The Justice Department on Friday pressured the Ferguson Police Department to stop its officers from wearing bracelets stamped with the message “I am Darren Wilson,” in solidarity with the police officer who is being investigated for shooting an unarmed black 18-year-old, and from covering up their name plates with tape. …NYT
Above that report opener in the Times is a photo of the police chief of Ferguson talking with a group of Ferguson citizens, mostly if not all black. His face? The face of an angry white man. The other faces? Anxious and questioning. [icopyright one button toolbar]
Contrition for the killing of Michael Brown doesn’t seem to be in the rule book guiding the Ferguson police force. The Department of Justice has stepped in.
In a stern letter to Chief Thomas Jackson, Christy E. Lopez, deputy chief of the special litigation section of the Justice Department’s civil rights division, said that the bracelets “upset and agitated people.” …NYT
I’d bet some salty talk about Obummer and Holder — and Lopez — is part of the locker room conversations in Ferguson’s police department these days.
She also said that police officers were reported to have placed black tape over their name plates, a violation of the police department’s own policies.
“Officers’ wearing name plates while in uniform is a basic component of transparency and accountability,” Ms. Lopez wrote. “It is a near-universal requirement of sound policing practices and required under some state laws.” Chief Jackson had met with Justice Department officials on Thursday afternoon. …NYT
Another “Street Fest” was scheduled for this weekend and cancelled because of “concerns” about “safety.” But it seems to me that, to the extent that “safety” is under threat in Ferguson, it’s the police who continue to make the city — and democracy and freedom — “unsafe.”
If there are any threats America needs to worry about, they come not from ISIS but from ourselves. The long-dominant whites in America need to remember that they are close to being outnumbered if they’re not already outnumbered. These are people who got the notion in their heads that they somehow “own” America. We embrace the principle of competition until we find ourselves having to compete. Hauling out the military hardware is hardly a cure for our inadequacies and childish expectations.