The War on Cops. Heather Mac Donald
legitimate issues in terms of how communities and law enforcement interact.”
Such skepticism about the ability of the police to maintain the peace appropriately was unwarranted at the time and even more so in retrospect; the forces of law and order didn’t fire a single shot. Nor did they inflict injury, despite having been fired at themselves. Missouri’s governor, Jay Nixon, was under attack for days for having authorized a potential mobilization of the National Guard—as if the August rioting didn’t more than justify such a precaution. Any small-business owner facing another wave of violence would have been desperate for such protection and more. Though Nixon didn’t actually call up the Guard, his prophylactic declaration of a state of emergency proved prescient.
Obama left no doubt that he believed the narrative of the mainstream media and race activists about Ferguson. That narrative held that the shooting of Brown was a symbol of nationwide police misbehavior and that the August riots were an “understandable” reaction to widespread societal injustice. “The situation in Ferguson speaks to broader challenges that we still face as a nation. The fact is, in too many parts of this country, a deep distrust exists between law enforcement and communities of color.” This distrust was justified, in Obama’s view. He reinvoked the “diversity” bromide about the racial composition of police forces, implying that white officers cannot fairly police black communities. Yet some of the most criticized law-enforcement bodies in recent years have, in fact, been majority black.
“We have made enormous progress in race relations,” Obama conceded. “But what is also true is that there are still problems, and communities of color aren’t just making these problems up. . . . The law too often feels like it’s being applied in a discriminatory fashion. . . . [T]hese are real issues. And we have to lift them up and not deny them or try to tamp them down.”
To claim that the laws are applied in a discriminatory fashion was a calumny, unsupported by evidence. For the president of the United States to put his imprimatur on such propaganda was bad enough; to do so following a verdict in so incendiary a case was grossly irresponsible. But such partiality followed the pattern of this administration in Ferguson and elsewhere, with Attorney General Eric Holder prematurely declaring the Ferguson police force in need of wholesale change and President Obama invoking Ferguson at the United Nations as a manifestation of America’s ethnic strife.
The wanton destruction that followed the grand jury’s decision was overdetermined. For weeks, the press had been salivating at the potential for black violence. The New York Times ran several stories a day, most on the front page, about such a prospect. Media coverage of racial tension portrayed black violence as customary, and riots as virtually a black entitlement.
The press dusted off hoary tropes about police stops and racism, echoing the anti-law-enforcement agitation and the crusade against “racial profiling” of the 1990s. The New York Times selected various features of Ferguson almost at random and declared them racist, simply by virtue of their being associated with the city where Michael Brown was killed (a theme that Chapter 2 examines further). A similar conceit emerged regarding the grand-jury investigation: innocent or admirable aspects of the prosecutor’s management of the case, such as the quantity of evidence presented, were blasted as the product of a flawed or deliberately tainted process—so desperate were the activists to discredit the grand jury’s decision.
This kind of misinformation about the criminal-justice system and the police can only increase hatred of the police. That hatred, in turn, will heighten the chances of more Michael Browns attacking officers and getting shot themselves. Police officers in the tensest areas may hold off from assertive policing. Such de-policing will leave thousands of law-abiding minority residents who fervently support the police ever more vulnerable to thugs.
Obama couldn’t have stopped the violence in Ferguson with his address to the nation. But in casting his lot with those who speciously impugn our criminal-justice system, he increased the likelihood of more such violence in the future.
Press reports on the Ferguson “unrest,” as the media prefer to call such violence, quickly began to reveal an operative formula: select some aspect of the city’s political or civic culture; declare it racist by virtue of its association with Ferguson; disregard alternative explanations for the phenomenon; blame it for the riots. Bonus move: generalize to other cities with similar “problems.” By this process, the media could easily reach predetermined conclusions.
For example: Ferguson’s population is two-thirds black, but five of its six city council members are white, as is its mayor. Conclusion: this racial composition must be the product of racism. Never mind that blacks barely turn out to vote and that they field practically no candidates. Never mind that the mayor ran for a second term unopposed. Is there a record of Ferguson’s supposed white power structure suppressing the black vote? None has been alleged. Did the rioters even know who their mayor and city council representatives were? The press didn’t bother to ask. It only saw an example of what was imagined to be a disturbingly widespread problem. In a front-page story complete with a sophisticated scatter-graph visual aid, the New York Times summed up the problem: “Mostly Black Cities, Mostly White City Halls.”
Another example: Ferguson issues fines for traffic violations, and 20 percent of its municipal budget comes from such receipts. If people with outstanding fines or summonses don’t appear in court, a warrant for their arrest is issued. Conclusion: this is a racist system. The city is deliberately financing its operations on the backs of the black poor. The only reason that blacks are subject to fines and warrants, according to the media, is that they are being hounded by a racist police force. “A mostly white police force has targeted blacks for a disproportionate number of stops and searches,” declared Time (September 1). What was the evidence for such “targeting”? Time provided none. Might blacks be getting traffic fines for the same reason that whites get traffic fines—because they broke the law? The possibility was not considered.
The most frequently summonsed traffic offense is driving without insurance, according to an “exposé” of Ferguson’s traffic-fine system by the New York Times. Perhaps the paper’s editors would be blasé about being hit by an uninsured driver, but most drivers would be grateful that the insurance requirement is being enforced. Might poor blacks have a higher rate of driving without insurance than other drivers? Not relevant to know, apparently.
The next highest categories of driving infraction are blasting loud music out your car and driving with tinted windows. If you attend police-and-community meetings in poor areas, you will regularly hear complaints about cars with deafening sound systems. Should the police ignore such complaints? Are they ignoring similar complaints in white areas because they want to give whites a pass? Do Ferguson’s white and black drivers blast loud music from their cars at the same rate? We never learn. Tinted windows pose a possibly lethal threat to the police during traffic stops, since they prevent officers from assessing the situation inside the car before approaching. Ignoring this infraction puts officers’ lives at risk. Should the police nevertheless do so? Such is the implication, if doing so would mean fewer fines for black motorists. The New York Times quotes a victim of the “racist” Ferguson traffic-enforcement system who was fined for driving without a license. Why was his license suspended? Was he driving drunk? Did he hit someone? We will never know. What is the crime rate in the black areas of Ferguson? That is also something that the mainstream press is not interested in finding out.
The most ubiquitous “Ferguson is racist” meme was that the city’s police force is too white. Four of Ferguson’s 53 officers are black. This imbalance, it was suggested, must be the result of racism and must itself cause racist enforcement activity. How many qualified black applicants have been rejected after applying to join the Ferguson police force? Not an interesting question, evidently.
The “too-white police force” meme, which the New York Times generalized into another front-page article (“Mostly