The Grand Jury No-Bills in Ferguson

Not surprised. The District Attorney did his level best to throw the case:

A St. Louis County grand jury has brought no criminal charges against Darren Wilson, a white police officer who fatally shot Michael Brown, an unarmed African-American teenager, more than three months ago in nearby Ferguson.

The decision by the grand jury of nine whites and three blacks was announced Monday night by the St. Louis County prosecutor, Robert P. McCulloch, at a news conference packed with reporters from around the world. The killing, on a residential street in Ferguson, set off weeks of civil unrest — and a national debate — fueled by protesters’ outrage over what they called a pattern of police brutality against young black men. Mr. McCulloch said that Officer Wilson faced charges ranging from first-degree murder to involuntary manslaughter.

The prosecutor threw all this into the grand jury's lap without a recommendation, a highly unorthodox decision, and even with that, it appears that his presentation was deliberately weak.

If St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Robert McCulloch keeps his promise to release the proceedings to the public, and I don't expect him to, as it will reveal what he did, or more accurately what he did not do.

Needless to day the message here is that black lives are downright cheap in Saint Louis County, and probably at a significant discount in the rest of the United States.

Of course there are also larger issues with policing in the United States, where, for example, Seattle Police were responsible for 20.6% of all homicides, and Utah, police kill more people than gangs, drug dealers, and child abuse.

The juxtaposition of a hyper-militarized constabulary with the prison industrial complex is truly disasterous.