Well, of course they do. It's disturbing their petty private white fiefdom, all this demonstrating, reporters everywhere, people in the streets, cops everywhere, state troopers even, politicians from who knows where, and the PUBLICITY! Lord, it's enough to ruin a perfectly good summer! It wasn't enough that some black kid had to go and disobey a police order and get himself killed, but then people just had to go and make some kind of federal case out of it.
So now, Ferguson's white mayor and City Council are asking people to stay home and stop the demonstrating. According to a statement released today, the mayor, City Council, and "other employees" (who are not named) have been exploring "how to increase the number of African American applicants to the law enforcement academy, develop incentive programs to encourage city residency for police officers and raise funds for cameras that would be attached to patrol car dashboards and officers' vests." Well, pardon my skepticism, but I wonder just how long that exploration has been going on! (Continued below the orange squiggle.)
Now they say they are looking to increase the number of African American applicants to the law enforcement academy, and they're trying to explain why they have so few black officers (three, to be exact) on their whole force. Mayor James Knowles is quoted as saying, "We continue to try and diversify our police department. It's very difficult to get. There's not a huge pool of applicants we can get interested or involved in police work in the African American community." Gee, I wonder why. I'm sure it has nothing to do with the attitude of the police department toward the local community. It might, however, have something to do with the fact that a qualified candidate of color just might not want to work for a chief of such astounding incompetence (and prejudice) as Chief Jackson.
Apparently most of the members of the Ferguson police department do not live in the community they are charged with "protecting and serving". We know that Officer Darren Wilson did not. Does the police chief? I would be willing to bet good money that he does not, or that if he does, he lives in a very white enclave, carefully isolated from his neighbors of color. I suspect the mayor probably does, because by law he would almost certainly have to, as would the members of the City Council, but I'm quite sure they live in that same pretty little enclave and have very little daily interaction with those neighbors either. Apparently these old white guys, who, sadly, are probably younger than I am, are still living in 1950, or wish they were. They have learned nothing from the civil rights era and don't want to. Well, boys, this is no longer a plantation and people are not necessarily going to behave like you want them to just because you say so. And that includes going home before dark and staying there!
NOTE: All snark in this diary is intentional. The writer is too old to play nicey-nice any more. She was born in 1943 and figures she's earned the right to call a spade a spade and not a damned shovel.