Sometime in the future, after tempers have cooled in Ferguson, Mo., over the shooting of Michael Brown, compliance officers should devour all the post-mortems and case studies that inevitably will come. The lessons that can be learned from Brown’s shooting, and police response afterward, are many. They dizzy the mind, really.
One week ago I thought the primary lesson from Brown’s death was obvious. I knew the prime fact, that Brown was unarmed and had his hands up when Officer Darren Wilson shot him. I’d seen the images of police in army gear moving through Ferguson like an invasion force. The issue for ethics & compliance officers was clear: that social media, and its ability to document misconduct in real time, can be a tool to improve conduct in the moment—a point the Ferguson police, in all their buffoonish militarized glory, missed completely.
