Officer Darren Wilson Deserves an Apology
Or how you can’t have it both ways
By Nate Thayer
March 4, 2015
Yesterday, the U.S. Justice department, with the compliant complicity of the media, released a remarkably well choreographed excercise in the carcinogenic power of PR spin to obfuscate the truth and control the narrative. It should be studied by all those students who want to take their 30 pieces of silver to serve the Devil and go into a career of being professional liars, otherwise known as “public relations”.
It is a study in how to have it both ways, and let the powerless hang out to dry.
In August, a white cop, Darren Wilson, shot and killed a black kid, Michael Brown, in Ferguson,Missouri.
This caused a significant national kerfuffle.
Yesterday, the Justice Department leaked carefully selected excerpts of the politically motivated findings of their months long investigations into the events. It detailed the true endemic racism and economic disparity in America and how it affects poor white and black people.
90+% of all the police arrests–including ridiculous stuff like jaywalking–were made against black people, mainly by white cops.
What a shocker? To whom, is my question? Certainly not to cops or black Americans.
The leaked excerpts never mentioned the ruined life of police officer Darren Wilson or the even more ruin life of the dead Michael Brown.
Here is the dirty little secret which can’t be spoken in polite company:
Officer Wilson did his job as a cop, by the rules. He didn’t do anything wrong.
His life was ruined because he is white.
Michael Brown is dead because he is black, and because he broke those rules. He didn’t do anything wrong being born black in Ferguson, Missouri.
His life is ruined because he is dead.
Darren Wilson didn’t deserve his life to be ruined and Michael Brown doesn’t deserve to be dead.
They are/ were both working class people trying to do the best they can/could under the circumstances.
And they both played by their legitimate rules.
Darren Wilson was unequivocally cleared of all the millions of allegations that ruined his life.
He deserves an apology from his country.
I have no doubt that if the federal government could have found one i not dotted or one t not crossed by Officer Wilson, they would have, and he would have been sent to prison. They didn’t. Darren Wilson was cleared of any and all civil rights or legal violations in the Ferguson shooting.
Officer Wilson’s actions on Aug. 9 in Ferguson, Missouri, didn’t violate any federal civil rights laws and “do not constitute a prosecutable violation,” according to the U.S. Justice Department. “Federal statutes require the government to prove that Officer Wilson used unreasonable force when he shot Michael Brown and that he did so willfully,” the Department of Justice said.
Michael Brown is still dead.
Many witnesses said Mr. Brown was shot dead by a racist cop.
He wasn’t.
He was shot dead because Officer Wilson feared for his life.
The Feds agreed with this, reluctantly, because it is true. Just like a Missouri State Grand Jury did in November.
The Justice Department said forensic and witness evidence confirmed this without qualification. It turns out that Officer Wilson told the truth from the get go–that Brown tried to take his weapon, fought with him, refused to follow orders to halt, and charged at him–all things that would scare the shit out of me if I was a cop, with a gun, pointed at you. I probably would have done the same thing as Wilson and shot Brown. What would you have done differently?
It turns out that Brown did not have his hands up. That is proven, now, by forensic science. He was not surrendering. He was not complying. He was aggressively threatening the cop.
“There is no evidence upon which prosecutors can rely to disprove Wilson’s stated subjective belief that he feared for his safety,” the Justice Department report said.
“Some of those (witness) accounts are inaccurate because they are inconsistent with the physical and forensic evidence; some of those accounts are materially inconsistent with that witnesses’ own prior statements with no explanation. Although some witnesses state that Brown held his hands up at shoulder level with his palms facing outward for a brief moment, these same witnesses describe Brown then dropping his hands and ‘charging’ at Wilson. Those witness accounts stating that Brown never moved back toward Wilson could not be relied upon in a prosecution because their accounts cannot be reconciled with the DNA bloodstain evidence and other credible witness accounts.”
The Federal Justice Department report was exhaustive and thorough and unbiased.
The problem is that the facts of the case didn’t fit the PR political agenda of all kinds of folks.
So black Michael Brown being dead and white Officer Darren Wilson having his life and career and reputation ruined for doing his job are sort of just left out of the report. They are collateral damage of the class and race wars that are simmering right at the surface in the U.S.
The shooting report is separate, kind of, from a broader investigation into Ferguson that found widespread civil rights abuses by the Ferguson Police Department.
The feds made sure to release the report on endemic racism in Ferguson first and then, after it had gained publicity traction and fit the narrative, they slipped in the report that Wilson shot Brown because Wilson was doing his job.
The investigation found a wide pattern of racism by the city’s police force. No kidding? Who would have thunk? “It is time for Ferguson’s leaders to take immediate, wholesale and structural corrective action,” Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said in a statement late Tuesday. In a few minutes, Holder will make public remarks on both issues.
The next step, in my irrelevant view, is to examine whether these tactics are also used disproportionately against working class and poor people, in general. Whether the most pernicious aspect of these findings is that the police powers that have been extended in recent years allow this stuff to happen.
It isn’t just a race issue. It is a class issue. And it is an issue of the frightening and disturbing level of powers given to civil law enforcement in the U.S. in recent years.
If you give the state or cops the power to do this stuff, they will. Anywhere on the planet. Against any race. Against whoever they can get away doing it to.
Michael Brown and his entire race deserve an apology as, equally, does Officer Darren Wilson and the many other good white and black cops. Both were just playing the game by the rules.
I am very glad I am neither black or a white cop in American 2015.
Both deserve better.
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