WASHINGTON (AP) – Two unarmed black teenagers shot dead. Two very different reactions from President Barack Obama.
In contrast to the deeply personal response that Obama delivered last year after a Florida jury found Trayvon Martin’s killer not guilty, America’s first black president was more restrained in speaking after a Missouri grand jury declined to indict Michael Brown’s shooter.
The cases have many differences, most notably that the bullets that took Brown’s life came from a policeman’s gun after a confrontation on the street.
Obama’s call for calm Monday night was not heeded by the protesters in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson who torched buildings and police cars, smashed and looted storefront windows and fired gunshots. In a real-time display of the limits of his influence, television networks showed Obama’s remarks from the White House on a split screen with live video of the violence.
“We are a nation built on the rule of law, and so we need to accept that this decision was the grand jury’s to make,” Obama said in response to the decision not to charge police officer Darren Wilson in Brown’s death.