13 Days in Ferguson

by Ron Johnson

  Feeling battered, as if I have just emerged from a raging storm, I ease into a spot behind a long table covered with a lumpy plastic tarp.

  A police chaplain to my left bows his head and utters a short prayer. I hear the words, but I can’t absorb a single thing he says. As he speaks, my fingers tingle from exhaustion and frayed nerves.

  When the chaplain says “Amen,” I nod at an officer standing to my right. He yanks the tarp off the table, revealing two handguns and a Molotov cocktail, individually wrapped and taped up in plastic.

  I follow the gaze of the reporters as they stare at the guns and the Molotov cocktail. In their collective expression, I read confusion, shock, disbelief. Maybe some of them have never seen a Molotov cocktail this close. Or for that matter, a gun.

  I begin to read the notes I’ve written on the three sheets of paper that flutter in my hands.

  “I want to begin by thanking the brave men and women of law enforcement who tonight took another strong step forward in restoring order to the city of Ferguson. Throughout the night, these officers acted with restraint and calm, despite pockets of disorder and coming under violent attack on serveral occasions.”[8]

  Lying in bed, I picture myself standing in front of those reporters, many who are still staring at the guns and Molotov cocktail and not looking at me.

  In my mind, I rewind all the way back to Monday morning.

  11:00 a.m.: As I do every morning when I leave for work, I stop at the small built-in desk in our kitchen and slide my “lucky buckeye” into my pocket. I’ve carried this smooth brown nut—commonly known as a horse chestnut—every day since a friend of mine gave it to me many years ago. I remember him telling me, “Keep it with you. It will bring you luck.”

  This morning, though, I’m running late, and as I hustle toward the back door, I reach out my hand, but I don’t grab the buckeye, which is sitting on the desk right in front of me. Instead, I snatch a cross attached to a string of rosary beads, which is hanging from a tack on the bulletin board over the desk. My son, Brad, left it there months ago.

  I don’t know why I grab the rosary. I don’t do it consciously. I’m not Catholic—I’m a Baptist—and I don’t really understand the significance of the rosary or how it’s supposed to work. But I reach for the string and take it. A reflex. An instinct. An act of intuition, perhaps. But instantly I feel strangely comforted by the small, twinkling glass pellets. I roll them into my palm, enclosing them with my fingers, and stuff them into my pants pocket.

  I look back at the buckeye, sitting right where I always leave it, and I have no second thoughts. Maybe I’ve lost my belief in luck. Maybe I never had it. Or maybe I’ve replaced the whole idea of luck with a newfound belief in faith. I don’t know. I certainly don’t realize at that moment that I have retired my buckeye permanently to the kitchen desk and that I will keep the rosary beads with me for the rest of my days in Ferguson—and longer. Perhaps forever.

  To have faith means to believe.

  I have faith.

  I believe.

  But it can be hard.

  So very hard.

  1:00 p.m.: The governor announces he’s lifting the curfew. He has gotten pressure from the NAACP and other groups, who argue that the curfew has obviously not served the intended purpose of quelling the rioting, looting, and violence. In fact, the groups claim, the curfew has served no purpose at all and has caused more harm than good. Honestly, I agree. The curfew had become a lightning rod, an imposed police mandate, giving the protesters another reason to take to the streets and the criminals another excuse for rioting.

  All afternoon and into the early evening, I walk. I send out more teams of police, six or seven officers each, whose sole purpose is to mingle and talk with the people on the street. Again, as yesterday, the conversations begin haltingly, awkwardly, uncertainly, a river of ice separating both sides. Gradually, though, a few police officers break the ice and begin talking civilly, even dropping their guard. They abandon their role as police and talk as people. Once again, I witness a few officers laughing with a group of protesters.

  Hope.

  I may be seeing some hope.

  6:30 p.m.: A man rushes out of the crowd. I recognize him from somewhere. He grabs me by the elbow and steers me toward a car parked off to the side of the road. He swings open the passenger-side door. I lower myself into a crouch and find myself face-to-face with Sister Mary Antona Ebo, a St. Louis legend and civil rights pioneer. Ninety years old and still going strong, she wears her hair cut short, and her brown, button-like eyes shine behind her glasses.

  I smile, feeling suddenly humbled and small. “Hello, Sister,” I say.

  “I’ve found you,” she says.

  “Yes . . . ,” I say, not sure where this is going.

  She takes both my hands. “You say you’re going to get things back to normal, but they are not normal.” She drills her eyes into mine. “There is no normal. You must change it.”

  That’s all she says.

  Sister Mary Antona drops my hands and nods. The man who brought me over reappears, and I stand as he closes the door. He walks around to the driver’s side, gets into the car, and drives away, leaving me stunned on the street.

  I shout after her, into the air: “Sister, you can’t leave me like that.”

  But she’s gone.

  I spend the rest of the evening on West Florissant. As I continue to walk, scattered screams of anguish bolt out of nowhere and bore into my skull.

  I hear the screams of a mother and father who have lost their son. I hear the screams of people who own businesses that have been burned and looted, their livelihoods destroyed. I hear screams of people who don’t feel safe. I hear people screaming, “Why aren’t my schools accredited? Why can’t I find a job? Why do I feel like a target every day? Why doesn’t anybody care?”

  I hear residents screaming, “Why don’t the police respect me?”

  I hear police screaming, “Why don’t the residents respect me?”

  Yes, we’re all screaming the same thing.

  The pain begins with a scream.

  The scream becomes a plea.

  The pleas become a conversation.

  The conversation leads to understanding.

  That is my hope.

  There’s so much hope and so much promise during the daylight hours.

  And then . . .

  2:40 a.m.: “Tonight began peacefully with calm and orderly protests,” I say to the reporters gathered around me. “Other law enforcement officers and I interacted on numerous occasions with protesters who shook hands with officers and expressed their opinions. This is the freedom of expression that we are committed to protect.”

  I look down at my notes and sigh. “At 9:40 p.m., more than two hundred people walked toward police officers at the corner of West Florissant and Ferguson Avenues. They were loud but not aggressive. They came to the line of police officers, chanted, and then seemed to be turning around and thinning out. Police did not react. In fact, several of the protesters encouraged the crowd to turn around, indicating that their message had been heard.”

  I swallow. I have to report to the media exactly what happened and in what order. For the second night in a row, I present a detailed police report, an annotation of violence. I list the night’s criminal acts. I read them off, one by one, for all to hear. This is my pain. This is my scream.

  “But that’s when bottles were thrown from the middle and the back of a large crowd that gathered near the media staging area. These criminal acts came from a tiny minority of lawbreakers. But anyone who has been at these protests understands that there is a dangerous dynamic in the night. It allows a small number of violent agitators to hide in the crowd and then attempt to create chaos. The catalyst can be bottles thrown, Molotov cocktails, and of course shots fired. Protesters are peaceful and respectful. Protesters don’t clash with police.”

  My voice grows thick, heavy with hurt. I exhale, my breath causing the page in front of
me to flutter.

  “In the dark of night, there were at least two people shot.”[9]

  Please, God, don’t let there be blood on my hands. This has been my continual prayer, and yet it happens again . . . and again . . . the same insidious pattern. The daylight lulls us all into a sense of comfort, hope, and progress. Then night comes and turns against the day, extinguishing the hope, staining the streets with blood, lighting up the darkness with fire and rage. Gunfire echoes. Buildings burn, crumple, collapse. A battle zone forms. Chaos is unleashed.

  I have to control the chaos. That is my job. That is my charge.

  I order SWAT trucks in to support the police on the street. I have no choice. I have to protect my officers. I don’t see this as an act of aggression. I see it as a last resort.

  The reporters record, write, and film as I read. “We have been criticized for using SWAT trucks during protests. We did not deploy those into the crowd until things deteriorated. Tonight we used a SWAT truck and another vehicle to get into a violent, dangerous area in order to extract a gunshot victim. . . . Tonight there were numerous reports of shots fired. We also had two fires—one at a business, another at an unoccupied residence. In the area of West Florissant and Canfield, our officers came under heavy gunfire.”

  My hands shake. I fight to keep the sheets of paper steady. My nerves jangle. Unchecked anger rises into my voice.

  “Once again, not a single bullet was fired by officers, despite coming under heavy attack. Four officers were hit by rocks and bottles and sustained injury.”

  As I look up again, I absently reach into my pocket. My hand encircles the rosary beads. I speak urgently, from the depths of my being.

  “I want the good people of this area to come out and protest tomorrow during the daytime hours. Make your voices heard. . . . That is my suggestion.”

  I hear rustling and throats clearing, and I realize that this statement has startled some of the journalists—and some of the officers—in the room. I hear some people muttering under their breath.

  Do I hear the word?

  I can’t think about that. I can’t go there. I fumble with the pages, look down at my notes, search for my place, find it, and press on.

  “As of 2:00 a.m., thirty-one people have been arrested tonight. I’ve said that many of the criminal element that have been coming through Ferguson are not from this area. Tonight, some of those arrested came from as far away as New York and California.”

  I flip to the next page, pausing briefly to glance at my notes. I can no longer focus on what I have written. I speak off the cuff, from the heart.

  “I want to address the role of the media in what is going on here. Tonight, the media had to be repeatedly asked to return to the sidewalks and get out of the street when clashes were going on in the street. We need to have those areas cleared. This is a matter of your safety and the safety of others. We need the roads cleared so we can reach people who need us. Please clear the roads when asked. Please pay attention to the officers. Let’s pay attention to those who are protesting peacefully. Let’s not glamorize the acts of criminals.”

  I suddenly feel worn down. Raw to the bone. If I were alone, my emotions would overflow and I would lose it.

  You can’t do that, I tell myself. You can’t fall apart here.

  I take a moment to compose myself, and my gaze wanders to the table in front of me with the guns and the Molotov cocktail. My voice raspy, I say, “On this table you see two guns that we confiscated tonight. These guns were in vehicles right near this media area where you are standing. On this table you also see a Molotov cocktail that was thrown tonight. I have talked to many of you in the media who said that you have not seen any of these thrown. I wanted to show you.”

  Several reporters step forward. They lean over the table, zoom in, and snap pictures of the weapons. I lose myself for a few seconds in the scribbling and scratching of pens, the clicking of cell phone cameras, and the whir of photos being posted to the Internet.

  “We did not have a curfew tonight,” I say. “As a matter of fact, we told some of the protesters that they could stay as long as they wanted. But after midnight, safety became a concern. We had officers who were in the midst of gunfire.”

  Maybe it’s the lateness of the hour or the frustration of the day, but my voice cracks as sheer emotion claws its way into my throat. I sniff, desperately trying not to unravel in the middle of this press conference.

  “I guarantee you that those officers’ wives and husbands and parents are calling them now to see if—”

  I swallow and breathe. I can’t fight it anymore. I allow the tears to come. I speak haltingly.

  “I stood there and listened over the radio and heard the screams of the officers who were under gunfire. . . . We can’t have this. We do not want any citizen hurt. We do not want any officer hurt. But when you’re shooting in apartment complexes and children are lying in their beds and bullets are flying everywhere. . . . There’s an old saying on the street: ‘A bullet has no name.’ We do not want to lose another life in this community.”[10]

  I’m done. I can’t talk anymore. The reporters, sensing that I’ve come to the end of my prepared statement, barrage me with questions. I hear them, but I cannot comprehend them. The words come to me as garbled fragments, as if the reporters were speaking a foreign language. The one question that burns in my mind is my own: Has anyone seen my tears, felt my emotion?

  And then out of the cacophony of voices I hear someone ask about accidentally arresting members of the media or mistaking members of the media for protesters. I feel compelled to address that issue.

  “In the midst of chaos, when officers are running around, we’re not sure who’s a journalist and who’s not. And yes, if I see somebody with a fifty-thousand-dollar camera on his shoulder, I’m pretty sure. But some journalists are walking around and all you have is a cell phone because you’re from a small media outlet; some of you may just have a camera around your neck. So, yes we are—we may take some of you into custody.”

  More rustling. I can almost feel the discomfort rising.

  Did he really just say that?

  Well, I did promise that above all I would be honest. So there you have it.

  “When that happens,” I continue, “if we do take you in and we find out you’re a journalist, we take the proper action. But in the midst of chaos, we have to be safe. We’re trying to keep you safe. We’re providing protection for journalists. We had a journalist who was trapped in the midst of that gunfire, and we’re providing protection for them. We took journalists back to their trucks.”

  I lower my head, reach into my pocket, and grip the rosary beads. When I lift my eyes again, I speak with a conviction that startles everyone around me.

  “I’m going to tell you: This nation is watching each and every one of us. This nation is watching law enforcement. This nation is watching our media. If we’re going to solve this, we’re going to have to do it together. I want you to think about that tonight. We are going to have to do it together.”

  I don’t fully hear the next question, but I understand the intent. It is the same question that has been keeping me up at night, the question that will still haunt me even years after this is over. Maybe nobody even asks the question. Maybe I just keep hearing it reverberating in my own mind.

  You allowed businesses to be looted. Should you have stopped that?

  “I talked to one journalist today,” I say. “He talked about us using SWAT vehicles and wearing SWAT outfits. He told me that the other night he stood in that line, with those businesses being looted. He was saying that we cannot rebound from that night; families saying that they lost their livelihoods; the media saying we did not do enough.”

  I look straight ahead, avoiding everyone’s eyes, feeling my tears come.

  “I stood on that line and officers were crying. Officers were angry at me for standing on that line and letting that happen. Today, some of those officers walked by me because they�
��re hurt. They’re ashamed that we stood there.”

  The faces in front of me disappear. I see only blank circles of flesh. I am suddenly alone, standing by myself, my hand in my pocket, clutching the rosary beads, talking into the wind.

  “I’m telling you—we’re going to make this neighborhood whole. We are going to make this community whole. And we’re going to do it together. We are going to do this together.”[11]

  That is my goal—to bring peace to this community and do it together.

  How can we do this?

  There is only one way. One path.

  Faith.

  Faith in each other.

  Faith in sharing our community.

  Faith in humanity.

  Faith in God.

  That is our path.

  We must have faith.

  “God,” I say, under my breath, “please let them hear me.”

  Their questions spin around me, pound into me. I can’t grasp the words. I feel myself slowly pivoting from the reporters. I am not dismissing them. I just don’t have it in me to answer one more question.

  “Have a good night,” I say quietly.

  That isn’t just lip service. I mean it.

  Please. Have a good night.

  And if you will, Lord, give us a good day.

  [8] “Police Press Conference in Ferguson,” Facing History and Ourselves, transcript of press conference on August 19, 2014, accessed March 13, 2018, https://www.facinghistory.org/resource-library/facing-ferguson-news-literacy-digital-age/police-press-conference-ferguson.

  [9] Ibid.

  [10] Ibid.