Who’s to Blame for the Ferguson Riots?
Ferguson police
The police, of course.
The day before Michael Brown was shot in Ferguson, Missouri, and the town went up in flames, citizens of Baltimore buried a three-year-old black child, McKenzie Elliot. A stray bullet, fired in another one of those “random” acts of mayhem that are buried deep in local newspapers, killed little McKenzie. That same day, the city of Baltimore implemented a curfew. Children under 14 must be indoors by 9 p.m., with 14-, 15-, and 16-year-olds inside by 10 p.m. on school nights and 11 p.m. on weekends.
A spokesman for the black mayor of Baltimore, Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, explained the purpose of the curfew: “The primary goal of all of this is to make sure young people who may be in challenging situations late at night are able to get home safely.”
Curfews are usually imposed as part of martial law. In cities with large black populations, however, this kind of authoritarianism is common. Nor are curfews imposed by whites on blacks–blacks often complain that whites had not been doing enough to police their communities.
- In 2011, Mayor Michael Nutter of Philadelphia increased police patrols in response to “knockout game” attacks, imposed a curfew, and pushed harsh sentences on first-time offenders.
- That same year, Mayor Sly James of Kansas City, also black, tightened an already existing curfew after he was caught in a gunfight between “youths.” To this day, the city maintainsa strong presence in trouble areas in order to enforce the law, which imposes a $500 fine on curfew-breakers.
- In 2013, Jesse Jackson called for “immediate Federal Intervention and Homeland Security in Chicago.”
- Just last July, black pundit Roland Martin said the National Guard should be sent to protect Chicago.
When black politicians impose a police state on their “youth” or when black activists ask the armed forces to keep blacks from shooting each other, it goes mostly unnoticed–unlike the frenzy over a white mayor’s “stop and frisk” policy in New York City. Needless to say, the reactions to the police response to the Ferguson riots–because it was ordered by a white police chief–is getting the same treatment as Michael Bloomberg’s “stop and frisk” policy. At Slate, Jamelle Bouie says the police are “treating demonstrators–and Ferguson residents writ large–as a population to occupy, not citizens to protect.” When white people are behind it, a robust police response is invasive and threatening. ...
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