Ferguson police blamed for not learning from history
Aggressive tactics fan flames, write Chris Christoff, Del Quentin Wilber and James Nash
NEGLECTING lessons of past civil disturbances such as the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles, police inflamed tension that has fuelled more than a week of unrest in a St Louis suburb where an unarmed black teenager was shot dead by an officer.
The challenges are as basic as the overwhelmingly white composition of the police department in predominately black Ferguson, Missouri, and a decision to quickly embrace aggressive tactics, current and former police commanders say.
While officials who have spoken to Bloomberg agree local authorities acted in a manner they thought best in difficult circumstances, they say inexperience, a chasm in relations between officers and the community, and disregard of lessons learned by larger police agencies appeared to make it harder to quell the strife.
“You have to know your community,” says Bert Shirey, who in 38 years with the Baltimore police rose to deputy commissioner, second-highest on the force, retiring in 2002.
“You have to have real contacts in the community, and you always have to be careful to walk a fine line not to overreact. Sometimes a big show of force in the beginning may not be the proper way to deal with it.”
The use of tear gas during demonstrations in Seattle against the World Trade Organisation in 1999 was “the biggest mistake, the worst decision in my 34 years in law enforcement”, says Norm Stamper, the city’s police chief at the time.
The chemical, intended to clear a throng of nonviolent protesters, provoked more violence in the days that followed, he says. “I learned what not to do, and I’m afraid it’s a lesson that has not been learned by American law enforcement.”
Protesters in Ferguson have hurled rocks and Molotov cocktails in repeated clashes with police since Michael Brown’s shooting on August 9, chanting “Hey hey, ho ho, these racist cops have got to go!”
Early on Sunday, in scenes that recalled the civil rights movement of the 1960s, police fired tear gas and rubber bullets at about 200 protesters who refused to obey a midnight curfew set by governor Jay Nixon.
Missouri State Highway Patrol Capt Ron Johnson, asked by Mr Nixon to oversee the police response, said the use of tear gas was appropriate as there were several armed people at a local restaurant, and one person had been shot.
Local authorities are referring reporter inquiries to the highway patrol.
The lessons learned by many big-city departments after episodes of unrest appear to have been lost on Ferguson police, says Jody Armour, a law professor at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.
The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), criticised for its response to the 1992 riots after a jury acquitted officers in the videotaped beating of King, a black motorist, improved relations with nonwhite communities under a consent decree with the Justice Department, he says.
Ferguson police should have realised a militaristic approach could backfire, “The armaments, the weaponry, the tone that was set with the citizens when you come in with a shock-and-awe approach to policing — when you’re surrounded by military armaments, the credo is more like ‘command and control’ than ‘serve and protect’.
“Experience matters. It taught the LAPD and a lot of other departments that it may be best to avoid those kinds of confrontations with citizenry rather than fan the flames.”
A commission investigating the King beating found police were perceived as an occupying army, not as members of the community, Joanne Belknap, a University of Colorado sociologist who served on the panel, says. Ferguson would have been wise to learn from that, she says.
The Missouri confrontations have fuelled questions about whether local police are overequipped and undertrained. The conflict has exposed a gap between a community that is 67% black and a police force of 53 with three black officers.
“You are way behind the eight-ball when you don’t reflect the community,” says Kevin Davis, formerly a top police official in Prince George’s County, Maryland, where the racial majority is black.
He says law enforcement officials in Ferguson should have immediately joined with community leaders at press conferences to urge calm. When matters got out of hand, police should have responded with officers in their usual uniforms, not militarystyle equipment. A forum would have allowed the public to vent its anger.