Ferguson, Missouri, has responded to the police shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed black
teenager, with outrage. While the Brown shooting was a catalyst for the protest, the roots of
the community's outrage run deeper. Ferguson is about 67% black, but that's just not even
remotely represented in its local government. The police force is 53 police officers, and
only 3 of those are black. Only one of the council members is black. The mayor and the
police chief are white. At the same time, Ferguson police have had a disproportionate
number of run-ins with African-Americans. In 2013, police arrested 483 black residents,
compared to just 36 white residents. So in many ways, what happened to Michael Brown,
for a lot of the black community, represents what could be happening to them and their
sons. "You took my son away from me. You know how hard it was for me to get him to stay
in school and graduate? You know how many black men graduate? Not many. Because you
bring them down to this type of level where they feel like they don't got nothing to live
for anyway. They're going to try to take me out anyway." The police reaction to the protests
has done nothing to repair that broken trust. Police are using full body armor. They have
snipers on armored vehicles, which are basically tanks. They have been using dogs. They have
shot tear gas into neighborhoods. They also have used rubber bullets on the protesters,
even when it doesn't seem like they're posing an immediate threat. Crowd control is a really
normal part of police work, but the goal is to de-escalate the situation. This heavy militaristic
response is likely to do the opposite by provoking fear and defensiveness from the crowd. Some
of these tactics may be the result of federal programs that provide local police forces with military-grade
equipment but do not provide any training or oversight on its use. The 1033 program,
which allows the Pentagon to transfer weapons to police departments, requires that the equipment
must be used within one year. This might inspire police to use the equipment even when it's
completely unnecessary. The result is that the streets of Ferguson are looking more like
Iraq than a Saint Louis suburb.