When Is an Unarmed Teen Not Unarmed?

From the start, it was almost a forgone conclusion, because of systemic biases, that the law would not hold police officer Darren Wilson accountable for shooting and killing unarmed teenager Michael Brown (explainer). Since the announcement of the grand jury’s decision not to indict Wilson, a lot of analysis from legal and law enforcement experts has pressed the point that irregularities in the handling of the case by the police and Prosecuting Attorney Robert McCulloch made certain Wilson wouldn’t face charges. I’m not the one to analyze that data, but I do want to look at some astounding narrative sleight-of-hand that aided the authorities in their crime.

 

The above cover for satirical news publisher The Onion appeared on August 15 soon after Michael Brown’s death. It’s a funny cover, taking a jab at those who see every person of color, every young man with swagger, every boy in a hoodie, as a threat, and it uses a clear logical contradiction to do so: Assuming you have the average human being’s rational apparatus, you would have to switch it off to think that an unarmed teen is armed.

That is the exact narrative, however, that Wilson sympathizers have been pushing and that the anti-protester crowd embraces today. The first trolls to engage me on Twitter always started with some version of “But hey, Michael Brown was a big guy.” The idea is that Michael Brown was so big, so ferocious, that with his bare hands he was an immediate threat to the life of a grown man his own size, armed and trained. Wilson made the same claims in his testimony--in which he described Michael Brown as a “demon.”

All of this is to say, in effect, that unarmed teenager Michael Brown was actually armed. He was deadly. The very lunatic logic behind the humor of The Onion’s cover has become the narrative of everyone--including many in high places--who thinks Darren Wilson did his job, Michael Brown got what was coming to him, and the protesters should just shut up. This narrative is tried-and-true and has gotten many a killer off the hook, while the victim's parents and friends cope with the loss of a loved one in the face of a system that will do exactly nothing for them.

I have held off posting this as I tried to decide how much I want to continue to address the issue--like the death of Trayvon Martin, I find this injustice upsetting--and as I have waited, the story has continued to develop. Wilson has resigned without severance pay, President Obama has met with community leaders to look for solutions, and protestors of all variety continue to raise a stink. In the end, I suppose I have to post this to raise my own small voice of solidarity with those who have little power but a voice to raise.

When is an unarmed teenager not unarmed? When he’s armed, of course. We might also ask where is an unarmed teenager not unarmed? Why, in America, of course. Because in America, you can kill unarmed kids in broad daylight in front of witnesses and not even go to trial.

Justice in Ferguson has been served up like a sad, sick joke.

 

 

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Previous posts on Ferguson:

Ferguson: How Did We Get Here?

Identifying with Ferguson as Symptom

Don't Look Away from Mike Brown

 

 



 

Ferguson: How Did We Get Here?

A police officer in Ferguson, Missouri shoots an unarmed teenager dead (the facts) and suddenly the streets of a small suburb of St. Louis look like something from a near-future dystopian nightmare: Frightened people raise their hands before snarling dogs, masked men in riot gear level guns at women and children, clouds of tear gas sweep the streets.

How did we get here?

 
Unfortunately, the events in Ferguson are nothing new. These events and the controversy surrounding them are recurring symptoms of many underlying problems that have plagued America for a long time: abuse of authority, racial inequality, economic disparity, fetishism of violence, imbalance of power, opaque bureaucracies, and unhinged debate.

I began to pay more attention to these types of tragedies while living in the San Francisco Bay Area. Ferguson was nothing unusual in the news out of San Francisco and Oakland. Police officers were regularly shooting an unarmed man, often innocent and black. It played out the same way every time: Communities would flood the streets in protest, ne’er-do-wells would loot and break car windows, the officers involved would go on leave while an investigation was carried out. Soon after, the officers would return to duty without further punishment or reprimand.

It was clear who had the power and who had none.

The lede of an editorial in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch summed up this feature of American justice nicely immediately after Michael Brown was killed in Ferguson:

“Michael Brown didn’t get due process. The still unnamed police officer who shot the 18-year-old black teenager dead in Ferguson will get plenty of it.”

Something often lacking from the narratives of the radicals and rabble-rousers I follow on Twitter is an admission that the police serve a necessary function, often risk their lives in doing so, and must make split-second decisions in fraught circumstances. If society at large extols them as heroes, it is because they often are.

Except when they aren’t.

And this is missing from the narratives of the police’s habitual defenders. While many, perhaps most, officers do their best to protect and serve, many do not. We know this better than ever because the prevalence of mobile technology ensures their deeds are caught on camera and uploaded online. Everyone saw the New York City Police strangle Eric Garner last month as he lay face down, hands shaking helplessly, repeatedly saying, “I can’t breathe!”

Similar videos are coming out all the time thanks to radicals, rabble-rousers and everyday people just standing around.

What is needed isn’t indiscriminate condemnation of law enforcement, but reform. Some police departments have instituted changes--when I lived in the Bay Area, San Jose tested head-mounted cameras to record every encounter between officers and the public--but a lot more needs to be done. Investigations need to be impartial and transparent, and when wrongdoing is found, punishment must have teeth.

To the extent that any one of us could find ourselves or our family members the victims of excessive force and be unable to do anything about it, not one of us should hesitate to declare--as many protesters and other voices of dissent have--that we are Michael Brown. We are Eric Garner. And we should stand in solidarity in calling for a change in our nation’s systems of power so those who often kill with immunity may no longer do so.