‘How Can I Explain Ferguson To My Son?’

By theunaustralianblog on 28/11/2014 • ( 0 )

Tony Willis tries to remain stone-faced, but his voice possesses a slight quiver when he talks. A resident of Kirkwood, Missouri, about 18 miles (29 kilometers) out of Ferguson, the events of the past couple of days have clearly had an effect on him.

“I just… I just don’t know what I’m going to tell him. How can I explain Ferguson to my son?”

Max Willis is a precocious 10 year old. Ebullient, with a permanent smile affixed to his face, when he grows up, he tells me he wants to be “just like daddy”. But after officer Darren Wilson escaped an indictment leading to mass protests against the legal system right across Missouri, it has become clear to Tony that the world he and his son lives in is not one of childish idealism.

“Part of me feels like it would be easier to just lie to my son. To protect him from the real world for just a little longer. I want to say ‘don’t worry champ, nothing like this could ever happen to you’. I want to say ‘people like this will be brought to justice’, but I can’t I have to tell him the truth.”

“We live in a world where these protestors will go unpunished. Where they’ll continue to spin lies about Darren Wilson. To paint him as the villain just because he shot an unarmed black teenager 6 times. They’ll continue to call cops racist, to say the system is racist, just because black men are 21 times likely to be shot than their white peers.”

“My son wants to be a police officer, just like me. And he’ll be hated because of it.”

Anti-law enforcement sentiment has been high since the grand jury refused to indict officer Wilson. Opponents point to the fact that only 11 out of 162,000 federal cases have have had grand juries refuse to indict. Refusing to indict is so rare, and the evidence against Wilson great enough, that it seems shady that this didn’t even move to a trial. Officer Willis hasn’t a different theory, however;

“That just proves how innocent Officer Wilson is. It’s incredibly hard to come out of a Grand jury without being indicted, so the fact that he did proves that he did nothing wrong. But these people won’t listen to reason. We live in a prejudiced society, and I want to tell my son that things will get better, but that will be a lie.”

Officer Willis’ last point seems to be true. Since Ferguson, police have killed 14 teenagers, and have received anti-police sentiment for each one. On November 22, police shot and killed 12 year old Tamir Brown for holding a legal BB-gun. Protests have already erupted over Cleveland.

“The sad truth my son has to face is that we live in a racist society. It’s tough being a white police officer.”

Matthew Farthing

https://twitter.com/MattJFarthing