The Man Who Shot Michael Brown

“Ta-Nehisi Coates, in his new book, “Between the World and Me,” writing of the psychological impact of incidents like the Brown shooting, says, “It does not matter if the destruction is the result of an unfortunate overreaction. It does not matter if it originates in a misunderstanding.” Coates also notes, “There is nothing uniquely evil in these destroyers or even in this moment. The destroyers are merely men enforcing the whims of our country.””

“I showed the four reports to Erin Murphy, an N.Y.U. law professor who studies Fourth Amendment issues. Murphy said that, in the case of Simmons, there was no legitimate reason for detaining him. The other ped checks were less dramatic, but also reflected “questionable constitutional behavior.” These reports, she noted, painted “a familiar picture of contemporary law enforcement.” Police officers, she added, are not entirely to blame—often, they are trying to “enforce vague standards for detaining people that they don’t really understand.” (Wilson conceded that the failure-to-comply ordinance was exploited as an “easy way to arrest someone.” True violations, he said, involved more resistance than “you telling someone to come here, and them saying, ‘No, screw you.’ ” But when I asked him to explain the ordinance further, he said, “I’d have to read it again.”)”

“According to Kevin Ahlbrand, the president of the Missouri Fraternal Order of Police, parking a police car in this manner is a common maneuver—a car in the street offers a cop protection in the event of a gunfight. Jonathan Fenderson, who is a professor of African-American studies at Washington University, in St. Louis, told me that young black men are inclined to see the police as an “occupying force.” Intentionally or not, Wilson’s decision to blockade the street sent a message: You will defer to the power that I exhibit, or I am going to force you back into place.”

“Academics have studied whether cops exhibit racial bias when deciding whether to pull the trigger. Joshua Correll, at the University of Colorado Boulder, has done more than twenty studies on this topic. In 2000, Correll created a video game in which participants view images of armed and unarmed men—some black, some white. Participants must make rapid decisions about whether to shoot. Initially, Correll tested civilians—college students, mainly—and found that they were quicker to shoot black suspects than white suspects. They also were more likely to shoot unarmed suspects when those suspects were black. When Correll had police officers do the test, the results were more ambiguous. Officers, like civilians, were significantly quicker to shoot black suspects than white suspects; but cops showed no bias when shooting unarmed suspects by mistake. Correll believes that this is a result of the training that cops receive.”

“Some looters walked away, Aldridge says; others didn’t. “Some called us house niggers,” he said, his voice cracking.”

“The problems in Ferguson, McCarthy told me, were rooted in a vast historical legacy of injustice: “No matter what we do, we cannot right our wrongs to the African-American community.” But police had to do their job”

“In places like Ferguson, police officers needed to spend more time in the schools, getting to know disadvantaged students, and they had to treat more residents as allies. He urged me to consider what might have happened if Wilson had known Brown, or Brown’s grandmother, and was able to say, “Does Miss Jenny know you’re out here?” Such a question, Reverend Wilson said, has a more potent moral authority.”

“Wilson proudly showed me a drawer, in his living room, which contained dozens of police-department patches from cops expressing their support. None of those cops, however, had offered him a job.”