After seven months of nonstop protesting in Ferguson, Missouri,
Police Chief Tom Jackson resigned yesterday. This news was not only well-received by the protest community, it signified what was perhaps the single-biggest victory since protests began. With what felt like tremendous momentum and the news media squarely focused on the corruption in the Ferguson police force, two police officers were shot right in front of the Ferguson police department. Fortunately, both of the wounded officers
were treated and released from the hospital less than 12 hours later and are expected to make a full recovery.
Not one eyewitness from the police or the protest community saw a shot come from the crowd of protestors. Instead, without fail, every single eyewitness saw and heard the shots come from at least one hundred yards away. Episcopal priest Mike Kinman, who was on the scene of the shooting stated "It definitely did not come from the protestors." Susan Weich, a reporter on the scene, immediately reported that "Shots came from a house up the hill across from police station." Matt Pearce of the LA Times reported "Three witnesses tell me shots at Ferg. PD didn't come from demonstrators, but up Tiffin Ave. on the hill." Protestor Deray McKesson immediately tweeted, "Now, I was here. I saw the officer fall. The shot came from at least 500 feet away from the officers."
In spite of all of this, Chief Belmar, just two hours after the shooting, decided to immediately shape the narrative by claiming that the shooter was somehow embedded with the protestors.
A reporter asked Chief Belmar, "To be clear here, this is not the people who were exercising their first amendment rights who did the shooting?"
Chief Belmar, even alluding to the reality that he didn't have any strong facts, still opted to reply in a way that implicated protestors, "I don't know who did the shooting to be honest with you right now. But somehow they were embedded in that group of folks."
No evidence of this exists. Not one protestor, which included priests and attorneys, witnessed a shooter in any way.
Why then, would the police chief publicly state that the shooter was embedded with protestors if no evidence of any such thing exists? Perhaps, it was for the very same reason he had when
he told a significant lie the morning after Officer Darren Wilson shot and killed Ferguson teenager Mike Brown. On that morning, on multiple occasions, Chief Belmar insisted that Wilson shot and killed Brown just 35 feet away from Darren Wilson's SUV giving the nation the early impression that the entire scene covered very little ground. He restated the position and this distance multiple times and refused to refute it for the entirety of the cases—only for the evidence to come out that Mike Brown ran 170 feet aways—a full 500 percent farther than Belmar repeatedly reported.
Why did Belmar do this, other than to create a mental image of a scene for people that didn't truly exist? His irresponsible press conferences are dangerous and shape public opinion in an unethical fashion. At the very least, he needs to wait until he has the facts straight before he puts good people in danger.