Some wounds take a long time to heal. And some never really do. A decade after Michael Brown’s death and the ensuing unrest, Ferguson, Missouri, sadly falls into the latter category. On Friday, the 10-year anniversary of that fateful incident, I shared an article reflecting on the incident and the radio documentary my cohorts at FTRRadio/”Q With a View” and I put together in the months following it.
Friday evening, protesters were back on the streets of Ferguson. The police department gave them room to protest, as you’ll see and hear Police Chief Troy Doyle explain in the video below.
But that wasn’t enough. The crowd became violent and started destroying property. And when the chief sent officers out to start making arrests, one of the protesters charged Officer Travis Brown (no relation to Michael Brown), knocking him backward and causing him to strike his head and sustain a serious head injury. Officer Brown is in an area hospital, fighting for his life.
Saturday afternoon, Chief Doyle gave a press conference in which he was joined by St. Louis County Prosecutor Wesley Bell —who just won the Democratic primary to replace Rep. Cori Bush (D) and represent Missouri’s 1st Congressional District on Tuesday.
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Bell expressed his condolences and his own concerns about what had transpired before announcing the charges being pursued against the perpetrators. But it was Chief Doyle’s impassioned plea to the community — his palpable frustration and anguish — that really struck a chord and deserve to be heard far and wide.
The full video runs 11 minutes, 30 seconds, and is worth the watch. I’ve transcribed Chief Doyle’s initial comments below.
DOYLE: I called this press conference to talk about an event from last night. We had protesters across the street at the Andy Wurm parking lot — and I’ll have my P.O. provide you with times and all that stuff after this press conference — but we had protesters lined up across the street here at Andy Wurm parking lot.
For the majority of the night, they were all peaceful. In fact, we even began blocking our streets out here on South Florissant Road — we allowed the protesters to block our streets out here. Not only did we allow the protesters to block our street, we even provided a car…on the north end and on the south end so the protesters couldn’t get hit by vehicles.
Sometime throughout — well, throughout the night, the protesters were violently shaking our fence at this police station. Again, we did not even react. We stayed here, let them shake the fence. That happened several times throughout the night, up until the point that they broke the bottom portions of our fence — they destroyed property on our police department’s parking lot.
It was at that time I sent out an arrest team to make an arrest for destruction of property. My team got out there and was assaulted by a number of the protesters that were out there on the scene. As a result, one of my police officers suffered a severe brain injury. He is at an area hospital right now, fighting for his life.
And I’m going to break away a little bit from what I was planning to talk about. This police department — this Ferguson Police Department — since 2014, has been a punching bag for this community. The police department back in 2014 — we don’t even have them officers here anymore. So, what are you protesting? These officers are not even here no more.
Everything that the activist community has advocated for, as far as body-worn cameras, implicit bias training, crisis intervention training — all this stuff, we have done all of this. What are we protesting? What is it? We even changed the uniforms at this police department because people said that the old uniforms triggered people. What are we doing?
Ten years later, I got an officer fighting for his life. It’s enough, and I’m done with it. We’re not doing it here in Ferguson. Our community is united behind us. Our community is fed up. We wanna heal — our community want to heal. We want people to peacefully protest, but we damn sure ain’t gonna allow you to destroy this city, and we ain’t gonna allow you to none of these police officers. We are united here in this city. We’re done with it — we’re not doing it anymore.
Doyle then took questions from the media.
Elijah Gantt, 28, of East St. Louis, has been charged with assaulting Officer Brown. He is charged with two counts of fourth-degree assault on a special victim (a police officer), resisting arrest, first-degree assault, and property damage. Gantt is being held on a $500,000 cash-only bond.
Officer Brown is reported to be in critical condition with a brain injury. Let’s continue to pray for his recovery.
