Public Servants

David Ehrenstein, on the apology forced in Ferguson.

Charles Pierce, on new episodes of police violence against unarmed citizens, and old stories

Something has gone badly wrong in the relationship between local police and the citizens they are supposed to serve. It has taken a long time to get to this point. It probably began during the early days of the "war" on drugs, in which local police were encouraged to believe that almost anything was permissable because they were facing a well-armed and well-financed "enemy" in the streets. This introduced the "Powell Doctrine" of overwhelming force to local law-enforcement, with all that entailed, including arming local sheriff's departments as though they were heavy-weapon platoons advancing on Bastogne. This attitude, and the equipment available to act it out, naturally bled over from drug busts to local police work in general.

As should be sadly obvious, black folks were the first to notice what was going on. In 1990, in Boston, when Carol DiMaiti Stuart was murdered by her husband, Charles, the murderer threw out a fairy tale about a black perpetrator that sent the Boston police on an absolute rampage through the neighborhood where the shooting occurred. It didn't stop until Stuart confessed by throwing himself off the Tobin Bridge.

He concludes his piece with this comparison

In February of last year, two Muslim men were sentenced in a London court for butchering a British soldier named Lee Rigby to death in broad daylight on a public street. The two demanded that onlookers take videos of their barbarity as the two of them literally dripped with blood. When the London police arrived on the scene, the two killers charged them. They were shot. But they were only wounded. They were alive to stand trial, to be convicted, and to be sentenced. They were not killed in the street next to their victim. They were shot by police but they were alive today, which is more than can be said for Michael Brown, killed for being big and black, or John Crawford III, killed for holding a BB gun while black. Something has gone badly wrong in this country.

Retired Captain Ray Lewis (R) of the Philadelphia Police department displays a sign during a peaceful protest on West Florissant Avenue in Ferguson, Missouri on August 23, 2014, two weeks after the fatal shooting of Michael Brown (AFP Photo/Michael B. Thomas)