Just a short diary to recommend (with caveats) a front page article over at the site of our conservative friends (heh), RedState. Leon H. Wolf, a longtime contributor to the site, read through the Ferguson report "with as jaundiced of an eye towards the Department of Justice as possible" and still came to the conclusion that the Ferguson PD effectively damned themselves in their own words. It's a long and detailed post, nothing that will surprise anyone here, and - here are the caveats - with an eye toward selling those conclusions toward skeptical conservatives (so, the usual mush about liberals and the DOJ and whatnot).
Given that Wolf excludes all data from DOJ observation and interviews and still reaches these conclusions, it's not only worth a read, but if you have (like I do) a number of conservatives in your social networks, it's a good way to prod them along this conversation. They can enjoy all the digs at liberals and still take away this: that the Ferguson PD is unarguably corrupt in a way that has heavily impacted the black community, and that voicing these concerns and fighting for solutions does not make one racist, or "anti-cop", or whatever.
Quick summary, and some thoughts below.
Here are Wolf's bullet-points, for the casually interested:
1. The Ferguson Police Department acts almost exclusively as a revenue generation machine for the city
2. The Ferguson PD Habitually Uses Excessive Force
3. The Ferguson PD has Utterly Failed to Supervise its Officers’ Use of Force
4. The Ferguson PD Systematically Punishes Residents of Ferguson for ‘Contempt of Cop’
5. The Evidence of Racial Bias in the Administration of Justice in Ferguson is Overwhelming
Each bullet-point draws on evidence from the police department's own files, which as Wolf notes, are "probably whitewashed" at that. Again, all material that critics have long-since noted, but it's refreshing to see a conservative reader who, unlike in last week's dismal editorializing (like this), has actually spent time with the evidence without dismissing it outright.
The comments section is going about as well as you'd expect - with focus almost entirely on misreading Wolf's arguments about racial disparity to argue that the black community, in the words of one commenter, "encourages and even celebrates disrespect of authority" as a basic "cultural" difference. Wolf suggests the response on twitter has been far, far more positive.
How widely-held that viewpoint may be, I'm not sure. But certain other conservatives have joined in, as Conor Friedersdorf noted in today's Atlantic, based on Wolf's post and another by Jason Lee Steorts over at NRO. Both Wolf and Steorts have a record of somewhat libertarian politics, so this kind of critique is less of a surprise coming from them than, say, certain other conservatives. Still, if anything's to change in Ferguson, it helps to have voices from the right adding theirs to the general chorus.
So: spread far, spread wide.
(h/t Jamelle Bouie)
((Dkos user theotherside noted this RedState article in a comment earlier today, but I wanted to be sure more people saw it.))
1:29 PM PT: And Wolf's article has been taking off. He's scheduled to appear on Chris Hayes' show tonight to discuss Ferguson.