Objectively appropriate
Michael Brown is a dead man. Darren Wilson is a free man. Robert McCulloch is the prosecutor and definitely not an unprejudiced man.
What happened is no news anymore. A policeman shot an unarmed man. Because “that man seemed so big and strong” and the policeman couldn´t tell if he was armed or not he felt that was the only choice. He shot him several times, the last shot directly into his head- Michael Brown died.
The policeman doesn´t feel guilty. It was “self-defence” and he would do it the same way again. The fact that the victim was black and the policeman is white is of no consequence, of course.
The judge pronounced the sentence this week. Wilson acted “objectively appropriate” because he felt threatened. He is going unpunished and his actions won´t have any consequences.
Robert McColluch is the prosecutor. According to Deutsche Welle his family is well connected to the police. His brother, uncle, mother and cousin work for the police in St. Louis, a town that is only 20km away from Ferguson. His father also worked for the police. He was shot dead by an Afro-American when McCulloch was 12 years old.
Is it possible for a prosecutor with this family history to judge objectively? Knowing this, is it still so surprising for him to defend Wilson´s deed as “objectively appropriate”? How can a prosecutor with this background even be allowed to judge in that case? Is there any other option than the waves of demonstrations that cover the whole country by now?
There is no other option! In more then 170 cities of the United States people are in the streets to fight for justice. In Ferguson itself the demonstrations are not peaceful. 2200 members of the national guard are there to establish order. But who is establishing order in the judicial system? Obama is not. According to him the volatile demonstrators are criminals. They shouldn´t fight violence with violence. Obama does admit that there are judicial decisions that are not fair from time to time. He does admit that its unfairness sometimes roots from racial backgrounds. Furthermore he does admit that the Afro-American community doesn´t have much trust in the police-system and that the lack of trust is coming from events in the past and that therefore it is understandable. Still he tells the people to accept the decision! But it can´t and shouldn´t be accepted. The breach of trust Obama is talking about is not only in the past. It happens every year, every week, every day.
The week Michael Brown was killed, 3 more Afro-Americans died because of police violence (ZEIT). 4 days ago a 12year old boy from Ohio was killed by 2 policemen. The police got a phone call by a women who saw a boy of colour playing with something that looked like a gun. She apparently also said that it could very well be a toy gun. She was right- it was a toy gun. The boy died in hospital on Sunday.
2008 the 22year old Afro-American Oscar Grant was shot by a policeman in San Francisco. Last year the movie “Fruitvale Station” came out which tells his story. He was unarmed. The policeman was convicted for non-deliberate homicide. Apparently he wanted to pull his taser and accidentally pulled the gun. Grant died (Spiegel).