A Tale of Two Justice Department Reports

A scathing review and analysis, from Heather Mac Donald, at the Weekly Standard, "Justice Is Blind: The case of dueling DOJ reports on Ferguson, Missouri":

Remember Michael Brown, the 18-year-old whose fatal shooting in Ferguson, Mo., last August triggered two waves of riots, a national protest movement, death threats against the officer who shot Brown, lamentations by college presidents regarding America’s enduring racial injustice, vilification of St. Louis prosecutor Robert McCulloch for not obtaining an indictment against the officer who shot Brown, a campaign to eliminate grand jury proceedings when police officers use deadly force, the assassination of two New York police officers, and a presidential task force to reform policing? The press and public leaders don’t appear to remember Brown, now that a Justice Department report has demolished the narrative that turned him into a martyr to police and prosecutor racism. His shooting is now mentioned in passing only as a prelude to a second Justice report, also released on March 4, that preserves the meme of a racist Ferguson police force, thus providing a substitute rationale for the summer and fall rioting.

Before the Justice Department report on the Brown shooting is consigned to total oblivion, it is worth examining its findings, as well as the strategies used to marginalize them, in some detail. They bear on the ecstatically received second Justice Department report on Ferguson police racism and on the larger discourse about policing and race.

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