Ferguson and Marketing

In the event that recently occurred in Ferguson, MO many questions have been brought to attention about the way police treat the people. We all know that police are supposed to serve and protect people in their city/town but in Ferguson this is different. Police scare people more than they protect them. “The images of police in riot gear armed with heavy weaponry and tanks has at times become the alarming backdrop for the Ferguson story, with pictures that television can’t resist” (http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/08/19/heavy-metal-why-ferguson-has-conservatives-challenging-military-style-police/). This is bad because the police department is marketing themselves as being violent and ruthless. They are making it so people view them in a negative way rather than a positive way. Another way that they are marketing themselves wrong is that they don’t fully answer the questions they are asked. In the interview we watch in class, a head of one of the police departments was asked the percentage of whites on his squad. He didn’t say the percentage of whites but says “three African Americans…there are actually six but one left rarely recently..we also have a Hispanic and two Pacific Islanders” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUdHIatS36A&sns=tw). He knows that the majority of the police are Caucasian. Another way that the police department is marketing itself in a poor way is that its police are dressing like they are fighting a war. “Aside from the egregious violation of civil liberties, the most worrying development of the crackdown is how the police have appeared and acted like soldiers..treating the streets of Missouri as if they were the streets of Kabul or Baghdad. Instead of blue uniforms they’re wearing camouflage and SWAT gear…holding batons in their hands, they’re armed to the teeth with assault rifles. Instead of keeping their sidearms in their holsters, they’re pointing sniper rifles directly at civilians” (http://www.salon.com/2014/08/19/they_are_no_longer_police_why_ferguson_reminds_us_that_we_are_not_exceptional/). As a result of this people feel as if they are in a war. Police are making people feel unsafe at all times when it should be the other way around. People should feel like police are protecting them and not threatening them. Overall, Ferguson police have created themselves to be seen negatively due to their actions and their marketing.