Baylee Reeves

Current Event Paper

Dibble MWF 9am
Nov. 22, 2014
The Ferguson Case

The Ferguson Case has been all over the news in the United States recently as a young
African American male was shot by a police officer in the town of Ferguson, Missouri, a suburb
of St. Louis. Michael Brown was the African American male who was shot and killed at the seen
on August 9th, and the officer, Darren Wilson, was the shooter. On this day August 9th, Brown
and his friend were walking down the middle of a street, and an officer pulled up, Wilson, and
told them to move the sidewalk. On the police scanner previous to this situation, there had been
reported that two black males had previously stole swisher cigars from a gas station. Video
cameras caught the next scenes, which was Brown looking into Wilsons police car and a shot
was fired. After the shot was fired, Brown and his friend ran to get away from the scene, and
Wilson was in pursuit of Brown. Wilson soon shot Brown six times, and it is still debatable if
Brown had his hands raised at the time or if he was going towards the officer Wilson. Because of
this controversial night in Missouri, Ferguson has not been at rest. There has been peaceful
protests against this officer and also violent protests. Police have taken force, but the people
believe that the justice of Michael Brown is not being served, and that the officer Darren Wilson
will be set free.

In the first article I looked it, it seemed as if it was leading towards the side of indictment
of Darren Wilson. It gave a short video, explaining how this event even happened, then went to
describe in text that justice may never be served. It spoke of how in the American system, cops
are rarely convicted of crimes unless there is hard evidence and in this case, there isnt much to
go off of. The article goes on to explain that nothing was written in text and so the chances of
Darren Wilson gaining a guilty charge would be very slim. The article went on to talk about how
regardless of who was killed, its one life lost and it disrupted a whole community. Riots began
to start, with protestors chanting, The whole damn system is guilty as hell!. The article then
went on to talk about other incidents where a cop used unjust force against seemingly innocent
people. It gave the example of Rodney King in Los Angeles in 1991, when he was critically
beaten by four officers. Rodney survived, but this caused such an upset in L.A. that fifty people
had died in the process of protesting against this cruel act. The article gave this example because
it wanted to point out that at that point in time, the four officers werent tried and got off, but
then later on they had been indicted again and had to deal with the consequences of their wrong
doing. The article then finished by talking about how police departments are not wrong, police
force is not wrong, but bad police officers are. The article states that this could be the start of
really looking into police forces and keeping good cops in, and kicking bad cops out.
The next article I looked at was similar, but also different from the first. The second
article was very intelligible, and had a lot of information about the court system, but it also gave
examples of past situations that were similar to the Ferguson case. It began by talking about two
legal issues. One being if the shooting of an unarmed teenager, Michael Brown, was justified
under police procedure and law. (Chertoff) It then talked about how the grand jury is making
that call, and there are many technical and specific rules that undergo when deciding whether or

not it was justified. The second legal issue the article stated was that there is room to ease
community outrage: a lawsuit for federal civil rights violations brought by the Browns Family
or the US Justice Department. (Chertoff) After talking about that specific legal issue, it stated
that it would defer if this was a common pattern the Ferguson police department often practiced,
or if this was an instance of isolated racism. This would cause the police department to be
supervised and make it more specific to the common race in the town of Ferguson, possibly
making the police department strictly African American. The article then dips into an example
that closely resembles this case. The case that Chertoff chose was the Moore v. Dempsey case. In
this specific case, a returning African-American veteran sought to organize black farmers into a
farmers union in their little county, and they met at a church. A white sheriff stormed into this
meeting at this church and fired shots, and shots were fired back. After this event, the African
American farmers were killed and taken to jail, leaving 200 black farmers dead and sentenced to
death as well by an all-white jury. After this huge controversy, the courts tried to take control,
but mobs raged from outside the courthouses. There was no justice for the African-Americans
that day in 1919, but the article goes onto say that we are dealing with something almost similar
100 years later with the Ferguson case. The point of this article is really saying that the court date
for this specific case needs to wait until peoples emotions are brought back down, that there are
no outside factors that will determine the outcome of this case. Equal justice under the law
means that no court she be asked to perform its duties in the teeth of an angry crown demanding
a particular result (Chertoff). It seems as if most people are in favor of the officer being guilty
of killing an innocent teenager, but Chertoff gives the advice of waiting for the determination of
the case to be off of cold hard facts instead of personal opinion.

The third and final article covered the weekend of resistance in Ferguson. The article
gave a little summary of what was happening in St. Louis and what the protestors were doing and
what their plan was. The protestors told the news journal that this was the beginning of a
movement, that it is not just an event, that it is going to make police brutality stop. Throughout
the month of October and since the shooting in August, there have been protestors and police
officers who have clashed. Protestors have been attacked by police, and the protestors believe
that there is specific violence from police that is turned toward the Black and Brown
communities. It then went on to give specific names of colored men who were brutally killed by
officers, just and Brown was. The article then began to talk about what the protestors did first in
the resistance. They picked the town of Clayton, where prosecuting Attorney Robert
McCullochs office is held. McCulloch will be helping choose the deciding factor for the Brown
case, and the protestors believe that he is not a good representative of the black community,
especially because he is apparently too cozy with the police. The protestors then began to tell
the article that they feel as if police officers are abusing their power, and they are being too
heavy-handed, especially against the black race. The protestors also went around the town
chanting, Hands up! Dont shoot!, which was how Michael Brown was right before he was
shot and killed, his hands up, not being a threat. The goal of the protestors resistance is to build
momentum for a nationwide movement against police violence, their website said. (Botelho &
Weisfeldt) This article really was very neutral in the case of Ferguson. It was really trying to
cover the resistance that the protestors were holding, but it was giving hard facts from the case,
and after every accusation, they wrote how it was the opinion of the protestors and not really the
writers of this article of CNN. This article really covered the town of Ferguson and the African-

Americans that have been affected by the death of Michael Brown, and what they are willing to
do to stop all the brutality against the black and brown community.
All these articles deal with the Ferguson case, and they all give a summary of the events
that happened on that day in august. I feel as though the first two articles are very similar, as they
seem to give off the feeling that they feel as though officer Wilson is guilty and had no right to
killed an unarmed teenager in Ferguson that night in August. The third article is more of a
neutral article, even though it writes about going against the police brutality and protestors
rallying against the recent events in Ferguson. The third one just gives facts, and it also gives
personal opinions of the protestors and what the protesters goals are. The writers of the article
are just covering the resistance that weekend, giving the world a look at what is happening in
Ferguson. The other two articles and their writers are trying to get a point across. The first leaned
toward the indictment of officer Wilson, and the second spoke of waiting for the country to cool
down before taking it to court, so the guilty is truly guilty and justice is served. All the articles
together give good information about the Ferguson case, giving different looks on the situation
and really being insightful of what is really happening in St. Louis.
The two readings that seem to really be similar to this specific case, is the Public
Statement and The Letter to Birmingham Jail. These two readings cover parts of the Civil
Rights movement, which was the movement for all races to have their civil rights and be equal to
the white Americans. Similarities to these readings are as follows; one being that there are
protesters fighting for justice to be served in the town of Ferguson, which is what Martin Luther
King Jr. was doing with his movement in Alabama. It also ties back to the other reading, Public
Statement, because the public is pushing theses protesters away. There has been police brutality
in Ferguson fight back against these protesters, who may be peaceful and who may not be, but

from the readings I wonder why things like this still happen. Kings letter is very moving, and I
think if anyone dealing with this situation, especially in Ferguson, were to read this letter things
would calm down significantly. The protestors would understand that yes, physically marching
and demanding for things to change will make things change, but you must be non-violent and
you must understand what may happen when you are marching and protesting. I think so far,
most the protestors have kept to how the protesters did it during the civil rights. Examples of
this would be that they had planned this resistance and specific plans for each day of what they
were going to do and how they were going to do it, which sent a huge message across the nation.
In my eyes, this is another case of civil rights being tried and the community is going to fight
back until justice is served.
Where I stand in this specific case is very neutral. I feel as if I dont know enough about
the entire situation at hand. I know that a young man who was unarmed was shot and killed by an
officer. I also know that there was sighting of a black male that fit the description of Brown, who
stole from a gas station, but all he stole were swisher cigars. From what I know, I feel as if
Brown was innocent, because he was unarmed, and regardless if he were being violent towards
the officer, the officer had no right to shoot. I also dont know if it is true that Michael Brown
had his hands raised above his head, showing that he was surrendering, or if he really went after
the officer. If I was there that day, and I could see that all the information against the officer was
true, Id deem him guilty, but from most articles and things Ive read, all I see is people rooting
for the officer to be guilty of killing Michael Brown, against police procedure. In my own
opinion outside of this case, I do believe that the police system does need a change. I think that a
lot of police officers become power hungry and feel as though they really need to show who has
the power in every situation, and they are willing to kill innocent people to show others what

they can do. That scares me, because police officers are supposed to be our protection, not our
enemies. I feel as though this case needs to be truly looked at and the final determination of the
case needs to be 100%, and I feel that the government needs to regulate police officers and really
look into each department after this. I feel as though if someone doesnt step in, it will cause an
uproar in the society because people will not put up with unjust police brutality any longer.

First Article
WREG MEMPHIS CHANNEL 3 NEWS
Ferguson Case Raises Question: Wheres the Data on Officer-Involved Killings?
http://wreg.com/2014/11/15/ferguson-case-raises-question-wheres-the-data-on-officer-involvedkillings/

Second Article
THE HUFFINGTON POST
The Ferguson Case: A Lesson from Constitutional History
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/meryl-chertoff/the-ferguson-case-a-lesso_b_5729202.html

Third Article
CNN
We Say No More: Protestors Kick Off Four Days of Resistance Over Ferguson Case
http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/10/us/ferguson-weekend-protests/index.html