MR. KOJO NNAMDIFrom WAMU 88.5 at American University in Washington, welcome to "The Kojo Nnamdi Show," connecting your neighborhood with the world. Later in the broadcast, fighting with keyboards, not guns. "Tech Tuesday" explores why the military now considers cyberspace the fifth domain of war. But first, a police shooting in Missouri has sparked conversations around the country and in our region about the relationship between law enforcement and those they're trusted to protect.

MR. KOJO NNAMDIA grand jury decided yesterday not to indict a police officer who shot and killed an unarmed African American teenager earlier this year in Ferguson, Missouri. Protests erupted last night in Ferguson and in cities across the United States. But this case is just the latest chapter in a long running debate about race, class and how justice is carried out in communities like Ferguson in every corner of the country. Joining us now by phone to talk about this is Doug Gansler. He is Attorney General for the state of Maryland. Doug Gansler, thank you for joining us.

MR. DOUGLAS GANSLEROf course. Good to be here.

NNAMDIYou too can join the conversation if you have questions or comments about this case. 800-433-8850. You can send email to kojo@wamu.org or shoot us a tweet @kojoshow. Mr. Attorney General, the President acknowledged in remarks last night that this grand jury decision speaks to larger challenges and that there are a lot of people asking questions today about the relationships their communities have with law enforcement. Particularly as those relationships pertain to race. How do you see it?

GANSLERWell, I think that's right and wrong in one sense. I mean, look, I think that we -- what has happened here in the wake of this shooting and then the grand jury pronouncement is that we're mixing this case with the broader issue of race relations and mistrust in some communities with law enforcement in that community. And that's a problem. I mean, look, most people did not go out and riot last night. Most people did not go out and loot last night. Those people were opportunists. I think what the President said last night, at the beginning of his remarks, were exactly right.

GANSLERThat we live in a country of laws and the grand jury had all the evidence before it. And on these facts of this case, decided not -- that there was no criminal act committed. That does not, though, undermine the need to continue the dialogue between certain communities and law enforcement, where there is a mistrust. And that's a problem. And we need to continue to address that problem.

NNAMDII'm glad you said the grand jury had all the evidence before it. As the state's Chief Law Enforcement Officer and a former state's attorney in Maryland who handled high profile cases in your own right, what do you make of how this case was handled? Specifically, I have seen a lot of former prosecutors, or a few anyway, who say that the standard in a grand jury hearing like this is probably cause. It is not the higher standard that we will expect in a court trial. And that, very often, prosecutors do not present the amount of evidence that was presented by this prosecutor. They merely present enough to get an indictment.

GANSLERWell, I think that's right. And there are strategic reasons not to present all the evidence in most grand jury situations. In this grand jury situation, I think the prosecutor did a very good job in saying look, I've got no preconceived notions here. Here's all the evidence. Here's the law. You decide. I mean, there's an old adage, Kojo, where they say you can indict a ham sandwich.

NNAMDIYep.

GANSLERAnd where that comes from is the fact that a prosecutor goes in there, there's no defense lawyer. The defendant's not in there and doesn't typically testify. And the prosecutor presents what evidence he or she wants to present, enough to get that probably cause standard, because everything that happens in the grand jury is going to be ultimately turned over if there, in fact, is a trial, to the defense. And they don’t want to have too much evidence. In this case, they went the other way. They put all the evidence in, which was, in my view, very appropriate.

GANSLERWhich is where a lot of the inconsistencies arrived. And, you know, there's so much misinformation out there. And the danger of cases like this is people were out there running around the streets and people have very strong opinions after what happened. The only people that know what really happened was the police officer and, unfortunately, Michael Brown. And now, the people on the grand jury, cause the people on the grand jury had all the evidence before them. So, you know, this was a very unfortunate situation.

GANSLERBut the police, what the grand jury did though, was that Officer Darren Wilson did not wake up that morning thinking he was going to shoot somebody. And what they also knew was police protocol and training. And they also knew that Michael Brown, the victim, came out that night and had committed a crime, and came at the police officer at some time during the incident. And he turned out not to be armed, but of course, they also knew that Michael Brown would have known that the police officer was armed.

GANSLERAnd at least some of the evidence suggests that Michael Brown went after the police officer's gun and he was shot as a result.

NNAMDIWe're talking...

GANSLERAnd so the question...

NNAMDI...go ahead, please.

GANSLER...it's okay. But the question is, you know, that the grand jury has to look at is did that police officer commit a crime? Probably commit a crime, as the probable cause standard is. And they looked at all the evidence. They were in a private room, they looked at all the evidence, and they determined that he did not commit a crime. In that case, but again, that doesn't mean that we shouldn’t have the broader discussion.

NNAMDIDoug Gansler is Attorney General for the state of Maryland. We're discussing the decision by the grand jury in St. Louis county, Missouri last night not to indict officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of African American teenager Michael Brown. You said this was probably the right thing for the prosecutor to do in this case. Can you discuss, strategically, why that is, because some people argue that because grand jury proceedings are essentially secretive, if all of this information were presented in a trial situation, after an indictment, the public would probably be a lot more confident about what it had seen and what it had heard.

NNAMDIBecause it wasn't able to either see that or hear that in the grand jury proceeding. Only the jurors were able to hear that. Of course, all of the information has been presented to the public in the wake of the grand jury's decision.

GANSLERWell, that's our criminal system. And you want to have a protection from the police. I mean, look, if we didn't have grand juries, the police would go out and make an arrest and that's been, you know, that person could be held for trial. And the next thing you know, the trial, months later and the person's being held. I mean, the whole purpose behind the grand jury is to make sure that we do, in fact, have an independent body of people from the citizenry which will review the evidence as it's presented to them and make a determination as to whether there's probable cause or not.

GANSLERAnd what they did here was they put all the evidence before them and the pastor's actually gone, I think, in a very unusual step of saying that he will try, and appeal to the court to have that evidence made public. And that we never see done, but I think he's trying to, within the confines of the criminal system that we have, trying to make sure that the public is assured that what happened here was completely fair. I mean, you know, it's an interesting thing.

GANSLERAnd you said it and the press has said it a number of times. There's been a very, a strong emphasis on the race of the police officer and the race of the victim.

NNAMDINot to mention the race of the grand jury, but we haven't gotten to that yet. But go ahead.

GANSLERAnd the race of the grand jury. And that's -- and all of that, obviously, you know, you can't, that's all relevant, but what they're looking at here is what did the witnesses see and what happened? Absent considerations of race. And again, there are -- did the mistrust comes -- I mean, if you put the race of the people differently or you look at all -- I mean, look, there's cases every day where police officers are being shot, black or white, by people that are black or white. There's people dying on our streets every day.

GANSLERMany African Americans in the cities by African American, non-African Americans. You know, the case that this reminds me of the most was the O.J. Simpson trial. I was actually at the US Attorney's office at the time, and that was, of course, an African American defendant and white victims. And, you know, race is always a part of it, but at the end of the day, it's what were the facts and how do those facts comport with the law? And the grand jury have to give them some credit. They struggle with this for days.

GANSLERThey saw all the evidence and they made the decision that they made. And we can't really say -- I mean, nobody can say it was the wrong decision, and perhaps nobody can say it was the right decision.

NNAMDIAllow me to go to the phones and talk to -- allow me to talk with Ernest in Baltimore, Maryland. Ernest, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

ERNESTYeah. I was a law enforcement officer, had more than 25 years of service at a major police department. And with the -- respectfully, what Doug Gansler is saying is absolutely wrong. First of all, when he was in the car, when he reached in that car, the only way -- that police officer already had his gun out. There's no way you can reach in a car, across a police body and remove a gun from a locked holster that they issue now.

NNAMDIWell, I don't want to try that specific issue here, Ernest.

ERNESTOkay.

NNAMDIBut it's my understanding that you also had a comment about how the prosecutor operated here.

ERNESTYeah, the prosecutor. First of all, he should have recused himself. He was too close to the police department. His father was a police officer and was killed in the line of duty. The other thing is, in more than 25 years of service, and testified before a grand jury I don't know how many hundreds of thousands of times, that I have never seen a grand jury handled in this case. Usually, the prosecutor goes in, put up the facts, and the police officer testifies. And that's it. Indictment is concerned.

ERNESTWhat? Nobody goes in and gives all their -- look. In other words...

NNAMDIThat was a strategic choice, Doug Gansler, and obviously, our former police officer disagrees with that strategic choice. Why do you think it was made in this case?

GANSLERWell, the strategic choice is made to benefit the prosecution. I mean, the grand jury is very prosecution favorable. Because you -- the prosecutor decides who to put in there and what to put in there. So, and Ernest, the police officer's exactly right. What they typically do is put a police officer in there. Is this what you saw? Are these the facts? And if the grand jury believes that police officer, then there is an indictment handed down. What the prosecutor did in this case was go way beyond that.

GANSLERThey didn't put just the favorable facts in. Put all the facts before the jury, every single piece of evidence they had from what, at least, we have to take them on faith that that's what happened. Was put before the grand jury, so it was actually much more and much more defense favorable than the typical case. And, you know, and I think that's -- and in terms of what happened in this particular fact of who reached in when and where, again, that was all put before the grand jury. And they had the real information.

GANSLERNot what we've heard from 24 hour cable stations, but what actually happened from, as accounted by the people who were witnesses to the case and the forensic evidence that went along with it. They did three autopsies in this case. I mean, they went above and beyond. And on the point of whether this particular prosecutor should have recused himself, I mean, he, from my understanding, he was not the person that presented the evidence to the grand jury.

GANSLERBut nor should he need to recuse himself. He's a law enforcement officer. He can't -- he's not going to change the facts of the -- what's being presented. He put all the facts of what was being presented to the grand jury and they made an assessment.

NNAMDIFinally, Doug Gansler, even as you look at how the system worked and whether it worked appropriately in this situation, a lot of people find that the basic facts are offensive, that an unarmed man was killed and the justice system says nothing wrong happened.

GANSLERAnd I -- and you have to be sympathetic with that. Because, first of all, that does, we have to understand there are racial biases in our criminal justice system. And there are many ways to address that and a lot of it's just -- it's gonna be over time, but while there is the racial makeup of a police department and there's a lot of different things and there's a lot of justice department investigations.

GANSLERAnd where Ernest, the caller, was just calling from in Baltimore, there's a deep mistrust in Baltimore city of the police by the community, as well. And so, that's an issue that we need to continue to address and this case, you know, is obviously incredibly sad. There's nobody wins in this case. And the police officer certainly doesn't win and Michael Brown and his family certainly don't win. But the question that was presented to the grand jury was, was a crime committed, based on this evidence with these facts? And the system that we have, the grand jury system, says that it was not.

NNAMDIOkay. Doug Gansler, thank you very much for joining us.

GANSLERThank you.

NNAMDIJoining us now by phone is Leighton Watson. He is President of the Howard University Student Association. Leighton Watson, thank you for joining us.

MR. LEIGHTON WATSONThank you for having me here.

NNAMDIEarlier this year, you and some of your colleagues at Howard organized a photo in the wake of the Michael Brown shooting. The photo in which you all stood with your hands up with hashtag, hands up, don't shoot. It went viral. But you said back then that the photo itself does not offer a solution and that there's more that you and protestors have to do if you want to affect change. What do you plan to do?

WATSONExactly. So the first thing that we plan to do now -- especially after the decision that was made -- is take time to grieve. And I think that that's one of the things that you saw in Ferguson immediately after that decision was made. You saw people crying. You saw people upset. You saw people angry, but they're really grieving and going through the steps of grief. That's the first thing we got to do.

WATSONThe second thing we have to do is really organize. What's happening now is we're seeing a lot of disparate, a lot of fractured efforts to do something. People across the board want to do something. But we have to organize and maybe even revise some of the organizational structures from before, but we're seeing a lot of same parallels out of the 1950s and 1960s as to what we're seeing now. The only difference back then was it was in black and white and now it's in color.

WATSONThe second thing that we have to do after that is immobilize students -- right -- who have the time, who have the energy, and give them a plan. For us, that can mean a number of different things. Really, when you do the research you understand that eventually all successful movements, all successful protesting -- when you look at Martin Luther King, he was not confused that the protest or the demonstration itself would change the situation. He understood that you had to put pressure on the powers that be.

WATSONAnd the quickest, most efficient way is through economics. And so that's what we have to focus on. It's different in this case because it's not a direct line. So bus boycotts, you boycott the bus system. Right. You cripple it. That's a direct line. In this case, a police department, you got to look at where it receives the funding. And that's the federal level. The Department of Justice, Homeland Security, Department of Defense. So you have to take a look at those funding sources and hit them where it hurts. And that's what we're planning to do.

NNAMDIWhen you say you look at the funding sources and hit them where it hurts, what is the specific objective of this movement in terms of police/African American community relations?

WATSONWell, what you want to do then is to tie-in certain qualifications to receiving that funding. From a federal and national level, that's really the only sort of direct involvement that you can have in a federalist state. So we want to tie certain attachments to it, such as police body cameras, such as community policing groups, where it's actually citizens in the community that have some oversight over police actions. Those are just a few of the ideas that we want to attach to the federal funding.

WATSONBut I think across races, across genders, across socioeconomic backgrounds -- even the former attorney general -- that was just on the call -- agrees that we have to do something different. And if we sit here and talk about the issues, if we sit here and debate it, but not everyone is on board to be a part of that difference, than this was just an exercise and it's going to happen again.

NNAMDIYou think body cameras -- in this particular situation, a body camera would, in your view, have made a significant difference?

WATSONThe only way -- it wouldn't have -- it wouldn't have stopped Michael Brown from being killed. And we're cognizant of that. But what it would do is ultimately, over the long term, decrease the number of police complaints. We look at Rialto, Calif. It dropped 88 percent in year one, police complaints of brutality. And then, more importantly, the actual uses of police force went down by 60 percent in year one. It provides accountability on both sides. The citizen's side and the police department's side. And people act different when they know that they're being filmed.

NNAMDIAs a young person in Washington, how would you describe your interactions with law enforcement here in this area?

WATSONMore similar to Michael Brown's interactions. It doesn't matter. Honestly, what -- we're here studying. We're here getting our education. But the officer did not run a background check on Michael Brown. He didn't look to see if he was going to college next month. He didn't look to see whether he -- he could have been going to Harvard for all he knew. He didn't look at that case. And I understand that that's the same thing that officer does to me.

WATSONI'm a student body president at a HBCU. I have a 3.77. You know, I'm -- I got into Princeton, University of Chicago, got into Notre Dame. That all doesn't matter in that split second decision that that officer made based on preconceived notions, based on stereotypes and presumptions, that he imminently feared for his life from somebody that was unarmed.

NNAMDILeighton Watson is president of the Howard University Student Association. Thank you for joining us. Good luck to you.

WATSONThank you. Appreciate it.

NNAMDIWe're going to take a short break. When we come back, fighting with keyboards, not guns. Tech Tuesday. We're exploring why the military now considers cyberspace the fifth domain of war. I'm Kojo Nnamdi.