re: #100 lawhawk

Nope. His “customers” weren’t businesses. They were the white communities surrounding Ferguson. His job, as he saw it, was to contain the situation to Ferguson, at all costs. And that meant coming down hard, merited or not.

There’s a whole lot of racism involved here, from the white flight that changed the local demographics in short order, to the education system that has been filleted and gutted (which is a disaster in its own right).

Seen on vox.com:
“…Police forces usually fall into one of two categories, though there some grey situations between the two. You either protect the rule of law and the population, or you’re the type of police force that’s there to protect the regime. What’s happening in Ferguson is what regime protection forces do, not what rule of law police do.”
—Jason Fritz
(Iraq war veteran, analyst on policing in conflict zones)