A new method?
To the editor:
Have we arrived today at a new method for having your voices heard when you oppose a legal procedure. Perhaps time is passing me by faster than I had imagined. There was a time in the United States went if the person went to trial and the jury did not convict them they were, in the eyes of the law, not guilty. If a prosecutor presented a case before the grand jury as they returned a no true bill, this person was considered not guilty.
On Feb. 26, 2012 Trayvon Martin was killed in Sanford Florida. I won’t bore you with the facts because the media made sure that their viewers heard only the parts they wanted you to know. Though they posted pictures of him when he was 12, he was actually 17 and posted pictures on Facebook making gangster signs. President Obama set the Atty. Gen., Eric Holder to “assist” the police in that area.
On Aug. 9, 2014 Michael Brown was killed in Ferguson, Missouri. Once again the media supplied us with the facts they wanted us to hear. Over and over again we were told that Mr. Brown was just an unarmed teenager trying to surrender when he was ruthlessly shot to death by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson. Then we were shown pictures of Mr. Brown as an innocent looking young man wearing headphones. If one took time to look you could see pictures of him on Facebook with piles of money and the gun, implying that he was selling drugs. You could also find a number of pictures on the Internet that showed him making gangster signs. They never talked about he was actually 6 foot four and weighed near 300 pounds, and that he was 18 years old.
When the prosecutor of Ferguson Missouri presented the evidence to the grand jury based on the physical facts, not rumors that were being spread by people who were not even there, the grand jury returned a no true bill. Normally in the United States that would’ve been the end of it. Instead the people of Ferguson began rioting, starting fires and looting businesses.
For some reason Pres. Obama said the United States Atty. Gen. Eric Holder to Ferguson to ask the people to be calm. This was to no avail. He also asked that the Atty. Gen. “assist” the police there. Because the people of Ferguson could not convict officer Wilson and have him punished, they continued to riot. Now for some reason, unbeknownst to me, the president, vice president, and Atty. Gen. has met with these people to help resolve the problems in Ferguson. It escapes me why there has been no effort to find out who did the looting, burning and general rioting and punish them.
Is this a new method for having your voices heard? I hate to think that these actions taken by our president were the result of him being the same race as the rioters. It just seems to be a fact that there have been many others who were not of the same racial background, but the president has not made these efforts to “assist” the police for them.
Mary West
Cape Coral