Did we learn anything from events in Ferguson, Mo.? With a ruling coming any day in the Eric Garner case here in New York, let’s hope so.
I have no idea what indictment, if any, the Staten Island grand jury will issue regarding Garner’s death. I learned long ago: Don’t try to forecast jury decisions, just be ready to be surprised.
Others take a different tack. On Saturday, the Rev. Al Sharpton, in linking Ferguson to Staten Island, said his “countdown” had begun. Those ominous words sounded like he was anticipating some sort of D-Day.
In Ferguson, Michael Brown’s father had urged that there be no rioting when the decision came down. But Brown’s stepfather was later seen on TV allegedly urging people to set a store on fire.
Lost in the dispute over the Ferguson decision is the fact that in America, we adhere to the rule of law.
Not always, of course: In the old South, mobs gathered outside a courthouse demanding a prisoner (usually nonwhite) be turned over to them for a trial at the nearest tree.
Sometimes authorities appeased a mob by promising that they would see that the accused was convicted and hanged. In other words, there would be a judicial lynching.
In the legal system today, our wish for a particular outcome is sometimes frustrated by rules about “due process” and the “presumption of innocence.”
Yet these rules have kept us free from the tyranny of kings or the mob. We abandon them at our peril. On more than one occasion, those who denounced certain legal technicalities were glad to invoke those same ones when they were the party accused of a crime.
Ferguson also presents a clear warning for law-enforcement officials.
Sometimes the police are told to look away at the scene of a disturbance and allow people to “vent” rather than enforce the law.
In Ferguson, the governor called out the National Guard before the grand jury’s decision was even announced — but then refused to deploy it against the protesters. All America saw the results: street violence, looting, stores burned down.
Citizens have every right to carry out lawful protests. But in the riots I have witnessed (and I’ve seen quite a few, from San Francisco to Boston and points in between), when police allowed laws to be broken to accommodate protesters, the results were invariably bad.
Nonetheless, we’ve seen multiple recent cases, including in New York, where authorities allowed demonstrators to shut down public highways and bridges.
I wonder how many cars and ambulances taking people to hospitals were delayed for long periods?
By what right does a public official curtail a citizen’s lawful activities to let other citizens break the law?
When officials were found to have unlawfully closed several George Washington Bridge onramps in Fort Lee not so long ago, all hell broke loose.
The incident may even have derailed Gov. Chris Christie’s 2016 presidential hopes. How is it that protesters don’t pay for their unlawful closure of other bridges?
Another lesson: When the media chooses people to comment on these decisions, they should be individuals with real expertise, such as former assistant district attorneys who’ve handled grand juries and are familiar with prosecutorial procedures.
Instead, over and over after Ferguson, we heard that a prosecutor’s job is to obtain an indictment. Not true: His job is to secure justice.
If police or former officers are quoted, I’d be interested in hearing how much time they’ve spent as street cops and whether as command officers they’ve ever investigated a killing by a police officer.
When someone who’s never been involved in street policing puts in his two cents’ worth on law-enforcement tactics, it has about as much value as the opinion of a hot-dog vendor on how US troops should be deployed in the Middle East.
If there is a violent reaction to the decision in Staten Island — and, eventually, to the one in Brooklyn on the shooting of Akai Gurley in the Pink Housing Project — the public is going to hold some prominent figures accountable.
Thomas A. Reppetto is the former president of the Citizens Crime Commission of New York City and a retired commander of detectives in the Chicago Police Department.