The St. Thomas community is feeling the effects and emotions of Monday’s grand jury decision not to indict Darren Wilson, the officer who fatally shot Michael Brown in August in Ferguson, Missouri.
The grand jury spent 70 hours reviewing evidence and heard from 60 witnesses before concluding that conflicting witness testimonies led to inconsistencies with the physical evidence.
St. Thomas justice and peace professor Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer said the absence of an indictment marks a significant decision for the entire country.
“I think it shows just how really important this issue is for the country,” Nelson-Pallmeyer said. “I think it points to just the deep-seated frustration and rage that exists in many communities of color in the country of feeling that policing is very unaccountable in their neighborhoods.”
Junior Martha McKinley said she is passionate about the issue.
“I’m incredibly heartbroken and angry about it,” McKinley said. “I think this is something that should outrage the entire country, and it’s definitely not a time that people should stay silent about it.”
St. Thomas’ Student Diversity and Inclusion Services hosted an open forum on campus Tuesday for students and staff to express their reactions and discuss issues of racism and the role of police. Jessica Gjerde, Student Diversity and Inclusion Services education program director, said schools nationally were providing an opportunity for students to talk, and St. Thomas wanted to do the same.
“We suspected that there were a lot of emotions going on with people, and we just wanted to provide a space for them to feel free to talk about them,” Gjerde said.
Sophomore Dylan Brooks attended the forum and said conflict between police and African American communities is not only a problem in Ferguson, but also nationwide.
“Predominantly white police force keeping law and order in a predominately African American community kind of sent the message, especially with their use of excessive force, that these aren’t the people you go to when you have a problem; they’re the people that you see as the problem,” Brooks said. “And it’s an us-versus-them mentality.”
Even though people want to talk and have been so expressive, Nelson-Pallmeyer said it is also important to draw attention to the family’s call for peace.
“I think that the family’s appeal is really important because it acknowledges that really nothing positive is going come out of this spiral of violence, and it needs to be broken,” Nelson-Pallmeyer said. “At the same time, I think the family has been very clear about the need to address these underlying issues, both the poverty, the marginalization, but also the police unaccountability.”
Sophomore Josh Grass is from the St. Louis suburb of Manchester, Missouri – 20 minutes outside of Ferguson – and said the media have had a huge impact on the situation because they sparked many of the riots outside of the Ferguson community.
“I think it was overplayed by the media initially. They caused the actual problem,” Grass said.
Many students were not surprised by the verdict, just upset by it. One of these students, junior James Mite, said he “wasn’t shocked” by the decision.
“I expected that to happen. I wasn’t surprised by the rioting,” Mite said. “It is disappointing, but at the same time when you have a lot of angry people, what do you expect when they don’t get what they want?”
Nelson-Pallmeyer said young voices make for the best kind of change and those changes can be expected from the Ferguson issues, even in Minnesota.
“I think this whole incident is providing energy for taking a real hard look at injustices within the criminal justice system itself. I also think that it will give a further push to deal with problems that we have in the Twin Cities itself, the lack of police accountability,” Nelson-Pallmeyer said. “I think there’s a real serious problem that many of us are insulated from, but certainly in communities of color, this is well known.”