Events in Ferguson, Missouri continue to heat up as three officers have resigned, retired, and dismissed from service following inappropriate conduct during the ongoing riots there, in response to the shooting of an unarmed African American teenager teenager by a policeman. The officers in question are: Lt. Ray Albers, who pointed an assault rifle at a protester, threatening to kill him, Dan Page, who pushed a reporter from CNN, and Matthew Pappert, who posted "very inappropriate" posts on Facebook. Protesters and a CNN crew report that Albers pointed his semi-automatic assault rifle at a protester, cursed, and threatened to kill one of the protesters who was pointing a camera at him. Page retired after pushing CNN correspondent Don Lemon and a video leak of him expressing anti-Supreme Court and anti-Islamic views. Pappert was fired after an inquiry into comments he made on Facebook that were deemed "very inappropriate" by the Chief of Police.
This piece is important because, while we as a country have come far on the issue of race, it shows that we still have a very long ways to go, as well as bringing to light and emphasizing the anti-protest sentiment of the Police in the United States. Officers of the law are bound by the Constitution, and in the First Amendment in the Bill of Rights, under which the Right of Free Speech is protected, it states that under that the right of Petition and Assembly is also permitted. The officers who have since left the Department were not physically antagonized or assaulted, yet felt it necessary to perform inappropriate actions towards the people exercising their rights. If anyone in this situation was antagonizing, or should be dealt with by use of extreme action, it should be the Officer who shot Michael Brown. The growing Police violence towards citizens and especially protesters is an important issue that needs to be addressed before it becomes any worse.
Source Article Link: http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/30/us/officers-ferguson-actions/index.html?hpt=hp_t4
The whole area down there in that section of the Deep South is incredibly prone to this kind of volatility. Thank god the music cluster had their Branson trip last year..
ReplyDeleteFerguson is proof that racially-driven police brutality is still very much alive.
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