The Washington Post - Ferguson: Three Minutes that Changed America

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Copyright 2015 by The Washington Post
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.
Illustrations by Peter Strain for The Washington Post.

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First Diversion Books edition August 2015
ISBN: 978-1-68230-021-3

Just after noon on Aug. 9, 2014, Darren Wilson tugged the steering wheel of his Chevy Tahoe police cruiser, turning left on Canfield Drive, a sleepy side street.

His vehicle glided down the street, past Reds BBQ on the left and rows of one- and two-story homes to the right. Wilson, a 28-year-old white officer in his third year with the Ferguson police force, was exactly halfway through his shift.

At 12:01 p.m., Wilson rolled his window down to tell two young black men, Dorian Johnson and Michael Brown, to get out of the street. By 12:04 p.m. it was all over.

In three minutes, Brown would be dead, Wilson would be on his way to becoming the nations most controversial man for a time, and the country would be en route to a difficult dialogue on race and policing that continues to date.

A year later, some of what happened that day in Ferguson, Mo., is clear: Wilson shot Brown at least six times, killing him. But other parts of the three confrontations between Brown and Wilson in those three minutes an exchange of words about Brown and his friend jaywalking, a scuffle inside Wilsons patrol vehicle and the final encounter in the middle of Canfield Drive will never be entirely clear.

What witnesses saw was insufficient to persuade the grand jurors to indict Wilson. It was also enough to spark nights of violence and secure for Browns death a place on a short and tragic list of American mysteries, all linked by a central truth: People can witness the same events yet draw very different narratives from them.

But the impact of Ferguson reached far beyond that street. The days of rage that followed turned up the temperature on subsequent confrontations between communities of color and police. Riots and protests erupted in Cleveland; New York; Baltimore; Atlanta; Oakland, Calif.; Madison, Wis., and North Charleston, S.C.

Ferguson and its wake gave momentum to a grass-roots movement, Black Lives Matter, that many believe represents a new era of civil rights activism. The rolling crises also have spawned a backlash from police unions, some of which complain that anti-police rhetoric interferes with their ability to ensure public safety.

Race relations have hit an inflection point in the year since Ferguson. Polls show a majority of Americans think interactions between the races have gotten worse, and African Americans say race relations are now the countrys most pressing issue.

The uproar over Browns death has also spurred change. Fergusons police department is now under Justice Department supervision to root out patterns of civil rights violations. The town just named its first black police chief, and the governor signed a court reform bill that caps what police and the courts can collect through ticketing and fines that disproportionately burden and impoverish black residents.

Police departments around the country have begun using body cameras, citizens are regularly filming arrests, and community policing has seen a revival. In addition, Congress has cracked down on the program that provides military gear to police, and Obama plans to use his remaining time in office to address inequities in the criminal justice system.

In other words, though people disagree about what happened in those fateful three minutes, Ferguson has nonetheless led to broad reassessment of race and justice in America and a new awareness that the countrys long, complex march toward expanded equality isnt over.

Heres how we got there.

Ferguson had been a new start for Darren Wilson, a towering officer who, at 28, still wore a bit of a baby face. Three years earlier, hed lost his gig as an officer at the nearby Jennings Police Department.

The department was so troubled, with so much tension between white officers and black residents, that the city council finally decided to disband it. The entire force was let go, and new officers were brought in to create a credible department from scratch.

For Wilson, law enforcement had been an escape, providing order to a home life and upbringing often marked by dysfunction.

Wilson was born in Texas in 1986 to Tonya and John Wilson, who divorced when the boy was just 2 or 3 years old. His mother remarried and moved Darren to Elgin, Tex., for a time, and then again to the suburban town of St. Peters, Mo., where she again got divorced and remarried.

Settled in St. Louis, Wilson attended St. Charles West High School, in a predominantly white, middle-class community west of the Missouri River. He played junior varsity hockey for the West Warriors but wasnt a standout.

And what had been an at-times rocky and disjointed home life turned more chaotic during Wilsons high school years. In 2001, during Wilsons freshman year of high school, his mother pleaded guilty to forgery and stealing. She was sentenced to five years in prison, although records suggest the court agreed to let her serve her sentence on probation.

By the next year, Wilsons mother was dead, of natural causes, when her son was just 16 years old.

Just years later, he would begin his quest for a career in law enforcement. Working in the justice system, a young Wilson hoped, would provide the balance and infrastructure that his upbringing had lacked.

He had a rough upbringing and just wanted to help people, remarked a friend. In Wilsons childhood, there was just no structure.

But instead, Wilsons first policing job provided more chaos.

Jennings is a small, struggling city not unlike the dozens of others that dot the map of North County, St. Louis. The municipality has roughly 14,000 people, 89 percent of whom are African American. But, as is the case in the majority of Greater St. Louis, those residents many of whom live in poverty were issued thousands of tickets each year, often for minor offenses, by police departments bent on increasing revenue. Many African Americans would up in jail when they were unable to pay such fines. And the officers handing out those tickets were overwhelmingly white just one, maybe two of the 45 police officers in Jennings were black.

The racial tension hung heavy over the town. Then it ignited.

An officer fired his weapon at an unarmed woman who fled a traffic stop in her vehicle. She wasnt hit; neither was the child sitting in the back seat. A series of lawsuits alleging unnecessary force began to pile up in 2009 and 2010.

In one case, a black Jennings resident called police after a car smashed into her van, which was parked in front of her home. When a responding officer asked her to move the van, she joked: It dont run; you can take it home with you if you want.