geonuc wrote:The source of any outrage I may have centers around the prosecutor. I think he should have recused himself and let an assistant handle the case. But then I have a very low opinion of prosecutors in general. Too many of them seem to be concerned with their image, their conviction record or their chances of getting elected to higher office than they are of seeing justice done. Just look at all the instances where DNA evidence later completely exonerates a felon and the prosecutor still won't budge. Here, if I read it right, the prosecutor's father was a cop murdered by a black man. If true, he's not unbiased and should have stepped aside, particularly after the case went viral.
One report I heard in the last day or so (I think it was from CNN) said that the prosecutor was unusually uninvolved in the presentation to the grand jury, and let his staff do a lot more of the work and questioning than usual, just because of those bias concerns. They also noted that it is unusual to release the testimony after the grand jury is finished.
I'm also quite disappointed in how the Ferguson police department has handled the situation.
In many ways.
First, my take on the incident, from what I read, says that Officer Wilson was probably justified in his use of deadly force, and that Michael Brown was not some innocent, but was being aggressive from the start (and may have been trying to provoke the officer); Officer Wilson did not do a good job in handling the situation, nor in diffusing it. Some better police work at the start would have had a better outcome.
Second, the inital response of the Ferguson PD was terrible, and just made a bad situation worse (the first few days after the shooting).
And the riots after the grand jury decision were inexcusable. The governor had already activated the National Guard, yet it seems they made virtually no use of them. My intial impression as to why the prosecutor first announced that a decision was coming was to give the police and the Guard time to deploy and be ready, and it appears they did neither. I suspect they were so "gun shy" from the over-reaction right after the shooting that they went too far the other way and under-reacted. But with all the time they had to prepare, there is no excuse for such a bad response.
