In Ferguson, a New Prosecutor ‘Gives Us Hope’ 4 Years After Shooting (09ferguson) (09ferguson)

TO FARAH STOCKMAN AND ASTEAD HERNDON: In Mr. Herndon's interview and articles pre- and post-election, why, Mr. Herndon, did you not ask Mr. Bell, if he knew then what he knows today, what he would have done, what charges he would have proposed to the grand jury, if any, had he been appointed a special prosecutor in the Michael Brown shooting case. Would he have presented the facts to the grand jury without a recommendation as McCulloch did, or, if he had had his current knowledge of the facts including the DOJ investigative report into the shooting, would he have recommended that the GJ indict the cop, and if so, on what charge(s)? That seems to be to be an essential question that should be asked by a neutral and unbiased reporter interviewing a candidate for the job of District Attorney; and the candidate's answer would be very important to the voting public. Why was that not a question posed to Mr. Bell. I would love to actually know what his answer would have been.

So what is it exactly that we have "hope" for now? That good cops doing their jobs well will be prosecuted for saving their own lives from thugs trying to take their guns away from them, when the "hands up, don't shoot" narrative was found to be a total fraud, even by AG Holder? Hope that career criminals will be able to ply their violent trade brazenly due to non-prosecution, in order to continue to perpetuate the greatest lie of our generation... The hoax of black victimization and relentless white racism?

With another #Ferguson anniversary upon us, I've seen numerous articles in national media decrying the fact that very little has changed in the part of town where Michael Brown lived. In Ferguson's Ward 3, poverty is still high, vacancies & crime are up, and many businesses haven't returned. Well guess who has been the city councilman in Ward 3 for the past three years? Wesley Bell. I get that many people are excited to see Bob McCulloch defeated but I think they're putting WAY too much hope into Bell. He has achieved very little in the small pond of Ferguson and now he's diving in the vast sea of the county? He has never prosecuted a single felony case and how he's in charge of 60 other attorneys....at what amounts to the 10th largest law firm in St. Louis?? Sounds like a disaster waiting to happen, but hey, at least it fits the #Ferguson narrative.

Mr. Bell's candidacy signals a possible end to the years of abuse against poor people of St. Louis. Many of those people are minorities, but not all. The scheme went like this: make the police a major source of revenue; make them write tickets for anything and everything: you could get a ticket if the police didn't like the sag of your pants. Perhaps your grass was a quarter inch too high. Maybe you were going 5 MPH over the speed limit. So you can't pay the ticket and, in some cases, are afraid to go to court because of a past criminal history. Now the county places unreasonably high interest rates and penalties on your ticket. What was a $100 ticket suddenly becomes $200. Then $300. Then $500. This happened to me when I received a $75 parking ticket in St. Louis county when my car was parked... in my own driveway. Criminal justice reform in St. Louis county isn't about keeping criminals out of jail. It's about using the police to target violent criminals and drugs, not wasting them on revenue generation. The budget of your community should have no bearing on how much the police harass citizens.

"But Mr. Bell and his supporters said that Tuesday’s victory, which he won by a comfortable margin, was about more than just the Michael Brown case. The county’s criminal justice system is still plagued by fundamental inequality, local activists said, with poor black residents often sitting in jail for days for minor traffic offenses." It's not just about M. Brown, it's about a broken system that needs fixing.

The brutal racism and oppression that was inflicted upon the black residents of Ferguson, leading ultimately to the murder of Michael Brown, has been documented in the report by the Department of Justice (highlights here): https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2015/03/04/the-12-key... Mr. Bell's election will hopefully begin to reverse these historic wrongs. More such victories are needed across the nation, driving white supremacy and systemic racism to where it belongs - the dustheap of history.

Will Ferguson and the rest of St Louis become the next Chicago run by Democrats with rampant murders and shootings?

Many/most people who opine on Michael Brown's suicide-by-cop never have read and never will read the DOJ report on the justified shooting of the thug. https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/opa/press-releases/attachmen... Why did Brown attack the police officer? Imho, it was because he knew he was about to be caught in the lie about being enrolled at Vatterott College. No one has proven that claim, and Vatterott has never verified it. Who gave him the money for tuition? His parents? His grandmother? Did he blow it? What would they do to him when they found out?

Michael Brown was a thug who reached for an officer's gun, and his shooting was foreseeable and justifiable. Many black people have been killed by the police for no reason at all, and those are essentially hate crimes, but Michael Brown is a bad example to hold up the banner of Black Lives Matter.

Wesley Bell's new responsibilities are going to be much bigger than Ferguson issues. According to reporters from the Post-Dispatch, Bell has never managed an office as big as the county prosecutor's staff. The P-D reporters predict a steep learning curve for Bell who has never experienced the pressure he will be under. If he thinks his job will be without racial complexity and controversy in a racially polarized St. Louis he will be surprised.

After the false "Hands up, don't shoot" and Michael Brown was murdered by the police narrative was pushed by the mainstream media and protesters, the number of murders in Ferguson, MO has skyrocketed. The average number of murders in Ferguson was less than 2 from 2002-2014. Since then, there were five murders in 2015, nine in 2016, and thirteen last year. The problem would seem to be not too many people in jail, but too few. Crime is rising and we need fewer people in jail? That fails the common sense test. As for Steve Stenger, the Northwest Plaza deal certainly smelled of corruption, when county offices were moved to a failed shopping mall when there was still an outstanding lease for the current offices. But, St. Louis County is a one party system, which are by their very nature corrupt.

When none of the local problems that plague this community are solved, who are you going to blame next?