13 Days in Ferguson Read online

  “I guarantee you that when these days are over and we’re all back in our homes, the answers we are looking for today—the answers we’re going to get—are going to make our lives a whole lot better. They’re going to make our community better. We’re going to rebuild our businesses. They will be rebuilt. I know they will. Our businesses are going to come back. We will create new businesses.”

  The young man digs in, his eyes narrowing suddenly.

  “Why are you out here on the street—with those police?” he asks. “You’re not even Ferguson, Mr. Johnson. You’re a state patrol officer.”

  I draw myself up to my full height.

  “Let me tell you something. I want to make this clear to everybody. I’m not speaking for Ferguson. I’m not speaking for the Missouri State Highway Patrol. I’m speaking for all the citizens of the state of Missouri. And I will be honest with you about what’s right, and honest with you about what’s wrong.”

  The young man tilts his head slightly, and when he speaks, his voice cracks with heartache: “I need answers, sir, for real.”

  He pulls down his bandanna.

  A young man—his face round and full, pudgy, almost childlike, his eyes soft and wide and surprisingly caring—stands before me. He looks to be in his early twenties, about the same age as my son. I have an urge to hug him and tell him it will be all right, that everything is going to be all right.

  “You need to speak for us,” he says. “We need answers. Why did Mike go down in cold blood? Why are they waiting to put the video out? Why are these things happening now?”

  Each question stabs me.

  “Some of those things you’re asking me,” I say, “I don’t have a why. I don’t. But I want to tell you, when you say ‘speak for us,’ you know what us should be? I know you don’t believe it today, but us should be all of us.”

  He sniffs. A man standing next to him, an older man I’m seeing now for the first time, rubs the young man’s arm. A loving touch. A father’s touch.

  “Us should be all of us,” I repeat. “Not separately. Not two counties. Not two Missouris. Not two United States. All of us.”

  “You talking about us as a whole,” the young man says weakly.

  “That’s what I’m talking about,” I say. “Us as a whole. Everybody. We’re out here asking for change.”

  I reach out and rest my hand on his shoulder. I look into his eyes, and I see this young man—this former outlaw—fighting back tears.

  And I feel this stronger than ever: In order for policing to work, we have to come into the community, talk to the people—just like this—and listen. We have to listen.

  “We’re going to get you some answers,” I say to the young man, my hand gripping his shoulder. “I promise you.”

  But even as I make that promise, I don’t know if I can ever answer those questions.

  Why?

  Why do these things keep happening?

  That’s what this young man needs to know.

  That’s what we all need to know.

  I keep walking, and people keep coming up to me. They come close—so close—and I hug them. I feel their shaking bodies. I hear their trembling voices. I taste their tears. Their pain moves into me, cuts me, sends a chill rippling through me.

  Nobody would believe this, I think. Nobody would understand.

  Not everyone wants me walking down this street. Not everyone out here welcomes me. People on both sides—civilian and law enforcement—think I have betrayed them. The police believe I have identified myself with the protesters, become one of them. When I approach a group of white police officers, they turn their backs on me. Later I make a point of walking right up to them, engaging with them and asking, “Hey, how’s it going?” They grunt or give me one-word responses.

  The protesters believe I belong with the police, and they want us off the street. They want to own the street. Some want to terrorize us, and their rage spills over.

  People curse at me.

  Someone yells, “Get out! Get away!”

  I don’t confront anyone. They have a right to say what they want. And I have the right to walk.

  A man comes up alongside me and starts to walk with me.

  “Yes, this is about Mike Brown,” he says. “But this isn’t just about Mike Brown. We’re out here because of a lot of other things too.”

  I stop at the top of West Florissant, at the crest of the hill, and look down the entire length of the street. I’ve walked for at least two hours, and now I’m going to walk back.

  Overall, I would call tonight a good night, a night of change. I feel uplifted. But as I look down the street in the gathering darkness, I realize I don’t know what’s happening down there. Maybe the bottles and bricks and Molotov cocktails will come out now. Do I have the courage to walk down that street again? I don’t know. But I know I have the strength. And I know I will walk. I have to walk. I will walk into the night, into the dark, not knowing what lies ahead. But I know I have to take the journey. I have to act, not knowing where the journey will end.

  I finally understand.

  That is what you call faith.

  Today has felt as long as two days. I drive home feeling both exhilarated and exhausted. But we have achieved something. We have taken a step forward.

  “We had a good night,” I whisper to Lori as I get into bed, knowing I still have to answer all her questions. “A very good night.”

  “A start,” she says.

  “A first step,” I say.

  I fall asleep believing that.

  “SAVE OUR SONS”

  * * *

  I said to the Lord, “I’m going to hold steady on to you, and I know you’ll see me through.”

  HARRIET TUBMAN

  FRIDAY MORNING, before I have showered and dressed, my duty officer calls to brief me on what happened in Ferguson last night after I left. He describes several incidents, the most serious one involving people throwing rocks at police, hitting four officers. No one suffered a serious injury, the duty officer says.

  “We finally had a good night,” I say. “Just not a perfect night.”

  I spend the next hour making calls, checking in with command, and setting up a news conference—my first—at ten o’clock. I still haven’t heard from Jon Belmar, and I have traded calls with Tom Jackson. As I finish shaving, Lori rushes into the bathroom.

  “Hey,” she says. “You’d better see this.”

  I head into the bedroom and see Tom Jackson on TV, beginning a press conference. I hadn’t heard that he intended to talk to the press.

  “I’m here to talk about two things,” he says, wearing a white short-sleeve shirt, standing at a microphone. “First of all—the name of the officer involved in the shooting.”

  “What?” I say to the TV.

  “And then . . . I’m going to be releasing information about a robbery that occurred on August ninth, immediately preceding the altercation and shooting death of Michael Brown.”

  I fear what he’s about to say next.

  “Don’t do it, Tom,” I murmur to the television set.

  “What we’re making available today are the dispatch records and the video footage of a robbery—a strong-arm robbery with use of force—that occurred at a local convenience mart.”

  “He’s releasing the security camera video,” I say, feeling my jaw starting to clench.

  “You didn’t know about this,” Lori says—a statement, not a question.

  “No idea,” I say. “We explicitly told him not to.”

  “I won’t be taking any questions here,” Tom says to reporters gathered in front of him. “I want to give this information to you, let everybody digest it, and then later on—sometime after noon—we can get together again, and then I’ll take questions.”

  “I guess I’ll be taking plenty of questions at my press conference,” I say.

  “I just want to give you a little timeline of what happened on August ninth,” Tom continues. He squints over his r
eading glasses, holding some pages from a yellow legal pad at arm’s length as he reads. “From 11:48 to noon, the officer involved in the shooting was on a sick call . . . there was an ambulance present. At 11:51, there was a 9-1-1 call from a convenience store nearby . . .”

  Tom follows his timeline until—suddenly flustered—he loses his place. After shuffling through his notes, he recovers and blurts out, “At 12:01 p.m., our officer encountered Michael Brown on Canfield Drive . . .”

  Tom then jumps to 12:04—after the shooting occurred. That three-minute gap screams.

  “A second officer arrived at the scene, immediately following the shooting,” Tom continues.

  “This serves no purpose,” I say to Lori, my voice rising. “Now people will have even more questions.”

  Tom starts to explain how the information packets will be distributed, and then someone off camera appears to ask him a question. Tom pauses, apologizes, shuffles through his notes again, and says, “The officer who was involved in the shooting of Michael Brown was Darren Wilson. He’s been a police officer for six years. He has had no disciplinary action taken against him. He was treated for injuries, which occurred on Saturday.”[3]

  People begin shouting all around Tom Jackson. They shout so loudly that I can’t make out what they’re saying. I finally hear someone ask him to repeat the officer’s name and to spell it. After Tom does that, he announces that he will answer questions later and steps away from the microphone.

  “I wanted him to give that video straight to the grand jury,” I say.

  Lori doesn’t reply, but I can read her expression.

  Why?

  “This will not help the situation out there,” I say.

  I try to understand Tom’s mind-set. I want to give him every benefit of the doubt. I don’t believe he acted out of malice. I think he simply wanted to support his department. He wanted to document publicly that a strong-arm robbery had occurred and that the officer in question—his officer—had suffered injuries. But right now, on the screen, the Ferguson police chief doesn’t look at all satisfied or vindicated. He looks bewildered. I wonder if he realizes he’s made an error in judgment.

  “He just poured fuel on the fire,” I say to Lori.

  On my way to the command post, I think about what I will say at my news conference. I drive slowly, cruising down West Florissant. I see a crowd gathering. I pull over, get out of my car, and walk over to the growing group of people. As I approach, they converge, surround me.

  “I’m sure you guys saw the news,” I say.

  They erupt, their emotions overlapping, crashing into each other, a mix of outrage and confusion. I wait quietly, allowing them to settle before I speak.

  “I just want to tell you—I knew nothing about that news conference. I had no idea he was going to give out the name and release that video.”

  “Why did he do it?” a young man asks.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “I truly don’t.”

  “Do you agree with it?”

  I look at the young man’s expectant face, and for a moment time stops. I feel as if I have stepped outside my body. I am not here. I see myself as a police officer caught between the line of law enforcement I stand with and the people on the street—the citizens I’ve pledged to protect—squeezed into some horrible middle where the very ground beneath my feet seems to be sinking.

  “Do you think he should have done it?” the young man asks.

  A hush falls over the crowd as every single person seems to lean in for my answer. They know they have forced me to make a choice: Am I with them or with the police?

  I choose neither.

  I choose honesty.

  “Do you think he should have done it?”

  “No,” I say.

  “That’s just what you’re telling us,” another man says. “You’re here now so that’s what you say now.”

  “No,” I say forcefully. “That’s how I feel. If anybody asks me, I’m going to say the same thing. My words are going to be the same whether I’m talking to you or talking in front of a camera. My words and my beliefs aren’t going to change. My truth is my truth.”

  More grumbling and comments arise that I can’t hear. I don’t know whether I’ve gotten through to them at all.

  “I’ll tell you what. I’ve got a news conference at ten o’clock. It’s going to be up at the shopping plaza. If you doubt my honesty, you can come to the news conference and hear for yourselves. You’re all invited.”

  Shouts, garbled sentences, and then someone says, “I’ll be there!” Others follow with a chorus of shouted agreement.

  I head back to my car, thinking that a few of them might actually come to the press conference.

  I’m wrong.

  They all come.

  At the command post, I meet briefly with Ferguson police chief Tom Jackson. I try to speak calmly, but I can’t tamp down my anger. I tell him I don’t agree with his decision to release the video and announce the name of the officer. He explains that he was responding to a “sunshine request” for the materials, referring to a Missouri state law ensuring that government meetings and records are open to the public, in accordance with the Freedom of Information Act.

  “I don’t know about that,” I say.

  “Well, that’s what I was told.”

  “It shouldn’t matter, Tom,” I say. “You have to think about the family first and then the effect the video will have on the protesters. I just came from West Florissant and talked to people out there. Releasing that tape has them upset. We finally had a good night. This is going to set us back.”

  “I didn’t think about that,” Tom says, looking genuinely pained.

  “I know you wanted to protect your department,” I say. “But what did this accomplish?”

  “Ron, honestly, I didn’t think it would have that response. I really didn’t.”

  I believe him. But that’s not the point. The damage has been done.

  Minutes before the scheduled start of my news conference, I stand at the podium in the parking lot in front of the command post. Cameras and microphones from local and national media pack the area in front of me. I look across the parking lot and see the group of people I spoke to on West Florissant clustered behind a line of yellow evidence tape. The group has grown. To me, they seem far away, out of hearing distance.

  Before I know it, I’m on the move. I step away from the podium and walk across the parking lot. Behind me, as if anticipating what I’m about to do, voices shout, “Wait a minute, you can’t do that!”

  Without stopping, I yell back at them, “I want everybody to hear me.”

  I walk until I’m standing across from the group of protesters, with the evidence tape swaying between us. Then, lifting up the tape to allow them to pass, I say, “Come on up closer so you can hear.”

  The protesters hesitate for less than a second, and then they begin to move forward, pushing closer to the podium and the assembled journalists. I’m not certain, but I think I see some people smiling.

  Back at the podium again, I begin the press conference.

  “Last night was a great night,” I say. “A great night. There were no calls for service. We did not deploy tear gas. We did not have any roadblocks. We did not make any arrests. It was a good night. People were talking. People were inspiring each other. People were getting their voices out. And we were communicating a lot better.”

  As I continue with my remarks, a reporter breaks in with a question about whether the release of the officer’s name and the video from the convenience store changed the dynamics of the situation.

  “I think the release of the name is what was requested by the community,” I reply. “And they’ve gotten that. I have not seen the video. I was watching the news this morning when I heard that it came out, so I have not seen that. So it would be hard for me to comment on that. I will try to get a copy—or be able to analyze—the packet that they have. This afternoon I will be walking back down to the QuikTr
ip. I will talk to the people there and explain what I see in the packet. And some of the questions that may have been unclear in the presentation this morning, I will try to make those clear.”[4]

  I back away from the podium to allow the next speaker to address the media and the crowd, but as I step to the side I sense it—an undercurrent of anger welling up in the crowd. It’s laced with something that feels dark. A kind of hatred almost. Yes, hatred, directed at me.

  After the press conference, the media and the crowd of protesters disperse. I step inside the command post and an officer approaches me. His face pulses red, and he corkscrews his lips. He eyes narrow in anger.

  “You call last night a good night?” he says. “No. I’m wrong. You called it a great night.”

  “Compared to the other nights since the shooting, yes, it was a great night. We had no arrests—”

  “Did you forget about us? People were throwing rocks. We got pelted by rocks.”

  “Nobody got seriously hurt—”

  “Four officers got hit. Four of your fellow officers.”

  “I know, but—”

  “You weren’t honest out there,” he says, spewing the words. “You didn’t tell the truth.”

  “Five percent of last night was bad,” I say. “You think I should throw out the ninety-five percent good over the five percent bad?”

  The officer stares at me. “You don’t seem to care about us,” he says. “You seem to care more about them.”

  There it is again.

  Them.

  These people.

  The officer grunts and practically sprints to the coffee maker in the corner.

  I look around the room. A few officers nod. Several more turn away. I grab my hat and head for the door. That’s when I hear it, hurled at my back.

  The word.

  Burning into me.

  As vicious and ugly as the first time I heard it at the all-white school when I was nine years old.

  As the day goes on, it gets worse.

  As if staging his own protest, Chief Jon Belmar has not yet made an appearance in Ferguson since the governor took away his command and put me in charge. Then I hear that the St. Louis County Police union rep has called a major newspaper to report that I lied during the news conference. I had said there were no major incidents Thursday night when in fact four officers were hit with rocks. I am immediately barraged by calls for clarification.