St. Louis Post-Dispatch Ferguson coverage - August 14

T H E N O . 1 S T. L O U I S W E B S I T E A N D N E W S P A P E R

THURSDAY • 08.14.2014 • $1.50

A CITY ON EDGE

NIGHTLY STANDOFFS CONTINUE AS FERGUSON BEGINS CLEANUP TEAR GAS USED TO BREAK UP PROTESTERS • OFFICER STILL NOT NAMED • REPORTERS ARRESTED

DAVID CARSON • dcarson@post-dispatch.com

A protester takes shelter from a tear gas explosion on West Florissant Avenue on Wednesday in Ferguson.

SWEEPING THE STREETS

OFFICIALS MAKE PLEA

RANCOR CONTINUES

Ferguson residents take to the streets to help clean up.

Authorities ask for patience as investigation unfolds.

Protesters remain defiant before police.

LAURIE SKRIVAN • lskrivan@post-dispatch.com

NO DETAILS COMING SOON FROM STAFF REPORTS

LAURIE SKRIVAN • lskrivan@post-dispatch.com

Witness talks to police Page A9

FERGUSON • Law enforcement officials on Wednesday asked

for patience to allow the investigation into the shooting of Michael Brown to take its course as tension over the teenager’s death continued for a fifth straight day.

St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Robert McCulloch said his office will take as much time as necessary to review circumstances that led a Ferguson police officer to fatally shoot the 18-year-old Brown on a street Saturday afternoon.

“The timeline on this is there is no timeline,” McCulloch told an afternoon news conference. “We will do this as expeditiously as possible. But we won’t rush.”

Volunteers help clean up Page A9

‘Hands Up’ becomes an iconic image Page A10

Letters and opinions Pages A18-A19

Live updates • STLtoday.com

See BROWN • Page A8

Hamas, Israel extend cease-fire 5 days

BY JOEL GREENBERG McClatchy News Services

JERUSALEM • Israel and Hamas agreed late Wednesday to a five-day extension of a cease-fire to allow further talks on a longer lasting truce in Gaza, but renewed rocket fire triggered fresh Israeli airstrikes, threatening the lull.

The agreement, reached under heavy pressure from Egyptian mediators, was announced in Cairo minutes before the expiration of a 72-hour cease-fire at

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midnight.

“In the last minutes, agreement was reached to extend the cease-fire for another five days, beginning at midnight tonight and ending on Monday,” said Azzam al-Ahmad, the head of a delegation of Palestinian factions negotiating indirectly with an Israeli team.

The Israeli military said six rockets were fired at Israel from Gaza before midnight, and that in response it had See ISRAEL • Page A5

LAURIE SKRIVAN • lskrivan@post-dispatch.com

NAMING OFFICERS NOT ROUTINE

BY ROBERT PATRICK rpatrick@post-dispatch.com > 314-621-5154

ST. LOUIS • A public cry for the name of the Ferguson police officer who killed Michael Brown is a fresh and uncommonly loud iteration of a recurring debate on the balance between police credibility and a public servant’s safety.

Although many departments around the country do release officers’ names and details of use-of-force investigations, there is no consensus. And it has been far from routine in the St. Louis area, where the subject has sparked controversy for years.

St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Robert McCulloch See NAMING • Page A8

Iraqi refugee rescue may not be needed

BY MITCHELL PROTHERO AND NANCY A. YOUSSEF McClatchy News Services

IRBIL, IRAQ • The United States mili-

tary has concluded that there are too few Yazidi refugees still trapped in the mountains of northern Iraq to warrant mounting a potentially risky rescue, the Pentagon said late Wednesday.

Military advisers who earlier in the day visited the Sinjar mountains, where as many as 30,000 people were thought to

still be trapped, said that they found “far fewer” Yazidis than expected and that those who were there were in better condition than anticipated. Food and water dropped in recent days have reached those who remain, the Pentagon statement said.

“The team has assessed that there are far fewer Yazidis on Mount Sinjar than previously feared, in part because of the success of the humanitarian air drops, See IRAQ • Page A13

OFFENSIVE WOES

SUICIDE RISK

CARDS BEAT MARLINS

Powering up offense an off-season priority.

Robin Williams fit an at-risk profile.

Justin Masterson does it all in 5-2 victory.

SPORTS • C1

HEALTH • B1

SPORTS • C1

1 IM Vol. 136, No. 226 ©2014

A8 • ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH

M 2 • Thursday • 08.14.2014

Ferguson Police Shooting

another night of unrest Brown

•

from A1

Resisting pressure from street demonstrators and public officials for answers that show why the unnamed officer confronted Brown and a companion shortly after noon on Saturday, McCulloch said the details may not emerge until the process of collecting evidence and presenting it to the grand jury is complete.

“I know that’s not the answer anybody wants to hear at this point,” he said. “Everybody wants to know what happened.”

McCulloch called the problem twofold. First, he said, ethical rules prevent prosecutors from disseminating the physical evidence. He also said he won’t do anything to corrupt the integrity of the investigation.

In response to a reporter’s question, McCulloch said it will certainly take more than two weeks to complete the investigation. He offered no specific estimate of the timetable. He cited a heavy volume of information that is being gathered in the case.

“We want to test the veracity and accuracy of anybody who comes to us,” McCulloch said.

McCulloch said a lot of information has come forward through social media, “some of it good, some of it bad.”

He stressed that the medical examiner’s report, 911 tapes and other investigative material will be withheld at this point.

One new detail of Saturday’s shooting did emerge Wednesday when Ferguson Police Chief Thomas Jackson in another news conference said the officer who shot Brown suffered facial injuries and was taken to a hospital.

Jackson also acknowledged that mending the strained relationship between his department and the African-American community is imperative for the city and region to move ahead following nearly a week of outrage, violence and looting.

“We have always had real good relations with all of the neighborhood associations,” Jackson said. “Apparently, there’s been this undertow that now has bubbled to the surface, and it’s our first priority to address it, to fix what’s wrong.”

The first step, he added, is working with the community relations office on race relations that the U.S. Justice Department has dispatched to Ferguson.

The chief defended the racial makeup of the Ferguson department. Three of the agency’s 53 officers are African-American in a community where two-thirds of the population is black.

Jackson said he has worked to improve the diversity of the police department, adding it is a “constant struggle to hire and retain personnel.”

In the past few years, Jackson said, he has tried not only to recruit but improve quality of life in the department, including pay levels, to retain officers longer.

The comments from law enforcement in a week that has seen forums, prayer vigils and a clergy-led parade Wednesday that passed many of the looted West Florissant Avenue businesses did little to quell the outrage spawned by Brown’s death.

As has been the case since Monday, the parking lot of a QuikTrip looted and burned Sunday evening has been the epicenter of hostility between protesters and police.

Naming

J.B. Forbes • jforbes@post-dispatch.com

Riot police moved in when protesters refused to get out of West Florissant Avenue in Ferguson on Wednesday. Many protesters raised their hands but refused to move.

an area where shots were heard.

ALDERMAN French, JOURNALISTS ARRESTED

Chris Lee • clee@post-dispatch.com

Protesters try unsuccessfully to light a Molotov cocktail as police prepare to advance Wednesday in Ferguson. It was the fourth night of unrest in Ferguson after the fatal police shooting of a teen on Saturday.

The animosity for the most part was verbal Wednesday until a thrown bottle prompted police to fire smoke bombs at the crowd shortly before 9 p.m.

When police then ordered demonstrators to evacuate the area or face arrest the protesters responded that “we are not going anywhere.”

Police a short time later chased protesters into nearby neighborhoods after dispersing the crowd for the third straight night with tear gas grenades.

On Wednesday, police also used piercing-sound sonic cannons to scatter the crowd.

As they have since Saturday, demonstrators throughout the evening taunted and threatened police.

“If I’m going to go, I’m taking one of you with me,” warned one

• from A1

No ‘officer risk’ exemption in Missouri Sunshine Law insisted Wednesday that no details of the Brown investigation will be released until a grand jury reviews them. But the National Bar Association and American Civil Liberties Union positioned themselves to fight for release of information they say should be immediately public by law.

Some people protesting Saturday’s shooting of Brown, 18, who was unarmed, have loudly demanded the officer’s name without explaining what they would do with it.

Ferguson Police Chief Thomas Jackson said Monday he would release the name once the officer and his family were somewhere safe, but later in the week declared that he would provide it only under court order or if the officer were charged with a crime.

Jeff Roorda, business manager of the St. Louis Police Officers Association, is so opposed

to release of the names that as a state legislator he once tried to pass legislation to protect them.

“These guys face threats during their eight-hour shifts,” he said.

“They shouldn’t have to face them at home.”

Roorda said the public’s right to know can be accommodated through the normal investigative process.

“If they did something wrong, they’re going to be charged criminally and everyone should know what their name is,” he said. He also acknowledged that the name could become public if a lawsuit is filed.

A lawyer said to be representing the Ferguson officer declined to comment Wednesday.

Local union officials representing Ferguson officers did not return calls. Kevin Ahlbrand, president of the Missouri Fraternal Order of Police, said simply, “The less said the better on our

demonstrator.

Another shouted, “We’re not dogs, so what the hell you’ve got those whipping sticks for? Because you want to whip us like dogs.”

A county police tactical operations armored vehicle was deployed at the demonstration site for most of the night.

Protected by body armor, police sat atop the vehicle methodically fitting high-caliber automatic weapons into tripods which were then trained on the crowd.

“You are being ordered to leave now!” police announced frequently through a public address system. “If you don’t leave peacefully there will be arrests.”

The crowd ignored the demand until the tear gas was fired.

As of midnight there were reports of sporadic gunfire.

SHOOTING CHARGES

part.”

ACLU Executive Director Jeffrey Mittman said some in the public have a lack of trust in how police shootings are investigated.

“And we think that starting off by denying the public the right to a document we’re entitled to is not the way to begin a difficult time.”

Mittman said there is no “officer risk” exemption in Missouri’s Sunshine Law. “There are other ways of dealing with that issue,” he said.

Both the ACLU and National Bar have filed open records requests. The ACLU, which asked for initial incident reports from Ferguson and St. Louis County police, has not received a response from Ferguson but was turned down by the county, said Tony Rothert, its legal director.

Neither Ferguson nor the county has responded to similar requests by the Post-Dispatch.

Names of St. Louis city police officers who used deadly force were never officially released before 2009, although the PostDispatch regularly obtained them. Since that time, a policy

keeps the names secret until a “threat assessment” clears them for release.

“Almost always, there’s going to be some level of threat,” said Neil Bruntrager, who has represented numerous officers involved in shootings and who is general counsel for the officers association. He said that releasing the name could put an officer at risk, “perhaps, for years to come.”

The Internet complicates the issue.

“If you have any social media presence, I can get a picture of you. I can find out where you live,” Bruntrager said. “I can follow you home. This threat now extends to whoever you live with.”

“And that’s why these things don’t get released.”

He said that in places where the names are released, “Everybody is prepared for it. There is a culture change.” He said officers there likely have a reduced social media or none at all.

Social media speculation that named a particular Ferguson of-

Prosecutors filed felony charges Wednesday against a man shot by police in a confrontation earlier in the day near the scene of the protests.

Esrail Britton, 19, was charged with second-degree assault on a law enforcement officer and armed criminal action. He remained hospitalized, and earlier in the day was reported to be in critical condition.

Officials said they have two addresses for Britton, both of them vacant dwellings in the St. Louis area.

The shooting occurred about 1 a.m. at West Florissant Avenue and Chambers Road, in an unincorporated area of St. Louis County, as county police responded to a report of four of five men with masks and shotguns in

St. Louis Alderman Antonio French was among about 10 people arrested Wednesday night.

French was being held at the Ferguson Police Department but no details of his arrest were being released.

Wesley Lowery, a reporter with the Washington Post, was arrested Wednesday evening along with Ryan Reilly of the Huffington Post, according to a Twitter post by Lowery.

He wrote that police came into the McDonald’s on West Florissant where the two were working, and tried “to kick everyone out.”

“Officers decided we weren’t leaving McDonald’s quickly enough, shouldn’t have been taping them,” he tweeted.

“Officers slammed me into a fountain soda machine because I was confused about which door they were asking me to walk out of,” he wrote.

He said that he was detained, booked, “given answers to no questions. Then just let out.”

Reilly tweeted that a SWAT team invaded the McDonald’s where he was working and recharging his phone, and asked for identification when he took a photo. They tried to kick everyone out, he wrote. He wrote that he was “assaulted” by an officer.

SCHOOL START DELAYED The continuing unrest forced the Ferguson-Florissant school district to postpone the start of school from today to Monday.

“In order to allow additional time for the situation to stabilize and for all of our students and their families to resume normal routines, we will reschedule the first day of school,” district officials said in a statement. “We believe that this change will help ensure a strong start to the new school year.”

Paul Hampel, Stephen Deere, Valerie Schremp Hahn, Joel Currier, Kim Bell, Koran Addo, Ken Leiser, Jessica Bock and Steve Giegerich of the Post-Dispatch contributed to this report.

ficer in the Brown shooting was wrong, Jackson said, and led to death threats.

Even someone who has supported the release of officers’ names following a threat assessment urged caution Wednesday in the Ferguson incident.

“When there are death threats, you’ve got to take them seriously,” said David Klinger, a University of Missouri-St. Louis criminologist and deadly force specialist. “It would be irresponsible to release his name right now.”

Klinger’s name was made public by the Los Angeles Police Department in 1981 when he killed a man who attacked a fellow officer with a butcher knife. Klinger said he “didn’t have a problem” with it at the time, but he was protected by the anonymity of a large police department in a large city, in a case that had not become a “big cause célèbre.”

Noting the magnitude of the Ferguson shooting backlash, he said, “Even if this was an LA cop, this would be disconcerting.”

08.14.2014 • Thursday • M 1 ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH • A9

Ferguson Police Shooting

night and day in ferguson For community, peaceful daytime protests give way defiant nights

By Chuck Raasch craasch@post-dispatch.com 202-298-6880

It’s been night-and-day since Saturday’s fatal police shooting of Michael Brown.

Mostly peaceful protesters march hand-in-hand by day. At night, people splinter, defiance and lawlessness take a firmer grip, and expressions and intentions move into the shadows.

By day, calls for nonviolent protest come from black and white activists and politicians.

By night, shooting and looting have appeared.

“Night has a way of bringing a different atmosphere,” said the Rev. Damon Lynch III, who helped organize nonviolent protests after a police shooting death of a black man in Cincinnati in 2001. “People can do things under the cover of darkness that they readily don’t do during the day.”

In Cincinnati, the same pattern took hold as in Ferguson: mostly peace during the day, violence into the night. Ultimately what resulted in Cincinnati was an agreement to improve policing. Today, Lynch said, “the atmosphere is 10,000 times better, police are more accountable to the community, and the community has greater respect for police officers,” and he wishes that for Ferguson.

Lynch said Wednesday that he has watched events in Ferguson by recalling what it was like to be at the head of a march, galvanized by one death, but displaying a multitude of motivations.

“I am a proponent of nonviolent social change,” Lynch said, “and I learned that you are going to have within this group of

Photo by J.B. Forbes • jforbes@post-dispatch.com

A march organized by area ministers travels down West Florissant Avenue in Ferguson on Wednesday. Unrest grew as people joined the march.

protesters probably every kind of philosophy available.”

From “pacifists to militants to anarchists,” he said, “everyone came out of the woodwork,” even if a vast majority were peaceful.

He constantly wondered how “if we are going to be peaceful but powerful, how do you keep everybody in line?”

“We just explained to them what our philosophy was and if they couldn’t abide by it they would go on and do what they wanted to do, throwing bricks and all of that sort.”

The curfew, he said, helped calm things down. Ferguson has

not done that, although Mayor James W. Knowles III and the Ferguson City Council issued a statement Wednesday asking for peaceful demonstrations during the day. It condemned “those who wish to co-opt peaceful protests and turn them into violent demonstrations ... during the evening hours.”

Those same night-and-day dynamics persisted long enough in Cincinnati for the mayor to set a curfew about a week after the shooting death of Timothy Thomas, who at 19, was just a year older than Michael Brown when Thomas was shot by police

trying to avoid arrest.

The relationship between Cincinnati authorities and residents of the Over-the-Rhine neighborhood, where Thomas was from, had been combustible long before Thomas was killed, but no action was taken “until they saw the anger spill over.” Some 15 black men had been killed by police over a few years, some unarmed, some of the killings ruled justifiable acts of defense. Two years before Thomas was killed, the ACLU had joined a lawsuit claiming police discrimination.

In Missouri, the Missouri State Conference of the NAACP in No-

Laurie Skrivan • lskrivan@post-dispatch.com

“I grew up in the community. We wanted to come back and just help out,” said Gerald Nickerson of Florissant (center) on Wednesday as he walks with volunteers.

Volunteers clean up Ferguson after protests and looting

By Lilly Fowler lfowler@post-dispatch.com 314-340-8221

FERGUSON • On the fourth morning after Michael Brown’s death, residents from different parts of the region came together in Ferguson, trying to pick up the pieces.

Some were young, some old. The majority arrived as part of the faithful. Others trickled in after spotting volunteers marching up and down West Florissant under the hot sun. Carrying brooms and large garbage bags, they collected whatever they could find: rubber bullets, broken glass, liquor bottles, tear gas grenades.

“I needed to come out today just to get some stability,” said Gary Park, 34, an auto mechanic who lives near the area in Ferguson where Brown was shot and protests erupted. Close by is the looted and burned QuikTrip that sits as a symbol of the severity of the unrest that has resulted from an unnamed cop fatally shooting an unarmed 18-year-old.

“I wanted some encouragement,” Park said.

Park is a member of Passage Community Church in Florissant, which together with a few other local congregations, organized the Wednesday morning cleanup. Pastor Joe Costephens said that although the trash-collecting effort was a last-minute plan, more than 100 people joined the endeavor.

It was a simple act but not an insignificant one, especially since authorities had reported two shootings only the night before. In fact, the continued violence has put any future volunteer efforts on hold, Costephens said.

Elise Park, 31, a stay-at-home mom, arrived with her two young children who were excited by the novelty of using garbage pickers.

“I was very encouraged coming out here today, seeing all the groups helping,” Park said. “It’s an opportunity for me to invest and really become part of

the community.”

Others, including a group of 20 somethings, came out to help on their own.

Larry Fellows, 28, of Ferguson, said since the shooting he’s been doing what he can to spread a little cheer. Together with a group of friends, Fellows walks the neighborhood’s roads, handing out free water, snacks and cleaning supplies.

Fellows, who works for a health care company, said recent demonstrations aren’t “just about this shooting. This has been building up for years.”

He said he’s even offered supplies to police, but authorities have reacted by rebuffing his offers.

Fellows believes that attitude is part of the reason the community remains angry.

“We’re the enemy.”

Another volunteer, Derrick Spencer of St. Louis, said in an attempt to inspire compassion, he planned to return a sign to his truck’s windshield that recites a line from the New Testament: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”

“We can’t take justice in our own hands,” Spencer said. Those who loot businesses are doing so at the expense of Michael Brown, he said.

After working for two hours, nearly 20 people gathered in the parking lot of First Baptist Church in Ferguson and held hands in prayer. They prayed for the family of Michael Brown and for businesses in the area that have been damaged by the riots.

Michael Williams of St. Louis, who described himself as a troubled individual who had managed to reset his life, was among those in the crowd. He said he wanted to show that “everybody is not about the rioting. Everybody is not about the destruction.”

Williams said he knows there are good police officers out there. “Most of us believe in doing the right thing, but this came to a boiling point,” he said.

vember filed a federal civil rights complaint alleging racism in hiring and firing and racial profiling in the St. Louis County Police Department.

Lynch said an “extremely effective” agreement emerged from the Cincinnati protests, including making police shooting investigations more transparent and mandating quick release of information, including the identity of the alleged shooter.

Ferguson authorities have withheld the name of the shooter, citing death threats.

Lynch said that may be fueling some anger.

Laurie Skrivan • lskrivan@post-dispatch.com

Dorian Johnson, with lawyer Freeman Bosley Jr., tells his version of Michael Brown’s death to Al Sharpton on MSNBC on Tuesday at the burned QuikTrip in Ferguson.

Key witness meets with authorities to discuss shooting

By Jeremy Kohler jkohler@post-dispatch.com 314-340-8337

The outrage over a Ferguson police officer’s fatal shooting of Michael Brown is partly grounded in the account of the teen’s friend: Dorian Johnson.

Johnson, 22, may be the closest eyewitness to the shooting. He has repeatedly told media since Saturday that he and Brown were walking in the middle of the street when the officer pulled up and ordered them to “get the F on the sidewalk” and grabbed Brown, 18, in the throat. Johnson disputed the statement

by St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar that Brown reached in the car and struggled for the officer’s gun.

Johnson has said that the officer shot Brown, who ran. The officer ran after him and Brown put up his hands in surrender, and the officer shot him again.

On Monday, on the MSNBC show All In, host Chris Hayes asked: “Did Michael reach and struggle for the officer’s gun as the police are saying he did?” Johnson answered: “That is incorrect, sir, he did not reach for a weapon at all.”

Johnson’s statements are a significant part of what the public has heard about the encounter that ended with Brown’s death. He has appeared for the past three days on national cable networks at the side of his lawyer, former St. Louis Mayor Freeman Bosley Jr., and spoke Wednesday with KSDK-TV (Channel 5) reporter Farrah Fazal.

Authorities were getting a chance to hear his story Wednesday. Bosley, who complained earlier this week that investigators were not initially interested in speaking with Johnson, said Wednesday morning that he was picking up Johnson to take him to meet with authorities. Late Wednesday afternoon, St. Louis County police said they were interviewing Johnson after being unable to locate him earlier in the week. Bosley said Wednesday night that his client was meeting with FBI agents.

Johnson has revealed little about himself. He attended Lincoln University in Jefferson City for two semesters in 2011, but “wound up back here, struggling to find a job,” Bosley said.

During the summer after his first semester at Lincoln, Johnson was charged with a misdemeanor after giving police a false first name after he was arrested on suspicion of theft. He later pleaded guilty.

He was accused of stealing a package containing a backpack belonging to someone else from an apartment complex. When he was arrested in that case, he identified himself as Derrick Johnson and said he was 16.

An officer found a student ID card in his sock identifying him as Dorian Johnson. Johnson told him he was carrying a friend’s ID, but two Lincoln University Police Officers recognized him as Dorian Johnson. He pleaded guilty in circuit court to a misdemeanor charge of filing a false report.

He is wanted for failing to appear in Jefferson City municipal court to answer to the theft charge, court officials said.

Johnson declined to be interviewed by the Post-Dispatch.

On Wednesday, Bosley acknowledged that Johnson told him he did “know something about that” and that he’d ask him more about it when he got the chance.

Several other witnesses have come forward with accounts similar to Johnson’s.

Adolphus Pruitt, president of the St. Louis NAACP chapter, which has been encouraging witnesses to come forward, said Johnson’s false report case “doesn’t concern me.”

“He’s been very clear about what occurred, and now we have ... four others stating facts that support the statements he’s been making,” Pruitt said. “Why would that diminish other accounts that are relatively the same?”

Reporters Jesse Bogan and Virginia Young of the PostDispatch contributed to this report.

A10 • ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH

M 1 • Thursday • 08.14.2014

Ferguson Police Shooting

HANDS UP A symbol of the Ferguson protests

A

fter Trayvon Martin was killed by a neighborhood watch volunteer in Florida, the iconic protest image

became the hoodie. In the shooting of Michael Brown by a Ferguson police officer, that iconic protest image has become the “hands up, don’t shoot.” Witnesses have said Brown was holding his hands up and facing the officer when he was shot to death Saturday.

J.B. Forbes • jforbes@post-dispatch.com

Piaget Crenshaw, 19, demonstrates on Sunday in Ferguson how she saw Michael Brown, 18, standing in the middle of the street when he was shot Saturday.

J.B. Forbes • jforbes@post-dispatch.com

Protesters raise their hands at a prayer vigil Sunday evening in Ferguson led by Lesley McSpadden, the mother of Michael Brown, and activist Anthony Shahid.

Chris Lee • clee@post-dispatch.com

Attendees chant “Hands up, don’t shoot” during a gathering Tuesday with Michael Brown’s family at the Greater St. Mark Missionary Baptist Church.

Robert Cohen • rcohen@post-dispatch.com

Protesters blocking Florissant Road raise their hands Sunday after being approached by police officers who asked them to stop blocking the street.

Chris Lee • clee@post-dispatch.com

Protesters stand off against police across West Florissant Avenue at Chambers Road in Ferguson on Wednesday. The protesters were eventually cleared from the intersection and dispersed with tear gas.

08.14.2014 • Thursday • M 1 ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH • A17

Stl Thursday Inside this section A17 • Heads Up A18 • Opinion A19 • Other views A20 • Funeral notices A22 • Weather A22 • People

COLUMNIST SCHEDULE Sunday • Bill McClellan Monday • Bill McClellan Wednesday • Bill McClellan Friday • Bill McClellan Saturday • Joe Holleman’s “Joe’s St. Louis”

08.21

08.23

Review • Khalifa’s tour meant to bring out peace and love.

By Kevin C. Johnson kjohnson@post-dispatch.com 314-340-8191

What’s up • From events.stltoday.com

08.17

Wiz Khalifa, Jeezy honor Michael Brown at concert

Armenian church picnic • The annual Blessing of Grapes Picnic hosted

by St. Gregory Armenian Church of Granite City will be held from 12:30 to 3:30 p.m. Sunday at the St. Gregory Community Center, 3501 Century Drive in Granite City, located behind St. Gregory Church. Lamb shish kebab, chicken kebab and losh kebab dinners, including pilaf and salad, will be sold. Additionally, Armenian pastries, breads and other delicacies will be for sale. Games for children of all ages are planned for entertainment. 618-452-0192.

The mind of Abraham Lincoln • Iver Bernstein, a history professor at Washington University, will present a lecture on how the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution informed his thinking. The lecture will be at 7 p.m. Aug. 21 in the auditorium at the University City Public Library, 6701 Delmar Boulevard. Lincoln was elected the 16th president of the United States in 1860, at a time when the nation was falling apart.

By the time he took the oath of office, seven states had already seceded from the Union. The exhibition now at the University City Library, “Lincoln: The Constitution and the Civil War” vividly evokes Lincoln’s struggle to resolve the basic issues that were dividing Americans. ucitylibrary.org, 314-727-3150 Volunteers at Jefferson Barracks • History-loving volunteers are needed at the Jefferson Barracks Powder Magazine Museums.

An information session on volunteering at the museums will be at 10:30 a.m. Aug. 23 at the JB Visitor Center, 345 North Road, south St. Louis County. Volunteers will welcome visitors and answer basic questions at the two Powder Magazine museums at Jefferson Barracks County Park. Two-person shifts are available Wednesday through Sunday from noon to 4 p.m. at the Old Ordnance Room, 346 Bagby Street, and the Powder Magazine Museum, 400 Bagby Street. For more information, contact Sue Bell at sbell@stlouisco.com or 314-615-8865.

To list a community event or meeting, submit it online at events.stltoday.com.

Heads up Botanical Garden classes • Registration is underway for fall and winter adult classes offered by the Missouri Botanical Garden. Various classes meet at the garden at 4344 Shaw Boulevard, or at the garden’s Commerce Bank Center for Science Education at 4651 Shaw, the Shaw Nature Reserve in Gray Summit and the Sophia M. Sachs Butterfly House in Chesterfield. From basic cooking techniques for newbies to advanced landscape design for the seasoned gardener to those wanting to “green up” their homes, classes are taught by knowledgeable instructors. The garden also offers classes on health and wellness, arts and crafts and nature study. Advance registration is required. Garden members receive a discount. View a catalog, browse classes online and register at www.mobot.org/classes. For more information, call 314-577-5140.

To submit items, email them to headsup@post-dispatch.com or fax them to 314-340-3050.

Hip-hop headliners Wiz Khalifa and Jeezy performed Tuesday night on the “Under the Influence of Music” tour at Verizon Wireless Amphitheater, but it was thoughts of Michael Brown that stole the spotlight.

The teenager, shot Saturday afternoon by a Ferguson police officer, factored into the sets by both Pittsburgh native Khalifa and Atlanta native Jeezy.

Jeezy, whose black T-shirt read “R.I.P. Michael Brown,” addressed the tragedy before dedicating “Soul Survivor” to the 18-year-old. He said he had a couple of things on his mind, and he knew the crowd, which numbered more than 9,000, did as well.

“I wanna talk to you about dreams,” Jeezy said. “If your dreams don’t scare you, you aren’t dreaming big enough.

Do I got any big dreamers in the house? I wanna dedicate this to a big dreamer. His dreams were taken away from him. We (are going to) dream for Michael Brown tonight.”

Khalifa wore a white T-shirt with the words “Don’t Shoot” across the front and “R.I.P. Michael Brown” on the back. He said “Under the Influence of Music” was more than just a tour; it was an experience meant to bring out everyone’s peace and love.

Khalifa’s set began with the impossibly lanky rapper rising from beneath the stage for “Work Hard, Play Hard.”

Backed by a small but noisy band, DJ and arena-size production, Khalifa gave a rock-star performance that cemented his status as one of the best of the rising young rappers. Songs such as “Black and Yellow,” “Young, Wild and Free,” “Raw,” “Like Jimmy,” “No Limit” and “Medicated” showcased a performer who could be as laid-back as he was explosive.

Sometimes Khalifa stood perfectly still at the microphone on “Stayin Out All Night,” from his new album “Blacc Hollywood,” when he rose high above the stage on a podium. Other times he flailed about wildly. He crowd-surfed on “We Dem Boyz,” to the delight of fans.

In a brief interlude, he paid homage to Snoop Dogg; the two are equally open

photo by Kevin C. Johnson

Wiz Khalifa performing Tuesday at Verizon Wireless Amphitheater.

about their use of marijuana. He may or may not have been smoking the substance onstage by that point in the show.

“Damn It Feels Good to Be a Taylor” and “Taylor Gang” brought out members of his Taylor Gang Records, including rapper Ty Dolla $ign, a support act on the bill, to party with him.

Jeezy, a St. Louis favorite, was accompanied by triumphant horn-filled music for his brand of street rap including “Put On,” “SupaFreak,” “Trap Star (She Likes It),” “Go Crazy” and “I Luv It.” He performed with a band and DJ as well, and brought out support act Rich Homie Quan to perform a YG song that features both of them.

Also supporting Tuesday night, in addition to Quan and $ign, were IAMSU/Sage and Mack Wilds. DJ Drama spun during breaks in the fast-moving show.

Prior to the concert, there had been some chatter over whether the rap concert should have been canceled or postponed for fear of a disturbance. The concert, on and off stage, went smoothly.

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A L E E E N T E R P R I S E S N E W S PA P E R • F O U N D E D BY J O S E P H P U L I T Z E R D E C . 1 2 , 1 8 7 8

THURSDAY • 08.14.2014 • A18

WE HAVE ISSUES

Our view • What the Michael Brown story tells St. Louis about its own divisions.

St. Louis has issues.

It shouldn’t take a visit by the Rev. Al Sharpton, the civil rights activist, for St. Louis to internalize that very simple statement.

“You’ve got issues in this city,” Rev. Sharpton told a standingroom only crowd Tuesday evening at the Greater St. Mark Missionary Baptist Church near Ferguson.

He wasn’t talking about Ferguson, or Dellwood, or Cool Valley, or Florissant, or any of the other 90 municipalities in St. Louis County.

He was talking about all of us in the greater St. Louis region.

We have issues.

We knew that before Michael Brown’s life was cut short Saturday afternoon by a hail of bullets fired from a police officer’s gun.

Like too many black men in St. Louis, he died too young. He was 18.

Even without that fatal confrontation, statistics suggest Michael Brown would have died earlier than other AfricanAmerican males just like him who had the good fortune of being born one ZIP code to the south and west.

This is but one of the startling and important conclusions of a recent Washington University study titled “For the Sake of All.” The landmark study is a picture of what St. Louis has become after decades of white flight, red-lined development decisions, uneven support of public schools and an uneasy racial division that is ever-simmering just below the surface.

Had he lived, Michael Brown’s projected lifespan was about 15 years less than had he lived just a couple of ZIP codes away on the south side of Interstate 70.

In St. Louis, ZIP code is destiny.

Before he died, before his community protested, before angry young men turned to violence and looting, Michael Brown’s journey defined the biggest issues facing St. Louis today.

He lived in an underfunded

J.B. FORBES • jforbes@post-dispatch.com

Civil rights activist Rev. Al Sharpton (center) waits to speak at a news conference outside the Old Courthouse on Tuesday in St. Louis.

and unaccredited school district — Normandy — that is centered amid a jigsaw puzzle of municipalities that struggle to provide basic services to a transient population living in concentrated poverty.

Those municipalities often make the poverty worse, by dinging their own residents with red-light and speeding-camera tickets, which help fund police departments that can’t afford to keep and train officers with the quality of the city of St. Louis or St. Louis County police forces.

It’s the luck of the draw that #Ferguson is trending on Twitter instead of any of the other patchwork of small cities where Michael Brown spent his youth.

His story is resonating in St. Louis, and in the nation, and the world, because it is the story of so many African-American men.

Michael Brown’s story is the story of North County.

His story is the story of St.

Louis.

It’s our story, past and present.

Yes, we have issues.

Over the past year, we’ve embarked on a series of editorials under the banner “A Greater St. Louis” focusing specifically on these big issues: the need to improve our local schools; the need to unite as a region, both

racially and over our arbitrary government boundaries, and the need to get beyond the very economic development policies that contributed to the concentrated poverty in both north St. Louis city and many parts of north St. Louis County.

The series is a call to action for a once-great Midwestern manufacturing hub making progress, albeit slowly, after decades of decline. It is a plea for city and suburban leaders to realize that for St. Louis to be great again, we must realize that we are better together, that we are stronger as a sum of all of our parts.

There are elements of each of these issues in both the journey of Michael Brown and the community’s reaction to his death.

One of the key arguments for uniting our region is that for too long, the public policy and perception has been one of isolation.

We put up our proverbial (and literal) gates in West County, for

example, and separate ourselves from the challenges of the urban core.

Sadly, the looting and violence in Ferguson this week feeds the fear in some mostly white suburbs. Some of them already have registered their official opposition to a movement underway to unite the various factions of St. Louis under a more well-defined regional umbrella.

St. Louis will never be great again if we don’t all take responsibility for the least among us, if we don’t strengthen our core first, if we don’t break down the walls that divide us.

For better or worse, Rev. Sharpton is right: This is now how the world sees St. Louis.

Outside of the 314 area code, people don’t differentiate between a QuikTrip in Dellwood or one on Big Bend.

Our issues, our divisions, our poverty, our troubled schools, our crime — all are laid bare.

There is no more sweeping them under the carpet.

The challenge now, as the Rev. Starsky Wilson — president of the Deaconess Foundation — wrote Wednesday on his blog, is to “collaborate, not compete.”

Rev. Wilson noted that there were competing prayer gatherings Tuesday, with Rev. Sharpton speaking to a massive and excitable crowd at one church, while Gov. Jay Nixon and other community leaders (most of them white) were speaking at a more somber gathering just a few miles away.

We have separate but equal prayer services. For St. Louis to move forward, those various constituencies need to be talking to each other, not at each other.

Sixty years after Brown vs.

Board of Education said separate but equal wouldn’t work for schools, St. Louis is still struggling with the concept.

“The Band-Aid has been ripped off,” Baltimore-based Pastor Jamal Bryant said at the Sharpton event on Tuesday.

St. Louis is an open wound.

YOUR VIEWS • LETTERS FROM OUR READERS McClellan’s column distracts from the broader conversation I’m not sure where Bill McClellan spends his time, but it’s clearly not with those who are vigilant in their efforts to provide positive opportunities for youth (“All killings should spark outrage,” Aug. 13). The ongoing efforts of groups like Better Family Life, Girls Inc., and even the St. Louis County Children’s Services Fund are part of the reason that violence is at its lowest levels in decades in the metropolitan region. But perhaps these groups and the progress they’ve made in helping black children achieve their goals and reduce violence in their neighborhoods are another one of McClellan’s beloved autostereograms.

McClellan’s worldview is part of the problem: The positive work of black communities is invisible to most. You only see the shootings, the looting, the drunk woman on the porch, the hoodies. You refuse to see our communities for what we are: fully human, working toward success, begging for your help and cooperation in this struggle. His perception of our apathy is simply wrong; he’s just not paying attention.

McClellan’s column distracts from the broader conversation that North County residents are having about Mike Brown’s death. We continue to insist that black life must be valued by everyone. And even if his argument had merit, to suggest that lack of attention to so-called black-onblack crime — which, I should point out, happens at about the same levels as whiteon-white crime — is a factor in whether we can demand justice in the face of police violence here and all over the country is absurd. Our expectation that unarmed black boys not be gunned down in the street by those whose job it is to protect them does not hinge on whether we’ve

ever rallied against a single instance of violence. They are important but unrelated challenges.

Jennifer Drake Fantroy • Hazelwood

Totally scared to death A young, unarmed kid who is running away with his hands in the air is not a threat to anyone. He is totally scared to death. If the police officer thought he had to pull the trigger, the police officer should have shot the scared kid in his leg, but never ever shoot the scared kid in his back. What if that scared kid was our son?

That unarmed, totally scared kid did not deserve to die!

Another certain fact is that all the rioting and looting must end so that justice can be calmly, thoughtfully and perfectly found.

Dick Reeves • Kirkwood

Looters do not represent the black community To the looters, thank you for making matters worse. You did nothing to help Michael Brown or his family. You have turned a peaceful demonstration and a quest for justice into an ugly event that will tarnish the city forever. You have also made it harder for yourselves and other black people in St. Louis. You have destroyed a community, caused a loss of jobs and made it inconvenient for the people who live in the community that needed those businesses you destroyed. You do not represent the black community. You are a disgrace and should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

To others, these people who have destroyed businesses and caused chaos do not represent the majority of the black

RAY FARRIS PRESIDENT & PUBLISHER

THE PLATFORM TM STLtoday.com/ThePlatform Find us at facebook/PDPlatform Follow us on twitter @PDEditorial

community living in St. Louis. Unfortunately, negativity boosts ratings. Criminals from all over took advantage of a horrible situation. It is time to focus on the main issue, which is police violence.

Ferguson is a nice, peaceful place to live.

The majority of people who live there have good jobs and nice homes. Do not let one event damage the city’s name and image.

Yes, people are outraged, but promoting peace is the only way to approach the situation. I encourage the media to encourage peace as well. There are so many hate posts on your Facebook pages; it’s sickening to know I live in a city with so much hate toward black people.

Stop promoting stereotyping and prejudice. It is time to promote healing and peace.

Jamillia Howard • St. Louis County

Peaceful protest is the right way to make an impact I am a strong advocate for peaceful protest. I, of all people (a Vietnam-era hippie), would never condemn a person for protesting against something they feel strongly about. I’d even condone a bit of peaceful civil disobedience.

But I wonder, how many of these people rioting and looting actually give a damn about Michael Brown? How many actually knew the kid? How many actually are on the streets because of the incident, what happened, how things happened? Maybe those that aren’t out on summer vacation from school or college would all be better served to take the time they’re spending and learn a trade, get a job. And if these are school/college students, now is the perfect time to learn how to make a difference, by going about it the right way.

That said ... you want to do something,

GILBERT BAILON EDITOR

difference in its cardinal principles, that it will always fight for progress and reform, never tolerate injustice or corruption, always fight demagogues of all parties, never belong to any party, always oppose privileged classes and public plunderers, never lack sympathy with the poor, always remain devoted to the public welfare, never be satisfied with merely printing news, always be drastically independent, never be afraid to attack wrong, whether by predatory plutocracy or predatory poverty • JOSEPH PULITZER • APRIL 10, 1907

Letters should be 250 words or fewer. Please include your name, address and phone number.

All letters are subject to editing. Writers usually will not be published more than once every 60 days. Additional letters are posted online at STLtoday.com/letters.

MAIL Letters to the editor St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 900 N. Tucker Blvd.

St. Louis, MO 63101

Instead of hands up, offer a hug to start the healing I watched what has happened to a community that was part of my boyhood in the last few days. It hurts. Some people look at the photograph of the slain person and see a black man. I saw a young man, one with tight skin and clear eyes, with hope and the future ahead of him. Then came the outrage. The outrage over what happened on a Saturday afternoon in August. Hopefully that’s over.

I watched the protesters stand toe to toe with the authorities, their hands in the air, as if surrendering themselves over. It was a powerful statement, one of courage and of frustration. Then came the bad, the looting and destruction.

One thing for sure will happen: Our government will step in and take over and try to set things right. That will take time.

In the meantime, I wish I could hug the city of Ferguson right now. It’s hard to hate after a hug. Giving a hug helps you understand; it lets the receiver be a better person. One lady asked where are our leaders?

I saw them. They were on the sidewalks, standing toe to toe, with our other leaders.

Now if the folks with their hands up in the air could lower them halfway and give a hug. Then maybe we can start to heal.

That will turn the protesters in demonstrators. This is, after all, the Show-Me State.

Russell McCreary • Union

TONY MESSENGER EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR

PLATFORM • I know that my retirement will make no

WE WELCOME YOUR LETTERS AND E-MAIL

you want to make an impact? There are no laws against peaceful protest. Do it right.

This sort of craziness is just trivializing Michael Brown’s death, disrespecting him and his family and creating an unwanted legacy for them.

Janel Demick • Columbia, Ill.

E-MAIL letters@post-dispatch.com FAX 314-340-3139

TONY MESSENGER tmessenger@post-dispatch.com Editorial Page Editor • 314-340-8382 KEVIN HORRIGAN khorrigan@post-dispatch.com Deputy Editorial Page Editor • 314-340-8135 FRANK REUST freust@post-dispatch.com Letters Editor • 314-340-8356 DEBORAH PETERSON dpeterson@post-dispatch.com Editorial writer • 314-340-8276

08.14.2014 • Thursday • M 1 ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH • A19

Other views More columnists online

Michael Gerson says about the situation in the Middle East: “This is what the complete collapse of a foreign policy doctrine looks like.” Read his column online at stltoday.com/news/opinion.

Riots in Ferguson, and what they mean Leonard Pitts Jr.

‘Open season on us’ • It is about the bitter sense of siege that lives in AfricanAmerican men.

A riot can be many things.

It can be an act of communal madness, reflecting the emotional imbecility of those who believe the best way to express joy at their ball team’s win is to overturn a car.

It can be an act of opportunism, a chance, under cover of darkness, influence of chaos, suspension of order, to smash and grab and run away, arms heavy with loot.

And it can be an act of outcry, a scream of inchoate rage.

That’s what happened this week in Ferguson. The people screamed.

To believe that this carnage — the windows smashed, the buildings torched, the tear gas wafting — is all about the killing of Michael Brown is to miss the point. Brown, of course, was the unarmed 18-year-old AfricanAmerican man shot multiple times by a Ferguson police officer on Saturday.

St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar — Ferguson Police asked his department, as an outside agency, to investigate the shooting — has said Brown was walking with another individual when a so-far unnamed officer sitting in a police car, stopped him. According to Belmar, the officer was trying to get out of his car when one of the two individuals pushed him back inside, where there was a struggle over the officer’s weapon and at least one shot was discharged. He says the officer came out of the car and fired, striking Brown, who was about 35 feet away, multiple times.

Witnesses say Brown, who was to have started college this week, had his hands up when he was shot. Police have not said why the officer felt the need to stop him in the first place.

Details are still too sketchy for us to draw hard conclusions about what happened that afternoon. But it is all too easy to understand what happened afterward and why good people should be paying attention.

Because, again, this is not just about Brown. It’s about Eric Garner, choked to death in a confrontation with New York City Police. It’s about Jordan Davis, shot to death in Jacksonville, Fla., because he played his music too loud. It’s about Trayvon Martin, shot to death in Sanford, Fla., because a self-appointed neighborhood guardian judged him a thug. It’s about Oscar Grant, shot by a police officer in an Oakland, Calif., subway station as cellphone cameras watched. It’s about Amadou Diallo, executed in that vestibule, and Abner Louima, sodomized with that broomstick. It’s about Rodney King.

And it is about the bitter sense of siege that lives in African-American men, a sense that it is perpetually open season on us.

And that too few people outside of African America really notice, much less care. People who look like you are everyday deprived of health, wealth, freedom, opportunity, education, the benefit of the doubt, the presumption of innocence, life itself — and when you try to say this, even when you document it with academic studies and buttress it with witness testimony, people don’t want to hear it, people dismiss you, deny you, lecture you about white victimhood, chastise you for playing a so-called “race card.”

They choke off avenues of protest, prizing silence over justice, mistaking silence for peace. And never mind that sometimes, silence simmers like water in a closed pot on a high flame.

One can never condone a riot. It is a self-defeating act that sells some fleeting illusion of satisfaction at a high cost in property and life.

But understanding this does not preclude recognizing that the anger we see in Ferguson did not spring from nowhere, nor arrive, fully formed, when Michael Brown was shot. It is the anger of people who are, as Fannie Lou Hamer famously said, sick and tired of being sick and tired.

Silence imposed on pain cannot indefinitely endure.

People who are hurting will always, eventually, make themselves heard.

Even if they must scream to do so.

Leonard Pitts is a columnist for The Miami Herald. Readers may contact him via e-mail at lpitts@miamiherald.com. Copyright the Miami Herald

Riots display black community’s pain Ryan Thomas Neace

Robert Cohen • rcohen@post-dispatch.com

A demonstrator throws back a tear gas container after tactical officers worked to break up a group of bystanders on Chambers Road near West Florissant Avenue on Wednesday.

Robert Cohen • rcohen@post-dispatch.com

Michelle Glass tries to block tear gas in Ferguson on Monday.

The Killing of Michael Brown

David Carson • dcarson@post-dispatch.com

An expired teargas canister fired in Ferguson on Monday night.

Laurie Scrivan • lscrivan@post-dispatch.com

Sunny Ford at a Michael Brown rally in Clayton on Tuesday.

Wake-up call • Self-destruction is meant to tell us that something is drastically, unequivocally and fatally wrong.

I have spent enough time in the company of African-Americans to know that the abuses of authority, police intrusiveness and brutality, and institutional racism they endure on a regular basis is real in ways that are difficult for me to personally or experientially fathom.

After all, I grew up in Columbia, Ill., located 15 minutes across the river from south St. Louis (the historically white portion of the city). Columbia is located in Monroe County, the fourth highest income per capita (of 102 counties) in Illinois.

There were virtually no people of color. The worst “abuses of authority” were when police ran radar in speed traps, or when they were rumored to have caught some star high school athlete with alcohol and let them go with just a warning. Certainly, I had no reason to be frightened of them. Once when I was in middle school, a police officer saw me walking on the side of the highway and gave me a ride home just to be nice. It seems obvious that to this point in my life I can only experience by proxy the pain of Michael Brown’s parents, the Ferguson community, and African-American folks as a whole.

Yet, one small way I’d like to express my sorrow and solidarity is in by responding to the folks who’ve littered my social media feeds with statements like, “Being angry is okay, but burning down your own neighborhood makes no sense!”

As a matter of fact, when marginalized people groups riot, when they destroy parts of their own neighborhoods or cities, it is more important than ever to listen to them. It does make sense.

When I see a client at my St. Louis counseling practice, I have in mind a core axiom: While he/she may be the “identified patient,” acting out at the level that therapeutic intervention is required means there is almost always something wrong with the surrounding “system” — usually the family.

For example, if a teenage girl is disrespectful, unmotivated and truant at school, it may be because her parents are so entrenched in battle at home. If a teenage boy is abusing alcohol and drugs, it may because he is being abused by someone else.

And so on. In the mental health world, these realities are so well-known they’re practically clichés.

In each case, a client is effectively harming him/herself in an effort to fix some other problem over which they feel (and often are) powerless. They harm themselves because nothing else gets anyone’s attention. They’ve given up. They don’t know what else to do.

I often think to myself, “How bad must things be that he is willing to do this to himself? How much pain must she be in that she’s willing to destroy herself?”

I have cried many tears living and working in these realities.

I tell loved ones, “Wake up, family! Your kid is hurting! Help me figure out how you’re a part, and how you can help!”

Here’s the difficulty.

The kind of pain my clients put themselves through can be a tragic, but necessary predecessor to systemic change in their lives. In fortunate cases, the entire family wakes up as a result of their loved one’s illness and begins to address the larger dysfunction, usually slowly and over time. It is even more tragic when the family fails to wake up, and instead blames everything on the very person who is self-destructing.

While ultimately it is my job to help my clients try to find a less self-harmful way to respond in the event the system never changes, individual client change is so much easier when the entire system around him/her changes, and so much closer to impossible when it doesn’t.

When considering the tragic death of Michael Brown, the self-destructing community is the plural equivalent of my selfdestructing clients. Like them, Ferguson residents are trying to tell us that something is drastically, unequivocally and fatally wrong.

We can blame them and tell them this is somehow their fault.

We can point at their communal self-mutilation and wag our heads in disgust and amazement.

Or we can say, “How much pain must this community be in that it is willing to destroy itself so that we pay attention? What part have I played in this, and what must I do to help?”

No community is an island. Just like my clients, to think that a community develops pathology in a vacuum is ludicrous. To turn around and fault them for trying to get the world to notice long enough to respond, even if it means sacrificing themselves and their community, is cruel.

Wake up, St. Louis family. Your kids are hurting.

Ryan Thomas Neace is a licensed professional counselor in Virginia and Missouri, and a nationally certified clinical mental health counselor by the National Board for Certified Counselors. He works extensively with teens, adults and families at his St. Louis private practice, Change, Inc. He blogs for the American Counseling Association and The Huffington Post.

Media’s choice of photos creates a split-second bias Court of public opinion • For black youth, media representation can be a matter of life or death.

Rebecca Hains and Robert E. Brown

Twenty-three years after Rodney King and just two after Trayvon Martin, the tragic story of unarmed black youth like Mike Brown being shot dead by police is an all-too-common one. But news media fuel the fires of racism every time they choose an accompanying photograph in which the victim resembles not the beloved son, brother, and friend his loved ones say he was, but the scary thug police assume he was.

Times have changed. Thanks to citizens’ widespread use of social media, journalists and editors can choose from victims’ Facebook and Twitter photographs to accompany their pieces. Their social media accounts feature happy photos of themselves with family and friends, at birthday parties and graduation ceremonies. But news media don’t choose these happy photos.

Instead, outlets such as KSDK and the New York Daily News accompanied pieces about Mike Brown’s slaying with photos of him posing in ways that might be construed as threatening and intimidating to white audiences.

Unfortunately, by making these racially charged photo selections, the news media are setting an agenda that convicts young black men in the court of public opinion.

Selecting such unsympathetic photographs to represent young men who have been forever silenced through death — who can never tell their side of the story — is unjust. It also echoes broader patterns in film and television, in which black men are too often depicted not as threedimensional human beings, but as threatening menaces — a stereotype that media critics and organizations have critiqued for decades, in reports like the

Michael Brown

Screen Actors Guild’s 1993 Women and Minorities in Television and 1998 Casting and Fate.

According to experimental studies, this same stereotype causes police officers to make split-second, erroneous

decisions to shoot unarmed black men — but not their white counterparts (as reported by B. Keith Payne in “Weapon bias: Split-second decisions and unintended stereotyping,” published by the journal Current Directions in Psychological Science in 2006). The politics of the media’s race representation have real, material consequences for all people, but for black youth, media representation can be a matter of life or death.

What the news media need to learn is that their photo selections create a split-second bias in the public arena. And that, too, can be a matter of life and death.

Today, however, the stereotype of the threatening black man has sparked a new social media movement to be reckoned with. Empowered black youth are using Twitter to speak back against the journalists’ bias in photo selection by posting a

pair of their own photos — one that would be perceived as positive, one negative — to ask the hashtag question: “#IfTheyGunnedMeDown, which picture would the media use?” The hashtag trended on Twitter on Sunday and Monday and is still going strong.

This could be breaking news for the news media: There are less racially distorted images of young black men available, and choosing them could go a long way toward mitigating prejudicial tendencies in news coverage.

Rebecca Hains is the author of “The Princess Problem: Guiding Our Girls through the Princess-Obsessed Years” and a frequent contributor to the Christian Science Monitor’s “Modern Parenthood” blog. Robert E. Brown is the author of “The Public Relations of Everything”; his commentary has appeared in the Boston Globe and other newspapers. Both are professors of communications at Salem State University in Salem, Mass.