“You cannot really eliminate pain through aggression. The more you kill, the more you strengthen the killer who will create new things to be killed. The aggression grows until finally there is no space: the whole environment has been solidified. There are not even gaps at which to look back or do to do a double take. The whole space has become completely filled with aggression. It is outrageous. There is no opportunity to create a watcher to testify to your destruction, no one to give you a report. But at the same time, the aggression grows. The more you destroy, the more you create.” ~ Buddhist teacher Trungpa Rinpoche

 

Missouri Highway Patrol Captain Leads March In Ferguson: “When I see a young lady cry because of fear of this uniform, that’s a problem. We’ve got to solve that.”

Bonus: the sign above is in a puny font because it’s for the snipers.

Suddenly, yesterday, everything changed.

The man in the photo above? “Captain Ron Johnson of the Missouri Highway Patrol. Gov. Jay Nixon relieved the local police and sheriff and placed his troopers and him in charge of security of Ferguson.”

“Not only did Johnson march with the protesters, but he vowed to not blockade the street, to set up a media staging center, and to ensure that residents’ rights to assemble and protest were not infringed upon. Officers working crowd control, he said, have been told they must take off their gas masks.”

One man stopped, telling Capt. Johnson that his niece had been tear gassed earlier this week – “What would you say to her?”

Johnson reached out his hand and replied: “Tell her Capt. Johnson is sorry and he apologizes.”

Also, this.

Police taking off riot gear and gas masks. Snipers removed. Cops who truly serve and protect instated. A march with the civilians. No more tear gas thrown at press, then cameras taken apart.

“Glad there is someone who is willing to work with the community for a solution, rather than working against.”

“With Highway Patrol, hugs and kisses replace tear gas in Ferguson,” reads the headline from The Washington Post’s Wesley Lowery, who has been covering the protests for days.

 

“This guy, wearing an American flag shirt, holding a bag of chips, throwing a tear gas canister back at police in Ferguson, is MURICA personified.”

 

This is what police should and must honor:

The “Peelian Principles” of policing, issued in 1829 onwards in the UK should be, but not always are, behind every police action:

1. To prevent crime and disorder, as an alternative to their repression by military force and severity of legal punishment.
2. To recognise always that the power of the police to fulfil their functions and duties is dependent on public approval of their existence, actions and behaviour, and on their ability to secure and maintain public respect.
3. To recognise always that to secure and maintain the respect and approval of the public means also the securing of the willing co-operation of the public in the task of securing observance of laws.
4. To recognise always that the extent to which the co-operation of the public can be secured diminishes proportionately the necessity of the use of physical force and compulsion for achieving police objectives.
5. To seek and preserve public favour, not by pandering to public opinion, but by constantly demonstrating absolutely impartial service to law, in complete independence of policy, and without regard to the justice or injustice of the substance of individual laws, by ready offering of individual service and friendship to all members of the public without regard to their wealth or social standing, by ready exercise of courtesy and friendly good humour, and by ready offering of individual sacrifice in protecting and preserving life.
6. To use physical force only when the exercise of persuasion, advice and warning is found to be insufficient to obtain public co-operation to an extent necessary to secure observance of law or to restore order, and to use only the minimum degree of physical force which is necessary on any particular occasion for achieving a police objective.
7. To maintain at all times a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and that the public are the police, the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.
8. To recognise always the need for strict adherence to police-executive functions, and to refrain from even seeming to usurp the powers of the judiciary of avenging individuals or the State, and of authoritatively judging guilt and punishing the guilty.
9. To recognise always that the test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, and not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with them.

Of the people, for the people.

Relephant: Ferguson police tear gas Al-Jazeera news crew, SWAT team moves in to dismantle their equipment (ksdk.com)

Those War-Ready Cops in Ferguson Are 9/11’s Awful Legacy—and Your Taxes Are Paying for It (newrepublic.com)

This needs attention. Police in Ferguson tear gas the press, dismantle their gear after they flee. (pbs.twimg.com)