Bret Stephens: Ferguson, Lies and Statistics

Bret Stephens: Ferguson, Lies and Statistics - WSJ:
"Darren Wilson has been exonerated, again, in last August’s shooting death of Michael Brown, and that ought to be as much a vindication for the onetime Ferguson, Mo., police officer as it is a teachable moment for the rest of America.
It won’t be.
The story line has failed, so the statistics have been put to work.
That the claims made against Mr. Wilson were doubtful should have been clear within days of Brown’s death, and again in November after a grand jury, having heard from some 60 witnesses, declined to indict the officer—an outcome one outraged commentator denounced as having “openly and shamelessly mocked our criminal justice system and laid bare the inequality of our criminal jurisprudence.”
Yet if anyone was openly and shamelessly mocking the criminal-justice system, it was so much of the media itself, credulously accepting or sanctimoniously promoting the double fable of Ferguson: that a “gentle giant” had been capriciously slain by a trigger-happy cop; and that a racist justice system stood behind that cop.
At least half that fable was put to rest last week by an exhaustive Justice Department report.
It demolishes the lie that Brown was shot in the back, along with the lie that he was surrendering to Mr. Wilson, hands in the air, when he was shot.
It confirms that Brown physically assaulted the officer, who had good grounds to fear for his life.
And it confirms that eyewitnesses either lied to investigators or refused to be interviewed out of fear of local vigilantes.
“Witness 109 claimed to have witnessed the shooting, stated that it was justified, and repeatedly refused to give formal statements to law enforcement for fear of reprisal should the Canfield Drive neighborhood find out that his account corroborated Wilson.”
Witness 113 “gave an account that generally corroborated Wilson, but only after she was confronted with statements she initially made in an effort to avoid neighborhood backlash. . . . She explained to the FBI that ‘You’ve gotta live the life to know it,’ and stated that she feared offering an account contrary to the narrative reported by the media that Brown held his hands up in surrender.”
Now there’s a story for the media:
A community in which honest people can’t tell the truth for fear of running afoul local thugs enforcing “the narrative reported by the media.”
Or is that more of a story about the media...?