Ferguson Police Chief Says No Dashcams in Cop Cars, Body Suits Not in Use Yet—Riots Continue

Rioting in Ferguson, Missouri continued a second
night after the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown,  an
unarmed 18-year-old shot by police. Cops claim Brown, described by
family and friends as
a good-hearted, respectful kid, was attempting to grab a gun
from a cop before he was shot. Witnesses say Brown had his hands in
the air when cops shot him.

The Ferguson Police Department reportedly has body cameras for
its cops, so it shouldn’t be difficult to get to the truth. Except,
according to police, they haven’t started using the body cameras
they purchased yet, while Ferguson squad cars aren’t (!) equipped
with dashcams.
Via Fox News:

Ferguson Police Chief Tom Jackson told KSDK-TV that there’s no
video footage of the shooting from the apartment complex or from
any police cruiser dashboard cameras or body-worn cameras that the
department recently bought but has not yet put to use.

Despite the rioting, a response to what looks a lot like a
cold-blooded killing by cops, crime in
Ferguson has been declining for the last decade and a half,
approaching the national average. At the same time, while blacks
make up two-thirds of the population, they are
twice as likely to be stopped by police as whites, accounting
for 93 percent of arrests and 92 percent of searches. This despite
cops finding contraband on 34 percent of whites stopped but only 22
percent of blacks, according to a racial profiling report from the
Missouri’s attorney general last year.

Last night riot police used tear gas and rubber
bullets to disperse protesters, claiming some had thrown rocks at
them. Police barricaded main throughways in the area, such as
I-270. There were also reports on Twitter of police confiscating
cameras, although there a lot of photos of last night’s events as
well. The FBI has announced it is investigating the incident, which
some community leaders hope will return calm. More protests are
scheduled for today—the police officer who shot and killed Brown
has not been identified yet, cops have not explained why Brown was
in their police car in the first place, something they claim
happened, and there have been no charges or arrests related to the
Saturday afternoon incident at all.

Brown’s family, in the meantime, has hired Benjamin Crump, who
represented the family of Trayvon Martin. “I don’t want to sugar
coat it,” the attorney
said, the teenager “was executed in broad daylight.” Brown’s
parents have
condemned the looting that has accompanied some of the
protests, saying such behavior also has the effect of pushing their
son out of the picture. Ferguson’s mayor, James Knowles,
blamed a “small group of people” (the cops??) for “creating a
huge mess,” saying the rioting was “only hurting our community.” In
some other political cultures, Knowles and other city leaders might
be expected and obligated to resign in a show of disgrace,
contrition, and an admission that they are, because of their faults
and history, unable to fix the problem. Instead look for them to
keep blaming the residents that are growing tired of being victims
of local police.