Racial crime of the police of Ferguson and critical situation of black people, workers and poor people in USA
Tuesday 19 August 2014, by
An independent autopsy of Michael Brown, performed Sunday, provides graphic evidence that the 18-year-old unarmed youth was shot execution-style by Ferguson policeman Darren Wilson.
The autopsy was conducted at a local funeral home by Dr. Michael Baden, the famed long-time medical examiner of New York City, now retired, with the assistance of forensic pathologist Shawn Parcells. Both experts volunteered their services and acted at the request of the victim’s family.
The two confirmed that Michael Brown had been shot at least six times, possibly more, with the first four bullets striking him in the right arm and shoulder, and the last two in the head. Only the final bullet, fired directly into the top of his head, was “not survivable,” Dr. Baden said.
Given that the victim was six feet five inches tall, he could only have been shot from that angle if he was bending over, practically in a kneeling position, strongly suggesting that after being struck by the initial rounds from Wilson’s gun, Brown was trying to indicate submission. The cop then delivered a coup de grace, execution-style.
The sheer number of shots undermines the claims of the Ferguson police, and Wilson’s defenders in the media, that the killing of Michael Brown was the outcome of a physical altercation initiated by Brown, in the course of which Brown tried to grab Wilson’s gun. There were no powder burns on Brown’s body, suggesting that all the shots, including the first one, were from some distance, not at close range.
Parcells gave special attention to the bullet that hit the front-facing portion of the victim’s right forearm, saying that the direction travelled by that bullet showed that Brown was either walking away from the police officer or had his hands raised in a “don’t shoot” position, as described by several eyewitnesses.
In subsequent television interviews, Parcells and Baden expressed surprise that the Ferguson police had not released preliminary autopsy results, including at least the number of bullets that struck Michael Brown. Baden said, “People have been asking: How many times was he shot? This information could have been released on Day 1.” The police withheld even the name of the shooter for nearly a week, and they continue to withhold all other details of the killing.
In a transparent effort to rebut the devastating evidence from the autopsy, the Ferguson police have tried to explain the trajectory of the final, lethal bullet, claiming that Brown had lowered his head and was charging Officer Wilson (with five bullet wounds in his body, including one to the head!) This story was fed to the media through an unidentified female “friend” of Wilson who called a radio station, after which it was trumpeted as an eyewitness account by CNN and other television networks.
This bogus account is absurd on its face: no 18-year-old African-American man, unarmed, would charge at a policeman pointing a loaded semi-automatic at him, especially one who had already fired a volley of shots. Moreover, the first shot to the head, even though not instantly fatal, would have brought Michael Brown down and made any such “charge” impossible. The second shot to the head, therefore, was delivered by the cop to an incapacitated victim.
In an effort to contain the damage from the exposure of police lies by the independent autopsy, US Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the Justice Department would arrange for a separate federal autopsy of Michael Brown, “due to the extraordinary circumstances involved in this case and at the request of the Brown family.”
Queen, a retired Verizon worker said, “Police brutality has got to stop. We are under siege. I am afraid for my sons, my nephews. American society is basically built on social injustice. It is not going to be fixed in my lifetime. The schools, the housing, our infrastructure is not safe. Did you hear of a Tale of Two Cities ? We live in two countries. The Pentagon is giving tanks to local police. For what reason? To kill people.”
Joshua Brown said, “I think it is crazy that all this is happening around the same time. Cops have been known to target young Black men. Things may start getting more violent. That is where it is going. People are reacting, the cops increase their violence, and people react to that. It is escalating. The way the system is, like in the courts, you can’t beat the cops. So what else is there to do? What course of action has not been tried yet?”
Another reporting team spoke to workers in Barrio Logan, a primarily Hispanic working class neighborhood of San Diego.
Ramon, age 31, denounced the recent surge in police brutality throughout the country, “I think it’s horrible what happened to that kid [Brown]. I recently saw another video of police brutality, an officer was choking and punching a woman on the side of the street. It made me so angry. I understand why the people are protesting. What would you do if that was your mom or sister?”
Asked why he thinks police react with such brutality towards workers and youth, Ramon responded, “They don’t care about poor people. I believe these days it’s about making life more difficult for people. I think they’re just trying to find a way to make life worse for us.”
Another resident, Joe, said, “I think we all need to let them know what we think about these shootings. There are a lot of things that the government hides from us. There are a lot of demands we need to make of them.
“The United States government is very corrupt just like Mexico; they just cover things up better than any other government.”
Karla, a recent high school graduate, who is working part time in retail and trying to pay her way through college to get a degree in audio production, spoke about the attack by police on protestors in Ferguson. “People can’t express their feelings with a gun to the head. They are trying to create fear in everyone. They are trying to control society. That is what it is about.”
A reporting team in Baltimore spoke to residents Kelly and Brittany, who were incensed at the level of police brutality in Missouri. Brittany said, “I can believe it. It’s happening all over the country, and not just shootings. I am a victim of police brutality. A cop sexually harassed me in front of his friends. It was awful.”
“They act like they’re above the law,” Kelly added.
Margaret expressed her disgust at the police brutality in Ferguson, “These cops are like criminal gangs. They have all the power and they abuse it.”
Walter, an unemployed resident of Baltimore, quoted Martin Luther King when asked about the events in Ferguson: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” He continued, “Police abuse their authority and they have the politicians on their side. Society knows who the killers are, but there are two societies—theirs and ours.” Speaking on the senselessness of the police’s claims of self-defense, he said, “How can you feel threatened when the boy’s back is turned? If we start getting the word out, like you are doing, then we can expose them.”
Police launched several rounds of tear gas and what appeared to be crowd-control percussion devices late Monday night to clear the streets of the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson, Missouri after a tense half-hour confrontation between several hundred protesters and a wall of law enforcement officers 60 wide and five deep.
Police in riot gear had formed a barricade, donning gas masks and some sat with guns pointed atop armored vehicles. As an armored vehicle began moving toward the crowd, and as clergymen and other community leaders locked arms to hold the protesters back, people appeared to retreat at about 10 p.m., local time. But tensions later intensified again, with police ordering protesters over bullhorns to keep moving or face being arrested.
The first contingent of the Missouri National Guard ordered into Ferguson by Governor Jay Nixon arrived Monday afternoon and began taking up positions in a local shopping center. The unit, consisting of military police, was not to be immediately deployed on streets of the city.
Instead, the MPs were to guard the strip mall, which includes a Target store, now being used as the operations center for the multitude of police forces engaged in suppressing protests over the police killing of an eighteen-year-old unarmed black youth, Michael Brown, on August 9.
Police officials claimed that their headquarters had come under “organized attack” on Sunday night—one of the countless lies pumped out by the authorities and rebroadcast by the local and national media.
Governor Nixon repeated these claims of “deliberate, coordinated and intensifying violent acts” in his official statement ordering the National Guard into Ferguson. He declared that peaceful protests were “marred by the violent criminal acts of an organized and growing number of individuals, many from outside the community and state, whose actions are putting the residents and businesses of Ferguson at risk.”
The cries against “outside agitators” and a “violent minority” were taken up by virtually every politician and police official in the course of Monday, right up to President Obama, who warned against “carrying guns and attacking police,” although no such incidents have taken place anywhere in Ferguson over the past nine days.
Captain Ron Johnson of the Missouri State Police, brought in last Thursday to put an African American face on the police crackdown, told a press conference in the early hours of Monday morning that the police operations center had come under organized attack by hundreds of people, some of whom threw Molotov cocktails, and that at least eight people were seen carrying guns.
“I had no alternative than to elevate the level of our response,” he said, referring to police charges with truncheons, tear gas and rubber bullets. Since then, not a shred of evidence has been produced to support this dubious claim. On the contrary, local residents described the sudden police mobilization Sunday night as completely unprovoked, a deliberate escalation of violence by the local and state authorities.
The official picture of Ferguson as a city in the throes of an armed uprising aimed at the police and local businesses may give expression to the fears of the US ruling class and its police defenders. More ominously, it may foreshadow an attempt to frame up individuals, particularly those most active in the protests over Michael Brown’s death.
There is no resemblance between this gross fabrication and the actual conditions facing the residents of the city, who are being stripped of their democratic rights.
The main commercial street in the area where Michael Brown was killed, West Florissant Avenue, is effectively closed to vehicle traffic for several miles, clogged with police vehicles and barricades. Other barricades have been set up at major intersections throughout the small city, forcing residents to identify themselves at police checkpoints.
Protests against the police killing of Brown are still permitted, but only in the form of demonstrations on the sidewalk, in which protesters must keep moving continually. If demonstrators stop or gather together, they are warned not to congregate, then dispersed by police or arrested if they resist.
Governor Nixon, a Democrat, announced he was lifting the midnight to 5 a.m. curfew imposed on Saturday and Sunday nights, but he made it clear that this was not a relaxation of the repressive measures. It was more an assertion that a complete ban on movement after midnight was no longer needed because police were in full control of the streets.
There is also the possibility that the lifting of the curfew is aimed at encouraging isolated incidences of vandalism so as to create a pretext for mobilizing the National Guard directly against the protesters.
Throughout Monday, police escalated their clampdown on both protests and any independent media reporting of their actions. Just before noon, local and state police who had removed their badges and name tags so they could not be identified began ordering members of the press, including a World Socialist Web Site reporting team, to disperse or face arrest.
The reporters had gathered at the Quick Time convenience store parking lot adjacent to the scene of Brown’s killing, but were moved out of the area by officers who descended on the parking lot with dozens of police vehicles, advancing in groups on reporters and residents and demanding that they vacate the premises.
When asked by a WSWS reporter why members of the press were being asked to leave, one officer responded that it was “for your own safety.” When asked if the police were planning on making arrests at the scene, the officer said, “I don’t know.”
Officers holding assault rifles were positioned out of sight on the periphery of the parking lot, where dozens had gathered earlier in the day and where multiple media outlets had set up their equipment. WSWS reporters saw officers with assault weapons positioned in the parking lots of nearby apartment complexes.
Later in the afternoon, Scott Olson of Getty Images was arrested without provocation and booked at a local jail.
A researcher in Washington DC posted a report Monday on the social conditions in Ferguson, which she described as “emblematic of growing suburban poverty.” Elizabeth Kneebone of the Brookings Institution is co-author of a study “Confronting Suburban Poverty in America,” which was released last year.
She wrote of Ferguson: “The city’s unemployment rate rose from less than 5 percent in 2000 to over 13 percent in 2010–12. For those residents who were employed, inflation-adjusted average earnings fell by one-third. The number of households using (subsidized federal housing) climbed from roughly 300 in 2000 to more than 800 by the end of the decade.”
Suburban poverty has been growing rapidly throughout the last decade, she noted, with the number of such neighborhoods in the 100 largest US metropolitan areas more than doubling in that period.
The events in Ferguson, Missouri over the past ten days mark a political turning point for the entire country. The immense scale of social inequality, the ruthlessness of the financial aristocracy, the disintegration of American democracy—all have been exposed in the execution-style police killing of unarmed eighteen-year-old Michael Brown and the vicious crackdown on protests that erupted in response.
At the heart of all the social and democratic issues raised in Ferguson is the nature of the capitalist system. No struggle against inequality and the police state apparatus in America can be successful unless it is based on the understanding that what is involved is a struggle against the entire social and economic order.
What has taken place in recent days has revealed the political line-up of all factions of the political establishment against the working class. Last week, millions of people in the US and around the world were shocked by the images of tanks and riot police in military camouflage toting automatic rifles and using tear gas and rubber bullets to suppress protesters in the streets of Ferguson. The Obama administration and Democratic Governor Jay Nixon intervened with a maneuver aimed at buying time and defusing popular opposition.
Nixon placed oversight of policing in the hands of the Missouri Highway Patrol. Democratic Party operatives such as Al Sharpton followed up with a prayer meeting on Sunday calling for “unity” with the police.
These cynical gestures were intended to create the conditions for an even more aggressive crackdown, including the declaration of a “state of emergency” by the governor and the deployment of the National Guard. Cops fired tear gas and rubber bullets at peaceful protests on Sunday and Monday night in the most sweeping police action thus far.
Checkpoints have been set up throughout the city, with police demanding identification from those passing by. The police have arrested and threatened reporters and arbitrarily detained residents for the supposed crime of “congregating.”
Ferguson has been placed under martial law in all but name.
Under these conditions, President Obama once again stepped in with remarks at a press conference Monday afternoon. He sought to posture as evenhanded and unbiased, while placing principal responsibility for the violence in Ferguson on protesters. Attempting to justify police-state measures, he referred to “those who are using the tragic death as an excuse to engage in criminal behavior” by “looting or carrying guns and even attacking the police.”
These are lies. The principal “criminal behavior” was the murder of Michael Brown and the illegal and unconstitutional police operation that followed. On Monday, an independent autopsy report showed that the fatal shot to Brown struck the top of his head, indicating that the young man was on the ground and attempting to surrender, as claimed by eyewitnesses, when he was killed by police officer Darren Wilson. Despite clear evidence of the murder of an unarmed youth, Wilson remains at large.
Obama then acknowledged, somewhat grudgingly, that the population had certain constitutional rights, including the “right to speak freely, to assemble and to report in the press.” These rights must be “vigilantly safeguarded,” he said. “Ours is a nation of laws, for the citizens who live under them and for the citizens who enforce them.”
What a fraud! With Obama’s support, constitutional rights have been rendered a dead letter in the streets of Ferguson. Shortly before Obama spoke, police began clearing protesters from central locations in the city, following orders from Governor Nixon that no one be permitted to gather in these areas—a violation of the First Amendment right to free assembly.
Obama’s by now ritualistic references, repeated again on Monday, to “one united American family” with a “common humanity” cannot hide the reality of life in the United States. These platitudes are issued by a president who has worked to further enrich the corporate and financial aristocracy through a redistribution of wealth from the bottom to the top on a historically unprecedented scale. As for “humanity,” it was Obama who issued the immortal lines at a press conference earlier this month that “we tortured some folks,” while making clear that nothing would be done to hold accountable those who ordered or carried out the torturing.
Regardless of Obama’s demagogy and lies, social and political reality finds expression in popular consciousness. The anger on the streets of Ferguson is an expression of sentiments felt deeply throughout the country. It is an anger over not only police violence, but over unemployment, poverty, inequality and the relentless assault on the social conditions of the entire working class.
There is a growing realization within the working class that the problems working people face are systemic. In video interviews posted on the WSWS, workers and young people in Ferguson speak of the nature of capitalism, pointing to the vast resources that are devoted to the military and police even as the ruling class claims there is no money for education or jobs. They note the hypocrisy of American imperialism waging wars for “democracy” abroad even as it sends tanks against American cities at home.
This developing consciousness in the working class must be anchored to a clear political program on the basis of which a successful struggle can be waged. The central aim of the Socialist Equality Party in the US and its sister parties around the world is to build the revolutionary leadership—in St. Louis, throughout the country and internationally—that is required to arm the working class with such a socialist program.
The SEP calls for the mobilization of the entire working class behind the workers and youth of Ferguson, Missouri. Demonstrations and meetings demanding the arrest and prosecution of the killer of Michael Brown, the withdrawal of the National Guard and demobilization of the police, and the lifting of the state of emergency should be held throughout the country. These democratic demands should be linked to the defense of the social rights of the working class—the allocation of hundreds of billions of dollars to provide decent-paying jobs, education, health care and housing for all.
What is taking place in Ferguson is part of an attack on all workers. The police-state measures employed on the streets of that city, along with the vast intelligence and military apparatus, are directed against all opposition to the policies of the corporate and financial aristocracy.
The SEP insists that the defense of the democratic and social rights of the population in the United States must be connected to the struggle against imperialist war. The National Guard troops being deployed in Ferguson are the same forces that have been sent to brutally suppress the populations of Iraq and Afghanistan. The interests of the American working class in dismantling the US war machine are inextricably connected to the fight of workers all over the world against the machinations of the US ruling class, which is threatening to plunge the world into a new world war.
Nothing can be accomplished without a direct assault on the domination of society by a capitalist class that has shown it will shrink from nothing to defend its rule.
The basic question posed is: Who will rule? Will the ruling class and its instruments of repression continue to impose ever more savage attacks on the social and democratic rights of the working class, while leading mankind to catastrophe? Or will the working class, the vast majority of the population, take political power and reorganize society on the basis of equality, a radical redistribution of wealth, and democratic control over the giant productive forces of humanity? This alternative is posed with ever-greater immediacy and urgency. WSWS
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