Americans hate shades of grey.
On August 9th, Michael Brown, a black teenager in Ferguson, Missouri was shot and killed by police outside a convenience store. By now, if you're the kind of person who reads blogs like mine, you already know this and know what happened afterwards: we have riots. We have looting. We have protests. We have an ongoing and growing police presence involving everything from snipers to tanks to tear gas. We have a community enraged and law enforcement put in a horrible place of being asked to use violence to contain their neighbors.
The American public has done what it does best; jumped to conclusions. The tweets and posts about it have been jarring to read. Some folks jump to the defense of the police depending on what isn't or can't be known as the buffer between the facts and the response. Others rush to Michael's defense without the slightest knowledge of what may have transpired. They are ready to see the police officers terminated or brought up on charges before the independent autopsy is finished. Images of Trayvon Martin and other slain victims of police violence cloud their heads and blind them to the very due process they would otherwise staunchly defend.
Let's be clear:
Michael was unarmed, had no history of violence, and preliminary reports say he was shot once in a struggle and twice while attempting to flee. He may have reached for the officer's gun. He was a primary suspect in an unrelated robbery.
On these core facts, once again, we're polarized; We pick one side of two and we throw our lot in with that cause, obeying the system of ideological politics we've been trained to align with.
But what are the questions we SHOULD be asking instead of manufacturing a constant stream of outrage at the uninformed conclusions and emotional outbursts of those coming from a different point of view?
1) Was Michael endangering the lives of the police officers involved? The threat of lethal force has become something of a first resort by police in recent years as opposed to the last. If we accept the idea that the police are armed with lethal weapons to counter lethal threats, was this a 'lethal threat'? The possibility of lethality is not good enough. A lethal threat must be that the officer believed his life was in imminent danger.
2) Is apprehending a thief worth the thief's life? Two shots were fired at the fleeing Michael. Why?
3) When a community suffers a loss they see as unjust, what should we be doing to bring about a constructive solution? More and more, law enforcement seems to want to meet local unrest by stockpiling force; Establishing riot and containment policies with an eye towards the worst possible outcome. Is this a self fulfilling prophesy? Are we creating places like Furgeson by mishandling our reaction to situations like the shooting of Michael Brown?
The United States has been at war for over a decade. Most of our troops have seen multiple tours of duty and the war has been on the forefront of our minds and media for longer than many of our young adults have been old enough to understand anything else. These American wars depict a world full of insurgents that rise up from and among the population to attack and destroy our troops, embassies, holdings, and the structures and even the local police we've put into place even among their own people.
How much of that reality has bled back into our perception of ourselves? If troops can come home with post traumatic stress disorder from one tour of duty, how long can a culture be saturated with images and fears from a lurking threat among the population before that population starts looking next door for hidden threats instead of across the ocean?
In recent years, we've passed laws to justify shooting people we 'think' are dangerous. We've watched as teenagers are gunned down by police and protests are broken up by authorities using tactics we might expect in occupied Baghdad or Kabul, not New York or Ferguson. Has our media saturated decade of war bled back into our culture to poison how we manage local conflict? Have we lost what we learned at places like Kent State in the 60's and no longer see civilian anger as constructive signs of growth and opportunities for change and now see protesters as disobedient insurgents in need of pacification?
The new paradigm of American growth needs to be constructive vs. destructive, not conservative vs. liberal. Whether or not Michael was guilty of reaching for a gun or attacking an officer, the continuous escalation starting with any confrontation that allowed armed police officers to conclude that they had to shoot an unarmed teen is the start of destructive decision after decision leading to one of the worst bouts of social unrest we've seen in recent years, breaking apart community cohesion and pitting executive power against civilian peace.
There are no winners in this.
We, as a society, have already lost.
The most important questions is whether we can learn anything from Ferguson so something like this doesn't happen again.
On August 9th, Michael Brown, a black teenager in Ferguson, Missouri was shot and killed by police outside a convenience store. By now, if you're the kind of person who reads blogs like mine, you already know this and know what happened afterwards: we have riots. We have looting. We have protests. We have an ongoing and growing police presence involving everything from snipers to tanks to tear gas. We have a community enraged and law enforcement put in a horrible place of being asked to use violence to contain their neighbors.
The American public has done what it does best; jumped to conclusions. The tweets and posts about it have been jarring to read. Some folks jump to the defense of the police depending on what isn't or can't be known as the buffer between the facts and the response. Others rush to Michael's defense without the slightest knowledge of what may have transpired. They are ready to see the police officers terminated or brought up on charges before the independent autopsy is finished. Images of Trayvon Martin and other slain victims of police violence cloud their heads and blind them to the very due process they would otherwise staunchly defend.
Let's be clear:
Michael was unarmed, had no history of violence, and preliminary reports say he was shot once in a struggle and twice while attempting to flee. He may have reached for the officer's gun. He was a primary suspect in an unrelated robbery.
On these core facts, once again, we're polarized; We pick one side of two and we throw our lot in with that cause, obeying the system of ideological politics we've been trained to align with.
But what are the questions we SHOULD be asking instead of manufacturing a constant stream of outrage at the uninformed conclusions and emotional outbursts of those coming from a different point of view?
Relevant Questions
1) Was Michael endangering the lives of the police officers involved? The threat of lethal force has become something of a first resort by police in recent years as opposed to the last. If we accept the idea that the police are armed with lethal weapons to counter lethal threats, was this a 'lethal threat'? The possibility of lethality is not good enough. A lethal threat must be that the officer believed his life was in imminent danger.
2) Is apprehending a thief worth the thief's life? Two shots were fired at the fleeing Michael. Why?
3) When a community suffers a loss they see as unjust, what should we be doing to bring about a constructive solution? More and more, law enforcement seems to want to meet local unrest by stockpiling force; Establishing riot and containment policies with an eye towards the worst possible outcome. Is this a self fulfilling prophesy? Are we creating places like Furgeson by mishandling our reaction to situations like the shooting of Michael Brown?
A Slow Poison: Continuous War
The United States has been at war for over a decade. Most of our troops have seen multiple tours of duty and the war has been on the forefront of our minds and media for longer than many of our young adults have been old enough to understand anything else. These American wars depict a world full of insurgents that rise up from and among the population to attack and destroy our troops, embassies, holdings, and the structures and even the local police we've put into place even among their own people.
How much of that reality has bled back into our perception of ourselves? If troops can come home with post traumatic stress disorder from one tour of duty, how long can a culture be saturated with images and fears from a lurking threat among the population before that population starts looking next door for hidden threats instead of across the ocean?
In recent years, we've passed laws to justify shooting people we 'think' are dangerous. We've watched as teenagers are gunned down by police and protests are broken up by authorities using tactics we might expect in occupied Baghdad or Kabul, not New York or Ferguson. Has our media saturated decade of war bled back into our culture to poison how we manage local conflict? Have we lost what we learned at places like Kent State in the 60's and no longer see civilian anger as constructive signs of growth and opportunities for change and now see protesters as disobedient insurgents in need of pacification?
The new paradigm of American growth needs to be constructive vs. destructive, not conservative vs. liberal. Whether or not Michael was guilty of reaching for a gun or attacking an officer, the continuous escalation starting with any confrontation that allowed armed police officers to conclude that they had to shoot an unarmed teen is the start of destructive decision after decision leading to one of the worst bouts of social unrest we've seen in recent years, breaking apart community cohesion and pitting executive power against civilian peace.
There are no winners in this.
We, as a society, have already lost.
The most important questions is whether we can learn anything from Ferguson so something like this doesn't happen again.
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