Michael
Brown's untimely death put the entire country's criminal justice system on
trial.
By Marc Morial
The funeral is over. The protests have subsided. The lax and
listless wheels of justice in Ferguson, Missouri are beginning to turn.
A St. Louis County
grand jury recently convened to consider whether to bring
charges against police officer Darren Wilson for fatally shooting Michael
Brown, an unarmed 18-year-old.
I’ve never witnessed a situation more poorly handled than this
one. The grand jury’s formation is a good sign, but questions of fairness in
the St. Louis County criminal justice system and in the culture of policing in
the nearby town of Ferguson continue to demand answers.
It reminds me of what Fannie Lou Hamer, the legendary civil
rights activist famously said: “I am sick and tired of being sick and
tired.”
McCulloch’s father, brother, uncle, and a cousin all worked for
the St. Louis Police Department. In addition, in 2000, McCulloch
refused to prosecute two white police officers for the shooting
deaths of two unarmed black men who it was later determined were not advancing
towards the officers.
Some observers wonder if McCulloch’s decision to release the
video of a convenience store altercation involving Brown was a blatant attempt
to taint a potential jury pool. As of this writing, the prosecutor has failed
to arrest or charge Wilson, who remains on paid administrative leave.
McCulloch has vowed to stay on the case unless Governor Jay
Nixon orders him to recuse himself.
That hasn’t happened, so he’s still in charge of the
investigation.
More than a month later, established legal procedures and the
concerns of the Ferguson community continue to be ignored.
And the heavy-handed, militaristic tactics employed by Ferguson
and St. Louis County police in response to citizen protests following Brown’s
killing are also a powerful wake-up call. While there were isolated aggressive
acts by a few rogue protesters, the majority of protests and protesters were
peaceful.
Yet the use of tear gas, stun grenades, and armored vehicles was
reminiscent of ugly police confrontations with citizens during peaceful voting
rights demonstrations in the South during the 1960s.
It’s unthinkable that we find those tactics acceptable today.
That’s why the National Urban League has joined a coalition of more than a
dozen national civil rights organizations in issuing a unified
statement to promote reform and stop police abuse.
Our statement proposes a number of police reforms in Ferguson
and elsewhere that are designed to ensure a greater reliance on community
policing and that police departments are more reflective of the racial, ethnic,
and gender diversity of the communities they serve.
We also called for an independent and comprehensive Justice
Department investigationinto Brown’s fatal shooting and concrete
steps to ensure that federal military weapons don’t end up in the hands of local
law enforcement. The Obama administration has pledged to investigate the
killing and evaluate the
weapons program.
We’re also urging a comprehensive federal review on the
excessive use of force generally against youth and people of color, the
development of national use-of-force standards, and the universal use of dash
cameras in police vehicles and body-worn cameras by police officers.
Clearly, Michael Brown’s untimely death put the criminal justice
system in America on trial. Despite the tremendous civil rights progress made
over the past 50 years, we will never truly “overcome” until we honestly
acknowledge and address the insidious vestiges of racial segregation and
dehumanization that remain in this country — and unfortunately, in law
enforcement.
Marc Morial is the president and CEO of the National Urban
League and the former mayor of New Orleans. www.nul.org Distributed via OtherWords
(OtherWords.org)
