Per nestork:
While the civil rights activists are claiming this is a case of a racist
white cop shooting an unarmed child, the people that owned that
convenience store, and undoubtedly many others are glad that Michael
Brown is out of their lives.

I would agree with that assessment.

But...

From what I have heard so far (especially the Charlie Rose interview
last nite) the problem with whole situation is perceived lack of
transparency.

The Zimmerman thing, for instance: it went to trial and all the
arguments on both sides were publicly made. A lot of people didn't
like the outcome, but by-and-large they accepted it - because the
process was transparent.

In this case, the it looked to me like the general perception was that
the process was hidden. It might have helped if the grand jury
proceeding were televised, but going to trial would have helped a lot
more. It also might have lengthened the cooling-down period by virtue
of the lag between filing charges and the time of the trial.

In addition I heard a lot of cynicism about the prosecutor's conduct:
apparently, in the light of history, very un-prosecutor-like. Instead
of being aggressive, he just did a data dump to the jury of everything
connected with the case and sat back.

The kid's dead and he's not going to strong-arm-rob any more innocent
store owners - but the public need to see justice served has been denied
(rightly or wrongly... but still denied).
--
Pete Cresswell