By: Jeff Katz – December, 2014
There are quite literally thousands of interactions between citizens and law enforcement officers every single day in the United States. Unless you are the cop or the suspect in one of these situations, you’re not aware of them. Why? Because almost all of these incidences involve issues which are not particularly noteworthy.
The incident in Ferguson, MO should have been among the thousands of cases we know nothing about. An eighteen year old man being asked to get out of the street is hardly a headline grabber. Even the arrest of an eighteen year old man for stealing some cheap cigars would usually not get any attention. Heck, a fight between a police officer and an eighteen year old man is not particularly newsworthy. So, why do all of us now know the names Michael Brown and Darren Wilson?
We know about Michael Brown because a carefully crafted life story has been created by those who are looking to exploit his memory. If the professional race hustlers told the truth about Michael Brown, well, they’d have nothing to peddle. See, an eighteen year old man who stands six feet six inches tall and weighs close to three hundred pounds is hardly a doe eyed babe in the woods. So the first thing they did was to make sure that only photos of him from his childhood would be available, kind of like the tactic they took when exploiting the Trayvon Martin case.
After casting Michael Brown as a helpless little boy, the con men in clerical collars made sure that Brown’s strong arm robbery was ignored and the entire “hands up – don’t shoot” meme was created. Make no mistake, “hands up – don’t shoot” is a great angle but it is also purely fictional. We’ve seen multiple times in this case that facts simply do not matter. And as usual useful idiots be they college students, Congressmen or Saint Louis Ram players were willing to play along.
Darren Wilson was the beat cop who had the misfortune to encounter Michael Brown on that August evening. Wilson was a well respected member of the Ferguson Police Department who made a simple request of Brown; please get out of the street. Nothing more, nothing less. The tragic decisions that night were all made by Brown. It was Brown who made the choice not to comply with Wilson’s lawful request. It was Brown who charged the cop and it was Brown who turned a simple thing in to a life and death matter.
Protesters, cops, civilians and talking heads of all stripes can all agree that Michael Brown did not need to die that night. We should all be aware of who was really in control of this situation and it was not Darren Wilson. If only Michael Brown had conducted himself properly he’d be here now. He didn’t so he’s not.