If weeks of leaks have been accurate, a grand jury in St. Louis will soon conclude that no charges should be filed against Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of Michael Brown.
You could argue that such a finding would be in error. You could argue that the St. Louis county prosecutor handling the case, Robert McCullough, has a long history of backing law enforcement even in cases where such support may not have been appropriate. Some have already begun making that case, and will continue to do so.
However, federal prosecutors under U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder have also investigated the case and have apparently concluded that they too don't have enough evidence to charge Wilson with violating Brown's rights. If that indeed proves to be the case, it should go a long way toward reassuring people that justice is being done. When Holder went to Ferguson in the wake of the shooting and related his own experiences as a young black male with police officers, he was strongly criticized by some, as if he were taking sides in that particular case. He was not. He was attempting to defuse general anger and frustration, but without commenting on the specifics of the case in question.
That kind of background and outreach will give the findings of his department a powerful credibility among many that McCullough, the St. Louis prosecutor, does not have. It will give those counseling a peaceful reaction a convincing case to make, and testifies to the importance of a power structure that reflects the diversity of those within it.
Furthermore, a failure to file criminal charges would not prove that Officer Wilson performed professionally in his confrontation with Brown or that he ought to remain in law enforcement. Those remain open questions because we haven't been given access to the evidence that the grand jury and federal prosecutors have been studying. Let's see what the facts tell us.
If no charges are filed by either local or federal prosecutors, does that mean that the protests and controversy surrounding the Brown killing were all for naught or even unjustified? No, it absolutely does not. Brown's killing and law enforcement's behavior in its aftermath -- from leaving his body on the street for four hours to its overly militaristic, outright repressive response to protests -- sparked a confrontation in Ferguson precisely because conditions there were already so ripe for it. That was the larger problem.
In other communities with a better relationship between law enforcement and those it is hired to protect, the killing of a young man in such a fashion would have brought intense scrutiny, as it should have, but it would not have touched off such an emotional, long-running confrontation. Demonstrations and tense conflicts between citizens and law enforcement in Ferguson reflected a much deeper, pre-existing problem in that town and surrounding communities, and in many other places as well.
Brown's death brought those problems to the forefront. It made them impossible for civic, community, religious and law enforcement officials in the St. Louis region to ignore, and significant positive change has already resulted. It also forced a painful, at times ugly national conversation about race relations, political power and abusive police practices that ought to continue.
It ought to continue peacefully. Law enforcement and protest organizers have both had a long time to prepare for what happens next. A criminal element beyond the control of either group may attempt to take advantage of the situation, but they should not be permitted to dictate events. "The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy," as Martin Luther King reminded us. "Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it."
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