The Attorney General is catering to his and Obama’s black constituency by opening an investigation into the politically incorrect-staffed Ferguson Police Department and its alleged use of excessive force and discrimination against blacks
One cannot deny that the Ferguson Police Department fails the politically correct diversity test when two thirds of Ferguson’s 21,000 residents are black and its 53-man police department has only three black officers. Even the most ardent conservative would have to agree that something doesn’t pass the smell test here.
In order to appease and cater to an angry black community, Attorney General Eric Holder is ordering the Justice Department to open a broad investigation into the entire Ferguson Police Department. Incidents going back several years in which complaints were made about the use of excessive force and discrimination against Ferguson’s black residents will be investigated for civil rights violations. This investigation will be conducted in addition to the investigation already being conducted into the shooting of Michael Brown and the Ferguson PD’s response to the protests that followed.
Paul Sperry’s article,“LBJ’sWar On Poverty Lies Beneath Ferguson Tragedy,” which was published in Wednesday’s Investor’s Business Daily, described the subsidized housing Michael Brown grew up in and the high school he attended.
In order to understand what the Ferguson PD was up against and why it may have received a shitload of excessive force and discrimination complaints, here is an excerpt from Sperry’s article:
Michael Brown grew up in the Section 8 [subsidized housing for the urban poor] epicenter of Ferguson, a small southeast corner of the city that includes several sprawling apartment complexes catering to subsidized poor renters. That area accounted for a whopping 40% of all robberies and 28% of all aggravated assaults reported in the city between 2010 and 2012, according to local crime data.
An official with the St. Louis County Housing Authority, which administers Section 8 vouchers in Ferguson, confirmed that the area's a hotbed of crime. "We get plenty of complaints, and we refer them to the police," Susan Harrod, director of assisted housing, told me.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch and other press outlets have reported that Brown lived with his grandmother at the Northwinds Apartments, which, according to housing authority data obtained by IBD, has the greatest number of Section 8 tenants of any apartment complex in Ferguson. The county subsidizes 58 of the 438 units there.
Northwinds also happens to be a nest of criminal activity.
"I was robbed at gunpoint while holding my infant child right in front of my apartment ... worst experience of my life," said one former tenant. "I had my home invaded four times," said another resident. "The crime is really bad. We have neighbors that stand around all day and sell dope."
"Almost everyone out here is on Section 8 and doesn't work," another Northwinds renter complained. "This isn't the apartment for working-class people. They break into people's houses and cars."
The complex reportedly had more than 50 units broken into in a single year. Tenants have also complained about rapists entering through windows, and shootings virtually every weekend. Some move their mattresses to the floor, below their bedroom window, to dodge stray bullets at night. Last month, daytime gunshots from inside Northwinds cut short reporters' interviews with residents about the Brown case.
Males aren't the only perps. At an adjacent apartment, Canfield Green, where Brown was shot, a female tenant reportedly once chased a boyfriend across the parking lot and tried to attack him with a butcher knife. In another recent incident there, a woman traded blows with a young mother holding a baby on her hip. Packs of girls are known to roam the property, beating victims with socks packed with rocks.
Brown's school was no less violent. He attended Normandy High School, which the Post-Dispatch last year named "the most dangerous school in the area."
"Normandy stands apart not only for its sheer number of fights," the paper reported, "but for a dramatic spike in serious discipline incidents — which have nearly doubled since 2009," a period when local Section 8 subsidies also spiked.
In 2012, the school reported 285 discipline incidents — from assaults to weapons to drugs — that resulted in suspension. Last year, police and fire crews were called to Normandy, which is 97% black, more than 83 times.
A string of school arsons kept local firefighters busy. "They were setting the toilet paper on fire," the local fire chief complained. "They were setting the soap dispensers on fire. They were setting old papers, books on fire under the stairwells."
With 21,134 residents, Ferguson accounts for 2% of the county's population but 10% of its Section 8 units. The city's demographics changed dramatically with the influx of these subsidized tenants. In 2000, Ferguson was 52% black and 45% white; today, it's 67% African-American and 29% white. Over that period, the city's Section 8 units doubled. So did calls to police.
Like too many Ferguson teens, Michael Brown grew up without a father in the home. A third of Ferguson households are now headed by a female with no husband present. Half the city's young black men are unemployed. Many join gangs and deal dope rather than take jobs.
It appears that Brown got caught up in the gang culture.
He not only robbed a liquor store but also once assaulted a neighbor. He was accused of stealing at his high school and was bounced from one school to the next. He smoked blunt and flashed gang signs. And the college he reportedly was supposed to attend was in fact a trade school that can't confirm he ever enrolled there.
Now it should be easy to understand why officers working in such an environment will be the object of numerous complaints, some of them legit, but most of them bogus. The under-representation of black officers notwithstanding, Holder’s investigation appears to be primarily a white cop witch hunt.
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