Another Police Shooting...

[Lord Jim]

Gov. Nixon pulls National Guard from a calmer Ferguson

FERGUSON -- The streets where Michael Brown's death brought angry protests appeared calm Thursday afternoon for the first time since he as shot 12 days earlier.

Along West Florissant Avenue, the scene of nightly demonstrations, it looked like life was begininng to return to normal. There were no protesters. People strolled to stores. The spot where Brown, 18, was felled by Officer Darren Wilson's bullets was quiet save for a few onlookers and reporters who took photos of the flowers, candles and stuffed animals left in memoriam.

After a night of relative calm -- seven arrests vs. 47 the night before -- Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon ordered National Guard troops to begin a "systematic" withdrawal.

Nixon had sent the troops into Ferguson on Monday to protect state troopers and police trying to cope with increasingly violent streets demonstrations after the shooting of the unarmed teen. .

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nati ... /14395465/

It appears that two factors played the most important roles in finally turning the tide on the mayhem...

The first was the development of effective coordination with protest organizers and community leaders, who were successful in getting most of the peaceful, legitimate protestors to clear out before dark...

And the second was an aggressive arrest policy towards the thugs, thieves and hell raisers. On the night before the 47 arrests mentioned in the article, there were 78 arrests, and another forty some odd the night before that. After three nights of high arrests apparently the word finally got out to the lowlifes that Ferguson was not the place to go to carry out their lowlife activities with impunity.

A third factor is probably "protest fatigue". It appears to have dawned on these folks that the government will not be intimidated into lynch mob "justice" and that it could be a month or more, (if ever; the evidence may not justify an indictment; if that decision is announced I'm sure we can expect another round of rioting) before the officer involved is charged. People may finally have decided that living in a community where schools can't open and businesses can't operate isn't a really great idea over the long haul.

ETA:

I feel real sympathy for Ron Johnson, the state police captain who has had operational control over security since the third night of the rioting. He really has bent over backwards and worked extremely hard to try to handle this with as light a police touch as possible, but unfortunately the criminal element saw that as nothing but an opportunity to take advantage of. He had no choice but to ratchet up the policing, and the pain that all of this was causing him was palpable.(he had grown up in Ferguson).

[Econoline]

THE BODY IN THE STREET
By Charles P. Pierce on August 22, 2014

I keep coming back to what seems to me to be the most inhumane thing of all, the inhumane thing that happened before the rage began to rise, and before the backlash began to build, and before the cameras and television lights, and before the tear gas and the stun grenades and the chants and the prayers. I keep coming back to the one image that was there before the international event began, before it became a television show and a symbol in flames and something beyond what it was in the first place. I keep coming back to one simple moment, one ghastly fact. One image, from which all the other images have flowed.

They left the body in the street.

Dictators leave bodies in the street.

Petty local satraps leave bodies in the street.

Warlords leave bodies in the street.

A police officer shot Michael Brown to death. And they left his body in the street. For four hours. Bodies do not lie in the street for four hours. Not in an advanced society. Bodies lie in the street for four hours in small countries where they have perpetual civil war. Bodies lie in the street for four hours on back roads where people fight over the bare necessities of simple living, where they fight over food and water and small, useless parcels of land. Bodies lie in the street for four hours in places in which poor people fight as proxies for rich people in distant places, where they fight as proxies for the men who dig out the diamonds, or who drill out the oil, or who set ancient tribal grudges aflame for modern imperial purposes that are as far from the original grudges as bullets are from bows. Those are the places where they leave bodies in the street, as object lessons, or to make a point, or because there isn't the money to take the bodies away and bury them, or because nobody gives a damn whether they are there or not. Those are the places where they leave bodies in the street.

Bodies are not left in the streets of the leafy suburbs. The bodies of dogs and cats, or squirrels and raccoons, let alone the bodies of children, are not left in the streets of the leafy suburbs. No bodies are left in the streets of the financial districts. Freeze to death on a bench in the financial districts and you are whisked away before your inconvenient body can disturb the folks in line at the Starbucks across the street. But the body of a boy can be left in the street for four hours in a place like Ferguson, Missouri, and who knows whether it was because people wanted to make a point, or because nobody gave a damn whether he was there or not. Ferguson, Missouri was a place where they left a body in the street. For four hours. And the rage rose, and the backlash built, and the cameras arrived, and so did the cops, and the thing became something beyond what it was in the first place. And, in a very real way, in the streets of Ferguson, the body was still in the street.

To read the whole essay, click on the link (above, in the title of the piece).




ETA: (BTW, some of you may remember Charlie Pierce as one of the original panelists on the NPR news quiz show "Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me!" A smart guy, and his blog is well worth following, IMHO.)

[liberty]

By Kevin Murphy

(Reuters) - The police chief of a small south Texas town was shot dead during a traffic stop on Saturday, a county sheriff said.

Michael Pimentel died of multiple gunshot wounds suffered in a confrontation with a motorist shortly before noon in Elmendorf, a rural community of about 1,500 people just southeast of San Antonio, said Bexar County Sheriff Susan Pamerleau.

“We don’t know exactly what ensued between the two individuals but it did result in the suspect firing a weapon that hit the chief several times,” Pamerleau said.

Pimentel was taken by air ambulance to a San Antonio hospital where he died a short time later, she said.

Joshua Manuel Lopez, 24, was taken into custody on charges of capital murder of a police officer, Pamerleau said. When Lopez was stopped, he was wanted on a misdemeanor warrant for graffiti, she said.

Pimentel was in his 60s and had served as chief for about a year and a half, Pamerleau said. He was head of a small department that included a sergeant, two officers and several volunteer reserve officers, she said.

“This tragedy today reinforces the fact that our law enforcement officers’ jobs are dangerous and you never know what they might encounter,” Pamerleau said. “Here was a quiet and peaceful community in south Texas that in an instant turned to tragedy."

(Reporting by Kevin Murphy in Kansas City; Editing by Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles)