Grand Jury in Murder of Michael Brown—A Vehicle for a Cover-Up
NOT THIS TIME! ENOUGH! NO MORE!
September 29, 2014 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
From a reader:
Early morning September 23, someone, or some group, burned down the memorial at the site where Michael Brown was killed. Earlier Ferguson police had let one of their dogs urinate on the memorial and had run over it with their car. Many in the community thought the cops had attacked it again. Outrage spread and people quickly rebuilt the memorial. Photo: Special to Revolution/revcom.us
The pig Darren Wilson publicly executed unarmed Mike Brown on August 9 in the middle of the day, in the middle of a suburban apartment complex in front of multiple eyewitnesses, with cell phone video recordings documenting key aspects of it in Ferguson, Missouri. Mike was shot multiple times with his hands up in the universal sign of surrender. It took an uprising to force the police to even identify the killer. Over 51 days later (as of September 29), Darren Wilson has not been arrested. WTF?
Meantime, over 200 people have been arrested protesting this police murder with over 35 reportedly for felony charges.
TIME'S UP! WE DEMAND THE IMMEDIATE ARREST OF WILSON AND THE FIRING OF THE POLICE CHIEF WHO PRESIDED OVER THE DEPARTMENT THAT GROOMED THE MURDERER.
OH YEAH, ONE MORE THING: FUCK THE GRAND JURY, IT’S A VEHICLE FOR A COVER-UP.
We cannot wait and see whether the grand jury is going to come back with an indictment. There is too much at stake. If after the righteous uprising in Ferguson awoke the country to not only Mike Brown’s murder at the hands of the police but to the epidemic of police murders nationwide... If after the reverberations that this could have been any one of millions of Black and brown youth... If after the resistance dragged into the light of day the everyday police terror directed at the Black population and especially the youth who this system has no future for... IF after Trayvon Martin... If after all this, Darren Wilson walks—then it will be a big green light for open season and a target on the back of every Black and minority youth in this society.
Time and time again, police murders of unarmed Blacks and Latinos have been ruled justifiable homicide. You can probably count on one hand the number of cops who have been indicted and given what amounts to a slap on the wrist for state-sanctioned murder of thousands of people in the last decade alone. You can’t know for sure because no official agency keeps track. The experts will tell you, it is EXTREMELY, EXTREMELY RARE for a murdering pig to be indicted. The system is set up to let them off.
We cannot allow that to happen yet again. We cannot allow the agonizing and rage over what happened to Mike Brown to be yet again shoved back into the stifling normalcy of America where millions suffer these horrors in silence and millions more look away and ignore the howling injustice being perpetrated.
There's a Cover-Up Going On
There is no investigation going on... there is a cover-up taking place.
First, there was the character assassination of Mike Brown.
Then they raked his friend Dorian Johnson, who was a victim of the trauma of seeing Mike murdered in cold blood, over the coals. His credibility as a key eyewitness was dragged through the mud. He was threatened with arrest on an old warrant. Remember the witness who videotaped the strangling to death of Eric Garner in New York City and who was later arrested, while the cops go on paid vacation? Remember the ridicule of Rachel Jeantel, a key witness who was on the phone with Trayvon when he was murdered by wanna-be cop George Zimmerman? This is an all too familiar pattern.
One of the many Ferguson police wearing “I Am Darren Wilson” bracelets. Darren Wilson is the pig who murdered Michael Brown. So don’t tell us about killer cops being a few bad apples—the whole barrel is rotten.
Legal experts say that the grand jury will indict a ham sandwich if the prosecutor asks it to. It is normally a rubber stamp. But when it comes to a case of police murder, all of a sudden the grand jury is “investigating” to decide whether to bring a charge for a cold-blooded murder in the middle of the day in front of many witnesses. This is one piece of pork that the grand jury will try to let walk. Look at what just happened in Ohio where the video inside Walmart shows John Crawford walking around the store talking on his phone and then gunned down in a blink of an eye.
In Ferguson, the life of this grand jury was recently extended until January 2015. This gives the authorities the maximum time to carry out their cover-up while they work overtime to repress and derail the struggle for justice for Mike Brown, including into channels safe for the system like voter registration and healing.
We repeat: the grand jury is a way to actually FORGE the cover-up of the murder of Mike Brown in secret proceedings that are supposed to have a stamp of the (UN) justice system working.
Darren Wilson recently testified before the grand jury for four hours. A veteran criminal defense attorney was quoted in St Louis Post Dispatch as saying: “It’s unusual but not unheard of for a prosecutor to extend an invitation” for the target of an investigation to testify to a grand jury. The defense attorney said he had rarely allowed it: “I would only consider allowing my client to testify at a grand jury proceeding if I was convinced that the prosecutor presenting the evidence to the (grand jury) was convinced that his testimony would help them reach the decision not to indict.”
Put this up against the stonewalling by the police against releasing any information so as to allow the maximum freedom for concocting a “narrative” for the murdering pig. The only thing the police released was a blanked-out police report and no other information other than things to try and demonize Mike Brown.
An expert on forcing disclosure of police documents in Florida, Albuquerque, New Mexico (in relation to a rash of police murders), and now in Ferguson told Salon.com that he “believes the police incident report was created, but then buried." According to the expert, "Originally the ACLU was told that the report existed, but that it could not be released due to the bogus claim that it was an investigatory document (which it is not, under Missouri law). However, it may take a trial, with full discovery, to finally settle the matter of what was created when. Either way, however, the police have not followed procedure, violating both their own internal policies and Missouri state law.” [The expert, Charlie Grapski, blogs at Photography Is Not a Crime (PINAC) where he documents the cover-up going on in Ferguson extensively.]
There Is NO Justice in the Justice Department.
For those who think that the federal government’s Justice Department will fix the problem—you need to get real. There is no justice in the Justice Department . Have you seen any justice for the murder of Trayvon (the FBI is still investigating)... have you seen any in the murder of Sean Bell... or in Albuquerque where the Justice Department condemned police practices? You cannot because there has not been any. The Justice Department is there to cool out people’s righteous anger. Look at the way the Justice Department stepped in after the recent Ferguson City Council meeting turned into a public relations disaster as the people took the microphones and in front of the media spoke bitterness about all the years of racist abuse they have endured at the hands of the police. What happened? The Justice Department told the City Council to only hold three more of these kinds of sessions (not the planned five), to not let the media inside to cover them, and to restrict attendance to people who can prove their Ferguson residence—as if this is a local problem and concern.
Month of Resistance—A Big Stop Sign to Society
For Oscar Grant, Sean Bell, Anthony Baez, Andy Lopez, Trayvon Martin, Jordan Davis and the thousands of others whose lives were stolen—WE SAY NOT THIS TIME. ENOUGH. NO MORE. This is what the October Month of Resistance is all about—putting up the stop sign to society that this must stop, starting here and starting now.
As Carl Dix said after the not guilty verdict in the Trayvon Martin case: “Enough with this system and its savage oppression of Black people. No more of its open season. This capitalist system arose on the foundation of slavery and genocide and is today a worldwide system that enforces lives of poverty and misery on countless millions. We need to get rid of this system. We need a society and a world where our Black and Latino youth can live and thrive, where women don’t face violence and enforced motherhood, where instead of making wars on the oppressed of the world, the new society is backing their revolutionary struggles, where the environment isn’t being ravaged but being protected for current and future generations. This kind of world could be brought into being through revolution.”
We in the RCP are building a movement to sweep away this rotten system at the soonest opportunity. We have the leadership in Bob Avakian and the party he leads, the Revolutionary Communist Party. There is a strategy for how to make this revolution. As we fight for justice for Mike Brown, for an end to mass incarceration, police terror and the criminalization of a generation through the October Month of Resistance, you need to learn about this revolution that can CHANGE EVERYTHING.
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