Topic: Decline of the West
I’m not as disturbed as perhaps I should be by the mob violence in Ferguson, Missouri—because I so totally expected it.
First, it seemed pretty clear that the grand jury was not going to indict Officer Darren Wilson for the killing of Michael Brown. The evidence that trickled out in the weeks and months since the shooting led me to the conclusion that the former had acted within the bounds of his lawful authority. Brown was a thug and a criminal; Wilson was trying to do his duty as a police officer. Brown assaulted Wilson and threatened the officer’s life; for that he forfeited his own life. This is of course tragic for Brown’s family and even for Wilson, who must live out his life with Brown’s death on his conscience. But this must be said: Michael Brown died in the commission of a crime. That is a fact, however much people would prefer to overlook it.
Second, it seemed evident that certain factions of the Ferguson protest movement were primed for violence. Even if the grand jury had indicted Wilson there would have been looting, burning, bricks and bottles flying through the air. What had been started on the day that Michael Brown and Darren Wilson met for the first and last time was not to be stopped by the pronouncement of a grand jury—whatever the grand jury pronounced. A parade of rabble-rousing outsiders, led by the egregious Al Sharpton, marched into Ferguson to make sure this happened. And let it be noted that media coverage of the incident and its aftermath, much of it highly speculative and irresponsible, played a major role as well in the fanning of the flames.
The prosecutor in the case, Robert McCulloch is now being condemned by some for being too “pro-police.” What seems to be meant by this is that instead of maneuvering the grand jury into returning a true bill—a thing he could easily have done by being selective in his presentation of the evidence—McCulloch laid out all the evidence. Reviewing it, the grand jury not only decided that Wilson had not murdered Brown but that no crime at all had been committed. Think about that. In the face of enormous public pressure to do something, to throw the outraged community a bone of some kind, the grand jury declined even to indict Wilson on a lesser charge like involuntary manslaughter. So if McCulloch had gamed the system to obtain an indictment he would have been kicking the can down the road—to a trial jury that would very likely have acquitted Wilson. That very thing happened in the Zimmerman-Martin case, with a duplicitous prosecutor obtaining an indictment under false or at least questionable circumstances so as to pacify the community with a show trial. But the scheme backfired badly when the trial jury acquitted Zimmerman. In this case, at least, no such farcical miscarriage of justice will ensue.
What the Holder-corrupted Justice Department might do now is a doubtful question but I’m skeptical that Darren Wilson will ever be prosecuted in federal court. Given the evidence, it would be practically impossible to convict him of violating Michael Brown’s civil rights—the bar is high for such a conviction under federal law. On the other hand, a flurry of civil suits is a virtual certainty. How these will turn out is anybody’s guess but probably they’ll end with a series of costly settlements.
So there you have it: Despite all the hysteria and hyperventilating, the Wilson-Brown case has played out according to the well-thumbed formulistic script of race-baiting and media sensationalism. There’s sure to be plenty of hand-wringing and finger-pointing in the weeks ahead, with charges of police racism on one side and of violent lawlessness on the other. But I doubt that we’ll hear much about the business owners whose life’s work went up in smoke last night, or the actual, flesh-and-blood residents of Ferguson, Missouri who still be cleaning up after the pundits and the activists have moved on.
