ALSO SEE: Police in Utah Kill More People Than Gang Members Do

Dead of Night: The Ferguson Decision

By Charles Pierce, Esquire

25 November 14

hat seemed for a long time to be the day's most remarkable story concerning police and the citizens they are paid to serve had come out of Utah, of all places. The Salt Lake Tribune had dug in and found that the Salt Lake City police had become more dangerous to the public welfare than are the local drug gangs.

As the tally of fatal police shootings rises, law enforcement watchdogs say it is time to treat deadly force as a potentially serious public safety problem. "The numbers reflect that there could be an issue, and it's going to take a deeper understanding of these shootings," said Chris Gebhardt, a former police lieutenant and sergeant who served in Washington, D.C., and in Utah, including six years on SWAT teams and several training duties. "It definitely can't be written off as citizen groups being upset with law enforcement." Through October, 45 people had been killed by law enforcement officers in Utah since 2010, accounting for 15 percent of all homicides during that period. A Salt Lake Tribune review of nearly 300 homicides, using media reports, state crime statistics, medical-examiner records and court records, shows that use of force by police is the second-most common circumstance under which Utahns kill each other, surpassed only by intimate partner violence.

These astonishing statistics were followed by the least surprising statistic of them all.

Nearly all of the fatal shootings by police have been deemed by county prosecutors to be justified. Only one - the 2012 shooting of Danielle Willard by West Valley City police - was deemed unjustified, and the subsequent criminal charge was thrown out last month by a judge.

No kidding. And this on the heels of an incident in Cleveland in which a 12-year-old waving a toy gun was shot and killed by a rookie officer.

Deputy Chief Ed Tomba said the officer, one of two who responded to a dispatcher's call, was less than 10 feet from Tamir under a gazebo when the confrontation took place He declined to say if the video matches the officer's description of events, saying a full interview of the officer has not been conducted.

There is something gone badly wrong in the way police are taught to look at civilians these days. This is the logic of an occupying power being employed on American citizens. Ever since 9/11, when we all began to be told that we were going to have to bend a little bit, and then a little bit more, to authority or else we'd all die, the police in this country have been militarized in their tactics and in their equipment, which is bad enough, but in their attitudes and their mentality, which is far, far worse. Suspicion has bled into weaponized paranoia, especially in the case of black and brown people, especially in the case of young men who are black or brown, but this is not About Race because nothing ever is About Race. Even the potential of a threat requires a deadly response, Dick Cheney's one-percent idea brought to American cities and towns until Salt Lake City, of all places, winds up with cops who are deadlier on the streets than drug dealers. This is how you wind up with Darren Wilson. This is how you wind up with Michael Brown, dead in the middle of the road. This is how Darren Wilson walks, tonight, for the killing of Michael Brown. This is how you end up with an American horror story.

Jesus Mary, this Bob McCulloch guy may be the single greasiest public servant I've ever encountered. I've never seen a DA who was so damned proud of himself for putting a grand jury on automatic pilot. (See, "Ham sandwich, indictment of.") And I've never seen such a perfect mixture of condescension and willful nonfeasance in my many years of watching how law enforcement in this country operates. This, after all, is a guy who once personally wrangled a grand jury to discover the identity of a whistleblower. This is a guy who once lied through his teeth about another police shooting, this one involving a car that allegedly "charged" a couple of officers, much as Michael Brown allegedly "charged" Darren Wilson. The kindest evaluation of McCulloch's record is that he is a very active prosecutor with a very clear sense of what he can make a grand jury do, if he chooses to do so, which he did not in this case, for reasons that are far from unclear. In the most high-profile case of his career, prosecutor Bob McCulloch insisted he was just a feather in the wind, just gathering evidence so the grand jury could make up its own mind, not directing it at all. And then, Monday night, he hummina-hummina'ed for seven full minutes before announcing the least shocking news of the day. Darren Wilson did not commit a crime by shooting Michael Brown dead in broad daylight in the middle of the street. But Bob McCulloch, public servant, knows what the real problem with this investigation was.

"The most significant challenge encountered in this investigation has been the 24-hour news cycle and its insatiable appetite for something, for anything to talk about, following closely behind with the non-stop rumors on social media."

Social media. He actually fking said that.

Nothing good will come of this. Nothing at all.