Indict the system, says lawyer

ST LOUIS: A lawyer for the family of Michael Brown said on Tuesday that a grand jury’s failure to indict the police officer who shot the unarmed black teenager was “completely unfair” and said the criminal justice system was “broken”.

“The process should be indicted,” attorney Benjamin Crump said at a press conference a day after the grand jury, an investigative panel, decided not to charge police officer Darren Wilson over the August 9 killing in Ferguson, Missouri.

The St Louis County prosecutor’s announcement on Monday set off protests and rioting, which left dozens of businesses looted and burnt.

Crump accused the prosecutor of favouring the police and said a special prosecutor should have been appointed.

“We object publicly and as loudly as we can,” he said.

He proposed that reforms in the wake of the Ferguson unrest should require all police officers in the US to wear video cameras to increase transparency, especially in cases like the Brown shooting.

President Barack Obama said the Ferguson situation had sparked “necessary conversations” about race and police practices.

“The frustrations that we’ve seen are not just about a particular incident. They have deep roots in many communities of colour.”

There was “no excuse” for violence, he said, and “no sympathy at all for destroying your own communities”.

Reforms came not from destruction but “because people vote, because people organise, because people mobilise”, he added. – Sapa-dpa