Ferguson: A losing case for everybody
LEONARD BRANT/Guest opinion | Hagadone News Network | UPDATED 11 years AGO
In a matter of two or three hours a vile group of black or white thugs destroyed whatever sympathy there may have been for the black people of Ferguson, Mo. My wife and I lived in Ferguson and neighboring Dellwood in 1958. At the time, the population of Ferguson was composed of approximately 75 percent white, 20 percent black and 5 percent other residents, with about 35 percent of the crimes attributed to the black community. Today, the population is about 20 percent white, 70 percent black and 10 percent other, with about 70 percent of the crimes attributed to black people.
The news media incited the black residents by prematurely reporting that young Mr. Brown, an unarmed teen, was shot in the back, or shot with his hands in the air. Both of these reports proved to be untrue after the autopsy report and grand jury review. Additionally, the news media implied that Ferguson's police conviction rate at 75 percent for blacks and only 25 percent for whites and others indicated that blacks were being profiled and discriminated against. Compare the present black crime rate with the present black population and the numbers indicate that crime data are not skewed as the media suggested.
The police and legal system made their share of mistakes. The police had done little to maintain trust with the population that had changed drastically over the years. Also, they should have released the name of the officer much earlier. These failures incited people who were eager to condemn the police, and they began the march on the streets of Ferguson.
The prosecuting attorney's office would have been better served by appointing a prosecutor from another district to preside over the Brown case with the Grand Jury of St. Louis County. Some black clergy have said the jury was skewed against the black people; however, this jury, composed of seven white and three black jurors, was seated in May of 2014 and gave their unanimous decision that there was not enough evidence to indict the officer. It is sad that the young man died for the minor charges of shoplifting and jaywalking, but if the grand jury believed the boy was the initial aggressor, then their action or inaction was justifiable.
The relationship between Ferguson's black and white residents is the real loser in this case. How would the black community have reacted if white thugs had burned black-owned businesses after O.J. Simpson was acquitted? Those who burned Ferguson were home-grown terrorists that failed to realize that many of their people were employed by the very businesses they torched, and now these innocent people are unemployed until the facilities are rebuilt, if they will ever be.
Organized protest marches are fine if they are thought out and truly just, but too many people march for causes they know little or nothing about and only participate for the emotional rush they feel from being involved in some cause that may not be as just as they believed when things get out of hand.
Leonard Brant is a Post Falls resident.
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