On my "Thanks for" list is definitely you people here at Talk Left and for Jeralyn, especially.

Three Portland police officers were told Monday to remove Facebook posts that showed their Portland Police Bureau badges surrounded by a bracelet with the phrase "I am Darren Wilson."

Police Chief Mike Reese ordered the three to remove the badges from their posts. Portland Mayor Charlie Hales said the posts would be reviewed by the Professional Standards Division to see if they violated city policies.

"The image displayed does not represent this organization and was very inflammatory in nature," Reese said in a statement issued shortly after he ordered the officers to remove the photos. "Officers certainly have a right to have and express their opinions but not using an official badge of the Portland Police Bureau. The badge represents all members of the organization, past and present, and is an important symbol in our community that must not be tarnished."

This NYT article from 2004 noted a growing trend in the accused testifying and succeeding in not being indicted.

In a sharp departure for New York City's criminal justice system, defense lawyers are allowing many suspects -- from police officers to hardened street criminals -- to testify before grand juries, with notable success.

In years past, such risky testimony was considered nearly unthinkable because grand juries were deemed to be so willing to follow the wishes of prosecutors that they would, in the words of a former New York State chief judge, ''indict a ham sandwich.''

But this year, in Brooklyn alone, nearly 14 percent of felony suspects have testified before grand juries investigating their cases, and slightly more than half of those cases have ended with no charges, according to the district attorney's office. Citywide, the numbers vary, from about 5 percent of suspects going before grand juries in Manhattan to as many as 18 percent on Staten Island, but in every borough, what was once extremely rare is now commonplace, according to lawyers' accounts, district attorneys' data and descriptions by people who have served on grand juries.

I am thoroughly disgusted with the implication made by so many bloggers and posters all over the Internet that the Ferguson Grand Jury was too stupid to make the right decision.

...I'm sure there are plenty convinced that it's not stupidity but racism.

I consider the Ferguson Police Dept. to be inherently corrupt and untrustworthy as an institution. And that's a really sad thing to have to say about a law enforcement agency and its members, whose sole raison d'etre has apparently been to perpetuate their own employment at the ultimate expense of local residents. The entire department should be decommissioned, its members' employment with the city terminated, and their duties transferred to a corresponding county agency.

As far as I'm concerned, the kabuki which played out before that grand jury was nothing short of a tragic farce. And I further believe that prosecutors probably skirted a very fine line regarding the suborning of perjury, when they pointedly chose to leave unchallenged the veracity of the testimony offered by Wilson to grand jurors -- particularly in light of the obvious discrepancies between his account and those offered by the various eyewitnesses.

Dorian's testimony puts the issue of Mike's possible mental impairment in a new light.  He says that the store clerk did in fact threaten to report the theft of cigars to the police (Vol. 4, p. 37.)  Acutely aware of the danger of arrest, he thought the behavior of his companion inexplicable (pp. 37-40.)  As may be seen in the video, Brown starts to leave, and then turns and advances on the clerk in a threatening manner, as if in response to something he had said.  This would appear, on the face of it, to represent self-destructive behavior.  Dorian entertained no doubts about the seriousness of this offense.  When he spotted a police cruiser approaching them, "I was just, wow, we're really going to get locked up, this is going to happen" (p. 40.)