"The county prosecutor, Robert McCulloch, who is widely viewed in the minority community as being in the pockets of the police," the New York Times editorial board writes this morning, "made matters infinitely worse by handling this sensitive investigation in the worst possible way."
From the get-go McCulloch, a political figure with ties to area police, refused to step aside when requested. No kudos to Missouri Governor Nixon for not pressing the notorious county prosecutor to get out of the way and allow the appointment of a special prosecutor.
McCulloch was allowed, then, to set up a grand jury in such a way as to give the police the edge.
Instead of conducting an investigation and then presenting the case and a recommendation of charges to the grand jury, his office shifted its job to the grand jury. It made no recommendation on whether to indict the officer, Darren Wilson, but left it to the jurors to wade through masses of evidence to determine whether there was probable cause to file charges against Officer Wilson for Mr. Brown’s killing.
Under ordinary circumstances, grand jury hearings can be concluded within days. The proceeding in this case lasted an astonishing three months. And since grand jury proceedings are held in secret, the drawn-out process fanned suspicions that Mr. McCulloch was deliberately carrying on a trial out of public view, for the express purpose of exonerating Officer Wilson. ...NYT
I caught a bit of the Lawrence O'Donnell discussion of the three months' worth of transcripts of the grand jury procedings last night. O'Donnell and guests zeroed in on the testimony of all-important "Witness #10," who -- it was demonstrated -- was given full credence by the county prosecutor's office in spite of the fact that his testimony was inconsistent at best.
What we're expected to put up with is a form of white collar crime, practiced by the police in Missouri, New York, on the road in Iowa and right across the nation. This is crime that has its own vocabulary and expectations. We've almost come to accept the cliches associated with what we might call "black 'n' blue collar"crime.
That's street crime, crime indulged in by more animalistic people who "bulk up and charge," and who are "demons" at best whether they're lurking in doorways up around 186th Street in New York, or in cities like St. Louis. The language of witnesses is malleable in these situations. No less important is the decision of the prosecutor -- Robert McCulloch in this case -- as to which facts are more, um, relevant than others.
I was taken by O'Donnell's painstaking examination of Witness #10's consistent testimony as to where Michael Brown and his friend were walking. Remember "right down the middle of the street"? Well, #10 first reported that the two young men were "walking down the sidewalk." At some point later on, this became, uh, well, they were walking down the street, uh, kind of near the curb. And then, finally, came the right-down-the-middle-of-the-street claim.
Particularly breathtaking is the language the New York Times also singles out, describing the Michael Brown as "almost bulking up to run through the shots, like it was making him mad that I’m shooting at him." The prosecutor asks you to picture poor Officer Wilson, all by himself in a massive Cheverolet Tahoe, armed and shooting shooting wildly. Out there is a crazed, wounded, and (okay) unarmed, nigra staggering toward him. From 35 feet down the road.
Where was Bull O'Connor with his trained dogs when he was so badly needed?
Who, if anyone, at the Department of Justice is studying the transcripts from Mr. McCulloch's odd "jury"? Any chance we'll see some truly independent, trustworthy, federal-level probes into the roles the police play in Missouri's justice system? ... At a moment in American history when the Supreme Court has, itself, fallen into disrepute?
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When we look back on what happened in Ferguson, Mo., during the summer of 2014, it will be easy to think of it as yet one more episode of black rage ignited by yet another police killing of an unarmed African American male. But that has it precisely backward. What we’ve actually seen is the latest outbreak of white rage. Sure, it is cloaked in the niceties of law and order, but it is rage nonetheless.
Protests and looting naturally capture attention. But the real rage smolders in meetings where officials redraw precincts to dilute African American voting strength or seek to slash the government payrolls that have long served as sources of black employment. It goes virtually unnoticed, however, because white rage doesn’t have to take to the streets and face rubber bullets to be heard. Instead, white rage carries an aura of respectability and has access to the courts, police, legislatures and governors, who cast its efforts as noble, though they are actually driven by the most ignoble motivations. ...CarolAnderson,WaPo
