The weeks of anxious waiting and hours of deliberating ended Monday, but the grand jury’s decision not to indict a white Ferguson, Missouri, police officer in the fatal shooting of black 18-year-old Michael Brown will likely reverberate throughout the community and nation for days to come.
THE LATEST: Attorneys for Michael Brown’s family and the Rev. Al Sharpton criticized St. Louis County Prosecutor Bob McCulloch’s decision to take the case in front of a grand jury and not to appoint a special prosecutor. They also took protesters who committed violence to task during Tuesday’s news conference.
THE BEGINNING: Officer Darren Wilson shot and killed Brown, who was unarmed, shortly after noon Aug. 9 in the middle of the street after a scuffle. Brown’s body lay there for hours as police investigated and an angry crowd of onlookers gathered. Several days of tense protests in the predominantly black community followed, prompting Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon to call in the National Guard. McCulloch decided to present the case to a grand jury.
THE ANNOUNCEMENT: Made up of nine white people and three black people, the grand jury met 25 days over three months, and heard more than 70 hours of testimony from 60 witnesses. McCulloch held a prime-time news conference Monday to reveal the decision, and described inconsistent witness accounts. He never mentioned that Brown was unarmed when he was killed.
THE PUBLIC RESPONSE: Thousands waited in the streets of Ferguson and in other major U.S. cities on Monday, and responded with shouts of anger. In Ferguson, some began throwing objects at police, and soon began to smash windows and set fire to businesses and cars. Authorities lobbed tear gas to disperse the crowd.
When daylight broke, about a dozen businesses had been severely damaged or destroyed along a stretch of West Florissant Avenue in the north St. Louis suburb. Sixty-one people were arrested in Ferguson and 21 were arrested in the Shaw neighborhood of St. Louis, while 14 people had protest-related injuries.
THE DOCUMENTS: More than 1,000 pages of grand jury documents were released Monday, including Wilson’s full testimony in which he described the scuffle in his patrol car and recognizing the cigars in Brown’s hand as possibly being connected to a report of a convenience store robbery. Wilson also said that Brown approached him: “And when he gets about … 8 to 10 feet away … all I see is his head and that’s what I shot.”
THE FINAL SAY? The U.S. Justice Department has its own investigation into possible civil rights violations that could result in federal charges for Wilson, but investigators would need to satisfy a rigorous standard of proof. The department also has launched a broad probe into the Ferguson Police Department.
WHAT’S NEXT: A protest is planned for Tuesday evening in downtown St. Louis, and St. Louis Archbishop Robert Carlson has scheduled a 5 p.m. Votive Mass for Peace and Justice.
(AP)
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4 Responses
Why did YWN choose a blatantly biased news source for this? The author clearly has a point of view that the cops are wrong, the jury biased, the prosecutor biased. Sure, they’d no mention he was unarmed. There also no mention that he attacked the cop and was going for the cop’s gun.
What’s next is that Ferguson is destroyed and is well on its way to becoming a ‘hood. Businesses that were firebombed will be shuttered for months, many forever, and plenty of those that weren’t, will leave for greener pastures. The middle class will leave, houses will decay, and soon it will look like any other slum. All thanks to politicians and race mongers who have an agenda and sought to exploit it, through a false story.
A lot of mussar can be learned from this.
The solution is simple. Only black officers should be placed on duty in black neighborhoods. Then let’s hear Mr. Al Sharp-tongue protest the racial bias!
Excellent idea bahby! Trouble is the self appointed reverend will be outta business. We won’t have to hear from him again!