Written by: Anne Meador

If you believe mainstream media, Ferguson turned a corner Tuesday night. The riots are settling down, and justice in the form of U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder arrived on Wednesday.

“As Tension Eases on Ferguson’s Streets, Focus Turns to Investigation,” reads the New York Times headline.

“No teargas used in relatively calm nighttime protests,” says the Guardian.

“No bullets, no teargas mark ‘turning point’ in Ferguson,” proclaims MSNBC.

These major media outlets, among others, parroted Missouri police captain Ron Johnson’s talking point from his late-night press conference, that an alleged de-escalation of conflict marks a “turning point.”

Peaceful, rationale people—with the aid of law enforcement—are winning out over “the agitators, the criminals,” who are “embedded” in their midst.

Following another shooting of an African-American man on Tuesday by police not far from Ferguson, this assertion is nothing short of Orwellian. It is intended to pacify the citizens of Ferguson and justify the violence inflicted on them.

Relative Calm

There is a new standard for peace on the streets: the absence of teargas, bullets, or flash grenades. But demonstrators have been calm throughout; it’s the police and National Guard who have been violent. By some twisted logic, law enforcement has acted virtuously by not deploying all its weapons of war, just some of them. Thus Ron Johnson congratulates himself, and the press gives a gracious nod of approval.

Never mind that arresting 47 protestors when supposedly only a few of them were criminals and agitators makes no sense.

Never mind that nearly every mainstream media outlet got it wrong when reporting the facts on the ground.

If you have become immune to the sight of armored vehicles and assault weapons, you could call it calm. But many reporters must have packed up and gone home early Tuesday night. Because a little after midnight, the shit hit the fan.

A Single Water Bottle

“In all my life I have never been so terrified,” writes Rosa Clemente.

She relates a harrowing story about how she and several others “were chased like animals by the cops.”

I saw them raising their batons and getting in formation. As I was finishing talking to Trymaine, we saw a water bottle, plastic water bottle being thrown, people kind of looked up, turned back to what they were doing talking etc.…and the next thing police came at us like charging bulls, weapons drawn, screaming, causing mass confusion “leave the area now!” “Don’t move!”

They were pursued, surrounded and ordered to lie down. “We were told if we did not stop moving we would be shot. We complied.”

For most of the evening, hundreds of heavily armed police and National Guard warned demonstrators to stay on the sidewalk, even though the street was blocked off and there was no traffic. “They need to keep moving. If they don’t move, take them to jail,” Missouri State Trooperssaid.

Chief Johnson alleges that when glass bottles and urine were thrown at law enforcement, they were forced to “take action.”

But many reports from independent journalists contradict Johnson. Some report more than one projectile thrown at police, but it was only a single plastic bottle that set them off. Kevin Gosztola of Firedoglake maintains that about 12:15am, “As far as press could tell, a single water bottle was thrown by a protester.” On his Facebook page, Gosztola says, “A water bottle was tossed or thrown. That’s it.”

He further reports:

Armored personnel carriers and police vehicles with police in riot gear swiftly moved out of the storefront parking lots and onto the street. They parked and then unloaded and formed lines with their rifles drawn. In the lots, police in vests had their rifles out too. That was all it took to send the situation spiraling out of control.

False Arrests

Police arrested Max Suchan, who was wearing the green hat which identified him as a legal observer. The National Lawyer’s Guild says that he was documenting police indiscriminately apprehending and arresting people of color in the “snatch and grab” style characteristically used during civil disobedience protests. When he identified himself as a legal observer to officers, they threw him to the ground.

Police continue to arrest journalists. An officer shoved photographer Coulter Loeb with his baton, asking him, “Do you want to go to jail?” He was thrown to the ground, arrested and held overnight.

Loeb believes that the large number of press negatively influenced the situation. Police were just as unprepared for an influx of media as they were for major protests, he thinks. “A camera can be just as scary as a gun to a cop in my experience. They weren’t prepared for 200 lenses pointed at them.”

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