04 Dec 2014 Project 21’s Shelby Emmett Makes Sense about Ferguson Decision Politics, Process

Project 21 member Shelby Emmett, a lawyer and former Capitol Hill staffer, was a true voice of reason after the controversy erupted in Ferguson, Missouri.

In interviews that lead-off Rick Amato’s cable talk show on two occasions over the course of a week, Shelby explained why things may have gone the way they did regarding the Ferguson grand jury and how professional race hustlers and violent opportunists made the situation in Ferguson worse than it needed to be.

On the 12/2/14 edition of “The Rick Amato Show” on the One America News Network, Shelby was asked about outgoing Attorney General Eric Holder’s stated intention to end alleged racial profiling by local police, she replied that such a move is likely to make things a whole lot more unfair and regulated in America:

It will probably be something with a more powerful, centralized federal government and he’ll probably ask for a lot of money…

They just want one big uniform police state, and they want to make sure that power is concentrated in the hands of the few at the expense of everybody else.

This comment intrigued Amato, who played a 2008 clip in which then-candidate Barack Obama railed against increased police power.  Shelby noted how the President is now headed in the wrong direction if he truly does want to follow his campaign rhetoric about reducing the power and influence of the police:

If the President was actively concerned with ensuring individual liberty and protections for everyday citizens — particularly those in poor areas — what he would do is push a bill for education reform and choice, and he would push to decriminalize so many of these gun control issues.

For a president that seems to think the police have too much power, he has no problem trying to take away constitutional Second Amendment rights for everyday people… instead of allowing these people to be armed and protect themselves.  And instead, he supposedly wants these same entities that are allegedly harassing African-Americans every single day — he wants those people to have more power and more access to guns.

The whole thing just doesn’t make sense.  This is all about power, control and distraction.

And she said that Al Sharpton, a protest gadfly and now an apparent White House confidant, is “all about political pandering” and helping President Obama distract the American people from the more important issue of Obama’s executive action on amnesty.

Speaking about the grand jury’s decision in Ferguson on the 11/25/14 edition of Amato’s program, the day after the decision was rendered, Shelby said that she felt the jurors “came to the right conclusion” based on the information available at that time.  She noted that the “jury did what the jury needed to do,” and that they did so with the knowledge of what was happening in the world around them and what the controversial decision they did come to could mean in the community.

Shelby was quite critical of Benjamin Crump, a lawyer representing Michael Brown’s parents.  She said that Crump, who had earlier represented the parents of Trayvon Martin in Florida, was “looking for his five minutes of fame” and his anger about the ruling — dutifully rendered by the grand jury — was improper since, as a lawyer, he “has a higher duty” than the parents or the general public to respect the grand jury’s decision.

She added about the grand jury and allegations of potential tainting of the proceedings:

Of course, arguments can be made about the prosecutor’s past and what happened to his father [who was a cop killed by a black man in the early 1960s], but then we could also make those same arguments if there was anyone on that jury — particularly the three African-American members that were on the jury — did they ever have any issues with the police department.  And, if so, could we argue that they would not be able to be on that jury.

Commenting on establishment civil rights leaders and protesters who waded into the Ferguson controversy, Shelby said there are those who “want the violence” and “want the drama” associated with angst over the grand jury’s decision, and that one needs to “separate people that may be legitimately upset — with background and reason to be — and those that just wanted a reason to start trouble.”