Five Years Since Ferguson, and What?

Five years ago yesterday, Darren Wilson shot and killed Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, launching the Black Lives Matter movement more fully into the national spotlight and proving once again that the U.S. is many things, but a land of equality is not one of them.

Today, Phillip Atiba Goff, professor of policing equity at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and who works with police departments across the country to decrease bias, gave his personal remembrance of it and his thoughts for today and tomorrow:

Officer Darren Wilson shot and killed Michael Brown, Jr. on August 9, 2014. The country awoke to the explosive tensions between police and Black communities, and those of us who work in policing had our worlds turned upside down. But, for me, "Ferguson" began today. August 10.

I was still unpacking boxes in a new city when Ferguson caught fire. But my first notification was an email I received on the morning of August 10, 2014. It was from a therapist who was working with a community that had just lost a young Black man to police violence.

The therapist telling me that police killed Michael Brown was the first time I saw his name. She said that the community was hurting. Bad. And that she thought my team’s research on dehumanization could help them make sense of what had happened.

She thanked me for the work and then, as now, I was ashamed. Working in the academy and from the distance of my nonprofit can keep me insulated from the agony that is so close to communities I study and work in.

I often fear that the work we do is small when compared to the problem. Looking back on the email now—as I have every year since—gives me chills. To think about the humility and the rage and the heartache this woman was holding together for and with her community…

That Policing Equity’s work was anywhere near that trauma feels at once like we were given too great a gift and that we delivered too little to the folks whose pain would birth a movement that made the work we do possible.

Today, I look around and I wonder why the country doesn’t feel ashamed. In the 5 years since Ferguson, we have seen improvements, but national commitment to police reform has all but evaporated.

In 2017, philanthropy gave roughly $220 million to criminal justice reform efforts—a drop in the bucket compared to the size of the problem. Of that, $200 million went to decarceration efforts. The rest was split evenly between policing and re-entry.

$10 million to policing compared to $1.6 billion in federal aid to policing alone. We have delivered so little to these communities since Ferguson compared to what they need, what we owe them.

I know that the crises of climate, immigration, and whatever happened in Washington DC 13 minutes ago legitimately command the entirety of our attention. And I get that we have limited capacity to solve problems simultaneously. We have to prioritize.

But on the 5-year anniversary, I read the letter again, like I do every year. And again I think, the people of Ferguson gave the country such a gift. Awareness. Resilience. The vision of a better country in the form of engaged youth.

And, again, I am ashamed. Because we have not prioritized them. We have not given them back what their efforts are worth.

So, today, I pray we choose different. Before this Ferguson is forgotten and the next Ferguson demands our attention.

If Mike Brown were still alive, he would be 23 years old.