13 Days in Ferguson Read online

  I crane my neck in search of Chief Belmar, but he, too, has vanished. For a second I feel abandoned, on my own, but then another wave of people escorts me outside and hustles me into a truck with several troopers. Some of them murmur their congratulations; others say nothing.

  I can’t tell if they’re looking at me or past me. Both, maybe. It occurs to me then that I have to show these troopers leadership. Confidence. At the moment, though, I can’t say I feel confident. Everything feels unreal. As the governor said, the nation is watching Ferguson. What he didn’t say was that the nation—including the troopers in this truck—would now also be watching me. Somehow, though, I push beyond my uncertainty. I have to.

  As incredible as it feels, I know in the deepest part of me—in my soul—that I am ready for this. It’s almost as if I’ve been preparing for this moment my whole life. I can acknowledge the momentousness of this—for me, for all of us—but I can’t allow it to weigh me down. I simply have to move us forward.

  “We’re going to that march,” I say to the troopers in the truck. “I’m going to support the clergy.” I pause and then add, “It’s the right thing to do.”

  Silence.

  As we drive toward Ferguson, nobody says a word. The silence in the truck becomes stifling. I decide to call Lori, this being the only time I may have for hours to tell her the news.

  “Hey,” I say when she answers. I cup my cell phone, trying to keep my voice low, knowing that everyone in the truck is listening—and no doubt judging me. I realize that they will be judging everything I do from now on.

  “The governor’s made some changes,” I say to Lori, clamping down the emotion I suddenly feel rising in my voice. “He put me in charge.”

  “He did what?”

  “Yeah,” I say, lowering my voice even more. “That’s right.”

  “Why?”

  Truthfully, this is not the response I was hoping for from my wife.

  “Well—”

  Of course, I had expected her to validate the governor’s decision and pump me up. But Lori, being brutally honest—and scared for my safety, I suddenly understand—blurts out the first word that jumps into her mind, the same question I’m asking myself: Why?

  I can’t answer that question.

  But I have to move past it.

  The question doesn’t matter.

  I am in charge.

  It’s on me.

  But Lori has a thousand follow-up questions.

  “I’m just wondering, because this is so unexpected. Did the governor explain how he arrived at the decision? It’s a big deal—”

  “It’s funny,” I reply. “Your dad actually said we should be put in charge—”

  “Did the governor consider anyone else? You’re qualified, of course, the most qualified, but, specifically, why? Did he go into his reasons? Did he offer any details?”

  I want to answer all her questions, and I will, or at least try to, but not now—not in the center of the silence and scrutiny of the troopers riding solemnly along with me. I love her inquisitiveness and concern, and I feel myself smile, but I have to deflect these questions.

  “So, yes, that’s right, he’s made that change. We’re on our way to Ferguson right now. I’ll call you later, okay?”

  “Okay.” Lori pauses. “Ron—?”

  “Yes?”

  “Be safe.”

  We continue driving, and still nobody says a word. I start to realize that the governor’s putting me in charge came as a shock to the troopers, as well as to me. I don’t know whether they accept me. But I can’t dwell on that—or the why. I only know that once we get to Ferguson, I’m going to walk with the protesters. That will be my new tactic. My plan. And by doing this, I will already be instituting a radical change.

  Still, I wonder . . .

  Will the troopers walk with me, or will I walk down that road alone?

  I close my eyes and rub the bridge of my nose as memories of the first time I was ever put in charge flood into my mind.

  I am ten years old.

  I wear an orange strap across my chest.

  I am the school crossing guard.

  I stand on the corner, and when I see that it’s safe, I spread my arms and wave kids across the street.

  Kids wait for my signal.

  I feel a sense of authority and responsibility.

  In my mind, I’m helping to get them safely to school and back home. Kids respect me. I feel that. That’s new. Different. They don’t tease me anymore. They don’t call me names. I don’t hear the word.

  It helps that I have a friend, my next-door neighbor, Jeff. He’s two years older, and his dad races cars.

  When we first moved into the neighborhood, Jeff ignored me; but then I found out he hadn’t spent much time around black people.

  Jeff parents and mine never really interacted—nothing more than a nod when they saw each other. But Jeff and I started talking one day, and before long we were hanging out together and playing in his backyard after school and on weekends.

  One day, Jeff invites me to go with his family to one of his dad’s car races. I can tell that my mother has concerns, but she lets me go. At the racetrack, Jeff and I walk around the pit area, where the crews service the cars before and during the races. Everyone knows Jeff because of his dad, and people stop and talk to him. Every person I meet—every face I see—is white. At one point, a guy Jeff is talking to tilts his head toward me and asks, “Who’s this?”

  “This is Ron,” Jeff says. “He’s my friend.”

  By the time I entered junior high, several more black families had moved into the neighborhood, and life had gotten easier. My high school years at Riverview Gardens were typical and unremarkable. I played trumpet in the school band. I ran track. I made the varsity football team and played tight end. I was a decent player at a wiry 170 pounds, but that didn’t mean much my senior year when we lost every game. I dated my share of girls and went to prom. I graduated from high school and went on to earn a degree in criminal justice at a local college. I checked all the boxes.

  Before I knew it, I was edging toward twenty-three years old, working at UPS, with my career on the rise. I had moved up from working the loading dock to part-time supervisor, but I felt stuck, restless. Even though I had a good job and worked with some good people, every day when I went to work, my spirit felt crushed. As I pored over packing lists and employee shift schedules, six words kept screaming through my head: I want to be a policeman.

  Still.

  Always.

  Since forever.

  One day, after practically losing my mind at work, I called the Missouri State Highway Patrol recruiting office when I got home. I told the officer who answered the phone that I was interested in becoming a trooper. I chose state trooper over other divisions of law enforcement because I didn’t want to be confined to a particular area. I wanted to police the entire state. The officer arranged for a recruiter to come to my house the very next day.

  The recruiter interviewed me, met my dad, and told us enthusiastically that the MSHP was committed to signing up more minorities. A few days after my home interview, I drove to the Patrol’s troop headquarters in St. Louis County to take the first round of my official entrance exam: the written test.

  Wearing pressed slacks, a blue blazer, and a tie, I entered a large room where everyone else I could see was wearing blue jeans and T-shirts. Some were even in shorts. At first I thought, Ron, you look like a big nerd. But then I said to myself, No, you look properly dressed. My parents had taught me the importance of making a good first impression—even when I’m just taking a standardized test in a room with fifty other people.

  Looking back, I believe I dressed up that day for another reason. I dressed up out of respect for law enforcement.

  As I nervously opened the first page of that test, I felt a sudden sense of awe for the blue, for the badge.

  I passed the written test without a problem.

  Next I had to take
a physical fitness test—a mere formality. I was a former high school athlete and had kept myself in good shape ever since. I had spent months working on the loading dock at UPS. I had no worries about passing the fitness test.

  I failed the fitness test.

  A tall, sullen-faced trooper ran a group of us through several exercises. One exercise required us to squeeze a small rubber grip with a built-in meter that measured hand strength. When it was my turn, I grabbed the device and slowly applied pressure.

  The meter barely moved.

  I failed—along with another guy I knew casually, a massively muscled former college linebacker.

  “You guys didn’t pass,” said the trooper administering the test.

  I was so stunned that I had difficulty forming words.

  “I can’t believe—”

  “You can always try again. Come back in six months.”

  My body deflated. I slumped toward the door, my legs barely moving. I had never felt so defeated.

  As I stepped into the hallway, I heard the trooper say, “Hey. Come back in here for a minute.”

  I turned, but he was talking to the linebacker.

  “You’re a big guy,” I heard the trooper say. “You had to be doing something wrong. There’s no way you couldn’t make that meter move.” Then, speaking out of the corner of his mouth, he said, “You want to try it again?”

  “Sure.”

  Wait, what?

  He had my full attention now.

  That’s bias, pure and simple, plain as day.

  The trooper was making an assumption about the linebacker—and about me—just by the way we looked. The linebacker may have been bigger, but who’s to say he was any stronger?

  I propelled myself back through the doorway, nearly knocking the linebacker over.

  “Sir, if he can try it again, can I?”

  The trooper hesitated, but he had been caught.

  “Fine,” he said.

  The trooper handed the device to the linebacker and whispered urgently under his breath, “You have to squeeze the handgrip really tight and right away. Don’t press it gradually. You have to give it a jolt.”

  The linebacker nodded, took the handgrip, and squeezed it hard and fast. The needle on the meter moved to the right.

  “I knew you could do it,” the trooper said. Then he looked at me. “You sure you want to try it?”

  Sometimes, even when you deserve equal treatment, you have to fight for it.

  I smile. “Yes, I’d like a second chance too.”

  I took the handgrip from him and squeezed it immediately. The needle on the meter fluttered and then sprung all the way to the far right-hand side.

  I grinned at the trooper. “I believe I pass.”

  “I guess so,” the trooper said.

  “Thanks for giving me a second chance,” I said. “You won’t regret it.”

  The next step in the process was boot camp—the most grueling, debilitating, mind-numbing half year of my life. (The linebacker, incidentally, was not selected.) For six months, the training sergeants screamed at us, criticized us, and belittled us. When it came to marksmanship, I ranked lowest in my class, which made me the target of merciless taunting from my superiors. As each day ground into the next and every day melded into a blurry, bad dream, I never doubted that I would gut it out—and I did, surviving at times on sheer determination and pride.

  During that six-month ordeal, I learned a valuable, lifelong lesson: It doesn’t matter how strong you are physically. What matters is your inner strength. Your spirit. Your will. Your heart.

  In fall 1987, I graduated from the academy and officially joined the ranks of the Missouri State Highway Patrol. To celebrate, my parents threw me a party—nothing elaborate, just family and a few friends gathered for food and drinks in the party room in our finished basement.

  I mingled with the guests for a while, and then my dad took me aside and said, “Go upstairs and put on your uniform.”

  I felt like I was eight years old and my dad was telling me to put on my Halloween costume or my Little League uniform for everyone. But I caught the look in his eye, and I knew it was more than that.

  “Okay,” I said.

  After a few minutes, I came down the basement stairs wearing my full dress uniform. My dad took a few steps toward me and stopped, locked in place, his eyes glued on me. I have never seen such . . . pride. He froze for a moment, and then his bottom lip began to tremble. I hugged him, both of us trying valiantly to hold back our tears.

  All these years later, riding in that truck on the way to Ferguson—as head of security in the aftermath of the Michael Brown shooting—a vision of my dad flashes before my eyes. I see his gaze riveted on my face, his eyes filling up with tears, brimming with pride. I only wish I could walk down those basement stairs again and see my dad one more time.

  I received my first assignment as a newly minted Missouri state trooper: South St. Louis County, a middle-to-upper-class, majority-white community. I worked eight-hour shifts—days at first, and then nights. Eventually I would work alone, but in the beginning another trooper accompanied me in the field, training me.

  Early on, we worked a horrible fatal crash involving a motorcycle. The trooper told me I would have to inform the wife of the motorcycle rider that her husband was dead.

  I was twenty-four years old.

  As we headed to the bank where the young wife worked, the trooper tried to prepare me by predicting the questions the woman might ask. As he talked, I found it hard to focus. I felt overwhelmed with sadness.

  The trooper and I walked into the bank and found the manager. We asked if we might speak to the woman privately.

  “We have some bad news,” the trooper said. “It’s about her husband.”

  We didn’t have to say any more. The bank manager set us up in an empty office, and the trooper and I waited, standing uncomfortably in the middle of the room, holding our hats.

  After a few minutes, the bank manager returned with the young wife. When she saw us, her face caved in. I began to sweat. Rivulets of perspiration slid from my forehead, pouring down my cheeks and onto my neck. The young woman gripped the edge of a desk, and a whimper escaped from her lips. She started to cry.

  I cleared my throat. “I’m sorry,” I said. “Your husband—”

  I couldn’t find any more words. But the woman didn’t need to hear anything else right then. She shook her head furiously and began to sob.

  I felt so helpless.

  I was supposed to be this . . . policeman . . . this symbol of strength. Instead, I felt as if my legs were about to give out.

  The woman clutched herself, tears pouring down her face.

  I looked at the trooper standing next to me. He had not trained me for this. He hadn’t given me any protocol for dealing with grief.

  What do I say to her?

  How do I comfort her?

  Do I touch her shoulder?

  Do I hug her?

  I searched for answers in his eyes.

  He looked away, his eyes clouded, distant.

  By instinct, I reached out and put my arms around the young woman.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said.

  She sniffled and nodded, trying to find strength. And then she howled, her pain bellowing forth all at once in a squall of pure grief.

  I had nothing else to say. I held her until she finally found enough strength to let me go.

  “You’re kind,” she said as the bank manager gently led her away.

  Once my training period was completed, I patrolled the highways alone, working accidents, watching for speeders, lane-to-lane weavers, and worse. I arrested drunk and reckless drivers, and occasionally criminals. Our cars weren’t equipped with partitions between the seats, so the people I arrested rode up front with me. The days flew by—every day different, every day new.

  One time when I stopped a guy for speeding, I approached the car and could see that he was very agitated. He was wearing a suit
, with his tie loosened and askew, and he was drumming his fingers on the steering wheel, repeatedly checking his watch.

  “You know why I’m stopping you?” I asked.

  “Yes, sir. I know I was speeding.” He fastened his eyes on me. “Officer, my wife and I are trying to conceive a child. I’m racing home from work because she’s ovulating. We only have a small window.”

  I coughed to keep myself from laughing.

  “I don’t know if you’re telling me the truth, but that’s the best story I’ve ever heard. Go home. Just slow down to make sure you get there. And good luck.”

  I patted the side of his car.

  I never wrote a poor person a ticket. I know what it feels like to struggle. I know what it means to have to choose between feeding your family and heating your home. I believe—with all my heart—that every good policeman must have compassion. Empathy. We need to feel for each other. We need to learn to lead with our hearts.

  One winter when I was about twenty-five years old, I pulled over a car that was speeding and slowly approached it. I saw there was a family inside—the dad behind the wheel, the mom in the passenger seat, and three little kids in the back. The kids were wearing clothes that seemed shabby, and all three were without shoes, even though the day had turned bitterly cold. They were sharing a box of cereal.

  I asked for the dad’s license and registration. As I looked it over, I heard the wife say—not in anger, but in frustration, “I told you to slow down. Now you got a ticket. How are we going to pay for a ticket?”

  I caught the dad glaring at his wife. His look said, You’re embarrassing me in front of this policeman. Please stop and let me talk to him.

  I walked back to my cruiser to run the plates and make sure the license and registration checked out. As I returned to their car, the cold wind kicked up, biting my face. I indicated for the dad to roll down his window and then handed him back his license and registration.