My own guess is that the president and his team were not much listening
to the young people in that room. The notion that assembly of
politicians, aides, top cops and misleaders like King Rat
Sharpton are simply unaware of what cops and prosecutors do every day
doesn't pass a laugh test. Obama represented Chicago's south side in
the Ilinois state senate. Sharpton cut his teeth on this kind of thing.
These guys have been hearing horror stories of police misconduct for
longer than some of the young activists have been alive. For their
purposes, the day's participants were not much more than props in a
production aimed to convince some larger audience that the same
president who sent an extra 100 FBI agents to Ferguson MO
just before the grand jury decision to gather information on dissenters
was still fishing for facts on why there was widespread outrage in the
first place.
-- Bruce A. Dixon, "What Did Young Activists Gain From White House Meeting? What Did the President Get?" (Black Agenda Report).