"The shooting of a young African American teenager, Michael Brown, by a white Ferguson, Missouri law enforcement officer last month pushed that St. Louis suburban area to the boiling point. Today it offers up many lessons for the rest of the country and an opportunity for change.
The problems in Ferguson, however, are far deeper than the tragic shooting of Michael Brown. They reflect patterns of racial injustice and political imbalance in a city whose elected leaders and citizens — at least those concerned with justice and prudence — must work even harder to correct.
In the city of Ferguson, 67 percent of the residents are African American. Yet the city’s police force is 95 percent white. Five of the six members of the City Council are white. And in 2013, 92 percent of all police searches of individuals in Ferguson, 86 percent of all stops made by the police and 93 percent of all arrests involved African Americans, according to official reports. These disparities, no doubt, led to the unrest that occurred in Ferguson.
The leadership of the city must do more to recruit minority candidates to become members of the police force. At the same time, members of the minority community must do all that they can to identify and support worthy candidates for elected office.
The leadership of Ferguson must also insist upon the implementation of community policing, a policy developed in Texas in which police and citizens work together to protect communities from crime and violence. Under community policing, members of the police force are not viewed as enemies. Rather, they are perceived as protectors of citizens and their property. A partnership is formed with residents and business owners interacting closely with law enforcement officials.
Perhaps if community policing were in effect in Ferguson, the officer accused of killing Michael Brown would have called him over to his police car so the two could talk rather than engage in confrontation, as some witnesses to the incident have alleged.
We must never again witness the types of military hardware displayed on the streets of Ferguson, with SWAT team snipers poised to shoot at protesters. This is not the American way. We must also understand that the conditions that precipitated tragedy and unrest in Ferguson exist in other cities throughout our country. And we must take steps to rectify those conditions before we witness a repeat of what most Americans found revolting in a city located in the American heartland." - Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson
A Waco native who graduated from A.J. Moore High School, Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson represents a district in Dallas County.
Source: Waco Tribune
