Tuesday, August 19, 2014

Ferguson police firing range target



If you have not yet seen John Oliver's analysis of the events in Ferguson, you must watch the following:




And we have, here, what may be the best summary:

Jelani Cobb at The New Yorker:
From the outset, the overlapping bureaucracies in Ferguson handled the case in ways that suggested ineptitude. Yet subsequent developments -- the stonewalling followed by contradictory statements, the detention of reporters, the clumsy deployment of sophisticated military equipment -- all point not to a department too inept to handle this investigation objectively but one too inept to cloak the fact that they never intended to do so. One protestor held a sign that said, "Ferguson Police Need Better Scriptwriters."
I don't think the local authorities really care whether they conduct a responsible investigation, or whether they help Ferguson to heal and come to terms with what happened. It's not just that they're closing ranks around one of their own. It's not merely that they obviously believe Mike Brown was a worthless thug whose death should go unmourned. It's not only that they don't regard the people of Ferguson as fully human. It's that they don't care if you know all that about them. They're not trying to conceal it. They're not "too inept to cloak the fact" that they don't care.They don't give a damn what you think if you're the kind of person they don't like.