“We’ve got to go. They’re rioting in Ferguson,” my friend Rick said

quickly as I walked into the police station on the evening of August 10th,

2014. I grabbed a set of keys from the wall and seconds later, we were in

a car together heading toward Ferguson, Missouri, a municipality in North

St. Louis County. We didn’t work for Ferguson PD but we knew if they were

calling for our help, things weren’t going well. “Officer-in-need-of-aid”

calls came through every so often and we would respond when they were

close. However, from the start we knew this time was different.

Two of our evening shift officers were already at the makeshift Incident

Command Center located near a shopping center that was actively being

looted by approximately two thousand people according to the radio. This

rallying point was located in neighboring Jennings, not Ferguson.

Unfortunately, that distinction did nothing to keep our officers safer as a

Molotov cocktail passed overhead and looters ransacked nearby businesses

regardless of city limits. Merchandise walked down the street as everyone

staging at the command center waited for instruction.

August 9th had changed things regardless of the what actually happened.

We knew generally about the shooting and the resulting controversy.

However, while many people in the community, social media, and the news

raged about the behavior of a single police officer, indicating that we

were all mutually culpable for his decision, most of us had just as little

information about the shooting as everyone else. It’s hard to say an

incident is justified or unjustified when the particulars are all unknown.

Most of us working in North County municipalities knew Ferguson officers,

but none of us knew who the shooter was, at least at that point. Police

admittedly have a tendency to back other police but it’s impossible to do

that when you don’t really know what happened or who was involved.

What made matters more complicated was the fact that Ferguson PD and St.

Louis County PD had declined to comment on the incident leaving every

witness account to go completely unchallenged. While both Ferguson and St.

Louis County naturally wanted to avoid a rush to judgment until all facts

were verified, the first stories were the only stories.

These initial accounts were also inconsistent. Between various versions

of the events in the media, other officers, and members of the community I

probably heard eights variations of a story purporting to tell what really

happened to a now deceased Ferguson resident whose name had become a

rallying call for action, Mike Brown.

A press conference was finally held the morning of August 10th by Ferguson

Police and St. Louis County purporting to tell an initial investigative

finding of events. The results were sterile and noncommittal though

unsurprising for information that was less than twenty-four hours old.

Unfortunately, even the initial account had apparently not been accepted by

local residents and the mourning family of the deceased.

Irony was prevalent in the subsequent rush toward violence on the streets

of Ferguson, Jennings, Dellwood, and Florissant. While the community

seemed to believe that the initial findings released in the press

conference exonerated the officer, it seemed to me and other officers that

the findings really indicated that, if true, the officer may have been

unjustified, particularly in his final gunshots, leaving open the potential

for criminal and civil prosecution. There was no nuanced thoughtful

discussion of what these findings really meant. There was no wait to see

what the investigation revealed. The community decided how this would all

turn out and now North St. Louis County burned.

We waited for further instruction from the Midnight supervisor who arrived

at the station shortly after the us. Unfortunately, we were left to wait

on the side of the road by the interstate watching police cars continue to

push into neighborhoods while we listened to their plight on the radio.

Cars screamed down the interstate running code, lights and siren, red and

blue radiating against a sky caked in a worsening smoky haze.

I didn’t envy our supervisor who was tasked with weighing the

repercussions of sending us to help while considering the possibility that

these riots might reach our venue that bordered Ferguson. If we were tied

up there, it would be difficult to break away and return to town if things

escalated. Furthermore, our supervisor also had to weigh the ramifications

of what would happen if our vehicle was damaged or heaven forbid, one or

both of us was injured. Given the radio traffic thus far, everything was a

possibility.

A county dispatcher continued to request more and more cars to respond to

a conflict that was already far beyond any measure of control. At one

point between reports of burglary, looting, and shots fired, a dispatcher

stated, “First precinct has five priority one calls stacked and no one to

respond to them.”

Elsewhere, officers who were scattered throughout the area called for

assistance each saying some variation of the same thing, “All available

units please respond.” There were frantic calls of officers being

surrounded and other calls of officers being pinned down by gunfire. After

a while, the continual reports of looters, fires, explosions, violent

crowds, and gunshots became almost commonplace.

My first inclination was to give the crowds the benefit of the doubt and

consider myself from the perspective of these “protesters.” In fact,

headlines in the days that followed would repeatedly reference “protests”

that turned violent. However, as the reports of burglary and looting

continued to grow it became clear that what was happening had nothing to do

with any protest. Protests about police action don’t only occur around

businesses. Walmart, Walgreens, Target, T-Mobile, Quiktrip, Schnucks, Taco

Bell, Boost Mobile, Sams, P&C Bank, Hibbett Sports, Party City, Family

Dollar, various auto-part, beauty supply, shoe stores, and gas stations

don’t have any control over use of force policy or human resources

decisions in the city of Ferguson.

So we sat in the car and waited for clearance from our supervisor.

Interestingly, it seemed like there was far more civilian traffic going

into the Ferguson area than departing from it. After a time, a tall skinny

black man with short facial hair in his thirties approached us on the

sidewalk.. He wasn’t the first man to walk past us, but he was the first

to approach us in eighty degree weather wearing a full sized jacket. He

was also the first to not stay to the left-hand side of the sidewalk, the

side furthest from traffic. He approached the center of our vehicle and

didn’t go unnoticed by the two officers in the car.

“Is he coming at us?” Rick asked and I responded, “It certainly looks that

way.”

I went ahead and drew my gun, keeping it low in my lap. Rick did the

same. As the man got within about fifteen yards of our car, still walking

in line with the front end, he brushed his coat away from his hip with his

right hand and started to fiddle with something in his waist band. Was he

going for a gun? We didn’t know and didn’t have time to find out. I

inhaled abruptly and started to open the car door with my free hand. As if

in response to my action, the coat fell back across the waist band and the

man proceeded past the driver side window, the side facing into traffic.

It was interesting that the deceased eighteen year-old, Mike Brown, had

supposedly been walking in traffic when a Ferguson Officer tried to stop

him on August 9th. Was this person trying to instigate a similar

situation?

“What’s up?” I asked as the man passed.

“Not much. How you doing, officer?” he responded gruffly.

I wondered if the man had intended us harm but hadn’t seen that there was

more than one officer in the car until he was close. Considering the

environment a few blocks away, anything was possible. We wouldn’t have

been the first officers shot at that night and if it had happened, we

wouldn’t have been the last.

We remained tense in the car until we watched the man round a corner down

the road and out of sight.. A lot of officers would have jumped out of the

car on the man, patted him down for weapons, and questioned him about what

he was doing. We were a little preoccupied and what was more, given what

was going on at current, it seemed like a losing proposition politically to

stop and frisk a black male even if we more than met the legal prerequisite

to do so per Terry v. Ohio. Looking back it’s hard to admit that we

briefly sacrificed our safety in the interest of political correctness and

not wanting to be involved in further controversy.

It wasn’t five minutes later that a white minivan screeched in behind us.

This time we didn’t wait and both of us jumped from the car pulling our

guns. The driver jumped out of the car and started yelling, “Don’t shoot!

Don’t shoot! I’m one of you!”

The man was wearing a duty belt and a badge around his neck but plain

clothes. My first thought was that a real officer would know better than

to drive up behind us in a personal vehicle while we were parked on the

side of the road, given what was happening just a few miles away. It

turned out my reaction was justified because the man wasn’t an officer at

all. He was a bail-bondsman wanting to know if we could help him arrest

someone in another neighboring venue. Besides being outside of our city

limits, we told him that everyone was preoccupied and sent the bounty

hunter on his way.

As Rick and I got back into the car, I said, “Let’s… go stage someplace

else.”

The radio traffic continued to degrade as more fires were set and more

shots were fired. Burglary alarms kept getting called in as businesses on

entire stretches of road had glass broken out. Reports of looting were

widespread particularly in the larger chain stores like Walmart and Sams.

Alert tones were being triggered by officers and at least one was injured

so far.

The phrase, “Any available units” continued to be a disheartening refrain.

I also heard the phrase, “fully engulfed” but didn’t catch where.

Finally, we heard that a small group of officers trying to protect a

Walgreens were in the process of being surrounded and needed help. It was

the last straw and we started heading in that direction.

Now, we were running lights and siren toward the smoke on the horizon and

what was looking to be a very long night. While en route, a few police

cars sped past us. A few others jumped behind us assuming that we knew

something they didn’t. I was fixated on the road and driving fast but not

too fast. I didn’t know the area well enough and I had no idea when we

were going to come face-to-face with a crowd or a traffic jam or one of a

hundred different but all together possible road hazards. The radio had

advised repeatedly to any units still arriving that West Florissant was

impassable for miles so we were approaching from the South.

Finally, we arrived at Walgreens which sat at the corner of the

intersection of West Florissant and Lucas & Hunt. About forty civilian

cars were stopped along the adjoining roads and corresponding intersection.

Six officers from various departments stood stoically blocking the

entrance to the pharmacy. The store had long since shut down. Even as a

twenty-four hour shop, the manager had opted to pull down the antitheft

gates and turn out the lights for fear of looters. The fear was indeed

justified as around fifty angry people gathered along the sidewalk and

others were still actively walking up to the crowd or driving up in other

cars.

Rick and I pulled into the parking lot and immediately jumped out of the

car. We joined the line, but no one really said much to us. Everyone was

focused on the crowd understanding that given what was happening to

businesses throughout the area, these people wanted to get into the store.

It was too early to tell if the crowd was willing to go through us to get

inside. However, all of us knew that on some level they were considering

it, otherwise they would have been elsewhere, anywhere other than a

pharmacy in a different city than the one that they felt slighted them.

Unfortunately, as we stood around, the crowd continued to grow along the

intersection. The rhetoric became more and more inflammatory. Small

groups of people started breaking off from the larger crowd and would

approach us screaming obscenities and other accusations directed at the

Ferguson Police Department, of which none of us was a member. Some would

fall back to the large group only to be replaced with other angry people.

The phrase, “No Justice, No Peace” had become the rally cry for the

protests by the family. This phrase was echoed by the crowd at Walgreens

though it was used just as frequently as the phrase, “Kill the police!” I

read some comments online later that the last chant never happened and that

the first chant was merely being misquoted. I can confirm that both

phrases were yelled repeatedly and frequently.

I also found the notion that somehow “No Justice, No Peace” was a slogan

for peaceful protest to be oddly humorous and almost ironically

threatening. “No peace” implies violence, implies war, implies duress.

Peaceful change, peaceful protest comes from discussion and compromise, not

intimidation. I maintain that the riots on Sunday, the 10th, were not an

escalation of legitimate protests, but I concede that if a protest was

going to turn violent, a chant that threatened aggression was not exactly

far removed.

To be fair, there were initially a lot of comments about the shooting.

One of the more common rhetorical questions yelled at us by the crowd was,

“What if it was your son?” No one answered, as we didn’t engage the crowd

in reference to any question, but I think every officer was pretty much of

the opinion that even if we hadn’t raised our kids as well as we hoped, at

least they wouldn’t be allowed to loot and riot, let alone on a Sunday

night as school was getting ready to start. As a result, the chances of

them having a tragic interaction with the police were much less by my

estimate and not because of their skin color.

There were other chants as well, though much less frequent. The phrase

“Fuck the poh-lice” was yelled a number of times. However, it was uttered

far fewer times than a line of dialogue I really hadn’t expected to hear.

The crowd was absolutely fixated on the color of our skin. Some of the

comments were about the fact that we were white officers. Most of the

comments were geared toward the fact they perceived us to be part of a

wider white society that they blamed for far more than the death of one

person.

However, the comments about our skin color didn’t stop with us as

officers. Several people said repeatedly that they intended to kill all

white people. To be fair, they did repeatedly state their intention to

kill us specifically as well. Others said that they intended to bring the

riots to more stereotypically white municipalities in West County like

“Chesterfield” which they named directly. For the record, “riots” and

“looting” were terms they used. The crowd also said they planned on

looting white businesses, which I took as an interesting admission of a

perceived justification felt widely throughout the crowd. Along these same

lines, someone called into local AM radio KMOX in the days that followed

and justified the damage with the phrase, “They got insurance, don’t they?”

One particularly classy rioter informed us that he planned to anally rape

our wives and then force them to perform oral sex afterward. This claim

was picked up by several other men in the crowd who hooted and hollered and

affirmed that they too were going to do the same. In time, the comments

from the growing crowd seemed about as far removed as possible from the

death of Mike Brown that supposedly brought them here.

Speaking of verbal comments, the black officers there with us that night

defending the pharmacy suffered the worst comments that the crowd had to

offer. While we received general threats geared at our race and our

occupation, the black officers were singled out and targeted directly with

personalized attacks.. When the crowd wasn’t commenting on their physical

appearance, the officers were called “Uncle Toms,” “House N***ers,” and

“Traitors.” One of the black officers with us was standing back holding an

AR-15 rifle. A few women called him out directly saying, “All these other

pigs got sticks and you’re the only one that’s got a gun out. You’re the

only one they got ready to kill folks.” For whatever it’s worth, I was

glad someone had a rifle in case we were fired upon by a similar weapon

which is not uncommon to this area.

Interestingly, in the days that followed, the lack of diversity within the

various local area police departments was cited as part of the problem

perceived by the community. Having watched the verbal barrage these

officers had borne the brunt of, I didn’t know how any qualified black

person could want to be an officer. It didn’t matter to the crowd if these

black officers were good people or even good officers. The crowd decided

that they were subhuman simply because of their group affiliation. It’s

pathetic for a community to complain about a lack of black officers when

that same community hypocritically treats them so terribly.

The group was also torn on whether or not they thought that we were all

part of the rich white establishment that they felt was responsible for

their suffering or if we should be made fun of for not making as much money

as they supposedly did. More than once they laughed as a group about the

fact that “What? You make like thirty thousand a year? I make more in one

month than you make in a year!” While this comment was nothing more than

hollow boasting, it was particularly ironic when these same people started

looting the stores across the street from us in the hours that followed.

I turned to Rick at one point and said, “I’m really trying hard not to

laugh at some of these comments.” It was about that time that the first

beer bottled whizzed near my head and shattered on the ground a short

distance away from my feet. Rick was on my left and the bottle had flown

from my right when I turned briefly to make my comment. We were also two

of the only people present without a helmet. When anyone tries to ask the

question of why officers were decked out in riot gear that night, this was

why. The crowd actively targeted those who weren’t.

Everything was a bit more serious to me after the first bottle shattered.

More bottles flew from the crowd as it continued to swell from fifty to

somewhere between a hundred and fifty, to two hundred. A chorus of

officers yelling, “Head’s up! Bottle!” warned us as new threats

materialized.

I kept my body and vision fixated on the area where the bottles had flown

from, though I had no way of knowing who had thrown them. Cars were

beginning to pull into the lot from the East and small groups of men were

trying to move closer and closer around the back of our line on our right

flank along the side of the building.

Rick pointed out a group of three overweight black men in their late

thirties standing behind a pickup truck. They weren’t joining in the

yelling but having a close conversation between each other by whispering

into each others ears and motioning with hand gestures. There was no way

to determine what they were saying but it was impossible not to consider

that they were coming up with a plan for rushing us. I pulled out my baton

and extended it in my left hand with the flick of a wrist.

I think it was at that moment, when the group was near its largest and we

were the most outgunned, that I really started to get scared. The periodic

gunshots, though not directed at us, didn’t help. I had faith in my

training and my own abilities but that mattered less and less as the group

swelled, bottles flew toward our heads, and our attention was drawn in

fifty million places at once. As the standoff continued on, I found myself

hopeful that if something bad was going to happen, it would just happen

already so that we could do something, anything other than to simply wait

for the worst. If we were going to have to fight our way out of this

crowd, I wanted to get on with it already whether we came through

unscathed, whether we survived or not.

Fortunately, as the crowd grew, we were eventually reinforced by a number

of other agencies with the largest number coming from St. Louis County. As

our line of defense increased in manpower to around twenty to twenty-five,

we were still exponentially outnumbered. The size of the crowd was also

directly correlated with their diminishing fear and willingness to close

distance on us. Officers are typically taught to keep a six to eight foot

“reactionary gap” when dealing with members of the public so that we have

room to respond if someone intends us harm. This crowd was actively

pushing the limits of what we could safely tolerate.

St. Louis County had several K9 units arrive as well and they held up the

left flank of our line. The crowd immediately set to work antagonizing the

dogs and several people who lunged at the dogs almost got bit repeatedly.

The handlers were doing their best to keep the dogs calm but in time they

had to fall back because it was clear that many members of the group were

trying to taunt the dogs since they had failed to instigate us officers to

violence. If we reacted first or if the dogs had bit anyone in the crowd,

that group would likely have felt justified in attacking us. At least, the

worst members of the crowd seemed to think there was some validity in that

theory. I can’t imagine any other reason for purposefully trying to get

bit by a police dog.

About an hour later, the crowd suddenly and explosively dispersed across

the street toward the Buzz Westfall Plaza and began breaking into every

store within view including but not limited to P&C Bank and T-Mobile. I

looked to Rick considering pursuing the crowd but held back when no one

else from the line moved. We needed to stop the looting but it wasn’t

going to do anyone any good if we went unilaterally into the center of the

spread-out crowd and got hurt because no one else had received further

orders to move. Everyone waited for orders that never came. Fortunately

the crowd moved too close to the Incident Command Center on the other side

and was pushed back.

The crowd from before started back toward us but continued East on the

opposite side of the street down West Florissant. As the group kicked in

the side door on yet another beauty supply store, officers finally started

running to engage the looters. I charged forward with the other officers

toward the open door and the scores of people who were running in and out

of the business. As we quickly approached, far more people were running

out than in. Humorously, after all the bravado about killing cops and

killing white people, the crowd broke apart with a fair chunk heading

further east along W. Florissant while the main group proceeded back in the

direction they had come toward the intersection by Walgreens.

A St. Louis County Officer, I say officer because I’m pretty sure he

didn’t have any stripes, started ordering people to form a line with him.

Rick and I joined his line of about five and we started making our way

toward the intersection routing members of the crowd and yelling, “Get

back!” More officers joined our line and we isolated a much smaller group

to the corner of the road.

Once again, we found ourselves in a stand off. Once again, bricks and

bottles flew from the other side of the Auto-parts store we were standing

next to. Once again, we received death threats. Interestingly, these were

all based on our skin color and I don’t believe we heard one comment at

this point directed at the fact that we were officers.

Of course, in the midst of the crowd, a new person emerged to draw our

attention. A short fat black man in a tattered and dirty white mask that

could only be adequately described as a ninja hood, was moving through the

crowd with a long duffle-bag slung across his back.. He was taking time to

move behind people and peer out periodically serving no purpose other than

to make us uncomfortable and wonder what was in the bag. To grab him meant

leaving the line and enter the crowd but to leave him be was to risk our

lives for whatever he was carrying with him.

Rick called over a St. Louis County Lieutenant who was hanging back behind

the line and pointed the guy out. The Lieutenant asked Rick, “Do you think

we should grab him?” The question bothered me and Rick stared for a

moment, I think unsure that he had heard the supervisor correctly. Then he

followed up with a nod and said, “Yeah.” The Lieutenant started to point

as though he was going to order someone to grab the man as the short fat

man started to move across the street toward the Walgreens from before.

However, as he got about halfway across the street, the LT seemingly forgot

what he was doing and the man continued on without being accosted.

A little while later, the same man returned without his mask and without

the duffle-bag. Fortunately, the man also returned without any long guns

that could have been hidden within the bag. There were also no explosions

to my knowledge close enough that his bag could have been responsible. You

might be wondering how I know this was the same man. Well, after a little

while in the middle of the crowd, he pulled the same tattered dirty ninja

hood out and put it back on, apparently unsure how concepts like anonymity

are suppose to work.

The group moved back and around the corner behind some brush so St. Louis

County had their helicopter move in and spotlight the area. We hadn’t seen

much of the helicopter tonight because it was having to move around pretty

steadily in order to avoid taking fire. Multiple shots had been fired at

the helicopter one of several times it had been stationary further shedding

doubt on the notion of “peaceful” protest.

The crowd didn’t like the overhead spotlight and started dispersing up the

road heading North on Lucas & Hunt. As the group headed north, a car with

completely blackened windows pulled into view from a gravel road that ran

parallel to Lucas & Hunt. The car was going approximately five miles an

hour and slowly turned to face us. Assuming the worst, every officer on my

part of the line started to free their guns from their holsters while still

holding back from drawing down on the vehicle. I assume seeing the

reaction of seven or eight cops collectively going for their guns, the

vehicle thought better of approaching the line and did a quick three point

turn heading back the direction it had come from.

Even more officers showed up in the hour that followed, but the crowds had

largely dispersed from our area and now we had to contend with reports of

even more widespread looting and what I believe were probably false reports

of other riotous crowds to draw our attention away from the outlying

businesses that were still being looted. For the record, we were only one

of like ten major ongoing conflicts taking place at the same time. The

next largest problem area seemed to be W. Florissant and Chambers road

which was a few miles west of us. There were reports of large crowds and

it seemed far more pressing than the empty streets we had now been guarding

for almost an hour while new reports of looting continued to come in.

Rick and I returned to our car and moved through several roadblocks until

we came to the underside of an overpass that was almost completely choked

with police cars. I moved up and talked to an officer in SWAT gear. He

informed us that Chambers was a long way on foot but that we could make it

through all the cars in our own if we were careful. I thanked him and we

started to walk away when another SWAT guy spoke up asking, “Hey, you guys

don’t happen to have any Tums do you?”

I responded, “No. Sorry. Wish I did.”

“Oh… that’s okay. Did they make it into the Walgreens at Lucas & Hunt?

Bet there’s some Tums there,” he said and everyone chuckled.

While his sarcasm lightened the mood, the fact that his group just a few

blocks from where we had been was unaware that the Walgreens had been

saved, was just indicative of how widespread and large this series of riots

had actually been.

The gravity of the situation was still not entirely clear to me as we

slowly made our way through a sea of cars, broken glass, and debris

resulting in a scene that would have felt just as at home on the set of the

Walking Dead. Driving down West Florissant we finally got an idea of just

how bad everything had been. Everything between our Walgreens and Chambers

Road had been completely ransacked.

The worst of it was when we came to the still smoking ruins of a Quiktrip

gas station about halfway between the Walgreens and our destination on

Chambers. The front interior of the building was completely burnt out with

the roof starting to collapse inward. Still, smoke emanated across the

street as fire crews attempted to keep what was left of the flames from

affecting the gas pumps. There was also numerous graffiti sprayed across

the building. On one side read, “Snitches get stitches.” On the front of

the building was the words, “187 County Police.” Someone had even climbed

up onto the streetlight level sign listing gas prices and spray-painted

over the premium price, “SNITCH.”

We didn’t know at the time but apparently there was a widely spread and

evidently widely believed story that one of the employees at this location

had called 911 after the deceased eighteen year-old, Mike Brown, had

shoplifted something petty. In other words, they burned down the Quiktrip

because they held the business responsible for Brown’s death. This story

was interesting for a variety of reasons. However the most notable reason

was that the story turned out to be completely untrue which made the

violence even more senseless. The fact that the employees barely escaped

with their lives is another factor that is not brought up enough. Mike

Brown never went into the Quiktrip but I contend that the riots had long

since stopped being about Mike Brown.

We continued weaving our way down the street dodging debris and soaking in

the devastation. A restaurant was filled with smoke that created a strobe

effect from the outside as a smoke detector went off and a light blinked at

equal intervals against a hazy gray backdrop behind broken windows. Glass

shelters at bus stops were destroyed because if there was one way to hurt

rich white America, it was to take out your frustration on people that ride

the bus. As we approached Chambers Road, we noticed an Auto-parts store

that had been ransacked, glass broken out and tire displays noticeably

disturbed and shortened.

The fortunate part of Chambers road was that the area was saturated with

law enforcement and the crowds that remained in the area were relatively

small at least at least by that night’s standards. Unfortunately, as we

started to try and figure out who was in charge, reports started coming in

that there was a small group armed with shotguns rallying by a church north

on Chambers.

One of the SWAT teams, I think St. Charles City, radioed as we headed in

that direction that they had eyes on the subjects in question but didn’t

see the weapons being alleged. Nothing materialized from this group so it

was likely a false report to consolidate our people and allow for more

looting elsewhere.. We were finally asked by a County Sergeant to help

lead a pair of Laclede Gas workers in plain clothes and a personal vehicle

to the ruins of the Quiktrip if it was safe to do so. We had just come

from there so it was no problem. By the time we reached Quiktrip, the

smoke was beginning to subside and the fires were merely smoldering.

After that, we checked on the eastern most blockade at Sunbury but found

that this area also was now under control. By about two-thirty or three in

the morning, only pockets of looting remained and were largely making their

way into the city of Florissant where officers were already making numerous

arrests. We did receive a few more reports of supposed gatherings as

social media indicated attempts at rallying specifically at a number of

Quiktrip locations throughout North County, but these also didn’t

materialize. For the moment, it seemed that our long night was coming to a

close.

We were fortunate that we didn’t have to encounter some of things other

officers in the area did. None of our vehicles were damaged. Florissant

PD lost at least four cars. None of our officers were injured, while two

were reported from other agencies. While we heard gunshots, we never took

fire and never had to return fire. However, it was impossible not to leave

the event contemplating the hatred and utter racism we endured just because

we had the gall to protect a Walgreens from the treatment every other

building in that area received.

The “Us and Them” mentality is oft discussed but rarely understood.. In

case anyone was wondering, this is how it happens. There is no

justification for racism, be it from a black protester or a white

policeman. It is interesting that there has not been a single media

discussion of racism on the part of the looters. The lack of honest

discussion indicates a clear and indisputable bias toward a preordained

story.

The aftermath of Sunday, August 10th was covered widely by the local

media. St. Louis County PD was also widely criticized for not moving

quickly enough to engage the looters acknowledging the severity of the

damage. It’s interesting that there has been such a strong subsequent

push, particularly in the National Media, to minimize and in some cases

outright deny the severity of the riots on August 10th.

On the following night on August 11th, the riots resumed even earlier than

on the tenth. The use of tear gas became a natural and preferable

alternative to risking officer and looter safety by physically attempting

to engage all of the rioters. The August 11th riots began with the crowd

reassembling at Quicktrip and overturning several vehicles. Following the

deployment of tear gas, the riots were largely brought under control when

compared to the night before. Anyone that disputes that fact need only

review the radio traffic from August 10th and the radio traffic from August

11th.

Stupidly, the ruins of the Quiktrip continue to be the rallying point for

supposed protests ignoring the fact that the whole story behind the

building has already been debunked. Quiktrip’s corporate office even put

out an official statement saying that they had investigated the claim and

that Mike Brown hadn’t so much as entered their West Florissant location at

all on August 9th, let alone been reported as shoplifting from there.

After all, their surveillance footage is stored offsite and was thus

unaffected by the fire. There is also no discussion of the fact that even

if the story had been true, Quiktrip has every right to call the police in

reference to a shoplifting and no onus on whatever actions the police took

subsequent to that.

The National Media is also now weighing in and trying to tie these events

into a prejudged narrative inconsistent with what’s really going on. The

most consistent and utterly deliberate lie from the media is that the

severity of the riots have been blown out of proportion and the majority of

the people present were peaceful demonstrators. The fact of the matter is

that, at least as far August 10th was concerned, the streets were so

violent and out of control that it wasn’t safe for peaceful protesters even

if they had been inclined to demonstrate and not loot stores.

Furthermore, there’s a new narrative that everything is now under control

in Ferguson since the replacement of St. Louis County Police command with

the Missouri State Highway Patrol by order of the Governor. The narrative

neglects to acknowledge the fact that MSHP has been present since the first

night and been a willing participant in everything that has only within the

last day been deemed too militarized by our governor and our senator.

Neither figure could be found making a stand until it was politically

expedient to do so as St. Louis County utterly lost the public relations

battle.

Furthermore, as of the night of 8/14/2014 going into 8/15/2014, violence

has not ended in Ferguson. As soon as I walked in the door, I heard a

shots fired call near W. Florissant and Chambers involving a woman who had

bullets coming into her house. Numerous reports of shots fired and people

flourishing firearms went on throughout the night. This is NOT peace and

the media is lying.

I am a police officer. I’m not perfect but I’ve never shot anyone. I’ve

never used force when it wasn’t called for. I don’t treat people

disrespectfully unless they disrespect me first. I’ve never treated anyone

differently because of the color of one’s skin, simply the content of their

character. Unfortunately, on the night of August 10th, we saw some of the

worst content anyone had to offer.

WS