Insincere Apologies Mean Nothing

While I was scrolling through the New York Times Op-Ed page, I came across an article about some new developments in the Ferguson, MO case where the unarmed African American teenager Michael Brown was shot. This Op-Ed featured a video of the Chief of Police, Tom Jackson, making some type of apology to multiple people. There has been a lot of controversy around this case because some people think that this was a case of racism demonstrated by the white Ferguson police, much like the Zimmerman case in Florida a few years ago.

In the article that followed, Rosenthal (the author) brought up many good points about the abundance of flaws in the apology. I agreed with the majority of them. He talked about how weird the setting of the video was. It was filmed in front of an American Flag, and Jackson was wearing a golf shirt instead of his police uniform. I think that because he was not wearing his uniform the message felt more as if it was coming from a normal citizen which is not as powerful as coming from the police unit, where he could have acted as a representative of all the officers who did not properly handle the case. Another odd part of the apology which the author brought up was the timing of when he made the video. Brown was shot in early August of this year, and the apology is just happening. I think that this is an unreasonable amount of time to wait before apologizing for killing somebody and it gives the message a sense of insincerity.

I saw many aspects of the video which I thought he could have improved on, at least enough to make the message seem meaningful. He stood in front of the camera, looking almost bored the whole time and clearly had written out notes about what he was going to say. He held a paper in his hand and looked at it constantly, adding to the phony sense of his speech. I assume that this apology video is merely what he is forced to do to keep his job, and if he really wants to make anything better, he should make a genuine statement of regret, rather than an unfelt one which hardly makes the situation any better.