DON'T SHOOT COALITION (DSC)
Undated, circa November 16, 2014
Discover the Networks: A Guide to the Political Left
The Don't Shoot Coalition (DSC) was established in the immediate aftermath of an August 9, 2014 incident where a white police officer shot and killed an 18-year-old black male named Michael Brown, who had forcibly robbed a convenience store in a St. Louis suburb (Ferguson, Missouri) just a few minutes earlier. Brown's death instantly sparked accusations of police misconduct and racism, and led to several days of violent rioting and looting by local blacks. When compelling ballistic, eyewitness, and forensic evidence eventually (in late October 2014) indicated that Brown in fact had assaulted the officer and tried to steal his gun just prior to the fatal shooting, the radicals' rage over the incident was undiminished. DSC, for its part, continued to denounce “the murder of Michael Brown” as evidence of “the ongoing crisis of police-on-black crime.” Moreover, the Coalition emphasized the need for society to “address the ongoing systemic problems of police practices in black, brown and all oppressed communities.”
From its inception, DSC issued a set of demands that included: “justice for Mike Brown and other cases of police brutality in the St. Louis region”; “an expanded Department of Justice investigation into patterns of civil rights violations by police”; “an end to ongoing racial profiling across the St. Louis region”; “civilian oversight and review of shootings and other allegations of police misconduct”; “ongoing initiatives to ensure that local law enforcement departments represent the communities they serve”; and efforts to “promote the vote, so that our democratic institutions appropriately represent all segments of our communities.”
In addition to the demands listed above, DSC called for Ferguson/St. Louis-area police to abide by Rules of Engagement stipulating that they “wear only the attire minimally required for their safety”; that “specialized riot gear” be used only as “a last resort”; that “crowd-control equipment such as armored vehicles, rubber bullets, rifles, and tear gas ... not be used”; that police or government authorities “not interfere with the free flow of information through tactics such as ... interception of cell or other mobile conversations”; that “safe houses ... be considered sacred ground and only entered by police when called upon or if extremely necessary”; that police commanders “allow protests to take and occupy larger and more disruptive spaces than would normally be tolerated”; that police “be tolerant of more minor lawbreaking ... when deciding whether to escalate the use of force”; and that police refrain from engaging in “intimidation and harassment of protesters.”
On October 22, 2013, DSC submitted an extensive list of recommendations to the U.S. Justice Department as ways to improve the “abysmal state of policing in North St. Louis County.” Specifically, these items stipulated that all police should be required to wear body cameras during the course of their work; that police should be barred from conducting any consent searches unless they first obtain from the suspect permission on a signed form (“translated into [various] languages for immigrant communities”) or on video; that after any encounter with civilians, police should provide them with “receipts” that include “the reason for the stop, and the officer’s name and badge number”; that officers should “carry palm cards with instructions on how to file an Internal Affairs complaint to provide to any citizen who requests it, with the officer name and badge number included”; that a “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” should be established to deal with victims and perpetrators of police brutality; that all officers should be trained extensively in “cultural sensitivity”; that detailed “racial profiling data” which includes pedestrian stops should be collected by all police departments; that the names of all police officers involved in incidents where deadly force was used should be made public “within 48 hours”; and that all Missouri police forces should be required to use “an assessment tool gauging racial bias … that goes beyond the recording of racial composition of police stops.”
Among DSC's 45 coalition members are the Advancement Project, Amnesty International, the Catholic Worker Community (St. Louis), Jewish Voice for Peace (St. Louis), Missouri NOW, Missourians Organizing for Reform & Empowerment (MORE), the National Organization for Women (Missouri), the New Black Panther Party, the Palestine Solidarity Committee (St. Louis), the PICO Network, the Service Employees International Union's “Healthcare Missouri” project, and Veterans For Peace.
A November 2014 analysis in the American Thinker notes that all of DSC's coalition members are united by the common thread of “some grievance against an authority —police, corporations, or otherwise —that they feel has abused their rights, or the rights of others.” “The eclectic composition of the DSC,” adds the piece, “suggests that it assembled, not as a coalition of persons who see themselves as long standing victims of police brutality, but as collegial progressive activists who, when summoned to align behind the meme of police brutality against young black males, signed up in a shared spirit of victimhood.”
DSC is co-chaired by Denise Lieberman, a senior attorney with the Advancement Project and a former ACLU (Eastern Missouri) legal director, and Michael McPherson of the St. Louis chapter of Veterans for Peace. The Coalition's most public spokesperson is Montague Simmons, leader of the Organization for Black Struggle , a group founded in 1980 “to fill a vacuum left by the assaults on the Black Power Movement.”
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