McCulloch: "Come on, man, they were doing great!"
Later today, a grand jury will begin hearing evidence in the shooting death of Michael Brown, the unarmed black teenager who was gunned down by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, on August 9. And as is everything else surrounding this case, it is already aswirl in
controversy:
[Missouri Gov. Jay] Nixon said Tuesday he doesn’t intend to ask County Prosecuting Attorney Robert McCulloch to step aside from the case amid criticism that McCulloch will be biased in favor of the police officer who shot Brown.
And the basis for those concerns about bias? Besides the fact that McCulloch's father was a police officer killed by a black suspect, his critics says that:
In both his prosecutorial decisions and public comments ... he has shown a clear bias toward police in cases where officers’ actions are in question.
And those critics are particularly concerned with McCulloch's reaction when Nixon had the Missouri Highway Patrol take over security from the Ferguson and St. Louis County police departments last week:
“It’s shameful what he did today, he had no legal authority to do that,” McCulloch said of Nixon at the time. “To denigrate the men and women of the county police department is shameful.”
Nixon defends his decision to stick with McCulloch and suggested his only out was if McCulloch recused himself. But the Missouri attorney general disagrees, saying that "Nixon did indeed have the right to remove McCulloch if the governor declared a state of emergency."
So, does anyone really doubt that the nearly two weeks of police clashes with protesters in the wake of Michael Brown's death qualifies as a state of emergency? And does Gov. Nixon intend to allow even a question of bias to surround the decision on whether or not Darren Wilson is indicted for shooting Michael Brown? Seriously?