– ‘A nationwide problem’ –
Civil rights firebrand Al Sharpton said the Brown case renewed a nationwide fight for greater police accountability.
“This is not a Ferguson problem… This is a problem all over the country,” Sharpton said. “We may have lost one round but the fight is not over. They have broken our hearts, but not our backs.”
Separate protests flared, meanwhile, in Cleveland, Ohio, following the fatal shooting by police of a 12-year-old black boy holding a replica gun at the weekend.
Despite appeals by Brown’s family for calm in Ferguson on Monday, protests rapidly degenerated into looting, arson and running street battles between police and stone-throwers.
Ferguson mayor James Knowles meanwhile declined to comment Tuesday on Wilson’s future, saying only that the 28-year-old officer remained on administrative leave.
“His current employment status has not changed,” Knowles said.
The August shooting of Brown sparked weeks of protest and a debate about race relations and military-style police tactics.
The Ferguson grand jury concluded Wilson had acted lawfully in firing 12 shots at Brown after he first reached into the officer’s car to grapple with him, then turned on him as he gave chase.
Brown’s death, the aggressive police response to protests and now the result of the grand jury hearing have stirred racial tensions in Ferguson, a mainly black suburb with a mostly white police force.
The town’s community of 21,000 has been on edge since the shooting, and residents complain of years of racial prejudice and heavy-handed police tactics.
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