Excerpt
SUMMARY: Judy Woodruff talks to Yamiche Alcindor of USA Today in for a closer look at the drama unfolding over the police killing of Michael Brown, as well as local reaction to the governor’s order for State Highway Patrol to take over security. Former Ferguson Mayor Brian Fletcher and Tony Messenger of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch weigh in on Ferguson’s disproportionately white police force.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): For a look at what’s happening on the ground in Ferguson, we turn to USA Today reporter Yamiche Alcindor, who was there last night. She regularly covers social issues relating to criminal justice. I spoke to her a short time ago.
Yamiche Alcindor, we thank you for talking with us.
First of all, reaction to the governor’s announcement that the Missouri Highway Patrol is going to be taking over law enforcement there?
YAMICHE ALCINDOR, USA Today: Residents here for the last two days that I have been here have really been complaining about what they consider military-style policing.
People are welcoming this announcement. I just talked to a woman who said she was scared to have her child out in the street and that she was going in extra early.
I think people are really excited about. And even though they don’t know exactly what’s coming and they — and they’re still kind of worried about what the Highway Patrol is going to do, people think, if it’s not going to be tanks or tear gas, that may something will be better.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, you were very much there last night. You were reporting on it, tweeting about it. What did you see? Because, as you know, officials are saying people in the crowd were throwing rocks, throwing firebombs.
YAMICHE ALCINDOR: So, I didn’t see people throwing rocks and firebombs. But I know that there are some images of people doing that, so I continue — I think that that might have actually happened.
What I saw mostly were people crowding in different areas, picking up their arms, saying, don’t shoot, hands up. People were in some ways aggressively walking up to police and kind of taunting them. At about 2:00 in the morning, I was at the Ferguson Police Station, and a group of six to seven people actually walked on to the Ferguson police property and were kind of taunting the police there.
Soon after, the Saint Louis County police showed up with about four trucks and about 60 officers in riot gear. So I think — I saw that. And I also saw officers with rifles drawn kind of pointing at people that they thought were either taunting them or — or that they thought might be shooting at them.
"Why military equipment is in the hands of local police" PBS NewsHour 8/14/2014
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SUMMARY: Violent clashes between local police and protesters in Ferguson, Missouri, has highlighted the distribution of military equipment to police departments around the country from the U.S. Defense Department. Hari Sreenivasan talks to Matt Apuzzo of The New York Times about the concerns over the militarization of domestic law enforcement.
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