My thoughts on the Darren Wilson/Michael Brown grand jury decision.

As you know by now Darren Wilson has not been indicted. It was clear from the start that this was going to be the outcome. Some will say this is because of racism. I say it was because of lack of evidence. It was clear that there was, at the very least, reasonable doubt in the case. I watched the announcement on CNN and the fact that the prosecutor said that many witnesses changed their stories was a huge blow to getting an indictment. It was clear that the forensics never matched the "brutal execution" theory. Even the medical examiner hired by the Brown family disproved that. And, as always, when there is doubt the justice system must err on the side of caution.

So why did this case blow up if it was clear from the start that there would be no indictment? Two factors above all else contributed. The first factor is social media. Twitter and Facebook were the means that the false narrative of this being a brutal race based execution spread. Even though social media is notoriously unreliable as a source of information, people believed rumors spread there before any information came out. Once these rumors and, lets face it, propaganda came out, peoples minds were made up. When information showing that the "hands up don't shoot" narrative was unsupported by evidence, nobody believed it because everyone "knew" what had happened already. 

The second factor was the regular mainstream media. They love this kind of thing. When the George Zimmerman case happened, the cable news networks covered it 24/7 and saw a huge boost in ratings. A racial issue that presses every single hot button issue on both the left and the right is a boon for the media since they can have their talking heads pontificate and speculate and sow outrage. There was very little objective, responsible reporting. The main problem was that the media had to give credence to both sides of the debate when it was fairly clear that the evidence only really supported Darren Wilson. Well, they didn't have to but they did anyways. 

As for any riots and civil unrest so far it seems pretty calm. I saw a few people throwing garbage at the cops and a few people yelling at cameras on CNN. Other then that it seems calm for the moment. We shall see if the peace holds. I'm not holding out hope but it is important to remember that everyone thought that people were going freak out after the Zimmerman trial, but other then a few isolated incidents, nothing much happened. I'll continue to monitor this story through the night and if something does happen I'll post about it. Either way I'll have a round up of information in the morning.