Deval Patrick: Indictment, Trial Would Have Been 'Good for the Community'

On Sunday, Gov. Deval Patrick (D-MA) added his voice to the criticism over the Ferguson grand jury decision not to incident a city police officer for the August shooting of a local teenager. Without having any facts of the case at hand, Patrick says there should have been an indictment and then criticized the lack of transparency in the case.

Appearing on NBC’s “Meet The Press” on November 30, Governor Patrick claimed that white Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson should have been indicted for “murder” in the August shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown.

“Without knowing all the facts, of course,” Patrick began, “I wanted to see an indictment – mostly because I think a trial and the transparency of a trial is good for the community and because so many of us had the supposition that police officers are not going to be held accountable and not going to have to answer for the shooting of an unarmed black teenager.”

Patrick seemed to think there was a separation to be made between a fact-based finding of guilt for the officer and the unrest engulfing Ferguson because of a misunderstanding between police and the community.

“That is separate and apart of the anxiety so many black people have about encounters with law enforcement and the anxiety that some in law enforcement have about their encounters with black people and the startling lack of understanding between the two,” Governor Patrick said.

Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com.