Hasn’t Ferguson suffered enough?
Last summer, the city exploded into chaos and the entire nation was roiled by the activists’ rallying cry of “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot,” after Officer Darren Wilson shot and killed teenager Michael Brown. The idea was that an overzealous white racist cop had gunned down an innocent black teenager in the act of surrendering.
Activists demanded the feds step in after a state grand jury refused to indict Wilson, convinced that Eric Holder’s Justice Department would bring criminal charges.
Only one problem. What DOJ actually found was that the “hands up” version recounted by so many alleged eyewitnesses was false — contradicted by other witnesses and by the available evidence.
Facts, alas, do not seem to matter.
On his way out the door, unable to bring charges against Wilson, Attorney General Holder has issued a report slamming the Ferguson police department for fostering a “highly toxic environment” for racism. Holder says the feds might even need to dismantle it.
President Obama has weighed in himself, declaring the police in Ferguson “oppressive and abusive.”
All this for a town of 21,000 people and a police department with just 72 total employees. Yet it’s this report — and not the one clearing Officer Wilson — that’s getting all the media attention.
Plainly, Holder did not get the indictment he had hoped for.
At a time when the big news regarding Ferguson is that the whole “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” thing was a myth, it’s hard not to see Eric Holder’s dubious Justice Department report as a consolation prize for those who can’t face the facts.