There are a lot of things to think about following the grand jury decision not to indict the officer who killed Michael Brown. People are primarily focused on racism and biases of white police officers, police brutality, abuse of power and the impact it has on certain groups. What isn't being talked about is the inherent flaw in the structure and use of the grand jury system and how it will continue to fail our society in these types of cases.
The grand jury system forces local prosecutors to present the facts of these cases and seek indictments against the very officers that they work side by side with to prosecute all other criminal matters. The legal community in which criminals are prosecuted is small. Prosecutors have relationships with many officers and if not direct relationships they likely know their partners, colleagues or managers. This is not only a conflict of interest, but likely awkward and ineffective as well as giving an unfair legal advantage to police officers. This will happen regardless of whether the prosecutor intends it to -- it's human nature to give an advantage to the person you know and work with.
This is another bias, seemingly parallel with the racism that causes these crimes of police violence. Both biases are unfair and dangerous to the public, racism of police leads to deaths like that of Michael Brown and Eric Garner while lack of indictment lets racist and overly brutal officers free to kill again.
When we think about racism we usually isolate the idea, but maybe we should try to think about it as one of many biases in the context of the legal system, one of many things that makes a less equal world for our citizens in the United States.
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