
CHICAGO (CBS) — Activist priest Michael Pfleger was urging churches everywhere to take time out of services on Sunday for some civil disobedience, as a response to the second case of a grand jury failing to indict a white police officer involved in the death of an unarmed black man.
“I think it’s a great opportunity to show a unity in church. The church has to be vocal in this,” Pfleger said.
His call for action comes one day after a Staten Island grand jury decided not to indict New York Police Officer Daniel Pantaleo in the death of 43-year-old Eric Garner.
The grand jury decided there was not enough evidence to charge Pantaleo, even though a witness used a cell phone camera to film the officer performing a chokehold — which is banned by the New York Police Department — on Garner in July, and an autopsy by the city’s medical examiner ruled Garner’s death a homicide.
That grand jury decision came little more than a week after a Missouri grand jury declined to indict Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson for shooting and killing 18-year-old Michael Brown in August.