My attention was drawn this
week to some rather arrogant and ignorant comments made by a
blogger/gadfly/wanna-be pontificator who, it seems, would like to
dictate to everyone in the world what their assigned places in the
world should be. This particular blogger mentioned the murder of
Michael Brown, an unarmed Black teenager, by a white policeman in
Ferguson, Missouri, and stated that a surveillance camera video had
surfaced that showed Mr. Brown allegedly robbing a convenience store
shortly before he was shot. Thus, in the mind of this particular
blogger, the shooting of Mr. Brown was no crime, but rather the
judgment of a righteous society against a Black population that
insists on remaining stubbornly dysfunctional.
There are only three
problems with this argument. First, it is very easy nowadays to
alter digital video – assuming that the original video was
authentically made by a convenience store video camera. If you want
to know just how easy video can be altered, read this
2007 article from Scientific American. Or you can read this,
or this.
Or, you can just watch the
video
yourself. And that leads to the second problem. The video sample I have selected is representative of the
quality one would expect from typical store surveillance cameras; in
other words, you don't use cameras like these to take pictures of the
rings of Saturn or to shoot blockbuster movies. You tell me: who can
positively identify the faces of anyone in the video? (If you want
another version of the video, watch this.
See how much clearer the image of the Fox News liar is than the
images of any of the people in the alleged robbery video? Also note
in the beginning of this clip, that Michael Brown wasn't the only
person in the world who liked red hats and white T-shirts.)
The third problem, of
course, is that the police let slip the fact that officer Darren
Wilson did not know about the alleged robbery when he stopped Michael
Brown. Thus Mr. Wilson's act looks increasingly like what I have
called it: murder.
A person who has learned how
to think would ask the following questions about video evidence:
first, what are typical surveillance camera capabilities (i.e., image
quality, resolution, low-light performance, etc)? Second, how easy
is it for an ordinary person to alter a digital video (and the vast
majority of videos nowadays are digital), or to create
a fake video from scratch? Third, are there unaltered, untampered
9-1-1 calls from Ferguson, Missouri, describing a convenience store
robbery on the day that Michael Brown was shot? Fourth, what
motivations would the various players in this drama have for lying?
Fifth, what sort of track record does the Ferguson police department
have in regard to misconduct?
Sixth, how often are unarmed Black men shot
in this country?
The answers to all these
questions might be deeply upsetting to those who enjoy the rapidly
fading vestiges of Anglo-American privilege. But the willingness to
ask the questions and to face the answers would separate honest
people from dishonest gadflies who hold and voice opinions simply
because they like them, regardless of the facts. Again, I am
thinking of the blogger I mentioned at the first, who said during the
most recent race riots in England that the British had a problem with
immigration (and who disregarded the way the British violated and
victimized nonwhite residents and citizens), and who said that
Haitians were starving because Haiti had a population control problem
(without considering how multinational corporations had stolen
everything they could steal from that country). How easy it is to
blame the victims for the injuries you have inflicted.
I have reviewed hours of video footage at work, where we had some vandalism, so I know just how high the standard of quality is required for the police to act.
ReplyDeleteEven if Mr Brown had been a prior employee of that store, and the owner able to identify him (as in our case, we knew who it was, AND he had previously issued threats), they would not bring charges on such low-quality evidence - a warning to Mr. Brown maybe.
We failed to get the police to act on much better quality video than that released to the public. Even if the video is not tampered with, the police know full well that it was too low a quality to bring about a conviction in a court of law. Most departments would be embarrassed to even present such shoddy images without collaboration from other sources.
If it would not stand up in a court of law, why present it to the court of human opinion?
Everything you say here is true, but to my mind completely misses the main point, which is that even if Michael Brown were unequivocally guilty of robbing that store, there is still no justification for the shooting. Since when does knocking over a convienance store merit extra-judicial execution?
ReplyDeleteHello Aimee,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your continued readership. I would just say that Michael Brown's guilt is a key factor in this story. You are correct that the shooting of an unarmed man is unjustified. But the release by the police of a grainy, low-resolution video alleging Michael Brown's guilt in robbing a convenience store is part of a continuing attempt to paint all young Black American men as potential criminals. The "liberal" response to such criminalization is to say, "Well, all kids get into trouble...but Michael Brown didn't deserve to get shot to death for causing trouble." In other words, let's cut the little criminals some slack. It's somewhat like the attitude held by some liberals toward education of minorities, where they say things like, "We've got to take into account how Black boys learn!" I don't know Michael Brown's family, but I'm fairly confident that they are not looking for that kind of sympathy right now, as that kind of sympathy is nothing more than a continued injury against their son.
I forgot to add this, but my position is that the facts so far point to the conclusion that Michael Brown was murdered utterly without cause, and that the Ferguson police are liars.
ReplyDeleteOuch. I hadn't seen my comments in the light that you cast on them. I apologize if I was unwittingly offensive. It seems to me that your point and my point are both valid but fundamentally unrelated. Looking at what I said, I see that my comment may condemn police brutality and overreach, but doesn't at all address the issue you were articulating. Yes, I agree with you that the police's (and be extension, the government's) production of this false video is part of a nationwide campaign to dehumanize people of color and consolidate their own power by enlisting the "sympathy" of the white/middle class "majority." I see this type of cynical manipulation of images and words all the time with regards to immigrants and the poor and homeless, too. Sometimes the tactics used are so clumsy and gross that I wonder how they can be effective (i.e., the politician who said the child refugees at the border were bring Ebola to the US). I think the only way is if the listeners are actively complicit, willing themselves to believe patent idiocies.
ReplyDelete