From [HERE] Darren Wilson, the white police officer who fatally shot Michael Brown in August 2014, will not be charged with any crimes.

St. Louis Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell, who is Black, made the announcement Thursday afternoon, officially ending the six-year legal saga. Bell said the lack of charges did not exonerate Wilson, but that the five-month investigation did not find anything that could be proven beyond reasonable doubt.

“I think we try our best to move on,” Bell said in a press conference. “I don’t know how a family will ever heal fully. I don’t know how this region is ever going to heal fully from this case, and I know the significance of it, but I think it’s time to try to move on.”

Brown’s father met with Bell before the press conference about the investigation’s findings.

“Mike Brown Sr. did not leave this meeting happy and anything short of justice in this case, that being Darren Wilson being held criminally responsible, would certainly be disappointing,” Anthony Gray, the Brown family attorney, said in a statement.

Bell’s announcement was made 10 days prior to the six-year anniversary of Brown’s death. Wilson claimed that he was acting in self-defense after Brown, who was unarmed and 19 years old, charged at him. Video from a nearby convenience store showed Brown allegedly stealing a box of Swisher Sweets before the encounter.

Several in attendance at the press conference shouted their displeasure at Bell. One man screamed that it would be “his last term” before being removed by security.

“What I would hope is that people who are watching this, understand that we put the time in, we did a thorough and detailed investigation, and we sat down with the family, looked them in the eyes, and gave them the findings,” Bell said. “And I think at this point that is all we can do.”

Bell said the investigation took place without any announcement because he did not want undue outside influence. He said they went through thousands of pages of documents in the case before reaching the conclusion.

Like his racist suspect predecessor, Bob McCulloch is also a democrat. McCulloch could have directly filed charges against Darren Wilson, the white cop who shot Michael Brown to death, but instead chose to take the case to a grand jury. It is widely believed that McCulloch did not want the grand jury to actually indict the white police officer. He selected a mostly white (9 out of 12) grand jury. McCulloch’s prosecutors handling the case took the highly unusual course of dumping all evidence on the jurors and leaving them to make sense of it. McCulloch’s office claimed that this is a way to give more authority to the grand jurors, but it was more like a way to avoid charging Wilson at all — and to use the grand jury as cover for the outrage that ensued. McCulloch's father was a police officer killed in a shootout with a black suspect, and several of his family members are, or were, police officers. He did not prosecute a single police shooting in 23 years. [MORE] and [MORE].

In January 2015 the NAACP Legal Defense Fund* wrote an open letter to Missouri Judge Maura McShane [also white] asking her to investigate Ferguson prosecutor Bob McCulloch and his team for misconduct in the lackluster, fake effort grand jury he put together in the Brown case. 

The group of experts assembled by the NAACP to review the grand jury transcripts “were struck by the deeply unfair manner in which the proceedings were conducted.” [MORE]

A federal investigation led by white prosectors also failed to turn up any charges against Wilson.

Brown’s death sparked months of often violent protests in the streets of Ferguson, a St. Louis suburb. The incident brought the issues of systemic racism and excessive police force into the national conversation.

In 2015 during the Ferguson Uprising Bell was elected to the city council with strong support from some activists. [MORE]

He then ran for DA on a platform of systemic overhaul of the county’s criminal justice system. His campaign against Bob McCulloch seemed improbable at first. But it was propelled by tireless grassroots organizing, a viral #ByeBob social media campaign modeled after Chicago’s #ByeAnita, and the backing of some national players that have prioritized transforming the culture of district attorney’s offices nationwide. His victory in the Democratic primary was both stunning and decisive. With a record turnout, he beat the incumbent by a 14 percent margin. [MORE] After his win left leaning reporter John Nichols said, “I thought what was incredibly significant last night was the Missouri race in St. Louis for the prosecutor’s seat. Wesley Bell’s victory out there is just a remarkable breakthrough win in a prosecutor’s race that might well be the pinnacle race in the country, because this is the prosecutor who didn’t respond effectively to Ferguson, and here you have a city councilman from Ferguson running against the incumbent 28-year veteran prosecutor on a platform of criminal justice reform, addressing cash bail, raising all the critical issues, and winning not by a small margin. It looks like Wesley Bell’s victory will be in the range of 57-43. So that’s a very big victory out there.“ [MORE]

The progressive publication, The Intercept wrote, “the push to put progressive prosecutors into office really took off after Ferguson, where the disastrous investigation of Brown’s killing opened the public’s eyes to prosecutors’ unique power to decide whom and when to prosecute. With Bell’s election, the Ferguson protests’ impact on the politics of criminal justice finally came home to St. Louis County."

“I absolutely feel like I am part of a momentum that’s continuing to grow,” Bell told the Intercept, adding that he draws inspiration from Krasner, Foxx, and other progressive prosecutors who preceded him. “I think that we have a real opportunity.” [MORE]

As if he was really about it, one of Bell’s first [symbolic] moves was to fire a veteran assistant prosecutor who had been a key figure in the case of Darren Wilson. Thereafter however, it took him two years to reopen the investigation into Michael Brown’s shooting. Two years? If a white cop or white human being were killed in the street would it take two years?

SOMETHING FOR NOTHING. ‘VOTING IS AN ILLUSION TO KEEP US QUIET, PACIFIED AND STUPID ABOUT OUR CONDITION.’ Dr. Amos Wilson explained, ‘The white liberal establishment [liberal dependent media, non-profit organizations, educational institutions and politicians] strives strenuously to convince the Black electorate that every conceivable problem which confronts it can be resolved through voting heavily for Black and friendly White politicians.’ It was no different after Michael Brown was killed: “Get out and vote to make change!”

But the reality was already there for anyone who had eyes to see:The Democratic Party has dominated St. Louis city politics for decades. In fact at the time of Brown’s murder there was a Black president, a Black Attorney General and lots of non-white representatives in Congress. Democrats controlled Ferguson/St. Louis and had significant power in Missouri. There was also a Democrat Governor (Jay Nixon), Democrat U.S. Senator (Claire McCaskill), a Democrat state attorney general (Chris Koster), a Democrat prosecutor (Robert McCulloch) overseeing the grand jury. At the time St. Louis city not had a Republican mayor since 1949 and the last time a Republican was elected to another city-wide office was in the 1970s. Additionally 95% of the city's 28 Aldermen were Democrats. At the federal level, in Missouri's 1st congressional district, a Republican had not represented a significant portion of St. Louis in the U.S. House since 1953. [MORE] 

Yet Blacks still had and have no power to get justice for Michael Brown. Clearly, in no way did voting for friendly white and Black politicians solve Black people’s problems in Ferguson or in NYC, Minneapolis, Atlanta, LA, Chicago or many other places where Black people are murdered in broad daylight by white cops. All such places have active Black votaries and no shortage of liberal democrat puppeticians. Right in our face; Blacks have no power to solve their problems. This is what powerless class means.

The fundamental rule of politics; the quid pro quo has not applied to electoral Black politics. Claude Anderson observes, “History does not show any instances in which Black Americans have been compensated on a quid pro quo basis for the political, cultural or economic contributions they have made.” He explains, “ Both White and Black candidates for public office, various political parties, and this nation, all get a free ride with Black voters. Black voters are led to believe there are two purposes to vote: 1) to elect the White candidate who is best able to lead and control resources or 2) to elect the Black candidate who is most deserving of a public job and personal recognition. The most we get is personal satisfaction that the candidate we supported won. We play politics just to play.“

Wilson states, ‘The dependent media is ever quick to remind the Black electorate of the historical struggles necessary to achieve their right to vote. It indicts the community for its electoral apathy and seeks to evoke guilt feelings in those who do not participate in the electoral process — making such ritualistic participation emblematic of democracy and first-class citizenship. This is of special interest when it is realized that very few, if any, of the major political, economic and social goals achieved by Black America, including the Voting Rights Act, were accomplished through Black voting prowess. The ballot box has been a relatively impotent weapon in the achievement of major victories by the Black community. Suddenly vigorous protest and direct-action legal suits and extralegal processes such as boycotts, sit-ins, and the like, which were used so effectively by the community to achieve its sociopolitical ends and to fight injustice and oppression, have fallen far behind the election of Black politicians to achieve the same ends.

Wilson states, that in reality the election of such politicians who in no way are interested in developing a program for the economic emancipation and empowerment of the Black community, and who are not committed to the final overthrow of White supremacy.’ [MORE]