The worst thing about this as I alluded to, is that the people who are protesting are not JUST paranoid about the police's attitudes towards them,there is an element of paranoia ,but there is an old saying "just because you're paranoid it doesn't mean no one is after you" and I can absolutely attest to the fact that the police ( make that some of the police) in my home town have an adverse attitude towards black people,
Whether they were in possession of that attitude when they came to the job ,I don't know because JUST like their attitudes the black people in my home town (generality here ) have an attitude towards the police and really defeat the purpose of community policing by not aiding the police when bad actors need to be arrested.
There are several shooting deaths here that eyewitnesses could testify about but won't so the perps go free .
Like I said the power of expectation rules, seems to me both sides expect the other to prove a negative ( which you can't do) IOW you as a white cop have to prove you aren't a racist ,which means you are assumed to be and at the first sign you might be you are judged to be and anything you've ever done to indicate otherwise is dismissed , same for the people on the street , a cop sees you walking down the middle of the street where there is a perfectly good sidewalk ( pretty sure Fergoson has a jaywalking ordinance) and they quickly judge that you are doing it to bait or defy the law.
Fact is I'm pretty confident both the cop involved and the young man who was killed have been treated as if they were subhuman in the course of their life / duty somewhere along the line.
Unless I miss my guess the reaction if the grand jury fails to indict isn't going to be as massive as some are predicting ,I doubt it spills over into the whole city and certainly not West County and beyond ,and like I said before threats from podiums especially by people from out of state , should be prosecuted as Federal Offences ,
