It would appear that unnamed Obama administration officials, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, and their media cheerleaders have coordinated a narrative with regard to the Ferguson, MO Police Department. According to CNN, “government officials familiar with the ongoing discussions between local, state and federal officials” are saying Police Chief Thomas Jackson is expected to step down “as part of the effort by city officials to reform the Police Department.”
The proverbial fly in the ointment? Jackson and Mayor James Knowles deny any such plan exists. “Nobody in my chain of command has asked me to resign, nor have I been terminated,” said Jackson in a phone call with the news network. Knowles affirmed that statement and dismissed the notion that pressure was brought to bear by the feds. “People have been saying that for months, I mean for him to step down, Knowles explained. “But we’ve stood by him this entire time. So there is no change on that.”
Apparently Eric Holder has a different agenda. “I think it’s pretty clear that the need for wholesale change in that department is appropriate,” he said Wednesday, during an appearance at the Washington Ideas Forum. “Exactly what the form of that change will be, I think, we’ll wait until we complete our inquiry.”
Holder reiterated his exasperation with the leaks that have been emerging from the various investigations in the case that garnered national attention — as well as ongoing civil demonstrations often deteriorating in lawless mayhem — following the shooting of teenager Michael Brown by Officer Darren Wilson last August. The AG declared that the attempt to shape public opinion while the investigation remained ongoing was inappropriate. “I’ve said I’m exasperated. That’s a nice way of saying ‘I’m mad,’ because that’s just not how things should be done,” he declared. “Whoever the sources of the leaks are needs to shut up.”
The irony is rich. Holder is calling for wholesale changes in the police department prior to the ultimate determination of Wilson’s guilt or innocence, yet somehow the leader of perhaps the most politicized Justice Department in modern history doesn’t see that statement as a blatant attempt to shape public opinion.
Furthermore, MSNBC has reported at least one of those leaks comes courtesy of “a source within the Obama administration,” the New York Times cited “government officials” as their source in detailing leaks about Wilson’s testimony, and Daily Caller reporter Chuck Ross reveals that Mayor Knowles told the Caller that he was told by CNN “that the DOJ was the source of their information.”
Could it be that Eric Holder himself “needs to shut up”? Or is he in the process of fashioning yet another capitulation to the mob that has been so threatening that five felony cases have been dropped because Wilson, characterized as an “indispensable witness” in all of them, can’t appear due to threats on his life?
It is a mob that has regularly chanted, “Who do we want? Darren Wilson! How do we want him? Dead!” It is a mob that has rioted on several occasions, looted and burned down businesses, shot at police and news helicopters, and threatened the lives and property of many innocents. It has been egged on by professional race-baiters and radical leftist organizations, including the Tauheed Youth Organization, the pro-Hamas Organization for Black Struggle, the Moorish Science Temple, the New Black Panther Party (NBPP) and racial arsonist Al Sharpton. The NBPP and Sharpton both presented a list of demands that must be met, with the NBPP insisting that Wilson, who had yet to be identified at that point, much less charged, “be fired and charged with murder,” and that the Ferguson Police Department must be re-made to “reflect the racial demography of the community.”
Diversifying a police department is a legitimate desire, but easier said than done. “We hire everyone that we can get,” Knowles insisted. “There’s also the problem that a lot of young African American people don’t want to go into law enforcement.”
Not just in Ferguson. The authors of the Law Enforcement Recruitment Toolkit, published by the U.S. Department of Justice, spoke to the reality of peer pressure. “Some nonwhites may view policing as a white-dominated and racist profession and may reject the idea of working for the police because they fear being perceived by their peers as selling out,” they noted. Phillip Atiba Goff, co-founder and president of The Center for Policing Equity at the University of California, Los Angeles echoes that assertion. “If you were taught from the time that you could speak, from the time that you could understand speech, that police are to be feared and that they’re part of an occupying force that is there to circumvent the democratic processes and to strip you of your rights, then it’s very difficult for that department to come into your neighborhood and tell you that they respect you and that you should join their team,” he said, adding that diversity is “no pancea.” Malcolm D. Holmes and Brad W. Smith, co-authors of “Race and Police Brutality: Roots of an Urban Dilemma,” further explained that diversifying police forces “have not curbed police violence in communities of color” or removed the unique challenges of policing deprived neighborhoods.
Regardless, the mob may get at least one of their wishes fulfilled. In addition to the purported ouster of Chief Jackson, MSNBC is reporting that Officer Wilson is also expected to be “eased out” of his job. Both moves are ostensibly a prelude to a “full-scale take over of the Ferguson force by the St. Louis County police.” The announcement of these steps could occur as early as next week, according to CNN.
CNN legal analyst Mark O’Mara was quick to jump on the bandwagon. “The animosity that existed in Ferguson were way before Mike Brown’s shooting, justified or not. So, unfortunately, the leadership in the Police Department has to change,” he insisted. “And if [Jackson’s] sort of a sacrificial lamb to get this started, it’s going to have to be. Ferguson’s going to have to move forward. And it doesn’t seem they can move forward with this police chief in place.”
O’Mara was likely taking his cue from Holder, who voiced a similar dissatisfaction last month when he announced the Justice Department was conducting an investigation of the force. “People consistently expressed concerns stemming from specific alleged incidents, from general policing practices and from the lack of diversity on the Ferguson police force,” Holder told reporters at the time. “These anecdotal accounts underscore the history of mistrust of law enforcement in Ferguson that has received a good deal of attention.”
That would be predominantly media-driven attention, and their initial effort to frame the narrative in this case was reprehensible. Their description of Michael Brown as a college-bound “gentle giant” was shattered by a video-tape depicting him committing a strong-arm robbery against a far smaller store clerk. Also debunked were the initial reports that Brown was shot in the back. That allegation was made by witnesses Dorian Johnson, Piaget Crenshaw and and Tiffany Mitchell. Johnson was Brown’s partner in crime, and Crenshaw changed her story following the family autopsy conducted by Dr. Michael Baden.
Yet the trio’s other allegation, that Brown had his hands up when he was shot— unsupported by the official autopsy—was far more problematic. While several other witnesses contradicted that assessment, the “hands up” narrative went national, and remains largely embedded among a portion of black America and their white, leftist enablers who are either uninterested in the truth, or working feverishly to gain as much political mileage as they can from the incident, prior to the grand jury’s ultimate determination.
CNN analyst Michael Smerconish believes that the attempt to oust Jackson is another orchestrated sop to the mob that may indicate the grand jury is not going to indict Wilson. “To me this is all calibrated and intended to take the temperature down of the community,” he said. “I’m absolutely convinced we’re headed for no indictment in this case.”
The evidence leaked so far points in that direction. The official autopsy backs Wilson’s version of the events, as do seven or eight black American witnesses — who won’t speak publicly because they fear for their own safety. And the infamous hacker group Anonymous cites yet another “government source” indicating that Wilson will not be indicted, adding that the grand jury’s announcement to that effect, originally slated for January 7, may now be made in as little as 10 days.
In the meantime, Americans ought to ponder the “chicken or the egg” order of events if and when such a scenario unfolds. As a simple Google search reveals, much of the media consider it a virtual given that Ferguson, and perhaps several other communities as well, will erupt in unrestrained violence if Darren Wilson is acquitted. The LA Times offers a quote from Kevin Seltzer, who lives at an apartment complex near where Brown was shot. “They’re not going to be looting next time,” he warns. “They’re going to burn the city down.” CNN gots in on the act. “If there is not an indictment, excuse my French, all hell is going to break loose,” says an unnamed protester. “Ferguson and St. Louis will be in a state of emergency if Wilson is not indicted,” grad student Jaleah Williams told the Huffington Post. “If he’s not indicted, Ferguson will never be same. At the end of the day, the amount of times Wilson shot Mike Brown was excessive. So, if no charges come down, that’s saying it’s okay for police to kill our kids,” he added.
The Guardian reports that protesters are “warning police that they are prepared to die on the streets for their cause,” with Millennial Activists United co-founder Ashley Yates insisting that if Wilson is not indicted “people have every right to go out and express their rage in a manner that is equal to what we have suffered.” Hands Up United activist Tef Poe was far more direct. “Don’t come to Ferguson if you aren’t ready to die,” he warned. “Stay at home, as it could happen.”
If it does happen, the blood will be on the hands of the aforementioned race-baiters and their media enablers, as well as Attorney General Eric Holder, whose role in this tragedy cannot be understated. It was Holder who went to Ferguson last August and, absent any evidence of what actually occurred, sympathized with the residents’ “mistrust” of police because he is not only the attorney general, but a “black man” — one who proceeded to tell the crowd about his own experience of being stopped on the New Jersey Turnpike and accused of speeding. “I remember how humiliating that was and how angry I was and the impact it had on me,” Holder said — without ever mentioning whether or not he had in fact been speeding. And now, even with the facts as yet unannounced, he has essentially indicted an entire Ferguson Police Department that requires “wholesale change.”
It is America itself that requires wholesale change. The nation has reached the point where the politics of division embraced by this administration and its enablers in the Democratic party, egged on by their corrupt cheerleaders in the media, must be forcefully rejected. The race card is maxed out, and only those who profit from the misery of others wish to see the divisiveness continue.
Source: Front Page Magazine
Arnold Ahlert is a former NY Post op-ed columnist currently contributing to JewishWorldReview.com, HumanEvents.com and CanadaFreePress.com. He may be reached at atahlert@comcast.net.
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