St. Louis County prosecutor Robert McCulloch defended his handling of the Ferguson grand jury during a University of Missouri law school talk that drew controversy because it was closed to the public, reports the Los Angeles Times, which obtained an unofficial recording of the event. “For years, we have tried to eliminate some of the …municipal police departments, because they’re terrible police departments, they’re lousy,” McCulloch said. “Ferguson wouldn’t necessarily have been among that group …there are so many more … that are far worse than Ferguson in terms of the ability to provide effective law enforcement to the people of St. Louis County.”
When a questioner asked McCulloch what he would have done differently about the Nov. 24 grand jury announcement that officer Darren Wilson would not be charged for killing Michael Brown, he said, “I certainly wouldn’t change releasing the information [to the public] — maybe the manner in which it was done. I would have been more thorough about it. We apparently missed a stack of statements in our rush” to release the documents immediately to the public. “It’s something we’ll be picking apart for years to see what we can do better and how we can do better,” McCulloch said. He added, “The cops have got to get out in the street more, they’ve got to get more involved with the community.”