Once again under the guise of "the law", race has been the deciding factor in whether the person pulling the trigger will face the bar of justice or not. There are going to be people who claim that because Wilson was "in fear" and Brown was "aggressive" then he was justified in killing Michael Brown. They are wrong.
In all my years in law enforcement I have never seen a Prosecutor come out after a no-bill and put on a case (for the accused) in front of the world like Bob McCulloch did last night. Ever. To anybody involved in law enforcement on any level if they were to honestly assess his performance that was a train wreck. It was unsettling to see him there speaking with such a flat affect about the killing of Michael Brown while able to generate such obvious contempt for the process and anybody who questioned his methods or his agenda. McCulloch not only openly attacked the process and the victim, he literally hid behind Eric Holder while he did it!
I blame the pace of this "investigation" on the Governor for not removing this prosecutor but I absolutely hold Bob McCulloch responsible for choosing to present this in the way that he did to the grand jury. On it's face Governor Nixon appears to have wanted cover when this came out and that is exactly what you are seeing now. But if you look deeper something even more troubling is beginning to take shape. Nixon made a political calculation that he would rather have this officer get off and the city burn than risk any blow-back from the reactionary forces in the state. That is the real elephant in the room here. Nobody at any level seems to want to make the racist contingent of Missouri angry.
Nixon knew what the outcome would be the moment he refused to appoint a special prosecutor, McCulloch is 0-5 in prosecuting police for killing UNARMED suspects. If you weren't convinced McCulloch's stunt on national TV last night during that announcement proved that he is vicious, thin skinned and unprofessional, but not incompetent. Bob McCulloch knew exactly what he was doing and he got the outcome that he wanted.
If a prosecutor want's an indictment they will get an indictment. Period.
They will only present the evidence to the grand jury in a way that is most favorable to getting that indictment. Because a grand jury proceeding is not an establishment of guilt but a formal accusation they don't have to present any exculpatory information and they can take almost any kind of evidence or testimony. It's basically a chip shot. When they present the case to the grand jury the prosecutors have already gone over the incident report and the witness statements and they know what the charges are and who they want to charge. In a grand jury the presenting prosecutor wants it simple and sweet, nothing to complicated because they want a case that is solid on the law and easy to go to trial with and win. The prosecutor will begin the presenting of the case by specifically naming what the charges are that they are seeking and who they are charging.
"this is a bill of indictment in the case of the State of (__) versus (__), he/she is being charged in this bill of indictment with (___)"
From that point most grand juries are like an assembly line with officers stacked up in one room waiting to testify and witnesses stacked up in another room doing the same thing. They run you in, get your testimony and move on to the next witness. That is why when Bob McCulloch said upfront that his office was not going to come in with a charge but rather they were going to present "all of the evidence and let the grand jury decide". That was a huge red flag.
What that tells me is that the prosecutor never wanted to indict Wilson in the first place. Just based on what I have read, I don't see how under normal circumstances Wilson doesn't get indicted. But these weren't normal circumstances. There is a visceral fear in that city and in that state of a backlash from the white population.
I have chased guys that could be starting wide receivers on some college teams. I have fought guys Mike Brown's size and bigger. Right now at 43 years old I live with chronic pain from arthritic shoulders, hands and fingers broken multiple times and bad knees from injuries I sustained in the line of duty. I also have seen the damage that a 250 plus pound man can do with a punch and frankly the pictures that have been released are not very convincing. It's a part of the job. Fear is not a reason to shoot someone. Anger is not an excuse to shoot someone. "Charging" an officer does not meet the criteria for deadly force.
When a kid walks in to a public building and begins to mow down people with an automatic rifle, we don't just send in the police to kill him, the objective is to take him into custody so that HE can be brought to the bar of justice. If he is an active shooter or poses an active lethal threat to the community THEN lethal force would be a more than reasonable option. That is precisely why you give verbal commands, "get down, get down", "put the weapon down", etc and don't just go in guns blazing. Even with the most heinous crimes you are there to make the area safe and affect the arrest, not execute. And for God's sake, just because a person is big and looks like the "hulk" or "looks like a demon" does not mean they should die. That narrative that seems to be getting repeated over and over is absolutely absurd.
RESISTING ARREST IS NOT GROUNDS FOR DEADLY FORCE.
In previous posts I have speculated that Wilson probably confronted Brown while he was sitting in his vehicle. I also have speculated that Wilson incorrectly chose to try and use his gun as his first and only level of force. If that was the case, he probably had pulled the gun as soon as he pulled up on Brown or shortly after. Last night Bob McCulloch essentially confirmed every theory that I had about this incident.
No officer should ever engage ANY suspect while sitting in their vehicle. Wilson was either being lazy or a coward. I don't believe that Brown "went for Wilson's gun". I believe that Wilson was sitting there going back and forth with Brown and Brown frustrated him. Wilson then shot and wounded Brown and when he ran away, Wilson got out of his vehicle, chased Mike Brown down and finished him off like he would have a wounded deer. Let me reiterate that. Wilson pursued an UNARMED fleeing subject, shot him down like an animal and then the department left his body in the street.
Correction they didn't treat Brown like an animal because they probably would not have left an animal in the street for 4 hours.
This is not the way that professional law enforcement is supposed to behave, this is some third world shit. The fact that the prosecutors office is basically cosigning on this type of shitty police work is awful. It makes me wonder how many times this DA's office has gone to war on behalf of an officer that pulls this same kind of mess? What kind of cases are they making there in St Louis County? I've said it before but it bears repeating, blindly supporting this police officer is not helping the profession. You can't learn how to properly police when nobody every holds officers like this accountable for stupid behavior.
Regardless of what the media or the persecutors office are saying the fact is:
WHEN THE SUSPECT (MIKE BROWN) DISENGAGED AND RAN AWAY, THE THREAT WAS OVER.
When the threat is over the need for the use of force is over. Brown is "fleeing" but TN vs Garner would not apply because he was unarmed and already wounded. The fact that nobody has produced dispatch recordings of Wilson calling in the situation or even keying up his mic speaks for itself. I believe honestly that Darren Wilson lied in his statement and lied in front of that grand jury. Nobody on that jury knew how to ask the questions that needed to be asked and unfortunately this prosecutor did not seem to have the desire to point these facts out to the grand jury.
For all of the folks out there cheering this no-bill I have a word of caution for you. You may comfort yourselves by thinking that you or your kids will never have to deal with a situation like this or an officer like Wilson because you "raised them right", or you live in the right part of town or your kids are the right color or they don't let their pants sag or talk back to police. But you are mistaken. This culture of bad policing is a pathology that spreads like a cancer and eventually it can go beyond the usual racist paradigm and come knocking on your front door. That's why every smart mouth 6 ft 5 in 18 year old that survives an encounter like this with a police officer is a benefit to us all. IF a police officer like Wilson has the ability to handle this same situation differently, without using deadly force then that means that your 18 year old son that doesn't like LOOK Michael Brown or ACT like Michael Brown is that much safer.
If there is one thing that I have learned from my time on the street: At some point in all of our lives WE ARE ALL one or two bad decisions away from disaster.
I know from experience that in that moment you WILL have to rely on someone else to have the cooler head and make a better decision. You will need someone else to be a rational actor when you can't be. And If you keep living there will come a time when you or someone you love will just need mercy.