Police Response in Ferguson, MO Draws Social Media Comparison to Gotham Lockdown in The Dark Knight Rises

As police wearing riot gear and outfitted with military-grade hardware respond to protests and riots in Ferguson, Missouri, social media has exploded with criticism directed at the scale of the police response and their decision to arrest local politicians and members of the media.

One of the criticisms that’s come across our Twitter feed pretty regularly is a comparison of the Ferguson and St. Louis County police presence to the military forces working to prevent attempts at evacuating Gotham City during the third act of Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises.

The photos above are taken from the film (top) and from the scene this week in Missouri, bottom. And it’s touched off a series of responses:

The unrest was touched off earlier this week when a Ferguson police officer shot and killed an 18-year-old black man during an altercation. The specifics of the altercation vary depending on who’s telling the story, but the consistent details are that Michael Brown and a friend were approached by police for walking in the street and that within minutes Brown had been shot several times by an as-yet-unidentified officer who is currently on paid administrative lead pending an internal investigation.

There have been both peaceful protests and looting in Ferguson and the surrounding area in the last few days, and today the police presence has seemingly escalated significantly, with numerous reports of journalists among those arrested and a local alderman who has been live-tweeting the events in town also taken into custody tonight.