Remember when the authorities in Ferguson asked for a no-fly zone, and all of assumed it was to make it harder to document their criminal activies? We were right:
The U.S. government agreed to a police request to restrict more than 37 square miles of airspace surrounding Ferguson, Missouri, for 12 days in August for safety, but audio recordings show that local authorities privately acknowledged the purpose was to keep away news helicopters during violent street protests.
On Aug. 12, the morning after the Federal Aviation Administration imposed the first flight restriction, FAA air traffic managers struggled to redefine the flight ban to let commercial flights operate at nearby Lambert-St. Louis International Airport and police helicopters fly through the area — but ban others.
“They finally admitted it really was to keep the media out,” said one FAA manager about the St. Louis County Police in a series of recorded telephone conversations obtained by The Associated Press. “But they were a little concerned of, obviously, anything else that could be going on.
At another point, a manager at the FAA’s Kansas City center said police “did not care if you ran commercial traffic through this TFR (temporary flight restriction) all day long. They didn’t want media in there.”
FAA procedures for defining a no-fly area did not have an option that would accommodate that.
“There is really … no option for a TFR that says, you know, ‘OK, everybody but the media is OK,'” he said. The managers then worked out wording they felt would keep news helicopters out of the controlled zone but not impede other air traffic.
The conversations contradict claims by the St. Louis County Police Department, which responded to demonstrations following the shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown, that the restriction was solely for safety and had nothing to do with preventing media from witnessing the violence or the police response.
Is every one in that city power structure a criminal?
srv
So it’s Obama’s fault?
The FAA does not work for St. Louis county.
Phil Perspective
Is every one in that city power structure a criminal?
Pretty much. Or accessories. Maybe we should ask them about “If you see something, say something.”
redshirt
We need a People’s Drone Army.
dr. luba
Is every one in that city power structure a criminal?
Yes. SATSQ.
TaMara (BHF)
I have stopped being shocked by all of this. These people are craven, soulless, and without a moral code. I don’t even know how you begin to address the decay.
Totally unrelated, but it’s keeping me away from the site today – horrible auto-play ads I can’t find, pause or mute. Screaming at me about Mark Udall. I have everything disabled that can be disabled, and still they’ve found a way.
Please make it stop.
300baud
What you have to understand is the amendment regarding the freedom of the press is pretty far down in the constitution. They didn’t mean anything by it; they just haven’t read that far.
Omnes Omnibus
Wait for the grand jury result.
PurpleGirl
@TaMara (BHF): Do you use Adblock and/or Flash block? I’m using Firefox with those two plug-ins because animated ads of any sort bother my eyes (my eyes being drawn to the movement). I find I don’t get those “secret” ads with the plug-ins loaded. Just my experience of what I need to do to protect myself. I’d go anxiety crazy if I had to see/hear animated ads of any sort.
ETA: I do sympathize.
Howard Beale IV
At least it sounds like some folks at the FAA saw this for what it was, and questioned it-and they did bitch when it did impede commercial flights.
How do you destroy the Ferguson Government without destroying its residents? Only thing I can think of is a recall of all its government officials.
SWMBO
@Howard Beale IV: Can you prosecute them for aiding and abetting? Might send a clearer signal.
Roger Moore
@Howard Beale IV:
Get those residents registered and to the polls. The solution to the problems in Ferguson is to make sure that the elected officials running the government actually represent the people they’re supposed to be representing.
Tree With Water
If Bush-Cheney (et.al) and FOX “news” (et.al.) has taught republicans one lesson, it is not to worry about telling lies to the American people.
amk
So, the revolution won’t be televised after all?
Shalimar
@300baud: It’s right at the beginning of the Bill of Rights; Not hard to find. I think the problem is that the 2nd Amendment to authoritarian minds is like a laser pointer to a cat. They get anywhere near the light on the wall and they can’t focus on anything else.
If they had just saved freedom of the press for the 10th amendment, authoritarians wouldn’t have any trouble finding it. They would be for abolishing it, but at least they could find it.
BlueDWarrior
It is times like this that we have remember a very pertinent quote to something like this:
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? [Idiomatically ‘translated’ as “Who watches the watch-men?”]
Ultimately, we have to do it if we really care. And what history has shown us is that we are too apathetic to care unless it’s our friends and families literally being beaten by police. Otherwise we just tell the people with the boots to their necks to shut up and stop screaming so loud. It’s so unseemly don’t you know?
AndoChronic
It doesn’t matter if choppers are in the air or not.
sharl
I swear that whole suburban STL area is run by vampires, with the African-American community providing them their blood meals (e.g., via crushing fines at traffic court, often leading to jail time when the money has run out). The script for a horror movie practically writes itself. Makes American Gothic look like Mr. Rogers Neighborhood by comparison.
Joel Hanes
Same reason that law enforcement all along the Gulf Coast were instructed to prevent first-hand investigation in the aftermath of BP’s Macondo spill, First Amendment be damned — the flow of enough money and power leaves complicity in its wake, and the guilty don’t want to be exposed.
Same reason that Obama had to reverse himself on his pre-election promise to veto any FISA bill that included retroactive immunity for the telecoms who cooperated with the Bushies unconstitutionally-broad wiretapping of American citizens — after inauguration, he learned that prominent Democrats would be exposed for complicity in those crimes (**cough**Harmon**cough**Feinstein**). He couldn’t very well start his Administration by setting up national leaders of his party for indictment, so breaking that promise (and the hearts of liberals pining for a civil rights champion) was the price we paid for Dem complicity.
Mandalay
@TaMara (BHF):
Install an ad-blocker. The very best one of all, AdMuncher, recently became free! O/T, but the guy who created it sorta explained why he has made it free:
Mandalay
@Joel Hanes:
I am sure that Obama was well aware of that before he ever became president. He may have his failings, but he is not that naive.
Getting elected president is really difficult. Making and breaking campaign promises is easy.
gogiggs
@Shalimar: You might want to have your sarcasm detector looked at. It doesn’t appear to be working.
sharl
Adding to my earlier comment, Radley Balko recently wrote about the horrible court system in St. Louis County, and here’s his tweet showing a map of just how densely the courts are distributed in the area outside the city. [The data behind the map and study of the regional court system was collected and analyzed by the St. Louis urban research organization Better Together.]
Shakezula
These people are just fucking ridiculous. Before this is all over we’ll find they were forcing people to house members of the National Guard.
@Howard Beale IV: The government (or at least the leadership) is destroying the people of Ferguson.
This reminds me of arguments that you shouldn’t jail abusive “bread winners” because mom and kids will starve if the person who beats them can’t work.
However, in the instance of Ferguson’s government, you could take out the people responsible for the massive violations of civil rights and still leave all of the services the government provides intact. So if anything, this is worse than the abusive family member comment.
PaulW
Yes.
Time to file federal charges re: civil rights abuses against every elected official or administrative person involved in this bullsh-t.
debbie
@Omnes Omnibus:
Do you think the DA will actually present this information to them?
PaulW
@Omnes Omnibus:
They’ve already leaked the grand jury result. Minds are already made up in that legal district to protect the cops and punish the civilians.
debbie
More post-racial brilliance at work:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/native-americans-washington-redskins-lawsuit
Bystander
I just wish I could accept the fact that after tomorrow, the whole country’s government will effectively become a great big Ferguson. Stupid, racist, hate-filled and evil.
MattF
Hey, they’re white, so… not criminal, by definition.
Chris
Yes to the “criminal” question, and probably far beyond just Ferguson. The crackdowns on OWS rallies were pretty blatant as well, and those happened all over the country.
Culture of Truth
They just lie and lie and lie and lie and lie
Console
I hate TFR’s. They are these security theater abominations that are half DHS half FAA. Sometimes they serve a good purpose, but most of the time they are nuisances.The upside is that a local government is going to get called on its bullshit very quickly if they start grounding itinerant flights. It’s one thing to piss off a local news station. But it’s a whole other thing to start pissing off airlines and ridiculously rich people. Once Delta starts breathing down your neck then you better have a legitimate safety reason for why you are calling a TFR that’s more restrictive than the one the President gets.
Alicia
I wonder if this is why the NYT ran that puff piece on the Ferguson Police Department about how baffled and upset they were that the African-American townspeople of Ferguson hated their guts. Of course they made sure to talk to the two black people in the department: a female dispatcher and a male cop to try and give cover to Ferguson police.
RAM
Is that a trick question?
Cervantes
Valued commenter mclaren has answered this question. Others have as well.
El Caganer
@Omnes Omnibus: I’m not following you. What does the grand jury have to do with this? Would this information be presented to it? I don’t know what the jury is or is not supposed to be looking at, so I’m not trying to be snarky here.
Shalimar
@gogiggs: The detector wasn’t the problem, I just felt the strong urge to pile on.
Cervantes
@redshirt:
The Chinese have one. Perhaps we could borrow it.
kindness
I will be curious to see what the voting turn out is in Ferguson. If what has happened there isn’t enough to get people to the polls then, I hate to say it…but then they will deserve what they end up with.
A liberals lament.
Carl Nyberg
That the FAA went along reminds me of a story about Department of Veterans Affairs bending to the will of a local prosecutor.
The county in question had a veterans court for non-violent offenders who were veterans. Department of VA assigned a social worker who was also both a lawyer and a former prosecutor.
The county prosecutor was pushing for a veteran to be tried in normal criminal court rather than the court for non-violent veterans.
The VA social worker said the veteran was eligible for the veterans court. The prosecutor argued that a breaking-and-entering offense was a violent crime. The judge agreed with the VA social worker.
Then the prosecutor called the Department of Veterans Affairs and asked for a new social worker to be assigned (presumably one not so assertive and lacking training as a lawyer & experience as a prosecutor). And the VA moved the social worker with legal training to other duties.
J R in WV
Historically, isn’t it likely that we have a better and more democratic society today than we did in the past?
After all, the House Un-American Activities committee is no longer issuing subpoenas to innocent Americans in an attempt to identify communists and punish them by making them unemployable. Oh, wait…
The Mafia is no longer working to corrupt every facet of society in order to smuggle boot-legged alcoholic beve— wait, what
Help me out here, I’m sure America right now today is the best it has ever been!! The sun is shining, employment is high, people are happy and, wait… just a minute. People are underemployed, unhappy, dissatisfied. But they won’t vote to change things.
Voting won’t change things if people who are pissed won’t participate, file to run, work to elect each other.
And yes, everyone in the Ferguson government is crooked, Simple Answers To Simple Questions! But I repeat those above who beat me to it.
Off to work the phones for a candidate who isn’t perfect, but is very much better than the alternative. Wish there wasn’t so much Hippie Punching, but you do what you gotta do…
Console
@Carl Nyberg:
Sounds about right. For all the talk of how powerful the federal government is, at the local level you can’t really piss on anyone that has the ear of the local Congressman. At least not for little issues. You get the backing of the agency though and you can piss on whoever you want.
fidelio
I dopn’t think the power structure of St. Louis, city and county, is any more crooked than any other large metropolitan area in the US. They are twisted and perverted by the effects of centuries of racism, and their inability ot let go of that, whether it’s a major strand in their natures or whether they’re just giving the “public” what they think the “public” wants so as to keep themselves in their positions.
St. Louis was, during the Civil War, a Confederate city in the minds of many of its white residents. Much of the power structure in the county has been informed and shaped by White Flight syndrome. In many cases they do not see African-Americans as their fellow citizens, but as a problem that needs to be managed and controlled.
Since the Civil Rights era, there really hasn’t been any sustained drive to call them on this poisonous approach to governance, and from the era of Reagan on, the worst of them have felt empowered and supported in their approach to this “problem”.
For some idea of what people are dealing with, maybe those of you willing to dip into Twitter could check out Deray McKesson’s (@deray) adventures last night when a friend was at the ER after an accident. I’d link, but I’m at work where they wisely keep toys like Twitter locked up.
Another Holocene Human
@sharl: The vampires Abe Lincoln couldn’t reach with his hatchet settled in MO?
Sounds legit.
mclaren
Yes. That’s why Eric Holder and the federal justice department is now pursuing an aggressive investigation of the Ferguson police department and justice system. It’s also why people are now talking openly about dismantling the entire Ferguson PD.
Long past time.
The real issue, though, is why Obama hasn’t commissioned a study from his own DOJ to see how many other American cities exhibit this same pattern of criminality and racism. Armed with that study, Holder could then crack down hard on small town police departments throughout the U.S. Current anti-discrmination laws give him a very big club, since most local PDs get massive amounts of federal funding (AKA military weaponry and military training) today. That’s not even mentioning the massive civil rights violations of amendments 5, 6, 8 and 14 involved in these kinds of small-town police abuses.
I find it startling that progressives aren’t pounding the table about this kind of stuff, since these measures are clearly and obviously something that both Obama _and_ Holder (or Holder’s replacement) could do right now, without congressional approval. Nobody in the White House or the DOJ needs any kind of permission from congress to launch investigations and then put muggers with badges in handcuffs and force ’em to do a perp walk. That’s just a matter of enforcing laws that are on the books. Nobody needs a congressional sign-off to enforce laws that are already in the books.
mclaren
@TaMara (BHF):
AdBlock is your friend.
Try it. You’ll be glad you did. Also think about installing Greasemonkey and some anti-flash and anti-ad extensions. They work magic.
mclaren
@fidelio:
The statistics disprove your assertion.
When you have a city with three outstanding criminal warrants per household, that’s freakish. I’ve never heard of that anywhere but Ferguson MO.
If you try to explain how holding court hearings half an hour before the scheduled time and then locking the doors of the courtroom 5 minutes after the scheduled time for the start of the hearing is just like “any other large metropolitan area in the U.S.,” people will point at you and laugh.
This is corruption on an epochal scale. It’s Boss-Tweed levels of judicial and police criminality.
My Truth Hurts
Is everyone in that government a criminal? It’s a microcosm of the country. Of the world. The entire system from building inspector to POTUS is rigged for the rich and powerful. Since day one.
fidelio
@mclaren: Its the racism. The majority of the people behind this see what they’re doing as good and necessary; keeping Those People in Line justifies anything. They see themselves as defenders of civilization, keeping the lights on for humanity.
After all, however the tickets and warrants average out, the majority of that paper does not fall on the heads of white people.
Of course, once you open yourself to corruption for one reason, you’ll be willing to consider it for others. But the root of the tree that bears this poisonous fruit is nurtured in centuries of composted racism.
fidelio
@mclaren: I’ll also note that we know about Ferguson because of the efforts of people there and in the greater St. Louis area who have spent nearly 90 days protesting, keeping the incident in the eyes of the world. We have no idea how many other Fergusons, just as distorted and twisted in their civic functions are out there. The people who are most likely to know have struggled for years to get the rest of us to catch on.
There are lots of suburbs and small towns like Ferguson in the US. It’s fortuitous that this killing managed to get traction as well as it did, that the local people who started the protests found as much comfort & support as they have. Ferguson isn’t worse than other places; it’s just the place on our radar.
In general, St. Louis city and county government is not crookeder than Chicago’s, Philadelphia’s, Baltimore’s, Cleveland’s, or Louisville’s. In terms of general corruption, it’s playing in the kiddie pool next to New Orleans. But once race gets into it, anything is justified. It”s not the only place where this is true.