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
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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