After three months of protests and a very secretive court case, yesterday the Grand Jury in the Michael Brown murder case found “no probable cause” to indict police officer Darren Wilson on each of the five counts against him. Autopsies by the county and Michael’s family found that he was shot by Wilson at least six times, including twice to the head. In fact, Wilson’s gun was fired 12 times in the course of the encounter. These facts did not seem to matter, though, and Ferguson erupted in violent protests as soon as the verdict was delivered. In New York, thousands marched through Times Square, and other protests were sparked around the world.
Most people in Ferguson expected that Wilson would not be indicted. Many of those involved in demonstrations accuse white authority figures in the city, whose population is two-thirds black, of covering up the truth about the killing of Michael Brown. In the past ten years at least 14 people have been killed by St Louis police, and none have been charged. This week a 12 year-old black boy playing with a replica gun was also shot dead by an officer in Cleveland, Ohio.
Image Credit: Flickr / sarah-ji
