Beavercreek Officer Sean Williams shot and killed shopper John Crawford III in the Pentagon Boulevard Walmart store on Aug. 5, just four days before Brown, who is black, was shot and killed by Wilson, who is white.
Branford Brown, executive director of the Miami Valley Urban League, pronounced himself “concerned and a little disappointed” in the Ferguson grand jury’s decision.
“As this point, I just hope that the community will listen to the pleas of Michael Brown’s family and react in a peaceful (manner),” Brown said.
“There is some work to be done in terms of building relationships between particularly communities of color and the police departments,” he added. “Hopefully we can begin some conversations before these kinds of acts occur.”
Amaha Sellassie of the Miami Valley Organizing Collaborative, said of his initial reaction to the Ferguson decision: “I’m devastated.”
Sellassie and members of the Ohio Student Association gathered at the Bolinga Black Cultural Resources Center on the campus of Wright State University to watch the announcement.
Some of the dozen people that had gathered at the center cried as they heard the news.
“I think there needs to be a trial and not just no indictment,” he said.
Sellassie, a black male, said the grand jury’s decision sends a message that some lives are valued more than others.
“It doesn’t seem like the justice system is really working,” Sellassie said. “We’re calling for nonviolent sustained pressure to transform the relationship between community and police.”
The members of the Ohio Student Association will gather at 4 p.m. today at the Beavercreek Police Department for a candlelight vigil to recognize those who have died from what Sellassie called police violence.
Concern about local reaction
Thomas Hagel, a University of Dayton School of Law professor, said his immediate reaction is one of concern about the public’s reaction locally in Ferguson.
But he said that from the case’s beginning, he believed Officer Wilson was trying to protect himself in the encounter with Brown.
“Let me put it this way, it didn’t shock me,” Hagel said of the grand jury’s decision.
When these cases are put before grand juries, jury members often ponder the evidence and testimony with an awareness that police officers are trained professionals who work to protect their communities, he said. That may make a difference in grand jury outcomes.
“I think, first of all, there is an ingrained respect for police officers,” he said.
Pastor James Washington of Phillips Temple CME Church in Trotwood said he was not surprised by the grand jury’s decision.
“History shows it’s very difficult to indict a police officer when he is engaged in enforcing the law. It takes a lot of evidence to uproot that,” Washington said.
“I do believe that it shows there is a lack of trust between the police, law enforcement and the black community,” Washington said. “ A lack of trust in government is something that is uniquely American. Those who founded this country had a mistrust in government.”
Washington added that when you look at the black community, it’s evident that there is a definite trust factor when it comes to the relationship to law enforcement.
Washington said the public needs to focus on three main things when it comes to the Ferguson case. Number one, there are two parents who have lost their son. Number two, police have a difficult responsibility to enforce the law, and number three, the protesters should not be the focus.
“We don’t want the protesters, whether its violent or nonviolent, to get the main focus and the attention,” Washington said.
Attorney Michael Wright represents the family of John Crawford III, 22, who was shot and killed as he carried a black air-powered BB gun at the Beavercreek Walmart.
A lone 911 caller said Crawford was waving the weapon at fellow shoppers, and police said Crawford did not respond to their commands. Wright and Crawford’s family members, however, after watching Walmart store video footage, argued that Crawford was shot on sight, having never been given a chance to comply with police orders.
A grand jury declined to indict anyone in that case, and local reaction to the decision was “measured,” Wright said. While there were gatherings and social media activity, there was no Dayton-area unrest in response to the local grand jury’s decision.
“I think the local reaction was responsible,” Wright said in an interview before the Ferguson decision was announced. “I think the local reaction was measured, and I believe they took, and the public took, the steps they believed were necessary.”
In general, Wright believes prosecutors can secure indictments from grand juries when that’s the outcome they seek.
“I personally believe that the prosecutor has a lot of authority related to whether or not there’s an indictment or no indictment,” he said. “The prosecutor has the ability to present the evidence in such a manner to basically determine whether there is going to be an indictment.”
Added Wright, “The grand jury normally does its job.”
Ric Simmons, a professor of criminal law at The Ohio State University Moritz College Law and a former prosecutor, said grand juries are imperfect tools that usually vote as prosecutors wish them to vote.
“The grand jury as it’s usually used, it’s used essentially as a tool by the prosecutor,” Simmons said.
Usually grand juries only see the evidence prosecutors want them to see, he said. That presentation usually is one-sided, he said.
What makes the Ferguson grand jury unusual, Simmons said, is that it was expected to see “all the information,” he said. “The prosecutor made a different choice here and is basically giving the grand jury all of the information. I think it has been a number of months of presentations.”
Grand jury members are not immune to political or community pressures, he agreed.
“They’re not sequestered,” Simmons said. “They’re seeing all the media reports that the all of us have,”
Nine of 12 votes to indict are sufficient, Simmons said. And the testimony and evidence that a grand jury sees are usually secret. But in this case, prosecutors have said that if there’s no indictment, they will seek a court order to release at least otherwise secret witness testimony, if not the names of witnesses who testified, he said.
Meanwhile, the office of District Attorney Carter Stewart is conducting its own review of what happened when Officer Williams shot Crawford. Wright said that review is ongoing. Williams was placed on restricted duty while the federal probe is conducted.
Wright said his office has collected all evidence and information from the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation, which investigated the Crawford shooting. The Crawford family will weigh its options when it comes to a possible civil lawsuit, he said.
The Cincinnati riots
When Dayton Police Chief Richard Biehl watches the events that unfolded in Ferguson, he experiences a very familiar feeling.
“It’s as if I’m reliving the riots in Cincinnati 13 years ago,” Biehl said in his own interview before an announcement in Missouri.
In April 2001, Biehl was assistant chief with the Cincinnati Police Department. He remembers well the city’s response after the death of Timothy Thomas, a 19-year-old black male who was shot by a Cincinnati police officer after a late-night foot chase.
Some in the city’s Over The Rhine neighborhood and nearby locales took to violence and unrest for several days following that shooting.
Lingering behind the unrest were the deaths of a total of 15 black men while in Cincinnati police custody or during police encounters over the previous five or six years.
But in most of those encounters, the citizens that police confronted were armed, Biehl said. “In fact, we had police officers, guns pointed at (them), shot at (them) and shot during the events. And yet that gets lost. That level of detail gets lost.”
Biehl said he knew immediately after the Thomas shooting that there would be “trouble” in the city. But he also says that over the years, only “three to four” of the 15 police-involved deaths had been “controversial” at the time.
Cincinnati paid a steep price. In the year following the riots, the city’s crime rate rose. One Cincinnati Enquirer headline that year read: “Summer of Blood,” Biehl recalled.
In Ferguson, Brown’s Aug. 9 death set off months of protests, some of which resulted in injuries and arrests. The town’s police force has been widely criticized for overreacting to the initial protests, donning riot gear and assault weapons to confront law abiding demonstrators.
The killing and its aftermath sparked a national conversation about how blacks are treated by police. Protests rippled throughout the nation.
Although peaceful, several protests and rallies were held in the Miami Valley after Crawford’s death.
Watching Ferguson this year, said Biehl: “I feel like I’m living it all over again. The same narrative, the same response. I wonder if we’ve learned anything, as a society, as a culture and as a nation.”
For Maj. Daryl Wilson, an African-American who has worked for the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office since 1991, local and national tensions after recent police-involved shootings go deeper than black-white relations. They affect all citizens, he said.
“It’s not a black-and-white thing,” Wilson said. “It is not. And I know people want to put that on there because it adds more flavor to the story. Really, it’s a human life thing. It’s unfortunate when anybody loses their life.”
Likewise, Wilson feels lingering tension impacts all officers, not just those who are black and who may be seen as bridges to minority communities.
“I don’t think it’s about me being an African-American deputy sheriff,” Wilson said. “I think it’s law enforcement as a whole. Because it’s about authority.”
It remains important for him to be on the street, for citizens to see him, he feels.
“I think it’s very important that we as law enforcement engage, get out in the community, built a relationship, build trust,” he said. “Because this thing is deeper than just the Ferguson and (Beavercreek) Walmart (shootings). This thing goes back years.”
Today, he said, “95 percent” of all police officers are doing their jobs well. Perhaps five percent, he said, may harbor prejudice. “Is the other five percent prejudiced? I would be a fool to tell you that they’re not.”
Wilson asked citizens to understand the singular stresses that accompany law enforcement jobs. An officer starts his or her shift not knowing whether a fatal encounter is ahead.
“Police officers are human,” he said. “Police officers have families that we want to come home to at night. And this is a crazy society. Not only is there international terrorism and threats, but it’s domestic.”
Said Wilson, “Let’s look at the big picture here. Obviously this society is a dangerous society.”
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