WhatFinger


Cops fire tear gas into crowd in Missouri.

Riots over police shooting of black teen aren't dying down on second day



What's happening in Ferguson, Missouri is not good, which is an observation quite apart from the merits of what's brought it on.

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People are angry because an 18-year-old black man named Michael Brown was shot by police. That is not surprising. Sadly, it is also not surprising that they're rioting, because somewhere along the line it became established in American culture that when urban minorities have a problem with the police, this is what they do. Usually self-appointed black leaders "urge calm" without really coming right out and saying that rioting is unjustified under any circumstances, and is never the solution to any problem. KSDK-TV reports on the situation:

CNN offers a pretty good synposis of the facts, or at least the claims different parties are making, at this point. It's a longer excerpt than we would normally use but all the details are important:
Dorian Johnson told CNN affiliate KTVI that he and Brown were walking in the middle of the street, and the officer told them to use the sidewalk. The two told the officer they were only a minute from their destination and that they'd soon be out of the street. There was an exchange of words, witness Piaget Crenshaw told the station, and the officer exited his vehicle and fired a shot. Both teens ran, Crenshaw said. Johnson told KTVI he hid behind a car, but Brown stopped after a second shot was fired. Brown held up his hands to show he wasn't armed, Johnson and Crenshaw said, and the officer shot him twice. "(The officer) shot again and once my friend felt that shot, he turned around and put his hands in the air," Johnson told KMOV. "He started to get down and the officer still approached with his weapon drawn and fired several more shots." That Brown was unarmed seems undisputed -- St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar said every casing found at the scene was from the officer's weapon -- but he said in a Sunday news conference that Brown was not an innocent victim. "The genesis of this was a physical confrontation," said Belmar, adding Ferguson police asked his office to investigate the case. Without revealing what led to the dispute, Belmar said the preliminary investigation showed that the Ferguson officer tried to exit his vehicle, but Brown pushed him back into the car, "where he physically assaulted the police officer" and struggled over the officer's weapon, Belmar said. A shot was fired inside the police car, and Brown was eventually shot about 35 feet away from the vehicle, Belmar said. He didn't explain how Brown got so far away from the car or whether he was surrendering. He said he was declining to disclose certain details because he didn't want to "prejudice" the case.
As is so often the case, the rioters don't wait for the facts to get worked out before they take to the streets. For many, it's simply an excuse to publicly misbehave without consequence (or at least they hope, since there have been some arrests). For others, it's a misguided attempt to make some sort of statement on behalf of justice. If a police officer really did shoot an unarmed teen without justification, the facts will bear that out and there will be a process to be followed that leads that officer to accountability and justice. No one contributes in the slightest bit to that outcome by participating in a riot. Whoever the "leaders" of this community might be ought to know that, but I suspect they find it useful to their own personal agendas to take advantage of the attention the rioters get so they can claim to be their spokespeople and enjoy the stage.


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Dan Calabrese’s column is distributed by HermanCain.com, which can be found at HermanCain

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