The Ferguson Police Department’s new PR flak was convicted of reckless homicide 10 years ago. No, really.
But he should be fired for cause if he orchestrated yesterday’s PR debacle, in which Police Chief Tom Jackson first issued a video apologizing to the Browns six weeks after Jackson’s officer gunned their unarmed son down and left the kid’s body in the street for several hours. Then Jackson tried to join a protest against…Jackson. Astoundingly, the gesture wasn’t well received:
St. Louis Alderman Antonio French:
I don’t think he was marching with the protesters more than 30 seconds before the riot cops came out into the crowd and tried to get themselves closer to him and protect him,” said French, a St. Louis elected official who has been following demonstrations since the Aug. 9 shooting and who supports calls for Jackson’s resignation. “Just them being out there pushing started stuff — it’s a complete misread of the situation. His very presence agitated the crowd.
Resign already, asshole.
Karen in GA
Good lord. Are there ANY intelligent white people there?
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
Jesus Christ. What? I can’t even…
Steeplejack
They told him to “get out in front of this thing,” and he took them literally.
Belafon
@Karen in GA: Yes, and they would never get elected to office.
Felinious Wench
This white girl has a lot of black friend (not the “prove you’re not racist” type) and we have been very openly discussing this via in person, email, and Facebook. Not only do they not get it in Ferguson, anyone who defends the police in any locations like New York, anyone who attacks Treyvon, anyone who thinks they’re “standing up because people are mistaken about the facts,” anyone who says “I understand what it’s like to be discriminated against, I once was treated unfairly” needs to shut the ever-loving fuck up. Seriously, just shut the fuck up.
We absolutely can empathize, but we DON’T understand. We have not experienced it in our communities for generation after generation. It doesn’t matter that the Irish got it years ago, or my ancient ancestors were indentured servants. And black people can determine who is racist and who is not without being told.
Goddamn it.
/rant
CONGRATULATIONS!
The mind reels. I work for a place that I frequently am given cause to refer to as “Mismanagement Central” but that is above and beyond anything I’ve ever heard of.
As to the chief going out to the crowd, well, I think he knows they fucked up good and hard and I think he thought he was doing the right thing, but that was not a good idea either for calming the crowd or for his own personal safety.
Emma
My gob is thoroughly smacked. Honestly. Not only incompetence but contempt for the intelligence of African-Americans. Sheer effrontery.
Cervantes
It’s worse than that. It’s very unlikely he would have issued that “apology” if he didn’t already know that Wilson will not be indicted. (Would prejudice the case and all that.)
Betty Cracker
@Cervantes: I hadn’t thought of that angle, but what you say makes sense. It might also explain why they pushed the timeframe back on the grand jury; maybe they’re hoping the furor will die down. I don’t think that will happen.
? Martin
One of the front pagers might want to grab onto this:
http://www.propublica.org/article/carmen-segarras-secret-recordings-from-inside-new-york-fed
I doubt this will blow up into anything as big as it should, but it deserves more attention than it’ll receive.
Amir Khalid
One is disappointed, but not surprised, to learn of the Ferguson PD doing something stupid and insensitive in its dealings with black people. Or to learn that the consequences of shooting Michael Brown, the worldwide shaming and the likelihood of Federal prosecution, have not put the local constabulary off its tendency to deal violently with black people.
debbie
Seems pretty emblematic of the GOP to me. Just like having a bunch of old white guys testifying to what women really want in the way of contraception. Absolutely tone deaf.
kindness
I think the guy trying to march with the people was a nice sign but I think that whole department is filled with assholes who should never have been hired as cops.
Unless they are willing to wipe out half that force and hire better people I’m not sure anything is going to change there. Obviously way too many on that force don’t like minorities and think it is police’s role to run roughshod over them to keep them in their place. Yea, we know. Dirty little not secret. With that in mind it’s amazing there haven’t been reprisals from civilians.
Humans…..aliens listening in would shake their heads and go out of their way to have nothing to do with us.
JaneE
I heard “didn’t intend” and wondered how in the world anyone could be that clueless.
Maybe you didn’t intend to disrespect or show contempt for Michael Brown and his family and friends because the disrespect and contempt you have for black people is so innate and deeply rooted that you no longer have conscious awareness of it. To other people, it is obvious. Any single thing that happened in Ferguson might have been inadvertent. Putting a whole string of them together for days in a row – that’s what you do if you want to start a race riot, or maybe a civil war. I would guess that you didn’t intend for Ferguson to be known globally as a the premier example of human rights abuses in the United States, but that is what you accomplished.
Roger Moore
@kindness:
The bigger problem is that the dislike of minorities and desire to run roughshod over them is coming from the top down. The police are doing exactly what they were hired to do, and they are never going to be fired and replaced until the politicians who are responsible for overseeing the department are replaced.
Patrick
Did his apology also include the idiotic action of releasing the video of Brown the very same time they released the killer’s name?
Cervantes
@Betty Cracker: Yep. The apology is intended to be pre-emptive and they’re hoping it will damp down some of the fury when the “no bill” is announced.
Mike J
If a cop had been killed I have no doubt in my mind that the crime scene would have been scoured from top to bottom, every shred of evidence collected, photos taken from every possible angle, everything recorded down to the most minute detail in hopes of getting a conviction. And they would have done it all after they respectfully moved the body in the first two minutes after arriving on the scene.
scav
speaking of, Has this been getting larger play in other media? Went to bed expecting to find it more places by now.
Ohio police given ‘pep talk’ on shooting scenarios ahead of Walmart encounter
They seemingly are being trained to emotionally react with violence and at speed.
Cacti
O/T but just saw this and it made my morning.
Meet The Press is pulling even lower ratings with Chuck Toad than they were with Dancing Dave.
I has a happy.
Karen in GA
@Cacti: That’s pretty funny.
Suffern ACE
@Cacti: I guess no one wanted to see that different perspective chuck Todd brought to the show. The bulk of his ratings are from dead people who set their TiVos to record the show and whose bodies haven’t been found by the neighbors yet.
shortstop
@Suffern ACE: That made me laugh immoderately.
jo6pac
I thought eric the holder had this under control and doj/fbi were going to solve all the problems. Well it was a good photo op for the now bailing eric-the-holder.
Cacti
@jo6pac:
What are you emo-ing on about?
Holder had said months ago that this would be his last year as AG.
SatanicPanic
@Felinious Wench: I hear what you’re saying, but I’m not sure this is helpful.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@jo6pac:
You may have thought that. I haven’t any idea why you would think that, but you may have done so.
boatboy_srq
@Roger Moore: This explains both the fixation on maintaining gerrymandered districts and the conviction that Voter Fraud Is Ruining This Country™. Without the
whiteright people running the place it’ll go straight to BLEEP, and all those uppity folk do is make a mess of things. (/snark, in case nobody figured that last bit out)@Karen in GA: the iggerance of many white volk is vastly underestimated. Semi-related example: overheard shopping at Tysons Corner Galleria the other weekend, when one particular couple encountered the (G-rated, IYMK) LGBT periodicals at B&N – “How can they put that there? I thought this was a Christian mall…”
boatboy_srq
@Suffern ACE: Those volk are all still registered to vote in Ferguson, yes?
Patrick
@jo6pac:
Bailing? He is one of our longest serving AG’s in our history. Furthermore, how do you know where the DOJ/FBI are in their investigation?
LAC
@jo6pac: “I thought…” Stop right there! What did you momma say about working without tools again?
Mnemosyne
@scav:
Because that’s what we need right now — not police reacting calmly and with control, but emotionally ramped-up cops who will shoot someone at the slightest provocation to “avoid another Sandy Hook.”
I heard the end of a very depressing story on NPR yesterday about the new guidelines for Seattle cops, which of course have their police union up in arms — whaddaya mean we’re supposed to stop and assess the situation instead of going in guns a’blazing? What fun is that?
LAC
@Cacti: lol! If it’s Sunday, it’s Beat the Press in ratings.
gratuitous
Amazing. Credibility is just no longer a commodity, along with critical thinking skills. People seem to have credibility simply because they’re on the teevee machine a lot (e.g., John McCain, George Will), and it doesn’t really matter what they say or how wrong they are. This salutary situation doesn’t obtain for everyone, naturally, but there seems to be an irreducible group of people who are called upon to bloviate about anything that crosses their tiny little minds.
I bring that up because the authorities in Ferguson seem to have developed the mindset that they can do no wrong, and that whatever they do is done from the purest of motives and will be (should be) well-received by everyone.
Amir Khalid
@boatboy_srq:
Speaking of ignorant white people, this exemplar thereof announces that more “prayer rugs” have been found on the Texas side of the Mexican border — no doubt these, like the last one, bear the well-known Islamic inscription, DIE MARKE MIT DEN 3 STREIFEN.
Karen in GA
“Eric the holder”? It’s like a six-year-old sees his ten-year-old brother make other ten-year-olds laugh by making fun of someone’s name, so the six-year-old tries it too — and, by the exacting standards of a bunch of snickering 10-year-olds, fails.
And none of the kids have any idea why they have to leave the room when the adults want to have a conversation.
steve
Slate is reporting that they have fired the PR rep:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2014/09/26/ferguson_police_chief_pr_rep_has_reckless_homicide_conviction.html
SatanicPanic
@Amir Khalid: I don’t want to give them any ideas, but how long before some James O’Keefe type starts buying rugs leaving some out there on purpose?
Belafon
@Amir Khalid: I’m going to put those up there with crop circles.
Belafon
@SatanicPanic: Last week.
Amir Khalid
@SatanicPanic:
That wouldn’t work. To these fools, only an Adidas football shirt looks like a Muslim prayer rug.
Gin & Tonic
@Amir Khalid: I’m going to show my ignorance, but is there any difference between a prayer rug and a rug rug?
Calouste
@kindness:
That they hired a PR rep who was convicted of reckless homicide tells you enough about their hiring practices. In other words, a single cop there runs more background checks during a single traffic stop than their HR department does in an entire year.
Kathleen
@Suffern ACE: But…but…the “edginess”. The swipy screen thingy. The Starbucks vs Chick-Fil-A. I don’t get why this would not be drawing viewers like magnets.
Amir Khalid
@Gin & Tonic:
Prayer rugs are made for the purpose, and customarily used. Mosques in Malaysia typically have the main prayer hall carpeted for the congregation’s comfort. But a rug is not actually required; any clean surface is fine.
SatanicPanic
@Amir Khalid: OK, I’m going to drive down there and leave Nike jerseys just to mess with them
Gin & Tonic
@Amir Khalid: But it’s just a question of the rug’s size, right? There is nothing about its design or markings or color that says “this is to be used for prayer” as opposed to, say, putting it in my entry hall for decorative purposes?
shortstop
@Amir Khalid: Those Muslim wetbacks sure are sloppy with the details. I mean, they keep dropping Qur’ans, prayer rugs, and little scraps of paper on which “Allahu Akbar!” and “Die, Infidels!” are scrawled. They never seem to lose key rings or Kleenex packets or any other generic possessions, just telling symbols of their faith.
shortstop
I’m extremely surprised we haven’t yet found any Muslim prayer curtains abandoned near the border.
Mnemosyne
@Amir Khalid:
One of the top comments over there: “Somebody finds some bath mats from a demolished trailer park and they become prayer rugs now?”
There’s a pretty interesting documentary called Hell House about a church in Texas that does an annual “haunted house” that’s really an opportunity for them to try and evangelize people. It’s simultaneously really disturbing (especially the attitude towards rape victims and LGBT people) and extremely funny to see how frickin’ clueless they are about the supposed “occult” symbols they use.
(It’s also unexpectedly poignant because one of the families they focus on is a single father with four kids, two of whom are disabled. The church is awful, but you can tell that if this guy didn’t have this church to lean on for emotional, financial, and childcare support, he would have put a bullet in his head years ago.)
boatboy_srq
@Amir Khalid: I blame IKEA.
Patrick
@Cacti:
When is the MSM going to understand that their ratings won’t go up if they go out of their way to repeat BS right-wing talking points without challenging them? People that watch FoxNews will never switch from FoxNews to NBC. And people like me will never return to Meet the Press as long as they keep repeating the right-wing talking points. And the idiotic process of inviting more Republican guests than Democratic guests makes me think twice of ever returning as a viewer. Good luck, Mr Todd!
Mnemosyne
Also, to the actual point of the thread — it probably was not the worst idea in the world for Jackson to take off his uniform and go down to try and talk to people one-on-one. It was the worst idea in the world to surround him with the very riot police that people are pissed off about.
Joey Maloney
@Patrick:
How long did it take the Democrats to figure out that given the choice between a fake Republican and a real Republican, Republicans would vote for the real one every time?
Plantsmantx
It’s somehow fitting that they hired this sleazy “PR” con man. It’s also fitting that he turned out to be as inept as they are.
Felinious Wench
@SatanicPanic: “I hear what you’re saying, but I’m not sure this is helpful.”
I wrote you a long, thoughtful reply, but FYWP.
So, shorter version. I agree with you, it’s not helpful. Rants rarely are….which is why I added the /rant tag. It’s emotional, not factual or elegantly argued. I completely acknowledge that.
I also thanked you for your civility in not telling me to fuck off. :)
Cacti
@Patrick:
Dancing Dave came across as a lazy parrot of GOP conventional wisdom.
Chuck Toad on the other hand, comes off as a smarmy, full bore propagandist, having previously stated explicitly that reporting facts and correcting Republican misinformation was not his job.
I mean, he started his first show with the complete fabrication that the POTUS had not mentioned Syria in their interview, despite having mentioned it about 30-seconds previously.
Villago Delenda Est
@boatboy_srq:
It’s crap like this that makes me forget that it would be cruel to throw “Christians” into an arena floor filled with starving lions. Cruel to the lions, that is.
Villago Delenda Est
@Joey Maloney: Truman told them about it back in the 40’s and some still haven’t figured it out yet.
drkrick
@Villago Delenda Est: I’m trying to figure out how clueless you would have to be to pick up the idea that Tysons Galleria of all places would be a “Christian” anything. This is not some Bible Belt burg where half the strip malls probably have a fish symbol worked into their logo somewhere. Jeebus.
EthylEster
FPer wrote:
So do you think he should be fired for this?
If he had disclosed his background to everyone, he would have never gotten the (that is, any) job.
Sort of a catch-22.
Palli Davis
@Steeplejack: Jackson was a Trojan Horse. The cops are desperately trying to create as many riots as possible before the mid-term elections to solidify the white vote. There are may Euro Americans standing with the African American residents of Ferguson.