Open Ferguson No Indictment Thread

43 thoughts on Open Ferguson No Indictment Thread

1. Numb.

2. There’s a protest in NYC at Union Square at 7:00 PM tonight. I’ll be there unless health issues prevent me.

   That’s all I’ve got.

   I hate this shitbag of a country, where the state murders black children with impunity.

   1. Thanks for posting this – I never know when things are happening here.

3. Basically, if I get one more white person in my twitter feed saying “The system/country is broken,” I’m going to lose my shit. Nothing’s broken. Everything is working. This is how it’s supposed to work. That’s the fucking problem. And until white people accept that, they’re going to persist in the delusion that if we tinker with this and tweak that, justice will happen. And that’s not going to work.

   1. Yes.

   2. Pretty much.

   3. Relevant post at The Belle Jar: On Ferguson – The System Isn’t Broken, It Was Built This Way

      A popular belief among progressive white people is that the system is broken, but it’s absolutely not. It was built this way; it was built to prioritize the safety and security of white people over everyone else. The way the system works is by oppressing Black people and other people of colour. As Ta-Nehisi Coates said at a recent talk that I attended, “the machine is running as intended.” The very foundations of the American economy are based on the enslavement of Black people. Throughout American (and Canadian) history, there are so many examples of state-sponsored marginalization and oppression of people of colour. These examples continue today – just look at the overrepresentation of Black men in prisons. This is the fucking system – this is how it is meant to run. We don’t need to “fix” the system, because it’s operating exactly the way it should be. What we need is to completely overthrow it and start again from scratch.

      1. I’ve updated the OP with another quote from The Belle Jar’s Ferguson post and this list of links:

         I have friends who have Black sons, and today, as they struggle through grief and pain and fear, they are trying to figure out how to make sure that their son isn’t the next Mike Brown or Trayon Martin. They want to know what they have to tell their kids in order to keep them safe. I wish I had some kind of answer for them, but of course I don’t – both because I’m white and this is so far outside of my realm of personal experience that I am absolutely not in a place to give advice, and also because there are no answers. The only way to ensure these boys’ safety would be for them to be white – and that’s both an impossible and terrible response. There is nothing about this situation that doesn’t feel impossible and terrible – and, again, that’s me as a white person saying that, and I can’t even imagine the depth of horror Black communities are experiencing right now.
         […]
         Below are some excellent pieces by Black writers. If you are white, please take some time to go through it and educate yourself. That is our job right now.

         The Case for Reparations by Ta-Nehisi Coates

         About Ferguson, White Allies and Speaking Up When It Matters by Awesomely Luvvie

         America’s Not Here For Us by A’Driane Nieves

         A Letter to My Unborn Black Son by George Johnson

         Youth Are on the Frontlines in Ferguson, and They Refuse to Back Down by Muna Mire

   4. I am no longer surprised by white people saying this now that I know how little Americans are actually taught about Reconstruction during US History class. A textbook I read stated that reconstruction failed due to “earnest constitutional objections” over the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments from Southern states, not because states were allowed to imprison black men en masse for “vagrancy” and put them back to work in the fields.

      Not that it gets white Americans ignorant of their own history off the hook, but damn if I don’t believe that ignorance is part of the system working as well.

   5. Basically, if I get one more white person in my twitter feed saying “The system/country is broken,” I’m going to lose my shit. Nothing’s broken. Everything is working. This is how it’s supposed to work. That’s the fucking problem. And until white people accept that, they’re going to persist in the delusion that if we tinker with this and tweak that, justice will happen. And that’s not going to work.

      I am similarly sick of white people justifying the non-indictment by pointing to POC on the Grand Jury and amongst the witnesses as evidence that justice was done. All of the Grand Jury members, white or otherwise, could have arrived completely untainted by prejudice, yet the system stacks the cards in such a way that an indictment was never going to happen.

4. A list of actions taking place across the country can be found here: fergusonresponse.tumblr.com/

5. “According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. attorneys prosecuted 162,000 federal cases in 2010, the most recent year for which we have data. Grand juries declined to return an indictment in 11 of them.”

   1. From the other side of the world what I hear about the USA’s grand jury system is that they are only asked to hear cases where prosecutors expect they will need to deflect a storm of criticism, that grand juries almost always give prosecutors whatever prosecute/don’t-prosecute decision that prosecutors demonstrate to them that they want, and that this antique and non-transparent system survives to give a thin veil of public legitimacy to decisions that prosecutors don’t want to take personal responsibility for.

      1. It’s a little more complicated than that. Some states, and for federal charges, require a grand jury indictment for felonies. Other states, including Missouri, give prosecutors the option of either seeking a grand jury indictment, or bringing charges before a judge directly. (Still other states don’t use grand juries.)

         From what I’ve read, there aren’t public statistics on the rate Missouri grand juries return indictments.

      2. To be a bit more fair though, grand juries are extremely, extremely reluctant to indict police officers regardless of whether they are black or white. Prosecutors are loathe to charge cops anyway. Cops and prosecutors think of themselves as a team against criminal defense attorneys, to charge a cop would be to break the team spirit and the prosecutor would find himself on the wrong side when he needed help next time with an investigation.

         A friend of mine was close to a cop in Florida. The cop told him that every cop gets ‘one free kill’, you can kill at least one person on duty and you will pretty much have no charges brought against you. If you make a pattern of it, you may be in trouble though. He also learned that most cops, at least in FL, carried ‘drop guns’. Most of these guns came from gun buyback programs.

         1. Disarm all law enforcement. Take away their lethal weaponry, and their war toys. Jhc, one “free kill”. They make me sick.

6. I hate this country so much. Racist brutality is just becoming further entrenched in society as time goes on, and #Ferguson is just one example of this process. At the same time, #Ferguson is an example of what has always happened to black POC in this country: impune violence, in various forms, with no real end in sight.

7. I’m trying to understand. In the USA, a cop can kill someone without it resulting in a full investigation?

   Don’t get me wrong, in my own country, France, policemen have a long history of impunity, including with being involved in hate crimes (mostly against Arab-world immigrants). But seriously, nowadays, no death in which a cop is involved is treated as par for the course.

   1. A fatal shooting here in NSW in circumstances such as that of Michael Brown I would expect to be rapidly dealt with by the police force’s internal investigation tribunal and separately rigorously investigated by the Crown Prosecuting Service then almost certainly passed up for a fully public trial.

      From what I’ve read (and anyone with better information please correct me) the police administration in Ferguson have not made provision for an independent internal investigation or tribunal (they have probably filled in some mandated paperwork noting their conclusion that Darren Smith has no case to answer in terms of breaching any police procedure), and the DA prosecutors have been notably unenthusiastic about investigating all sides of this shooting. This lack of rigorous investigatory procedures in cases of police violence seems more possible under the US system of elected sheriffs and prosecutors and judges than in (some) other systems where law enforcement and justice officials are career/appointed positions in bureaucracies with clear systems of external oversight. This lack of rigorous investigatory procedures in cases of police violence also seems to be regarded by the local elites as a feature rather than as a bug.

      1. That said, I’ve been told of large country towns in NSW where only a few decades ago it was FUCKING JOKED ABOUT how all one needed to do if one’s vehicle hit an indigenous person on the road was to quietly let the police desk sergeant know that you’d “run into a large animal on [name] Road about five miles out of town” and he would send out a team who would move the body to somewhere where it wouldn’t be found for days/weeks and when/if it was found it would be recorded as an accidental death from a fall while drunk. I would be appalled but hardly surprised to learn that police complicity in this sort of coverup of racist violence was still happening in smaller country towns now.

         1. wow that is disgusting. And so, so believable.

      2. Thank you both for your contributions – I’m actually curious what would happen internationally, if anyone has any other stories or examples. This is exceptionally US-centric, but I know I wasn’t the only one who wasn’t surprised by the outcome.

         1. In Canada, when police shot aboriginal protester Dudley George, the Ontario provincial government dragged out for years holding a public inquiry, then waited on implementing recommendations from the inquest. Eventually they implemented some of those recommendations. One of these was adding an aboriginal liaison officer to the police forces whose job is to foster better communication, more calm among the force going into any situation, and hopefully prevent violence.

            Our local one is named Grant. What else he does is spy on any social justice activist / protest / labour groups in town and relay legalistic threats from the police to activists to discourage public dissent. I’m in an anti-poverty organization and he tails us to all our events. But he doesn’t carry a gun, so there’s that. More surveillance state, more midnight phone calls, less shooting.

            Given how at other times, people do still die in police custody in this country and the police usually clear themselves of wrongdoing, this is considered a win.

      3. the DA prosecutors have been notably unenthusiastic about investigating all sides of this shooting.

         Why would they investigate? Both the police and the DA are tasked with putting people into prison. DAs are judged by their conviction rate. If the DA annoys the police, the police might become uncooperative and lower the DA’s conviction rate.

         Whether DAs (or judges) are elected or appointed doesn’t really matter. Either way, they’re chosen by the political process from a pool of people who manifestly have an interest in maintaining the current power structure. The police killing people from powerless groups doesn’t endanger the power structure. Serious consequences for the police who do so does.

         1. The police killing people from powerless groups doesn’t endanger the power structure. Serious consequences for the police who do so does.

            I totally agree with this. I have some disagreements with some of your other statements, but I think that belongs on #spillover rather than becoming a derail here.

         2. I have some disagreements with some of your other statements, but I think that belongs on #spillover rather than becoming a derail here.

            I would be interested to hear your disagreements, if you would be willing to share them. Even when I disagree with you, I always find your views thought-provoking. Spillover #22?

            1. The current spillover thread commenting period is about to expire, and I’ll be setting up a new one tomorrow. It’s just gone midnight here, so I’m off to bed and let my subconscious marshal some of my points for me. Happy to engage with you on the new thread once it’s up.

8. my heart hurts. Rally in Austin, TX at the police station at 6pm

9. Of course they didn’t indict. Because what would make thanksgiving week worse? More racism.

   1. “Here, would you like more racism to go in that Thanksgiving cornucopia of shit? I think we can squeeze more in next to the mini pumpkins.”

      1. Pretty much.

10. If I see one more white person on my FB feed scolding the rioters via a MLK JR quote I am also going to lose my shit.

    1. Maybe counter with this one: “A riot is the language of the unheard.” Martin Luther King Jr.

       1. This doesn’t always make sense. In plenty of places, riots are organized to remove inconvenient minorities, etc and take over their land or resources.

          1. Riots are different from pogroms. Organization and planning are two of those differences.

             That said, riots are not always radical. But that doesn’t mean they’re not the language of the unheard. It’s just that the unheard are not always righteous in how they direct their anger.

    2. Not to mention that those white people are selectively ignorant about MLK and his beliefs; and that it’s known that he believed even violent resistance has a place.

       I would especially refer to those who counsel, “Wait!” and to those who say that they sympathize with our goals but cannot condone our methods of direct-action in pursuit of those goals. I wonder at men who dare to feel that they have some paternalistic right to set the timetable for another man’s liberation.

       And

       Over the past several years, I must say, I have been gravely disappointed with such white “moderates.” I am often inclined to think that they are more of a stumbling block to the Negro’s progress than the White Citizen’s Counciler [sic] or the Ku Klux Klanner.

       If there’s more violence and rioting in the days ahead, I hope it spreads far and wide beyond the inner cities and ghettoes and into the comfy, insular suburbs of privileged white people. When they shit their collective pants as they watch their own property get trashed and stolen for a change, it might just wake them up and make (some of) them take note of what they’ve had their head in their asses about for so long. Besides that, most of them are probably insured to the eyeballs and can so can afford a few broken windows and burning cars here and there.

       1. It won’t. Quite frankly, if it spreads to areas of insulated white privilege, the crackdown will be even more draconian and militarized than we’ve seen thus far.

          1. Not to mention the ” i was scared of the scary black person” types of killings will go up.

11. [Copied from the Open Thread as per mod. instructions. Originally posted November 25, 2014 at 7:34 am ]

    I just read about the Grand Jury decision about Darren Wilson.

    I’m dismayed (can anyone think of a stronger word?), but not surprised. I’ve been on a grand jury (2 year hitch), and I know that grand juries do exactly what the prosecutor tells them. And even before you know of the prosecutor’s connections with police and his support for Darren Wilson, you know that a DA has to work every day with the cops in his district and thus has a strong incentive not to do anything that they don’t like. I live in the NYC area, and I notice that despite the NYPD’s long history of endemic corruption and lawlessness, the only times NYPD officers get prosecuted is when other jurisdictions get involved — usually, it’s the Feds, but the time a group of cops was caught dealing stolen drugs, it was Nassau County that prosecuted, and there’s a recent case in Mount Vernon (NY) where an NYPD cop was sitting in his car waiting for someone to come by so he could shoot them, which I’m hoping will go somewhere.

    Of course, once the Governor declared a state of emergency, it was even more obvious what was going to happen.

    I wish I could say I’m hopping mad, but this cr*p has been happening so regularly, I’ve run out of mad, and I’m just despairing. It hurts too much to care. In my youth I was a Conservative(tm), but life has radicalized me to the point that I’d be a revolutionary if I didn’t fear that any revolution would just replace the current axis of evil with something worse. I just cry for all the “little people” who get ground up into hamburger every day so that evil may flourish.

12. Powerful, heartbreaking op-ed at the New York Times from the fantastic Michelle Alexander.

13. I’ve been talking with a lot of people who just don’t understand how grand juries work. To many folks it seems like “hey, they had their shot, what’s all the upset?” They don’t get that this is very, very, unusual–almost unheard of. And that the things which “seem neutral” are themselves evidence of something very strange.

    This is a good post on that subject, which I have simply sent to a few of the more reasonable ones.

    http://blog.simplejustice.us/2014/11/25/the-ferguson-lie/

14. Another would-be-even-madder-if-I-hadn’t-already-run-out-of-mad thought:

    The whole state of emergency “to prevent rioting” thing: what would you call the response of the Ferguson police to protests after the killing?

    Anybody remember Chicago? 1968?

    If they really wanted to prevent riots when stuff like this happens, they’d do better to lock up the police, especially when we’ve already seen that they aren’t interested in keeping the peace, they just want to throw gasoline on the fire.

15. This problem goes deeper than everyone is.willing to admit… We will have to go through the last 60 years of created laws and see the effect that they had on black families… As a black mother of 4 kids ( 3 boys and 1 girl) I felt it at first hand..from the drug on war to the share custody laws (still supported by NOW and other feminist organisations) the effect that supposedly progressive and women friendly laws.have had on our lives.. The core of.society has to acknowledge the basic concepts of inequality if we.have.hope of ever turning this thing around.. There is not a single ideology that will set us free

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