Ferguson Shooting Case Study

On August 9th, 2014, Michael Brown, a black man, was shot and killed by a white police officer named Darren Wilson. Witnesses accounts differ on whether or not the shooting was justified, but the evidence collected from the interior of Officer Wilson’s patrol car, from the street where the shooting took place, as well as the multiple autopsies suggested that the shooting did, in fact, concur with Officer Wilson’s version of events (1), and a grand jury chose not to proceed with charges against Wilson. Protests had begun in the hours after the shooting, as the story spread of the white police officer gunning down an unarmed black man, inflaming years of racial tensions that had been festering in Ferguson and around the country. In Ferguson in particular, the majority black population (67% of Ferguson residents) were being policed by a …show more content…
The next competency that could be used is energizing others, in this case for the purpose to work across factions and groups for a collective purpose. Intervening skillfully is another competency that could be put to use, by holding people to a purpose, focusing the energy of the multiple factions, and enacting a real and beneficial change in the community. The first competency to use in the situation in Ferguson and around the country is to diagnose the situation. For effective leadership to occur, the situation needs to be understood. For every situation, there are parts that are technical challenges and there are adaptive challenges. Technical challenges are those that can be easily fixed by someone with knowledge on this issue, without a deep behavioral change being necessary. In Ferguson, a technical challenge would a lack of body cameras for officers to record interactions with the populace, giving definitive accounts of what happened in situations where people feel a wrong has occurred. This is a problem that be taken care of easily, without any