In August 2014, riots and looting began after a police officer shot Michael Brown, an unarmed eighteen year old African American.
Different versions of the events that led to the shooting have emerged. One version states that the unnamed officer grabbed the young man, and shot him while he was running away. Another account states that Brown pushed and attacked the officer.
Whether one or the other is correct – or it’s a mix of the two stories – the people of Ferguson, Missouri, are caught in the middle of the conflict between rioters and police.
What causes riots to occur? Do the Michael Brown shooting and the resulting Ferguson, Missouri riots, resemble other incidents involving social unrest?
Instrumental or Emotional Violence
In the United States, the 1960s included both the Summer of Love and race-riots from Los Angeles to Newark. In 1972, Psychologist Dr. Leonard Berkowitz, of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, examined these events and uncovered some commonalities.
Berkowitz wrote that violent acts can be classified as either instrumental or emotional. Instrumental violence benefits the actor in some way, while emotional aggression is more impulsive – using violence to express a response to negative events.
In other words, instrumental violence would relate to the looting incidents associated with the Ferguson riots, while emotional violence would relate to groups of people simply rioting and destroying things in response to the death of young Michael Brown.
Berkowitz wrote that in the initial stages of riots, emotional aggression is dominant. This matches the report on MSN that the fourth day of rioting in Missouri was “… a world apart from the earlier demonstrations, with a light, festive atmosphere and no hint of violence.”
Ethnic Diversity, Poverty, and Social Unrest
In the case of the Missouri riots, a police shooting of an African American teenager was the catalyst – the spark that touched off a bonfire of rioting. Researchers published The L.A. Riot and the Economics of Urban Unrest in the National Bureau of Economic Research in 1998. The Los Angeles riot of 1992 was the riot that took place after news of the Rodney King beating came out; researchers found that the LA riots “resulted in 52 deaths, 2500 injuries, and at least $446 million in property damage.”
The authors studied multiple riots, and concluded that although poverty wasn’t a determining factor, high non-white unemployment and a lack of ethnic diversity among the community rioting were contributors to more intense and widespread rioting.
Riots After Racially-Charged Deaths
The United States has a history of rioting following allegations of racial profiling in cases such as the Rodney King beating and the death of Trayvon Martin. When emotional violence explodes, it is hard for rational voices to be heard.
President Barack Obama has issued a call for calm, “let’s remember that we’re all part of one American family. We are united in common values, and that includes the belief in equality under the law, respect for public order and the right to peaceful public protests”
Diffusing the Violence and Waiting it Out
Actions to diffuse the situation are also underway. Missouri governor Jay Dixon has put the Missouri State Highway Patrol in charge of Ferguson, and the Department of Justice is investigating the incident to determine whether to pursue federal prosecution for the police officer involved. In the meantime, non-rioting residents are waiting out the storm.
© Copyright 2014 Gina Putt, All rights Reserved. Written For: Decoded Science
Well now we have forensic evidence and an autopsy that does not, in any way, contradict the testimony of officer Darren Wilson, and which proves that the “witnesses” insisting that Michael Brown was shot by Wilson while running away from him were lying. Kudos to Al Sharpton and Eric Holder for assuming any credence, and pre-judging the “guilt” of Wilson.
The black community will always turn on authority, and make up any narrative that supports some racial animus. The facts, however, eventually speak for themselves.
Sharpton and Holder are frauds.
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I see the ever available loser Al Sharpton showed up with his phony outrage. This clown is nothing but an instigator and a complete fraud.
Wow, what an insightful and helpful comment. Maybe you can post some links of things that other black people have done that you find distasteful. If you can post enough of them it will probably justify a cop shooting an unarmed 18 year old kneeling on the ground with his hands raised (one he had already put two bullets in no less….). And maybe you can throw the words ‘thug’, ‘savages’ and ‘animals’ into your post, to even further justify things. Then it will be all better.
I think the author is examining this incident through the prism of her own beliefs about race and class. I see it differently. I see the Ferguson police as viewing the black citizens as “the enemy”, based on their long history of bullying the people to the point where every black family there has a story of being hassled for no reason, then one oppressive officer flying into a homicidal rage toward a youth who apparently didn’t jump fast enough when he commanded him to.
In essence, it is the police who have been covertly rioting against the blacks they were hired to protect. Bullies cannot tolerate criticism from their victims and as a rule, lash out. The Ferguson police did this on first night, hours after the murder. Their victim’s blood was still in the street and neighbors were outside, ventilating their dismay and anger. So what do the police do? More of them drive into the neighborhood with their lights blaring and showing off big guns to intimidate and and shut up the mourning, angry community.
In effect, the police were now overtly rioting against the community, and continued to do so the next several days with dogs, armor, tanks, guns pointed directly at the protestors., some but not most, who reacted to police aggression with their own. This was followed by the rioters using tear gas, rubber bullets, and their legal authority to make arrests. One Missouri senator, Maria Chappelle-Nadal, was teargassed while peacefully protesting, two journalists including one from the Washington Post were arrested, the and a film crew from Al-Jazerah news were teargassed and had their video equipment taken.
It is time, I think, for sociologists to re-think their labels on who is actually rioting, because if the police had not been wearing uniforms, it would be very clear.