Looking for a related post on BLDGBLOG about the militarization of public space in America, will update when I find it.
jdparnell1218
Aug 14, 14 5:18 pm
I think it would behoove people to look into the St. Louis local news outlets as well. You are more likely to get a down to earth perspective that national news can't get.
Matthew Friesz
Aug 14, 14 5:33 pm
The aftermath of the shooting has become something different all together. The mob mentality up against a militarized police force, only one of which is something new. The police forces in the US are become more and more reminiscent of the nazi brown shirts of the past, using brute force and intimidation to suppress descent. Is that telling of a larger societal swing going on? Maybe, but it is becoming very worrisome to see the police adopting the shoot first mentality (that even the military was barred from using in Iraq towards the end) add a total lack of accountability, and we will see rebellion. Lots of theories out there regarding the state of affairs with the police, but the outcome of the recent trend is beginning to become clear...
archanonymous
Aug 14, 14 6:01 pm
Matthew, would love to see any good local links or stories you have found on this. Are you local to STL?
Carrera
Aug 14, 14 7:20 pm
I’m not up on it all but that line-up brings back my memories of Kent State only the shirts were army green. This isn’t new; they brought out tanks in Detroit in the 60’s. It’s simply the mentality of law enforcement. Have you ever met or talked to any of these guys? I chased work during the jail/prison building boom and met many, took a number of groups out to party to get the work. A lot of these guys are Neanderthals. In my community these guys will chase down a traffic violator and kill the guy, or innocent bystanders in car accident cross-fires. They have had the good sense to throw two of the fuckers in prison, but it still continues.
Have an architectural story that says it all. Chased a regional jail and we had an inside track with a friend of mine that was going to be its director. Spent a lot of time & money chasing, touring, entertaining and got short-listed with only 3 firms. Did the interview and got the crushing news that night that we came in second. I obviously asked my friend why and he said the winning firm passed out key-chains made in the form of handcuffs before their interview and he said “they liked that”. He was fucking serious and couldn’t think of another reason. I thought my forehead was going to split open! Never chased another jail, couldn’t afford the key-chains.
Best just to stay away from the entire justice system. Once stopped in one of those DUI dragnet blockades and I went off on the State Patrol Officer, I remember words like “Gestapo”, “Dragnet” & “Police State” leaking out and he leaned over into my open window and smiled and said “Its going to get worse”.
drums please, Fab?
Aug 14, 14 7:35 pm
that looting deserves a militarized response, yo!
Matthew Friesz
Aug 14, 14 8:16 pm
I'm afraid I'm not local, just a military vet who's disappointed with what's happening in police departments across the country.
However one tragedy elicits riots, protests, looting, national media attention, comments from the president. death threats, cyberattacks, the creation of this thread, etc.
The other is business as usual.
Unfortunately, the more that comes to light about this case the less and less it looks like a "teen" being shot by the man and more like a misguided young man who's life ended according to brutally accurate statistics.
zonker
Aug 16, 14 8:28 pm
Stll - why spray paint shops of folks who had nothing to do with it. - Ever since The Oscar Grant shooting. - the Chronicle shows an Oakland PD cop beating the sh**t out of a protester
More violence overnight. The police tear gassed the protesters before the curfew started, supposedly because the protesters were throwing molotov cocktails. Sounds like looting is spreading to neighboring dellwood. the governor called in the national guard.
The difference between your three stories and this one is that it was a cop who shot the kid, right?
Miles Jaffe
Aug 18, 14 9:14 am
Reports this am that the kid was shot six times.
My guess is the cop ran out of ammo.
subgenius
Aug 18, 14 9:25 am
yep, you guys should really support and "pity" those poor folks who feel that justice can only be served with looting their innocent neighbors...oh wait, that innocent kid, probably did not try to use his size and aggression to attack a cop..i mean what would make this kid think he could just bully his way around? Someone should tell these cops that they have somehow surrendered the right to protect themselves...wait a second. (notice that the kid was not shot once in the back)
DeTwan
Aug 18, 14 9:27 am
Yeah, it would conclude that the cop lost his temper and his mind. Two bulltets to the dome, and then the video of him left uncovered on the street for over an hour. Very bad policemanship on behalf of the Ferguson PD.
curtkram
Aug 18, 14 9:29 am
apparently the police at the scene threatened to shoot a reporter for taping what they were doing as well.
I think people don't understand just how racist the St. Louis area is. Cops like to harass dark-skinned people there - sure it happens in other cities, but it's much worse there.
Go to St. Charles and you'll still hear white people say "colored."
DeTwan
Aug 18, 14 10:00 am
I think you'll hear them say worse things than that. I live in Kansas City, and the same is here. Kansas City lost all its funding and state grants back in the oughts, and all the school building have been for sale for years, that is right... NO PUBLIC SCHOOLING in Kansas City proper.
A complete shame on the public officials that didn't and still don't care about education here in Missouri. I don't know how it is in STL, but I imagine it can't be much more different.
This situation is about what you would expect if you were to pull the plug on public education, an then spend a decade militarizing the police with tax dollars. For Missouri to be located so far west and not too far from the most progressive state of the union, it is amazing just how far behind it is in its juridical thought process. Almost feels deep south.
curtkram
Aug 18, 14 11:30 am
i live in kansas city too! fairly close to troost.
hale cook elementary just opened as a new public school in the kansas city district. the future isn't all doom and gloom for us.
Carrera
Aug 18, 14 12:28 pm
I agree with Xenakis and one other, what is supposed to be done to protect the innocent there? Ever since the death of Martin Luther King this seems to be the universal response to injustice. They don’t realize that this kind of thing is only making things worse, not better.
In their defense though, what are we to expect from the disenfranchised? All our society has done is widen the gap and paint the disenfranchised into-a-corner. It has been 46 years of pacification. Look at drugs and gangs, they could control this in many ways but don’t, they let it proliferate so long as they keep it inside their neighborhoods. Zaluchi said in The Godfather - I don't want it near schools -- I don't want it sold to children! That's an infamia. In my city, we would keep the traffic in the dark people -- the colored. They're animals anyway, so let them lose their souls... I swear they think this way.
from that source, it sounds like the media is becoming a bigger problem than the protestors
i don't want to minimize the real problem, because it still is a real problem with race and unequal application of "justice," but if this scene is just becoming attention whoring, and the media wants to see violence while the police want to play gi joe and be violent, the residents can go home.
Miles Jaffe
Aug 20, 14 6:11 pm
Every aspect of media has been compromised. This is a terrific video about how photojournalists manage and stage scenes looking to get a photo that will sell.
The media devalues these kinds of situations very fast especially with fast internet media where the attention span of its readers is 160 characters or whatever a tweet is. I watched a conference in a church on this and when it switched to the newscasters they only wanted to talk about the intensity of the emotions and nothing about the situation really. Now they are talking a lot about agitators......then you have the convenient detachment of the internet where you can say things without consequences.........I lived in a small town in Missouri and one evening while having dinner with the family we heard 8 pops. We thought it was our neighbor doing construction. When we saw our neighbor run across our yard we went outside to see what had happen. I am writing this from memory, happened almost 20 years ago. The very short version - a white man killed a black man. It took a few days before the white man was in custody. Small rallies were held downtown once or twice and gangs or relatives (depending who you asked) sat downtown at night for a week or so - coming from st. Louis or KC. At the time, after leaving my girlfriends house I would drive late nights through the small downtown square to see a handful of people hanging out - not much happening. There was about 2 minutes a night a week of press coverage. Generally I do not remember talking about it much in school, the conversations were typically behind closed doors. Everything was very tense including football practice. Our headcoach asked some young white coach, probably 23 at the time, to say something - unfair to the young coach to say the least. He at best said he had went to school with black kids that were bused in - he didn't even live in the town. That is what the media sounds like a lot. On one hand the media is trying to relay the situation properly and pretend to have empathy, but I think at their current rate - with their professional lust for the spectacle they are really devalueing the entire moment in history.
I wanted to start an official thread on this instead of cluttering up a thread about actual architecture with off-topic posts.
If you have not been following this, here are some ways to catch up.
What set it off: http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/08/11/Witnesses-in-Say-Shooting-by-Ferguson-Cop-Unjustified
Aftermath (tried to get diverse news sources to represent a x-section of political leanings, hence the Brietbart news):
http://boingboing.net/2014/08/13/ferguson-protesters-hold-peac.html
http://gawker.com/washington-post-huffpo-reporters-arrested-in-ferguson-1621284034
http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/8/13/2nd-shooting-ferguson.html
http://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/2dj1k7/ferguson_police_tear_gas_aljazeera_news_crew_swat/
http://www.breitbart.com/InstaBlog/2014/08/13/What-Al-Sharpton-Has-Done-Right-in-Ferguson
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-28779376
Looking for a related post on BLDGBLOG about the militarization of public space in America, will update when I find it.
I think it would behoove people to look into the St. Louis local news outlets as well. You are more likely to get a down to earth perspective that national news can't get.
The aftermath of the shooting has become something different all together. The mob mentality up against a militarized police force, only one of which is something new. The police forces in the US are become more and more reminiscent of the nazi brown shirts of the past, using brute force and intimidation to suppress descent. Is that telling of a larger societal swing going on? Maybe, but it is becoming very worrisome to see the police adopting the shoot first mentality (that even the military was barred from using in Iraq towards the end) add a total lack of accountability, and we will see rebellion. Lots of theories out there regarding the state of affairs with the police, but the outcome of the recent trend is beginning to become clear...
Matthew, would love to see any good local links or stories you have found on this. Are you local to STL?
I’m not up on it all but that line-up brings back my memories of Kent State only the shirts were army green. This isn’t new; they brought out tanks in Detroit in the 60’s. It’s simply the mentality of law enforcement. Have you ever met or talked to any of these guys? I chased work during the jail/prison building boom and met many, took a number of groups out to party to get the work. A lot of these guys are Neanderthals. In my community these guys will chase down a traffic violator and kill the guy, or innocent bystanders in car accident cross-fires. They have had the good sense to throw two of the fuckers in prison, but it still continues.
Have an architectural story that says it all. Chased a regional jail and we had an inside track with a friend of mine that was going to be its director. Spent a lot of time & money chasing, touring, entertaining and got short-listed with only 3 firms. Did the interview and got the crushing news that night that we came in second. I obviously asked my friend why and he said the winning firm passed out key-chains made in the form of handcuffs before their interview and he said “they liked that”. He was fucking serious and couldn’t think of another reason. I thought my forehead was going to split open! Never chased another jail, couldn’t afford the key-chains.
Best just to stay away from the entire justice system. Once stopped in one of those DUI dragnet blockades and I went off on the State Patrol Officer, I remember words like “Gestapo”, “Dragnet” & “Police State” leaking out and he leaned over into my open window and smiled and said “Its going to get worse”.
that looting deserves a militarized response, yo!
I'm afraid I'm not local, just a military vet who's disappointed with what's happening in police departments across the country.
Closer to home link here. http://demilit.tumblr.com
Sometimes I think the 2nd amendment guys are just kooks, but then something like this happens.
Here are three teens 18 and under who have been killed in Chicago since the shooting in Ferguson occurred.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/chi-chicago-gun-violence-shootings-20140810-story.html
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/chi-boy-17-fatally-shot-on-south-side-20140812-story.html
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/chi-male-victim-killed-in-south-side-shooting-20140806-story.html
Both situations are TRAGIC.
However one tragedy elicits riots, protests, looting, national media attention, comments from the president. death threats, cyberattacks, the creation of this thread, etc.
The other is business as usual.
Unfortunately, the more that comes to light about this case the less and less it looks like a "teen" being shot by the man and more like a misguided young man who's life ended according to brutally accurate statistics.
Stll - why spray paint shops of folks who had nothing to do with it. - Ever since The Oscar Grant shooting. - the Chronicle shows an Oakland PD cop beating the sh**t out of a protester
http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Oakland-rally-protests-Missouri-shooting-5692419.php
More violence overnight. The police tear gassed the protesters before the curfew started, supposedly because the protesters were throwing molotov cocktails. Sounds like looting is spreading to neighboring dellwood. the governor called in the national guard.
The difference between your three stories and this one is that it was a cop who shot the kid, right?
Reports this am that the kid was shot six times.
My guess is the cop ran out of ammo.
yep, you guys should really support and "pity" those poor folks who feel that justice can only be served with looting their innocent neighbors...oh wait, that innocent kid, probably did not try to use his size and aggression to attack a cop..i mean what would make this kid think he could just bully his way around? Someone should tell these cops that they have somehow surrendered the right to protect themselves...wait a second. (notice that the kid was not shot once in the back)
Yeah, it would conclude that the cop lost his temper and his mind. Two bulltets to the dome, and then the video of him left uncovered on the street for over an hour. Very bad policemanship on behalf of the Ferguson PD.
apparently the police at the scene threatened to shoot a reporter for taping what they were doing as well.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/17/police-threaten-reporters-ferguson_n_5686674.html
I think people don't understand just how racist the St. Louis area is. Cops like to harass dark-skinned people there - sure it happens in other cities, but it's much worse there.
Go to St. Charles and you'll still hear white people say "colored."
I think you'll hear them say worse things than that. I live in Kansas City, and the same is here. Kansas City lost all its funding and state grants back in the oughts, and all the school building have been for sale for years, that is right... NO PUBLIC SCHOOLING in Kansas City proper.
A complete shame on the public officials that didn't and still don't care about education here in Missouri. I don't know how it is in STL, but I imagine it can't be much more different.
This situation is about what you would expect if you were to pull the plug on public education, an then spend a decade militarizing the police with tax dollars. For Missouri to be located so far west and not too far from the most progressive state of the union, it is amazing just how far behind it is in its juridical thought process. Almost feels deep south.
i live in kansas city too! fairly close to troost.
hale cook elementary just opened as a new public school in the kansas city district. the future isn't all doom and gloom for us.
I agree with Xenakis and one other, what is supposed to be done to protect the innocent there? Ever since the death of Martin Luther King this seems to be the universal response to injustice. They don’t realize that this kind of thing is only making things worse, not better.
In their defense though, what are we to expect from the disenfranchised? All our society has done is widen the gap and paint the disenfranchised into-a-corner. It has been 46 years of pacification. Look at drugs and gangs, they could control this in many ways but don’t, they let it proliferate so long as they keep it inside their neighborhoods. Zaluchi said in The Godfather - I don't want it near schools -- I don't want it sold to children! That's an infamia. In my city, we would keep the traffic in the dark people -- the colored. They're animals anyway, so let them lose their souls... I swear they think this way.
http://thevandykecollection.com/embarrassed-to-photograph-ferguson/
from that source, it sounds like the media is becoming a bigger problem than the protestors
i don't want to minimize the real problem, because it still is a real problem with race and unequal application of "justice," but if this scene is just becoming attention whoring, and the media wants to see violence while the police want to play gi joe and be violent, the residents can go home.
Every aspect of media has been compromised. This is a terrific video about how photojournalists manage and stage scenes looking to get a photo that will sell.
http://rubensalvadori.wordpress.com/2011/09/23/presenting-photojournalism-behind-the-scenes/
The media devalues these kinds of situations very fast especially with fast internet media where the attention span of its readers is 160 characters or whatever a tweet is. I watched a conference in a church on this and when it switched to the newscasters they only wanted to talk about the intensity of the emotions and nothing about the situation really. Now they are talking a lot about agitators......then you have the convenient detachment of the internet where you can say things without consequences.........I lived in a small town in Missouri and one evening while having dinner with the family we heard 8 pops. We thought it was our neighbor doing construction. When we saw our neighbor run across our yard we went outside to see what had happen. I am writing this from memory, happened almost 20 years ago. The very short version - a white man killed a black man. It took a few days before the white man was in custody. Small rallies were held downtown once or twice and gangs or relatives (depending who you asked) sat downtown at night for a week or so - coming from st. Louis or KC. At the time, after leaving my girlfriends house I would drive late nights through the small downtown square to see a handful of people hanging out - not much happening. There was about 2 minutes a night a week of press coverage. Generally I do not remember talking about it much in school, the conversations were typically behind closed doors. Everything was very tense including football practice. Our headcoach asked some young white coach, probably 23 at the time, to say something - unfair to the young coach to say the least. He at best said he had went to school with black kids that were bused in - he didn't even live in the town. That is what the media sounds like a lot. On one hand the media is trying to relay the situation properly and pretend to have empathy, but I think at their current rate - with their professional lust for the spectacle they are really devalueing the entire moment in history.