Midnight Curfew Approaching in Ferguson, Missouri

Livestream

UPDATE: It's 12:00a.m. in Ferguson, which means its curfew time. Antonio French, a St. Louis alderman whose been covering the protests on Twitter, says protesters who want a confrontation with police are congregating at the Red's Barbeque. Looks like he's sticking around so you should follow him if you aren't already.

Original story below…

Missouri's governor ordered a curfew for the entire town of Ferguson, which is supposed to be in effect from midnight CDT to 5:00 a.m. Democrat Jay Nixon sent the Missouri Highway Patrol into Ferguson on Thursday to take over policing protests that had occurred every day since the shooting of Michael Brown last Saturday afternoon. Following several days of a militarized police presence which included cops throwing tear gas at protesters and into residential neighborhoods, Thursday night featured the decidedly un-militarized looking highway patrol monitoring protesters. On Friday, Ferguson police released the name of the officer who shot and killed Brown, as well as surveillance video purporting to show Brown robbing a corner store a few minutes before he was killed. Police admitted later that same day that the officer's stop of Brown and a friend walking in the middle of the street wasn't related to the robbery. Unsurprisingly, protests on Friday night were rowdier. Despite attempts by some demonstrators to prevent rioting, several businesses in the area were looted.

Today Nixon ordered a curfew for midnight, ostensibly to prevent more looting but effectively depriving residents of the right to assembly. In a way the curfew can be seen as a bit of collective punishment. A few criminals caused some trouble last night and tonight the governor is making the entire town pay for it. In some cities curfews, almost exclusively limited to young people, are popular, popular enough at least not to be challenged as policy. And they've led to incidents of police brutality before. According to accounts on Twitter, the crowd out tonight is skewing younger, with some saying they wouldn't obey the curfew. It's also been raining tonight, which likely would've put a damper on protests in Ferguson had it not been for the imposition of a curfew there to defy.

Anyway, you can watch a livestream from Argus Radio here, and another from Credo, via Youtube, below

You can read Reason's coverage of events in Ferguson here.

Comments

[Dweebston]

In a way the curfew can be seen as a bit of collective punishment.

Government is just a word for the beatings we endure together.

[Fist of Etiquette]

A few criminals caused some trouble last night and tonight the governor is making the entire town pay for it.

Maybe if the town doesn't want to be hit with a curfew they might want to consider policing themselves. A little vigilantism might go a long way.

[Scarecrow Repair]

Or suffer collective punishment, eh?

[Mickey Rat]

The looters are rationalizing their activities as collective punishment, so it seems they are already suffering that.

[Ken Shultz]

"Today Nixon ordered a curfew for midnight, ostensibly to prevent more looting but effectively depriving residents of the right to assembly."

I don't see a problem with a temporary curfew. Again, if there's any legitimate purpose of government, it's to protect our rights. No doubt, the people of Ferguson need their rights protected from the local police, but the business owners of Ferguson need their rights protected from looters, too. If that can only be accomplished by a curfew on an emergency basis, then that's what needs to happen.

In the 1992 LA riots, they used 4,000 troops from the National Guard to enforce the curfew. A poorly executed curfew may be worse than no curfew at all; I'll concede that. And I question whether they have the manpower necessary to make the curfew in Ferguson work.

[Ken Shultz]

If more unarmed people were shot violating curfew, for instance, because they didn't see many cops around and thought they might get away with it, that would be an excellent example of a poorly executed curfew.

[XM]

I also have no objections to the state using reasonable measures to protect people from looters. I fully expect the national guard to be "militarized" if this ever reaches scale of the 92 riots.

The Rodney King incident lit a fuse that exploded on a lot of built in grievances and conflict among blacks. They were resentful over Korean merchants standoffish with black customers and wouldn't accept returns. A Korean grocery owner shot a black girl after an argument.

It's no secret that African Americans quietly resent growing Asian and Latino influence in their neighborhood. I'm told by friends that black kids say something like "When did the Chinese take over" frequently as they leave
Asian owned liquor stores in LA.

It just seems like some parts of the country are just balkanized and isolated in an ethnic bubble for way too long. They're perpetually poor, angry, fed anti-establishment and class warfare sentiments by the left, and will just explode at the face of controversy like this.

[Freedom Frog]

Not sure how anyone who calls themselves a libertarian can support a curfew of any kind pretty much ever.

I mean, government there 'to protect our rights'...that's a joke, right? Any libertarian worth a shit knows you can never give these fuckers an inch at any point ever. How long does this 'emergency basis' last? It's been 13 years at the airports. You really want to extend this bullshit to the streets?

[Ken Shultz]

"Not sure how anyone who calls themselves a libertarian can support a curfew of any kind pretty much ever."

Did you read my comment?

I don't know how a legitimate government can stand by, watch business owner's property being looted and their stores burned to the ground--and do nothing.

[RussianPrimeMinister]

The key word is "legitimate".

But I actually agree.

[Ken Shultz]

"I mean, government there 'to protect our rights'...that's a joke, right? Any libertarian worth a shit knows..."

Any small-state libertarian knows that the only legitimate function of government may be to protect our rights.

We have a military to protect our rights from foreign threats.

We have courts to protect our rights from the police.

We have police to protect our rights from criminals.

Is there any legitimate function of government that isn't about protecting our rights?

A limited curfew in the middle of a riot is like arresting a suspect in a crime.

When you're a suspect in a crime, they'll handcuff you and lock you in a cell for 24 hours--without you even being convicted of anything yet!

...and that's actually a perfectly small-state libertarian function of the police's job to protect our rights from criminals.

The government sometimes drops bombs on our enemies--even if their soldiers haven't been convicted of a crime. And that's perfectly appropriate from a small-state libertarian standpoint--if it's done with proper constitutional authorization to protect our rights from foreign threats.

A curfew in the middle of a riot is like that, too. The government standing by and doing nothing while looters burn people's stores down is like the government standing by and watching a rape. Stopping stuff like that is the government's job--stopping stuff like that may be their only legitimate job.

[Freedom Frog]

You are literally advocating the 3rd grade doctrine of 'Fine, no on wants to admit it? You're all punished!'.

Guess what, riot outside of my house, I can still go for a brisk walk. Johnny Law has zero say. Whether I need a gallon of milk, need some fresh air, or just want to see what what's going on during said riot, they have no say, none, as to what I do so long as I hurt no one. Period.

FFS, what you're complaining about is what the 2A is for.

[Ken Shultz]

Are you willing to go so far as to say that because we have a Second Amendment, we don't need the cops at all? Theoretically, there's no reason for the cops to respond to burglary calls, then, too, right?

If we're going to pay taxes, it seems to me that asking the government to stop people from burning our buildings down is the least they can do.

Anyway, I'm not an anarchist...yet, but I don't think there's anything anti-libertarian about anything I've written here.

[Freedom Frog]

Giving citizens a bedtime is about as anti-freedom as it gets.

[Ken Shultz]

Standing by and doing nothing while angry mobs loot businesses is about as communist as it gets.

[Freedom Frog]

You're straying. The topic is big brother telling you that you can't go outside of your home.

[bill o'rights]

Looks like the Russians are skilled at destabilization as well.

[Irish]

Man, that Argus livestream has some seriously intellectual commenters:

One thing's consistand...blacks have big mouths

she is a strong black woman and she don't need no man

FUCK YOUR CURFEW CRACKERS!

Eric Dorner rises from the dead, takes revenge on police. Black messiah, baby!

Really rational crowd gathered over there.

[Irish]

#stop #racism #kill #whitey

I feel like those thoughts kind of contradict each other, but I'm not sure how. When I figure it out, I'll be sure to inform you guys.

[Ken Shultz]

I think the idea is that white people won't let up on the racism until they feel the consequences of it themselves.

[Ed]

so do they want black cops to kill white people? If cops' identities weren't almost always protected after a shooting I might be able to dig up a few examples of that. These attitudes the drive-by activists have is less than useful, it's unhelpful for the goal of reform. If the goal is to drive more business for the race studies complex I suppose it's constructive.

[Irish]

Exactly. Especially given that these riots and looting instances make it so that businesses don't want to operate in the area. Then the people who live there twenty years from now are destitute because there are no jobs and you get a replay of race riots as desperate people burn buildings again.

Thirty years from now Ferguson is going to be an encampment of very poor people with no businesses in miles. It's hard to see how that helps poor black people.

[Ed]

It helps rich black people. More books on racism, more TV gigs, more palm-greasing with politicians. It wouldn't surprise me at this point to see someone advocate PDs hire "race relations counselors" before, say, oversight lawyers.

[Irish]

Also:

so do they want black cops to kill white people?

Honestly most of them would probably be okay with this in the same way a disturbing amount of white people are okay with police brutality against blacks. A solid portion of the American populace really does not care about people who are part of a different 'tribe' than they are and would gladly watch such people be abused or murdered by the state.

People who are opposed to such violence *no matter who it's happening to* are a rarity.

[Ed]

NYC councilman Andy King, who represents the neighborhood in the Bronx where Ramarley Graham was killed, pretty much admitted that to me in an interview:

http://reason.com/blog/2013/07.....cial-profi

Reason: If the NYPD were to counteract accusations of racial profiling by targeting more young white males suspected of making illegal drug purchases, would that lend their activities in the community more credence?
King: If the scale is equal, of course.

[Irish]

Hey, Ed? Want to see some real serious journalism?

Two words: Infowars Livefeed.

I'm sure there's going to be some serious journalism going on over there. Their video feed looks like it's done on a phone from 2008 and they appear to be 5 miles away from where anything is actually happening.

[Ed]

Bill Hicks isn't fooling me 😮

[Irish]

Well, now infowars is actually right in the middle of the protesters. The source is ludicrous, but this might actually be a good feed since they're right in the middle of things.

[Irish]

Holy God, check out that infowars feed. A woman is trying to get the crowd to disperse, a man is yelling that they won't leave and things look like they might get violent. I'm amazed the infowars feed is actually better than the others I've seen.

Cops just moved in, people are yelling that they won't leave.

[Ken Shultz]

I'm not saying I agree with it, by the way; I'm just saying I think that's what they mean.

But there is something to the suggestion that there needs to be negative consequences for people who misbehave before anyone should expect the bad actors to change their behavior.

And from what I've read, this one shooting was just the straw that broke the camel's back. Just like the LA riots weren't really about Rodney King.

It was mostly about the way the LAPD had treated people in that community for years and years--and a lack of accountability. That's why Obama should be doing more than he's done.

When George H.W. Bush announced that the cops in the King beating were going to be investigated for federal crimes, things got better. I think these "protestors" are demanding some kind of accountability. For some of them, that's what arson and looting is about.

You can't expect unaccountable people to change their misbehavior unless there are negative consequences for misbehaving. And isn't that right? Obama should assure them that there will be negative consequences for any injustices that were committed.

He should really emphasize that. And the fact that he hasn't shows that he's incompetent.

[Ed]

I should do some heavy reading on the LAPD riots. You're right. Bad actors will keep acting badly as long as there aren't consequences. But at this point I'm not expecting those on the mainstream left or right who are following this story to bring up the role of unions. So it'll keep happening I guess.

[Ken Shultz]

It's probably our job as libertarians to bring that up.

Yeah, is there anything that contributes to making cops unaccountable like their unions?

[Ed]

I have been. Amazing how police unions have such bipartisan support. Funny too. Walker exempted police unions from his union reform bill and they still joined the protests against him. But Kasich didn't exempt police unions in his bill and it failed. It's going to be a long fight but as long as the unions aren't broken it's just going to get worse. There's gotta be a tipping point somewhere in the future.

[Irish]

Two minutes and, based on the livestream, a shitload of people still out.

This might go dark places.

[Irish]

Cops are allegedly going in to arrest everyone. Chatter among the protesters is that they're surrounded.

[Derpetologist]

Tear gas...

[Derpetologist]

rubber bullets...

[Mickey Rat]

"Today Nixon ordered a curfew for midnight, ostensibly to prevent more looting but effectively depriving residents of the right to assembly."

The right is defined as "peaceable assembly". What has been going on has not been very peaceable.