Yo, Ferguson ... WHERE WAS KEVIN JORDAN’S RIOT?

Where Was Kevin Jordan’s Riot?

A Mini-Manifesto on What Happened in Ferguson, Missouri

All the upheaval that went down in Missouri, and no one gave a crap when a cop got killed a couple of months ago in Georgia. 

Last week a young man got killed in Ferguson. It is probably safe to assume that unless you've been trapped underground while cave diving in New Guinea you have heard about it. I have been following the story closely as I have a different perspective than our watered down, facts last, truth be damned media does. My perspective is probably forged in part from being raised by a guy that lived through the war in the Pacific, and having sons who are soldiers and friends who are cops. I also have friends of all races, religions, colors, and creeds who are not soldiers or cops. Some are of the same race as Michael Brown.

The difference is that my friends understand that a riot is not an acceptable act of civil disobedience, and they are tired of it all too. They are tired of the media being so quick to stir the pot to create a story: A story that has filled the headlines, choking out other meaningful and arguably more pressing issues. Stories like ISIS cutting off the heads off of kids and putting them on sticks in Iraq, that garner only an occasional byline in the wake of “racial unrest” here in America.

So, by way of setting the record straight, I do have some experience with race. I was assaulted twice as child. Once in Saginaw the day we moved there. My mom took me to the park while the movers worked, I was eight years-old, and some kids banged me around. I had a fat lip and was confused; I just wanted to play with them? When I was twelve I got jumped walking down some old railroad tracks near my grandmother’s house in East Detroit.

Ironically, I went back there the other day doing some site research for a mini-documentary that I'm working on. My memories were of a very different place and time. The streets were lined with Dutch elms, and every lawn was meticulously cut, most manicured expertly with hand-pushed reel mowers. The walkways were edged, the porches were painted and the bushes were trimmed. My grandma won yard of the month at least once a summer. Her roses rocked the chain link fence in the back yard. Now the house she bought after the great depression is in shambles, windows gone, and hypodermic needles were strewn about the trash covered floor.

When I was 15 my friends and I had our bikes stolen while riding in downtown Saginaw only days before a cycling trip we had planned for months. Both of the assaults and the bike thefts were perpetuated by kids that had a different cultural dynamic and heritage than I did. We'll leave it at that, with one clarification: I managed to stay color blind. I had friends in high school that were also of different races, although our core-values were aligned. Rev. David Taylor, Chief Ralph Martin and especially Willy Smith made me laugh hard and often. They were my friends. They still are, although distance and time, and maybe if I'm honest being of different cultures relegated our relationship to Facebook. I think I might need to fix that.

After school I moved to Atlanta. In spite of the incidents above my 'rose colored race glasses' still guided me. I was at a batting cage on North Druid Hills road one Saturday morning when two guys approached me. “Hey man, you wanna play some ball?” I was new to the area, it was spring, and that’s what I had always done in the spring. The answer was simple, “Sure, I’m in.”

So, for the next two seasons I played ball for Coach Harold White, who carried the team’s equipment around in the trunk of his yellow Oldsmobile Cutlass convertible. Coach called me Dale Murphy, which if your remember Braves slugger Dale Murphy, was an honor. I could turn on a fastball, catch, play the corners, pitch and back then I was fast enough to play in the outfield too. I guess I just didn't have the footwork for middle infield, but I was handy on defense and being able to hit a bit helped. On most Saturday afternoons I was the only guy of my race in whatever park we played at. But at the end of the day, we all played ball and that was all that mattered to us.

It was a great experience. We even played a game that was watched in person by Cy Young award, world Series, and 31 MLB game winner Denny McLain, during a scrimmage at the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary. Denny was serving his time for several “non-baseball related” incidents. Having grown up a Tiger’s fan, I knew that the big guy in the stands on the 3^rd base side (There is actually a baseball stadium inside the prison) looked familiar. Coach White, I said, “Who’s that guy in the stands over there?” After all he was wearing a uniform, of sorts – it was striped. I will never forget coach running up and down our dugout telling the rest of the team, “That’s Denny McClain! That’s Denny McLain! That’s Denny McLain!”

My four sons all ended up playing football for the Sandy Spring’s Saints. Those were without doubt the best years of my life. SSYS Football & Cheerleading was a “racially balanced” football program located in the heart of one of the wealthiest demographics in the nation. I volunteered as a parent and coach, and ended up running the program for several years. About half the players were from one race, and half were from another, and few from yet other races.

Continuing my voluntary personal cultural outreach programs, two years ago I got upset with one of my adult sons and decided I was going to teach him a lesson. Gas prices were soaring too, so I went a year without a car in Detroit. I rode the #14 Cross Town bus dozens of times. On most trips I was the only representative of my race. Yet, I usually had good conversations with other riders, only once being called a “cracker” by some idiot. Idiocy is not bounded by race.

So, now that I've shared just a bit about having a broader perspective than many of my own race about race, let’s get down to why the situation in Ferguson, MO makes me so angry. Here’s something that most people don’t know about cops and soldiers: No matter how “badass” they are, they get scared. There’s a Marietta officer named Bobby Franklin that I used to spar with. “Boo Boo” was his nickname. He once kicked me so hard in the belly that my back went out, and he wasn't trying to kick me hard. Boo Boo is a “badass”. But Boo Boo talked with us candidly on several occasions about walking up on a situation, not knowing who’s armed … and being afraid. Afraid to the point where you have to fight off shaking. You are not human if you are not afraid. Other cops have shared the same thing. My father, sons and friends who are infantrymen and marines with combat experience have all known the feeling.

Now, as the facts surrounding Michael Brown’s shooting come to light, I believe that a few things will come to be realized that really matter. Michael Brown appears, at least as of late, to have taken up the role of a bully and a thug, and embraced that role with conviction. There is a pattern of behavior that is all too typical. Here’s what my boys have been counseled on; If you screw up and do something stupid, and a police officer calls you out on it, you had "GD" better use a lot of “yes sirs” and "no sirs” and do what you're told. Period. That advice should transcend racial lines.

We'll learn more in the days and weeks to come, and I can’t pontificate about what exactly happened, as my sources are the Internet and a few seemingly biased news feeds. But, I do believe that Michael Brown, in all likelihood, made some very bad choices that day of, and in the days preceding the shooting. Getting your picture taken holding a pistol with a folded stack of bills in your mouth and tequila bottle in the foreground is a bad PR move, especially if you want to go to college. The controversy will swirl until all of the facts come out, and then it will likely continue to swirl. 

I have "opinions" that I believe will probably end up being pretty close to the truth. A young man robbed a store, and strong armed the owner. Within minutes he was asked to get out of the middle of the road by a police officer that he towered over and outweighed by about #100 pounds. He took issue with the officer’s request, and assaulted him while he sat in his vehicle. The officer “may” have sustained an orbital blowout fracture. Note: it takes a powerful shot to do that, and in all my years as a martial artist I have only heard of it happening once to anyone I knew personally. That was a spinning hook kick where the heel of the foot delivered the blow. And the guy who did it used to be the U.S. #4 middleweight in full-contact karate. I also used to break bricks for demonstrations. I think I did 10 or 12 one time, and I can tell you that if the Darren Wilson did sustain an orbital blowout fracture he got blasted hard with a closed fist by a big man.

Then the officer probably, as it is his job to do, attempted to apprehend the assailant, and Michael Brown charged. The autopsy reports showed the fatal shot to be at the top of the head. If you know anything about ballistics you know that a shot from a handgun at the very apex of the skull will almost certainly not enter the skull if the victim is standing, and the trajectory is already at an angle that is up. The weapon would have been 12-18” below the apex of Brown’s head if he was standing with his arms up, looking at Officer Wilson, who was likely in a standing shooting posture with knees slightly bent.

The more likely scenario is that Michael, in a fit of rage, charged the officer, who was by now no doubt afraid and probably temporarily blinded in one eye. It is also likely that the momentum from the charge carried him as he fell forward after the first shots, causing the fatal shot to enter the apex of the skull from the top, when he was head down driving with his legs towards someone he had just assaulted. Here’s why that explanation is more plausible than the one latched onto by the media: If you are shot standing upright six times with your hands up, you are probably not falling forward, no matter how big you are. Think about it. I watched CSI too.

A tragedy took place and a community is being torn apart. Robbery, vandalism and violence are being condoned on the accusation that a cop shot an unarmed man on the basis of race, without so much as a passing inquiry by our “on the spot national media” about the circumstances that led up to shots being fired. Thugs are coming to rescue of a community, but they define “rescue” as justification to loot businesses and throw Molotov cocktails and rocks at police. The absurdity of the whole thing is surreal.

In this morning’s Wall Street Journal Juan Williams addressed this issue in his article entitled Ferguson and America’s Racial Fears. He quotes comedian Bill Cosby speaking at an NAACP event, when he said, “People getting shot in the back of the head over a piece of pound cake.” “And then we all run out and we’re outraged – The cops shouldn't have shot him!” “What to hell was he doing with the pound cake in his hand?”

Here’s what’s really disturbing though, and what prompted me to hit the keyboard today. On May 31st of this year a police officer named Kevin Jordan, was shot in the back three times while trying to arrest Chantell Mixon, by her boyfriend Michael James Bowman, in a restaurant parking lot in Griffin, Georgia. The wounds were fatal. Officer Jordan was an Army veteran and the father of seven children. The community loved him.

I lived in Atlanta, just north of Griffin for 25 years. I was in Atlanta the first week of June. But, it was not until yesterday that I saw ran across the story of Officer Jordan, and that story was actually about the restaurant whose parking lot he was shot in having the decency to close during his memorial service.

Which leads to the question first posed in the headline above: Where was Officer Jordan’s riot? Where was that idiot Al Sharpton? Why didn't Eric Holder get dispatched by the President? Why wasn't Griffin visited, robbed and looted in protest? Was it because Officer Jordan was white and his assailants were black?

Outraged now? Upset with me now? Want to call me a racist? Well, if so, then you took the bait. Officer Jordan was not of the same race as I am. However, his assailants were. And yet, there was no evening news coverage outside of local and regional markets. No tear gas canisters launched to quell the "protests" on his behalf. No full-segments on Good Morning America with interviews about people who are afraid of the police (and police who are also afraid).

Well if you're not outraged I am. I thought briefly about putting my .45 and spare clips in the car just in case the wheels really come off this media-driven racial pressure cooker. Then I wrote this blog article to vent, and watched (for the 3rd time),  what Morgan Freeman had to say about race on June 3^rd of this year. Oh, and please take note of the fact that the preceding paragraph this is the first time in this article I used the words "black" or "white" as related to race. I'm trying to do that all the time now as Morgan Freeman's logic is so simple. So pragmatic. We need to quit referring to each other with color as the primary descriptive adjective.

OK, having sufficiently vented (thanks for giving me my moment), I decided that instead of arming myself the greater good may be better served by dusting off my ‘rose colored race glasses’ one more time. So, I just called and volunteered to start teaching MS Office, web development and social media classes through the Detroit Rescue Missions Ministry. In the end, maybe something good can come from the misguided media frenzy that unfolded this last week in Ferguson. In the end, maybe we can come to terms with the fact that when bad things happen they may not have anything to do with race. Maybe Michael Brown did bust that cop in the eye, and then charge him when the officer got out of his car and tried to effect an arrest. Maybe, just maybe, it is more about a 26 year-young man sworn to uphold the law, who was on the street by himself, scared and hurt, having to make a split second decision. A decision that could have turned out like it did in Griffin, Georgia.

And maybe some single mom will learn to use spreadsheets and manage web sites, and land a job because a pissed off Polack took a moment to rant, and think it all through. Maybe we should also listen to Morgan Freeman, and stop making race a bigger issue than it needs to be. Maybe, if I ever have to fill out an employment application again, and it asks what my race is, I will write in “human”.