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Rachel was all over this last night. Hilarious from the Ferguson Keystone wannabe Kops
Rachel was all over this last night. Hilarious from the Ferguson Keystone wannabe Kops
this leapt out:
At least 163 people were arrested in Ferguson-area demonstrations since Brown’s death, authorities said late Thursday. Just seven of those live in Ferguson, according to data provided by St. Louis County.
The other thing that lept out on me was the conservative backlash against the voter registration booths.
My father called it "inappropriate", but it seems to me that getting people more involved in their city government is THE most appropriate thing you can do.
I doubt the Republican mayor will keep his job.
I try not to be quite a cynical as Boutons about the GOP, but their constant efforts at suppressing minority voters (ID laws, redistricting) seems to me to be pretty disgusting.
working to reduce voter turnout is key for the party representing older folks.
the VRWC/Repug strategy of ing up govt causes voters to become cynical, disaffected, non-voting. Repugs know demographics are against them, so ing up govt to make more people hate govt is wonderful strategy.
There is another excellent article on a-j but the way that St Louis is divided into districts.
http://america.aljazeera.com/article...gregation.htmlWhat’s unusual about St. Louis — and goes a long way to explain the tension of the Ferguson protests — is not racism per se but the way the metropolitan area has chopped itself into bits, remaining socially and economically segregated long after racist laws were erased from the books.
There are neighborhoods where people live their entire lives and keep out strangers, with stone-pillared gates that seal off mansion-lined private avenues. The Mississippi and Missouri rivers have been used as racial divides. And artificial boundaries carve St. Louis County into 90 separate municipalities, many of which can’t afford good schools and representative, highly trained police departments. Yet the municipalities refuse unification with one another and the city of St. Louis.
Ferguson, tucked into North County, is one of those tiny cities, with a population of roughly 21,000. Its mayor has expressed some guarded openness to a city-county merger, though there’s a strong sense of community and iden y in Ferguson (the upside of fragmentation).
Still, Colin Gordon, author of “Mapping Decline: St. Louis and the Fate of the American City,” called Ferguson “a postage stamp municipality in which the white population still clings to the levers of power,” despite a population that has shifted from about 25 percent black to two-thirds black in just two decades.
“It’s part of a crescent of municipalities between the city and the airport that are not really suburbs,” he said. “They look much more like the city in the size of the lots and the mix of the land use. When flight begins, this becomes a zone of transition, because it’s the sole pocket of affordable housing.” Transition, he pointed out, is a point-in-time measurement; it doesn’t necessarily signal healthy integration.
I am not a fan of districting at all. It's an instrument of oppression.
You sure about that?
Ferguson..
The Looters...
Dan Page..
Bogeyman...
Missouri police officer on leave over video in which he says: 'I'm ... a killer'
By Greg Botelho, CNN
updated 10:43 PM EDT, Fri August 22, 2014
"As a police chief, that's something I'm not going to be able to endure," Belmar said.<SNIP>
But it's another video that led St. Louis County police officials to say they had removed Page from his post and had started a process that will likely include the department's internal affairs unit investigating and a psychological evaluation of the officer.
"(I) apologize to the community and anybody who is offended by these remarks, and understand from me that he ... does not represent the rank-and-file of the St. Louis County Police Department," county Police Chief Jon Belmar told CNN. Belmar called the video "so bizarre."
<SNIP>
Belmar, the head of the St. Louis County police department, said all the talk about killing was especially disturbing to him.
http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/22/us/mis...html?hpt=hp_t2
Michael Brown, Ferguson Victim Paid For His Rellos
Brown never robbed the convenience store....no police report was ever filed.....the police have put the innocent lives of these store owners in jeopardy...
's all look the same to racists right?
Suspect Jodah Cain, 17, poses in a Facebook photo with a gun. His mother said he'd been sent to Portland for a fresh start.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/1...n_4069914.html
A Former Marine Explains All the Weapons of War Being Used by Police in Ferguson
There’s at least one line every Marine knows: “Never point a weapon at anything you do not intend to shoot.” The St. Louis County Police Department apparently never received that memo.
One small way to measure the police violence against black people in Ferguson is to attend to its details. It is in that spirit that I present this simple catalog.
Combat Load
They are equipped with Kevlar helmets, assault-friendly gas masks, combat gloves and knee pads (all four of them), woodland Marine Pattern utility trousers, tactical body armor vests, about 120 to 180 rounds for each shooter, semiautomatic pistols attached to their thighs, disposable handcuff restraints hanging from their vests, close-quarter-battle receivers for their M4 carbine rifles and Advanced Combat Optical Gunsights. In other words, they’re itching for a fight. A big one. It’s a well-known horror that the US military greets foreign peoples in this fashion as our politicians preach freedom, democracy and peace. It’s an abomination that the police greet black communities in the States with the same trigger-happy posture. Especially on the occasion of an unarmed teen’s death by cop.
Smoke Grenade and Smoke Bomb
I suspect their air-purifying respirators and the smoke and CS gas they’ve released might be getting in the way of said objective. It’s unclear whether it was cheap fuse-operated smoke bombs (think fireworks) or more expensive pin-operated smoke grenades that are responsible for the fog. Both tools have been reported onsite. For what it’s worth, such smokescreens are usually executed during flanking attacks, retreats, close air support missions or casualty evacuations. All of these situations are presumed to take place under real or potential conditions of heavy enemy fire. Make of this what you will. My guess is that they’ve got a surplus of toys to play with, and a powerless demographic to experiment on.
Stun Grenade
Ostensibly less than lethal, stun grenades have been known to kill or severely injure numerous victims, and the device was recently in the news for burning a 19-month-old baby in Georgia, resulting in a coma, during one of the thousands of domestic police raids this year. They are designed to temporarily blind and deafen, thanks to a shrapnel-free casing that is only supposed to emit light and sound upon explosion. Nonetheless, the list of casualties is long, and the number of flammable mishaps is disconcerting.
Riot Gun
The most likely culprit is the ARWEN 37, which is capable of discharging 37mm tear gas canisters or wooden bullet projectiles. Another possibility is the SL6, a 37mm six-shot rotary magazine projectile launcher that is seemingly capable of firing every relevant “non-lethal” round in the book. When a Marine or other warfighter is introduced to one of these for the first time, he likely thinks of the M203 Grenade Launcher as a point of comparison. This is because they’re all part of the same family. They’re all grenade launchers.
Triple Chaser CS
The police used tear gas unsparingly the past week, and it was perhaps the most disturbing ingredient in the stew. As others have noted, the Chemical Weapons Convention of 1993 actually bans the gas as a permissible means of warfare. Then again, it is allowed for domestic riot control, and nations like Turkey, Bahrain, Israel and the United States have exploited the loophole to great avail. If you’re interested in the weapon’s mechanics or science, the Internet has your back. In the meantime, I can assure you its effects are far from pleasurable. Every Marine has his or her own story about their time at the “gas chamber,” the place we go to become familiar with our gas masks (so they tell us). Suffice it to say it sucks out your organs, hogs your oxygen and burns you inside and out. Interim blindness and extended coughing fits are common, as well as an overall sense that you are dying or dead. And they’re dispersing this poison in people’s backyards.
Pepper Spray Projectile
These “pepper balls” are lethal; the Boston Police Department banned them after a young woman was killed by one. It passed right through the eye and skull to the brain. She was guilty of being present in a rowdy crowd after a Red Sox v. Yankees game in which the former won. The ACLU condemned the use of such projectiles for the purposes of crowd management back in 1997, following an unfortunate incident in Eugene, Oregon. They even convinced Eugene officials to do the same
Rubber Bullet
The key takeaway is that, like so many of the other “safe” items on this list, they disable and kill. It appears the preferred method of discharge in Ferguson is by way of the 60-cal Stinger, which contains approximately 42- or 27 32-caliber rubber balls per casing.
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