Ferguson Authorites Charge Journalists Because They Want Us All To Shut Up Already

Police square off against demonstrators in Ferguson, Missouri
last August, with the McDonald's where the journalists were
arrested in the background. 

I was mystified earlier this week when St. Louis County, Missouri decided to proceed with criminal charges against reporters Wesley Lowery of the Washington Post and Ryan Reilly of the Huffington Post.

In what had been up until now a pretty much forgotten incident, the two journalists were in a Ferguson Missouri McDonald's restaurant during the unrest last August following the police shooting of Michael Brown.

Police fairly violently detained the pair that night for "trespassing" and "interfering with law enforcement."  Those charges were quickly dropped and the journalists were let go.

But what mystified me is that this weekt St. Louis County, Missouri prosecutors resurrected the charges against Lowery and Reilly from that night last August in the Ferguson McDonald's.

I'm usually skeptical of conspiracy theories, but the one proposed in Salon, a leftish news and commentary site, makes sense to me.

The fact that it does make sense is chilling.

Salon notes that Lowery and Reilly have high powered news organizations with an army of lawyers behind them, so they'll get off scot free eventually.  Plus, the criminal charges really seem to be trumped up, and possibly a violation of First Amendment rights.

St. Louis County prosecutors must know all this, so why bother pursuing the journalists.

That's because a lot of news we get comes from small scale "citizen journalists,"especially when new stuff breaks out in Ferguson or anywhere else.

These citizen journalists are usually bystanders with cell phone cameras that take in what's going on.

Salon theorizes - and I agree - is that the charges against Lowery and Reilly are really a message to these citizen journalists. Which is tell the world what we do, especially if it's not necessarily kosher, and we'll come after you.

Citizen journalists don't have legal teams to back them up like the Washington Post and Huffington Post.. What St. Louis County prosecutors are saying to citizen journalists is, "Shut up!

Or as Salon puts it, St. Louis prosecutors are saying:

"This is what happens if you cross us. It wants to make sure than any journalist who comes to Ferguson in the future will do what they're told. It wants them to remember what happens when you step out of line. If media elites howl in protest, well, that's OK. If the case against Lowery and Reilly falls apart, that's fine too. The message will have been sent."

I'm just hoping that St. Louis County's response to bad PR is criminal charges against those spreading the bad PR, to somehow comes back to bite them.

It would also be nice if St. Louis County officials someday realize they're not dictators in some backwater third world country.

That St. Louis Cops Are SO Sensitive Makes Me Really Suspicious Of Them

St. Louis Rams doing the "Hand Up Don't Shoot"
gesture at their game Sunday.  

The St. Louis Police Officers Association is really, really, really mad at members of NFL's St. Louis Rams for displaying the "Hands Up, Don't Shoot" gesture in solidarity with those who think Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson should have been indicted for shooting Michael Brown.

Even if you think the grand jury's decision, and the prosecutor's action were proper, isn't the St. Louis Police Officers Association getting just a teensy little bit too sensitive about this?

It's not like the Rams totally stopped a game. They made their statement with their "Hands Up, Don't Shoot" gestures, then went on to play their football game.

Boy, the Officers' Association statement on the Rams' protest is certainly flowery enough. And totally wrong in the facts. It reads in part:

"The gesture has become synonymous with assertions that Michael Brown was innocent of any wrongdoing and attempting to surrender peacefully when Wilson, according to some now-discredited witnesses, gunned him down in cold blood."

Well, no. The Grand Jury was faced with lots of conflicting evidence, and laws that give police wide latitude in shooting cases, and possibly a prosecutor who could have been more aggressive.  With that mess before them,  they couldn't bring themselves to indict Wilson. It was all too muddled.

The Police Association statement gets even worse, in the melodrama department, and full of self pity as it discusses the thoughts of the Police Association Business Manager, Jeff Roorda:

"Our officers have been working 12 hour shifts for over a week, they had days off including Thanksgiving canceled so that they could defend this community from those on the streets that perpetuate this myth that Michael Brown was executed by a brother police officer and then, as the players and their fans sit safely in their dome under the watchful protection of hundreds of St. Louis's finest, they take to the turf to call a now-exonerated officer a murderer, that is way out of bounds, to put it in football parlance, Roorda said."

OK, I'll be first in line to thank and appreciate police officers for the hard work and sacrifices they make to keep us safe.

But jeez! Who said Brown was "executed?" He was shot and killed by a police officer under murky circumstances. One of many black people shot by police across the nation under murky circumstances. No wonder people are upset.

I'm not so sure Wilson is exonerated, either. He's not indicted. But did he act as responsibly as he could have? Umm......

Look, Michael Brown wasn't a perfect little angel, but it still seems as if any crime he might have committed didn't exactly deserved death. Darren Wilson isn't a serial killer, but in hindsight, there had to be a way for him to deal with Brown without killing him.

Given the number of police shootings in this country, I can't get behind the assertion that the Ram football players' brief demonstration was "tasteless, offensive and inflammatory" as Roorda suggests.

Roorda's statement also refers to violent "thugs" While he didn't specify race, I have to ask why it seems black criminals so often seem to be referred to as "thugs" by so many people out there,  but white criminals seem to be rarely described as "thugs"

A criminal is a criminal, right?

Anyway, police were asserting last night they received the apology from the Rams they demanded, but the Rams organization is only saying they respect police and want to continue to work with them through difficult times.

And at last report, the NFL won't fine or punish the players who made the gestures, as police have demanded.

From a practical standpoint, it seems the faux outrage by the St. Louis Police Officers Association, justified or not, (and probably not) seems like it would fan the flames of community anger, not tamp it down.

And I thought they said they were protecting the public. Contributing to public outrage doesn't seem to be protecting anybody.

Most cops I know are dedicated, serve the public well and aren't particularly whiny. Roorda, the guy from the St. Louis Police Officers Association, ought to take that to heart. Or take your brand of "protecting and serving" elsewhere.

I Love The Ferguson Police. Maybe.

Are the police in Ferguson overdressed here?
Photo by Jeff Roberson, Associated Press.  

Yep, that's right, I think the police out there in trouble Ferguson are  totally boffo. They've done us all an enormous favor.  

Or, they, and other police officials down there, are rapidly pushing this nation toward a crisis, I'm not sure yet.

No, I don't like that police in Ferguson shot an unarmed black teenager. No, I don't like that they played dress up, pretended to be soldiers with ridiculous amount of gear, and military trucks and gear.  I don't appreciate them arresting journalists who are trying to tell us what's going on.

I don't like that the police are trampling First Amendment rights. Or telling people "I will fucking kill you" for the high crime of walking down the street.  Or telling a CNN producer to get out because those "niggers" might do anything. 

The reason I love the job police in Ferguson are doing is because they've finally got us talking about whether arming local police to the teeth with hard core battle weapons is a good idea. They've got us talking about how our rights to peaceable assembly and speech are threatened by goons who say they are trying to keep the peace.

Police in Ferguson have us talking about race, crime, rights, poverty, freedom. I have no idea if all the talking we're doing because of Ferguson will improve things, but it's better than silence.

Look, I get it. Ferguson is complicated. There are a few criminals, looters, violent offenders, and jerks amid the hundreds, or thousands of peaceful protestors that have been out every night in Ferguson.

You've got to control the creeps, arrest them, put them away, but at what price? Isn't there a better way than to also treat everybody who lives in and near Ferguson like they are terrorists?

WAR GAME ARE FUN!

They brought the dogs out in Ferguson. Photo
by David Carson, St. Louis Post Dispatch  

We can start by police nationwide, who are taking advantage of federal giveaways to receive enought high tech arms to make Vladimir Putin blush.

Do we really want local cops to constantly act like third rate actors making some sort of lowbrow military Rambo movie? Yeah, in extreme events, some of this stuff might come in handy. But once in a blue moon. Do we really need entire invading armies to execute basic search warrants?

The juxtaposition of peaceful protests and police so pimped up in military gear it looks like they're in a knock down, drag out battle in Baghdad is disturbing to say the least.

The Economist has a good summary of how Congress, awash in military hardware campaign cash, perpetuate this extreme militarization of what used to be the nice police on foot patrol in your neighborhood.  

"In this as with so much else in American governance, it starts with federal cash. Every year Congress passes the National Defense Authorization Act, which sets out the Defense Department's budget and expenditures. The version passed in 1990, in the wake of the sharp rise in drug related violence, allowed the Defense Department to transfer military gear and weapons to local police departments if the were deemed "suitable for counter-drug activities. 

"....The American Civil Liberties Union found that the value of military equipment used by American police departments has risen from $1 million in 1990 to $450 million in 2013."

Apparently, defense contractors weren't making enough money off of wars overseas. The bottom line would get even better if they encouraged police to declare war on us. The shareholders must be so excited. 

 U.S. News and World Report has a pretty good take on this point: 

"Have no doubt, police in the United States are militarizing, and in many communities, particularly those of color, the message is being received loud and clear: 'You are the enemy, ' writes Tom Nolan, a 27-year veteran of the Boston Police Department and professor at SUNY Plattsburgh, in an op-ed that appeared in DefenseOne in June, more than a month before the Ferguson riots.

Is that what police in this country really want? That we are their enemy? That is truly scary. 

FIRST AMENDMENT

I also love the police efforts to detain and shut up journalists covering the unrest. Yeah, like THAT'S going to work.

Lord knows some journalists are jerks, too, bloviating about nonsense and puffing up their over inflated talking head egos even more. But the truth is, most journalists, imperfect as they are,  just want to tell us what's going on. They want to make us understand the deal. And the have the First Amendment right to do so.

Apparently, the cops in Ferguson think the First Amendment is bullshit, and reporters should just shut up and regurgitate their happy little press releases.  I hope the national conversation about this crisis eventually convinces them otherwise. But I'm not totally optimistic on that one.

At least Ferguson has gotten so much attention, and drawn so many journalists, that police in Ferguson have ended up playing whack-a-mole. They detain three or so journalist to shut them up, and 30 journalists come in to yak and yell about journalists being detained.

I guess police in Ferguson police haven't figured out how to control the entire media like China has, which is a good thing.

And by the way, you Second Amendment enthusiasts. Where were you when they were trampling the First Amendment? I bet you'd be howling in the streets if the police trashed the Second Amendment as badly as the First. Aren't all the Constitutional Amendments important?

Who knows if the reaction to Ferguson will improve things in this country? At least we can count on minor victories.

The cop that told peaceful citizens and journalists to leave or "I will fucking kill you" has been reassigned away from Ferguson. (When asked for his name the "I KEEL YOU" cop said "Go Fuck Yourself" so I guess that's his unusual name)

I don't know how the rest of the Ferguson story will play out. I don't know if police will back away from arming themselves to the teeth.  I wonder if anyone will be held accountable for trashing Constitutional rights.

But something better change, dammit.

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