Americans frustrated with the the relationship between law enforcement and black communities have legitimate concerns, but a prominent conservative black attorney says the violent reaction to the grad jury decision in Missouri Monday set back efforts to improve the justice system and President Obama’s comments and track record only make matters worse.
On Monday, St. Louis County, Missouri, District Attorney Robert McCulloch announced the grand jury considering five separate charges against Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson determined the evidence did not warrant any indictments against Wilson in the August shooting death of Michael Brown. While city, state and national leaders pleaded for calm regardless of the decision, protests quickly turned violent and dozens of Ferguson businesses were looted or burned. However, no injuries were reported.
Attorney Shelby Emmett is a member of the national advisory council for the Project 21 Black Leadership Network. She says there is deep-seeded mistrust of law enforcement in many heavily black communities, but she says nothing on Monday night helped to address them.
“I think it’s utterly shameful,” said Emmett, who says she has her own painful experiences with law enforcement that help her identify with some of the exasperation in Ferguson.
Nonetheless, she says there’s a right way and a wrong way to express that frustration and far too many Ferguson protesters chose the wrong way.
“Rioting and destroying your own communities has never, ever solved anything. I think the best way to approach this in a new era is for us as black people to become more involved in our communities, to join these police forces to start changing and having a positive impact instead of us always reacting,” said Emmett.
She believes Monday’s nights violence and property destruction only made the racial challenges in the country greater.
“I think how people acted last night just set us back in terms of a people and as a movement of supposedly wanting justice under the law and equal treatment. Too many of us are looking at this emotionally and not trying to look at this based off the law. And that’s both sides. A lot of people were quick to defend the officer. A lot of people were quick to condemn him, based off simply nothing more than experience or personal resentments or attitudes,” said Emmett.
Attorneys for the Brown family, and others who thought an indictment of Wilson was appropriate, accuse McCulloch and his team of not being nearly tough enough on Wilson in his appearance before the grand jury. They also say prosecutors approached the process all wrong. Many times, prosecutors will present their strongest evidence of guilt in order to secure an indictment and then the entirety of the evidence comes into play at trial. McCulloch is under fire for bringing all of the evidence forward to the grand jury, but Emmett thinks it was the right thing to do.
“What I would surmise that he was probably doing was, ‘Look, we know that we’re going to have these potential problems. There might be protests or there might be this. I’m going to give the jury every little teeny, tiny thing that we have, so nobody can say that we didn’t show x or if we would have put x,y and z together instead of just x and y, they would have got an indictment.’ I think he just wanted to put everything out there,” said Emmett.
Regardless of the decision, Emmett says the grand jury deserves credit for going about its work under extreme public scrutiny.
“They had a lot to deal with. It wasn’t just the case they were dealing with but also the social issues going on around it, the fears of protests, the threats. For them to still take this very seriously, which they did, instead of caving in to fear or being concerned with what could be the consequence, it’s obvious that they took their job very seriously,” said Emmett.
Shortly after McCulloch finished his presentation of the grand jury’s decision, President Obama made a statement from the White House. Obama sis the decision should be respected because it was the grand jury’s to make. He also implored the protesters to remain peaceful, noting that Brown’s parents had made the same plea.
Other parts of the statement, however, highlighted the distrust he says many black Americans have toward police and the judicial system.
“The situation in Ferguson speaks to broader challenges that we still face as a nation, The fact is, in too many parts of this country, a deep distrust exists between law enforcement and communities of color. Some of this is the result of the legacy of racial discrimination in this country,” said Obama, who elaborated further on this point.
“We have made enormous progress in race relations over the course of the past several decades. But what is also true is that there are still problems and communities of color aren’t just making these problems up,” he said.
Emmett agrees that these are sensitive issues that need to be addressed and resolved to advance as a nation, but she blasted Obama’s “horrible timing” with protesters already on edge. She further slammed Obama for squandering a unique opportunity to make progress on racial issues.
“President Obama had a real chance to have a dialogue with everybody, just kind of put it out there, hold blacks accountable for us, hold everybody accountable for their own actions and have a real discussion. Instead he does the opposite. He waits for either a specific racial issue to happen or he allows it to become more of a racial issue than it should have been,” said Emmett.
She believes the nation is far more divided on demographic lines after six years of Obama as president and she says he deserves a good part of the blame.
“The president is more so using people, using groups, be it illegal aliens, women, African-Americans. I think he uses these groups to push an agenda or distract. I don’t think any of this is genuine on his part and actually wanting to address these issues that actually real, substantive and genuine.
Emmett has a two-step approach that she believes would go a long way towards lowering tensions and fostering an honest national discussion. First, she says, is to get rid of some familiar faces.
“First and foremost, we’ve got to rid of this idea that black people as a whole have some ‘leader’. These fake leaders, your Al Sharpton and your Jesse Jackson, are so far removed from what their original purpose and worthwhileness was that they just need to go away. That’s the first thing,” said Emmett.
She believes that first step would set the stage for a more productive national dialogue.
“We all do need to have a real conversation about this. I grew up in a mixed household myself, so I understand how some people may be uncomfortable with it or you’re taught that the polite thing to do is not address it. We just need to be honest and up front, but that conversation has to come from everybody coming from a basic understanding of is it going to start where we are today or are we going to keep looking back on the past,” said Emmett.
