Violence in Ferguson after grand jury verdict

A police car was set ablaze after the announcement of the grand jury decision Monday, not to indict a policeman in the Ferguson teen murder.

Gunfire erupted across the night, two-dozen buildings were set ablaze, police cars were vandalised and reports of looting emerged in what authorities said was the worst instance of violence following the August 9 street killing of an unarmed African-American teenager by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri.

After a grand jury on Monday night returned a verdict to not indict officer Darren Wilson, who fired at least six bullets at, including two to the head of, Michael Brown (18) authorities in the St. Louis suburb arrested 82 people and U.S. President Barack Obama reiterated his appeal for calm to protestors and for restraint to law enforcement at the site.

Racial tensions appeared to be boiling over across the nation, as protestors took to the streets in numerous cities, including New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Detroit, and Washington DC, and members of the Congressional Black Caucus, led by its Chair, Democratic Congresswoman, Marcia Fudge on called the grand jury a “slap in the face” and a “miscarriage of justice.”

Similarly the American Civil Liberties Union issued a statement on Monday night saying that it would continue to fight for racial justice, and, “We must end the prevailing policing paradigm where police departments are more like occupying forces, imposing their will to control communities.”

The use of the grand jury in this case was a means to establish whether there was probable cause to formally indict Mr. Wilson of criminal charges, which would have needed concurrence from at least nine jurors. Although an alternative approach may have been to hold a preliminary hearing before a trial court judge, the grand jury’s verdict runs contrary to the broader U.S. trend of such jury’s returning indictments in recent years.

The surprise element of the testimonials recorded by the 12-member grand jury, comprising nine whites and three African-Americans, which considered the allegations of excessive force levelled against Mr. Wilson, was that the policeman’s account of Mr. Brown’s behaviour and actions on the street moments before he was shot dead appeared to conflict with the version of events that many in Ferguson believe.

According to Mr. Wilson, Mr. Brown was incensed after being stopped by the officer to the point where his face looked “like a demon,” Mr. Wilson told the grand jury, and that when Mr. Brown reached into the officer’s car and attempted to grab his gun, Mr. Wilson was so physically overawed that he “felt like a 5-year-old holding onto Hulk Hogan.”

After they scuffled in the police car and Mr. Wilson shot Mr. Brown there several times Mr. Brown took off on foot, the officer said, only to confront him again on the street a short distance away.

According to his testimony, Mr. Wilson shouted out to the youth to get on the ground, but “When he looked at me, he made like a grunting, like aggravated sound and he starts, he turns and he’s coming back towards me,” Mr. Wilson recalled, adding “His left hand goes in a fist and goes to his side, his right one goes under his shirt in his waistband and he starts running at me.”

After firing multiple shots at his arms, the policeman then fired a lethal shot to Mr. Brown’s head, and he said to the grand jury, “When it went into him the demeanour on his face went blank, the aggression was gone, it was gone, I mean I knew he stopped, the threat was stopped.”

An autopsy conducted on Mr. Brown in August by Michael Baden, a former Chief Medical Examiner for New York City, revealed that one bullet had entered the top of his skull, “suggesting his head was bent forward when it struck him and caused a fatal injury,” and four shots to his arms, probably not fired at close range given the absence of gunshot powder on Mr. Brown’s body, were fired into his front causing “multiple perforations.”

This autopsy result as well as some eyewitness statements had thus far led many to believe that the Mr. Wilson may have used excessive force against an unarmed youth.

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