

The Front Lines of Ferguson - cjf4
http://grantland.com/features/ferguson-missouri-protest-michael-brown-murder-police/

======
gavanwoolery
Not going to try to defend the actions police or anything (I think the protest
is for a good cause), but one piece of info I think is valuable:

Mob mentality is dangerous. There is a thin line between a "peaceful protest"
and a riot. If you have seen other protests that have turned into riots (like
in France where several innocent shops got destroyed in an anti-Israel
protest), or in England where the riots got way out of control, you know what
can happen. Its a few police trying to keep a huge crowd in control - and it
is a scary job. Unfortunately being well-armed makes the crowds even angrier.

~~~
omgtehblackbloc
Riots like these happen because people feel that society is fundamentally
hostile to them - that it is trying to kill them. And so it makes perfect
sense to attack society in general. Cops, shops, news vans...whatever. People
fight back when they are under attack. It's a natural response, and
suppressing it only causes it to build up and erupt.

You don't prevent riots like this with tanks, you prevent them by having a
healthy society. And ours is seriously ill.

~~~
icantthinkofone
The riots and burning occurred before the police in riot gear showed up. Not
after. [http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-
courts/attacked...](http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-
courts/attacked-on-the-job-a-post-dispatch-photographer-s-
tale/article_1b6fba60-5ac1-592a-8818-19614f1910aa.html)

~~~
DanBC
From the article you posted:

> At first, the crowd was quiet, even peaceful, he said. But as night dropped,
> more began showing up. And cops came, too, with riot gear and assault
> rifles.

~~~
icantthinkofone
The crowd was angry, tense and numbered in the thousands. You're not going to
show up with flyswatters.

Here's my point. Would YOU have reacted the same way? I would not. Most people
would not. Why are people trying to blame the police for their actions?

Interesting fact that just came up. The boy who was killed had robbed a
convenience store just minutes before.
[http://www.stltoday.com/news/multimedia/videos/ferguson-
poli...](http://www.stltoday.com/news/multimedia/videos/ferguson-police-
release-convenience-store-surveillance-
video/html_9cdfc317-764d-5ccd-a574-2c75d2d0c753.html)

And now the story takes a turn.

~~~
DanBC
You lied. You said they were already rioting before the police turned up in
riot gear.

There's no point continuing the conversation with someone willing to mislead.

And so what if he did rob a shop? The penalty for that is arrest, charge,
trial, conviction, punishment. Not drag to the back of a police car, shoot him
in the head.

------
pezh0re
Last night's atmosphere stood in stark contrast to the evening prior. I think
it's due almost entirely to how the state troopers interacted with the crowds.
They were in their normal, non-body armor uniforms. They walked among the
crowd, exchanged laughs, and generally set the mood at ease. By respecting the
protesters, the tensions were lessened - the situation, deescalated. At the
same time, the riot ready police were a mile away, ready to take action if
required.

Compare that to police in full armor, with tactical weapons trained at the
crowd, perched atop armored vehicles... It's no surprise to me that things got
so far out of hand on Wednesday, but were completely different on Thursday.

------
bavcyc
Lots of bad decision making in Ferguson. There are surface reasons for the
decisions, but there are underlying issues that it would be nice to address.

I don't know the answers to the issues, and while I can analyze and say this
is what should have been done differently at each step of this tragedy; not
sure it is helpful.

I would be interested in hacker news memberships ideas of the issues
underlying this situation.

------
icantthinkofone
Why did I know something like this was going to show up:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzBdY6WXeRE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzBdY6WXeRE)

Note: the radio station verifies the caller as best they can but, yes, we
don't have a positive ID on the caller.

------
icantthinkofone
While the QuikTrip was burning to the ground several hours after the incident,
a Post-Dispatch photographer was whacked in the head and kicked after
observing looters with hand guns tucked into their waist bands. Note in the
link that police in riot gear did not show up until after all this:
[http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-
courts/attacked...](http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-
courts/attacked-on-the-job-a-post-dispatch-photographer-s-
tale/article_1b6fba60-5ac1-592a-8818-19614f1910aa.html)

As usual, I see waaaay too much one-side "reporting" of the result with no
attention to the origin.

~~~
joshuahedlund
From a comment in /r/Stlouis[0] (because I live in another suburb and have
been watching developments closely)

> A shooting is a disproportionate response to someone walking in the road,
> riots and looting are a disproportionate response to an unjust death,
> militarized police is a disproportionate response to riots and looting, and
> Molotov cocktails are a disproportionate response to a militarized police
> force. > A cycle of violence will continue to escalate until one side will
> take a step back and often it takes a third party like the Missouri Highway
> Patrol to make that happen.

When a conflict is escalating, there are multiple layers of disproportionate
response that allow outside observers at any point to interject how the people
worrying about Layer X are ignoring Layer X-1, which allows other observers to
interject that said person is ignoring Layer X-2, ad nauseum.

It's somewhat the inevitable result of people trying to process a complicated
tragic situation with information overload into simple understanding that are
inevitably influenced by their pre-existing biases and experiences.

[0][http://www.reddit.com/r/StLouis/comments/2dlq8w/the_first_ni...](http://www.reddit.com/r/StLouis/comments/2dlq8w/the_first_night_of_peaceful_protest/)

~~~
jmaygarden
That's a great perspective. The sibling comment from yedava is an immediate
X-1 example.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8182939](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8182939)

These photographs of paramilitary soldiers shooting tear gas into groups of
reporters and peaceful protesters turns my stomach. Likewise, allowing looting
and destruction of innocent peoples' property is unacceptable. It's a
despicable situation on all sides.

