After a Week of Unrest in Ferguson, Missouri Governor Wants “a vigorous prosecution” in Michael Brown Case

With not-so-effortless timing, Missouri’s
Governor Jay Nixon announces that, ten days after a Ferguson police
officer shot unarmed Michael Brown at least six times, sparking
violent protests, it’s time for “a vigorous prosecution” to be
pursued.

This comes after an intervening week-plus of police officers on
the street in battle dress, riding armored vehicles, wielding
assault rifles, and firing on the admittedly boisterous crowd in a
feedback loop of viciousness. It was a week that burned indelible
images into many apparently willfully innocent minds of a U.S. city
under what looked like
military occupation. Foreign correspondents flocked to the
scene to capture the exotic scenes of urban conflict in a place
where you could get a decent cup of coffee.

To put the Ferguson fiasco in context, Governor Nixon
sent in the National Guard to deescalate tensions between
authorities and a mostly African-American community fed up with
brutal police tactics.

“National Guard” and deescalate don’t generally appear in the
same sentence.

But now, while promising to restore law and order in Ferguson,
where police are under the command of Captain Ron Johnson of the
Highway Patrol, local officials having been pushed aside as perhaps
a tad too banana-republic-ish in their crowd control instincts,
Governor Nixon
says it just might be time to address the original cause of
upset.

a vigorous prosecution must now be pursued.

The democratically elected St. Louis County prosecutor and the
Attorney General of the United States, each have a job to do. Their
obligation to achieve justice in the shooting death of Michael
Brown must be carried out thoroughly, promptly, and correctly; and
I call upon them to meet those expectations.

Let’s remember that this specific incident started with the
shooting, at least six times, of an unarmed man who may
have been a shoplifter, and who was apparently not suspected of
that crime, but was instead stopped for walking in the street.

Behind that is a long and escalating history of intrusive and
oppressive policing, starting in America’s minority communities,
but extending far beyond. The most visible aspect of that is the
camouflage and armored vehicles, but cops in patrol cars and blue
uniforms can be every bit as big a problem when they adopt an
“obey
or die” attitude and persecute whole neighborhoods.

“A vigorous prosecution” (carried out according to due process,
and not out of panic) is a first step. And Nixon gets it right when
he says, “We won’t always get it right, but we’re going to keep
trying. Because Ferguson is a test, a test not just for the people
of this community, but for all Americans. And it is a test we must
not fail.”

If we’re going to avoid an epic fail, changing the way
police operate throughout the country needs to come
next.