Ex-Witness: Prosecutors Work With Cops

In the wake of a lack of indictments for the police officers who shot unarmed black men Michael Brown and Eric Garner this month, Mother Jones Washington bureau chief David Corn has detailed his own account of testifying before a grand jury after witnessing a white NYPD officer kill an unarmed homeless man. Corn writes that many years ago, he saw an unarmed homeless man walking from Central Park, carrying a small boulder. The man was not bothering anyone, only muttering to himself as he walked. Then a group of NYPD officers encircled him with their guns drawn and the man dropped the rock and ran. One of the officers shot him several times. Corn writes that he tried offering what he witnessed as a statement but was met with apathy from the officers and told to go downtown to the station. Once Corn did, he was called to testify before a grand jury but was cut off by the prosecutor before being allowed to recount his full version of events. The jurors themselves, he writes, looked uninterested or even drowsy. “And prosecutors work closely with cops to rack up convictions, and they don’t want to alienate their law enforcement partners. No one in that grand jury room was there to serve the interests of the dead guy,” he writes. In the end, no indictment was served.