Greets and saluts from the NYC metro area. Parts of the area are finally drying out after the rainfall of historic proportions yesterday. Islip LI and several nearby areas got more rainfall in a 24 hour than any other place in NYS. Ever. More than seen by upstate during Hurricane Irene. More than during Floyd or any number of major storms, including the Long Island Express of 1938. Now imagine nearly all of that rainfall coming in a 2 hour period.

Weather I can deal with.

What I can’t deal with is the fact that the right wing echo chamber is busy smearing Michael Brown and making unsubstantiated claims about his acts prior to being shot and killed by a Ferguson cop. Or their blaming the community for riots while ignoring the heavy handed tactics by both Ferguson PD and the St. Louis County police departments.

Overnight, the county police trotted out their armored vehicles, and put their LRAD sonic devices to crowd control use. Mind you, these vehicles were intended to give local police the ability to respond to terror attacks, to school shootings and mass casualty events. But they’re using them, along with cops in body armor that are busy pointing loaded weapons at civil and peaceful demonstrators. These same cops have harassed journalists (arresting and detaining two yesterday without charges or an apology), and even arrested @AntonioFrench.

As he walked out of the Ferguson Jail this morning, French wore his signature oxford shirt and talked with reporters about his experience. He said he was near the burned-out QuikTrip at about 9 p.m. Wednesday when police in riot gear ordered protesters to disperse.

“Police had just given a final warning to disperse and released smoke bombs, people scattered and ran,” French said. “Police started to move forward with riot gear and tear gas started to come.”

“I moved away when it looked like they were throwing what I thought was tear gas … it turned out to be smoke bombs,” French added. “I realized the best place (to be was in my) car with the windows rolled up. That’s where I was.”

When a reporter asked French today how he went from being in his car to being arrested, he said: “They open your door and drag you out.”

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

These cops are intent upon causing a scene, but don’t want cameras to capture any of their actions. They’ve sought to limit coverage by the media from the air with a NOTAM that has dubious merit, and have gone out of their way to target people with phones/cameras because it would show just how heavy-handed the response has been.

Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon has a mess on his hands, and he’s doing the bare minimum to get the police to stand down in a town with two officer involved shootings in as many weeks; the first involving Michael Brown and the circumstances of which are dubious at best, and the second appears to have been justified (with police recovering a firearm at the scene, and the suspect may have been involved in a shooting just minutes earlier).

French, who has been covering the protests on the ground since they began, notes that the situation and tensions have been ratcheted up since the police have added more SWAT teams and brought in the heavy gear. Instead of reducing tensions, the county police are courting even more violence.

Moreover, French is right to note that the right to protest doesn’t end at 9:00pm. Purposefully attacking peaceful protesters with smoke bombs, pepper balls, etc., who are forced to disperse before the imposed 9:00 deadline actually precipitates conflict.

Meanwhile, the ACLU and STL Post Dispatch have both sought the name of the officer via FOIA requests, and have been rebuffed. Next stop would be court. Balancing the risk versus the sunshine of identifying the officer would go a long way to reducing tensions in the community, which sees hiding the identity of the officer as part of the department’s coverup of events. I get that some in the department and the public think that this increases risks to the officer and his family, but the department could take steps to protect the officer (like shifting a car or two of cops from “riot” patrol to protecting the family. But the Department should see benefits outweighing the risks - instead it sees only the risk, and in doing so, it causes more grief for itself and the community.