ST. LOUIS — A grand jury has declined to indict Darren Wilson, the white Ferguson, Mo. police officer whose fatal shooting of an unarmed black teenager sparked days of turbulent protests and a national conversation about race and police interactions with African Americans, prosecutors said Monday.
The decision means that Wilson, 28, will face no state charges in the August shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown. Although a parallel federal civil rights investigation of the shooting is continuing, federal investigators have all but concluded they do not have a case against Wilson, either, law enforcement officials have said.
A separate federal probe of the Ferguson Police Department is underway. But the prospect that Wilson will face no direct legal consequences for Brown’s death was expected to trigger protests in the St. Louis area, and in the hours before the announcement, scores of demonstrators gathered near the area where Brown was killed.
Protests are going on nationwide. In Ferguson, some businesses are going up in flames. Gun shots have been heard. I am not sure what protests will do. Would the behavior be the same if Wilson were not white? I am not sure. I have never felt that Officer Wilson was guilty, from what I read. However, I wasn’t there. Neither were most of the people out in the streets rioting.
As you comment, please attempt to be judicious in your comments. None of us were there. A set of parents have lost their son and a community has lost one of its young. Those things hurt. Michael Brown has become an icon, rightly or wrongly, for police brutality, especially in communities of color.
@Rick Bentley
You are assuming that the shots were measured.
He was shooting at a moving target, head down, charging him. He fired, probably rapidly.
As long as the man was moving towards him, he was a threat. You shoot to stop the threat.
@Moon-howler
I completely agree with you except for the last characterization of Zimmerman.
Zimmerman lost Martin.
Martin returned to Zimmerman’s location and attacked him.
Zimmerman did not play “supercop.”
Is Zimmerman a hero? No. He, too, is a victim.
Oh dear God, now I am going to agree with Cargo. re: shoot to stop the threat.
Please, someone take my keyboard away. First Jackson, now Cargo.
I wasn’t there. The grand jury determined there wasn’t the evidence to proceed with prosecution. Done.
Eric Holder needs to butt out if he is thinking of butting in. His intrusion would start off an even bigger sh!tstorm.
@Rick Bentley
“At some point, Brown who was unarmed, had been shot and was falling. Wilson shot him again in the head, fatally. IMO this probably wasn’t justified on a oral basis.”
Where did you see that he was shot while falling or that he was shot in the head while falling?
If any of us (well most of us) were involved in a shooting incident like this, as the victim – after being shot once would you:
A – Turn around and confront the officer again?
B – Layout on the ground as directed
C- Try to flee the area
He was also in possession of a small amount of Pot and tested positive for THC. Some people become aggressive and paranoid while on THC.
@Pat.Herve
B. Browns actions were eerily reminiscent of someone who commits suicide by cop.
Cargo, Moon : My argument is not that any particular thing happened. my argument is that we don’t really know what happened.
Cargo, multiple witnesses said he got shot in the head while falling. Wilson says he was coming at him head down. I’m not sure that passes my smell test. Had the kid been coming at him head down I would think most other witnesses would have seen that.
Pat, THC does generally make people more mellow, not more aggressive. This is beyond well-known. To suggest otherwise is disingenuous.
“all I see is his head and that’s what i shot”. That’s a big kid. Hard to believe the only shot he could take is a head shot. It strains credulity to take Wilson’s testimony at face value.
Hard to believe Brown is charging at him head down like a ram, and other people see yhim as standing in place. Wilson’s testimony seems cooked up, after all witness statements and evidence were collated.
Thinking about it, there’s no reason in the world for Wilson to shoot him in the head – the center of gravity is just below that. His testimony is not believable to me.
Actually, it is beyond well known that POT can make some people ore aggressive and paranoid, amongst other issues. I am not being disingenuous by stating a fact.
Yes, and I know people who have that reaction. You are right, Pat.
I’m going to cede your point, because the kid didn’t look very mellow 10 minutes earlier in the liquor store.
But thinking this whole thing through, I don’t think that head shot was justified, and Wilson’s story that the kid was charging him like a buck seems cooked up.
I think a trial would be appropriate here.
There are some people who participate in the discussions on this blog who seem knowledgeable which is why I’m posing the question here. I’m not trying to be difficult. I’m one of the few people who do not know all the details of what happened in this case. All I know about police work is what I learned from watching returns of The Andy Griffith Show.
In the 21st century, in the nation that put the first man on the moon, can we or have we already devise(d) a method to stop a charging 200+ lb. man-mountain without pumping him full of lead?
Is it necessary to shoot people with lethal weapons? Is there a better way or another way? Or is it possible for us to come up with another way of stopping unarmed threats?
Good question. I am going to pass on it. I am an outlier on this issue…or something. I am not having my normal reaction.
“I’m one of the few people who do not know all the details of what happened in this case.” – No – you’re one of the few people who doesn’t want to PRETEND they know all the details.
The Tazer is the most common way to subdue a suspect with non-lethal force. Had Wilson been carrying one, I think it would have worked. Apparantly he doesn’t usually carry a tazer though.
@Rick Bentley
Multiple witnesses DID see that.
@Rick Bentley
And yet…..the witnesses that said one thing….like he was standing still, etc….all had to change their story went confronted by the jury.
The jury went with that he was charging the cop.
The head shot was not a coup de grace. It was one of many.
Not every shot fired actually hits its target. I might go to shoot you in the torso and hit you in the head, especially if I was under stress.
“And yet…..the witnesses that said one thing….like he was standing still, etc….all had to change their story went confronted by the jury.”
Why do you say that? On what basis?
I looked through about half of the witness statements – and I saw one witness speaking on CNN the other day. They weren’t recanting. Why do you say that they were? (Is it the psychological urge to reduce complexity, to boil down to a single narrative?)
@Rick Bentley
I said it because that was the statement from the jury. It was stated when the decision was released.
http://www.c-span.org/video/?322925-1/ferguson-missouri-grand-jury-decision-announcement
Around the 4 min mark.
Transcript:
HE CLOSE REGARDED DETAILS GIVES LAW ENFORCEMENT YARDSTICK TO MEASURE THE TRUTHFULNESS. EYEWITNESS ACCOUNTS MUST ALWAYS BE CHALLENGED AND COMPARED AGAINST THE PHYSICAL EVIDENCE. MANY WITNESSES TO THE SHOOTING OF MICHAEL BROWN MADE STATEMENTS INCONSISTENT WITH OTHER STATEMENTS THEY MADE AND ALSO CONFLICTED WITH THE PHYSICAL EVIDENCE. SOME WERE COMPLETELY REFUTED BY THE PHYSICAL EVIDENCE. AN EXAMPLE — BEFORE THE RESULT OF AN AUTOPSY WAS RELEASED, WITNESSES CLAIM THEY SAW OFFICER WILSON STAND OVER MICHAEL BROWN AND FIRE MANY ROUNDS INTO HIS BACK. OTHERS CLAIM THAT OFFICER WILSON SHOT MR. BROWN IN THE BACK AS MR. BROWN WAS RUNNING AWAY. HOWEVER, ONCE THE AUTOPSY FINDINGS WERE RELEASED SHOWING MICHAEL BROWN HAD NOT SUSTAINED ANY WOUNDS TO THE BACK OF HIS BODY, NO ADDITIONAL WITNESSES MADE SUCH A CLAIM. SEVERAL WITNESSES ADJUSTED THEIR STORIES IN THEIR SUBSEQUENT STATEMENTS. SOME EVEN ADMITTED THEY DID NOT WITNESS THE EVENT AT ALL BUT MERELY REPEATED WHAT THEY HEARD IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD OR ASSUMED. FORTUNATELY FOR THE INTEGRITY OF OUR INVESTIGATION, ALMOST ALL OF INITIAL WITNESS INTERVIEWS, INCLUDING THOSE OF OPPOSITE WILSON WERE RECORDED. THE STATEMENTS IN THE TESTIMONY OF MOST OF THE WITNESSES WERE PRESENTED TO THE GRAND JURY BEFORE THE AUTOPSY RESULTS WERE RELEASED BY THE MEDIA AND BEFORE SEVERAL MEDIA OUTLETS PUBLISH INFORMATION FROM REPORTS THEY RECEIVE FROM A D.C. GOVERNMENT OFFICIAL. THE JURORS WERE THEREFORE PRIOR TO THE RELEASE OF THE INFORMATION BEING PUBLIC AND WHAT FOLLOWED IN THE NEW CYCLE — THE JURORS WERE ABLE TO ASSESS THE CREDIBILITY OF THE WITNESSES, INCLUDING THOSE WITNESSES WHO STATEMENTS AND TESTIMONY REMAINED CONSISTENT THROUGHOUT EVERY INTERVIEW AND WERE CONSISTENT WITH THE PHYSICAL EVIDENCE.
This is a red herring. yes, some witnesses who were interviewed claimed things that didn’t happen. one woman claimed there were two cops.
Which doesn’t refute every witness whose story doesn’t match Wilson’s. regardless of what the prosecutor implies.
The fact that you’re quoting that as some type of evidence is sad to me.
I’ve thought this through. I don’t know who initiated the contact, and am not sure whether Brown was walking or running at him when shot. there’s believable testimony both ways on that.
But Wilson’s shooting him in the head smells bad. That kid was big. Big torso. Wilson’s testimony is that Brown was running at him head down (free safety style). So he had no choice to shoot him in the head. “All I see is the head and that’s what I shot”.
Almost certainly bull****. He shot him in the head because he thought he was armed.
Brown was by many witness accounts reaching down at his pants several times. Propably pulling up baggy pants. But to Wilson it probably looked as if he was reaching for a weapon.
He thought an armed man was walking at him. So he shot him in the head.
When no weapon is found, rather than own up to shooting an unarmed man in the head, he shaded this story of the kid rushing at him head first. No cooroborating evidence for that, that I know of.
Bottom line, it was an unjustified shooting leading to a death. And rather than own up, Wilson concocted this ending where the kid runs at him head down and he can only shoot this very big guy in the head.
Wilson’s no hero. Just another crooked cop.
Speculation.
Its a good reason not to wear pants down to your knees. It impedes your motion.
@El Guapo
Yes, you are correct, there are multiple ways of stopping a 300 pound man (he weighed 292 if I’m not mistaken) from charging. However, those tools/techniques take time to implement/deploy.
You have to remember that this guy just tried to take your weapon from you. The entire event from the time he first encountered Brown till his backup showed up was less than 90 seconds. I’m not 100% sure on that time but if I remember correctly that was the duration of the incident.
Imagine you came across someone as an officer and you were in the same situation. You encounter someone who is a strong arm robbery suspect (which he was, it’s on video) you contact him, a scuffle occurs where he tries to grab for/reach for your weapon. You struggle for the weapon for a bit, you end up pulling the trigger twice grazing his thumb. He takes off, you exit your vehicle to give chase. The rest is which is in question but all of that within 90 seconds.
How much time would it take for you to go thru the list of no lethal options in your head and then access, control and deploy said non lethal option?
Think it through – it’s pretty obvious. It’s hard to say what happened at earlier points in this story. But the head shot at the end doesn’t add up.
Wilson was afraid to tell the truth here – he thought for sure the kid had a weapon, so he shot him in the head. Not the torso. If someone’s running at you, as close as Wilson says he was, you have a much bigger target area than the head. “All i see is the head and that’s what I shot” is absurd.
Jackson I may well have shot him the same way IF I THOUGHT HE WAS ARMED. If not I wouldn’t shoot him in the head.
The torso is the place to shoot, unless you’re convinced he has a gun.
Wilson is not telling the truth.
What if Wilson is just a lousy shot?
His story doesn’t add up. Seems to fool many white people and not many black people … but he’s crooked and the idea that he had no other choice but to shoot for the head is stupid.
@Rick Bentley
It is SO amazing that you can speculate all that….while discounting the jury statements. You just seem to know exactly what was in that cop’s mind and what actually happened.
Wow.
Congratulations to everyone here for a civil conversation with many different points of view. It is much more civilized here than it was at my house about 2 hours ago. My daughter and her kids came by, ages 8, 13, and 19. We all got in a huge fight about this issue. Mr. Howler, our housemate and I were on one side and my daughter and her kids on the other. It got heated. The fact that Mr. Howler and I were even remotely on the same side is a miracle in itself. The deadly shot was that she told her kids that their grandparents just weren’t very progressive.
Ha! So there. I hope we got the war out of the way for tomorrow. Thanksgiving is never dull at my house.
@Rick Bentley
With all due respect Rick you don’t know what you would have done. To be honest I don’t either but having family in law enforcement I can tell you that if a subject tried to grab your weapon it’s pretty cut an dry. Like I said before, Browns actions were suicidal. The incident has all the signs of someone who was committing suicide by cop. I would be interested to know if there is a history of suicide in the Brown family or depression..
The fact is he committed a strong armed robbery. Instead of running away from the crime scene he walks confidently down the middle of the street. Not between buildings, not running away, walking down the middle of the street with the stolen evidence in his right hand for all to see. That alone points to someone who HAS to know cops are looking for someone matching his description and is looking for a confrontation. If not that then please tell me why someone who just robbed a store would behave like that.
When a cop does confront him what does he do? He doesn’t run away, hide, ditch the evidence, he confronts the officer and tussles with him almost immediately. He even goes after the cops gun and the physical evidence proves that.
Again, all the signs of someone who either wants to commit suicide by cop. Create a situation to where cops would be looking for you, make yourself as visible as possible to be found. Then once found provoke a scenario where a cop has to shoot.
Mr. Brown had multiple chances to avoid any kind of confrontation but deliberately chose not to. Why? Again and again, choice after choice he deliberately choose to have a confrontation with police. He even unfortunately made the final and tragic fatal choice of trying to grab the weapon from an officer. Time and time again Mr. Brown made these choices.
All i am saying for sure is that Wilson’s story doesn’t add up, particularly the head shot.
I’m not making Michael Brown out to be a hero, or saying he couldn’t have been the aggressor.
Just saying Wilson’s testimony is in part straight up bull****.
Dude, the racial shit is getting fucking old. I’ve tried being civil and honest about the evidence of the incident but statements like this are disgusting.
http://monsterhunternation.com/2014/11/25/the-legalities-of-shooting-people/
This should be read by all.
@Rick Bentley
The head shot was to the top of the head.
If he had shot him, on purpose, to kill him, the entry wound would be to the face.
He fired 12 rounds, quickly. He missed with 6 and hit with 6. They are in line…which happens when you fire quickly. Adrenaline makes you miss. They are to the left of center…which can be common when firing under pressure. You tend to push the gun. Also, if he used a Glock, shooters tend to fire left of center when firing quickly.
You can google his autopsy results.
He was coming forward, head down, charging. The fatal wound was a bullet entry at the top, exiting through the supraorbital ridge. 8-10 ft away when he was shot in the head.
Adrenaline causes tunnel vision. That may explain why “that was all he saw.”
“Dude, the racial shit is getting fucking old. ”
You mean the way white America is not able to look at this story rationally once the bogeyman figure of the violent black teen is in the equation? I agree. And it’s disgusting.
Oh, wait, no. you meant me calling attention to it is disgusting.
Then you have people like me who usually don’t respond like I have responded. In fact, weren’t you one of the people who crawled my butt over my defense of Treyvon Martin? I still think George Zimmerman is a punk. He wasn’t where he was supposed to be. He was a wanna be cop. Treyvon Martin was in his dad’s neighborhood, talking on his phone, hanging outside for some privacy. I see it all the time with kids in my neighborhood.
I didn’t go riot, loot and burn after Zimmerman wasn’t convicted. He had his day in court and the jury of his peers didn’t see the evidence to convict him. End of story. He is still a punk and a toad, however. Nothing can change that description but the man himself, by altering his behavior.
Cargo, you are making a good point. The angle of the shot is consistent with him charging head down.
Or maybe falling down from another shot.
I don’t know, I should probably review more evidence before I make statements as provocative as I’ve been doing. i would walk some of it back if i could.
I’m skeptical.
I was very skeptical myself, in the beginning. In fact, I believe I have walked back a lot of what I first said. The more I learn, the more I will have to say I don’t know what happened. I think the evidence indicates that Brown was no saint and that he made some very stupid choices I don’t think Darren Wilson set out that day to kill a black kid. If he went by the procedures outlined in his department, he should be exonerated. I am sure his wife didn’t want to become a widow that day any more than Browns parents wanted to lose a child.
Apparently the shot went in through the top of the head.
I’m having a hard time beleiving Brown was charging at him head parallel to the ground.
Seems more likely to me he was falling from a different shot, or looking down.
try running at anything with your head parallel to the ground … not making any sense.
If a guy was running at you with his head at a 90 degree angle to his body, not looking up at all as he ran at you, would you stand in place and shoot at his head? That’s absurd. Anyone in that position would move to the side.
@Rick Bentley
We’re talking seconds….. The cop shot….demanded that he stop, and when he didn’t….reacquired his target…which was Brown at 8-10 feet.
Watch an NFL linebacker. Where’s his head when he’s lining up for a tackle?
Brown was moving. He may even have been falling at that moment. But you are talking about split seconds. The ENTIRE thing lasted about 90 seconds.
You shoot until the threat stops. You AIM center of mass. That does not mean that you will hit it. As long as no others or injured, hitting the threat is the main concern. His shot placement shows that he was aiming for the upper body. Nothing was aimed, slow fire.
Brown getting shot in the head was a result of him coming at the cop. Period.
The best way to not get shot by a cop is to not threaten him.
I know there are bad cops. I have personally encountered bad cops. Having said that, lets assume the default is good cop, with a few outliers. People are forgetting that a cop goes to work everyday of his or her life really not knowing if he or she will come home again that night. Its the nature of the job. When cops don’t come home, it is generally random. I think we just need to remember that often it is a thankless job with entirely too many people hating your guts and wishing you dead.
Under fire or threat of harm, cops have the same biological reactions, even with superior training. Let’s face it, Darren Wilson wanted to live that day. I am sure he didn’t put a lot of planning into his encounter with Michael Brown.
There is a huge discrepancy in the size of the two men.
No..the way you seem to be giving a pass to a violent teen. THAT and the actions in Ferguson are what is not rational. Just because you disagree with the verdict does not mean that it is not being seen rationally. And if you can consider the riots without being disgusted……
“You shoot until the threat stops. You AIM center of mass. That does not mean that you will hit it.”
Makes sense. But that’s not Wilson’s testimony. He said that all he could see was the head, though by any account there’s at least 10 feet between them and Brown’s torso is huge.
His testimony is cooked. Do you believe the kid is running at him 10 feet away with head at a 90 degree angle, such that he can’t see Wilson, and Wilson stands straight instead of moving to the side? And all he can see to fire at is the head? This is the story made up to fit available evidence, but it can’t be what happened.
I’m not talking about the riots. I’m not “giving a pass to a violent teen”. I’m pointing out that Wilson’s story is not credible.
More likely, Brown was facing him and pulling up his pants, repeatedly – as most witnesses did see and couldn’t tell what he was doing. Wilson presumed that Brown had a gun, and felt threatened, and shot him. When no weapon turned up, this story ending of Brown charging head down was invented.
I don’t think I’m particularly biased here. I kept an open mind on this until the evidence was released. And I’m a guy who thinks George Zimmerman shouldn’t have been charged.
But the evidence speaks for itself. It’s confusing at a lot of places. But it’s easy to see what happened at the end of the story.
I’m gonna be a little contrarian here and agree with Rick a little.
Something stinks about this whole thing. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but something’s not right. Let’s say I’m Mike Brown and I just lifted some Phillys from the local quick mart. I just want to get home as fast as possible and roll up my blunt. The absolute last thing I want to do is confront a LE officer in the middle of the street. If a cop rolled up on me and I thought I was about to get pinched for lifting the Phillys, I’m going to take off like a bat out of hell. I think the rest of the story probably went down pretty much like the officer testified, but the story prior to the confrontation inside the cop car stinks to high heaven. More likely, this was two alphas squaring off in the street with multiple FUs. In other words, I think the officer had more to do with the initial escalation than he let on, and then the situation got out of control.
@Cato the Elder
But, even then, if a cop says, “Get the F off the street.” do you stick around if you committed the crime? Heck….why walk down the middle of the street?
He was arrogant. He had just successfully committed a strong arm robbery.
Regardless, the evidence shows that he attacked the cop INSIDE the car.
I can’t help to wonder why the left is so adament that the process was unfair and the the decision was unfiar, given all we know and, most importantly, all we now know about the hard forensic evidence. Until Shummer’s recent speech regarding Obamacare, I cannot think of a single progressive, who has ever admitted that they were wrong about anything — in the face of history and/or the conga line of failures and miss-steps by this Administration. Argue it, argue and argue it again until the rest of us quietly walk away. The riots in Fergusen ended the conversation, and that is the sad part about this.
Too bad Officer Wilson wasn’t wearing a body camera. Much conjecture could have been cleared up with video. I still wonder about the makeup of the grand jury-9 white, 3 black. In 2013, St. Louis County was 70% white, 24% black and 6% other ethnic folks. Seems to me the grand jury should have been 8 white, 3 black and 1 non-white. IMHO, this jury was rigged from the start. While we may never know who voted how, if it went as I suspect, the outcome was predictable despite the jury having “all the evidence.”
“More likely, this was two alphas squaring off in the street with multiple FUs.”
Totally agree.
“the evidence shows that he attacked the cop INSIDE the car”
The evidence shows a fight inside the car.
“all we now know about the hard forensic evidence”
Yeah, that he was shot through the top of the head. Hard to explain unless he was falling down. Does anyone really believe Wilson;s story that the kid was charging him HEAD FULLY DOWN and instead of moving sideways he stands right where he is and shoots him through the top of the head – aiming for the head, the only thing he could see? Ridiculous.
“While we may never know who voted how”
George I strongly suspect, as you probably do too, that it was a 9-3 vote along racial lines.
We will never know the truth-eye witnesses are generally the worst type of witness. It is too bad that the grand jury could not find a way to let Officer Wilson have his day in court so that the public had a real opportunity to witness whether justice could be served or not. However, there is so much bias/prejudice/mistrust on both sides that even a jury trial might not have satisfied either group, regardless of how the verdict came down. I’m not sure how Officer Wilson can remain in Ferguson in any sort of meaningful law enforcement role. Am certain that he feels like a hunted man and remaining there very well could lead to serious injury or even death.
@George S. Harris
Rigged from the start? The jury was picked months before the incident. It was not assemble for this case.