The resignation of Ferguson Police Chief Tom Jackson comes many months too late to be any salve to the family and friends of Michael Brown, the community of Ferguson and the hundreds of people still facing trumped-up and often unconstitutional charges following the extrajudicial killing of an unarmed young man.
Chief Jackson should have been fired when it was discovered he had repeatedly lied to the public and the media following Michael Brown’s death. By the time Officer Wilson’s near-blank incident report was reluctantly released, Jackson should have been long gone. Instead, hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars were pumped into highly questionable PR blitzes and a deeply disingenuous video apology.
While it makes tragic reading, the Department of Justice report is depressingly familiar to people of color in every part of the U.S. Quite aside from everyday lived experience, the Missouri Attorney General’s office shocking statistics show massive racial
profiling at work for many years, and the predatory and corrupt municipal court system is a portrait of deeply entrenched systematic racism at work.
Symbolic resignations will not quell the fury sparked on the streets of Ferguson. “Ferguson” has become shorthand for a corrupt, profit-driven system of brutality and incarceration that punishes black and brown youth for their mere existence. The people of Ferguson will not bow down. We will continue to stand alongside them, insisting black lives matter.
Rev Osagyefo Sekou
Via email