Contumacious
Radical Freedom
“Outside Agitators” in Ferguson
William Norman Grigg
During a less-than-demanding interview with Fox News coiffure model Sean Hannity, Chief Thomas Jackson of the Ferguson, Missouri Police Department blamed “a lot of outside agitators” for the looting and other violence that has spun off from protests over the killing of Michael Brown. Neither Hannity nor Ferguson mentioned the role of influences outside of Ferguson or the State of Missouri in facilitating the hyper-aggressive violence of the town’s police department.
Ferguson is a town of about 21,000 people — two-thirds of whom are black — has an unremarkable violent crime rate (thefts are regrettably plentiful there) and — as the world has seen — a police department that has received the full panoply of military toys and battlefield-grade weapons.
Although it has been armed to the gills through the Pentagon’s 1033 program, the police department has no functional dashcams or body cameras to record “interactions” with the public; the department has received that hardware, but hasn’t gotten around to using it. It’s all a matter of priorities: Military-grade armaments and equipment can enhance officer safety, while video recorders can imperil the career security of abusive police officers"
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William Norman Grigg
During a less-than-demanding interview with Fox News coiffure model Sean Hannity, Chief Thomas Jackson of the Ferguson, Missouri Police Department blamed “a lot of outside agitators” for the looting and other violence that has spun off from protests over the killing of Michael Brown. Neither Hannity nor Ferguson mentioned the role of influences outside of Ferguson or the State of Missouri in facilitating the hyper-aggressive violence of the town’s police department.
Ferguson is a town of about 21,000 people — two-thirds of whom are black — has an unremarkable violent crime rate (thefts are regrettably plentiful there) and — as the world has seen — a police department that has received the full panoply of military toys and battlefield-grade weapons.
Although it has been armed to the gills through the Pentagon’s 1033 program, the police department has no functional dashcams or body cameras to record “interactions” with the public; the department has received that hardware, but hasn’t gotten around to using it. It’s all a matter of priorities: Military-grade armaments and equipment can enhance officer safety, while video recorders can imperil the career security of abusive police officers"
.