Federal prosecutors are not expected to bring federal civil rights charges against Ferguson, Mo., police officer Darren Wilson in the August shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown, the New York Times reported Wednesday.
The Justice Department is working up a legal memorandum recommending no charges for Wilson, according to the Times, after an FBI investigation found no evidence to support federal charges.
The news comes two months after the local prosecutor decided not to file criminal charges against Wilson following a lengthy grand jury investigation into the shooting, which sparked fierce protests in Ferguson and a national debate about race and the U.S. justice system.
Wilson resigned from the Ferguson police department in November after he was not indicted.
The Times noted that a broader Justice Department into civil rights violations by the city’s police department remains active.
Same shit different day/year/decade.
This isn’t a surprise. It’s very difficult to prove a racial motive in a situation like this…even with all the racial stuff going on with cops and black people, you can’t unequivocally say that this killing was racially motivated. The feds can’t charge him based on the evidence (which should have lead to a trial at the very least), and the evidence doesn’t have anything in it that shows the officer was racially motivated to shoot Brown (no name calling or anything like that). I do think there is an (unjustified) increased fear by police of black people, and that affected Wilson’s actions (hence all the comments about demons), but that’s best handled with an investigation of the entire department. The right venue for taking Wilson to trial was the courts, and that failed horribly (and people should be going to jail or fired for that debacle).
Personally, I’m upset that the justice system is failing in all of these cases to punish the actions of the police…it’s most troubling that after these shootings the victims are not receiving medical care. That’s just unconscionable, and the real place where people should be concentrating efforts to criticize the police…but that’s the whole point of #blacklivesmatter, though it’s getting lost in the argument about if the person getting shot “deserved it”.
True. However many holes there were in Wilson’s story, Michael Brown was unavailable to provide a different story.
I came here to comment after nearly shouting at my screen in anger while reading the comments to the times articles. There is a consistant pattern of people defending “law enforcement” commenting and upvoting each other. It is sick, and disturbing.
This decision is likely the right one. It seems to me that Officer Wilson did not shoot Michael Brown because he was trying to shoot a black man. He did not shoot him because he thought that Mike’s blackness would let him get away with it. He shot him because he was scared. He started a fight with a kid by yelling at him through the window of his car. The unarmed kid is dead with six shots. He is dead because he was large, and black. It is a fucking tragedy.
I am not at all surprised by the decision.
Had he been charged, it would have had nothing to do with justice, only the bowing to the black and liberal racist protesters who think they deserve a free ride every time they are offended by law and order.
From the facts it appears that Brown was a big aggressive thug that probably had little future as a result of our society’s failure to require certain levels of behavior. Some one (either a policeman or another thug) would have eventually killed him.
Now, we need to try to work on some national (not local) solution to the thousands of young black men who have no more future than Brown had. I don’t know the answer, but I will offer that bringing back the draft might possibly give a last chance to some of these boys, by teaching them discipline, responsibility, and a trade.
OK, now all of you out there who have no solution are welcome to divert from the real problem, by jumping on me. Well, have it.