It's really hard to avoid indictment — unless you're a police officer

Following the Ferguson grand jury's decision to decline to indict Officer Darren Wilson for the shooting of Michael Brown, statistics blog FiveThirtyEight has shared numbers that indicate just how unusual that outcome is:

There are some differences to note: That ratio is for federal grand juries, and the Michael Brown case was heard in a state court. But the most important difference is the job of the accused. While regular citizens are almost always indicted, police officers who have shot civilians are almost never are. In Houston, for example, not a single officer has been indicted in a decade.

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