And now you can read it!
One should understand that the Justice Department did not simply find indirect evidence of unintentionally racist practices which harm black people, but "discriminatory intent”—that is to say willful racism aimed to generate cash. Justice in Ferguson is not a matter of "racism without racists," but racism with racists so secure, so proud, so brazen that they used their government emails to flaunt it.
And…
The residents of Ferguson do not have a police problem. They have a gang problem. That the gang operates under legal sanction makes no difference. It is a gang nonetheless, and there is no other word to describe an armed band of collection agents.
I found his summary of the DoJ’s acquittal of Darren Wilson disturbing. Darren Wilson took a life. Shouldn’t the burden of proof be on him to prove there was a legitimate threat to his life? That he is a cop should not weigh into this as much as it seems to do. It might well be that this is the law, and Coates understands this better than most. If its the law, than this is a draconian law. Also, a debate is to be had over the authority to kill given to the police. In light of several incidents, seems like “pushing and shoving” may well be passed as a legitimate threat to an officer.
The burden of proof is always on the prosecution. That Wilson was a police officer is irrelevant to where the burden rests in a criminal case.
Ta-Nehisi Coates so cooooooool OMWhatever! That’s hella dope.
Related to comment #1-
When Coates says:
is this accurate?
I thought there wasn’t enough evidence to charge him with a crime. That’s not the same thing as him being innocent.
olfroth #2:
Eh? It was already known that he had killed a person, and easily proven by the prosecution. It’s up to the defence to show extenuating circumstances, if any.
A threat to his life?
Oh I love this article! What a powerful tactic he used–accepting the conclusion of the investigation of Wilson on its face sets it up that the second conclusion regarding the police department is equally correct. No room for denial of it. Then he contrasts the procedural protections given to Wilson with the immense evidence in the systemic report showing no such procedural protections were given to residents. In fact, the opposite was given–thuggery and lawlessness.
At one point near the end he voices a possible detour of criticism for the Wilson report–the lack of credibility a member of such a department could be assumed to have. But he does not go there. He keeps the laser-like comparison focus on the procedural fairness we supposedly all should receive by our justice system and how so clearly those who are routinely defamed as “gang members”, namely Blacks, never get it, while those who so evidently truly do act as “gang members”, namely the police officers, received it. Wow!
David Marjanović @ # 6:
When Wilson was sitting in a police cruiser with the engine running as Brown (allegedly) ran at him, and all Wilson needed to do was put the car in gear and roll away in utter safety?
The legal question isn’t if a death occured, in the case at hand its clear that a man was killed. The question is did a crime occur? I’d have preferred to see a trial, instead of the prosecutor punting to a grand jury to determine if there was sufficient evidence to bring charges, but that didn’t happen. As it is, and as Coates notes, the Justice Department review exonorates Wilson, while condemning the Ferguson PD. As Cotes noted at the end of his fine piece, he doesn’t want to see the standard lowered for Wilson, he wants it raised to the level Wilson benefited from for everyone. I see a federal consent decree in the future for that PD.
@Tony!:
Eh. It’s the same thing as **legally** innocent. I agree that saying we think we’re too unlikely to win at trial to justify the expense and social cost (including costs to Wilson) of the attempt is **not** the same as saying he’s factually innocent.
I think the confusion comes when people say, after a trial, that someone was “found innocent”. Legally no one is found innocent. They are presumed so. Then the court system goes through an effort to determine if they can be found guilty. Being found “not guilty” isn’t the same as being found innocent. It doesn’t mean that there’s evidence of innocence. It means the process of looking for guilt failed to find sufficient certainty of guilt for each and every element of the crime alleged.
So some lawyers and other are quick to say that found “not guilty” is not the same as “found innocent”. But legally its fine to say that he **is** “innocent”. Legally he’s innocent during a trial. Legally he’s innocent during jury deliberations. Legally he’s innocent – because of our collectively mandated presumption, as written in the constitution – right up until the moment the judge enters a guilty verdict (although a jury decision renders this almost inevitable, it doesn’t actually change the legal status of the defendant on its own).
So, confusing, sure. I personally doubt that Wilson was in fear for his life. But my doubt wouldn’t be enough to convict in a court of law. I’d have to be certain beyond a reasonable doubt. I think he’s far from factually innocent of civil rights violations – a man with his history participating in a police force that the DOJ found to have this level of racist corruption? Fucking ridiculous to think he’s never violated civil rights laws. But proving it in relation to the particular shooting of Brown might truly be beyond the DOJ’s powers, and thus Wilson retains “innocence”.
Ah, Wilson. What immortal hand and eye framed thy fearful conspira-sigh? Did he who made the Browns make thee?
@Daz #5
Yep. That’s what I figured too. Otherwise, potentially any murder suspect can bring up the “my life was in danger” argument. Then he/she can be acquitted if there isn’t solid evidence that there was ABSOLUTELY NO threat to their life (the definition of which seems murky at best), as opposed to where the burden is on them to prove sufficiently that there was ANY threat to their life. Isn’t that the whole point of the arguments against “Stand your Ground” laws? In most states, normal citizens aren’t allowed that luxury. I believe Wilson being a cop played heavily in even the DoJ’s report.
I ♥ Ta-Nehisi Coates.
Pierce R. Butler
Initially, this would have been the c ase, but see, Wilson got out of the car to finish off Michael Brown. At that point, any movement he perceives from Michael Brown as being in his general direction can conceivably be perceived as a threat to his life (now outside of the protection of the car), which then gives him a reason to fear for his life, and, hence, shoot a teenager dead. For police, they just have to legitimately say that they were in fear for their lives – that, under the circumstances, they were honestly (if mistakenly) in fear for their life – and a shooting becomes legally justifiable (this is from what I’ve understood so far of the law as it pertains to police officers in the US of A).
In my personal opinion, this is bullshit and Darren Wilson should, at the very very very least, go to trial. And it pisses me off that he won’t, and that the DOJ finding will also make it more difficult to bring a civil suit against him.
But anyway.
I ♥ Ta-Nehisi Coates.
Sorry, did I say that already?
Larry Wilmore produced a great bit about the Ferguson Police.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/larry-wilmore-ferguson-police-department
Jon Stewart and Jessica Williams, “Senior Ferguson Correspondent,” produced a segment focusing on the “manner of walking” tickets given to black people.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/jon-stewart-doj-ferguson-michael-brown
Which, one would think, why would Wilson have put himself in danger (or “danger”) by leaving his car? And that’s why suggested reforms in other police departments, such as Las Vegas, have included changing officers’ training and discipline to avoid decisions like this which increase the chance of something violent happening: Albuquerque Journal
Safer training includes teaching officers not to start chasing suspects on foot, especially when alone; not to jump out of their own vehicles unless the situation specifically calls for it, and not to reach into citizens’ vehicles during traffic stops, but to keep their distance. (This last results in shootings when a citizen’s car moves or even twitches while an officer is right next to it.)
Pteryxx
I could always speculate on the intelligence level to be found inside Darren Wilson’s head, but I’m afraid the result would be very short and pretty ugly.
@Sagar Keer, #11 and Daz, #5:
He’s not any murder suspect. He’s suspected (take the ‘s to be present or past tense as you prefer) of a crime related to killing while an on duty police officer.
You can look at the statute here.
But it won’t tell you much without looking at Missouri case history. If you’re not a lawyer and/or not interested in doing so yourself, you can read this Nation article for starters.
Money quote:
Law enforcement officers being presumed reasonable in the past (practically presumed, not legally presumed) led to a working definition of objectively reasonable use of force in the line of duty that is obscene…but it’s also backed by SCOTUS and it’s going to take some hard work to get any judge to go around it, especially because it’s in prosecution’s interests not to dislodge the practical presumption of law enforcement reasonableness for, y’know, every other prosecution, search warrant application, etc., and so it’s in the prosecution’s interest not to bring the attentions of judges to cases in which officers are acting unreasonably.
Crip Dyke #17:
Thanks.
Which… basically: Ugh! Institutionalised conflict of interest.
@Crip Dyke #17
Thank you for that! And that was my point. His being a cop weighed in heavily on the DoJ investigation as well, unlike what @olfroth said. The major aspect of this is the rampant racism in Ferguson PD, yet the shrugging off of the unrestrained power & lethal brutality of the police needs re-examining too. Am I right in believing that you can (and do) have frequent situations where a racist cop in a not-so-racist PD can(and does) get away with murder not just through a mistrial, but a perfectly legal trial?
@ Daz, @18: Thanks to this case I learned from Pharynula about another thing that is broken in US law system – police departments are in part financed through the money they take in as fines. That is such an obvious conflict of interests, that I really cannot comprehend how anybody on earth could even conceive this as a good idea, let alone to put it into praxis. It is de-facto legalized protection racket and thus so stupid, that it burns.
@Sagar, @Daz:
Be careful of making assumptions about the law based on what seems sensible or just to you.
Self-defense law is not that simple. It’s true that self-defense is an “affirmative defense,” in which the defendant admits to actions that violate the law, and then takes on the burden of proving that the action was justified. However, it does not reverse “innocent until proven guilty” to be “guilty until proven innocent,” despite the fact that the defense leads off with what is essentially an admission of guilt.
The details vary by state. In the state I’m familiar with, which isn’t Missouri, the burden on the defendant is to provide enough evidence to prove that his actions might have been justified. At that point the burden switches back to the prosecution to prove that it wasn’t self-defense.
In other words, I can’t stand at a crowded bus stop, blow someone away, yell “Self-defense,” and then force the prosecution to prove otherwise. But I certainly CAN do all of the above, prove that the decedent had a knife, put on a witness to prove that the decedent initiated an argument with me, in which he uttered threats, and basically I’m done. The prosecution then assumes the full burden of proving that events didn’t happen as I allege, that the threat wouldn’t be believed by a “reasonable person,” that I wasn’t afraid, etc., etc.
@Charly
That’s easy. The municipality* profits from the fines, so they want collections maximized. They incentivize this by giving a cut to the police.
I was disappointed to see PZ frame this in terms of Republican cuts to police budgets, because even if that is a contributory factor, it seems that he prefers a comfortable explanation, complete with scapegoat, rather than face the reality that this is a design feature, not a bug, and it’s supported pretty much unanimously across the political spectrum.
Every municipality in the country, that can afford a police department, counts on the money it generates. They structure ordinances in such a way as to optimize revenue. It’s revenue generation all the way down.
* Note: I say “municipality,” but the spoils system is complicated and varies by jurisdiction. Who gets first crack at the money depends whether the officer is state police (state), sheriff (county), or municipal officer (municipality). The court gets its cut as well, and residuals go to the other government subdivisions depending on all sorts of factors, like where the infraction was committed.
I live in a 100% safe Democratic municipality, in a Democratic county, in a blue state–and as a law enforcement officer, I know that my primary function is revenue generation. It’s understood at every level, and communicated in no uncertain terms.
Even if the Ferguson department was purged from the top to the bottom (as absolutely should happen!), and was replaced by an all African-American police force (which I’d love to see!), it would still be true that one of its primary jobs will still be revenue generation. If you want to reform that (as I hope every decent person does), you’ll have to dig the system out by the roots and replace it with something that doesn’t have revenue generation as a design feature. If it involves fines for summary offenses, for example, it might require that 110% of every fine be donated to a worthy charity, with the other 10% coming from the same coffers that currently profit from fines.
Crip Dyke
Then the statute needs to be changed (or simply abolished), that’s all.
Then maybe, just maybe, they should take steps to ensure that the police do in fact behave in such a fashion, rather than simply assuming it, because in practice they often don’t, in cases of warrants etc. Indeed, in many cases it appears that the prosecutors’ offices are just as corrupt and culpable as the police departments that they work with. Indeed, this is why I’ve previously brought up the essential need to reign them in (or, better, abolish them as a separate office; I’d still like to see the prosecutors and Public Defenders working out of the same department with the same resources).
Charly 20
It’s small government in action.
For the photo mentioned above, see this article.
For the “below the fold” details, see the link above. There’s John Shaw, the chief executive of Ferguson; Ronald J. Brockmeyer, Ferguson municipal judge; and Thomas Jackson, Ferguson chief of police. The details are making me angry. I think I’d better go take a walk.
A Masked Avenger
It’s called raising taxes.
We no longer have a police force. We have a for profit army that intimidates, murders and unjustly imprisons Americans to fill the pockets of the rich and powerful. We have a government funded school to prison pipeline for poor black students. Black bodies rot in overcrowded (often private for profit) prisons that enrich the jack-booted army that imprisoned them as well as the politicians who create “crimes” where there are none. Politicians need money from corporations and the endorsement of the police and prison guards’ unions to stay in power. The justice system props all of this up and for the same reason. The system feeds on itself. Slavery never really ended in America. The dystopia is here. Who is going to stop that behemoth or even slow its acceleration? The media and the politicians are for sale and guess who has the money? It doesn’t matter what party or network, they’re all for sale, but if you want to see who really wants to see this process pick up speed just look for the people who are working hardest to keep it fed. It’s unbridled capitalism to see all people as “capital builders”.
This isn’t the land of the free. It costs alot to get any justice here.
@Dalillama,
Among the perverse incentives at work here–and there are many–imagine if you will going in to work knowing that your boss was liable to lock you in a cage downstairs. How would that color your interactions? How would your coworkers react to seeing you locked in a cage, knowing you could be next? How will you interact with your boss when you return to work after being released from the cage?
If you think it through, you’ll realize you can’t arrest your fucking coworkers, and then show up to work the next day.
You could try and have two sets of cops, one of whose job is to arrest the other cops when they fuck up. The premise is sound. Ever watch police shows? They’re very, VERY fictional (real cops aren’t half so altruistic, for example), but this part they get very true to life: the hatred between regular cops and “internal affairs.”
You could stop police from actually working for the prosecutor; that might also reduce the incentive to get a conviction without giving too many fucks whether you’ve convicted the right person. That’d be nice. It would break the current system, though, because prosecutors have no means of gathering investigative information other than having cops do it.
Can a system be devised without this problem? I dunno–it’ll take someone with more imagination than me. The problem is very deep.
I have ideas, but they won’t fit in the margin of this blog. And they’d be costly to implement. But among other things, it would help to balkanize police into their various functions, so that the folks serving arrest warrants aren’t also found directing traffic (while armed!), issuing traffic tickets, canvassing for information, interrogating suspects, etc. Most of these functions can be carried out without weapons, so most “cops” could then be disarmed. Most don’t require the authority to break doors down, so there’d be fewer people on the street with extraordinary powers. For starters.
If we ever do manage to dismatle the police force to rebuild it, do you think those excops are going to just walk off into the sunset? I think we can expect more, better armed and better trained “militias”. So, basically they will go from the government paid terrorists to just plain terrorists. We joke about the American Taliban, but I don’t think it’s a joke. Any change is going to be fought tooth and nail by the people who profit from things remaining the same. It’s the American way.
@Dalillama:
Give me a fucking break. At precisely what level, do you think, will tax revenue be enough that your average political subdivision will say, “That’s plenty thanks–no more money for us.”
It’s called flatly forbidding anyone in the government from profiting by fines, confiscations, or other police activities. Period.
If taxes need to rise as a result, so be it. But “raise taxes until revenue generation stops looking like a good idea” is an asinine solution. Nobody should be giving a fuck whether revenue generation looks like a good idea; they should be prohibiting it outright. And then doing whatever needs doing to meet the fiscal needs of society.
Oh, I forgot to add:
I suppose that’s a worry, but it’s certainly the least of mine. Cops aren’t cartoon Nazis. They commit these abuses because they have carte blanche to do whatever the fuck they want. If you take away their impunity, most of them will go back to coaching so they can bully Little Leaguers. They won’t be getting shotguns and motorcycles and trying to make Mad Max a reality.
…I guess if you want a terrifying doomy scenario to keep you up at night, you should try to imagine the police reaction if all these hypothetical reforms were announced all at once.
If you’re thinking, “Municipal cops trying to arrest congress, the President, and all 9 Supreme Court justices in a coordinated series of dawn raids, because they have nothing left to lose,” then you should know I call dibs on the movie rights.
Poverty is depressing and people turn to drugs to escape their circumstances. If you are caught with drugs (which you are far more likely to be if you are poor and/or black) everything you own can be taken from you and sold for profit. Felons do not get access to the social safety net, a law that frequently splits up families. Felons can’t vote in many states. That’s win/win for the state if you ignore all of the talent, creativity and culture that is destroyed. People in prison are not given support for addiction or skills to help them excel on the outside. So we get re-offenders. We get more kids growing up in a high stress, heavily policed environment created for the purpose of putting as many of them in prison as possible because it makes the right people rich and the wrong people powerless. Again, the system feeds on itself.
A Masked Avenger
And what happens when that is taken from them, too? I don’t have the link handy (and probably won’t be able to dig it up, sorry), but that’s exactly what happened recently to one of the cops involved in one of the many shootings in US of A. I sincerely apologize, that’s extremely vague, but what’s next for them? (Mostly a rhetorical question – quite frankly, I wouldn’t mind them all getting jobs where they’re never in contact with people ever again, but I’m not sure how to go about doing that.)
Lynna @24
Can you put that up, please? I’ve been avoiding the implications of that photo. I probably shouldn’t. And the rest of the details are definitely walk-worthy. :(
@Sagar Keer, #19:
Yep.
@Dalillama, #23:
I hope you don’t think I was endorsing the situation. I was merely describing it.
A Masked Avenger 27
Imagine, if you will, going to work knowing that your boss was liable to throw you into penury and leave you to starve on the street. That’s the reality for most of working America right now, so forgive me if I have no fucking sympathy.
Funny how in the private sector, people fuck over their co workers all the time and still come in to work the next day then, isn’t it?
tl;dr: just look for the bold face.
One thing that I’d argue helps at least with one part of this mess is stopping voting for any job involved with law enforcement – sheriffs, prosecutors, judges and the like. These people are not supposed to support whatever happens to be the local majority position, they are supposed to support whatever is the law. A popularity contest sabotages that. Can’t have an independent judiciary, for example, with elected judges. That is broken by design.
Another thing might be to avoid having these as municipal positions. If those institutions are too small, it is too hard to fight corruption. I’d put them all on state level (unless they are federal). Then one of the things you can do is move people around so as to routinely disrupt the connections that invariably form and benefit corruption. (And yes, that means Bubba won’t have a career in the city he grew up in, where he knows everybody and everybody knows him. That’s the (well, a) point. Incidentally, that would also help with pretty much every other corruption-heavy job. A side benefit would be that personnel in different places would be more likely to behave the same, so you could know better in advance what to expect from them. And if their regular evaluations come from different bosses all the time, it’s also less likely that bad apples get promoted to high places.)
I also like A Masked Avenger‘s proposal at 27 to separate the functions more.
@Dalillama, #36,
Don’t lose the plot. I’m not trying to elicit sympathy. I’m pointing out that the system is structured so that it can’t function at all if prosecutors start charging the cops on which they depend for convictions, or if cops arrest the cops they use for backup.
When you call for them to do such things, you’re fantasizing, not addressing the problem. The problem isn’t a “few bad apples.” It’s an inherently broken system. Most of the bugs you complain about are, unfortunately, actually features.
re @37:
Sorry, read 37 will poor “reading comprehension”. I first thought you were advocating recusing LEOs from voting on the laws they will ultimately have to enforce. Kinda like “insider trading” and “conflict of interest”.
IE: I originally read the quoted bit above, this way: “… stopping voting
forof anyone with a job involved with law enforcement …”Then I got to the part about “elected judges” being antithetical to “impartiality” & “justice”. =Forehead smack=, *duh*, why did I misread the beginning of 37?
“A few bad apples” is part of the aphorism “a few bad apples spoil the barrel.”
Looks like the bad guys are doubling down, because of course they are:
http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/ferguson-mayor-says-scathing-doj-report-not-proof-of-widespread/article_d4334c29-d4c2-593e-af81-358fd8b24ad1.html
From neverjaunty’s link @40:
Why don’t we ever get a reporter asking the follow up question that really gets to the heart of the matter? In this case:
Ah, journalism. One day it will come to the United States.
Maybe not in my lifetime, but in yours, I feel sure.
“When I’m looking … “ => inevitable Schroedinger’s Cop: When mayor watches; their wave function collapses into [good cop] mode. Only when he’s *not* watching; their wave function is completely indeterminate: {goodcop | badcop | thug | coward | whatevah}.
I think in other countries fines simply go into the federal budget hole (probably state-level in Germany). They’re too small to have an effect there, so there’s no incentive to turn the police into an extortion racket.