Throwing The Bullshit Flag

If you Google-search "molotov Ferguson", you can find a plethora of video and written story links to report after report from the lamestream media, and even alternative media sites like Breitbart BigMedia (who ought to know better), who have parroted for days and days the allegation that protesters in Ferguson are hurling Molotov cocktails right and left nightly.

So, for the record, anyone who does that, as a general rule, deserves a marksman's bullet in the head, or arrest on every charge from domestic terrorism to attempted murder that can be sustained by the facts in their case.

But if you look for video of such an event anytime recently, you begin to rapidly feel like Captain Ahab attempting to locate Moby Dick. (I.e. there may be one such actual example, somewhere, but no one has seen it in a very long time.)

But to listen to daily and nightly news reports, and police press releases, you'd think they were coming down like raindrops in a summer shower there. Yet despite hundreds upon hundreds of professional news crews, thousands of amateur videographers with cell phone video, and a legion of news directors who'd play the cut of an actual firebomb conflagration endlessly, like the Rodney King beating video, just for the ratings boost, there are no such shots in existence.

We generally get the same pic of a single man throwing a burning CS grenade back at the police who fired it, rather than one actual clip of a firebomb arcing into the police vicinity - or anywhere else - and exploding.

For the benefit of you younger whippersnappers too young to have experienced the actual 1960's firsthand, for whom this is unfamiliar territory, actual molotovs thrown are not hard to spot in the wild.

Try this example from Ukraine, notably at about the 0:42 mark.
In case you were confused, that is what a glass bottle filled with flammable petroleum products looks like on impact with someone or something you don't like.
So, where's that video from Ferguson??? Ten networks and 4,000,000 YouTube videographers shrug their shoulders, yet the claim is repeated over and over again.

Total number of videos that document this occurrence from Ferguson, in the last week-and-a-half: zero.
Total number of police officers from there with injuries consistent with a firebomb getting lobbed at them: zero.
Total number of police and media reports alleging "Molotov cocktails" being thrown: hundreds, thus far.

Having been observed before now, that phenomenon has a name.

What you can find with virtually no trouble at all, is video after video of the po-po there, whether city, county, or now state, lobbing CS tear gas bombs into non-violent protesters as though they were getting bonus bucks per round expended.

There are certainly some violent screw-ups there, whether we're talking looters, arsonists, and violent instigators.

The textbook way you handle that in civil disturbances is to wade into the crowd with overwhelming force in a extraction team, pluck them out, drag them back to police lines, book them, and max them out with every charge they merit.
(Don't believe me just because I say so; head over to read the Army's FM on Civil Disturbances and look it up for yourself. [.pdf alert.] Section 6-10 is what you're after.)
The textbook way to radicalize and convert a non-violent crowd into a violent mob is by profligate use of force against non-violent protesters as though they were all rabid anarchist bomb throwers.

So, you tell me which scene is being documented every day and night in Ferguson for the last week and a half.

"Molotov cocktails" being thrown?
I'm calling BULLSHIT, with bullshit filling, bullshit frosting, and a piquant drenching of bullshit sauce with shredded bullshit flakes, topped with a dungball of bullshit shaped like a cherry on top.

Enjoy your dessert.
Officer Safety will be your server.