Even Ray Kelly Thinks Ferguson Cops Are Out of Control
Ray Kelly's tenure as commissioner of the NYPD included the violent dismantling of Occupy Wall Street and the 2004 Republican National Convention protests, the killing of unarmed black men like Ramarley Graham, Sean Bell, and Tamon Robinson, and the escalation of stop-and-frisk from occasionally used police tactic to daily reality for many New Yorkers. Even he agrees: The policing situation in Ferguson needs fixing.
"The toothpaste is out of the tube here," Kelly told Bloomberg News, which interviewed several high-profile police commissioners about the way law enforcement has handled the unrest following Michael Brown's death. "There's lots of things that should have been done differently, and you have to live with them."
Kelly said that it is "mind-boggling" that 50 of Ferguson's 53 police officers are white, while the area's population is 70 percent black, and criticized police for closely guarding relevant information, rather than releasing it to the public: "[Information] certainly has the potential for quelling or lessening disturbances. You tell them what you know and tell them what you don't know, rather than dribbling it out."
Let this be a wake-up call to officials in Missouri, then: When a public figure as pro-police, as resistant to criticism as Ray Kelly says you're doing it wrong, you're probably doing it wrong.
