Patricia Greig: Ferguson just latest incident in vicious circle of violence

Police in riot gear move past a vehicle that continues to burn on the street in Ferguson Missouri. Photo / AAP

On August 9, Michael Brown was walking through a housing estate with his friend Dorian Johnson. Officer Darren Wilson pulled up next to Brown looking for a robbery suspect.

Johnson says: "We were so close, almost inches away, that when he tried to open his door aggressively, the door ricocheted both off me and Big Mike's body and closed back on the officer."

A witness says Wilson grabbed hold of Brown's neck while he was still in the car. Two shots were fired. Brown freed himself and ran. There were six more shots fired.

Johnson, and other witnesses, say Brown had his hands up in surrender and was insisting he was unarmed when he was shot and killed. A grand jury found Johnson had no case to answer.

Three autopsies noted that Brown had been shot at least six times, including twice in the head.

One week after Brown was shot I travelled to America and experienced the unrest for myself. The protests continued for weeks. The Ferguson community waited for information, a State of Emergency was called and curfews put in place.

The world saw the wide reach of social media during the Trayvon Martin case (another African American youth shot dead while walking through a housing estate) and the acquittal of his shooter George Zimmerman. The protests and demonstrations were easily reactivated in the Brown case.

Hip hop star Killer Mike said: "We have essentially gone from being communities that were policed by people from the communities to being communities that are policed by strangers, and that's no longer a community, that's an area that's under siege."

The people agreed. The unrest didn't trickle across the country, the country heaved with it.

Images of the violence in Ferguson were splashed across newsstands. We were dazed. We were mesmerised. We watched Brown's funeral on television. We had many moments of silence. Knowing glances shared between strangers on the street.

The tension was palpable, yet uniting. Everyone knew what had happened in Ferguson and that there was an element of society that was corrupt. Opinions on what the element was were different, of course.

A friend of mine is from St Louis. To see a place she identified with her upbringing teeming with the National Guard and so many angry and hard-done-by people was heart-breaking. The impression was that everyone knew an 18-year-old boy. And that any 18-year-old could be in the wrong place, at the wrong time.

A shift is needed socially - something Obama touched on this week in his speech following the grand jury's decision, something he plainly has no solution to.

Although the media coverage dropped off after those first weeks, protests and unrest continued.

One hundred and eight days later demonstrators were remobilised in an instant. There are protests in major cities and police cars burn. Tear gas is released. Looting starts. People protest because it is their right to.

This is a situation that could explode in the blink of an eye until it is resolved and not brushed under yet another rug in yet another police department.

• Patricia Greig is a Herald sub-editor