Ferguson: We Need to Pay Attention

Grace and peace be unto you. Today, I wanted to speak to you for a moment concerning the Mike Brown incident in Ferguson Missouri and what we should glean from this moment. A few days have passed since the announcement that no charges would be filed by the Ferguson County district attorney as a result of the determinations made by the grand jury. Nothing about the incident can be applauded by any righteous person. Although, there are some obvious observations that have been made that are important and should be made.

Firstly, Mike Brown may have been a felon by any tangential observer. He had just committed what is called a strong arm robbery (maybe). I say that because the video is not, as of yet, conclusive. Which means, he should be in jail and not dead. Secondly, by the admission of the police department, the robbery was not the reason for the stop. Thirdly and maybe most significantly, the reason for the uproar is because there is no equal treatment here. Just this year, you had a litany of examples where police have waited out felons with guns, so not to hurt these white men (with Guns), yet Mike Brown is gunned down in broad day light, with no gun. There is a different metric, seemingly that police use when the suspect is black. We understand this.

Beloved, I have a problem and I must admit, we are to blame for some of this. I contend that we are not paying attention. When you live in a town, such as Ferguson, with 67% African American, 29.3% White, .5% Asian, .4% Native American and .4% other races, (Wikipedia, 2010 Census), there should not be an almost exclusively white city government, a nearly exclusively white police department or a white District Attorney.

Is it possible to have white qualified officers and people in that city government? Of course, and there should be. My contention is, we ought not be so disengaged that we allow this to be the way our cities are run. What we need to do is form and follow a plan that would ensure that this never happen again. By this I do not mean, that we never have another white police officer kill another unarmed black suspect, that would be wonderful, but what I do mean is that we should never see it done and have city government give its approbation for this. We should never have a district attorney do his level best to avoid an indictment as oppose to letting the chips fall where they may. We need to pay attention to our cities and care who we elect. We need to make a big deal about voting in every election.

Another thing, we need for those brothers and sisters in Ferguson to join the police academy. We are able to police our own community and do it well. We need those brothers and sisters who are fed up with the treatment of African Americans in that county to do what is neccesary. Sometimes, we behave as if it is way more important to criticized, and loot, than to solve. We are not paying attention. If we pay attention, we will elect responsible people to city goverment, have way more people of good conscious in our police force and make a point of knowing that the people we elect are qualified to hold office. Pay Attention!

Yours Because I am His,
Leo Colon
pastor@ihpfwc.org
http://www.ihpfwc.org