People are angry and they have every right to be. One of their own was gunned down in the streets like an animal in his own community, his lifeless body displayed where it fell like a trophy for all to see.
His crime? Walking the street of Ferguson Missouri as a black man. That act is apparently a crime that carries with it an automatic death penalty, to be administered by the first police officer on site.
The officer who pulled the trigger, and pulled the trigger, and pulled the trigger, pumping multiple bullets into Michael Brown’s body, was quickly whisked away by police and put in their protective custody for a job well done.
Yes, people are angry and they should be. But these people are black. The bullet-riddled body of the dead teenager, whose apparent crime was walking, was also black and based on eyewitness reports, the trigger-happy police officer who committed the crime of murder was white and belongs to a police force that’s 97% white.
These combinations should have made this unfortunate situation a teachable moment – bringing together the community and the police and ensuring justice for Michael Brown and his family. But instead, scenes of white officers in military gear with heavy artillery, spiced up with the heavy smoke from exploding tear gas canisters and flash grenades, illuminated the area where just days before, an unarmed teen spent the last moments of his life, kneeling down on the cold hard asphalt, hands raised and begging for his life.
Michael Brown’s pleads for life fell on deaf ears as the bullets destroyed his internal organs. And ironically the angry community, using their constitutional rights to protest the killing of one of their own, also found themselves, sitting on the cold hard asphalt with their hands raised, yelling “hands raised don’t shoot, hands raised don’t shoot!”
And for that instant, the protesters must have experienced a small piece of Michael’s last moments as they too looked down the street and saw the same police force, with their machine guns and snipers aiming directly at them… tear gas, flash grenades and rubber bullets the only conversation these police preferred.
