St. Louis Post-Dispatch Ferguson coverage - Aug. 24

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Behind the badge Bradford hurts knee again

Four other Rams starters injured in first half.

SPORTS • C1

BY KORAN [email protected] > 314-340-8305

Nine months out of the year, Andrew Nelson works about 50 hours a week, driving his 1995 Mazda on either 50- or 100-mile round trips ev-ery weekday to his college teaching gigs at Lin-denwood University in St. Charles and East Cen-tral College in Union.

He gets paid just $22,000 a year combined — without the benefit of a retirement package or

health care coverage.Nelson is one of an estimated 4,000 adjunct

faculty working in the St. Louis area. All together, they make up the working class of the academic community. They are the low-wage earners who teach classes when full-time faculty are already overloaded with heavy course loads, and they fi ll in when teaching departments are short-sta� ed.

For the past few years, a number of shadow

Colleges’ adjunct faculty eyeing unionization

The part-time teachers cobble together a living, not knowing when they will beneeded and working without benefits.

BEL-NOR

46% 20% population police

BELL. NEIGHBORS


BERKELEY


BEVERLY HILLS


BRECKENRIDGE HILLS


CALVERTON PARK


CHARLACK


EDMUNDSON


FERGUSON


FLORDELL HILLS


FLORISSANT


HAZELWOOD


MAPLEWOOD


MARYLAND HEIGHTS


MOLINE ACRES


NORMANDY


NORTHWOODS


OLIVETTE


OVERLAND


PAGEDALE


PINE LAWN


RICHMOND HEIGHTS


RIVERVIEW


ROCK HILL


ST. ANN


ST. JOHN


ST. LOUIS


ST. LOUIS COUNTY


UNIVERSITY CITY


VELDA CITY


VINITA PARK


WELLSTON


WOODSON TERRACE


PERCENT BLACKHere is a look at 31 municipalities where at least 10 percent of the

population is African-American, comparing the percentage of African-Americans in the communities and their police departments.

OUT OF BALANCEFEW AREA POLICE FORCES REFLECT THE COMMUNITIES THEY SERVE

COUPLE MAKE A NEW LIFE AMID CHAOS Community • B1

BY KEVIN [email protected] VIRGINIA [email protected]

Until 16 days ago, Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon was in a position most politi-cians would envy.

As the moderate two-term Dem-ocratic governor of a Republican-leaning state, he could tout a stel-lar state credit rating, a scandal-free personal résumé and a folksy persona that plays well in middle America. His one brief brush with the national spotlight — in the af-termath of the Joplin tornado in 2011 — portrayed an e� ective and empa-thetic leader.

With two years left in his

HAS FERGUSON DAMAGED NIXON’S POLITICAL FUTURE?

BY DOUG MOORE • [email protected] MOSKOP • [email protected] NANCY CAMBRIA • [email protected]

About 67 percent of Ferguson’s residents are Af-rican-American, but only 7 percent of the city’s commissioned police o� cers are black.

That lopsided representation, brought to light after a black teen was killed by a white police of-fi cer two weeks ago, has city leaders pledging to try harder to improve race relations.

The disparity is common among communities in St. Louis County with signifi cant black popula-tions. Many police departments do not refl ect the communities they serve.

No known agency tracks the racial makeup of po-lice departments, so the Post-Dispatch contacted 36 St. Louis County police departments in cities

QUALIFIED BLACK APPLICANTS HARD

TO FIND, CHIEFS SAY

LAURIE SKRIVAN • [email protected]

MU season preview

How will Maty Mauk and the Tigers fare this year?

SPORTS • C1

Demonstrators rally in support of o� cer. Inside • A8

Leaders worry about investment backlash. Business • E1

Sources: Local police departments, U.S. Census Bureau

See ADJUNCTS • Page A4

See POLICE • Page A7See NIXON • Page A6

E4 • ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH M 1 • SUnDAy • 08.24.2014

By Jim [email protected]

St. Louis residents can hope that the re-gion won’t follow the route of Cincin-nati, another Midwestern river town that saw racially charged protests and riots, in 2001.

As in Ferguson, the Cincinnati protests began after police shot an unarmed black teenager. He was the 15th black person killed by police there in the previous five years, and the last three were unarmed, said the Rev. Damon Lynch, a black min-ister who helped lead a subsequent boy-cott.

The protests and rioting started in the run-down Over-the-Rhine neighbor-hood, but spread into downtown.

“It really shook up the psyche of Cin-cinnati,” Lynch said.

That psyche took a long time to heal.“You had the city leaders in denial, say-

ing there’s no racial profiling in Cincin-nati,” he said. “We were marching every day after the unrest, always peacefully.”

Local black leaders launched a boycott. Bill Cosby and Wynton Marsalis canceled appearances. A music festival moved to Detroit. National Urban League and Pro-gressive National Baptists pulled out of conventions.

“The boycott really hurt Cincinnati,” Peter Bronson, a former columnist for the Cincinnati Enquirer, and author of “Be-hind the Lines: Untold Stories of the Cin-cinnati Riots.”

“It was pretty ugly,” Bronson said.The Cincinnati police, upset by criti-

cism and federal monitoring, launched a

work slowdown.“Police were working back-to-back

shifts, risking their lives to save the city and never got thanks. Instead, they were demonized,” Bronson said.

The attitude became known as “drive-by policing.” Arrests fell, and crime rose. “The courthouse was like a ghost town. They weren’t bringing cases.” Within three months of the riot, shootings rose 300 percent.

The lesson Bronson draws: “If you tell the police to back down, they will.”

People were afraid to go downtown for entertainment. The Main Street district, an area of bars and nightclubs, “basically

died after the riots and never came back,” Bronson said. The Maisonette, a locally famous restaurant with a 5-star rating from Mobil Travel Guide, closed down.

It took five years, but the sides worked out a peace treaty, called the “Cincinnati Collaborative.”

As civil rights lawsuits worked their way through federal court, all sides came to the table — city officials, the police union, civil rights leaders.

A system of “problem-oriented polic-ing” was started to spot places and people causing problems. Cameras now record police stops. The department set up an early warning system designed to identify

officers showing problems and a civilian board to investigate complaints against police.

Shootings by police declined. Bronson thinks the use of Tasers helped by giving police a nonlethal way to stop a suspect.

“It wasn’t like a giant love fest, but we finally got it done,” said Al Gerhardstein, a civil rights lawyer in Cincinnati.

Cincinnati has since undergone a re-vival. “The downtown is back and healthy,” Bronson said. Over-the-Rhine, a poor neighborhood in 2001, is rapidly gentrifying, with the young middle-class moving in.

Lynch came to St. Louis during the dis-turbances in Ferguson this month to ad-vise community leaders on the Cincinnati solution.

The story went differently in Anaheim, Calif., the home of Disneyland, in the summer of 2012. Protesters threw rocks at riot police and smashed downtown win-dows in several days of unrest following a series of police shootings.

“In Anaheim, people were freaked out,” said Jose Moreno, a member of the Ana-heim School Board and an education pro-fessor at the University of California in Long Beach. “It really woke up the com-munity that in Anaheim there is a con-centration of working poor that folks don’t associate with us because of Dis-neyland.”

There were later peaceful protests, in-cluding at Disneyland.

But the ordeal didn’t have a lasting im-pact on business in the Los Angeles sub-urb. There is a “business and residential boom” in the area hit by unrest, says Ana-heim city spokeswoman Ruth Ruiz.

business

THE WEEK IN REVIEW

Standard & Poor’s 500

+33.341,988.40

DowJonesIndustrials

+338.3117,001.22

Nasdaqcomposite

+73.624,538.55

BloombergSt. Louis last week

+17.03904.18

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Cincinnati riots led to long sufferingRecovery from 2001 unrest began only after negotiated agreement, changes in police procedure.

AssociAted PressA protester holds a sign up in Cincinnati in 2001. In response to a police shooting, businesses were boycotted, police launched a work slowdown, and the downtown entertainment district went dormant as crime spiked.

munity, and you can’t damp it down overnight. People will remember it,” says Richard Ward, a longtime economic de-velopment consultant in St. Louis. “This can have a tremendous long-term effect.”

So far, no business has nixed plans to expand here. No group has canceled a convention here. Hotels report normal bookings.

But people who make those decisions are asking a lot of questions.

“All of our world has changed over the past few days,” says Denny Coleman, CEO of the St. Louis Economic Develop-ment Partnership, the business recruit-ing arm of St. Louis and St. Louis County. “Nobody has said, ‘Well, I’m not coming there.’ But it’s given prospects a reason to pause until they see where this leads.”

Other cities have erupted in protests and violence following police shootings — Cincinnati in 2001; Anaheim, Calif., in 2012; Albuquerque, N.M., this spring.

The economic consequences have var-ied. In Anaheim, several days of violent disorder had little long-term effect on jobs and business in the suburban home of Disneyland near Los Angeles. The down-town area smashed in the riot is now en-joying a “boom,” says a city spokesperson.

In Cincinnati, riots spilled into down-town and led to years of discord — in-cluding a damaging business boycott by minority groups, a police work slowdown and rising crime.

The 1992 Los Angeles riots, over the po-lice beating of Rodney King, left 52 dead and 1,000 buildings in ruins — events much worse than in Ferguson. One study put the business cost at $3.8 billion in lost sales over the next 10 years.

NEXT TO EmErSONTo avoid such damage, the region’s eco-nomic salesmen and women are speak-ing soothing words to business prospects. They point out that nearly all the violence took place in a small part of a big metro area.

The prospects’ response is noncom-mittal. “Nobody has said no. It’s just that every client considering investment has raised questions,” says Joe Reagan, presi-dent of the Regional Chamber and Growth Association.

Convention planners were in St. Louis last week scouting sites. “They were see-ing for themselves that the hotels and the airport and the visitors’ attitudes show no signs of what they were seeing on the na-tional news,” said Kitty Ratcliffe, president of the St. Louis Convention and Visitors Commission. “People are still coming,” she added.

Indeed, tourists were wandering around the Gateway Arch grounds and other at-tractions all week.

“We decided to come down anyway,” said Jim Urkevich, who was visiting from Kansas City on vacation. He and his wife

saw that Ferguson was far enough from the places they wanted to see, including the Zoo, the Arch and a ballgame at Busch Stadium. “Everybody here has been real nice,” he said, taking pictures under the Arch.

The center of unrest bordered the Fer-guson-based headquarters of Emerson, a global manufacturer on the Fortune 500 list of major U.S. companies. But it is miles away from other major businesses.

That may limit the damage to St. Louis’ business reputation, Ward says. “This is not downtown. It is not something many people are going to see.”

But people elsewhere may not make the distinction between a small North County suburb and the rest of the region, says Steve Roberts, a St. Louis businessman who chairs the board of Logan University.

Roberts was in Washington last week walking past the Newseum, which posts newspaper front pages from around the world. “I couldn’t believe it,” he said. “Half the newspapers in the U.S. had pic-tures of Ferguson.” A third of the foreign newspapers also showed the unrest. “It was like the world saying to us, ‘What’s wrong with you?’”

Roberts thinks the St. Louis needs a national image cam-paign — but better funded than past promotions. “We have to defend this region as a good place to do business,” he says.

That’s not going to hap-pen — at least not right away, says Coleman, the city-county development head. “If we did that now. It would be like fill-ing a balloon with helium,” said Coleman. “As pretty as that looks, another pinprick could blow it up.”

rESPONDiNG QUiCKlyDespite this month’s battering, business leaders say St. Louis’ long-term image depends on

how the region responds in the weeks ahead. If the world sees St. Louis trying to improve education and inclusion of minorities, the damage to the region will subside, they say.

“We have to reach out to groups that don’t feel included,” said Coleman. “Be-fore we start a media campaign, we have to get at some of the roots of this.”

St. Louis businesses may have to pay for it. “Government does not have the re-sources to make a difference,” says Rob-erts. “The state is barely making its bud-get, the cities are struggling and there is no federal money coming down.

The effort should give some hope to the young people who live around West Flo-rissant Avenue and who were out in the street, says Mike Roberts, Steve Roberts’ brother and business partner. Their only role models are “people with a ball in their hand, a microphone for rap or are emulat-ing an illegal pharmacist,” said Mike Rob-erts, who is black.

He wants major St. Louis companies to help to form a group to offer such young people job training directly tied to jobs at those companies, or to give them skills to start their own businesses.

Owners of major St. Louis businesses ought to consider giving more contracts to minority-owned companies, says Ed Bryant, president of the St. Louis Minor-ity Business Council. Those businesses are more likely to hire minorities than white-owned firms.

Some think it may also require a change in police tactics.

“We had a militarized reaction by the police in the very first few nights of dem-onstrations and looting,” said Reagan, who runs the region’s main business group. “What put us on the front page of the Wall Street Journal wasn’t a riot or protest. It was the military presence by local police.”

The protests and violence have made St. Louis a harder sell to out-of-towners. The region already battles a reputation as a crime capital, says a longtime executive recruiter, who didn’t want to be quoted criticizing the town he pitches to highly paid professionals. “The wife will start looking into St. Louis, and she’ll come up with research that shows we’re number one or two,” he says.

He’ll argue that those crime rankings reflect the city of St. Louis only — a small part of the region — and that metro area crime rates are much lower. But pictures of looting in the suburbs make crime worries ring true, he says.

In the Ferguson area, businesses are wondering about the future of the neigh-borhood.

“We’ve yet to hear from anyone saying: That’s it. We’re out of here,” said Brian Goldman, president of the Northwest Chamber of Commerce, which represents Ferguson-area businesses.

“It’s a holding pattern. People are wait-ing to see what happens. What happens when the verdict comes down?” he asks, referring to the decision on whether to prosecute the policeman who shot Mi-chael Brown.

Former Ferguson Mayor Brian Fletcher wants to reverse the town’s image with 4,000 “I love Ferguson” yard signs, plus T-shirts. He and about 35 business and civic leaders formed an “I love Ferguson” committee. About half are black, Fletcher said.

“I have a line out the door of people wanting signs,” he said.

Mary Engelbreit, the St. Louis native who runs her namesake company known for sweet artworks and greeting cards, drew a poster to raise money for Ferguson. It shows a black mother and child looking at newspaper headline saying “Hands up, don’t shoot.”

“No one should have to teach their chil-dren this in the USA,” says the poster.

Engelbreit drew it after watching the mother of Michael Brown on TV. “I lost a son 10 years ago, and I knew what she was feeling,” Engelbreit said.

She thinks the shock of the riots will bring people together to solve the prob-lems of Ferguson. “I think it will have a good impact eventually,” she says.

But in the meantime, “We have to re-build the image of St. Louis. We look ter-rible,” Engelbreit said.

FErGUSON •

FrOm E1

Long-term image could depend on change

photos by Laurie skrivan • [email protected] man kneels in protest with his hands up on Aug. 18 along West Florissant Avenue in Ferguson. Police were limiting protesting to the sidewalks throughout the day.

“They think they are going to scare us. We are not going anywhere. They are not going to lock me out of my own house,” said Brian Nickel of Ferguson on Aug. 18. Nickel arrived at 1:30 a.m. to stand guard with his AR-15 at the Papa John’s Pizza on West Florissant Avenue.

A6 • ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH M 1 • SUnDAy • 08.24.2014

ferguson police shooting

NixoN oN FergusoN

Monday, Aug. 11 • Two days after the Aug. 9 shooting death of Michael Brown, with protests growing, Nixon releases a written statement saying he will make “a formal request to the U.S. Department of Justice to conduct an independent investigation into the fatal shooting in Ferguson this past Saturday.” “Our thoughts and prayers go out to all those affected by this tragic event,” he writes.

Tuesday, Aug. 12 • Three days after the shooting, and after two nights of unrest, Nixon makes his first public appearance in relation to the issue, speaking at a forum at Christ the King United Church of Christ near Black Jack. He pleads for peace, telling the standing-room-only audience: “Justice must not simply be pursued, but in fact achieved. Instead of burning bridges in anger, we must rebuild them with love.”

Wednesday, Aug. 13 • Criticism is building over what many say has been Nixon’s lack of engagement in the Ferguson conflict. State Sen. Maria Chappelle-Nadal appears in protests holding up a photo of Nixon with “M.I.A. Again” written across his forehead. Late in the day, Nixon announces via Twitter than he will skip his planned appearance the next day at the Missouri State Fair in Sedalia and instead go to North County. “Situation in Ferguson does not represent who we are,” he tweets.

Thursday, Aug. 14 • Nixon visits Ferguson for the first time since Brown’s shooting. Later in the day, he promises a “new tone” to the increasingly controversial police presence in Ferguson, and announces he is putting the Missouri Highway Patrol in charge of security there, taking control from county and local police. “(It’s) a Missouri community, but lately it’s looked a little bit more like a war zone, and that’s unacceptable,” says Nixon. The move is credited with fostering the relatively peaceful night that follows. By morning, there is national speculation that the crisis may be over.

Friday, Aug. 15 • The peace is shattered after Ferguson police, under public pressure, finally release the name of the officer who shot Michael Brown, but release along with it a convenience store video that appears to show Brown stealing cigars and shoving a clerk shortly before the shooting. (Nixon will later call the release of the video “not helpful.”)

Also on Friday, Nixon meets and prays with Michael Brown’s mother.

Violence erupts anew in Ferguson that night.

Saturday, Aug. 16 • In response to the night’s violence, Nixon announces a midnight to 5 a.m. curfew at the riot site. He makes the announcement at an awkward, nationally televised news conference at which protesters shout down his attempt to converse with reporters.

Sunday, Aug. 17 • In an attempt to regain the reins in Ferguson, Nixon makes the rounds on national Sunday morning talk shows, hitting ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos,” NBC’s “Meet the Press,” CNN’s “State of the Union” and CBS’ “Face the Nation.” He expresses empathy for the “deep wounds” the episode has opened in Ferguson and around the country, and stresses the importance of a federal investigation.

Monday, Aug. 18 • Capt. Ronald S. Johnson, Nixon’s hand-picked security chief in Ferguson, states unequivocally that the Missouri National Guard won’t be ordered in. Minutes later, Nixon does just that, seemingly an about-face on his previous step to demilitarize the situation. In yet another operational security shift, Nixon also lifts the previous curfew in Ferguson.

Tuesday, Aug. 19 • In an interview with the Post-Dispatch, Nixon says he will not heed growing calls to ask that St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Robert McCulloch be replaced on the case by a special prosecutor. Nixon couches it as a matter of the integrity of the process, but notably offers no specific support for McCulloch against charges he is biased, and makes it clear he wouldn’t mind if McCulloch steps down by his own choice. McCulloch later accuses Nixon of “doublespeak” and all but dares him to remove him. “Man up,” McCulloch says.

Nixon releases a video message in which he calls for a “vigorous prosecution” of the case. His comment draws immediate fire from critics, including Missouri Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder, as prejudging the outcome of the pending investigations. Nixon’s office will later clarify the comment, insisting he wasn’t assuming the police officer acted illegally.

Wednesday, Aug. 20 • Nixon meets in St. Louis with U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, U.S. Sens. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo, and Roy Blunt, R-Mo., and others. It is apparently the first direct communication Nixon has had with the senators since the crisis began.

Thursday, Aug. 21 • As the situation in Ferguson appears to calm, Nixon announces the Missouri National Guard will start a “systematic withdrawal” from the area.

Friday, Aug. 22 • Sens. Blunt and McCaskill issue a news release saying they had sent Nixon a letter suggesting he ask for a federal emergency declaration so that low-interest loans or other federal aid would be available for people trying to recover from economic losses or damage to property from the violence and demonstrations.

More oNliNeSee a timeline with more details about Nixon’s involvement in Ferguson at STLtoday.com

term-limited tenure as governor, he appeared to be poised for the national stage, with potential op-tions including a U.S. Senate run or a Cabinet position in Washington. He has been on national pundits’ lists of dark horse vice presidential possibilities. There have been trips to Iowa and Colorado, and the at-tendant presidential murmurs.

Then came Ferguson.As the tear gas clears from the

civil strife that followed the Aug. 9 shooting death of Michael Brown, one of the few things that voices on all sides of the controversy ap-pear to agree upon is that Nixon’s performance through the crisis was unsteady and flawed.

Protesters and African-Amer-ican leaders say he engaged too slowly and tepidly, waiting days to visit the region as violence grew and then flailing for the right re-sponse. Police supporters say he has shown outright bias against the officer involved, as when he called for “vigorous prosecution” before knowing whether there will be criminal charges.

Both sides have decried his shift-ing, sometimes contradictory strategy, with the police presence first being “demilitarized” and then being augmented with the National Guard, and a curfew being imposed and lifted two nights later. He has infuriated both the sup-porters and detractors of embattled St. Louis County Prosecuting At-torney Robert McCulloch, offer-ing him virtually no public sup-port against allegations of bias, but refusing demands to replace him with a special prosecutor.

“He is getting criticized from all sides,” Stuart Rothenberg, edi-tor of the Washington, D.C.-based Rothenberg Political Report, said in an interview. “A Democrat from Missouri isn’t a bad position if you are coming out (onto the national scene) with great strength, but the attention he has received over the past week has been consistently between critical and bad.”

How that bodes for Nixon’s po-litical future is an open question. Two years represents an epoch in national politics. But virtually no one thinks it works in his favor.

“Nixon has time to reshape the future ... if he was planning to pivot to the national stage,” Donna Brazile, the longtime Democratic strategist and commentator who ran Al Gore’s 2000 presidential campaign, told the Post-Dispatch in emailed comments. But, she added: “Nixon waited too long to show up, and when he came for-ward, he didn’t have any of the answers that the community de-manded.”

Others on the national stage have been less diplomatic.

“Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon has VP aspirations,” tweeted the Daily Kos’ Markos Moulitsas, to his 120,000 followers. “His handling of #Fer-guson ends that conclusively.”

Kevin Madden, a Republican strategist and top adviser to Mitt Romney in his past two presiden-tial campaigns, asserted that, for many Americans, “their first intro-duction to Jay Nixon is a negative one. That disengagement and in-decision has been commented on by many people.”

A New York Times national poll released Thursday found that only 32 percent of Americans were sat-isfied with Nixon’s response to events in Ferguson, with 34 per-cent saying they were dissatisfied, and 34 percent saying they didn’t know.

The phone poll of 1,025 adults

nationwide also found that Afri-can-Americans were less happy about Nixon’s performance than the general public, with almost half dissatisfied with how he has han-dled the unrest and less than one-quarter satisfied.

ProBleMs WiTH rACeRace long has been a political co-nundrum for Nixon.

As Missouri’s attorney general for 16 years, he alienated black leaders when he tried to end court involvement in the St. Louis Pub-lic Schools and phase out the vol-untary busing program. While he moved to patch up those relation-ships when he first ran for governor in 2008, they are still somewhat strained. Today, there are no Cab-inet-level African-Americans in his administration, a fact he admit-ted uncomfortably in an interview with KMOX Radio last week, with the quick follow-up that “we have a lot of sub-Cabinet (officials) and judges” who are black.

“The governor doesn’t care about black people or the black community unless it’s politi-cally expedient,” Missouri state Sen. Maria Chappelle-Nadal, D-University City, told MSNBC, summing up a common criticism among some black leaders in Mis-souri.

But Nixon has undeniably taken pains to reach out to the black community during the Ferguson crisis, speaking at black churches and talking about poverty and jus-tice. His appointment of the Mis-souri Highway Patrol to lead secu-rity efforts in Ferguson, with patrol Capt. Ronald S. Johnson, who is African-American and a native of the Ferguson area, at the helm, was an unabashed olive branch to the community.

That outreach also was evident during an interview with the Post-Dispatch last week. When asked whether he thought the protest-ers had accomplished anything, Nixon first separated the peaceful protesters from what he called “the lawbreakers.” He then proceeded to laud the peaceful ones in language that wouldn’t have sounded out of place coming from Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson.

“The protesters certainly have (accomplished something) ... The eyes of the world are on us,” said Nixon. He credited them with shining a spotlight on “the chal-lenging issue of our times — what can we do about poverty, educa-tion, race ... the difficult relation-ships between law enforcement and communities, especially some of the urban communities ... these are big, deep issues, and the pro-testers are forcing all policymak-ers to think about them ... to dig deeper.”

sHiFTiNg sTrATegYWhile those kinds of sentiments may help, Nixon has struggled to effectively convey them — par-ticularly under the unfamiliar glare of a national audience. When off-script, he tends to speak very quickly, in long strings of some-times-unrelated sentence frag-ments, punctuated with false starts and awkward pauses. Missouri journalists and audiences are used to it. The rest of America got its first earful of it over the past two weeks.

“The first [news conference] he had was atrocious ... with all the ‘uhhs’ and ‘huhs’ and ‘duhs,’” said Steve Glorioso, a longtime politi-cal strategist and media consul-tant in Kansas City who works for Democrats. He added: “In fairness to him, I’m sure he was very con-cerned that one wrong word could exacerbate the situation.”

Republican consultant John

Hancock said Nixon “has managed to get by relatively unscathed over many years by frankly not being that accessible. The minute he has to take center stage in a drama, his weaknesses as a politician are ex-posed.”

That weakness was on stage dur-ing a cringe-worthy, nationally televised news conference on Aug. 16 as Nixon announced a curfew at the protest site. It soon became apparent that the news conference had been packed with protesters shouting questions and demands. As the nation watched, Nixon grew quiet and appeared increasingly uncomfortable, ultimately giving up and turning the microphone over to others.

Missouri House Speaker Tim Jones, R-Eureka, described Nixon’s strategy in Ferguson as “all over the map.”

“The impression was that he was just bouncing from one strategy to another,” Glorioso said. “What he did might have made sense if you’re on the ground, but when you’re 250 miles away, it just seemed like he was thrashing about.”

Nixon last week argued that the shifting dynamics of the protests from night to night required shift-ing strategies. “What started out as a peaceful protest has been at-tracting bad guys from around the country. That does require a shift ... We didn’t know that folks were going to start throwing Molotov cocktails.”

JoPliN CoNTrAsTsAnyone who watched Nixon’s han-dling of the aftermath of the Jop-lin tornado damage three years ago might have a hard time reconcil-ing that politician with this one. He drew widespread plaudits for his role overseeing recovery efforts in the storm-wracked town in May 2011.

But a tornado is not a racially charged killing.

In Joplin, Nixon was adept at solving “structural problems,” said Missouri state Rep. Jeremy LaFaver, D-Kansas City. “You go in and talk about building and money. But is-sues related to race and poverty, it requires a level of diplomacy and leadership that isn’t necessarily the same skill set you would need in re-sponse to a natural disaster.”

Even so, no one says the gover-nor’s task — protecting the right of angry protesters to have their say while ensuring public safety — was easy.

“There’s no playbook for this,” said state Sen. Gina Walsh, D-Bellefontaine Neighbors, who was part of a small group of St. Louis-area legislators who met with Nixon at a Ferguson coffeehouse on Thursday.

“I think he has an impossible task in front of him,” Walsh said. “This isn’t about something that happened two weeks ago. This is all about racism, education, socioeco-nomics.”

Other defenders include Mis-souri state Rep. Courtney Curtis, D-Berkeley, who represents part of Ferguson in the House. “There were some tough calls that had to be made, and he (Nixon) made them,” Curtis said. “And ulti-mately, we’re seeing results from that. This situation could’ve been a whole lot worse.”

Nixon’s office, when asked for a comment on this story, responded with a written statement: “The Governor’s attention has been and will remain focused on making things better for the people of Fer-guson and the entire region — not politics.”

Chuck Raasch, Nicholas J.C. Pistor, Alex Stuckey and Lisa Brown, all of the Post-Dispatch, contributed to this report.

NixoN •

FroM A1

Cristina Fletes-Boutte • [email protected] Highway Patrol Capt. Ronald S. Johnson speaks Aug. 15 at a news conference in front of the QuikTrip in Ferguson that was looted. At right is Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon.

Handling of Ferguson may hinder Nixon

08.24.2014 • SUNDAY • M 1 ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH • A7

BY MARK [email protected]

NORTH ST. LOUIS COUNTY • Ferguson, where two-thirds of residents are black but most city elected o� cials are white, isn’t the only north St. Louis County community with a racial dispar-ity in political power.

Blacks make up more than 70 percent of Bellefontaine Neigh-bors’ population, according to the 2010 census, but hold only two of eight seats on the Board of Aldermen, and the mayor is white.

In Black Jack, the African-American population exceeds 80 percent, but key officials — the mayor and City Council members — are nearly evenly split between blacks and whites. The same is true in Jennings, which has a black population of about 90 percent.

However, some other North County municipalities — such as Berkeley, where the mayor

and aldermen are all African-American — have heavier black representation.

Terry Jones, a professor of political science at the Univer-sity of Missouri-St. Louis, says for various reasons, it takes a long time for growing minority populations to be reflected in large numbers in their munici-pal governments.

“There is upwards of a 15-to-25-year lag between the racial transition from Caucasians to African-Americans in a com-munity and having close to pro-portional representation of that minority in electoral positions,” Jones said.

Analysts said newcomers don’t tend to get interested in local government until they’ve lived somewhere for a while.

“People don’t vote as much if they don’t have a stake in the community and perceive them-selves as not having a stake,” said Ken Warren, a political sci-ence professor at St. Louis Uni-versity.

Jones added that black people moving into these communi-ties tend to have more young children than older white hold-overs. That means the percent-age of blacks in the general pop-ulation may be higher than that of the voting-age population.

Another factor, he said, is the timing of municipal elections. City officials across Missouri are picked in lower-turnout April elections .

In Ferguson, the percentage of blacks increased from 52 per-cent in the 2000 census to 67 percent in the 2010 census. But the mayor and five of six City Council members are white.

In contrast, Jones said, Berke-ley, with its current heavy black representation, experienced its racial transition more in the 1970s and 1980s. Blacks already made up 66 percent of the city’s population by 1990; by 2010, the percentage was 82 percent.

He added that the lag between population and political repre-sentation can vary depending

on local circumstances.He said a longtime white in-

cumbent may remain in office long after an area’s population becomes heavily black if he’s well-known and is perceived as doing a good job.

He said that may be the case in Black Jack, which had an 81 percent black population in the 2010 census. Norman McCourt, who is white, has been mayor there since 1998.

Currently there are fi ve blacks and three whites on the Black Jack City Council.

Arnold Hinkle, a black coun-cilman in Black Jack, said he feels the black community in his city is adequately represented, even though the percentage of elected o� cials is less than the population percentage.

Yolanda Austin, a black coun-cilwoman in Jennings, said the same about her city.

Warren said hot-button issues also can galvanize people to run for and support people for o� ce. He said it will be interesting to

see what happens in the next few years in Ferguson’s elections.

Reggie Jones, who last year became the second African-American to be elected mayor of Dellwood, said it may be easier for newcomers to win election in a smaller city such as Dell-wood, which with about 5,000 residents is only about one-fourth the size of neighboring Ferguson.

Dellwood’s Board of Alder-men now has five black mem-bers and three white members. Between 2000 and 2010, the black proportion of the city’s population increased from 58 percent to 79 percent.

Anthony Smith, one of two blacks on the eight-member Bellefontaine Neighbors Board of Aldermen, said many peo-ple — blacks and whites — just don’t want the responsibility of getting involved in government.

“Most people who tend to complain do it in a burst,” he said. “As far as having sustained concern, we just don’t have it.”

Black political power lags even in majority cities

FERGUSON POLICE SHOOTING

where at least 10 percent of the population is African-American. In 30 of the 31 communities that responded, the percentage of black residents is higher than the proportion of black o� cers.

While areas patrolled by St. Louis County Police are about 25 percent black, 10 percent of the county police force is black.

Bellefontaine Neighbors was among the departments that least refl ected its black popula-tion; University City was the most representative.

Bel-Ridge, Bridgeton, Country Club Hills, Hillsdale and Kinloch did not respond to the survey.

Many reasons for the disparity are given, including di� culty in recruiting black police officers; the lack of interest in policing by minorities; and the changing demographics in North County over the past two decades.

From 1990 to 2010, Ferguson’s African-American population rose by more than 150 percent.

And of the 230,000 African-Americans who live in St. Louis County, more than 90 percent of them reside in communities along and north of Olive Bou-levard, based on census data. That’s where 29 of the 31 police departments patrol.

Police chiefs cite various rea-sons for their departments not keeping up with this change, including a lack of minority ap-plicants and black officers fre-quently leaving for jobs at bigger, better-paying departments.

Last week, Ferguson’s elected o� cials said they are looking at ways for the community to feel “more connected” to city lead-ers, including police. They in-clude developing programs to attract more African-American police applicants; expanding and enhancing the school resources o� cer program; and creating in-centives for police o� cers to live in the city.

Rarely do small, suburban de-partments require o� cers to live in the communities in which they work. As a result, very few do. Some o� cers commute from as far away as Lincoln and Je� er-son counties. Darren Wilson, the Ferguson officer who shot Mi-chael Brown, lives in Crestwood.

“Policing is going to be more e� ective when personal relation-ships are made and (police) have an investment in the commu-nity,” said Wesley Bell, a crimi-nal justice professor at St. Louis Community College’s Florissant Valley campus in Ferguson, and a resident of the city.

Hiring more black officers in Ferguson and elsewhere is im-portant to build relationships and chip away at the deep mistrust many minorities have of police, said Bell, an African-American whose father was a police o� cer.

“If the police department in Ferguson was more refl ective of the community, people would be more apt to give them the benefi t of the doubt that the o� cer was using his discretion, and race was not an issue,” Bell said.

But with a predominantly white police force, that is hard to do, he said.

At a meeting last week of the Ferguson Youth Initiative, a non-profit formed to engage young people in the community, 18 teens sat in a circle, all but four of them African-Americans. They

talked about the fear and mis-trust they have of police, and the negative perception that keeps minorities from pursuing a ca-reer in law enforcement.

“It’s scary. They’ve got this big nine on their hip and you don’t know what’s going on,” said Jayde Brown, 17, referring to the 9mm handgun. “Their demeanor should be less forceful and less confrontational. Instead of say-ing: ‘Hey, get o� the street’, they should say, ‘Hey, what’s going on?’”

The other teens had similar comments. They want better communication with police and regular meetings with them, out of uniform, so they seem like one of them. Police need to under-stand that respect is a two-way

street. That is more important, the teens said, than the racial makeup of a police department.

“We’re not dogs, we’re peo-ple,” said Lovell Gordon, 18, who is black.

Maryland Heights Police Chief Bill Carson agreed that there is a stigma associated with police that keeps young blacks away from law enforcement as a ca-reer choice. And highly qualifi ed African-American law enforce-ment o� cers often have options, and won’t stay with small police departments, he said.

With a lack of applicants from black candidates, it’s hard to build a more diverse department, Carson said.

“Our last hiring process we had 81 applications, and only

three were African-American,” Carson said. “So it’s not like we’re passing over a whole bunch of quality minority applicants.” Just one of the city’s 79 police officers is black; the African-American population of the city is about 12 percent.

Other police chiefs shared Carson’s sentiment.

“I talked with some staff members here, and we’re not even sure the last time we had an African-American apply here, and I don’t know what the so-lution is,” said Overland Police Chief Mike Laws. “I would jump at the chance to hire a qualifi ed African-American candidate.”

Maj. Henry Mansker with the Hazelwood Police Department said his department recruits at

job fairs and the St. Louis Black Expo with little success.

In Florissant, where seven of the 92 o� cers are black, O� cer Andy Harmon said his depart-ment advertises open positions in the St. Louis American, and sends black o� cers to career fairs at Harris-Stowe State University and Lincoln University, and to a fair organized by U.S. Rep. Wil-liam Lacy Clay.

“We just don’t see any results from that,” Harmon said.

Local police chiefs say it is hard to compete with larger de-partments in more a� uent com-munities where pay and benefi ts are better.

In Breckenridge Hills, for ex-ample, the starting salary is $16.51 an hour. Just one of the police department’s 13 full-time o� cers is black.

Chief Perry Hopkins said his small department would wel-come diversity, especially with a growing Hispanic population of about 15 percent, he said.

“Our officers are having en-counters with the public where language is a barrier,” Hopkins said.

In the cities where depart-ments more closely reflect the racial makeup of residents, most are smaller, inner-ring commu-nities that saw an infl ux of black residents years before Ferguson did. Beverly Hills is one those.

Of the 14-person department, nine o� cers are black. Chief John Buchannan said his diverse force is crucial to building trust in the community. In addition to Bev-erly Hills, his department patrols neighboring Velda Village Hills.

Among all the departments that responded to the Post-Dis-patch inquiry, University City stands out: 41 percent of resi-dents and 42 percent of its 69 of-fi cers are black.

Dan Isom, the former police chief of St. Louis, now teaches criminal justice courses at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. A third of St. Louis city police o� cers are black; about half the city population is black.

“It is di� cult for a police de-partment to get a complete bal-ance on diversity,” said Isom, who is African-American. “That being said, you should be able to approach something that is at least reasonable.”

But steep challenges stand in the way, and are much more dif-ficult to deal with than getting blacks to fi ll out applications, he said. As long as education dis-parities remain and a dispro-portionate number of blacks are imprisoned, fewer blacks will be able to pass the o� cer candidate exams or background checks.

Also important, Isom said, is rebuilding trust between police and minority populations.

Tim Maher, a criminologist at UMSL, said a more diverse de-partment can improve relations with a community, but it does not necessarily mean less en-forcement of laws.

Minority police o� cers “don’t make fewer stops. They don’t make fewer arrests. They don’t have fewer incidents of com-plaints against them for exces-sive force,” Maher said.

But when police departments look like the communities they serve “it does make citizens feel better,” he said. “They feel they have better representation. Peo-ple feel better about seeing peo-ple of their own color and eth-nicity.”

POLICE •

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DOES THE POLICE FORCE REFLECT THE POPULATION?

This Post-Dispatch survey of St. Louis County communities with a black population of at least 10 percent and St. Louis city compares the black representation of their population and their commissioned police o�cers. Population data are from 2010 census.

Bel-Nor 1,499 46.2% 5 20.0% 26.2Bellefontaine Neighbors 10,860 72.5% 34 2.9% 69.6Berkeley 8,978 81.4% 33 54.5% 26.9Beverly Hills* 1,629 96.3% 14 64.3% 32.0Breckenridge Hills 4,746 32.3% 13 7.7% 24.7Calverton Park 1,293 41.5% 7 0.0% 41.5Charlack** 1,363 35.1% 11 20.0% 17.0Edmundson 834 26.4% 11 9.1% 17.3Ferguson 21,203 67.2% 58 6.9% 60.3Flordell Hills 822 90.5% 4 25.0% 65.5Florissant 52,158 26.6% 92 7.6% 19.0Hazelwood 25,703 30.4% 66 3.0% 27.4Maplewood 8,046 17.2% 31 9.7% 7.5Maryland Heights 27,472 11.8% 79 1.3% 10.5Moline Acres 2,442 91.6% 14 78.6% 13.1Normandy*** 7,673 70.8% 29 13.8% 57.0Northwoods 4,227 93.9% 22 59.1% 34.8Olivette 7,737 23.8% 23 8.7% 15.1Overland 16,062 16.1% 47 0.0% 16.1Pagedale 3,304 93.0% 15 60.0% 33.0Pine Lawn 3,275 95.8% 22 45.5% 50.4Richmond Heights 8,603 11.5% 41 7.3% 4.2Riverview 2,856 69.7% 10 0.0% 69.7Rock Hill 4,635 22.9% 10 10.0% 12.9St. Ann 13,020 21.9% 40 5.0% 16.9St. John**** 7,185 22.9% 22 4.5% 18.3St. Louis 318,416 47.5% 1,365 33.8% 13.6St. Louis County***** 407,818 25.0% 838 10.4% 14.4University City 35,371 40.9% 69 42.0% –1.2Velda City 1,420 95.3% 10 20.0% 75.3Vinita Park 1,880 64.7% 20 55.0% 9.7Wellston 2,313 95.1% 19 63.2% 32.0Woodson Terrace 4,063 20.5% 17 5.9% 14.6

Bel-Ridge 2,737 82.6%Bridgeton 11,550 18.5%Country Club Hills 1,274 90.9%Hillsdale 1,478 94.9%Kinloch 298 94.6%

St. Louis County

1.2.3.4.5.6.7.8.9.

10.11.12.13.14.15.16.17.18.19.20.21.22.23.24.25.26.27.28.29.30.31.32.33.

A.B.C.D.E.

Municipality Total Total Percent black

Di�erence betweenpercent black

population andpercent blackpolice force*Percent black

POPULATION

MUNICIPALITIES THAT DID NOT PROVIDE INFORMATION ABOUT THEIR POLICE FORCE

POLICE FORCE

* Includes demographic information for Velda Village Hills, which Beverly Hills patrols. ** Race of one o�cer was not provided.*** Includes demographic information for Bellerive Acres, Greendale, Pasadena Park, Glen Echo and Cool Valley, which are patrolled by Normandy.**** Includes demographic information for Sycamore Hills, which is patrolled by St. John.***** Population of St. Louis County excludes the population of all municipalities that have their own departments or are patrolled by departments other than St. Louis County Police.

SOURCE: Local police departments; Census Bureau | Post-Dispatch

Mistrust shown to run deep

A8 • ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH M 4 • SUnDAy • 08.24.2014

By JAcoB [email protected]

Supporters of Ferguson police Officer Darren Wilson, who fa-tally shot Michael Brown, gath-ered Saturday at a rally in south St. Louis, with many asking the public to withhold judgment on the case until the investigation is finished.

“Everybody needs to pull to-gether and find the truth,” said Jeff Swiney, who said he has friends who are police officers and wanted to show support for Wilson and the judicial process.

“They put on their badge ev-ery morning and might not come home,” he said. “I appreciate that.”

People came and went during the day, with more than 100 in

attendance about 1:30 p.m. As many as 20 people stood along Chippewa Street holding signs with messages such as “Jus-tice Comes In All Colors,” “I don’t support a race, I support the truth” and “Innocent until proven guilty.” Some motorists driving by honked in apparent solidarity throughout the late morning and early afternoon.

The event was on the parking lot and sidewalk outside Barney’s Sports Pub on Chippewa near Hampton Avenue. The crowd ate hot dogs and fought a heat index that climbed above 100 degrees with bottled water and cold beer.

“There’s two sides to every story,” said Mark Rodebaugh, a St. Louis police officer whose family owns Barney’s. He said he wanted to show support for Wil-son and emphasize that law en-

forcement cares about the com-munity.

“We’re here to protect them and protect their lives and prop-erty,” he said. “We don’t want the community to give up on law en-forcement.”

Many in the largely white crowd wore T-shirts with a badge insignia that reads: “Officer Dar-ren Wilson, I stand by you.” The shirts were for sale near the en-trance of the bar. A woman sell-ing the shirts, who declined to give her name, said they had sold about 500 for $20 each over the course of the day. The shirts are also for sale at teespring.com.

The money is going to Wilson and his family, the woman said. Already, online fundraising sites set up for Wilson have brought in more than $300,000. By late afternoon Saturday, one of the

sites reported raising $79,000, up from just over $50,000 on Saturday morning.

Later in the afternoon, a small group of counterprotesters gath-ered near the Wilson rally to show support for Brown. People also came and went from that group, which numbered about a dozen at one point.

A woman who addressed ral-lygoers on behalf of the Support Darren Wilson Campaign said Wilson’s actions were “war-ranted and justified.”

She said media coverage of Brown’s death and the ensuing protests has been biased, and that supporters of Wilson have received death threats. “Can jus-tice ever be attained if one side’s supporters live in fear of speaking out?”

She would not identify herself.

“You want my name?” she said, concluding the brief statement she read to a throng of media and supporters. “My name is Darren Wilson. We are Darren Wilson.”

Many of the people at the rally also did not want to give their names or speak to the media, saying they worried they would be targeted for their support of Wilson. Several participants said organizers were asking partici-pants to not give their names to reporters. “They want to protect themselves,” said the woman selling T-shirts.

Others were unafraid to ex-press their opinions. “It’s not about racism, it’s not about white and black,” said Tammy Messmer, who stood holding a sign along Chippewa. “Let the facts play out, let’s see what happens. It’s all we’re asking.”

‘There’s two sides to every story’RALLY foR offICER dARREn wILson

PoLIce JoIN cHUrcHeS IN FooD DISTrIBUTIoNMembers of the Missouri Highway Patrol and the St. Louis County and St. Louis police departments helped several organizations distribute food Satur-day in Ferguson.

The officers assisted the Crisis Aid International Life Church, Destiny Family Church and Clergy United. The churches gave the food to residents of the Canfield, Northwoods and Oakmont apartment complexes, all near Canfield Drive and West Floris-sant Avenue.

“I’m glad to get it,” resident Amina El-Meen said of the food.

El-Meen, who lives in the Canfield apartments, said her bag contained green beans, peaches, a box of macaroni and cheese, chicken noodle soup, tuna, spaghetti, tomato sauce, quinoa and brown rice.

— Kim Bell

PeAce MArcH SeT For MoNDAy

A “peace march” has been called for Monday after-noon by a new group called New Spirit of St. Louis and Gitana Productions Inc.

According to the Gitana website, the goal is to bring together “multicultural peace lovers” dressed in white. The three-hour event will begin at 3 p.m. at Greater St. Mark Family Church at 9950 Glen Owen near Ferguson.

“We will engage in conversations, spontaneous artistic expression and share our food from all over the world,” organizers said on the website. They said “the demonstrators, residents and police need to feel this love unequivocally.”

— Mark Schlinkmann

oBAMA eXAMINING PeNTAGoN DeALS

The White House is reviewing programs that have equipped local police departments with military gear from the Pentagon, urged by President Barack Obama’s call for more separation between the na-tion’s armed forces and civilian law enforcement.

The examination comes in the aftermath of the police response to the unrest in Ferguson.

Senior administration officials said Saturday that the review will examine whether the programs are appropriate; the amount of training provided for using military equipment; and how well the gov-ernment audits the use of the money and equip-ment by local police departments.

The officials say the review will be coordinated with Congress, where several lawmakers have called for a re-examination of the military-to-po-lice programs.

— Associated Press

By MArk [email protected]

FERGUSON • Between 300 and 400 people marched up and down West Florissant Avenue on Saturday after-noon in a peaceful show of support for Michael Brown, 18, shot and killed by a police officer two weeks earlier.

The procession began about 2 p.m., heading back and forth several times between Buzz Westfall Plaza and Can-field Drive, about a half-mile north.

The event was organized by the NAACP’s St. Louis County chapter. Kenneth Murdock, a NAACP spokes-man, said one goal was to channel the anger over Brown’s death into positive action such as getting people to regis-ter to vote and to obtain college grants.

“We have to kind of refocus from anger into activism” through groups such as the NAACP, Murdock said.

Joining march leaders up front were Missouri Highway Patrol Capt. Ron-ald S. Johnson, St. Louis Police Chief Sam Dotson and St. Louis County Po-lice Chief Jon Belmar.

“This sets the tone,” Belmar said af-terward. “If people can see the police chiefs and the leaders of the NAACP together, that’s the message we have to get out there. In the future, when we have acute incidents, we have to be able to trust each other from the beginning.”

Johnson said their participation was part of an effort to put law enforce-ment in touch with and reflective of the community. “And that’s my dream for this whole country,” he said.

The peaceful theme continued into the evening. Protesters stayed con-sistent, in number and tone, through about 11 p.m., and police generally re-mained in their cars.

Johnson said that as of 11 p.m., there was only one arrest in the protest area, someone who punched or kicked a McDonald’s drive-through sign, and then tried to run away.

Around midnight, police confirmed two more arrests after protesters marched down West Florissant.

In the afternoon march, partici-pants walked the first lap to Canfield

in silence. They chanted slogans dur-ing much of the rest of the march. “Ain’t no power like the people’s power. Because the people’s power will vote,” some participants chanted.

Although billed as a youth march, many adults joined. Most were black, but there was a smattering of whites.

Soon after the event ended about 2:45, Gov. Jay Nixon arrived and spoke with several marchers. He declined to answer a reporter’s questions.

Another march went down West Florissant later in the afternoon, said Allyson Mace, a co-organizer.

One of those in the NAACP march, Ann Hamilton, 53, said she took part because “we just want justice, nothing more, nothing less.”

Hamilton, a retired teacher who lives in the Central West End, said, “We want to be treated like everyone else. We are not satisfied with what has happened.”

Yusuf Muhammad, 21, a Tennessee State University nursing student from St. Louis, said, “We want the truth, that’s all.”

Langston Hunter, 16, a CBC high school student from University City, came with his mother. He said the march was aimed at spreading “our

message through peace” — not looting.Christan Shelton, 34, a teacher at a

nearby middle school, said Saturday’s march was in the spirit of peaceful protests held previously.

“But with anything in life, a few bad seeds come in and they ruin it for ev-eryone, and often the focus is on that instead of the positive things going on,” said Shelton, of St. Louis.

Heather Jones, 23, a Lindenwood University student from Maryland Heights, said, “This is an issue of how law enforcement treats African-Americans across the nation. It should be justice for all no matter what the ethnicity.”

Jones and her aunt, Lisa Jones, 48, of St. Louis, said they appreciated the involvement of the three officials.

Dotson, the St. Louis chief, said, “We’re two weeks out, the healing has to start, and I think this was a great first step.”

He said now the people of Ferguson and the entire St. Louis area need to come together to talk about and “fix the problems.”

Kim Bell of the Post-Dispatch contributed to this report.

Hundreds join march with NAACP notEs fRoM fERGUson

RobeRt Cohen • [email protected] St. Louis County Police Sgt. Colby Dolly checks for a rock in the shoe of 5-year-old Zion King Frenchie during a march of members of the St. Louis chapters of the NAACP and the National Urban League in Ferguson on Saturday.

huy MaCh • [email protected] of Ferguson police Officer Darren Wilson attend a rally for him on Saturday at Barney’s Sports Pub on Chippewa Street in St. Louis, near Hampton Avenue.

‘We have to kind of refocus from anger into activism,’ spokesman says.

Ferguson police shooting

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St. Louis is celebrating the 250th anniver-sary of its founding with birthday cake.

Make that fiberglass birthday cakes — 251 of them — decorated by local artists and installed all across the St. Louis region at landmarks, businesses and cultural sites.

Just one of these 251 cakes is in Ferguson.After two weeks of protests in the

African-American community following the killing of 18-year-old Michael Brown by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson, the fact of this single cake tells us a little bit more about our region’s history than per-haps we’d like to ponder.

Take a look at the map of the cakes at stl250.org and compare it to the maps of the city’s development history in Colin Gor-don’s 2008 book “Mapping Decline.” The pattern is nearly identical. The maps and charts in Mr. Gordon’s book show overlay after overlay of public policy investments in the central corridor of St. Louis. The same properties often received multiple tax abatements over several decades, even as vast swaths of the north side of the city were ignored.

This is the story of St. Louis.The anger that simmered and then

exploded in Ferguson has its roots in some-thing more than a white cop from a force that doesn’t look like its community killing — however it happened — an unarmed black kid. The root cause goes back further than a decision earlier this year by an all-white school board to fire a black superintendent who had welcomed black transfer students from the unaccredited school district where Michael Brown graduated from high school. It stretches beyond the demographic changes over the past 25 years that had Ferguson turning from a majority white to a majority black inner-ring suburb of St. Louis.

Night after night in the past two weeks, as protesters marched southeast down West Florissant Avenue toward a line of mostly white police officers dressed for war, they were tracing the history of St. Louis going back more than 150 of its 250 years. Had they kept marching roughly in a straight line, they would have eventually hit the infamous Pruitt-Igoe site, an abandoned, forested reminder of the city’s neglect of African-Americans as equal partners in the city’s growth.

In the 1950s, Pruitt-Igoe was going to be a great public housing program to help pull blacks out of poverty. But it was badly conceived — stacking poor people vertically turned out to be a terrible idea wherever it was tried. It became a milestone in a history of investing in primarily white institutions, and cordoning off black communities.

Pruitt-Igoe was razed in 1972. Nothing has happened to it since then.

Following a straight line of history from

Pruitt-Igoe, marchers would eventually end up at the Mis-sissippi River at the foot of Arsenal Street. It is called that for a reason, because there stood the Union Arsenal that in 1861 was targeted for takeover by Missouri’s Gov. Claiborne Fox Jackson. He was a slaveholder and Southern sympathizer who wanted the weapons in the arsenal to help implement his plan for Missouri to join the Confederacy.

Four weeks after Fort Sumter, S.C., was bombarded and the Civil War began, Union soldiers, with the help of German immigrant volunteers, routed Jackson’s Confederate troops at a site near what is now St. Louis University’s main campus. Federal troops were bought in to restore the peace.

To some extent or another, St. Louis has been fighting some version of the Civil War ever since.

Consider this: That same year Jackson attacked the Arsenal, he ordered state control of the city’s police department, a decision rife with racial undertones. The city didn’t regain control of its own police department for more than 150 years, until 2013, following a statewide vote.

As we write this, the protests in Ferguson

have slowed down, the National Guard has been withdrawn, a fragile peace is returning, and the cable talking heads who invaded our city have turned to debating the intricate and mostly rumored details of a prosecution that may or may not ever take place.

Our community’s challenge is to keep the focus where it should be, on recognizing that the protests in Ferguson can be a turn-ing point for a city with a regrettable history of marginalizing its black citizens. The sad but undeniable truth is that St. Louis has long devalued African-American lives. For some, it’s difficult to admit. For others, it’s hard to see. We don’t do empathy very well.

It’s easier to focus on distracting details of a shooting, or political battles between a governor and a prosecutor, and safe in our suburban enclaves, turn the page on

Ferguson and pretend it was all a hazy hal-lucination.

This was not and is not a dream.St. Louis earned this moment by spending

too much of its history refusing to invest in communities dominated by African-Amer-ican citizens and refusing them admittance to neighborhoods dominated by whites. Those decisions became the oxygen that fed the flame of protest: concentrated poverty, not enough jobs, separate and unequal schools, poor health care.

In the first editorial this page wrote on the Michael Brown case, we noted that the likelihood of a conviction in the case is extremely low. That remains true. It is the simple reality of most police shootings. But there can be an important conviction: The conviction of a city to change.

There is a serendipity in the historic line that connects Ferguson to Pruitt-Igoe to the Arsenal.

The current tenant of the federal property at the foot of Arsenal Street is the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, which is looking for a new home for its 3,000 jobs, with more promised down the road. The city’s choice to compete among others in the St. Louis region is the former Pruitt-Igoe site, located in the center of Paul McKee’s NorthSide Regeneration development. NorthSide is the first and only large-scale proposal in the city’s recent history to bring massive public and private investment to a community that has been ignored.

Imagine the hope that would follow the addition of 3,000 jobs at the intersection of Jefferson and Cass avenues, about 10 miles away from where Michael Brown was killed. Those employees will need gas and food, a QuikTrip perhaps, or maybe a Reds BBQ. Some of those employees will want to live close to work. They’ll need houses. Maybe they’ll look to Ferguson.

With a little federal investment, with some introspection that allows us to both recognize and learn from our region’s still strong racial divide, with an unwavering focus on educational equality that values young African-American students no dif-ferently than white ones, the final chapter of the Ferguson story can be a hopeful one.

It will be written long after a tragic shoot-ing, long after the protests have subsided, long after a legal case has been dissected and political grudges settled. The next chapter starts on Monday, when we mourn a black teenager who died too young.

No matter the details of his death, Michael Brown’s life had value. Many young people hoping to avoid his fate held up protest signs in Ferguson this week with a simple message: “Black lives matter.”

When all of St. Louis can agree on that, the next step in a difficult journey can begin.

Lessons from Ferguson:

WE EARNED THISOur view • History of St. Louis allowed racial divide to define us. Now what?

McCulloch demonstrates a calm determination to see justice prevail

Prosecuting Attorney Robert McCull-och was right in the beginning when he defended the county police and labeled Gov. Jay Nixon’s action sending in the Highway Patrol unconstitutional. The Highway Patrol is not a state police agency as in other states; rather, it has limited jurisdiction associated with highways unless called in by a sheriff or other law enforcement agency. As a result, for two days we had anarchy when the local police were told to step aside and the Highway Patrol lacked the jurisdiction to make an arrest and were told to stand down.

McCulloch is one of the most experi-enced and professional prosecutors in the nation. His expertise is far superior to some of the so-called experts being quoted as well as Gov. Nixon and Attorney General Eric Holder, who seem to be grandstanding for a political base.

McCulloch has served St. Louis County for 24 years and is so popular that long ago he could have moved up the political lad-der. Instead he opted to be a professional prosecutor. He has demonstrated a calm determination to see justice prevail. He will not succumb to hysteria. The case is mov-ing quickly to the grand jury, which will make a fair determination as to whether the o� cer should be exonerated or indicted

and if so, on what charge. McCulloch is also right to release the grand jury fi ndings and evidence relied on in making their decision.

We couldn’t have a better public official in charge than McCulloch. I’m proud of him and his longtime service to St. Louis County. I didn’t hire him, but I hired the guy who did, and Buzz Westfall would be proud of him, too.Gene McNary • LadueFormer St. Louis County executive

Convene a special grand jury in Michael Brown caseWe are a nation of laws, and the authority of law rests with the people, not the army, the police or the Legislature. The voice of the people of our region calls out for a timely investigation and disposition on the matters relating to the Michael Brown case.

Two months of waiting for a grand jury to meet once a week unnecessarily pro-tracts the process, festering fears and anxi-eties. Chapter 540, Grand Juries and Their Proceedings, Section 540.021 of the Mis-souri State Statues clearly states that:

“The presiding judge of the circuit court, or a judge designated by the presiding judge, shall have the authority to convene, recess, and adjourn a grand jury as, in his discretion, he deems necessary, and at times and places as he specifi es.”

It is time to convene a special grand jury specifi cally dedicated to the Michael Brown

case. They may meet fi ve, six or seven days a week as needed to examine the evidence and testimonies. Compared to Robert Mc-Culloch’s two-month time frame, a special grand jury could complete its task in a mat-ter of weeks.

This is a fresh case. There is no reason to make it stale.Terry Beckmeyer • New Haven

Need multiple police cameras to address accountabilityThe use of body cameras by law enforce-ment personnel will not satisfactorily address accountability issues because the video can provide only a unilateral, court-contestable perspective.

Accountability proponents should advocate a technology whereby multiple, view-overlapping cameras mounted on law enforcement vehicles are automatically enabled and streamed live/publicly online whenever an officer detains someone or activates the emergency vehicle’s sirens and lights. The video evidence would protect both law enforcement personnel and civilians, and the associated expenses (albeit exorbitant) would ultimately be offset by the significant reduction of court cases and trial time. The intangible cost of such accountability is, of course, privacy.Gene Weber • Shrewsbury

Holder should have assured all parties of a fair investigationIf I were the U.S. attorney general like Eric Holder, I think I would have paid a visit to either the Ferguson or county police departments as well as to the family, students, the FBI office and community leaders to ensure the public I supported true justice for all with no preconceived judgments. All parties involved merit the assurance of a fair investigation.

True justice is nonarbitrary, nonpartial and nonprejudicial. I am not in a position to judge anyone despite all that we have read and heard because we may not have read and heard everything that has a bearing to this case. Some of what we’ve read and heard may not be accurate or totally true.

But I think that if I were in law enforce-ment, I would be worried by now because the omission of important parties to this issue sends a message, even if subtle. If true justice is defi ned by what I have writ-ten above, the appearance of taking sides renders justice potentially compromised. Even if we identify personally and closely with one side or another, in the position of leadership in justice, even the slightest ap-pearance of partiality must be avoided at all costs for the sake of the integrity of the system.

Many of us really do want justice for all and realize there is a fair way of obtaining such a desirable outcome.Helen Louise Herndon • St. Peters

YOUR VIEWS • LETTERS FROM OUR READERS

Ferguson 2014

Pruitt-Igoe 1972

Union Arsenal1861

08.24.2014 • Sunday • M 2 ST. LOuIS POST-dISPaTCH • A21

Everyone has seen the reports: Two-thirds of the population of Ferguson is African-American, yet the majority of Ferguson leader-ship (city council, school board, police department) is white. That means most of the people who govern the daily lives of Ferguson residents probably cannot relate to the residents’ day-to-day exis-tence.

We have reached a critical moment in our region and coun-try, where our young African-Americans are not valued, heard or loved. This is the direct result of a complex set of injustices: the increasing existence of underperforming school dis-tricts, the removal of high-level

African-American school district leaders, the decreasing presence of African-Americans in elected office, high youth unemployment rates, and blatant police brutality and abuse.

Our inability to deal with rac-ism in St. Louis has contributed to the level of response seen since Michael Brown’s tragic death in the form of protests and other unrest. It’s been said over and over again that this has been “sim-mering” for years, and it took the unfortunate and tragic death of this young man for the pot to boil over. This is what happens when some of the primary elements that make up a community are miss-ing — when the leadership doesn’t

match the community. There are far too many people in places like Ferguson who feel like they don’t have a voice or that their lives don’t matter.

Issues and discussions about race are difficult to deal with, but it doesn’t excuse us from dealing with uncomfortable truths. When I have been outspoken about issues in our recent history such as the rodeo clown incident at the 2013 Missouri State Fair or the perceived segregation at Fair St. Louis, I have been met with the response, “You’re racist,” instead of opening the dialogue to under-stand my point of view.

But this isn’t just happening in Ferguson. It’s everywhere. Until

we have an honest conversation about race in this region and in this country, we will continue to see situations like this. This con-versation needs to take place with people of all races. We need to ask tough, and often painful, ques-tions. Make no mistake; talking about race doesn’t make anyone a racist. And while the conversation is difficult, we still have to power through it.

This is why I joined the Young Citizens Council of St. Louis. This is a group of area leaders commit-ted to making sure these conversa-tions take place. We are engaging the St. Louis community with a safe and relevant platform to voice their thoughts and ideas so those

thoughts and ideas can be turned into constructive actions.

But it’s not enough just to have tough conversations. We also need to respectfully listen. Ferguson and the entire St. Louis community will not move forward from this unless we are honest about our issues and work together to solve them. If we do not do this, then the death of Michael Brown will have been in vain.

As a leader in the St. Louis com-munity, I am more than ready to get to work. I hope you will join me. For more information on the Young Citizens Council, please visit dontshootmo.com.

Tishaura O. Jones is treasurer of the city of St. Louis.

Months before the eyes of the world were fixed on St. Louis, seven African-American scholars from Washington University and St. Louis University embarked on a project to report on the health and well-being of African-Americans in the region. The project, titled “For the Sake of All,” had four major goals:

• To inform the public about what are called the “social deter-minants of health,” factors like education, employment and housing that have a more significant impact on health than many realize;

• To present the regional economic and health consequences of intervening — or failing to intervene — on these social determi-nants;

• To provide evidence of the impact of persistent disparities on all members of the region, regardless of race or social class; and

• To influence the policy agenda on health disparities by broad-ening the conversation beyond personal responsibility and the delivery of medical care alone.

We reported that social and economic factors were strongly linked to health outcomes like disease, disability and death, and that addressing these factors is the most powerful means of tack-ling differences in health. We also noted that historical trends, including long-standing gaps in educational attainment, poverty and unemployment, help to explain racial differences in health and well-being in St. Louis. Among these factors, we highlighted edu-cation as one of the strongest and most consistent predictors of later health and described the unequal distribution of educational opportunities for African-American students in our region.

We found that social and economic patterns provided crucial context for understanding why African-Americans are more likely than whites to experience chronic disease, violence and injury, emergency mental health treatment and hospitalization, sexu-ally transmitted disease, adverse pregnancy and birth-related outcomes, and risk factors for diseases like obesity and high blood pressure. Given that behaviors like maintaining a healthy diet and exercising are so important for preventing disease and prolonging life, we pointed to the lack of resources and amenities in neighbor-hoods where many African-Americans live, which makes engag-ing in health-promoting behaviors much more difficult. And on page 4 of the report we released on May 30, we wrote: “We cannot afford to continue like this.”

We had no idea how timely that sentiment and the release of our findings would prove to be. In the days following the fatal shooting of Michael Brown and the ensuing turmoil in Ferguson, there has been great interest in “For the Sake of All.” People in St. Louis and around the world are using the final report to explore racial dis-parities in the St. Louis region that may help to explain the origins of the current crisis. In particular, they are noting the large gaps in life expectancy between areas of our region separated by only a few miles. They might also note the hundreds of deaths each year that we estimate to be associated with factors like poverty and low levels of education and the considerable human and economic toll of this loss of life. This search for answers within our briefs and final report is entirely appropriate, but our goal was always to raise awareness about problems while pointing to solutions.

Using both scientific evidence and an extensive engagement of the community, we proposed six broad areas of intervention to support the health and well-being of everyone in our region. They include:

• Investing in quality early childhood development for all chil-dren.

• Helping low-to-moderate-income families create economic opportunities.

• Investing in coordinated school health programs for all stu-dents.

• Investing in mental health awareness, screening, treatment and surveillance.

• Investing in quality neighborhoods for all in St. Louis.• Coordinating and expanding chronic and infectious disease

prevention and management.The current phase of this work, funded by the Missouri Founda-

tion for Health, is to continue to translate our findings and recom-mendations into action. We are partnering with FOCUS St. Louis to develop a series of discussion guides and action toolkits for the use of youth and adults in our community. We will continue our efforts to inform and engage local and state policymakers to iden-tify concrete strategies based on our recommendations. The active and important business sector in St. Louis is another target of our engagement strategy. As was noted in the final report, “Institu-tions, organizations, and individuals from across multiple sectors and segments of the region must come together to act.” The events of the last several days in St. Louis underscore the urgency of that need.

Indeed, the unfolding tragedy in Ferguson has placed the find-ings of our work in stark relief for all the world to see. The story must not end there, though. The world can also see the St. Louis region coming together to meaningfully address the social and economic conditions that contribute to disparities in health and hope. If we are going to heal from wounds sustained over several decades and the fresh wounds of the past several days, our invest-ments of energy, imagination and opportunity must truly be for the sake of all.

Jason Q. Purnell is an assistant professor at the Brown School/Institute for Public Health at Washington University.

Kerry McDaniel of Florissant says, “Many people are praying daily for a sense of peace to envelop Ferguson and the surrounding area. As we pray and wait, it disheartens me to see and hear the great disrespect that is being shown to the police officers.”

More letters online

Read and talk about this letter and more letters online at STLtoday.com/letters

Google Earth shows how close the Emerson Electric headquarters campus (oval) is to the burned-out Ferguson QuikTrip (circle).

Other views

tishAurA o. Jones

JAson Q. Purnell

Race relations • When the leadership doesn’t match the community, we have to open a dialogue.

Poverty’s factors • Ferguson turmoil creates new interest in ‘For the Sake of all.’

Time to ask tough, painful questions

Disparities in health and hope

One of the great ironies of the continuing furor in Ferguson is that the burned-out QuikTrip, ground zero for the protests, is located less than a mile from the headquarters campus of Emerson Electric.

The macro-global-economy is cheek-by-jowl with the micro-local-economy. Winners and losers side by side. Talk about your accidents of geography.

Emerson is No. 121 on the Fortune 500 with 2013 revenues of $24.6 billion. Some 1,300 St. Louisans are employed at the Ferguson campus, most of them doing highly skilled financial and management work.

Emerson employs a lot of less-skilled people to make a lot of different stuff, but not in Fergu-son. In Mexico, Central America, South America, Germany, France, Romania, Russia, Turkey, Ukraine, Poland, China, India, Japan, the Philippines and other nations, in 230 manufacturing centers, Emerson employs 130,000 people, including 33,000 at 80 locations in the U.S. and Canada.

Emerson’s companies make familiar stuff, like garbage dispos-ers, power tools and ceiling fans, as well as highly technical stuff that controls other highly techni-cal stuff. They make electronic controls for industrial automation machines that displace human beings. They make climate control stuff for server farms that power the Internet and displace other human beings.

Creative destruction at its finest. It’s the knowledge economy, the way of the world, adapt or die.

Many people in Ferguson and the rest of St. Louis could really use basic manufacturing jobs. Too bad. Ask the people who used to work at Ford-Hazelwood or Chrysler-Fenton. It costs too much money to do basic manufacturing in the United States. The future is advanced manufacturing, the kind that requires technical expertise.

In 2009, David Farr, then as now Emerson’s chairman and CEO, told analysts in Chicago that President Barack Obama’s ideas for the environment, health care reform and labor could “destroy” U.S. manufacturing.

“What do you think I’m going to do?” Farr asked his audience. “I’m not going to hire anybody in the United States. I’m moving.”

For Farr’s bosses — Emerson’s

board of directors and its share-holders — this was precisely the right attitude. Every dollar the company can save by employing foreign labor instead of American labor is a dollar that goes right to the bottom line.

Emerson has enjoyed 57 straight years of dividend increases. It cre-ates dependable, if not spectacular, returns for investors. If it has done so in part by offshoring America jobs, well, welcome to the global-ization NFL.

This is what makes the juxtapo-sition of the 8000 block of West Florissant Avenue (Emerson) with the 9400 block of West Florissant Avenue (the burned-out QuikTrip) a nice metaphor for modern America.

Last year, David Farr was paid $25.3 million, placing him No. 5 on Equilar’s list of America’s best-paid executives. About $3.8 million of this was cash compensation, the rest in stock and options based on performance. Farr doesn’t get performance options every year; Forbes figured his compensation for 2008-2012 at $84 million.

Even so, it’s a safe bet that he’s the best-paid guy in Ferguson. And worth every dime, at least by the standards that govern executive compensation today. He delivers the goods for the company.

Emerson is very, very good at what it does. The company has been in its location since before World War II, before most of the people in Ferguson were in Ferguson.

World War II was a turning point for Emerson. It made shell casings and armament for airplanes, weapons that helped win the war and may have saved Emerson, which had been struggling.

Emerson did so well during the war that in 1947, when the Army Air Corps turned into the U.S. Air Force, Emerson’s presi-dent, Stuart Symington, became the first secretary of the Air Force. Then he became a U.S. senator and briefly in 1960, a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomina-tion.

In 1954, Stu Symington’s old job was given to W.R. “Buck” Persons, who became wary of the uncer-tainties in the defense business. He began diversifying Emerson’s

portfolio by buying up other companies and managing them strategically, a business model that his successors have followed. Persons was succeeded by Charles F. Knight, who expanded the company’s international footprint, broadened its portfolio and created a widely admired management culture.

In his spare time, Knight and his close friend, August A. Busch III, sat on each other’s boards and ran St. Louis’ business and civic communities for the last quarter of the 20th century. They weren’t particularly interested in social engineering — the city kept emp-tying out, businesses continued to flee — but they were very generous to charitable and civic institutions.

Institutions around town that don’t have an “Anheuser-Busch” something or an “Emerson” something usually have a “Busch” something or a “Knight” some-thing. This summer I personally have benefited from both the Anheuser-Busch Eye Institute and the Charles F. Knight Emergency and Trauma Center at Barnes-Jewish Hospital. Last year alone, Emerson’s charitable arm gave away $33 million to more than 1,800 organizations.

Which is great. Which is fabu-lous. Ferguson isn’t the only place around here that needs help. Love the Emerson Children’s Zoo. Love

the Muny Opera. Love all the Emer-son Charitable Trust projects.

But what a great story if Emerson, with all of its man-agement talent, would reach out to its neighbors left behind by the globalization, automation and computerization that has enriched its

shareholders and executives.David Farr has said he sees great

potential in high-end American manufacturing, the sort that requires refined technical skills.

Michael Brown was shot to death on Aug. 9. His family said he had plans to start tech school on Aug. 11. A lot of tech schools promise more than they deliver, and a lot of students don’t follow through. Emerson already invests in technical education. Maybe it could do more of it in Ferguson.

Kevin Horrigan • [email protected] > 314-340-8135

Globalization • Ferguson’s global giant, and those left behind.

Two worlds, a mile apart

David Farr

Sunday • 08.24.2014 • B

J O I N U S O N L I N E S T LTODAY. C OM /M e T r O

Community 2 m

ST. LOuIS • He had five minutes to get things ready — straighten a few desks, put the class expecta-tions back on the screen, glance over the class list.

Jonathan Hamilton stood at the door as his seventh-grade math students filed into his room on the first day of school recently at Langston Middle School in the St. Louis Public Schools.

It was 9:20 a.m. Time for sec-ond period to start.

“Welcome, my little people,” he said.

The 14 pupils watched as their teacher moved around the room, talking about class expectations and what they could expect from him this year. Hamilton spent all summer training as a Teach For America corps member, learning how to reach students in low-performing urban schools.

New teacher is back homeTeach For America grad tries to reach students like him.

Cristina Fletes-BouttÉ • [email protected] Hamilton discusses responses to a class exercise with (from left) Luis Anaya, Devin Straub and Zachary Barnes at Langston Middle School earlier this month. A Teach For America corps member, Hamilton graduated from Sumner High School. See TEACHER • Page B5

LOOk Back / 250

InSIde • B3

Grand vision for 1904 World’s Fair muddied by murky water.

By eLISa crOuch • [email protected] > 314-340-8119

Charles Davis, 47, had been looking for a new business with his wife for six months before he asked the Lord to intervene. §

“Lord, I’m going to sit still, and you tell me where to go,” he prayed less than a month ago. § The next day, he logged onto Craigslist and saw a listing for a burger joint down the street from his home. He went to check it out the next day. § When his wife, Kizzie

Davis, 35, saw the kitchen, she was sold. They finally found it. § They spent a week inside Ferguson Burger Bar and More on West Florissant Avenue to see how it ran. § Charles Davis brought a cashier’s check for almost $35,000 on a Friday morning to seal the deal with the owner, Lamont Slater. Slater handed them two sets of keys. § On Saturday, Michael Brown was shot.

She quit her job AND took A leAp of fAith.theN ferguSoN erupteD.

new life amid chaos

See davIS • Page B4

Photos by Laurie skrivan • [email protected] and journalists flock to the Ferguson Burger Bar & More on Thursday in Ferguson. Their business has been open and undamaged during the unrest.

Charles Davis takes matters into his own hands at the restaurant with a juvenile, whom he asked to leave three times on Tuesday night.

Kizzie Davis is comforted Wednesday by Antonio Henley, owner of Prime Time Beauty and Barber.

by aisha suLtan • [email protected] > 314-340-8300

B4 • ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH M 2 • SUnDAy • 08.24.2014

Tucked inside a strip mall with a nail shop, beauty supply store, boutique and barber shop, the Burger Bar gets a fair amount of foot traffic. Three tables line either side of the store with a counter up front for orders. The walls, bright lime green on one side and mossy green on the other are punctuated with yellow trimmed chalkboards display-ing menu specialties such as the Single Garbage burger and Bacon Double ranch. The walls are scattered with printouts of inspirational sayings like this one: “If ‘Plan A’ didn’t work, the alphabet has 25 more letters. Stay cool.”

Kizzie’s Plan A was to pay off the $70,000 debt she had after earning her master’s degree from Lindenwood University in 2011. To do that, she worked for almost five years for Tenet Healthcare at St. Louis University Hospi-tal as a financial adviser. She and Charles had been dating off and on since she was 19 and were married in January. An entrepreneur, he’s pushed her to go into business for herself for years.

She was wary.“Are we going to be OK?”“Do you trust me?”“Yes, I do.”“Have I ever let you down?”“No, you haven’t.”She picked up the phone in May and called her supervi-

sor. “I love you guys, and I appreciate everything you have done. However, I’m going to step out on faith and do my own thing.”

They poured half their savings into the Burger Bar.

•••

They arrived at their newly purchased restaurant that Saturday, as early as 8 a.m.

They were still tweaking the menu, figuring out the prices and reworking recipes. Kizzie called the health de-partment to learn the rules to pass inspection and keep a Grade A rating.

Shortly after noon, her sister, Evelyn Carter, called her cellphone.

“MB’s son just got killed around the corner from the Burger Bar.”

“It couldn’t be Mike-Mike,” Kizzie said. She had seen the man outside holding the sign that said “Ferguson Po-lice just executed my son.’” Kizzie knew both of Brown’s parents well. She had known 18-year-old Michael since he was a chubby little kid. That wasn’t his father.

“I’m telling you, it’s Mike-Mike,” her sister said.Kizzie called her good friend, known as “Key-Key,” a

close relative of the Browns.“It was Mike-Mike,” Key-Key said. “They murdered

him.”

•••

Kizzie’s daughter, 9-year-old Geniah Watson, walked out of the apartments on Canfield Drive that day with her aunt to see what all the commotion was outside. They saw the yellow police tape. Blood was everywhere.

Then she saw Brown’s covered body lying on the street.It was the biggest crowd of people she’d ever seen.Kizzie’s first thought was about her friend, Lesley

McSpadden, who had just lost her son, Michael Brown. Then, she started seeing the streets filling and how people were reacting.

“Oh, my God,” she thought. “This is deep. This is really, really deep.”

She called her sister-in-law and said Geniah should stay where she was. She and Charles figured the police would be closing the street, so it didn’t make sense to keep the Burger Bar open.

Keeping the fryers on costs money.They closed while it was still daylight and headed to the

grocery to buy more supplies for the restaurant.Geniah insisted she wanted to go to the vigil for Brown

the next day. She said she held a candle and looked at the pole that was surrounded by teddy bears.

•••

The Davises closed the Burger Bar on Sunday. The previ-ous owners did not keep Sunday hours, and they did not have enough time to get the staffing together so quickly.

As the crowds on the streets got bigger, they started worrying about their home a few blocks away, also on West Florissant Avenue.

As night fell, they stood on their front porch and watched looters cut across their yard carrying baskets of stolen merchandise and televisions out of the box.

Kizzie saw men with guns wearing ski masks running across her yard. Some walked out of the cellphone store, carrying phones in both arms, their shirts bulging with items underneath.

“Do you think they are going to come into the homes?” she asked her husband.

“We’ll be fine,” he said. “God got us.”They drop to their knees every night and every morning.“We are protected,” Charles said.Kizzie was scared to death.“Oh, my God, where are the cops?” she thought.They stood outside and watched the vandals and

thieves for hours.

•••

When the nights of tear gas and rubber bullets began, Ge-niah got even more anxious.

It reminded her of a movie she had seen, “The Purge.”“Are they even coming into people’s houses?” she

asked her mom.“No, hopefully not.”“That’s what Tayja said.”“Don’t listen to Tayja,” her mom said.Geniah listens carefully to her 17-year-old sister, Tayja

Combs. She waits up for her at night and prefers to sleep in her bed with her.

Geniah’s been asking hard questions at home.“Mama, you said it was going to be OK. You said to

trust the police.”Kizzie, who has been crying at the drop of a hat these

days, tells her baby: There are good people and bad peo-ple, good cops and bad cops. If you’re not doing anything wrong, you’ll be OK.

To herself, she says a prayer.She wants to believe that.Since they bought the place, business has been slow.Geniah finishes her lunch, picks up a large bright yellow

cardboard sign advertising the Burger Bar and walks on to the sidewalk with it. The sign covers most of her body.

She holds it up as a stream of protesters walk by her.

•••

The third day, Kizzie saw her friend, Brown’s mother, McSpadden, come into the Burger Bar with her husband and cousin, Key-Key.

It was the first time Kizzie and Lesley met since the shooting.

Kizzie held her long and hard and cried. She whispered: Are you OK?

Lesley shook her head no.They sat a table near the front, and Lesley said she

hadn’t been able to eat for three days since she lost her son.

Kizzie asked what she wanted to eat.“I don’t know,” Lesley said.“They got tripe,” Key-Key said.“OK, get me a tripe.”Kizzie brought them their meal.Lesley took a couple of bites. She wrapped up the sand-

wich and put it away.Kizzie walked them to their car.“If you get hungry, call me,” she said. “I’ll make you

food.”

•••

The Davises opened again on the fourth day.“I got my face on,” Kizzie said. She helps the cooks

make the food and cleans up the lobby while her husband takes orders at the register. Her friends and family have been coming by to help out whenever they can.

The nights were still getting out of control.By the fifth day, she started crying.“I haven’t had these types of emotions since I lost my

mom when I was 10.”

•••

Business picked up considerably as the international me-dia descended on Ferguson. The small burger joint be-came a gathering point, especially in the evenings.

Kizzie and Charles did interviews with local and national media outlets. Their business had not closed a single day (except that one Sunday) nor sustained any damage.

Once, a young man grabbed all the money in tip jar by the counter and ran out the door.

Kizzie told her husband to let it go.“Maybe he needs it more than us,” she said. But the

pressure of the long, tense days and chaotic nights was getting to her. Soon after the National Guard moved in,

things reached a breaking point.The couple had been trying to close the kitchen around

10 p.m. Charles asked a young man by the door to stop letting people in. The lobby was packed.

Kizzie still needed to clean up at night before they opened the next morning. They’ve had little sleep, and their bodies ached.

The young man kept opening the door.The third time Charles asked him to stop and was ig-

nored, he walked over.“I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” he said.“I’m not going no mother---- anywhere,” the man said.“You need to leave,” Charles repeated and shoved him

out the door.Kizzie was upset. Her husband should not have put his

hands on that young man, and she was scared to death for what could happen to them. She told Charles she was done, and told him to close up and come home.

She walked out onto the sidewalk where the young man still stood. She approached him, sobbing.

“We’re not those kind of people. We are happy to feed you. You are welcome to come back. I apologize for my hus-band putting his hands on you to shove you out,” she said.

“It’s OK,” he said.“Are you sure? Are we good?”“We’re good.”“He’s not that type of person,” she said.She could not stop her tears. She got in her car and called

her husband’s mother, who lives next door to them.“I know it’s late,” she said. “But I need you to call

Charles and make him come home.”She started to talk about the turmoil and stress of the

days, which she had kept bottled inside.Charles got home after midnight and smiled at his wife.“So, you gonna call my momma?”

•••

Every night, the Davises go to bed thanking the Lord for the pains in their legs. They wake up with their feet still sore in the morning.

Every morning, Kizzie is surprised when she arrives to open the business and sees it untouched. Her husband tries to reassure her that they have insurance. She told him to double check on what kind of damage is covered.

People are still angry, she says. But she’s also seen a lot of love being shown.

“As far the community, I think a lot of us have come closer.”

She’s still worried about what will happen. Whether Officer Darren Wilson, who shot Brown, will be charged. Whether he will be found guilty. Whether things with change with the police.

“I don’t think we’ve crossed the finish line, by far.”But, they plan to open every single day, just as they have

since the day the unrest in their little, suburban neigh-borhood changed everyone’s life.

As new customers wander in throughout the day, Charles greets many of them from behind the counter in his loud, cheerful voice: “Welcome to the Burger Bar and More! The food here is gonna tap dance on your tongue.”

Editor’s note: Some of the scenes described in this story were not directly observed by reporter Aisha Sultan but are based on interviews with those involved.

Davis • from B1

Community

‘Oh, my God. This is deep.’

Laurie Skrivan • [email protected] Watson, 9, plays with her aunt Gena Watson on Friday outside the Ferguson Burger Bar & More. Geniah was staying at the Canfield Green apartments the day Michael Brown was shot and saw his body on the ground.

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J O I N U S O N L I N E S T LTODAY. C OM / bu S i n e S S

Jim Gallagher’s column returns next week.

By JuLIE aPPLEBy • Kaiser Health News

As more Americans gain insurance under the federal health law, hospitals are re-thinking their charity programs, with some scaling back help for those who could have signed up for coverage but didn’t.

The move is prompted by concerns that offering free or discounted care to low-in-come, uninsured patients might dissuade them from getting government-subsi-dized coverage. It also reflects hospitals’ strong financial interest in having more patients covered by insurance as the fed-eral government makes big cuts in funding for uncompensated care.

If a patient is eligible to purchase sub-sidized coverage through the law’s on-

Charity care cut for some who declined coverageBJC, Ascension are among providers making changes.

With Labor Day approach-ing, expect to hear a lot about the huge skills mis-

match in the American workforce.Even with unemployment at 6.2 per-

cent, which is too high in the sixth year of an economic recovery, employers com-plain that they can’t find qualified job applicants. In a survey by Manpower, 40 percent of U.S. companies said they have trouble filling jobs.

That’s a stunning figure at a time when so many people are unemployed or un-deremployed. It fits with statistics show-ing job postings growing much faster than hires over the past five years.

By Samantha [email protected] > 314-340-8017

Patients who end up with hefty medical bills now have another payment option: an interest-free loan without the worry of a credit check.

As patients’ deductibles continue to rise, leaving them unable to pay for ser-vices in one lump sum, health finance experts say hospital officials are looking for creative ways to collect on patient bal-ances.

Five months ago, SSM Health Care inked a deal with Commerce Bank to offer these interest-free loans with three- and five-year terms to patients in the health system’s four-state footprint — Missouri,

Biases drive myth of skills gap, expert says

Hospitals team up with banks to get patients to pay

If worker shortages were real, employers could simply pay, train more.

Medical systems hope offering interest-free loans will reduce bad debt.

See ChaRity • Page E3

Employees of McDonald’s watch through a shattered window as riot police move in on protesters on West Florissant Avenue on Aug. 17. Demonstrators escaped tear gas by breaking the restaurant’s windows and flooding inside.

By JIm [email protected]

Tear gas, looters, protest signs, cops in riot gear and angry demonstrators be-came the image of St. Louis over the past two weeks, as the troubles in Fergu-son led international newscasts and hit the world’s front pages.

Brian Williams hosted “NBC Nightly

News” from the scene. The cover of Time Magazine showed a man kneeling with his hands up on a Ferguson street. The front page of the Wall Street Journal — the nation’s main business newspa-per — was dominated by a picture of a Ferguson protester in a cloud of tear gas. CNN sent the violent video of racially tinged confrontation worldwide.

Now, as tempers cool, local business leaders are worried that the region may

feel an economic backlash.Will business leaders from elsewhere

cut the St. Louis area from their list as they decide where to expand produc-tion? Will bankers think twice be-fore making a big business loan here? Will people with smart ideas decide to launch their startup elsewhere?

“It has to be a black eye for the com-

Image problemleaders worry region will suffer investment backlash after news of unrest went global

See hOSPITaLS • Page E2

See FErGuSOn • Page E4

Photos by RobeRt Cohen • [email protected] officers guard Ferguson businesses on West Florissant Avenue, just ahead of a curfew set to go into effect on Aug. 16.

DaviD [email protected] 314-340-8213

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By Jim [email protected]

St. Louis residents can hope that the re-gion won’t follow the route of Cincin-nati, another Midwestern river town that saw racially charged protests and riots, in 2001.

As in Ferguson, the Cincinnati protests began after police shot an unarmed black teenager. He was the 15th black person killed by police there in the previous five years, and the last three were unarmed, said the Rev. Damon Lynch, a black min-ister who helped lead a subsequent boy-cott.

The protests and rioting started in the run-down Over-the-Rhine neighbor-hood, but spread into downtown.

“It really shook up the psyche of Cin-cinnati,” Lynch said.

That psyche took a long time to heal.“You had the city leaders in denial, say-

ing there’s no racial profiling in Cincin-nati,” he said. “We were marching every day after the unrest, always peacefully.”

Local black leaders launched a boycott. Bill Cosby and Wynton Marsalis canceled appearances. A music festival moved to Detroit. National Urban League and Pro-gressive National Baptists pulled out of conventions.

“The boycott really hurt Cincinnati,” Peter Bronson, a former columnist for the Cincinnati Enquirer, and author of “Be-hind the Lines: Untold Stories of the Cin-cinnati Riots.”

“It was pretty ugly,” Bronson said.The Cincinnati police, upset by criti-

cism and federal monitoring, launched a

work slowdown.“Police were working back-to-back

shifts, risking their lives to save the city and never got thanks. Instead, they were demonized,” Bronson said.

The attitude became known as “drive-by policing.” Arrests fell, and crime rose. “The courthouse was like a ghost town. They weren’t bringing cases.” Within three months of the riot, shootings rose 300 percent.

The lesson Bronson draws: “If you tell the police to back down, they will.”

People were afraid to go downtown for entertainment. The Main Street district, an area of bars and nightclubs, “basically

died after the riots and never came back,” Bronson said. The Maisonette, a locally famous restaurant with a 5-star rating from Mobil Travel Guide, closed down.

It took five years, but the sides worked out a peace treaty, called the “Cincinnati Collaborative.”

As civil rights lawsuits worked their way through federal court, all sides came to the table — city officials, the police union, civil rights leaders.

A system of “problem-oriented polic-ing” was started to spot places and people causing problems. Cameras now record police stops. The department set up an early warning system designed to identify

officers showing problems and a civilian board to investigate complaints against police.

Shootings by police declined. Bronson thinks the use of Tasers helped by giving police a nonlethal way to stop a suspect.

“It wasn’t like a giant love fest, but we finally got it done,” said Al Gerhardstein, a civil rights lawyer in Cincinnati.

Cincinnati has since undergone a re-vival. “The downtown is back and healthy,” Bronson said. Over-the-Rhine, a poor neighborhood in 2001, is rapidly gentrifying, with the young middle-class moving in.

Lynch came to St. Louis during the dis-turbances in Ferguson this month to ad-vise community leaders on the Cincinnati solution.

The story went differently in Anaheim, Calif., the home of Disneyland, in the summer of 2012. Protesters threw rocks at riot police and smashed downtown win-dows in several days of unrest following a series of police shootings.

“In Anaheim, people were freaked out,” said Jose Moreno, a member of the Ana-heim School Board and an education pro-fessor at the University of California in Long Beach. “It really woke up the com-munity that in Anaheim there is a con-centration of working poor that folks don’t associate with us because of Dis-neyland.”

There were later peaceful protests, in-cluding at Disneyland.

But the ordeal didn’t have a lasting im-pact on business in the Los Angeles sub-urb. There is a “business and residential boom” in the area hit by unrest, says Ana-heim city spokeswoman Ruth Ruiz.

business

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Cincinnati riots led to long sufferingRecovery from 2001 unrest began only after negotiated agreement, changes in police procedure.

AssociAted PressA protester holds a sign up in Cincinnati in 2001. In response to a police shooting, businesses were boycotted, police launched a work slowdown, and the downtown entertainment district went dormant as crime spiked.

munity, and you can’t damp it down overnight. People will remember it,” says Richard Ward, a longtime economic de-velopment consultant in St. Louis. “This can have a tremendous long-term effect.”

So far, no business has nixed plans to expand here. No group has canceled a convention here. Hotels report normal bookings.

But people who make those decisions are asking a lot of questions.

“All of our world has changed over the past few days,” says Denny Coleman, CEO of the St. Louis Economic Develop-ment Partnership, the business recruit-ing arm of St. Louis and St. Louis County. “Nobody has said, ‘Well, I’m not coming there.’ But it’s given prospects a reason to pause until they see where this leads.”

Other cities have erupted in protests and violence following police shootings — Cincinnati in 2001; Anaheim, Calif., in 2012; Albuquerque, N.M., this spring.

The economic consequences have var-ied. In Anaheim, several days of violent disorder had little long-term effect on jobs and business in the suburban home of Disneyland near Los Angeles. The down-town area smashed in the riot is now en-joying a “boom,” says a city spokesperson.

In Cincinnati, riots spilled into down-town and led to years of discord — in-cluding a damaging business boycott by minority groups, a police work slowdown and rising crime.

The 1992 Los Angeles riots, over the po-lice beating of Rodney King, left 52 dead and 1,000 buildings in ruins — events much worse than in Ferguson. One study put the business cost at $3.8 billion in lost sales over the next 10 years.

NEXT TO EmErSONTo avoid such damage, the region’s eco-nomic salesmen and women are speak-ing soothing words to business prospects. They point out that nearly all the violence took place in a small part of a big metro area.

The prospects’ response is noncom-mittal. “Nobody has said no. It’s just that every client considering investment has raised questions,” says Joe Reagan, presi-dent of the Regional Chamber and Growth Association.

Convention planners were in St. Louis last week scouting sites. “They were see-ing for themselves that the hotels and the airport and the visitors’ attitudes show no signs of what they were seeing on the na-tional news,” said Kitty Ratcliffe, president of the St. Louis Convention and Visitors Commission. “People are still coming,” she added.

Indeed, tourists were wandering around the Gateway Arch grounds and other at-tractions all week.

“We decided to come down anyway,” said Jim Urkevich, who was visiting from Kansas City on vacation. He and his wife

saw that Ferguson was far enough from the places they wanted to see, including the Zoo, the Arch and a ballgame at Busch Stadium. “Everybody here has been real nice,” he said, taking pictures under the Arch.

The center of unrest bordered the Fer-guson-based headquarters of Emerson, a global manufacturer on the Fortune 500 list of major U.S. companies. But it is miles away from other major businesses.

That may limit the damage to St. Louis’ business reputation, Ward says. “This is not downtown. It is not something many people are going to see.”

But people elsewhere may not make the distinction between a small North County suburb and the rest of the region, says Steve Roberts, a St. Louis businessman who chairs the board of Logan University.

Roberts was in Washington last week walking past the Newseum, which posts newspaper front pages from around the world. “I couldn’t believe it,” he said. “Half the newspapers in the U.S. had pic-tures of Ferguson.” A third of the foreign newspapers also showed the unrest. “It was like the world saying to us, ‘What’s wrong with you?’”

Roberts thinks the St. Louis needs a national image cam-paign — but better funded than past promotions. “We have to defend this region as a good place to do business,” he says.

That’s not going to hap-pen — at least not right away, says Coleman, the city-county development head. “If we did that now. It would be like fill-ing a balloon with helium,” said Coleman. “As pretty as that looks, another pinprick could blow it up.”

rESPONDiNG QUiCKlyDespite this month’s battering, business leaders say St. Louis’ long-term image depends on

how the region responds in the weeks ahead. If the world sees St. Louis trying to improve education and inclusion of minorities, the damage to the region will subside, they say.

“We have to reach out to groups that don’t feel included,” said Coleman. “Be-fore we start a media campaign, we have to get at some of the roots of this.”

St. Louis businesses may have to pay for it. “Government does not have the re-sources to make a difference,” says Rob-erts. “The state is barely making its bud-get, the cities are struggling and there is no federal money coming down.

The effort should give some hope to the young people who live around West Flo-rissant Avenue and who were out in the street, says Mike Roberts, Steve Roberts’ brother and business partner. Their only role models are “people with a ball in their hand, a microphone for rap or are emulat-ing an illegal pharmacist,” said Mike Rob-erts, who is black.

He wants major St. Louis companies to help to form a group to offer such young people job training directly tied to jobs at those companies, or to give them skills to start their own businesses.

Owners of major St. Louis businesses ought to consider giving more contracts to minority-owned companies, says Ed Bryant, president of the St. Louis Minor-ity Business Council. Those businesses are more likely to hire minorities than white-owned firms.

Some think it may also require a change in police tactics.

“We had a militarized reaction by the police in the very first few nights of dem-onstrations and looting,” said Reagan, who runs the region’s main business group. “What put us on the front page of the Wall Street Journal wasn’t a riot or protest. It was the military presence by local police.”

The protests and violence have made St. Louis a harder sell to out-of-towners. The region already battles a reputation as a crime capital, says a longtime executive recruiter, who didn’t want to be quoted criticizing the town he pitches to highly paid professionals. “The wife will start looking into St. Louis, and she’ll come up with research that shows we’re number one or two,” he says.

He’ll argue that those crime rankings reflect the city of St. Louis only — a small part of the region — and that metro area crime rates are much lower. But pictures of looting in the suburbs make crime worries ring true, he says.

In the Ferguson area, businesses are wondering about the future of the neigh-borhood.

“We’ve yet to hear from anyone saying: That’s it. We’re out of here,” said Brian Goldman, president of the Northwest Chamber of Commerce, which represents Ferguson-area businesses.

“It’s a holding pattern. People are wait-ing to see what happens. What happens when the verdict comes down?” he asks, referring to the decision on whether to prosecute the policeman who shot Mi-chael Brown.

Former Ferguson Mayor Brian Fletcher wants to reverse the town’s image with 4,000 “I love Ferguson” yard signs, plus T-shirts. He and about 35 business and civic leaders formed an “I love Ferguson” committee. About half are black, Fletcher said.

“I have a line out the door of people wanting signs,” he said.

Mary Engelbreit, the St. Louis native who runs her namesake company known for sweet artworks and greeting cards, drew a poster to raise money for Ferguson. It shows a black mother and child looking at newspaper headline saying “Hands up, don’t shoot.”

“No one should have to teach their chil-dren this in the USA,” says the poster.

Engelbreit drew it after watching the mother of Michael Brown on TV. “I lost a son 10 years ago, and I knew what she was feeling,” Engelbreit said.

She thinks the shock of the riots will bring people together to solve the prob-lems of Ferguson. “I think it will have a good impact eventually,” she says.

But in the meantime, “We have to re-build the image of St. Louis. We look ter-rible,” Engelbreit said.

FErGUSON •

FrOm E1

Long-term image could depend on change

photos by Laurie skrivan • [email protected] man kneels in protest with his hands up on Aug. 18 along West Florissant Avenue in Ferguson. Police were limiting protesting to the sidewalks throughout the day.

“They think they are going to scare us. We are not going anywhere. They are not going to lock me out of my own house,” said Brian Nickel of Ferguson on Aug. 18. Nickel arrived at 1:30 a.m. to stand guard with his AR-15 at the Papa John’s Pizza on West Florissant Avenue.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch Ferguson coverage - Aug. 24

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