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Finding Meaning in Ferguson
What the New York Times won’t tell you.

Demonstrators celebrate as fires rage in Ferguson, November 24, 2014. (Scott Olson/Getty)

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The New York Times has now pronounced on the “meaning of the Ferguson riots.” A more perfect example of what the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan called “defining deviancy down” would be hard to find. The Times’ editorial encapsulates the elite narrative around the fatal police shooting of unarmed Michael Brown last August, and the mayhem that twice followed that shooting. Unfortunately, the editorial is also a harbinger of the poisonous anti-police ideology that will drive law-enforcement policy under the remainder of the Obama administration.

The Times cannot bring itself to say one word of condemnation against the savages who self-indulgently destroyed the livelihoods of struggling Ferguson, Mo., entrepreneurs and their employees last week. The real culprit behind the riots, in the Times’ view, is not the actual arsonists and looters but county prosecutor Robert McCulloch. McCulloch presented the shooting of 18-year-old Brown by Officer Darren Wilson to a St. Louis county grand jury; after hearing three months of testimony, the grand jury decided last Monday not to bring criminal charges against Wilson. The Times trots out the by now de rigueur and entirely ad hoc list of McCulloch’s alleged improprieties, turning the virtues of this grand jury — such as its thoroughness — into flaws. If the jurors had indicted Wilson, none of the riot apologists would have complained about the length of the process or the range of evidence presented.

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To be sure, most grand-jury proceedings are pro forma and brief, because the evidence of the defendant’s guilt is so overwhelming, as Andrew McCarthy has explained. Here, however, McCulloch faced a dilemma. His own review of the case would have shown the unlikelihood of a conviction. Physical evidence discredited the initial inflammatory claims about Wilson attacking Brown and shooting him in the back, and Missouri law accords wide deference to police officers who use deadly force against a dangerous suspect. Not initiating any formal criminal inquiry against Wilson was politically impossible, however, especially since the eyewitness accounts that corroborated Wilson’s version of events would have remained unknown. (Not surprisingly, the six black witnesses who supported Wilson’s story did not go to the press or social media, unlike the witnesses who spread the early lies about Wilson’s behavior.) So McCulloch used the grand-jury proceeding as a way to get the entire dossier about the case into the public domain by bringing a broad range of evidence before the grand jury and then releasing it to the public after the proceeding ended — a legal arrangement.

The Times is silent about that evidence, of course. Blood and DNA traces demonstrated that Brown had initiated the altercation by attacking Wilson while Wilson was inside his car. Brown then tried to grab Wilson’s gun, presumably to shoot him. Such an assault on a law-enforcement officer is nearly as corrosive to the rule of law and a stable society as rioting. But to the mainstream media, it is apparently simply normal behavior not worth mentioning when a black teenager attacks a cop, just as it was apparently normal and beneath notice that Brown had strong-armed a box of cigarillos from a shopkeeper moments before Wilson accosted him for walking in the middle of the street. Amazingly, anyone who brought up that earlier videoed felony was accused of besmirching Brown’s character, even though the robbery was highly relevant to the encounter that followed (and showed that Brown did not have much character to besmirch in the first place, something his sealed juvenile records would likely have confirmed).

Even if we ignore the exculpatory evidence, it is absurd to blame the riots, as the Times does, on McCulloch’s management of the grand jury or the way he announced the verdict. There would have been rioting if the grand-jury proceeding had lasted one day, so long as it failed to indict Wilson for murder. It is unlikely that the rioters even listened to, much less carefully parsed, McCulloch’s post-verdict press conference, which the Times finds biased. It is equally absurd to imply that the grand jury’s decision not to indict resulted from unprofessional behavior on McCulloch’s part or from prejudice that somehow infected the proceedings. Not indicting officers for good-faith shootings in the course of their duty is the norm, not the exception. There have been no indictments of Missouri officers for shootings since 1991. Houston grand juries have cleared officers of shootings 288 consecutive times. The Brown verdict was par for the course and not the result of some flawed, partial process.

The Times then goes into blazing hyperbole about the reign of terror inflicted “daily” on blacks by the police in Ferguson and nationally. The Times coyly cites “news accounts” — i.e., its own– claiming that the police in Ferguson “systematically target poor and minority citizens for street and traffic stops — partly to generate fines.” The Times has no evidence of such systematic targeting, proof of which would require determining the rate at which blacks and whites violate traffic and other laws and then comparing those rates to their stop rates. Studies elsewhere have shown that blacks speed at higher rates than whites. Blacks likely also have lower rates of car registration and vehicle upkeep, for economic reasons. Moreover, if authorities are using traffic fines in order to generate revenue, they would presumably “target” the people most likely to be able to pay those fines, not the poorest residents of an area.

Even more fantastically, the Times claims that “the killing of young black men by police is a common feature of African-American life and a source of dread for black parents from coast to coast.” A “common feature”? This is pure hysteria, likely penned by Times columnist Charles Blow. The public could perhaps be forgiven for believing that “the killing of young black men by police is a common feature of African-American life,” given the media frenzy that follows every such rare police killing, compared to the silence that greets the daily homicides committed by blacks against other blacks. The press, however, should know better. According to published reports, the police kill roughly 200 blacks a year — most of them attacking the officer. In 2013, there were 6,261 black homicide victims in the U.S. The police could eliminate all fatal shootings without having any significant impact on the black homicide death rate. The killers of those black homicide victims are overwhelmingly other blacks, responsible for a death risk ten times that of whites in urban areas. In 2013, 5,375 blacks were arrested for homicide, which is greater than the number of whites and Hispanics combined (4,396), even though blacks are only 13 percent of the national population.


Protests in Ferguson
TUESDAY: Tensions remained high in Ferguson on the day after the grand jury decision came down. But a combination of continuing appeals for calm and the arrival of Missouri National Guard troops to bolster state and local police resulted in far less violence and fewer arrests on Tuesday.
Missouri governor Jay Nixon ordered the mobilization of more than 2,000 National Guard personnel to bolster security in Ferguson. Some had criticized Nixon for not sending in the troops on Monday.
Protesters clashed with police again. Pictured, a police vehicle is tipped over outside of Ferguson police headquarters.
Police moved in to limit the damage.
SWAT team disembark for another night on the front line.
More heavily armed SWAT officers.
A line of armored vehicles on West Flourissant Avenue, ground zero for protests in Ferguson since August.
The national news media remains out in force in Ferguson. Pictured, a wall of photographers watches as a protester poses in the iconic "Hands Up, Don't Shoot" pose.
The resulting news image.
A demonstrator raises his hands in the "Hands Up, Don't Shoot" pose as a news photographer shoots a photo.
Demonstrators grapple with teat gas canisters fired into the crowd.
A pair of demonstrators exchange words.
Police use an extinguisher to put out a vehicle fire.
Once again, tear gas and smoke filled the night air.
Another surreal vista
Police escort an arrested demonstrator past a line of National Guard troops.
National Guard troops escort a demonstrator arrested during Tueday's unrest.
Security forces continued to maintain an aggressive posture.
MONDAY: After weeks of rising tensions, the announcement Monday evening that a Ferguson grand jury declined to indict police officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of Michael Brown caused immediate outrage among demonstrators. Here’s a look at Monday’s violence and its aftermath.
Authorities report more than a dozen buildings were set on fire overnight while numerous others were damaged and looted. Two police vehicles were also destroyed, numerous cars were set ablaze in a Ferguson dealership.
Police arrested at least 61 people during a running battle with protesters who hurled bottles and epithets. Hospitals report treating at least 16 people for various injuries.
Demonstrators, police, and news media fill the street outside the Ferguson Police headquarters in anticipation of the grand jury verdict.
Demonstrators react angrily as the grand jury verdict is announced.
Police hold back protesters.
A line of protesters raise their hands in front of police.
A line of police in riot gear faces off against demonstrators.
A police officer points his weapon at protesters.
Tear gas spreads among police officers.
Police lights illuminate the growing cloud of smoke.
Tear gas and smoke fills the air along a major street.
A mob of protesters attack a St. Louis County Police vehicle.
Protesters push over a police vehicle.
Police run past a county police vehicle set ablaze.
Firefighters battle a blaze that has consumed a Little Ceasar’s restaurant.
More buildings on fire.
A storage facility goes up in flames.
Meda gather outside another building set ablaze.
Looters move through a private business.
Looters flow out of a store.
A looter emerges from the smoke-filled interior of a Walgreens store.
A man runs through the smashed windows of a looted store with stolen property.
A protester walks out of a vandalized store.
Police line the street below a holiday decoration.
Missouri state troopers form a line outside the Ferguson Police Department.
Police detain a protester
Fellow protesters hold back a young woman as she taunts police.
Demonstrators flee tear gas.
Protesters flee as tear gas canisters impact on the street nearby.
Demonstrators raise their hands in the iconic “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” pose.
A protester waves an American flag upside down, a traditional symbol of distress.
Police take cover behind a police vehicle outside Ferguson Police headquarters.
Police advance on the crowds of protesters.
Demonstrators wearing Guy Fawkes masks listen to coverage of the verdict in a car painting with protest slogans.
A demonstrator uses a liquid to treat the effects of tear gas.
A journalist injured by thrown rocks.
A protester blocks traffic.
A protester stands in the street as a cloud of tear gas approaches.
THE DAY AFTER: A fireman surveys a collapsed building destroyed by fires.
As dawn broke, the extent of the propery damage became evident.
Police survey the damage.
Local shop owners clean up the extensive damage.
Burned-out cars sit on a dealership lot.
Updated: Nov. 26, 2014

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