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T H E N O . 1 S T. L O U I S W E B S I T E A N D N E W S P A P E
R
Wednesday 08.13.2014 $1.50
Vol. 136, No. 225 2014POST-DISPATCH WEATHERBIRD
1 M
82/62MOSTLY SUNNY
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WeatherA18
tODaY
tOMOrrOW
Looking for answers Golden Age leading lady Lauren Bacall dies
at 89Obituaries a17
Robin Williams battled depression and drinkingObituaries a17
From staFF and wire reports
Sarah Sise, a partner at Bryan Cave, was diagnosed with colon
cancer when she was 40. She had no fam-ily history of colon cancer
and was 10 years younger than the recommended age for her first
colonoscopy screening.
She is now in remission after multiple rounds of chemotherapy
and surgery following her 2012 diag-nosis. Shes hoping that those
who are reluctant to
By Ken [email protected] > 314-340-8215
st. LOuis In the past month, Missouri transporta-tion officials
quietly removed signs marking a Travel Safe Zone on the seven-mile
stretch of Interstate 70 just west of the city limit.
The special designation had doubled the fines for speeders
ticketed on that part of I-70, angering mo-torists who declared it
a poorly disguised money grab.
By Leah [email protected] > 636-937-6249
arnOLd Former Fox School District employees shredded documents
and destroyed electronic files, the districts chief financial
officer said at a School Board meeting Tuesday in which the board
asked for a state audit.
The district also paid people at rates above those authorized by
the board and apparently used money
sharpton takes pulpit: youve got issues in this citytense quiet
returns to ferguson; leaders meet to reassure residents
From staFF reports
FerGusOn At two meetings with dis-tinctly different tones, the
call Tuesday night was for justice.
Packed houses at two churches heard speakers discuss the fatal
shooting of Mi-chael Brown, 18, by a Ferguson police officer on
Saturday afternoon a killing that has rocked that suburb and drawn
international attention to St. Louis.
At Christ the King United Church of Christ near Black Jack,
speakers included Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon, who told the
standing-room audience, Justice must not simply be pur-sued, but in
fact achieved. Instead of burning bridges in anger, we must rebuild
them with love.
The racially diverse audience of about 400, many of whom were
ministers, politely ap-plauded the speakers, even Ferguson
Police
Al Sharpton brings the glare of the national spotlight back to
St. Louis A8Justice Department gets more involved in police matters
A7
Blacks account for 86 pct. of traffic stops in Ferguson A7
Children exposed to unrest feel purpose and fear A8
Hacker activists target Ferguson, county police chief A8
McClellan: All killings should stir equal outrage A13
Nixon should start planning a Ferguson Commission Our View,
A14
Letters, social media and other opinions A14-A15
Live updates STLTODAY.COM
PHOTOS BY CHriS Lee [email protected] A group of young
protesters left the QuikTrip area Tuesday night and walked to
Greater St. Mark Missionary Baptist Church to join a gathering with
Michael Browns family and the Rev. Al Sharpton. They entered the
church chanting, Hands up, dont shoot. The gathering at the church
was in response to the police shooting of Brown, 18, on
Saturday.
Louis Head, stepfather of Michael Brown and Lesley McSpadden,
Michael Browns mother, comfort each other Tuesday at the
church.
Travel Safe Zones being removed from interstates
see interstates Page a6
At-home DNA-based test for colon cancer is approved
see CoLon Page a6
outcry and resolve
With Fox left in disarray, board seeks state audit
see Fox Page a6
see Brown Page a9
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08.13.2014 Wednesday M 1 sT. LOUIs POsT-dIsPaTCH A7
Ferguson Police shooting
Laurie Skrivan [email protected] Betty Davis stands
with her daughter Rose Harrison and family friend John McFadden on
Tuesday near the burned QuikTrip in Ferguson. Davis son was shot
and killed by police in 2013.
By WAlker Moskop [email protected] 314-340-8349
Ferguson police are much more likely to stop, search and arrest
African-American drivers than white ones. Last year, blacks, who
make up a little less than two-thirds of the driving-age population
in the North County city, accounted for 86 percent of all stops.
When stopped, they were almost twice as likely to be searched as
whites and twice as likely to be arrested, though po-lice were less
likely to find con-traband on them.
Pronounced as those statistics may seem, they dont necessar-ily
make Ferguson an outlier.
The figures are provided by the states attorney generals office,
which collects the data from police agencies and creates a
disparity index comparing the racial breakdown of drivers stopped
to the racial breakdown of the driving age population in the police
jurisdiction where they were stopped. An index of one means there
is no disparity for a particular race. The index for blacks in
Ferguson is 1.37.
Statewide, the disparity in-dex for blacks 1.59 is higher than
in Ferguson. The same is true for many other local police
jurisdictions.
On the other hand, the dis-parity index for whites, at 0.38, is
one of the lowest in the state. The statewide index is 0.96.
University of Missouri-St. Louis criminologist Rick Rosenfeld said
the statistics for Ferguson dont stand out from many other St.
Louis County municipalities.
I dont think Ferguson would be at the top of many peoples lists
for racial tension between police and the community, he said.
Rosenfeld also noted that the attorney generals data has some
limitations, specifi-cally that it doesnt account for whether
drivers live in the juris-diction where theyre stopped. This means
that an index could be skewed in an area with inter-state highways,
busy roads or shopping centers. Additionally, an officer may not
know the race of a driver when making the de-cision to stop
someone.
Rosenfeld said the rate at which drivers are searched is a more
useful metric. While the data doesnt prove the existence of racial
profiling, the fact that Ferguson police were more likely to search
a vehicle when the driver was black yet less likely to find
contraband than when the driver was white could be more indicative
of a problem, he said.
Last year, Ferguson police searched 12.1 percent of black
drivers they stopped, compared to 6.9 percent for whites.
Con-traband was found 22 percent of the time when the driver was
black and 34 percent when the driver was white.
Rosenfeld said he was puz-zled about why the stop rate for
whites was so low in Fergu-son. He said one possible fac-tor is
that the black popula-tion in the area, as a whole, is younger than
the white popula-tion. Older people are less likely to be stopped,
he said, and are less likely to be on the roads in general.
WHAT ARE THE NUMBERS?POLICE STOPS IN FERGUSON
By ChuCk [email protected] 202-298-6880
WASHINGTON The U.S. Jus-tice Department has intervened in cases
involving more than two dozen local or state law en-forcement
departments over the last 20 years.
The most recent interven-tion is coming in the fatal po-lice
shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson on Saturday.
Since 1997, 21 police depart-ments ranging from East Ha-ven,
Conn., to Los Angeles have signed consent agreements with the
Justice Department to improve procedures and poli-cies. They often
have involved use of force or relationships with minority
communities, according to Samuel Walker, a national authority on
civil liber-ties, policing and criminal jus-tice policy.
Not all Justice Department involvement goes as far as con-sent
decrees, and the depart-ment does not announce all its
investigative activities, particu-larly if it investigates and
closes without further action.
Consent agreements or in-vestigations reached between
the Justice Department and police forces usually came af-ter
broad allegations of police misconduct or, in a few cases, where
specific instances spark broader action against a police force with
a history of com-plaints against it.
The Justice Department in-volvement in the Ferguson case has so
far been what Attorney General Eric Holder describes as
supplementary to local law en-forcement investigations of the
shooting.
U.S. Rep. William Lacy Clay, D-St. Louis, and two other members
of Congress on Mon-day called for a broader inves-tigation than the
parallel track laid by Holder.
The concurrent investiga-tion may be insufficient for two
reasons, Clay wrote Holder, in a letter co-signed by Reps. John
Conyers, D-Mich., and Marcia Fudge, D-Ohio. First, the St. Louis
County Police Depart-ment may not be the most ob-jective or
credible body to in-vestigate civil rights matters in-volving law
enforcement given evidence of racial profiling by that department
in the recent past, which Congressman Clay had asked the Department
of Justice to investigate.
Second, only the federal government has the resources, the
experience, and the full in-dependence to give this case the close
scrutiny that the citizens of Ferguson and the greater St. Louis
area deserve.
The Missouri State Confer-ence of the NAACP in Novem-ber 2013
filed a federal civil rights complaint alleging that St. Louis
County police officers racially profiled blacks in and around
stores in south St. Louis County and that racism is ram-pant in the
departments hiring, firing and discipline.
The attorney generals reach in cases where race and civil rights
violations are potential factors grew in the 1994 Vio-lent Crime
Act that passed in the aftermath of the late Rodney Kings beating
by Los Angeles police officers.
The law gave the Justice De-partment power to bring civil suits
against law enforcement agencies where a pattern or practice of
conduct by law en-forcement officers exists that deprives persons
of rights, privileges, and immunities se-cured or protected by the
Con-stitution or laws of the United States or by the Constitution
or laws of state.
WHITES BLACKS
Local population % 34 % 63 %
Disparity index 0.38 1.37
Search rate 6.85 % 12.13 %
Contraband hit rate 34.04 % 21.71 %
Arrest rate 5.25 % 10.43 %
Population figures are 2010 census estimates for persons 16 and
older who designated a single race. The disparity index is the
proportion of stops divided by the proportion of population for a
given race.
SOURCE: Missouri attorney generals office
BreAkdoWn of driver stops By rACe in ferguson
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A8 ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH M 1 WeDneSDAy 08.13.2014
Looking backComparisons to four other
racially charged killings in the U.S.
images and videosView events
as they transpired
Live updatesTweets and instant reports
from the shooting scene
stltodAy.com
Ferguson Police shooting
By lilly [email protected] doug
moore [email protected] 314-340-8225
Where civil rights activist Al Sharpton goes, national attention
follows.
So as the Rev. Sharpton arrived in St. Louis on Tuesday to add
his voice to the many who have protested the shooting of Michael
Brown, it was seen as an event a kind of validation that the
incident had become a national cause.
Sharpton walked arm-in-arm down-town Tuesday morning with Browns
family members, their attorney and clergy, before speaking to a
crowd at the Old Courthouse.
About 50 people and twice as many re-porters heard him call for
peace, prayer and a continued push for justice.
By evening, more than 1,000 people packed a church located half
a mile from the shooting as the Baptist preacher and TV host hit on
similar themes.
Known for crisscrossing the country to deploy to civil rights
controversies, this is Sharptons mode of operation. Recently, he
led the charge against the handling of the Trayvon Martin case,
calling the ac-quittal of George Zimmerman last year an atrocity
and a slap in the face to those that believe in justice.
To his critics, Sharpton is a spectacle and a divisive and
self-serving one at that.
To others, he is a galvanizing and potent orator and a
mouthpiece for the message of justice.
Flanked by Michael Browns parents at the Old Courthouse,
Sharpton sought to keep the focus on that message.
This is not a cause for them, Sharpton said. This is not some
prop for politics. This is their child.
Sharpton said the purpose of his visit was to help the Brown
family gain justice
and to ensure federal authorities complete a full
investigation.
He said Brown was killed while showing an arms-in-the-air
surrender sign to the police officer.
Deal with the last sign he had shown, Sharpton said in a booming
voice to a re-sponsive crowd, with some clapping in agreement. We
want answers why that sign was not respected.
Sharpton lashed out against violent protests. To become violent
in Michael Browns name is to betray the gentile giant that he was,
Sharpton said. Dont be a traitor to Michael Brown.
Baltimore-based Pastor Jamal Bryant joined Sharpton, saying the
Brown shoot-ing has become a national event.
St. Louis is in fact bearing witness for America, he said. The
Band-Aid has been ripped off, and all of America is see-ing the
open wound of racism exists.
Tuesday wasnt the first time Sharpton has sought to draw
attention to events in St. Louis.
Perhaps his most notable visit came in 1999, when he was among
125 people arrested for standing on Interstate 70, bringing Monday
morning rush hour traf-fic to a halt.
The action was taken to seek to increase minority participation
on highway proj-ects. A construction training program was initiated
as a result, and including minor-ity contractors has become a more
com-mon practice on various capital projects.
Four years later, Sharpton was back in St. Louis as a Democratic
presidential candidate to push Metro to hire more mi-nority
contractors for a MetroLink expan-sion project.
Less than two months later, in Sep-tember 2003, Sharpton was
here urging students to boycott the first day of classes at St.
Louis Public Schools. Opponents were upset that a New York
management company had been hired to run the school district that
year, which included some
school closings. High first-day attendance numbers showed that
Sharptons appear-ance had little bearing.
Critics have accused Sharpton of stok-ing controversy instead of
working for resolution.
Perhaps Sharptons biggest stumble as a civil rights activist
came in 1987 when he fiercely defended Tawana Brawley, a
15-year-old African-American girl who claimed she had been
assaulted and raped by six white men, some of them police
of-ficers, in upstate New York.
A grand jury determined Brawley had fabricated her story.
Sharpton and two other men were successfully sued for
def-amation.
On Tuesday, Sharpton drew a packed crowd to the Greater St. Mark
Missionary Baptist Church, 9950 Glen Owen Drive. He did so at the
same hour that faith lead-ers had already organized a competing
fo-rum at Christ the King United Church of Christ, on Old Halls
Ferry Road.
Michael Browns cousin, Eric Davis, spoke prior to Sharpton.
He wasnt the type of kid who wanted to hurt anyone, Davis said
of his cousin. What happened on Saturday was they cut my cousins
life short.
Sharpton took to the podium and spoke for more than a half-hour,
with the Brown family behind him.
If you think you are mad, think about how they feel, he said to
a crowd that repeatedly thundered in applause and amens.
Sharpton said he knows St. Louis and mentioned his prior
activism here. He said he has been shining a light on injustices
for years, making sure what is done in the dark is seen by the
world.
This battle, he told the crowd, will take time.
People should be in it for the long haul, he said. You have to
have a long-term strategy. You cant be mad for two weeks.
Four-year-old Aubrey Glover struggled with a broom even taller
than her to sweep broken glass in the parking lot of a burned-out
convenience store the morning after a riot in Fer-
guson.Her mother, Erica Hampton, 31, woke
up Aubrey and her brother, Jaden, 10, early Monday in their
north St. Louis County home and said they were going to do some
cleaning.
Tearing up buildings and trashing places is not the way to solve
anything, she told them. They brought large white trash bags and
brooms.
She called her sister, Dede Patterson, 29, who lives near the
street where 18-year-old Michael Brown was shot and killed by a
police officer on Saturday. Pattersons young children have slept in
the bed with her the past few nights while they heard shouts from
the crowds outside.
I didnt even explain it to them, Pat-terson said. She wasnt sure
what to tell them. It was just too much. The QuikTrip is where her
9- and 7-year-old walk for snacks. My kids cant ever come to the
store anymore.
Lets go clean it up, her sister said to her. Lets go.
Patterson agreed: What I seen I didnt like. ... Its not going to
bring him back.
There is an urgency to do something, anything, to dull the
terribleness of the past week. For Hampton, who will com-plete her
masters degree in counseling in December, she wanted her children
to see her picking up trash around the destroyed building.
This what you do for your community, she told them.
There is anger here, not just about the shooting, but toward the
vandals who de-stroyed their businesses in their neighbor-hood.
Toward those who have changed the conversation from trying to find
out what happened and seek justice to the criminal reaction of
some.
They are judging us by this, Patterson said, waving her arms
around the parking lot.
Shamika Williams, 36, stood in the lot with two of her three
daughters. They had seen Browns body lying in the street in broad
daylight when he was killed. Their mother has been at protests,
wanting to add her voice to those calling for a change in the way
residents are treated by law en-forcement.
I dont want them growing up getting mistreated, Williams said. I
dont want them growing up afraid of the cops. Why cant we protest?
Why cant we grieve? Let us get this out of our system.
The stories shes heard and things shes seen make her glad she
doesnt have a son. If I had a boy, Id be afraid to let him walk the
street.
Beyond anger and grief, there is weari-ness in this area.
How many times have we seen this scene? How long will we march
in streets?
It seems like this has been going on a while, said Kenyana Shaw,
25, of St. Louis. I cant imagine if this happened to my son.
A small child stood next to a young, black man speaking angrily
to an older man in a parking lot. When I told him I wanted to speak
to parents in the area, he became even more upset.
He shook his head and started walking away from me but kept
talking. He said he knew what it was like to be Michael Brown. He
said he knew how it felt to be stopped walking down these streets,
auto-matically a suspect.
There was anguish in his voice: They hate us! Their daddies,
their granddaddies hated us, and now they hate us!
There is fear. A woman who owns a hair-braiding sa-
lon said she told her children to stay in-side all day. She only
came to check on her store and planned to lock up and stay home.
Her older boys had been friends with Brown.
Im so scared, she said. There were still parents pushing
baby
carriages down the debris-scattered street, past cracked and
broken storefront windows, past graffiti that said kill the police
and RIP.
Randy Casson, 37, stood in a small group with his 11-year-old
son, who partially hid behind his fathers legs. His sons eyes were
sad. His face somber.
Casson tried to explain to him that the people who rioted had
not learned a better way to express themselves. That they were
angry and lashing out in the wrong way.
It seems like the police and the people are about to go to war,
Randy Jr. said.
I couldnt help my immediate response.Oh, baby, no. Thats not
going to hap-
pen. Why do you think that?I heard there are tanks coming down.
This is not Gaza. This is not Iraq. This is the heartland of
America.
By dAvid [email protected]
FERGUSON The Internet crashed at City Hall here on Tuesday
morning. Fer-gusons website went dark. The phones died.
City officials didnt say what happened only that a flood of
traffic aimed at the City Hall website just kept coming.
But an international group of unnamed computer hackers had
warned it would happen. In the hours after 18-year-old Michael
Brown was shot and killed by a Ferguson police officer, the group,
Anon-ymous, urged residents to the streets.
And the hackers vowed retribution if police harmed
protesters.
We are watching you very closely, Anonymous distinctive
electronic voice rasped in a video posted Monday on Twitter. If you
abuse, harass or harm the protesters in Ferguson we will take every
Web-based asset of your departments and federal agencies
offline.
The hackers would also, the video con-tinued, begin publicly
releasing police of-ficers personal information.
Then they did. Early Tuesday morning, someone posted the home
address and phone number of Jon Belmar, the rela-tively new chief
of St. Louis County po-lice. And that was just the beginning.
The Ferguson protests have been in-
formed, if not fueled, by a stream of moment-by-moment posts,
largely on Twitter. Published instantaneously via cellphones by
residents at the scene, the messages have told the world when
crowds amass, when police line up, when tear gas flies.
But Anonymous hackers have reached beyond the Web.
Anonymous has been operating for nearly a decade. Its hard to
even call it a group those insiders who have spoken publicly about
the organization describe it more in terms of each individual
mis-sion.
It is an anarchist collective of autono-mous individuals, wrote
one hacker who responded to an email from the Post-Dispatch. Most
of us are friends and work together, but we are not responsible for
anything anyone else in the global collective does.
That team member, who declined to be identified but said he was
out of the country, said the core Ferguson operation is run by
about a half-dozen Anonymous operatives, invited by St. Louis
activists, with thousands of Anons from about 75 different
countries joining in to help.
And in the wee hours of Tuesday morning, at least one of those
hackers began following standard Anonymous protocol: He began
scouring the Internet for personal documents regarding Chief Belmar
doxxing the man Anony-
mous estimated was keeping the shoot-ers name secret.
Just after midnight, someone posting as @TheAnonMessage linked
to a Web page listing Belmars address, phone number and the names
of his wife and kids.
At 12:36 a.m., TheAnonMessage posted a photo of Belmars house;
at 12:41, his phone number and address, and at 12:46, another
missive: ... you said our threats were just hollow. See, that makes
us mad.
Then came the photos, all allegedly portraying his family: His
son, asleep on a couch. His wife and daughter, arm-in-arm. He and
his wife, together. Nice photo, Jon, TheAnonMessage added. Your
wife actually looks good for her age.
Have you had enough?Finally, at 1:34 p.m. on Tuesday,
TheAnonMessage leveled an ultimatum: Jon Belmar, if you dont
release the officers name, were releasing your daughters info. You
have one hour.
Then Anonymous gave up.We recognize that Jon Belmar has had
enough damage done to him, TheAnon-Message wrote at 12:46 p.m.
We will save the rest of our energy for the true perpetrator.
Belmar declined to comment for this story.
Joel Currier of the Post-Dispatch contributed to this
report.
chiLdren exposed to unrest feeL purpose, fearAisHA sultAn
[email protected] > 314-340-8300
al sharpton in st. louis
Photos by J.b. Forbes [email protected] Rev. Al
Sharpton addresses reporters Tuesday on the steps of the Old
Courthouse downtown about the shooting in Ferguson of Michael
Brown. Behind Sharpton (from left) is Michael Brown Sr., attorney
Benjamin Crump, and Lesley McSpadden, Browns mother.
hacker activists target ferguson, poLice chief
under spotLights gLare
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08.13.2014 Wednesday M 2 sT. LOUIs POsT-dIsPaTCH A9
Ferguson Police shooting
Stay updated Get text alerts, photo galleries and more with the
Post-dispatch news appstltodAy.com/Apps
By ElisA [email protected]
FERGUSON They sat under a shade tree, putting marker to poster
board in the parking lot of a strip mall.
As the Rev. Al Sharpton held the medias attention in down-town
St. Louis on Tuesday, an Il-linois pastor and a Missouri state
senator were across the street from the Ferguson Fire Station
organizing their own rally to pro-test Saturdays police shooting of
Michael Brown.
The young people arent go-ing to listen to Al Sharpton, said
Sen. Maria Chappelle-Nadal, D-University City They do not lis-ten
to older people. They do not listen to pretentious people.
So instead, she and the Rev.
Derrick Robinson, who pas-tors a church in East St. Louis,
organized a rally hoping to at-tract anyone young people especially
who wanted to join them, as long as it was in peace.
Its our generation thats be-ing affected, said Jerika Tyler, 21,
a student at Harris-Stowe State University. I have a 15-year-old
brother. He could have been Mi-chael Brown.
Small rallies and vigils like this one have popped up daily
since Brown was shot and killed by a Ferguson police officer on a
street outside Canfield Apartments.
But they have been overshad-owed by whats taken place af-ter
sunset, when crowds have become violent, and police have deployed
tear gas, rubber bullets and riot gear. Their prayer vigils, they
feel, have gone unnoticed.
The looting, Stefan Horna-day, 21, said, sickens me. But so does
police brutality, he said.
For hours protesters came and went, standing along the strip of
grass separating the parking lot from the curb. Some drove in from
St. Louis. Many lived in Ferguson. The conversations they held
tapped into the under-current of the fear and frustra-tion theyve
felt for years with police in and around this north St. Louis
County community.
Tamika McClain, of Breck-enridge, said shes been pulled over
numerous times, ticketed for such things as having a non-working
taillight or a broken blinker allegations she said were false.
Anthony Walsh said he isnt sure how to tell his chil-dren how to
avoid being arrested. Its one thing to understand not
to break the law, he said. But how to tell him how to deal with
an ignorant cop?
In many ways, the death of 18-year-old Brown ignited anger that
had been building for some time.
Poverty in the area is rising, with the highest concentrations
in African-American neighbor-hoods. In several school dis-tricts,
the quality of education is declining. A disproportion-ate number
of foreclosures has taken its toll, and property values havent
recovered.
But the anger on Tuesday con-cerned the police and skepti-cism
that the investigation into what led to the shooting will bring
justice.
Were fed up, McClain said. Were tired. We want answers.
She stood beside a friend who
choked back emotion as she thought of her own children. They
walk up and down that street all the time, Nicole Chis-sem
said.
Her family lives near Can-field Avenue, the street on which
Brown was shot. That could have been me on TV saying how I need
justice for my child.
For the next several hours, pro-testers of various ages and
races came and went from the rally, stopping by during lunch
breaks. They denounced the looting and the violence.
If youre out here fighting for something and the other messes up
what youre fighting for, you dont get anywhere, said Dante Taylor,
22, of St. Louis.
He held the marker and white poster board, trying to figure out
what his sign should say.
Protesters Pressing for Peace struggle to be heard
Chief Thomas Jackson, who told them, I want what you want. I
want the truth and I want justice and I want it as soon as
possible.
The other assembly at Greater St. Mark Missionary Baptist Church
on Chambers Road east of Ferguson also was stand-ing-room. It also
was much louder and less formal rock-ing at times and the audience
chanted and cheered as they waited for the Rev. Al Sharpton to
speak.
When he took the pulpit, he led them in a thunderous chant, No
justice, no peace. He noted that Ferguson has only a few black
police officers and that most of the arrests are of black
people.
Youve got issues in this city, Sharpton said. People jumped to
their feet when he spoke of seek-ing the truth and said, As soon as
you turn on the lights, the roaches start running.
Outside the church on Cham-bers, several hundred people marched
back and forth, their leaders urging everyone to be peaceful. A man
yelled into a bullhorn, The whole world is watching... We are going
to do this the right way. No violence, just justice.
At the church in Florissant, other speakers included Ferguson
Mayor James Knowles III and the pastor, the Rev. Traci Blackmon,
who said, We are here because we will not rest until we have
justice. Also attending were St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay and
Po-lice Chief Sam Dotson.
After the speeches, members of the audience asked ques-tions.
Someone asked why the Ferguson officers name hasnt been released.
St. Louis County Prosecutor Bob McCulloch re-sponded, Its a matter
of proto-col. We dont release names until charges are filed.
still tENsEAcross the area Tuesday,
events remained peaceful, if oc-casionally tense.
Shortly after 6 p.m., more than 100 protesters gathered near the
hulk of the QuikTrip at 9240 West Florissant Avenue, which was
looted and burned during violence Sunday night and has been ground
zero for the protests ever since. It also was where po-lice in riot
gear formed in sturdy formations and fired tear gas into a crowd
Monday evening, scat-tering that nights protest.
On Tuesday evening, protest-ers again chanted, Hands up, dont
shoot a rallying cry of the string of protests since Sat-urday.
Riot police, backed by SWAT armored vehicles, blocked West
Florissant. The crowd then marched toward the church where Sharpton
was to speak.
Dominque Bishop, 22, of Flo-rissant, said she was marching for
her two brothers. It could have been one of my siblings, Bishop
said.
Later in the evening, another crowd had again gathered at the
QuikTrip but by about 11:30 p.m. it had mostly dispersed.
There has been no violence since the looting rampage over-night
Sunday.
For the most part, the talk Tuesday was more redress, less
outrage. From the Old Court-house downtown to the White House in
Washington, the calls were for nonviolence. President
Barack Obama issued a state-ment urging Americans to re-member
Brown through reflec-tion and understanding.
We should comfort each other and talk with one an-other in a way
that heals, not in a way that wounds, Obama said. Along with our
prayers, thats what Michael and his family, and our broader
American commu-nity, deserve.
On the steps of the Old Court-house on Tuesday morning, Sharpton
stood with Browns family and their lawyer and said people want
answers, but should pursue them peacefully.
I know you are angry, he told the gathering on the courthouse
steps. I know this is outrageous ... But we cannot be more
out-raged than his mom and dad. If they can hold their heads in
dig-nity, then we can hold our heads up in dignity.
U.S. Rep. William Lacy Clay,
D-Mo., whose dis-trict includes Fer-guson, called for an
expanded federal investigation to spe-cifically explore the
potential for any pat-tern or practice of police misconduct by the
Ferguson Police Department.
At the place where Brown was killed in the 2900 block of
Canfield Drive, his parents and other relatives gathered briefly
Tuesday af-ternoon and released about a dozen red balloons. Then
they walked to his grand-mothers apartment, which they said had
been his destination when he was shot Saturday afternoon.
I n C l ay to n o n Tuesday morning, police closed Caron-delet
Avenue near the county Justice Cen-ter during a march by about 250
people.
Hey hey, ho ho, racist cops have got to go, some in the crowd
chanted. They also com-plained that there arent enough
African-Americans working as police officers and in the
pros-ecutors office.
Clayton police cars were inch-ing along, trailing protesters as
they snaked through the streets that surround the county police
headquarters and courthouse. March leaders demanded that
authorities release the name of the Ferguson officer, fire and
charge him.
County police officials said Tuesday they had not fired rub-ber
bullets Monday, as some protesters had claimed. Neither did
assisting St. Louis officers, a spokeswoman said. Five people were
treated for minor injuries at DePaul Health Center after the
demonstrations Monday eve-ning, a spokeswoman said.
Also Tuesday, McCulloch an-
nounced that nine people were charged with felony burglary,
ac-cused of looting Sunday night at three Ferguson stores along
West Florissant the Princess Beauty Supply, the Footlocker and the
Nu Fashion Beauty Supply.
Charged were Beonca Mc-Grath, 19, of the 4400 block of Jennings
Station Road in Pine Lawn; Michael L. Davis, 27,of the 8300 block
of Wabash Avenue in Berkeley; Robert Lee Stephen-son, 28, of the
9500 block of Guthrie Avenue in Woodson Ter-race; Trey T. Brewer,
18, of Dallas; Nikko Fiertag, 23, of the 9300 block of Clarion
Drive in Fergu-son; Andrew Henry, 30, of the 4100 block of
Appleberry Lane in Berkeley; Steven C. Martin, 27, of the 8800
block of Maya Lane in Ferguson; Stephon D. Thomp-son, 19, of 5700
block of Good-fellow Boulevard in St. Louis; and DeMarco Harris,
38, of the 1200 block of Gimblin Avenue in St. Louis.
McGrath and Harris also were charged with misdemeanor
pos-session of a stolen hair weave, and Fiertag was charged with
misdemeanor stealing of a pair of sneakers.
The felony charges carry a maximum sentence of seven years.
BusiNEssEs rEopENRepairs continued along the looted district,
and some busi-nesses in Ferguson reopened Tuesday, including both
loca-tions that had been damaged and those that were closed as
precau-tion. Zisser Tire & Auto, which was ransacked, reopened.
So did a Taco Bell nearby. But others, including Shoe Carnival and
Au-toZone, remained closed.
Looting occurred Sunday night along West Florissant and at some
stores to the north near Interstate 270, including the Walmart.
Fear of fast-traveling replays caused some stores in Brentwood to
close early Monday evening.
Ferguson City Hall was closed Tuesday morning due to safety
concerns, but classes began in
the Jennings School District, just east of Ferguson. The
Jennings district had canceled classes on Monday.
The Federal Aviation Admin-istration barred private aircraft,
including news helicopters, from the airspace over Ferguson for the
next week. Commercial aircraft are exempt. The county police
department made the re-quest.
Shortly before midnight Mon-day, a group of 30 to 40 people in a
caravan of vehicles attacked and looted a Shoe Carnival store near
Gravois Avenue in south St. Louis, far from Ferguson, St. Louis
police said. Covering their faces with shirts, they smashed windows
and stole shoes and other merchandise.
The group also tried to break into a nearby Radio Shack also in
Gravois Plaza, in the 3500 block of Bamberger Avenue. An un-armed
security guard saw the at-tacks and called police.
A police spokesman said it wasnt known whether the at-tack was
related to Ferguson, but called the tactics of mass bur-glary
unusual. Mayor Francis Slay said city police were closely watching
incidents for any con-nections.
Spokesmen at several area gun shops said sales had jumped, and
they attributed the change to the violence in Ferguson.
At Metro Shooting Supplies in Bridgeton, Sales have been
ab-solutely amazing for three days, said general manager John
Ste-phenson.
Al Rothweiler, an owner of Mid America Arms at 8205 Gravois Road
in South County, said sales were up about 50 percent. The things
that have gone on have made people act, Rothweiler said, although
he added, I dont like selling on fear.
Koran Addo, Tim Barker, Kim Bell, Jesse Bogan, Nancy Cambria,
Joel Currier, Stephen Deere, Lilly Fowler, Ian Froeb, Jim
Gallagher, Steve Giegerich, Valerie Schremp Hahn, Joe Holleman,
Jeremy Kohler, Ken Leiser, Samantha Liss, Chuck Raasch and Michael
Sorkin, all of the Post-Dispatch, contributed to this report.
Laurie Skrivan [email protected] I am out here because
I am part of the masses of people in St. Louis and soon to be in
the nation that are exhausted and fatigued with the progression of
police genocide. Its not police brutality anymore, its genocide
against young black Americans, said Sunny Ford during a rally on
Tuesday in Clayton, protesting the fatal shooting of Michael Brown
by a Ferguson police officer.
robert Cohen [email protected]. Louis County Police
Chief Jon Belmar (center) joins other officials for a prayer to
open a community forum on the death of Michael Brown held Tuesday
at Christ the King United Church of Christ near Black Jack.
the whole world is watchingBrowN from A1
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08.13.2014 Wednesday M 1 sT. LOUIs POsT-dIsPaTCH A13
Whats up From events.stltoday.com
08.23
08.24
08.28
heads up
Supply drive for troops To show appreciation for U.S. troops
deployed overseas, donations of other useful supplies are being
collected through the OFallon, Mo., Support Our Troops Supply
Drive. The drive is continuing through Sept. 11, with donation
sites throughout the city of OFallon. The donations will be shipped
overseas as part of the National Day of Service and Remembrance
projects coordinated by Volunteer OFallon. People are also
encouraged to contribute signed thank-you notes and cards for the
troops. The items that troops most often request include: beef
jerky, Vienna sausages, canned tuna and packages of sunflower
seeds, nuts, trail mix, deodorant, disposable razors, tweezers,
hair brushes, combs, fingernail clippers, nail files, lip balm,
Band-Aids, foot powder, baby powder, markers (highlighters or
permanent), batteries (AA and AAA) and small flashlights. For a map
and list of donation sites, visit ofallon.mo.us/volunteer. For more
information about the supply drive and other local volunteer
opportunities, call Volunteer OFallon at 636-379-5417.
To submit items, email them to [email protected] or fax
them to 314-340-3050.
Stl WedneSdayInside this sectionA13 Heads Up A14 Opinion A15
Other views A16 Funeral notices A18 Weather
Disc golf tournament Participants will compete for cash and
prizes at the annual Disc Golf Glow Tournament at Quail Ridge Park,
5501 Quail Ridge Parkway in Wentzville, beginning at 8 p.m. Aug.
23. In partnership with the St. Charles County Disc Golf Club, the
St. Charles County Parks Department has devised a disc-tossing
tournament. Using baskets lined with more than 100 glow sticks to
mark the course, a shotgun start will begin the 18-hole contest.
Participants will compete individually, and LED lights for discs
will be available during the event, 2 for $3 or 4 for $5. Cash
prizes will be awarded to top finishers in each flight. The entry
fee is $10 per player, but registration is limited to the first 72
players. Registration will be accepted from 7-7:45 p.m. the day of
the tournament at shelter No. 1 inside the park; but
pre-registration is recommended. For more information or to
register, call 314-413-4773 or send email to
[email protected].
Used book sale The Jewish Community Center will hold its annual
used book sale from Aug. 24-28 at the Staenberg Family Complex,
Arts and Education Building, 2 Millstone Campus Drive, Creve Coeur.
The sale will feature thousands of books for all interests and
ages. Aug. 24 is Preview Day, from 10 a.m.-4 p.m., with an
admission charge of $10 at the door. There is free admission from
Aug. 25-28. The event runs from 10 a.m.-7 p.m. Aug. 25-27, and from
10 a.m.-4 p.m. Aug. 28. The last day is Bag Day, where buyers can
fill a bag with books for just $5. Thousands of titles will include
mystery and intrigue, novels, biographies, politics, religion,
sports, cookbooks, history and more. There will also be
miscellaneous videos, books on tape, CDs and DVDs.
jccstl.com/programs/arts-culture/used-book-sale
Benefit for Pony Bird Pony Bird home for severely disabled
people is partnering with the Tenderloin Room restaurant in a
benefit event to help the home, which is in Mapaville in Jefferson
County. The benefit dinner and program will be from 6:30-10 p.m.
Aug. 28 at the Tenderloin Room, 232 North Kingshighway. Tickets are
$125, with proceeds to help Pony Bird build two new residential
buildings. The price includes a four-course dinner, cocktails, a
presentation by the founder of Pony Bird and a special gift bag for
all attendees. A live auction will top off the evening. For tickets
and more information, visit ponybird.org or
facebook.com/thetenderloinroom.
To list a community event or meeting, submit it online at
events.stltoday.com.
COLUMNIST SCHEDULE Sunday Bill McClellan Monday Bill McClellan
Wednesday Bill McClellan Friday Bill McClellan Saturday Joe
Hollemans Joes St. Louis
JoIn stltoday on FaceBooKBecome a fan of STLtoday on Facebook
and get the early
word on news scoops.facebook.com/STLPD
I was in Michigan last week, and the lead story in the Detroit
papers was the trial of a 55-year-old man who was awakened at 4:30
in the morning last November by somebody pounding on his door and
walls.
He didnt have a land line, and said he couldnt find his
cellphone, so he grabbed a shotgun from his closet. He opened his
front door and saw a person on his porch. He shot through the
screen door.
The person on his porch was a 19-year-old woman. She was
intoxi-cated. She had been in an accident three hours earlier and
had wandered away. She was killed by the shotgun blast.
The man was white and the woman was black. The man was convicted
of second-degree murder last week, and the headline in one of the
papers was a quote from the womans mother. Her Life Mattered.
From the coverage in the papers, youd have thought this was the
first fatal shooting in Detroit in years.
But, of course, it wasnt. Detroit is like St. Louis. Murders are
commonplace. What made this one so sensational was the racial
angle. Still, why did this vic-tims life matter more than the lives
of all the other victims?
I thought of a column Donnybrook panelist Alvin Reid wrote a
couple of weeks ago. This newspaper had just pub-lished a cartoon
of St. Louis County Ex-ecutive Charlie Dooley sitting at his desk
with Harry Trumans famous slogan in front of him The buck stops
here. In the cartoon, Dooley had scratched off the final word.
Some of Dooleys supporters claimed the cartoon was racist, and
that Dooley was being called a buck. I thought their contentions
were ridiculous.
Reid wrote that as soon as he saw the cartoon, he thought the
paper should not have published it. He compared it to an
autostereogram. That is an illustra-tion that has a hidden image in
it. Not everybody can see it, he wrote. Maybe because I miss a lot
of things, I liked that analogy.
I thought about it again when I re-turned from vacation and
Ferguson was on fire.
I can readily understand the black communitys anger in the wake
of the shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown. I like to give cops
the benefit of the doubt, but I have a very hard time try-ing to
figure out a justification for this shooting. Even if you accept
the police version of events, the officer got out of
his car and fired at an unarmed person. Maybe you shoot Carlos
the Jackal if you think he might escape, but Michael Brown doesnt
appear to have been an international terrorist.
Then, too, there is the notion of be-ing shot to death by the
people who are supposed to protect us. Plus, of course, you have to
factor in the long-standing animosity between law enforcement and
young black males.
So, yes, I understand the anger and consider it justifiable.
(Not the loot-ing, though. I heard St. Louis Alderman Antonio
French on the radio saying that the white community would be wrong
to consider it thuggery and leave it at that. French is smart and
thoughtful, and all things are complicated, but looting as a form
of righteous protest is beyond me. Maybe its an
autostereogram.)
But here is where I really get lost: Why not get angry at all
the other killings?
When a community gets together and rises up, it has power. In
this case, the authorities are not going to be able to sweep this
shooting under the rug. No way. Authorities in Detroit were not
able to ignore the shooting of that 19-year-old woman.
And yet, had that young woman been shot a couple of hours
earlier by a young black man, it would not have been big news.
Had Michael Brown been shot a couple of hours later by a young
black man, his killing would have been scarcely noted. Not by the
media, and not by the black community. No marches, no protests, no
nothing.
It is not condoning police shootings to point out that they
constitute a minus-cule fraction of the shootings that ravage black
neighborhoods. Its not the cops, and its not the Klan. Its the
residents themselves.
If the black community would come together on those shootings
and say, No more, there would be no more. Where was the outrage
when 11-year-old An-tonio Johnson was shot to death as he sat in
his apartment doing homework in March? The gunman climbed to the
win-dow ledge and fired into the apartment. There were three teens
in that apart-ment. Presumably, one was the intended target. I say
presumably because the family did not cooperate with the
police.
No celebrities came to town to demand justice for Antonio. In
fact, nobody said much.
Its another autostereogram. I cant see the picture.
Bill Mcclellan [email protected] >
314-340-8143
All killings should spark outrage
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36th Annual YMCA BookfairAugust 15 - August 20, 2014Kennedy
Recreation Complex6050Wells Road
$10PreviewNightFriday, August 154pm - 9pm
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PLATFORM I know that my retirement will make no di erence in its
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by predatory plutocracy or predatory poverty JOSEPH PULITZER APRIL
10, 1907
WEDNESDAY 08.13.2014 A14
A L E E E N T E R P R I S E S N E W S PA P E R F O U N D E D B Y
J O S E P H P U L I T Z E R D E C . 1 2 , 1 8 7 8
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As soon as the unrest in Ferguson is over and let it be soon
there must be a thorough, independent and timely investigation into
how and why it happened and the police response to it. This inquiry
would go beyond the parallel crim-inal investigations and get into
the root causes of this madness.
Yes, the immediate cause the tipping point they call it in the
literature of civil unrest was the fatal shooting Saturday of
18-year-old Michael Brown by a still-unidentified Ferguson police
officer.
(By the way, the failure to identify the officer violates every
principle of transparency recom-mended by law enforcement experts.
Society grants police offi-cers the right to use deadly force. That
right carries special obliga-tions, one of which is strict public
accountability. The longer the officer stays anonymous, the more
public confidence is undermined.)
When the independent investi-gation deconstructs the Ferguson
incident, as it must, it should explore the history and conditions
that may have helped precipitate Saturdays shooting and the
subsequent public protests. That includes racial segregation. That
includes the training and qualifi-cations of Ferguson police
officers. It includes command-and-control decisions by the Ferguson
and St. Louis County police forces and the Missouri Highway
Patrol.
One big problem with convening such an investigative panel is
that its not clear who has jurisdiction. The same problem plagues
the entire response in Ferguson: Who has command authority? Who is
accountable for the decisions that are being made?
The fragmentation may be deliberate; it certainly mirrors the
fragmentation that is the bane of the entire region. But the first
rule of restoring public confidence is to earn it. Someone must
step forward and take responsibility both for the law enforcement
effort thats currently underway and then for the investigation that
must follow.
It will have to be Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon, a man whose every
instinct is to dodge bad news whenever possible. Sorry, gover-nor.
But you asked for the job.
By law, cities and counties are political subdivisions of the
state. The state patrol already appears to be taking a lead role in
crowd
control efforts, though no one is saying so officially.
It cant be the city of Ferguson. It is one of 90 municipalities
in St. Louis County. It has 21,000 residents, two-thirds of whom
are black, and a police force of 53 com-missioned officers, 90
percent of whom are white.
Nor can it be St. Louis County. The county has more than 800
police officers but no formal juris-diction over law enforcement
in Ferguson. At Fergusons request, the county police force is
helping out through mutual aid agree-ments, as are the state patrol
and other municipal police forces.
Mr. Nixon is the only public official with the authority to
cre-ate an independent investigative commission. Public
confidence
demands that he announce plans to do so immediately. Its
membership should be diverse and of unquestioned integrity. Its
members should come from law enforcement, civil rights, academia
and civic leadership. Its time to step up.
The police agencies may know whos in charge, but the public
deserves to know, too. At whose
order were police dogs brought in? Who authorized the use of
tear gas and non-lethal baton rounds?
What central command author-ity is making sure that officers
from multiple jurisdictions are singing from the same hymnal? Is
anyone up to speed on the latest thinking in law enforcement about
dealing with mass protests?
There is a lot of literature on that subject, dating back to the
police riot at the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago and
for-ward to the 2011 London riots and Occupy Wall Street
protests.
A best practices study pub-lished in the FBI Law Enforcement
Bulletin two years ago says its generally accepted that crowd
violence escalates if people think police offers treat them
unfairly.
Furthermore, the study says, when a crowd perceives that
officers act with justice and legitimacy, disorder becomes less
likely.
Cops are human beings, and human beings get scared. Their first
impulse is to gear-up as if they were patrolling outside Baghdads
Assassins Gate. As in foreign policy, the academic types may say
that dialogue and soft power are better, but that defies the
averages cops attitudes.
What the public generally regards as riot gear helmets, shields,
Kevlar vests is known in police circles as hard gear. Heres what
the FBI bulletin says about that:
Officers must avoid donning their hard gear as a first step.
They should remember the lessons learned from the 1960s civil
rights movement and Vietnam War pro-tests. Police should not rely
solely on their equipment and tools.
What weve seen in Ferguson is skirmish lines of officers in hard
gear and videos of tear gas canis-ters lobbed onto roofs.
Individual officers generally have shown great restraint. But
those images are doing incalcu-lable harm, and not just to
com-munity relations in Ferguson. The nation and the world have
seen horrible images from St. Louis that suggest that race
relations here have a long way to go.
Theyre not wrong.There are people of good will on
all sides who want better. Ferguson should be the place where
bet-ter begins. Mr. Nixon must get it started.
WHERE BETTER BEGINSOur view Gov. Nixon should start planning the
Ferguson Commission.
THE KILLING OF MICHAEL BROWN: ST. LOUIS REACTS
Monday, Aug. 11, marked the 39th anniversary of the beginning of
the Watts Riots (Revolt), which took place in the Watts
neighborhood of Los Angeles in 1965. This upris-ing was incited by
a set of events, one of them being police violence against a young
black man and a young black pregnant woman.
Today, we see a similar revolt taking place in Ferguson, right
outside of St. Louis, where young, unarmed Michael Brown was shot
and killed by an officer on his way to his grandmothers home.
Michael Browns killing and the ensuing outrage, at the same time of
this historic event, ironically pivots the question, How can we
best demonstrate our outrage about a historic violent tradi-tion
which leaves the blood of our children young black men and women
repeatedly on the ground? If America has not fixed its problem with
the negro, what must African-Americans do to demand a cease-fire
across the nation and a new lens through
which to see black bodies as more than indicators of the
propensity toward crime and violence? It requires that we do more
than pray.
On Sunday, I attended an interfaith, interracial prayer vigil in
front of the Ferguson Police Department, the occupational home of
the officer who shot 18-year-old Michael Brown. As the ministers
prayed and I reflected on how many I had attended over the last two
years this constant refrain for peace and justice was starting to
feel like a way to shut up the scream-ing parents and loved ones of
those afflicted, silence the radical youth most directly impacted
by these violences, and to privilege white desires for black people
to always appear civil while reacting to uncivil manner. The latter
is perhaps the ugliest requirement of those who suffer often at the
hands of white racist attack and criminalization.
As I stood in front of the big
brick police building, I found myself asking how such national
peace-vigil moments activate anything more than a quick fix, or an
anesthetic for this murder and the many violences which people of
similar communities experi-ence too frequently? In such a
race-antagonistic America, can peace be the instrument of change,
especially when the policies, employment of the law, and
dis-tribution of freedoms continue to disregard the demands and
desires of those furthest down below?
As I was having these thoughts, I hear a minister say Amen,
concluding a powerful prayer that moved from peace talk to that of
war. She is invested in addressing spiritual war: the heartache,
pain and tears produced at the site of violence. My mind was moving
to the more literal: a scene of rage, verbal exchange that produces
powerful policy, and maybe even some threats to police power by the
legislature. A group of young men and women, marching came
to the center of Ferguson Road, parallel to the police
department, first putting their hands in the air (a gesture which
Michael Brown reportedly made to the police offer in order to show
he was unarmed), then proceeded to sit in the street. Ironically,
the ministers had began their vigil singing, We shall not be moved.
The main organizer of the vigil discouraged this moment of outrage
and sitting over her microphone, deeming it as having the potential
to distract from the peaceful work we were doing as we gathered in
prayer.
This attitude that the extreme rhetoric, sitting demonstrations
and subsequent resistance of these grief-stricken, justifiably
angered, and frustrated young is misplaced, inadvertently suggests
that there is only one way to seek justice. For me, these young
people are not simply saying ignore law enforcement, or disregard
the law, but rather they voice a disinter-est in the application of
the law and the law enforcement we have
come to know. Historically, the neighborhood where Michael Brown
was killed has been ridden with racial tension, a police force
which has rarely if ever understood itself as having a race
problem. Constantly, young black men and women are subjected to
verbal, if not physical violence and harass-ment from officers and
those in the surrounding communities who so often refer to this
commu-nity as having a bad element.
Most of us, standing at the vigil in our clergy uniforms adorned
with our varying degrees, were not subjected to these violences
daily. Therefore, our call for peace and reconciliation is much
easier. Most of us are not living in poverty-stricken communities,
where the constant entitlement to our space, our property, and even
our bodies angers us so, to claim entitlement to resources and
material goods denied us historically (i.e. looting). Most of us,
reading this post, have
JEFFREY Q. MCCUNE JR.
Outrage over shooting Response is a scene of public disgust a
lawless reaction to a lawless white terrorizing history and
present.
A revolt against violence
ROBERT COHEN [email protected] o cers from the
Missouri State Highway Patrol man the burned QuikTrip on West
Florissant Rd.
J.B. FORBES [email protected] police o cer holds his
dog in check while protesters march past the Ferguson police
station protesting the police shooting.
see REVOLT page A15
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08.13.2014 Wednesday M 1 sT. LOUIs POsT-dIsPaTCH A15
Honor Michael Browns memory in a positive way
The tragic death of a young man, who was eager to continue his
education and make a better life for himself, should not be
tarnished by a small number of hooligans who take out their
frustrations by looting, burning and rioting. Those actions only
serve to compound the grief felt by the members of Michael Browns
family. For those who wish to honor Michaels memory in a positive
way, I suggest these alternatives:
Collect donations at intersec-tions in your community to help
the family pay for funeral expenses.
Go to a local bank and establish a scholarship fund that will
allow other high school graduates in the community to continue
their educa-
tion at colleges and technical schools.
Line the streets to en-sure childrens safety as they walk to and
from school this week. Jen-nings School District felt it necessary
to cancel school Monday in the aftermath of Sunday nights
violence.
Once the investiga-tion into this
shooting has been completed, the citizens of Ferguson can decide
what is needed to resolve the problems confronting their
community.Barbara Blacksher Florissant
Looting, burning do nothing to settle differencesSomeone once
wrote: Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Violence
certainly does nothing to settle differences or resolve issues. The
actions of the crowd in the wake of the tragic death of the young
man in Ferguson will, if anything, have effects oppo-site of what
is desired. They certainly will not bring back the young man.
The business that was looted and burned did not cause the death.
What is accomplished by this burn-ing and looting? It certainly
does not give incentive for this business to rebuild, or for other
businesses to come into this neighborhood. The people who worked
there did not cause the young mans death, but they are certainly
out of a job as a result.
What has been gained by this activity? Not much. It does nothing
to bring much needed improvement in relations between people.Jon
Marx Oakville
Ferguson residents dont want to realize they have a race
problemMy city of Ferguson is in denial. We dont want to realize
that we have a race problem. No, not a huge one, but one that
festers and gets worse and sicker as it is ignored by those who
cling to what was before.
I first noticed it in a big way when my fellow Ferguson
residents in-sisted that the Ferguson-Florissant School District go
back to the draw-ing board when the board kept its promise to the
city of Berkeley to keep the name Berkeley on the re-placement high
school. This was a little over 10 years ago.
Last year was another big mo-ment, when the all-white school
board tripped all over themselves to suspend and dismiss a
well-qualified superintendent who was African-American, first
saying there was no
wrongdoing just philosophical difference. They were actually
sur-prised to learn that African-Ameri-cans do pay attention to
what deci-sions are made that may impact their childs education.
What should have been outrage by the entire commu-nity was only
experienced by many African-Americans, as most whites sat it out
waiting for the board to reveal its real reason, as the board kept
hiding behind personnel confi-dentiality struggling to find a
legiti-
mate reason. Meanwhile, many white voters elected two of the
in-cumbents back to the board.
And now, our mayor
says during Sunday and Monday interviews that our community is a
close-knit one, and the looters are outsiders. Mr. Mayor, although
you may consider the looters as outsid-ers, I assure you that some
of them are Ferguson residents. I dont think they feel part of the
close-knit community. In fact, I dont think that most of the
African-Americans who attended the School Board meetings are
feeling the love of a close-knit community either.
My fellow Ferguson residents, its time. Lets talk about
race.Cassandra Butler Ferguson
Media should think twice before further stoking the firesWas it
justified? That is the one question to be answered in the shooting
death of Michael Brown. If the answer is no, the courts will deal
with the crime. If the answer is yes, then the police officer goes
back to work.
Yet, before the investigation is complete, the St. Louis
Post-Dis-patch editorial board has rendered its verdict on the
editorial page (Aug. 11): Michael Brown didnt get due process.
An important area of North County is in tatters, caused by
riot-ers determined to take other peoples stuff, and the
Post-Dispatch decides this is the time to further stoke the
fires.
Already there is talk on St. Louis media that while the rioting
is not justified, it is understandable. Un-derstandable? What has
taking other
peoples stuff got to do with the death of an 18-year-old? What
is it about social and economic condi-tions that can justify the
looting and the burning a QuikTrip gas station?
The next morning after the QT was burned, some said the riots
are symptoms of hopelessness brought on by a lack of economic
oppor-tunity. When adults show any ac-ceptance of rioters, that
acceptance becomes an invitation to the next round of rioting.
The St. Louis media, St. Louis commentators and politicians must
think twice before talking once.Lee A. Presser Manchester
Argument that Brown was unarmed doesnt workThe argument that
Michael Brown was unarmed no longer works for me because of the
rioting and looting, and how is that good for his case? I am a
little older and will need hip surgery sometime soon, but I am
confident that I could make an officer fear for his/her life. And
if I am really deter-mined, it would be within the officers
interests to shoot me while I am out of arms reach. The rioting
gave me a chance to think from a different perspective that I
otherwise might not have.
I would like to see justice and mercy, but rioting and looting
are neither. The target of the anger is not harmed, but some of
your neighbors and friends and brothers and sisters are now
jobless.Dean Fry St. Ann
Death of Brown gets more coverage than anotherI am wondering why
you have given such an inordinate amount of sympathy to the fracas
surround-ing the death of Michael Brown and why, in comparison, you
gave so little space to the equally sense-less death of Megan
Boken. Why was her life so much less important than his? She had
gone to college (she was employed) and was here to benefit the
school from which she
graduated.What, in his lifetime, had Michael
Brown done to capture your sym-pathy and your incredible
unending belief that those in/of his sur-roundings are deserving of
the life Ms. Boken was living because of a dedication to hard work
and extra effort she made to secure that life. Can we assume that
there is a phenomenal component of jealousy that made Ms. Boken, in
your eyes and the actions of the protesters, a less important human
being?Ruth Karraker St. Louis County
No need for police to carry deadly weapon on routine patrolWhy?
In 2014 and the age of the Taser, why should any police officer on
routine patrol need to carry a deadly weapon?Anthony Wippold
Clayton
Little outrage over other senseless murdersMy heart goes out to
the family of the Ferguson teen who was shot down by a police
officer, but I cant help thinking of the many other senseless
murders of young men and children that occur every day. Unlike the
tragic case of Michael Brown, these receive hardly any attention
from media and organizations.
Consider, the same thing happens every night in Chicago, with
multiple deaths at the hands of other black men; and then theres
north St. Louis and St. Louis City. Wheres the na-tional spotlight
then? Where is the NAACP then? Yes, outrage is pour-ing out onto
the streets in Ferguson, but how often, when its black on black
crime, does the community re-fuse to snitch on the suspect or those
involved?
And then there are the savage murders of Iraqi Christian
children by the invading militant ISIS group thats currently in the
news. People are rightly outraged, but the same grisly murders have
been going on for over 40 years behind the purple doors of the
abortion mill in Gran-
ite City. Where is the outrage for the slaughter of these
innocents? And, sadly, of the mul-tiplied thousands who have
perished, over 70 percent are black children.
When it comes right down to it, it seems to me that some of
these out-raged people need to do some soul-searching before they
beat their chests and point
fingers. Different weapons; same results.Angela Michael
Highland
NAACP makes inflammatory statementI would like to call to task
the NAACP for the irresponsible and inflammatory statement that
they released after the shooting death of Michael Brown by a
Ferguson police officer.
To characterize that shooting as a slaughter without knowing all
the facts of the case, besides being irresponsible, is harmful and
inciteful. It helps nothing! Instead of calling for calm and order,
it had the opposite effect. In the future, I would urge the NAACP
to consider its words more carefully before issuing such
acrimonious state-ments.Steve Cummings Maryville
Richard A. Murray of St. Louis County says Mondays editorial is
filled with venom and self-righteous indignation against the police
officer involved and drawing a most damning conclusion. Could this
alleged newspaper share with us the facts that led to your
editorial? Is there something the Post-Dispatch knows that is not
being shared with your readers?
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Other views
MiCHAel BroWn
not felt without voice for many years and had an opportunity to
speak publicly about the deep-est terror we face at the hands of
those who are supposed to pro-tect us. This is not an indictment on
those who stand where they stand, but rather commentary on the
driving impulse of a dif-ferent approach to the urgent
hour. Indeed, if violence is ap-proaching ones neighborhood, one
can wait for gradual peace and justice; but when violence has
arrived, ones actions can be strategically impulsive to de-mand
urgent action.
Knowing this, I cannot see the responses to the killing of
Michael Brown as anything but a
scene of public disgust a law-less reaction to a lawless white
terrorizing history and present. Unfortunately, peace marches and
demonstration have not been able to powerfully capture, or shift,
this ugly reality. Indeed, Dr. King was very right in his framing,
A riot is the language of the unheard! And these
revolts must not be stopped by government, tear gas, or the
guilt of the respectable others who are embarrassed by public
expres-sions of pain and rage. May we allow this moment of revolt
to remind us of the necessity of prayer and its companion we can
call resistant, radical and incon-venient work! May this
shaking
of the streets remind the nation that the Michael Browning of
our young men and women must stop!
Jeffrey Q. McCune Jr. is an associate professor of Women, Gender
and Sexuality Studies and Performance Studies at Washington
University in St. Louis. McCune has written extensively on
masculinity, race and cultural politics. He is the author of Sexual
Discretion: Black Masculinity and the Politics of Passing.
revolt froM A14Peace marches and demonstrations often are not
enough
st. loUis reACts
the killing of
Umar Lee (@ STLAbuBadu) said at 6:55 p.m. Aug. 10:
We all want a positive future. Not one where unarmed kids or
police officers are killed.
James Birmingham wrote:
It just kills me how the new media turns this and spins it into
a race issue. I dont see it as a race issue. I see it as a police
officer and suspect issue. I hate how society jumps the gun and
makes up their mind on an issue without the full facts in the case.
Just as any witness you will not and cannot issue the whole
picture.
Diane Horning wrote: Im
not trying to start more controversy, but just as Mike Brown was
not given a chance to be proven innocent of anything, nei-ther has
the police officer. Lets not judge either of them and leave
judgment where it belongs in the courts.
Patricia Bynes (@Patricialicious)
said at 9:56 p.m. Aug. 10: Watching them break into these
businesses is HEART-BREAKING. THIS IS NOT #MikeBrown.
Michael Brown1996-2014
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