At approximately noon on Saturday, August 9 Darren Wilson shot and killed Michael Brown in broad daylight, a few dozen yards away from his grandmothers’ apartment off of West Florissant in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson. Brown’s corpse lay in the street for hours. The officer, who would not be identified until almost a week later, was placed on paid administrative leave.

These are the facts. Nearly everything else about what happened remains disputed. Whether Michael Brown was involved in a theft a few blocks away, what if any altercation took place, the toxicology of Wilson’s blood at the time, even how many times Brown was shot— these all remain obscured as I write this.

What happened next is even more bizarre.

In each of the following days, protests and vigils were convened near where Mike Brown had been killed. Protesters marched on the Ferguson police department, demanding the officer’s name be released and for the process of justice to begin. Simultaneously, looters began to conduct raids on numerous local businesses, including burning a Quiktrip to ashes.

The police response was swift, shoddy, and undeniably heavy handed. Ferguson PD moved in on armored personnel carriers in full battle rattle, with automatic rifles haphazardly trained on unarmed civilians indiscriminately. No state of emergency, martial law, or curfew had been decreed.

They employed tear gas, rubber bullets, police dogs, and the long range acoustic device (LRAD) to break up the crowd on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday. Police arrested dozens of people without cause including two reporters for national publications and one city alderman. They pushed the crowd back into the residential neighborhoods nearby, firing tear gas on to people’s front yards.

By Wednesday, President Barack Obama had issued a statement, and on Thursday, Governor Jay Nixon cancelled his planned appearance at the State Fair Ham Breakfast in Sedalia to intervene. The St. Louis County Police were relieved of command, and the Missouri Highway Patrol under the direction of Ferguson native Captain Ron Johnson, took over.

Since Johnson and the Highway Patrol have arrived, there have been no incidents with the public. However, as the investigation moves forward and reports come out, it’s impossible to fully extricate the present from the near past. The information so far, in the form of the officer’s name, one related incident report and conflicting press conferences, has been less than comforting.

Well, That changed too. There’s been protests all over the country, but few that have been broken up with such a show of force as in Ferguson, Shaw, and Tower Grove since I wrote this piece the first time.

I try to think through all of the issues this episode raises with a heavy heart and an open mind, but I want to gravitate toward absolutes.

For instance, in no universe that I can conceive is it just to shoot an unarmed person in the back, let alone that the shooter is a police man, let alone that the victim put his hands up and cried out “Don’t Shoot!”

In no America I want to live in is it just to break up lawful and peaceful assembly with the machines of war; even less so in the obviously trigger happy and poorly disciplined way in which this particular action was done. From any perspective — tactical or marketing — the operation was an unqualified disaster for the police.

While the incident itself, the police response to the peaceful demonstrations, the looting on Sunday are all in their own way terrible, I still want to justice metered out in due time with due process. I want Darren Wilson to be arrested, charged, tried and if found guilty, convicted for the murder of Michael Brown. I want him to be sentenced in accordance with the crime, and for him to live with the knowledge and regret of having taken a life. I am morally and legally opposed to the death penalty and do not wish to see the state take one more life, not even Wilson’s.

In some ways, however, these are the easier questions to grapple with. At the very least, there is a sensibility, a moral reasoning to which to go. What really keeps me up at night have less black and white answers.

Like, what can I actually offer my neighbors in their time of duress? How can I be of service without invoking my privilege as an educated white man? Am I supposed to risk a rifle aimed at me for justice? Does it make me a coward that I was unwilling to do so? Am I supposed to get a gun and hole up my family in our house, fearful of our neighbors and police? Should I get a cape and try to be a hero? Do I vote for new elected officials? Is that my only redress? Is it acceptable that my only emotion is ennui, and that I’m ashamed I’m not surprised that every 28 hours a black man is killed by police, to say nothing of the decades long mass imprisonment of nonwhites in this country? How do I talk to the children on the street or in the rec center if we discuss this? Do I warn them to cower in front of every badge?