13 Days in Ferguson

by Ron Johnson

  “NO MORE THAN I CAN BEAR”

  * * *

  “You were saved for something,” she says. “Don’t die before you find out what. What’s your dream for your life?”

  MARY KARR

  LIT

  I KEEP ASKING MYSELF THIS QUESTION:

  What is a man?

  In the early hours of Saturday morning, I exit the bathroom, walk slowly through the command post, and head out to the parking lot. I pass officers who won’t look at me and others who turn their backs and mumble things I can’t hear—things I don’t want to hear. I step outside, and the night is warm and still. As I get into my car, my thoughts are scrambled, thrashing around in my mind.

  What will I face tomorrow?

  Will these guys support me?

  Will they rally behind me?

  Or will they say they’ve lost confidence in me and refuse to follow?

  The streets of Ferguson are deserted and calm; the smell of smoke and fear are faint and fading.

  I wonder, When the sun rises, will I still be in command of my troops?

  My own faith has been strengthened. But I fear I have lost theirs.

  At home, I can’t sleep. I replay the moments of the day, and my emotions rise into my throat. I think about all the times when Lori, the kids, and I have talked about the consequences of being a cop.

  The pressure.

  The unknown.

  The danger.

  I have told them that the ultimate sacrifice for our family would always come from me. The weight would fall on me. As the man of the family, I would take on that responsibility. I vowed to make our family safe, but if anyone had to take the ultimate final fall, it would never be them. It would always, always, be me.

  I saw tonight that it could happen in Ferguson.

  I determined that if someone had to make the ultimate sacrifice, it would not be members of SWAT or officers assigned to quell the unrest on West Florissant. It would be me.

  I think about death. I think about dying.

  I decide to write a letter to Lori.

  I envision a blank sheet of paper and begin to compose a farewell letter in my mind.

  Dear Lori,

  I love you.

  I know that what has happened to me hasn’t been fair, especially to you. I may not have been fair to you. But this was on me. This task—Ferguson—was on me. I knew I had to give whatever it took to stop the violence on the street. I wanted to walk with the people. I wanted to walk in my uniform, without wearing a vest. I’m sorry if that was careless. Lori, I’m sorry. I loved every minute of our life together, and I deeply love you.

  I think about where I should leave the letter.

  I know that Lori would not want to live in our house without me, so I decide to slip the letter underneath the mattress, on my side of the bed. I want to leave it in the place where I wept every night during the unrest in Ferguson. I picture her finding the letter the day she moves out of the house.

  “Lori, please understand,” I whisper, “if anyone must die, it has to be me.”

  Lying in bed, I see myself back on the crest of the hill, facing the police officers massed behind me. I shout, “Stand down!” and the police officers fade away and disappear. I’m left standing on the hill alone.

  I roll off the bed and go into the bathroom. I close my eyes to douse my tears, and again I pray.

  “God, tell me—did I do the right thing?”

  Then I lose it and I wail, “What else could I have done?”

  I don’t remember returning to bed. I only remember drifting off to sleep to Lori’s gentle breathing.

  When I wake up on Saturday morning, one week after Michael Brown’s death, I feel as if a weight has been lifted off my chest. I feel strangely . . . free. In spite of how everyone around me reacted, I know that I did the right thing last night.

  I schedule an early news conference to start at eleven o’clock. I shower, dress, say good-bye to Lori, and go out to my car. But this morning, I don’t go directly to Ferguson. I decide to stop at the cemetery where my father and brother are buried. I need to talk to my man team.

  With the morning already warm and humid and sweat beading on my forehead, I face the oversize headstone—with my father’s dates on the left, my brother’s in the middle, and room for my mother’s on the right. I feel myself swaying slightly. I close my eyes and picture my dad—towering over me, playing catch with me, sitting like a king in his armchair recliner in the living room. When I visit him here, I picture him before the accident—six foot two, ramrod straight, full Afro, stylish clothes, cool demeanor, a magnetic presence. He was a force, my dad; the powerful engine that drove our family.

  I think about my brother now, gone way too young. Bernard, the life of every party, the center of every gathering, the de facto mayor of everywhere he went. He knew everybody and everybody knew him. So many people called him their best friend. I did too.

  “I need you guys,” I say. “I need my man team.”

  I sigh, fold my hands, and lower my head.

  “Please surround me with your strength. I need your strength.”

  I open my eyes and look at my dad’s inscription.

  “Please, Dad, walk with me.”

  What is a man?

  My dad.

  When I was twenty-seven years old, I started my third year as a trooper, and I began to lose my hair. At first, it thinned out on top, and then the thinning became disappearing as the area widened and formed into a small but prominent bald spot. Every morning, I spent way too much time working on my hair, getting it just right. It was a waste of time, because my hat immediately messed it all up. So even though I was required to wear my hat, I rarely did—unless my bosses came around.

  At the same time, I started to feel as if I were being passed over for promotion. I compared myself to those troopers who were getting promoted, and frankly I was stumped. So I set up a meeting with Captain Bill Siebert, who was both a mentor and a friend.

  When I closed the door to his office and told him I wanted to know where I stood, he picked up a sheet of paper that contained the names of all the troopers. Stabbing at the list of names with his fingernail, he moved his finger down the page . . . all the way to the bottom.

  For a moment, I couldn’t speak. I wanted to say, “Bill, I thought we were friends. How can you put me at the bottom of the list?”

  Instead, I said nothing.

  “Anything else I can do for you?” Bill asked.

  “No. Thanks.”

  He had sent me a clear message: Friendship doesn’t mean favoritism. In his eyes, I hadn’t yet earned a promotion. As I left Bill’s office, I realized I had to change. I had to make a commitment to my career, take nothing for granted, and work to become the best trooper I could be.

  Clearly you’re not doing the things you need to do, I told myself.

  I paused for a moment and then asked myself honestly, Okay, what specifically am I not doing?

  For starters, Ron, you’re not wearing your hat.

  That night, after work, I shaved my head.

  The next morning, I put on my hat. I wore it all through the day as a symbol of my new stance, my new attitude, my new confidence. I challenged myself to finish each day knowing I had given every ounce of myself at work, that I had been the very best Ron Johnson, state trooper, that I could be. The following year, when the next promotional test for corporal came up, I scored the highest grade in our troop.

  As a corporal, in addition to my regular duties as a trooper, I joined SWAT. I didn’t mind the time I spent patrolling alone in my car, but I loved being part of a team. Always have. And I admit that I craved the adrenaline rush that went along with being on SWAT.

  I also discovered something else. I seemed to have a knack for being able to slow things down, to see the whole picture—at times, to see a completely different picture—even while feeling the adrenaline pumping. Some guys on SWAT would say that once they’re in motion, their vision blurs.
The opposite occurred with me. Everything to me appeared in slow motion. My vision heightened. I saw details. I saw depth. Perspective. I saw a person’s past. A person’s life.

  One day, we burst into a vacated house, and I saw a few broken toys scattered on the floor and children’s snacks left on the table. Even though there were no kids in the room, I could see them. I knew who they were. I could picture their poverty. I could see their parents—or single parent—struggling. I could feel the pain in their lives. We had been called in to deal with a domestic violence situation, but I saw beyond that.

  I don’t know how or why my mind works this way. I have a different kind of vision. My imagination fills in the blanks. I don’t judge. I simply allow myself to see. And this reveals a different picture. I see . . . the humanity.

  What is a man?

  It’s not about putting on that uniform.

  It’s not about winning.

  It’s not about being a hero.

  It’s about not being a hero.

  I have never fired my gun in the line of duty.

  I came close only once.

  One day when I got called to an accident, I pulled over next to a wreck on the highway, a car tipped over on its side. As I approached the car, a large and very distraught man extracted himself from the mangled vehicle and suddenly charged toward me. He was red faced, jacked up, and he clearly wanted a piece of me.

  I told him to please step back.

  He kept coming.

  I drew my weapon.

  “Hey, hey, listen,” I said. “I’m here to help you.”

  He kept coming. As he got closer, I could see the fear in his eyes. I think he must have seen the fear in my eyes, too, because he abruptly stopped. Within seconds, several firefighters and police officers surrounded him and subdued him, and then I handcuffed him.

  Once he was secured, I returned to my car. I leaned against the hood as my stomach clenched, knotted up, and nausea rose in my throat.

  I pictured myself several years earlier, sitting across the desk from a highway patrol officer during my initial interview to become a trooper.

  “Can you take a life?” the trooper asked me.

  “Yes,” I replied, not hesitating at all. “Yes, I can.”

  I truly believed it then, but the trooper had asked me a hypothetical question. I had no true point of reference. The circumstance didn’t exist, had never existed. It wasn’t real to me.

  But that experience on the side of the road—drawing my gun on an actual human being and only a moment away from pulling the trigger and taking his life—was all too real.

  If you asked me that same question today, I don’t know if I could say yes.

  I’ve had one fight.

  I was arresting a drunk driver, and as he came weaving out of his car, he started throwing punches. I had no choice but to defend myself. I nailed him a couple of times, and he dropped to his knees. An ambulance came and took him to the hospital.

  Later that night, I visited him. When he looked up from his hospital bed and recognized me, he looked distraught.

  “I’m sorry I made you fight me,” he said. “It was my fault. You don’t have to write a report. You weren’t to blame at all.”

  “No, I’m going to write a report,” I said. But as I left the room, I thought, What did I do wrong? How could I have avoided that?

  I still don’t see how I could have responded any differently, but I think I felt worse than he did. I knocked that man down, but I didn’t win the fight. I lost by having it.

  And I once arrested someone who simply refused to let me arrest him.

  I stopped a guy for speeding and driving recklessly and asked him to get out of his car. When he did, I had to retreat several steps. The guy was huge. A former lineman at the University of Oklahoma, he went about six foot six and weighed well over three hundred pounds. His arms were so muscular and massive that he couldn’t reach them behind his back to be handcuffed. I hoped he wouldn’t throw a punch at me, because I knew I couldn’t take him. When I told him he was under arrest, he glared at me and widened his stance.

  “No, I’m not,” he said.

  “Yes, you are,” I replied. “You need to turn around.”

  “I won’t,” he said. “You’re not gonna arrest me.”

  In my mind, I quickly flipped through my options. I didn’t come up with many.

  “I guess if you’re saying you’re not under arrest, you’re telling me you’re free to go,” I said.

  He scrunched his forehead a little as he thought it over.

  “If you do that,” I said, “if you leave here, I wouldn’t go to sleep if I were you. Because the next time you see me, there’s gonna be a whole lot of me—and we are gonna arrest you.”

  He frowned again, his forehead creasing like an accordion.

  “It’s your choice,” I said. “You can come now, or we’ll find you later.”

  He grunted and then made his decision.

  “Okay,” he said, holding his wrists toward me.

  What is the goal of every law enforcement officer?

  It took me years, but I finally figured it out.

  Every day needs to end the same way.

  Nobody is big enough to win every battle. And some battles are not worth fighting. The situation dictates the outcome. But every outcome—every day—must end with the officer going home.

  What is the goal of every man?

  Each and every day, it’s the same goal.

  Three words.

  To go home.

  I rose quickly through the ranks.

  Two years after becoming a corporal, I made sergeant. In my opinion, sergeant is the best rank of all. Becoming a sergeant brings with it a certain prestige. I felt like both a player and a coach. I now had responsibility for a team. I led an entire unit, seven troopers in all. I created traffic plans and made field decisions while still working the road and SWAT.

  Then, only two years after becoming a sergeant, I made lieutenant and was transferred to Kansas City. I moved out of the field into an office. Sergeants reported to me. I no longer worked SWAT. As foreign as the term sounded to me, I became “the establishment.”

  I experienced culture shock. I missed being among the guys and on the road every day. I missed the camaraderie. I missed the adrenaline rush of working SWAT.

  One day, with two guys from SWAT on vacation, I got a call asking whether I’d be willing to fill in. I couldn’t wait. But being a lieutenant, I was treated differently. When I started to go inside the house with the rest of the team, one of the guys stopped me and told me I had to stay outside.

  “You’re administration,” he said.

  I knew what that really meant. Although I had worked SWAT for years, I was now just a substitute—and establishment to boot. I waited outside as the other members of the team rushed inside the house.

  “This feels so weird,” I said to the air.

  I hadn’t realized how much I missed the action, the excitement. I wondered whether I had given up too much, whether I had moved up the ranks too quickly. Once again I asked myself the question that I seemed to face constantly: Have I done the right thing?

  Eventually, I settled in to Kansas City, adjusted to my role as lieutenant, and even thrived. In Kansas City, I made perhaps my best friend in law enforcement: Jim Ripley. He helped me keep my sanity, even though together we were pretty much insane, always pulling pranks on each other.

  One day, three years after I arrived in Kansas City, I heard that a captain’s slot had opened up in St. Louis. Not only was it back home, but it was also the next rung up the ladder. I talked to Lori about the possibility of applying.

  “I know we’ve only been here a few years,” I said, “and it might be tough on the kids to move again; but if I don’t apply for captain now, it could be a long time before I have another chance.”

  Lori didn’t flinch, didn’t hesitate. “Go ahead and try.”

  I knew it was a long shot because thirteen
other people were applying for the position. On top of that, at thirty-eight years of age, I was extremely young to be considered for captain. I had only fifteen years on the force, far less time than anyone else in the running. The guys I was competing against all had at least eighteen years of experience, and many were already in their fifties.

  Somehow, I made it over every hurdle. Finally, it came down to one last step: an interview with the colonel in charge and six of his staff members—five majors and one lieutenant colonel.

  A few days before my interview, I called my buddy Jim Ripley. He always had his ear to the ground, and I wanted to know what he’d been hearing.

  “Not much,” he said. “People are mainly wondering if you’re too young or if you have enough time on.”

  I had been thinking about the sorts of questions I might be asked—What kind of leader will you be?—and rehearsing my answers. Having gotten this far, I didn’t think that my age or lack of experience would be serious obstacles. It seemed they would have already factored that in. Still, I couldn’t dismiss Ripley’s intel. I filed the information away and kept on preparing what I might say.

  On the day of my interview, I thought about Grandfather Sherman, my dad’s dad. When I was growing up, he lived on a small farm in Arkansas, and we visited him often. Something about him drew me. From as early as I can remember, we had a special bond. I spent as much time with him as I could, sometimes working beside him, picking peas. He was a humble man—quiet, proud, and wise. He treated everybody with respect, even the white people I observed who didn’t treat him with respect.

  Grandfather Sherman always held me accountable, asking how I was behaving in school, urging me to work hard. When I got older, we exchanged letters, and he always asked me if I was behaving. More than anything, I wanted him to attend my high school graduation, but he passed away shortly before the end of my senior year.

  One day when we were picking peas, he said, “You’re gonna become something, son. I got this feeling. You are gonna become something.”