The entire process through which the grand jury arrived at its decision is a legal fraud, with the outcome dictated by the political calculations of the ruling class.

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St. Louis County prosecuting attorney Robert P. McCulloch’s statement Monday night that no charges will be filed against Ferguson, Missouri police officer Darren Wilson for the killing of Michael Brown is a travesty of justice.

The entire process through which the grand jury arrived at its decision is a legal fraud. The outcome is not the result of fair judicial proceedings, but political calculations. The grand jury returned the outcome the state was seeking: no charges for the police murder of an unarmed African American youth.

Despite the fact that the decision was not announced until after 9:00pm eastern time, there were protests Monday night throughout the United States, including in New York, Los Angeles, Detroit, Chicago, Atlanta and Philadelphia.

In Ferguson and surrounding cities, police responded by deploying SWAT teams in riot gear, firing tear gas and rubber bullets. Convoys of armored police vehicles rolled through the streets. The roofs of some of the vehicles were lined with sand bags, with marksmen pointing assault rifles at unarmed demonstrators. At least 29 people have been arrested.

The mayor of Ferguson called for the deployment of the National Guard—previously activated by Missouri Governor Jay Nixon, who declared a pre-emptive “state of emergency” last week.

President Barack Obama spoke immediately after McCulloch’s statement, mouthing a few perfunctory and semi-coherent comments, the main aim of which was to solidarize himself with the grand jury ruling.

CNN broadcast a split screen, showing on one side the police crackdown in Ferguson and on the other Obama declaring, “We are a nation built on the rule of law,” insisting that everyone had to accept the grand jury decision.

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The decision not to charge Wilson took place against the backdrop of a growing wave of police violence all over the United States, including last week’s killing of a 12-year-old boy playing with a toy gun in Cleveland, Ohio and an unarmed man in New York City.

The decision marked a stand taken by the political establishment that it would uphold the right of police to kill whomever they chose. Like all reactionary classes facing a crisis, the American ruling class decided that any concession to the demands of the population that Wilson be prosecuted would be politically dangerous and serve only to encourage opposition.

The ruling and subsequent police crackdown express the breakdown of democratic forms of rule in the United States, under the pressure of the growth of social inequality and the drive to war. The war on terror, in a word, has come home.

Dispatches: Wake up US, Ferguson Calling
November 25, 2014
Maria McFarland Sánchez-Moreno

Many questions are already being raised about the grand jury decision not to indict Darren Wilson, the white police officer who shot and killed Michael Brown, an unarmed African-American teenager, in Ferguson, Missouri in August. However, many of those questions will, by necessity, remain unresolved: without hearing the same evidence the jury has heard in closed sessions over the past four months, it’s very hard to assess the soundness of their decision.

What is safe to say about the failure to indict is that it isn’t entirely surprising. While allegations of police brutality are common in the US, it is extremely rare for them to result in criminal charges—or even disciplinary sanctions.

This is not a new problem. In 1998, Human Rights Watch examined mechanisms for police accountability in 14 large cities. We found that excessive use of force by police officers, including unjustified shootings, severe beatings, fatal chokings, and rough treatment, persisted because of overwhelming barriers to accountability. Those barriers included a “code of silence” among officers, flawed systems of reporting and oversight, and scarcity of meaningful information about trends in abuse. Sixteen years later, the US Department of Justice has increased its investigations into “patterns or practices” of abuse in police departments, in line with our recommendations. But elsewhere, we have seen little momentum towards institutional reform ...

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