That Michael Brown was a long way from being a model citizen,and that the Fergusion Police department is remarkably inept in dealing with the Black Communitry, could both be valid points is something a lot of people just cannot accept because it interferes with the ideologically motiviated narrative.
For a while even some mainstream Republicans (ie.not from the Rand Paul wing of the party) were saying we had to take a look at how police forces are using a lot of military gear they were getting, but that seems to have vanished in the usual bickering.
I think certain communities in certain areas can be basically impossible to deal with well.
I think outsiders coming in and seeing how things stand without seeing the totality of how it got that way, aren't in a very good position to know whether it's justified or not.
It would be like walking into an inner city school classroom and seeing a teacher who is just completely, over the top harsh with the students and not giving them an inch of leeway and then deciding she's a horrible teacher who has no ability to deal with students at all. What you'd be missing if you made that judgment is the back story, the fact that when she showed up as a starry eyed new teacher, her weakness was taken advantage of and no learning or teaching of any sort could take place because her students were just completely out of control, and that over time she found being the way she is now was the ONLY way to even have a prayer of doing any actual teaching or having even a measure of control over the classroom.
The only problem with that analogy is the fact that it really isn't possible. A teacher doesn't have the option of just becoming completely disciplinarian as a last resort. There is no last resort for teachers in those sorts of schools, other than to quit their job. If anyone doubts this, take the time to read some personal accounts from such teachers in such schools. If they try to crack down, they're just shouted over, intimidated, and physically assaulted. They tend to get no support whatsoever from the administration, and in the really bad schools such support wouldn't matter anyway. Some kids are just truly uncontrollable. A student has to show up at school with a certain degree of discipline and respect for authority already instilled in them by their upbringing. If that is absent, and if they have no fear at all of the teacher or of getting in trouble... beware.
So what those teachers really tend to do is either quit, or tune out and stop any meaningful attempt at teaching or caring, and often times they go along with pervasive, institutionalized cheating to make the students pass because of the intense pressure to get their failure rates down, and just shovel the kids through. Such practices are frighteningly common and most people have no idea just how common.
Anyway, how does this sort of situation play out if it's a police force and a neighborhood, or significant portion of a community, rather than a school environment? Well, cops have some additional tricks up their sleeves. They can get out the riot gear, and they can start shooting gas, bean bags, and perhaps even real bullets if things get bad enough. The stakes are higher, and lawless criminality is something which cannot be allowed to run free in the streets like it was a classroom.
Of course, certain people are trying very hard to make the police just as helpless as the teachers when faced with completely uncivilized people.
So, I'm not convinced there is such a thing as a police department which could deal well with certain communities. I may have Ferguson wrong, and maybe they aren't as bad as all that. Maybe the FPD really is just bad at their jobs, and maybe a more sensitive, receptive and intelligent police force could have handled this situation much better than they did. I do know that there are some areas in the US which absolutely are un-policeable though.
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