Grand jury’s decision in Ferguson case not a surprise

By James Causey

Friday, Nov. 28, 2014 | 2:01 a.m.

A grand jury in Ferguson, Mo., on Monday decided not to indict Police Officer Darren Wilson, who fatally shot Michael Brown in August.

I wish I could say I was surprised by the decision, but I’m not. As a black male, I have seen this play out the same way too many times to count. Anytime a police officer says he “fears for his life” and uses deadly force, especially if the force is being used against a black man, the officer is hardly ever convicted.

The jury of 12 — nine white and three black — could have charged Wilson with first-degree murder or involuntary manslaughter, but it decided not to indict the officer. A CNN poll showed that Americans were split along racial lines about whether Wilson should have faced murder charges.

Fifty-four percent of nonwhites — including blacks, Hispanics and Asians — say Wilson should be charged with murder, while just 23 percent of whites agree. And 38 percent of whites say Wilson should not be charged with any crime. Only 15 percent of nonwhites held that position.

Wilson is white and Brown was black.

We know they were involved in a physical altercation in which the unarmed Brown, 18, was shot seven times.

People are angry, they are frustrated with the decision and they are angry with the way Ferguson officials handled the incident. They are also angry at the fact that while Ferguson’s population is nearly 70 percent black, African-Americans make up less than 6 percent of the police force.

On Sunday’s “Meet the Press,” former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani chose to address “black-on-black” crime statistics instead of looking at the disparities in the racial makeup of the Ferguson Police Department.

Giuliani got into a heated discussion with Georgetown professor Michael Eric Dyson after Giuliani asked why blacks protesting the shooting death of Brown do not display the same passion about black-on-black crime.

Giuliani said “93 percent of blacks are killed by other blacks. ... I would like to see the attention paid to that, paid to this.”

He also said the 93 percent figure was the reason why so many white police officers have to be in black areas.

Dyson called it a false argument. He’s right, because, according to the FBI’s most recent homicide statistics, whites kill 83 percent of white murder victims. Yet, Giuliani did not decry “white-on-white” crime.

It is also a falsehood that African-Americans don’t care about black-on-black crime. This is just not true. In cities such as Milwaukee, all you have to do is look at the hard work done by many at the grass-roots level by organizations that work with the young people that society has turned its back on. These youths are disadvantaged and have been told they will never amount to anything but being a drug dealer or a “thug.”

These grass-roots organizations are changing lives and saving lives because the people in them are sick and tired of seeing too many young people die in the streets.

Just because they don’t protest doesn’t mean they don’t care.

People are mostly frustrated because when black people kill other black people, they go to prison. When police do it, they generally do not get any jail time, and sometimes they even receive full disability.

Firing an officer takes guts. In October, Milwaukee Police Chief Edward Flynn fired Officer Christopher Manney after the officer failed to follow proper procedures in the fatal shooting of Dontre Hamilton.

Manney shot Hamilton 14 times April 30 in a downtown park after the two were involved in a physical confrontation. Days after Flynn fired Manney, the police union took a “no confidence” vote in Flynn.

Flynn’s frustration boiled over during a meeting of a police oversight panel. At one point during the meeting, members of the audience criticized Flynn for looking at his phone instead of listening to their concerns. Flynn was actually keeping up with the developments of a 5-year-old girl who was shot and killed on the south side.

“The fact is that the people out here — some of them who have the most to say — are absolutely MIA when it comes to the true threats facing this community,” Flynn said. “It gets a little tiresome when you start getting yelled at for reading the updates for the kid who got shot. Yeah. You take it personally.”

Flynn’s frustrations are no different from those who are fighting on the front lines for the young people whom society has forgotten. It’s not easy for either side, but they both need to be able to trust each other.

The division highlighted by the Ferguson case proves we still have a long way to go.

James Causey writes for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.