Attorneys for the family of slain teenager Michael Brown said Monday that the investigation into the officer involved shooting in Ferguson, Missouri has been “broken” and “unfair.”
LIVE UPDATES on Ferguson reaction to grand jury decision
"We object publicly and as loudly as we can that this process is broken," Benjamin Crump, a lawyer for the Brown family, said during a Tuesday morning press conference.
"The process should be indicted,” Crump said.
On Monday, a grand jury near Ferguson decided that there was not sufficient proof to charge Officer Darren Wilson with any crimes related to the August 9 shooting that killed Brown, 18.
According to evidence presented during the grand jury proceedings and made public after Monday’s announcement, Wilson, 28, testified in court that he fired several shots at Brown during an altercation between the two three months ago that the cop claims erupted during broad daylight in Ferguson, a town of 21,000 outside of St. Louis.
To the jury, Wilson described feeling "like a five-year-old holding on to Hulk Hogan.”
Challenging the prosecutor’s handling of Wilson on the stand, Crump said at Tuesday’s presser that “a first year law student would have done a better job" at interviewing the officer.
Joining Crump at Tuesday’s address, civil rights leader Al Sharpton raised questions as well about the grand jury’s decision, along with the investigation itself. The prosecution, Sharpton said, “still has not explained to us how you have a man on the force that feels like he is a child up against Hulk Hogan.”
“So what kind of training and policing do you do?” asked Sharpton, who said later that Brown’s death is not an isolated incident, citing an incident over the weekend in which police officers in Cleveland, Ohio fatally shot a 12-year-old child brandishing a fake gun at a playground.
“We will continue to fight for a new level of accountability of policing in this country,” Sharpton said to applause.