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St. Louis area braces for aftershock of grand jury’s decision on Ferguson shooting St. Louis area braces for aftershock of grand jury’s decision on Ferguson shooting
(about 4 hours later)
FERGUSON, Mo. —A grand jury is continuing its deliberation on whether to indict Darren Wilson, the Ferguson police officer who fatally shot Michael Brown, an unarmed 18-year-old, in August. ST. LOUIS — In a city bracing for another convulsion, the waiting game looks like this: University students gather in a gym and rally for peace. Churches draw up plans for “safe spaces,” a refuge during potential chaos. Fringe groups pass out fliers advocating for various kinds of instigation if a grand jury decides not to indict a police officer who 3 1/2 months ago shot an unarmed teenager.
When they jury will reconvene is unknown, but according to sources close to the process and who spoke on condition of anonymity, they may meet again Monday or possibly sooner. The process is secret, so sources could not speak on the record. It’s that decision, which authorities have for days signaled was imminent but now seems slow to come, that has brought St. Louis into a bizarre holding pattern, with little agreement here about what will happen in the city after the grand jury resolution.
Ed Magee, a spokesman for St. Louis County prosecutor Robert McCulloch, said his office is not confirming when the grand jury is meeting. Eyes were trained on this weekend as the decisive moment for an area that has been rocked by the shooting and the weeks of unrest, some of it violent, that immediately followed. But news came Saturday that the grand jury was still deliberating.
Residents, authorities and institutions are bracing for whatever thunderclaps may come from any decision. Exactly when it will reconvene is uncertain, though it could be Monday or possibly sooner, according to people knowledgeable about the deliberations. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the grand jury operates in secret. Ed Magee, a spokesman for St. Louis County prosecutor Robert McCulloch, said his office is not confirming when the grand jury is meeting.
Many people expect the grand jury will decline to indict Wilson based on evidence in the case that has emerged publicly. What no one can say for sure is what will happen next? Will the reaction surpass the violent conflict between police and demonstrators that immediately followed the shooting — or will the restraint of the weeks of nonviolent protests that followed prevail? That means whatever looming eventuality must continue to loom as the area moves another day closer to the Thanksgiving holiday.
Some, though not all, public schools that serve Ferguson reportedly plan to be closed Monday and Tuesday. Churches in the area will open their doors as “safe spaces” for people to take refuge and share emotions. Harris-Stowe State University — the region’s historically black college, where 40 percent of the students are from the Ferguson area — will have counselors on hand for students to seek psychological support, as well as art supplies as creative outlets for their grief or anger. “People are getting anxious, and this doesn’t help that,” said Tony Rice, a frequent protester who helps coordinate the ongoing but small demonstrations outside the Ferguson Police Department. “I bought into the hype of it being this weekend, even though I knew better.”
“As a former Ferguson resident, we are bracing for an explosion, a war,” said Jazminique Holley, a student leader at Harris-Stowe, who personally advocates nonviolence. No indictment “sends a message that it’s okay to kill little black boys, to be honest.” Meanwhile, President Obama, community leaders, and the father of the slain 18-year-old have all called for peace — a particular concern if the grand jury decides not to indict Darren Wilson, the officer.
When the decision comes, “I will be holding my son” — 4-year-old Seven — “tight for the rest of the night. But the first thing Monday morning, I’ll be out on the ground peacefully protesting,” Holley said. Ferguson, the suburb where the killing took place, is prepared for chaos. Business owners have boarded up storefronts, and the FBI — which has about 100 agents and other personnel here, according to law enforcement officials — has warned in a bulletin that the grand jury announcement “will likely be exploited” to justify a broader range of attacks on authorities and infrastructure.
Yet Marshida Harris, 22, a member of the Young Citizens Council of St. Louis, which has tried to use these months as a teachable moment to engage and educate young people in organizing for constructive change, had higher hopes: that any demonstrations may be powerful yet peaceful. Two men tied to the New Black Panthers were indicted on illegal gun purchasing charges. They were presented Friday.
“I honestly think it’s going to be a more organized, more peaceful protest,” Harris said. “It’s the police who feel like they need to suit up and boot up against people who are not suited up and booted up.” “If Darren Wilson walks, America must be brought to a halt,” said Lou Downey, a supporter of the Revolutionary Communist Party, a group that advocates for a turbulent version of nonviolence and civil disobedience in Ferguson. “That means no business as usual. It means blocking streets and walking out of schools. It means we refuse to accept this.”
On Monday, Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon declared a preemptive state of emergency and activated the National Guard — a move that was criticized as potentially escalating the situation. Whenever the decision does come, the response — whatever form it takes — will be of a different nature than the spontaneous protests that followed the Aug. 9 shooting. In this case, there has been plenty of advanced planning time. That has allowed protest leaders and police to draw up some rules of engagement that could keep a cap on tensions. But some in Ferguson note that even a modest instigation can change a calm gathering into a volatile one, as seen one night in August when one protestor’s launch of a water bottle set off a round of tear gas.
Following intense negotiations in recent weeks on tactics, police and protesters announced this past week an agreement on a dozen “rules of engagement” for how any protests will be policed, including general principles to protect human life and avoid excessive force. However, as of midweek, there was no agreement on the use of tear gas and riot gear. Some in Ferguson say they fear the lead-up to the grand jury decision has caused tension to build all the further.
Organizers of various factions of the sprawling protest movement have spent weeks training supporters in nonviolent yet creative direct action tactics. Lately there have been “die-ins” around the area, where demonstrators fall to the ground, their positions marked in chalk. Gunshop owners report a spike in sales. Anonymous, a leaderless Internet group known to carry out cyberattacks to advance social and political causes, is one of several controversial groups that has arrived in the region. The Klu Klux Klan has distributed fliers around the city saying that protesters have “awakened a sleeping giant” and said that “threats of violence” against police and communities will not be tolerated and will be answered with “lethal force.”
Yet some young protesters seem hungry for something more confrontational. Friday night, as usual, a group of a few dozen gathered outside the Ferguson police headquarters, taunting police and occasionally blocking traffic. They seemed disorganized. Some wanted to march, others wanted to block cars and leer at the motorists through their bone-white Guy Fawkes masks. Several black nationalists groups, including the New Black Panthers and the Revolutionary Communists, have had an enduring presence here since August, worrying law enforcement officials at the state and federal level.
They united in one rowdy chant: “Who shut it down? We shut it down!” Police officials, criticized in the aftermath of the shooting for zig-zagging strategies and the use of large tactical vehicles and tear gas, say they are now more prepared to deal with a volatile situation. Roughly 1,000 officers have been given civil disobedience training. The city and county police forces have created a special phone line and liaison for protesters.
Outside a peace rally Friday night at Harris-Stowe, someone not connected to the rally handed out leaflets calling for people to “pour into the streets,” block highways and take over campus buildings if Wilson is not indicted. “We’ve had since August to improve communication with the community, with protesters, so things can look different this time around,” St. Louis City Police Chief Sam Dotson said.
Inside the university’s gym, students gathered for the “Peace Rally for Youth.” The crowd of less than 200 was far smaller than organizers had planned for. But they came from several area colleges and universities, and they responded with enthusiastic chants and claps as organizers spoke of pivoting the Brown protest movement to a longer-lasting instrument for forcing change in the way some communities are marginalized, and stopping cases of mistreatment by police. Meantime, protest leaders have been preparing for weeks for the grand jury decision by readying safe houses, emergency packs and signs while also scouting out new protest sites. They launched a Web site with information on where would-be protesters around the country have posted plans for actions in their cities. Once the grand jury announcement is made, protest leaders will send a blast text message to a list of 16,000 subscribers — mobilizing them into action across the country.
“It goes beyond Michael Brown,” Harris, the Young Citizens Council member said in an interview after addressing the crowd. “Right now it’s in our territory. But what I realize is that Ferguson is a reflection of what’s going on across our country.” In Ferguson on Saturday, near the streets that saw that heaviest protest action in August, most of the businesses had sealed their windows with plywood. Some planks were festooned with enlarged photos of raised hands — a symbol of the protest movement — and spray-painted with a message: “We Are Open.”
Like Holley, worried about her son, Harris was thinking about her brother Lionel “Tre” Stokes III, who, at 16, was volunteering at the rally. After the decision, he wants permission to go watch the action outside the prosecutor’s office in the neighboring suburb of Clayton, which is the county seat and where the grand jury is convened. If the grand jury does not indict Brown, “I think [the community] will feel like it’s open season on young black men,” said Rev. Tommie Pierson, pastor of Greater St. Mark Family Church. “You will see an outburst of protest. I hope that we can be more targeted and more disciplined in our protest.
“My role on Sunday [if there’s a decision] is to talk to my brother,” Harris said. “I want him to understand what everything means. It’s beautiful for us to rush out and be part of it. It’s also very important to educate our own.” “There should not be looting at all. That does not help our cause,” he said. “Disruption is more helpful than destruction.”
Will she let him watch the protests? In a sign of how many are on edge, several squad cars in Ferguson were swarmed on Saturday by young men from the neighborhood while officers were making a stop for a possible traffic incident. The men called themselves the “Copwatch,” formed in the wake of Brown’s death. The Copwatchers trained their cameras on the police, who at first bristled, then engaged the men in a conversation about the use of cameras and what kind of distance to keep when police are doing their jobs. A black sergeant took the lead in the talks.
“After explaining it,” Harris said, “I may let him go.” “We need white officers to show up and be ‘Officer Friendly,’ ” Copwatch organizer David Whitt told the sergeant. “Stop sending someone black to be ‘Officer Friendly.’ We need white officers to understand who are the people in the community.”
Kimberly Kindy contributed to this report. Copwatch has distributed 210 cameras to watchers in the neighborhood, using donated funds, and has trained the citizen witnesses both how to use the technology and what their rights are when encountering police, Whitt said.
“Whatever the verdict is, we will be out there watching the cops,” Whitt said.
Even in recent days, in anticipation of the grand jury decision, protests have grown in number and intensity — most of them outside of the Ferguson Police Department. Some protesters say they are still being treated with a degree of hostility. Recently, after making arrests, the police have begun writing more descriptive police reports, as if building a case for any kind of action.
In the write-up of Friday night’s protest, the county police included this section:
“One individual was wearing a trench coat, black ‘Anonymous’ T-shirt and a white ‘Anonymous’ mask. This individual utilized a bullhorn with a siren on it, yelling profanities that included that they wanted Ferguson Police Officer Wilson ‘dead.’ ”
Chico Harlan, Kimberly Kindy and Sari Horwitz contributed to this report.