As usual, I read a variety of points-of-view on political issues. This was one of the items I read this week about the US Department of Justice’s report on the police of Ferguson, Missouri:
People are highly resistant to changing their minds and they become impervious to new evidence, often dismissing out of hand outright facts just because they are reported by a given source (e.g., “the media is untrustworthy” or “you can’t trust the Holder Department of Justice.”) Perhaps nowhere has this phenomenon been more obvious (or regrettable) than in Ferguson, Missouri, in the wake of the shooting death of Michael Brown…
Conservatives…have become highly resistant to assimilating information that strongly suggests that the Ferguson PD – as with many other municipal police departments in the country – truly is out of control, in that it recklessly violates the constitutional rights of the citizens of Ferguson and does so in a manner that has a clearly disproportionate impact on minorities…
Even if you read only the parts of the Ferguson DOJ report that come directly from the files of the FPD (which is to say, files that would be most favorable to the Department), the report paints an incredibly damning picture of the Ferguson Police Department. No conservative on earth should feel comfortable with the way the Ferguson PD has been operating for years, even according to their own documents.
This report did not come the left-of-center Daily Kos, which DID note this month, If you think ‘reverse racism’ is worse than what blacks face, read the Ferguson report.
Instead, it came from the right-wing publication Red State, written by the noted conservative Erick EricksonLeon Wolf. It was titled “Many Conservatives are Blowing it on the Ferguson DOJ Report,” with the subhead: “Their reaction is neither fair, accurate, nor good for America.”
Meanwhile, The Weekly Sift noted:
Both the city manager and the police chief have resigned, but the mayor is determined to hang on. He isn’t even convinced the city has a serious problem:
The report stated there was probable cause to believe the police and court routinely violate people’s civil rights. But, [James] Knowles [III] said, “that’s not proof.” He added that “there is probably another side to all of these stories.”
One might suggest that Mayor Knowles didn’t read the same report Leon Wolf did.
