A St. Louis church leader close to the family of Michael Brown told
Newsmax TV on Tuesday that a grand jury investigating Brown's death was unnecessary because authorities had immediate cause to arrest the police officer, Darren Wilson, who shot and killed the unarmed young man.
But the Rev. Carlton Lee, senior pastor of the Flood Christian Church, also told "MidPoint" host Ed Berliner that whether or not the grand jury indicts, he is "absolutely" committed to ensuring that any resulting protests are peaceful.
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"I am telling everybody to be peaceful throughout this whole process," said Lee, who also serves as the local chapter president for the National Action Network, the civil-rights group founded by the Rev. Al Sharpton.
"The [Brown] family has been saying the exact same thing . . . and the attorneys as well," said Lee. "We are looking for peace. We don't want any disruption of any kind. We just want peace."
The town of Ferguson, Missouri — where a midday run-in on Aug. 9 between Wilson, who is white, and Brown, who was black, ended with Brown, 18, lying dead in the street — remains on edge ahead of a grand jury decision that could come any day.
Demonstrators are converging on the St. Louis suburb, which has become a flashpoint for discord across the country between black Americans and police departments.
On Monday,
Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon pre-emptively declared a state of emergency and called out the National Guard to assist state and local police in maintaining order.
Berliner asked Lee about a sermon he delivered in October titled "Arrest Him Now" — which spawned a line of T-shirts bearing that phrase — and whether calling for Wilson's arrest while a grand jury deliberated was a provocative act.
Lee responded that he is civilly disagreeing with authorities' handling of the case. He said that there was "enough probable cause" at the outset to charge Wilson with Brown's murder and let a criminal court decide his fate — but that Wilson received deferential treatment no ordinary citizen in similar circumstances would be afforded.
He also argued that the decision by St. Louis County's top prosecutor, Bob McCulloch, to put the case before a grand jury was political and not required under the law.
"He's passed the baton over to someone else, as if to say, 'I have washed my hands of this situation,'" said Lee.
A St. Louis talk radio host, Jamie Allman, told Berliner on Tuesday that local law enforcement officials are less worried about public criticisms coming from Lee and other hometown supporters of Brown, and more troubled by opportunistic outsiders.
"Rev. Lee and other individuals like him hold a certain opinion about the [judicial] process and about what happened [between Brown and Wilson]," said Allman. "And, of course, not only are they entitled to that, but they are respected in that they have been encouraging nonviolence.
"They are actually doing a lot to stem the flow of violence and looting, and have condemned it, as [has] Michael Brown's family," said Allman.
"The people who are of utmost concern to the authorities —
including the FBI, which has now gotten involved in the situation — are the groups from the outside," said Allman.
Allman described those elements as exploiting a tense situation "to advance their own individual causes, and they're doing it under cover of what could be chaos."
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