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Wednesday, November 19, 2014

'Proof Ferguson Grand Jury decision rigged'

St. Louis County prosecuting attorney Robert P. McCulloch, a Missouri native whose police officer father was killed in the line of duty when McCulloch was 12. (photo: AP)
St. Louis County prosecuting attorney Robert P. McCulloch, a Missouri native whose police officer father was killed in the line of duty when McCulloch was 12. (photo: AP)

Missouri's Pre-Emptive State of Emergency Is Proof the Grand Jury Decision Was Rigged

By Carl Gibson, Reader Supported News
18 November 14
“Governor calls State Of Emergency. National Guard waiting. FBI giving warnings. KKK issuing threats. What 'effing year is this?”

@ElonJames

“I couldn’t become a policeman, so being county prosecutor is the next best thing.”
f Governor Jay Nixon didn’t already know the outcome of the Ferguson grand decision, he wouldn’t have needed to call a state of emergency to give police extra powers. This is proof that the grand jury has already made their decision, but it won’t be made public until the state had adequately prepared for the suppression of mass dissent.

From the very beginning, the grand jury process was conducted to methodically protect Darren Wilson from any indictments. Robert McCulloch, the prosecutor for St. Louis County since 1991 (who was recently re-elected with no opposition), has a long history of shielding police officers who kill citizens from indictments, as he did in 2001, even referring to the two black men killed by the acquitted officers as “bums.”

McCulloch’s brother was a sergeant in St. Louis’s 9th district. His nephew and cousin were all St. Louis police officers. His mother was clerk for the St. Louis Police Department’s homicide division for 20 years. Basically, Robert McCulloch IS the police.

When McCulloch was 12, his father, Paul, an original member of the St. Louis PD’s Canine Corps, was killed in the line of dutyon July 2, 1964. Eddie Glenn – a black man – was charged and convicted of first-degree murder, but an investigation by CounterPunch suggests that Glenn should have been acquitted, because of the circumstantial and questionable nature of the evidence against him.

Because Paul McCulloch was found dead at the end of a gunfight between Glenn and four police officers, the fatal bullet may have come from any of the police officers’ guns. Glenn didn’t testify, but the only times he was interviewed about the incident were when he was in critical condition, awaiting surgery, or incoherent after coming out of surgery. Glenn had no lawyer present on his behalf during any of the interviews. Moreover, the jury that found Glenn guilty was made up entirely of white men, and there were no witnesses to the crime other than St. Louis police officers. McCulloch is still haunted by the death of his father, as he talked about it in his original campaign for District Attorney in 1991.

Protesters have called on Governor Jay Nixon to take McCulloch off the case and replace him with a special prosecutor. Over 116,000 people signed a petition calling for a special prosecutor, yet McCulloch has refused to step aside. Rather than going by the common practice of waiting on county and federal probes to be completed before hearing evidence, McCulloch is feeding the grand jury bits and pieces of evidence as his office receives it. Despite the fact that the case involves a white police officer killing a black man, the grand jury is made up of nine white people and three black people. Nine jurors have to agree on whether or not to indict. You do the math.

Governor Nixon’s recently-declared state of emergency allows for the St. Louis County Police Department, the St. Louis Metropolitan Police, and the Missouri Highway Patrol to function as a “unified command” with the Missouri National Guard, which Nixon just deployed in the St. Louis area. While Nixon says the police will be there to “protect civil rights and public safety,” the heavy-handed response to the initial protests after Mike Brown’s shooting invites skepticism.

There’s no current reason for Jay Nixon to declare a state of emergency. Protests, while ongoing, have been largely peaceful with the exception of one night out of 100. Additionally, the FBI has sent out a bulletin to police departments across the nation, telling officers to be on guard as the Ferguson grand jury decision could provoke nationwide protests, in which “extremists” could attack police and target critical infrastructure. The whole process reeks of the state amassing resources to swiftly smash dissent, and stalling the announcement of the grand jury decision until all preparations have been made to handle protests of all sizes.

Protesters during the Civil Rights Era had to brave police dogs, batons, and fire hoses to desegregate public facilities and win the right to vote. However, if today’s protesters have to go up against a heavily-militarized police state with an arsenal of armored vehicles, assault rifles, tear gas, flash-bang grenades, rubber bullets, and baton rounds at its disposal, how is dissent even possible? And if a state of emergency giving police extra powers can be declared with nothing to prompt it other than a coming grand jury decision, how can we say our justice system is truly legitimate?



Carl Gibson, 26, is co-founder of US Uncut, a nationwide creative direct-action movement that mobilized tens of thousands of activists against corporate tax avoidance and budget cuts in the months leading up to the Occupy Wall Street movement. Carl and other US Uncut activists are featured in the documentary "We're Not Broke," which premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. He currently lives in Madison, Wisconsin. You can contact him at carl@rsnorg.org, and follow him on twitter at @uncutCG.

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