Ferguson Remains a City on the Brink

The never-ending soap opera of racial recrimination in the heartland.

At the Los Angeles Times, "A tense Ferguson fears the worst is yet to come":

Black racism alive and well in #ferguson -> pic.twitter.com/nJR18rkl17

— Kelly (@KLSouth) September 29, 2014

Beauty Town has an elaborate video surveillance system that displays 16 angles of the store, but the cameras are better at capturing crime than at preventing it.

The beauty shop has been looted multiple times since a white Ferguson police officer shot an unarmed black man Aug. 9. Last week, during another round of unrest on West Florissant Avenue, a group of young men broke the front windows and raided the shelves and cash register.

Owner Shawn Kim thinks 99% of the people who live around his shop are good people.

For the rest, he’s bought a gun. Just in case.

If the grand jury fails to indict the officer who killed Michael Brown, almost everyone here thinks things will get worse.

“They’re not going to be looting next time,” said Kevin Seltzer, 30, who lives at an apartment complex near where Brown, 18, was shot. “They’re going to burn the city down.”

Far from finding peace after a round of summer protests and riots, Ferguson remains a city on the brink, its nearly every step troubled. The last week has been especially fraught.

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