Ferguson is falling apart again, and the police are once again in the crosshairs. Officials are still trying to calm things down in the wake of the targeted shooting of two police officers tasked with supervising a protest earlier this week.
Here’s how the AP covered the shooting:
The officers were quickly released from the hospital, but St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar said they could have easily been killed and called the attack “an ambush.” Several people were taken in for questioning after a SWAT team converged on a Ferguson home near the shooting site, but they were later released, and no arrests were made.The shootings marked the first time in eight months of tension in Ferguson that officers were shot at a protest, and the bloodshed threatened to inflame the already fraught relationship between police and protesters just as the city seeks reforms in the wake of a withering Justice Department report on racial bias in its law-enforcement practices.The attack also seemed to create another layer of race-related mistrust after a week in which an unarmed young black man was killed by a white officer in Madison, Wisconsin, and a University of Oklahoma fraternity chapter was thrown off campus after a video surfaced showing members singing a racist chant.
I’m not entirely sure where a group of racist twenty-something idiots comes into a discussion about police officers getting shot and/or using deadly force to protect themselves, but hey, might as well drag everything into the pot while the fire’s hot.
MSNBC’s Ed Schultz isn’t helping, either. On Monday, he suggested disarming the Ferguson PD entirely, and today, he asked whether or not police really needed to be at these protests to begin with.
Because they’re so peaceful. No, really.
Peaceful protesters—nay, pilgrims—on a journey toward social justice and equality for all. At least, that’s how Barack Obama would like to paint what’s going on.
Unacceptable, yes; but the “path to justice” the President mentions in his tweet (it was him…he signs his with “-bo”) is no such thing. This Administration, and its surrogates, have made it abundantly clear that their goal is to saturate the narrative with the idea that, although the police aren’t always to blame (as was in the case of Darren Wilson,) this country still has a “systemic problem” with racism and the police. Justice in Ferguson doesn’t mean a jury verdict—it means a catharsis for the professional race hustlers who have spent months licking Eric Holder’s hand.
Look at this press release from the DOJ:
He talks about cross-country reforms and peaceful protesters, but the most successful (read: the most media-friendly) protests have been neither peaceful, nor a path to reform. Peaceful protests have and do exist, but the totality of the reaction to what happened in Ferguson and New York has not been peaceful; it has been destructive and disruptive.
The White House and the DOJ may condemn what happened to these two officers, but that hasn’t stopped them from throwing bones to the people who helped make it happen. Right now, police all across the country are in a no-win situation, and by the looks of things, it’s the goal of the media and the Administration to keep it that way.
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