Black Community News News and Commentary for Christians
After all the “Black lives matter,” “Hands up, don’t shoot” protests, which included burning down businesses, blocking streets, and generally being a public nuisance, President Barack Obama’s Department of Justice, with Eric Holder still sitting at the top of it, will not charge Officer Darren Wilson with violating the late Michael Brown’s civil rights when he shot and killed him.
The New York Times reports:
Federal investigators interviewed more than 200 people and analyzed cellphone audio and video, the law enforcement officials said. Officer Wilson’s gun, clothing and other evidence were analyzed at the F.B.I.’s laboratory in Quantico, Va. Though the local authorities and Mr. Brown’s family conducted autopsies, Mr. Holder ordered a separate autopsy, which was conducted by pathologists from the Armed Forces Medical Examiner’s office at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, the officials said.
The federal investigation did not uncover any facts that differed significantly from the evidence made public by the authorities in Missouri late last year, the law enforcement officials said. To bring federal civil rights charges, the Justice Department would have needed to prove that Officer Wilson had intended to violate Mr. Brown’s rights when he had opened fire and that he had done so willfully — meaning he knew that it was wrong to fire, but did so anyway.
Before this news leaked, autopsies showed that Brown wasn’t shot in the back running away, as the narrative went. The officer said Brown had struggled with him over the gun, “an account supported by bruises and DNA evidence. Two shots were fired during that struggle.”
Photo credit: By Loavesofbread – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons
