THE DAY AFTER IN FERGUSON - By Charles P. Pierce [View all]

[kpete]

"It Looks Like A Demon"

"He looked up at me and had the most intense aggressive face. The only way I can describe it, it looks like a demon, that's how angry he looked. He comes back towards me again with his hands up...He was almost bulking up to run through the shots, like it was making him mad that I'm shooting him...And the face that he had was looking straight through me, like I wasn't even there, I wasn't even anything in his way." "

-- Officer Darren Wilson, Testimony To The Grand Jury In The Matter Of The Death Of Michael Brown, 2014.

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.......... Darren Wilson cannot be guilty, because then all the institutions of our government are, and we are, as well, because we told Darren Wilson to protect us from people who look to us like demons.

Right from the beginning, when Governor Jay Nixon refused to name a special prosecutor and left the case in the hands of Bob McCulloch, the greasy and hopelessly conflicted local district attorney, this case was headed for the biggest public fix since the 1919 World Series. The people in Ferguson knew it. The police knew it. Even Nixon knew it; he declared a state of emergency a week before the grand jury's decision was handed down. McCulloch simply abandoned his duties as a prosecutor and dumped the evidence on the members if the grand jury without giving them any direction at all. Both of them relied, tacitly, on the fact that they knew the benefits they all would get of the thousand doubts that we give to the people we empower to take another person's life -- "under the color of law," as the legal jargon has it, and in this case that couldn't be more ironic.

And whoever it was that prepped Wilson for his testimony deserves a raise. There is the "hand in the waistband" defense, which you hear in almost every police-related shooting. Wilson was able to convince a grand jury that he was physically intimidated by someone who was exactly the same height. He was able to convince them that he was struck in the head with a closed fist three times, and that he suffered what appeared to be nothing more than a severe razor burn. He was able to convince them that Michael Brown had become something else -- a "demon" -- and that Wilson's actions in killing him was an act of exorcism on behalf of the entire community. He was able to convince them of something that the elected officials of the community already needed to believe.

This is a perilous time for the country, and for many of the citizens living in it. Our police are armed and trained as you would arm and train an occupying army. They are given body armor, and armored vehicles. They have been removed, physically and psychologically, from the people they are paid to serve, the people who invest in them to take the life of another. And there is a reason because there always is a reason, when some citizen winds up dead. The argument always is that you, the citizen, do not know the pressure these people face, that you never will experience a split-second life and death decision, and that the benefit of a thousand doubts is always justified because, otherwise, you will not be made safe by the people you empower to take a life. As regards to all the incidents cited above, not one person ever served one day in jail. This because there were reasons, and there are always reasons.

And the people who complain, and the people who riot, and the people who march and shout and scream for some kind of justice are just ungrateful because it is the job of the people we empower to take lives to keep them safe from each other, and don't they understand that? Don't they understand that Darren Wilson's exorcised the demon on their behalf as well, that Michael Brown died so that they can be safe? That is the reason, and there is always a reason.

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much more:
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/There_Is_Always_A_Reason