Editorial:
That a NO indictment came down in Ferguson, Missouri, does not really come as a surprise! When was the last time anyone can remember when a white police officer has ever been indicted for killing a black man or a Hispanic? Off the top of our heads we can’t think of one time.
St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Robert P. McCulloch went to great lengths and details to explain the reasoning for the Grand Jury’s decision to come back with a NO indictment. But it is still difficult to get our minds around what the reason was for a police officer to shoot and kill an unarmed young man supposedly over a handful of cigarillos!
As the Prosecuting Attorney went through his explanation it wasn’t hard to see how a Grand Jury could arrive at this conclusion. The rules of the game are created by those in power and in regards to the police it bends over backwards to protect and shield the police. The Grand Jury, following those rules and parameters, did not have enough evidence to indict. Yet this is a human being, a young man who was unarmed and until proven guilty was only a suspect in the crime of snatching those cigarillos. Now he is dead.
Where is the justice in this? Where is the accountability?
Why does the NO indictment not surprise our community? All we have to do is look at the Anastasio Hernandez Rojas, case of May 2010 when Rojas was handcuffed, beaten while laying helpless on the ground and tasered to death with approximately 20 Border Patrol agents either participating are standing and watching. Even though all this was captured on video tape and a Grand Jury investigation was convened, nothing happened. This case has gone to a civil trial. Unfortunatley This is not an isolated incident.
Police departments have always been instruments of oppression against minority communities, again you just have to look to Escondido where the police were used to harass and intimidate the Hispanic community with their police check points. So yes minority communities are angry and frustrated when the Grand Jury in Ferguson was unable to indict. The message is clear that the brutality and oppression experienced by so-called minority communities in the U.S. will continue unabated.
President Obama in his message to the people following the Grand Jury announcement stated that the country should use this opportunity to raise the level of conversation on the issue of policing in black and Latino communities. The President needs to understand that minority communities have tried to raise the level of conversation on this very issue but their words have fallen on deaf ears and are TIRED, and want an end to police brutality!
Will the shooting of Michael Brown, the Grand Jury announcement, and subsequent protest change anything, only time will tell!
If history tells us anything, nothing much will change. Members of the minority communities do not make the rules and until we attain the social, political, and economic power, the killing of Michael Brown will become nothing more than a sad chapter in American history.