People demand security and justice. When they get neither, the result is a serious rupture of the bond between the state’s institutions, the people and their representatives.
For more than three months, the grand jury — made up of seven men and five women, nine white and three black — heard evidence into the shooting. They met 25 times and heard from 60 witnesses.
FERGUSON, Missouri – Violent protests and looting erupted in the U.S. town of Ferguson on Monday after a grand jury chose not to press charges against a white officer who shot dead a black teen.
Five current and one former member of the Ferguson police force face pending federal lawsuits claiming they used excessive force. The lawsuits, as well as more than a half-dozen internal investigations, include claims that individual officers separately hog-tied a 12-year-old boy who was checking his family mailbox, pistol-whipped children and used a stun gun on a mentally ill man who died as a result.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. President Barack Obama has ordered a review of federal programs that supplied nearly half a billion dollars in military equipment to municipal police departments last year, amid criticism of the heavily armed response by local law enforcement agencies to protests in Ferguson, Missouri.
