“To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely.”—Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France
A variation on Burke’s theme is what I get from the words of former Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson: To make cops love the communities they police, the communities they police ought to be lovely. And indeed, Wilson seems to have found aspects of the rough community he policed lovely. But that’s not enough for his inquisitors.
CNN transcripts:
JOHN BERMAN: New this morning, former Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson breaks his silence in a revealing new interview. The 29-year- old who shot and killed unarmed teenager, Michael Brown, tells “The New Yorker” he wanted to get back on the streets of Ferguson but was told he would be a liability. He says he can’t get another police job anywhere despite being cleared of any wrongdoing in Brown’s death.
KATE BOLDUAN: He also tells “The New Yorker” that he ended up working in Ferguson because policing black neighborhoods would be a good way to advance his career. He says this as well, “If you go there and do three to five years, get your experience, you can kind of write your own ticket.” And Wilson says he enjoyed his time on the force. He also is saying this, “I didn’t want to work in a white area. I like the black community. I had fun there. There’s people who will just crack you up.”
CNN’s Boris Sanchez is joining us, and Boris is taking a look at much more of this.
It’s a long and revealing interview.
BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Certainly. He says quite a bit in there. One of the things you find out is he says he doesn’t think about Michael Brown. He hasn’t even read the Department of Justice report about the systemic racism in Ferguson. It’s really interesting because he kind of — the piece is meant to humanize him but, in a lot of ways, some of what he says brings up questions about his perspectives and his relations with the African-American community. At one point, he asks a fellow officer who helped train him for help in relating to some of the people in the community because he said he felt culture shock.
We’ll take a look at what he said. He asked Mike McCarthy, “Mike, I don’t know what I’m doing. This is a culture shock. Would you help me because you obviously have that connection, and you can relate to them? You may be white, but they respect you, so why can they respect you and not me?”
[11:15:26] Another thing Wilson says, as you mentioned, Kate, that he enjoyed policing in the African-American community because people there cracked him up. So he tries to paint this picture that he’s not a racist. At the same time, he goes on to say other things that many, including Michael Brown’s family, say kind of show that he has some prejudice. We’ll go to the other full screen now. He’s describing a blind mom in Ferguson apparently whose kids were running amok. He says they were causing trouble in the neighborhood. He said, “They ran all over the mom. They didn’t respect her, so why would they respect me?” He then goes on to say, “They’re so wrapped up in a different culture than — what I’m trying to say is the right culture, the better one to pick from.”
Now, the reporter wanted to find out if this was coded language, if this was somehow referring to race in kind of a subtle way. So the reporter pressed him. He said that Wilson struggled with an answer, going on to say, “Pre-gang culture where you’re just running in the streets, not worried about working in the morning, just worried about your immediate gratification.” And then he goes on to say, “It is the same younger culture that’s everywhere in the inner cities.”
Obviously, these quotes, the article, meant to humanize him, kind of bringing up more questions about his perspectives.
[SNIP]
The presstitute are still gunning for Darren Wilson.
