Michael Brown and the subsequent unrest can offer a refreshing viewpoint on America's many problems. They can also reveal a lot about how such disturbances are viewed at home.

For most Americans, the most familiar foreign news outlets covering Ferguson will probably be the British ones: Not only is there a shared language, but some British outlets, most obviously the Guardian but also the BBC and the Daily Mail, have made big pushes into the U.S. news market. Notably, some publications are treating the conflict as they might a war zone — the Telegraph has sent its Afghanistan correspondent, Rob Crilly, to cover the protests, for example (he was arrested while reporting this weekend).

British coverage of Ferguson has emphasized the racial drama that lies behind the riots and the scale of the police response. And while Britain has had its own problems with race and riots (most notably the 2011 events in London and elsewhere, also caused by a police shooting involving a young black man), some journalists are struck more by the differences than the similarities. "While the [London riots] were at their worst, people were calling for rubber bullets, tear gas and water cannons to be used against the rioters," Abigail Chandler of the free newspaper the Metro writes. "Ferguson is a living example of why we should be immensely grateful that those tactics were never used during the U.K. riots."

The German media leveled harsher criticism. Zeit Online, a centrist news site, saw the death of Brown as testimony of deep-rooted racism in the United States and concluded that “the situation of African-Americans has barely improved since Martin Luther King.” The publication went as far as to say that the “dream of a post-racist society, which flared up after the election of [President] Obama, seems further away than ever before.” Such criticism was echoed by its conservative competitor Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, one of  the biggest newspapers in Germany, which also specifically singled out the U.S. president for his failures: “It seems like mockery that [Obama] is still called the most powerful man on earth.”

Spiegel Online, a centrist, left-leaning publication, discussed Ferguson with Marcel Kuhlmey, an academic who studies police reactions. Kuhlmey told the site that in Germany, “weapons are the last resort, but in the U.S. police officers make use of them much faster” and went on to say that the “last time the German police owned assault rifles [which are being used in Ferguson] was during the Cold War.” The expert concluded that police officers “would never proceed like this in Germany." Fist tap Vic.

zero-sum politics in this beast: dollar dollar bill y'all....,

NYTimes |  POLITICS, wrote the political scientist Harold Lasswell in 1936, is about “who gets what, when, and how.” If you want to understand the racial power disparities we’ve seen in Ferguson, Mo., understand that it’s not only about black and white. It’s about green. 

Back in 1876, the city of St. Louis made a fateful decision. Tired of providing services to the outlying areas, the city cordoned itself off, separating from St. Louis County. It’s a decision the city came to regret. Most Rust Belt cities have bled population since the 1960s, but few have been as badly damaged as St. Louis City, which since 1970 has lost almost as much of its population as Detroit. 

This exodus has left a ring of mostly middle-class suburbs around an urban core plagued by entrenched poverty. White flight from the city mostly ended in the 1980s; since then, blacks have left the inner city for suburbs such as Ferguson in the area of St. Louis County known as North County.

Ferguson’s demographics have shifted rapidly: in 1990, it was 74 percent white and 25 percent black; in 2000, 52 percent black and 45 percent white; by 2010, 67 percent black and 29 percent white. 

The region’s fragmentation isn’t limited to the odd case of a city shedding its county. St. Louis County contains 90 municipalities, most with their own city hall and police force. Many rely on revenue generated from traffic tickets and related fines. According to a study by the St. Louis nonprofit Better Together, Ferguson receives nearly one-quarter of its revenue from court fees; for some surrounding towns it approaches 50 percent.

Municipal reliance on revenue generated from traffic stops adds pressure to make more of them. One town, Sycamore Hills, has stationed a radar-gun-wielding police officer on its 250-foot northbound stretch of Interstate.

With primarily white police forces that rely disproportionately on traffic citation revenue, blacks are pulled over, cited and arrested in numbers far exceeding their population share, according to a recent report from Missouri’s attorney general. In Ferguson last year, 86 percent of stops, 92 percent of searches and 93 percent of arrests were of black people — despite the fact that police officers were far less likely to find contraband on black drivers (22 percent versus 34 percent of whites). This worsens inequality, as struggling blacks do more to fund local government than relatively affluent whites.

the issue is about a policeman shooting an unarmed teenager six times while he had his hands up, period.

That's the point that the releases of the "robbery" report and the video were intended to obscure. A nicely calculated effort to derail the conversation, take the spotlight off the unjustified killing, and taint the jury pool. A shrewd piece of political feces-flinging, if not, perhaps, in the public interest. 

  

Based on eyewitness accounts, police statements and the recently released autopsy diagram - here's how that shooting went down:

a.. Wilson sees Brown and Johnson walking in the street and gets a little pissed off.

b.. As he drives by he orders them back onto the sidewalk, using profanity.

c.. Brown mouths off in response to the tone of the order.

d.. Wilson hears that and gets even more angry.

e.. He throws the truck into reverse and races backwards toward the pair.

f.. When the truck stops beside them, a now enraged Wilson throws the the door open with extreme force.

g.. It hits Brown, bounces back and smacks Wilson on the side of the head.

h.. The sudden pain triggers Wilson and all his residual self-restraint evaporates.

i.. He grabs Brown through the open window.

j.. Brown pulls free and starts to run away.

k.. Wilson jumps out into the street, aims at the running Brown, fires and misses.

l.. Brown hears the shot and realizes the danger he's in.

m.. He stops running suddenly (i.e. with a jerk), turns and raises his hands.

n.. Wilson is now fully in the grips of the adrenaline rage.

o.. Wilson aims for the head of the now-stationary Brown and continues firing until he goes down. This is supported by the autopsy diagram of the bullet wounds - if Brown had his hands up when shot, the diagram show a clear clustering of wounds at head level, slightly off to the left

p.. The fatal would in the crown of the Brown's head was probably the result either of Brown falling forward as a result of the earlier shots, or of him being shot while on the ground, as reported by eye witnesses.

This looks to me like a "vengeance execution" fueled by Wilson's steroid use (or something similar), compounded by a massive adrenaline rush that was triggered by the pain of being hit in the head by the police car door.

To put it bluntly, it looks to me as though Wilson got hit in the head by the door and then aimed for Brown's head in retribution.

But one thing is for sure, focusing on the subsequent police riots as "looting" is missing the point.

recall the burning man of tunisia bouazizi?

These humans have a biological limit on how much social inequality they will tolerate. Which means the centuries old econonarrative project will soon crash in the fire of instinctual moral directives of  fairness. Resource extracting banksters and their bought and paid for politicians and overseers should be on notice regarding what's just beyond that signpost up ahead.

why these cats had to be shut down 25 years ago....,

kcpd vs. kcfd political patronage parasites at odds over fatal firefighter niggerization by cop...,

kcfop |  Brothers and Sisters,

By now many of you have heard what happened this morning. A few members of the Kansas City Fire Department hung very large red ribbons with the name Bruno stenciled on them. Those ribbons were hung around the neighborhood belonging to the officer involved last year. Thankfully that officer and his family were out of town and did not have to witness the event. On duty members responded to the scene, but so did a large number of our own FOP brothers and sisters even though they were off.

What happened this morning is unforgivable and I understand how an event like this can bring up emotions that are difficult to deal with. I responded to the scene and met with a number of you. I have read each of your messages and understand the anger. I too am greatly upset about the events that happened today, along with the other events that have happened.

I met with the presidents of Local 42, 3808 and a representative of FOP Lodge 102 on Thursday morning to work out some sort of resolution. I have also been in constant contact with Mayor James, and Chief Darryl Forte'. Everyone involved understands our anger, but we need to try to be sensible about our reactions. I do NOT believe that either of the IAFF unions had anything to do with the recent issues, but their members have.

I am asking each of you to remember that there is a court process to deal with these issues, and we will be using that avenue. We believe that using city resources, shirts and symbols to harass anyone are violations of law and the appropriate measures will be taken. Lastly, I am not asking you to not be upset...you have that right. Just as you have the right to extend professional courtesy in your traffic stops and interactions. Should you choose not to, I understand, but please be polite when you contact any member of KCFD.

We choose this profession our families did not, bringing this fight to our homes is unforgivable. I stand by each of you and ask that you share this message.

political leadership not focused on that parasitic patronage army is no leadership at all!

Governing

NYTimes |  Night after night the streets have attracted disparate groups, some from within Ferguson, and some from hundreds of miles away. As demonstrators gather each evening, it is not unusual to see some people carrying handguns while only a block away parents push their toddlers in strollers. Neither the peaceful protesters nor the hotheaded elements appear to have any direction or a unified leadership.

Many of those on the street say they have shrugged off guidance from elders in the African-American establishment, and even from the Brown family, which has repeatedly pleaded for calm.

One protester, DeVone Cruesoe, of the St. Louis area, standing on Canfield Drive last week said, “Do we have a leader? No.” Pointing to the spot where Mr. Brown was killed, he said, “You want to know who our leader is? Mike Brown.” 

The Rev. Jesse L. Jackson arrived at the protest on Friday night. “People were so warm,” he said. “It was that kind of celebration.”

But he said on Saturday morning that the violent tone of the protest reflected anger over police tactics. Ferguson, he said, is “a metaphor for urban America,” where many minorities and poor whites lack access to jobs, transportation and health care. 

Many African-American civic leaders in St. Louis said they were frustrated by their inability to guide the protesters. 

At an emotional meeting at a church on Thursday, clergy members despaired over the seemingly uncontrollable nature of the protest movement and the flare-ups of violence that older people in the group abhorred. 

“We had the so-called power brokers here on Tuesday,” said the Rev. Robert C. Scott, pastor of Central Baptist Church in St. Louis, referring to a meeting earlier in the week. “Nothing has changed. It has exacerbated. We should not be on the news looking like Iraq or Beirut.” 

Derrick Robbins, another pastor in attendance, said there had been no negotiations between the police and protesters. 

“Everybody’s trying to be a leader, but it’s not working,” he said. “I wish we could come together and have a unified front. That is not happening.”

Some people have suggested that there is a generational divide. George Richardson, who works for the building department in East St. Louis, said the younger protesters were acting independently, ignoring advice from their parents.

chief struggley's occupation army is a patronage make-work project for what would otherwise be unemployed l00z3rs...,

buzzfeed | Over at the Prime Time Beauty & Barber Shop, a social hub in the black part of town, folks see it differently. “They treat us like criminals,” said barber Branden Turner, who’s worked at the shop for a few years. They described officers routinely waiting for customers to leave so they could give them traffic tickets, search for drugs, or ask them for identification so they could run a background check.

“Everyone knows the statistics,” said Turner, referring to the now well-known figures showing a disproportionate amount of traffic stops and arrests for blacks. “Ask anybody from the city,” he said, meaning St. Louis. “Don’t nobody come in from the city because they know this is one of the most racist places there is.”

In this city of about 21,000 people, the national spotlight has forced residents to grapple with dueling narratives of their relationship to each other and to their government. It’s a tale of two cities that happen to exist in one town: Ferguson. More largely, it’s a tale of two Americas, black and white, that seem to exist in totally different realities and have sharply divergent views on race.

Many black locals welcome the unflattering attention, hoping it might lead to change in a city where whites are only 29% of the population but five of the six city council members, six of the seven school board members, and — as repeated ad nauseam this week — 50 of the 53 police officers.

“We’re tired of being bullied,” said Jayson Ross, a 25-year-old native who has been a regular presence at the nightly protests.

Those demonstrations weren’t just a reaction to the killing of 18-year-old Michael Brown by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson. They were also a fiery response to years of grievances that were routinely ignored by most of Ferguson’s white residents and by its predominantly white government. It’s the same pent-up fury that sparked protests in small towns made infamous by previous race-related controversies that went national: Sanford, Fla.; Jena, La.; and Jasper, Texas, notable among them.

Regardless of the geographic region, the community response follows a predictable script: White residents almost always find themselves surprised by the simmering discontent of their black neighbors. And why wouldn’t they be? They usually live in a different part of town, no longer segregated by law but by history, custom, and sometimes policy. What’s more, the police and other arms of government treat them with respect. Many white residents don’t think there’s much racial discontent because they just don’t see it.

red ribbon protest: cops were busy cutting these down last night...,

I had to come down to the data center last night, and to my surprise there were thousands of Bruno ribbons tied around lamp posts, parking meters, street lights etc..., downtown in Kansas City. As I sat at a bus stop waiting to catch my ride home, a pair of cops came sauntering up the street arms fully loaded with the red ribbons where they'd been busily walking along and cutting them down.

Adhering to the "don't start none, won't be none" principle, I simply nodded my head in greeting to them as they passed by, because my highest priority was to get home without incident. I did manage to take a few pictures of some of the ribbons. Somebody with deep pockets paid for this substantial act of graphic speaking truth to power. 

judge struggley backpeddling quicker than chief struggley...,

pitch |  Jackson County Circuit Judge Bryan Round will not preside over a wrongful-death lawsuit filed by the family of Anthony Bruno, who was shot to death by an off-duty Kansas City police officer last December.

Round, who had been a Kansas City police board attorney for about eight years, was assigned last week to preside over the controversial Bruno lawsuit.

But Round recused himself Wednesday after The Pitch published a story in which legal experts criticized him for comments made during a trial that appeared to be protecting the Kansas City Police Department. Round filed the case transfer order but did not say why he was recusing himself. He also did not provide a statement.

The Pitch reported Wednesday that Round had found Nicholas Rose not guilty of resisting arrest in June but guilty of disturbing the peace and careless driving. Rose and about 50 friends were riding motorcycles and doing stunts on Interstate 70 and U.S. Highway 40 last year and causing a traffic hazard.

Between the June trial and the July 30 sentencing hearing, Round had learned that Rose was considering an excessive-force lawsuit against the police department and officer Donald Hubbard, who arrested him. (Videos show Rose doing a wheelie and bumping the back of Hubbard’s patrol car. Videos also show Hubbard jumping out of his patrol car, grabbing Rose and throwing him to the ground. Hubbard later told officers that Rose was trying to flee the scene and trying to hit him with his helmet.)

Round, who was appointed to the bench this year, called Rose a “vulture” and sentenced him to two weeks of shock incarceration. He also told Rose that he would not have found him not guilty of resisting arrest if he had known that Rose was planning to file a lawsuit against the police department.

you are not nearly scared enough about ebola?

foreign policy |  Attention World: You just don't get it. You think there are magic bullets in some rich country's freezers that will instantly stop the relentless spread of the Ebola virus in West Africa? You think airport security guards in Los Angeles can look a traveler in the eyes and see infection, blocking that jet passenger's entry into La-la-land? You believe novelist Dan Brown's utterly aburd description of a World Health Organization that has a private C5-A military transport jet and disease SWAT team that can swoop into outbreaks, saving the world from contagion?

Wake up, fools. What's going on in West Africa now isn't Brown's silly Inferno scenario -- it's Steven Soderberg's movie Contagion, though without a modicum of its high-tech capacity.

Last week, my brilliant Council on Foreign Relations colleague John Campbell, former U.S. ambassador to Nigeria, warned that spread of the virus inside Lagos -- which has a population of 22 million -- would instantly transform this situation into a worldwide crisis, thanks to the chaos, size, density, and mobility of not only that city but dozens of others in the enormous, oil-rich nation. Add to the Nigerian scenario civil war, national elections, Boko Haram terrorists, and a country-wide doctors' strike -- all of which are real and current -- and you have a scenario so overwrought and frightening that I could not have concocted it even when I advised screenwriter Scott Burns on his Contagion script.

Inside the United States, politicians, gadflies, and much of the media are focused on wildly experimental drugs and vaccines, and equally wild notions of "keeping the virus out" by barring travelers and "screening at airports."Let's be clear: Absolutely no drug or vaccine has been proven effective against the Ebola virus in human beings. To date, only one person -- Dr. Kent Brantly -- has apparently recovered after receiving one of the three prominent putative drugs, and there is no proof that the drug was key to his improvement. None of the potential vaccines has even undergone Phase One safety trials in humans, though at least two are scheduled to enter that stage before December of this year. And Phase One is the swiftest, easiest part of new vaccine trials -- the two stages of clinical trials aimed at proving that vaccines actually work will be difficult, if not impossible, to ethically and safely execute. If one of the vaccines is ready to be used in Africa sometime in 2015, the measure will be executed without prior evidence that it can work, which in turn will require massive public education to ensure that people who receive the vaccination do not change their behaviors in ways that might put them in contract with Ebola -- because they mistakenly believe they are immune to the virus.

We are in for a very long haul with this extremely deadly disease -- it has killed more than 50 percent of those laboratory-confirmed infections, and possibly more than 70 percent of the infected populations of Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea. Nigeria is struggling to ensure that no secondary spread of Ebola comes from one of the people already infected by Liberian traveler Patrick Sawyer -- two of whom have died so far. That effort expanded on Wednesday, when Nigerian health authorities announced that a nurse who had treated Sawyer escaped her quarantine confinement in Lagos and traveled to Enugu a city that, as of 2006, has a population of about three million. Though the nurse has not shown symptoms of the disease, the incubation time for infection, which is up to 21 days, hasn't elapsed.

with aid doctors gone, ebola fight grows harder

NYTimes |  On Saturday afternoon, several hundred people in an area of Monrovia known as the West Point slum broke through the gates of a former school that had been converted days earlier into a holding center for people with suspected Ebola. 

Samuel Tarplah, 48, a nurse running the center, said Saturday evening that the protesters wanted to shut it down. “They told us that we don’t want an Ebola holding center in our community.” He said the intruders stole mattresses, personal protective equipment, even buckets of chlorine that had just been delivered. “They took everything.”

Fear is complicating the huge increase in aid that is needed: food for people in areas that have been cordoned off; laboratory supplies to test for the disease; gloves, face masks and gowns to protect health workers; body bags for the dead; bedsheets to replace those that must be burned. Airlines have canceled flights that could have carried in such supplies, despite assurances from the W.H.O. that properly screened passengers pose little risk. Positions on aid teams remain unfilled. 

Hundreds of workers for Doctors Without Borders have fought the outbreak since March. The group’s president, Dr. Joanne Liu, said there was an acute need for materials as well as for more human resources — and not just experts and bureaucrats, but also the kind of person who is ready to “roll up his sleeves.”

“What we have to keep in mind is we are facing today the most devastating and biggest Ebola epidemic of the modern times,” Dr. Liu said. “There is fear, there is a front line, the epidemic is advancing, and there is a collapse of infrastructure.”

A more muscular effort to fight the outbreak began lumbering to life over the past week.

The newly appointed United Nations coordinator for Ebola, Dr. David Nabarro, wrote in an email that he had his “head right down working through some extremely challenging stuff under tight time pressure.” 

“All of us are going to have to perform in an outstanding way over some months,” Dr. Nabarro added in a phone interview. “For many, the image is fearful to a degree that it makes it very hard indeed for them to do anything other than think about their safety and the safety of those they love.”

nigeria sacks 16,000 doctors in midst of rising ebola concerns

aljazeera |  Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan reportedly (link is external) fired 16,000 resident doctors this week, causing concern as the country fights a number of Ebola cases. The government also reportedly (link is external) suspended the residency training programme in federal hospitals, citing the need to better address challenges currently facing the health sector. 

The move comes as thousands of doctors are on strike (link is external) throughout the country, calling for better working conditions and increased pay. The Nigeria Medical Association (NMA) Friday demanded (link is external) the immediate reversal of Johnathan's decision, and encouraged those affected not to pick up their termination letters. 

Online, many in Nigeria expressed concern over what the sacking meant for the country as it battles Ebola, with 11 cases confirmed (link is external) so far. 

ebola outbreak moving too fast to handle

msn |  The Ebola outbreak that has claimed more than 1,000 lives in west Africa is moving faster than aid organisations can handle, the medical charity MSF said Friday.

The warning came a day after the World Health Organization said the scale of the epidemic had been vastly underestimated and that "extraordinary measures" were needed to contain the killer disease.

Related: WHO: Ebola toll may 'vastly underestimate' crisis

The UN health agency said the death toll from the worst outbreak of the disease in four decades had now climbed to 1,069 in the four afflicted countries, Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone.

"It is deteriorating faster, and moving faster, than we can respond to," MSF (Doctors Without Borders) chief Joanne Liu told reporters in Geneva, saying it could take six months to get the upper hand.

 "It is like wartime," she said a day after returning from the region where she met political leaders and visited clinics.

WHO said Thursday it was coordinating "a massive scaling up of the international response" to the epidemic.

"Staff at the outbreak sites see evidence that the numbers of reported cases and deaths vastly underestimate the magnitude of the outbreak," it said.

The latest epidemic erupted in the forested zone straddling the borders of Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, and later spread to Nigeria.

WHO declared a global health emergency last week -- far too late, according to MSF, which months ago warned that the outbreak was out of control.

Liu said while Guinea was the initial epicentre of the disease, the pace there has slowed, with concerns now focused on the other countries.

"If we don't stabilise Liberia, we'll never stabilise the region," Liu said.

Concerns have also centred on the Nigerian cases, which are in Lagos, sub-Saharan Africa's largest city.

"Right now we have no past experience with in urban setting," said Liu.

ebola crisis in monrovia...,

bbc |  There are conflicting reports over the fate of 17 Ebola patients who vanished after a quarantine centre in the Liberian capital Monrovia was looted.

An angry mob attacked the centre in the city's densely populated West Point township on Saturday evening.

A senior health official said all of the patients were being moved to another medical facility.

But a reporter told the BBC that 17 had escaped while 10 others were taken away by their families.

More than 400 people are known to have died from the virus in Liberia, out of a total of 1,145 deaths recorded by the World Health Organization.

Assistant Health Minister Tolbert Nyenswah said protesters had been unhappy that patients were being brought in from other parts of the capital.

Other reports suggested the protesters had believed Ebola was a hoax and wanted to force the quarantine centre to close.

The attack at the Monrovia centre is seen as a major setback in the struggle to halt the outbreak, says the BBC's Will Ross, reporting from Lagos.

Health experts say that the key to ending the Ebola outbreak is to stop it spreading in Liberia, where ignorance about the virus is high and many people are reluctant to cooperate with medical staff.

black face chronicles: captain ron johnson not in charge in ferguson...,

Start video at the 2:00 minute mark.

he spotted the cigars: chief struggley set the stage for darren "barney fife" wilson to walk...,

vox |  In the 1980s, a pair of Supreme Court decisions set up a framework for determining when deadly force by cops is reasonable. Those decisions have governed how state laws are applied. Furthermore, many agencies simply use identical standards to the Supreme Court's for their own use-of-force policies — though some departments don't let officers use deadly force even when the Court decisions say they'd be allowed to.

Constitutionally, "police officers are allowed to shoot under two circumstances," says Klinger. The first circumstance is "to protect their life or the life of another innocent party" — what departments call the "defense-of-life" standard. The second circumstance is to prevent a suspect from escaping, but only if the officer has probable cause to think the suspect's committed a serious violent felony.

cops can't shoot every felon who tries to escape

The logic behind the second circumstance, says Klinger, comes from a Supreme Court decision called Tennessee vs. Garner. That case involved a pair of police officers who shot a 15-year-old boy as he fled from a burglary. (He'd stolen $10 and a purse from a house.) The Court ruled that cops couldn't shoot every felon who tried to escape. But, as Klinger says, "they basically say that the job of a cop is to protect people from violence, and if you've got a violent person who's fleeing, you can shoot them to stop their flight."

Some police departments' policies only allow deadly force in the first circumstance: defense of life. Others have policies that also allow deadly force to prevent escape in certain cases, within the limits of the Supreme Court decision.

Does the convenience store robbery matter?

Shortly after releasing the documents that identified Brown as the primary suspect in a convenience-store robbery, the Ferguson Police Department clarified that Wilson had not known that Brown was a robbery suspect when he made "initial contact" with Brown and his friend Dorian Johnson. (Instead, the department says, Wilson stopped the teenagers because they were walking in the middle of the street.)

That phrasing doesn't make it clear whether or not Wilson believed Brown to be a robbery suspect when he started to shoot at him. If he did, it might then be up to the investigators and county prosecutor McCulloch to decide whether a "strong-arm robbery," as the Ferguson Police Department described the incident, counts as a violent felony. If they decide it does, that will go some way toward a legal justification for Wilson's action. On the other hand, Wilson would only be able to claim that he was justified if Brown was fleeing — which eyewitnesses say he wasn't.

It's most likely, however, that the whole question is moot. From the Ferguson Police Department's statements on the afternoon of August 15th, it doesn't sound like Wilson even knew about the robbery at all. In that case, there's no way for him to claim that he was justified in keeping a violent felon from fleeing, because he didn't even know Brown was a suspect in a crime at all.

Wilson could instead, however, claim "defense of life" — that he feared for his life when Brown (according to his story) assaulted him in his car. In that case, the next question will be whether it was reasonable for him to be afraid of Brown.

failed black political leadership: st. louis missouri is and always has been hypersegregated....,

Skip to 6:40 and listen to Dorrien Warren

time |  St. Louis is a region of division: The depopulated, deindustrialized city (mostly African American) is legally divided from the far more prosperous (mostly white) county, with the city ardently seeking a reunion that the county vehemently spurns. North St. Louis city (largely African American) is estranged from south St. Louis city (mostly white) in a city that is now 48% African American. The maze of suburbs that make up north St. Louis county, where Ferguson is, is mostly African American and estranged from the maze of suburbs that make up south and west St. Louis counties, which are mostly white.

These interlocking networks of fragmentation that characterize the St. Louis, frequently deplored but diligently maintained, have managed to keep African Americans here contrarily concentrated and diffuse, politically empowered (there have been African American mayors, police chiefs, etc.) but also politically contained, and, in many respects, isolated from the cultural and political currents of the region. There remains in St. Louis a sense that African Americans are strangers in a strange land. The region is what sociologists call “hyper-segregated.”

Enter this iron triangle of control, neglect and racial alienation, and one uncovers several recent racial narratives that should have warned St. Louisans about what was coming—narratives about crossing the racial divide here. Metrolink, St. Louis’s light rail system, completed its second line in 2006. It provided African Americans of East St. Louis, one of the poorest cities in the country, and of north St. Louis county much easier access to the St. Louis Galleria Mall and the central cultural corridor of the city, including the hip Delmar Loop district. Concurrently, the Galleria has since seen an astronomical increase in shoplifting, and there has also been an increase in general crime and hooliganism in the Delmar Loop. This has led many to think that the Metrolink, as it has crossed racial boundaries, has enabled African American teenaged crime. This vicious cycle of young African Americans’ antisocial hostility and acting out, hardly unique to African Americans or even to Americans, and ever increasing white fear and barricade building, have intensified racial tensions, as people find the problem intractable and increasingly impossible to discuss honestly. The current riot in Ferguson is largely a war between police and the young African Americans who think cops exist mostly to prevent African American from harming whites.