The Killing Of Michael Brown

Race riots are one of the major news items we hear about via the media when a social crisis occurs. The riots in Baltimore, however, were not so much about race, but more about economic and social class separations. The riots began as a peaceful protest amongst the citizens of Baltimore over the death of one of their own, Freddie Gray. Gray was a young, African-American, from a financially lower class area of Baltimore. Unfortunately, he died while in custody of the Baltimore Police. While this is a tragic loss, he was unlawfully detained by the police (Sarlin, 2015) during this ordeal. On the surface, the riots may appear as a cut-and-dry race provoked, once they are looked into further, that is not necessarily the case.

Racial injustice against people of colour is an immense, ongoing issue that has not only targeted lives but has also taken many innocent lives. In America, these racial divisions date back to the days of slavery, where black people were denied of their basic human rights because of discrimination. In present day, some individuals view America as a post-racial environment, due to such victories as electing a black president; but the brutal, fatal and unjust events in Ferguson, Missouri prove that these divisions are still present. On August 9th, 2014, an unarmed, 18 year old black teen was shot and killed by Darren Wilson, a white police officer. The events that led to the death of Michael Brown occurred on an early morning where Mr. Wilson stopped Michael Brown and a friend after leaving a convenience store. An altercation occurred which prompted Mr. Brown to flee and officer Wilson to begin shooting. The death of Mr. Brown caused the city to stand up against police brutality through peaceful protest, looting, and even violence, to gain justice for Mr. Brown and his family. As the protests grew, the police used military tactics such as, tear gas, to “maintain order” during the unrest of the city. In recent, news the grand jury decided that Officer Darren Wilson was not responsible for the death of Michael Brown, which led to a larger public outrage not only in America, but also across the

Despite the important racial progresss our society has made since Emmett Till’s death, from the civil rights era, to present increase of police brutality has still left the Black/African American community in shadows of segregation. The second most recent shooting of teenager Michael Brown has left citizens in ongoing battles with law enforcement officers of Ferguson, Missouri. New Statement (2014) reports, Missouri police similarly attempted to retain control of the narrative, claiming Brown had stolen cigars, and then paying for them, and then claiming he was a bad child and attacked the officer who shot him” (New Statement, 21). Brown autopsy reveals he was gun less and shot six times. Police brutality is not solely about Ferguson, Emmett Till, or the civil rights movement, but it is simply about the history of capitalism and police brutality in America and having many forms of it.

In the summer of 2014, 18-year-old Michael Brown was fatally shot by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson. After the shooting, there had been conflicting reports by police and eyewitnesses about what exactly happened. Officer Wilson insist Brown was confrontational throughout the encounter, while eyewitnesses say Brown has his hands up trying to surrender before he was shot and killed. Following the Grand jury’s decision not to indict officer Wilson over the shooting of Michael Brown and similar cases of officer-involved shootings and brutality such as the death of Eric Garden in Staten Island, New York, politicians, family advocates, civil rights activists, and law enforcement officials have called for police across the country to adopt the use of body-worm cameras. Although there are many who feel police body cameras present a challenge to privacy and safety issues for both cops and civilians, by recording police-citizen encounters, it increases transparency and accountability of officers and the video recorded by body cams protect any false accusations, police misconduct, officials can get clear evidence of what happened instead of relying on hearsay.

After the fatal shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed, 18 year old black man by a police officer of Ferguson Missouri, the community took to the streets in a movement to protest a pervasive racial tension that some believe may have caused the shooting. Amidst riots, marches and other public demonstrations, Ferguson mayor James Knowles has given statements and interviews to the press to address both the tragedy and the allegations of racial conflict and profiling in Ferguson being at the root of the tragedy. Among these press appearances was an interview on the Steve Malzberg Show, four days after the shooting, wherein Mayor Knowles’ efforts to perform PR damage control give insight into how he views the town, and how some authority figures

During 2013 the police force attempted to fight through the hatred of the ‘Black Lives Matter’ group. While not every person in this movement hated police and the ‘oppressive white man’, just as not all whites hated blacks during Reconstruction, many of them sought after their right to ‘peacefully’ protest against police forces around the US by physically assaulting police of all colors and acting out against the safety laws, put in place for everyone’s protection, by walking around with solid black BB guns and pointing them at the men and women who are trying to uphold the law and safety of all citizens. This event lead to many deaths on both the polices and black persons’ sides and an uproar of fights within families and friendships over ‘who’s side is right.’ In the end, this movement fell to the back burner of national news as the talk of president Trump’s immigration policies and ‘wall’ came to focus and has been the ‘race talk’ to recent days.

In 1931, nine African American boys were accused of raping two white women. The boy’s ages ranged from 12-20 years old. The names of the black boys were Roy Wright 12, Eugene Williams 13, Charlie Weems 16, Ozie Powell 16, Willie Roberson 16, Olen Montgomery 17, Haywood Patterson 18, Andy Wright 19, and Clarence Norris 19. The trial is notoriously known as The Scottsboro Boys Trial. While the trial is considered a key trial in America’s criminal justice system, it showed the injustice in the Jim Crow south legal system.

This essay argues that the shooting of Michael Brown and subsequent events in Ferguson, Missouri, cannot be fully understood outside the context of the social, historical, political and economic ideologies that shape the United States. I chose to critique two news reports each from different news sources, including The New York Times (NYT) and The Washington Post (TWP). Each news report focuses on different incidents which took place during Ferguson’s upheaval in the summer of 2014. I will begin by briefly summarizing each article, then I will do an analysis on the problems and gaps that I find within each article. Next, I will provide an in-depth critique using Mills’ Racial Liberalism. By critiquing liberalist frameworks, I draw attention to the ways which racism and violence remain deeply institutionalized within the structures of American society and allows for the maintenance of white supremacy. The essay ends with a comparison of the Trayvon Martin case (2012) and includes a discussion of the affects of capitalism and globalization in the media.

Harris (2015) in his article, “The Next Civil Rights Movement?” explores the idea that racial tension in connection to police brutality is an extension of the civil rights movement from the 1960s. By connecting a contemporary movement to a well-documented movement, it is possible for racial tensions and police conduct to gain momentum in the news media. Furthermore, the advent of social media in more modern times has changed the face of the traditional civil rights movement as there is now the possibility for the movement to gain momentum in a matter of hours rather than days or week as was the case in the civil rights movement of the 1960s. This instantaneous collective momentum has allowed the news media the opportunity to explore varying points of view straight from the public through their posts, videos, and pictures on social media rather than relying on selective interviews. The momentum behind the movement has gained traction and prominence in the mind of the public with the creation of the hashtags #BlackLivesMatter (BLM) and #AllLivesMatter

To say Ferguson, Missouri has seen its share of racial discrimination and mistreatment would be an understatement. As hard fought a battle the civil rights movement was, many cities and suburbs, including Ferguson, remain clouded with unfair treatment of black residents based on their race. Decades of racial discrimination, oftentimes supported, even fueled by politicians, bankers, and real estate agents catapulted Ferguson into the downtrodden suburb it is today. It was the enabling of politicians and the city’s wealthier, white population who refused to allow blacks into their communities to live or for black children to attend school with white children.

In looking at the landscape of current events that relate to criminal justice, one set of events keeps coming to the forefront. These events are all connected to the Black Lives Matter movement and the increasing amount of officer-related shootings, both of suspects and the officers themselves. These recent developments have seemed to create a further racial divide in our society here in the United States. Looking back on the events of Ferguson, Baltimore, Minneapolis, many events in Louisiana, Dallas, and most recently in Milwaukee, all these events have been racially charged. All of this brings me to the event that I would like to focus on for this current event paper, the White Lives Matter protest that took place in Houston, Texas

The shootings of Michael Brown in Missouri and Eric Garner in New York have recently raised a lot of questions and debates about law enforcement’s operation in communities. The protests and riots of the public, especially of African-American, criticizing racial power imbalances in the United States. Even though the killing of the two unarmed African –American men can be viewed as visible sign of racial domination through coercion and violence, which of course is debatable, there are other nearly invisible practices such as grammar and the ideology of mestizaje(racial and cultural mixing) that are responsible for the production of racial domination. This racial power imbalance is also found through educational, economic, and political forces.

As of October 14th of 2015 the Ferguson Riot Commission has been released in response to the unrest, disorganization, and violence that arose in Ferguson preceding the death of Michael Brown on August 9, 2014 and the following manifestations of police brutality. This is not the first of riot commissions but there is a deep history of commissions prior. These commissions propose solutions to the issues in the communities but these commissions alone do not provide the full picture. In order to understand what was going on one must examine the voice of those desiring change and see how they were embraced by the commission group. This paper will discuss riot commissions in general, will inspect prior historical riot commissions in comparison to

Hidden wounds that adults and youth of color have experience are worn like invisible weights. No longer does not it come by as a shock when individuals from the African American community are murdered in broad daylight by the “peacekeepers.” Yet the feeling of disturbance has long since vanished from majority of the reactions towards the consecutively innocent killings. The endless headlines that are plastered on our television screens’ that should read, “Slaughter at the Hand of Law Enforcement,” only add to a tale we have had to endure for decades. These incidents always seem to end the same an up roar of controversial justifications for the unscheduled execution, following the sanction of freedom for the murderer. People failure to understand that police violence in African American communities has had such a profound effect that it provokes irreparable harm to it victims.

In the shooting death of Anthony Lamar Smith, Jason Stockley was deemed not guilty of first-degree murder by Judge Timothy Wilson. As a result of the acquittal of a white police officer who shot and killed a black suspect, protestors in St. Louis are taking action. The struggling, tense relationship between the police and minority groups, such as African Americans, in the U.S. seeps into people’s view and trust towards law enforcement and the criminal justice system. Cady’s failed cry for help to the police had similarity to the difficulties that African Americans are facing with law enforcement in St. Louis.