DISCLAIMER: I wrote half of this post a week or three ago and never finished it.)
Okay.
It's been awhile since my last post. I could get into why I haven't
been on-the-ball here the last couple of weeks, but who the fuck wants
to read that shit?! Anyway, I felt inspired today by fucking Ferguson,
and how the shit has gone down in that city... again. Well, that's what
I've read anyway. If you wake anytime after 8am the major networks have
forgone butt-fucking Ferguson in lieu of Thanksgiving talk and
encouraging you to buy more shit. Black Friday, which is the day our
country gets together collectively and butt-fucks each other all in the
name of slightly cheaper than normal prices on shit they don't need,
dominates the news cycle today. I have seen more posts on my goddamn
facebook feed this morning regarding Ferguson than I have on the major
networks. Apparently it's not worth talking about after 8am. Keep tabs
on the number of "fucks" I put in this post.
What I've also seen
on my facebook feed over the last 12 hours are people speaking out about
Ferguson. Each post begins in a similar manner. The person starts off
with a disclaimer saying something like, "I don't get political very
much on facebook, but blah blah blah." Now despite the similarities in
how they begin, the opinions and comments vary. They are, however, all
predictable when considering the source. The cop friend is quick to
defend the rule of law and to lay no fault at the hands of the officer.
Another friend proclaims that justice wasn't done because another black
child killer goes free. Finally the strong republican predictably makes
it about Obama, pointing to his speech the night of the decision where
he began by saying, "We are a nation of laws..." followed by claiming
Obama is making his own laws through executive action. So now, like all
of these assholes, I'll share my opinion. The main difference is I'll
spare everyone's facebook feeds. I'll do this despite the clear evidence
to support that people's opinions change based off what they read on
fucking facebook. I'm fully aware that sarcasm rarely translates into
the written word.
Obviously Ferguson is a complicated issue
that I'm certain I won't do justice. At the same time, I won't ignore
certain obvious issues that some people are very quick to ignore. There
is a strong disconnect between a large portion of the African American
community and the police. I was thinking of posting portions of some of
the arguments posed on facebook and rebutting them here, but considering
this post is a bit late to the party on the subject I'll omit that
portion. In addition, much smarter and more educated people than myself
have made some excellent points regarding the issue. I suppose it's
fitting that I never posted this because the grand jury's ruling against
the officer who killed Eric Garner has recently added a new dimension
to the issue.
Now I'll sum up the situation for anyone who is
unfamiliar, (especially because my traffic indicates I might have a few
readers outside of the United States). So to begin, a few months ago a
police officer killed a particularly large black man, (he's often
referred to as a "teen" because he was 18 years old; this is done for
dramatic effect, but he was legally considered an adult), who was
unarmed. There were several witnesses and initially the word on the
street was he was shot while surrendering to the officer, including the
man sustaining one gunshot wound to the hand. There were immediate
riots/protests in Ferguson, despite very few verified facts actually
circulating at the time. For more background, Ferguson is located in the
southern United States where issues of racism are still very much
alive. Well, the issues are alive everywhere, but more-so in the
southern United States. In the following weeks and months we heard
conflicting and changing stories about what had happened between the
officer and Michael Brown. The coroner's report came out and found that
Michael Brown's injuries/gunshot wounds were not consistent with a
person simply surrendering and being shot at a distance. Eyewitness
testimony reports also changed and many of them did end up reporting
some kid of struggle. The officer also sustained a few minor injuries
that initially were not reported. The main thing to take away here is a
white officer killed an African American man, and there was an amount of
ambiguity surrounding the incident. Also take away that this officer
was not indicted by the grand jury. This decision sparked many more
protests.
The second highly reported, (yet not quite as high as
what happened in Ferguson), and controversial death was in New York City
where a black man named Eric Garner was accidentally killed by a police
officer. Eric Garner was selling cigarettes illegally on the street,
and while several officers were attempting to arrest him, an officer
employed a choke-hold on Garner. Eric Garner's death, according the the coroner, was a result of "compression of the throat and chest." In other
words, he was killed by the choke hold. Now Eric Garner was a very
large man. He wasn't exactly submitting to the officers, but he
certainly wasn't presenting himself as a threat or reacting to the five
officers with any sort of violence. How do I know this you ask? I know
this because unlike the Ferguson situation, the entire incident in New
York was captured on cell phone video, and not at a distance either. The
guy shooting it had a front row seat to the incident. We were
immediately informed once this story broke about how choke holds are
against the policy of New York police departments. So Eric Garner was
accidentally killed by a police officer who was breaking the rules, and
we have definitive video proof of the incident. Oh, and the grand jury
decided to not indict this officer either.
Jon Stewart on "The
Daily Show", (a comedy news show which often has more substance than our
official news programs), put it best when explaining the situation. To
paraphrase, Stewart said that the main difference between these two
incidents is the Eric Garner case has none of the ambiguities that the
Michael Brown case. We have video proof of the Garner incident, unlike
with Michael Brown. It's very possible and likely that Michael Brown was
killed because the officer was in fear for his life. Unfortunately for
Brown, that's a bit subjective and difficult to scrutinize. Due to
eyewitness testimony conflicting with the scientific evidence in the
case, the grand jury decided not to indict that officer. It's not
difficult to see why when you consider the main reason to indict someone
is if there is sufficient evidence to suggest a trial would result in
conviction. So either the evidence isn't really there, or this is
another example of African American inequality in this country. Many
people argue that a trial should have determined the guilt of the
officer and the grand jury should have indicted the officer so this
could take place. I could be wrong, but it's not the job of the grand
jury to make that kind of determination. Grand Juries indict people when
they feel a conviction is possible, not simply because one person
killed another. Then again, I'm an idiot without a law degree.
Now
if a lack of cold, hard evidence was the main factor in the grand
jury's decision in the Michael Brown case, then the grand jury should
have indicted the fuck out of the officer in the Eric Garner case. The
officer here killed this man, and it was a result of the officer not
following the rules. Where Michael Brown's death may not have been
preventible, Garner's certainly was. I am not saying, however, that the
officer in the Garner case was doing anything out of the ordinary.
Almost every job has situations where an employee might have to do
something questionable to get the job done. We live in an age where
people are expected to do get the job done, often at all costs. No
excuses. Some jobs, like those of police officers, are subject to this
far more than other jobs. I think it's difficult to tell an officer that
a certain procedure shouldn't be used in a fight for their life. In
addition, if choke holds, (despite being against policy), help prevent
putting an officer's life at risk it is understandable how one might
employ this practice. Unfortunately, the officer here has a lack of
these excuses. Even if he would argue that he's done this a thousand
times in the past, and that he believed if he had not done this that his
or other officer's lives would have been at risk, he still should have
been indicted. Conducting "business as usual" resulted in a completely
unnecessary death. This man was needlessly and accidentally killed by an
unnecessary choke hold and there was most-likely sufficient evidence to
indict, and probably convict, on a charge of manslaughter.
So
now we're seeing protests all over the country. People are protesting
against police violence, particularly white officers on black citizens.
Many people are in denial, (mainly white people), that any sort of
profiling exists. The jail statistics prove otherwise. We incarcerate a
significant number of black people in this country. This number is
completely out of proportion to population breakdowns. Some people say
that black people are committing more crimes when compared to whites. We
call these people racist, and ignorant of the facts regarding a lot of
these cases. That's not to say this issue isn't complicated, but it's
not that complicated. Black people are stopped and/or arrested for
benign behavior in this country far more than whites. We have video
evidence of this, and that evidence is often infuriating.
I'm not sure where to end this post. Like many subjects I choose to write
about, I could go on and on. Many of these subjects deserve much more
than I give them here, but none of us are in this for a blog-style
novel.
TL;DR: Kanye West should have
replaced "George Bush" with "Police" when talking about who really
doesn't care about black people.
STL;DR: This post may not have flowed very well, and for that I apolo-fuck OFF!
IHTASOAN; DR: Penis Penis Penis, Vagina Vagina. Hope that makes up for the lack of those words above.
