Jocelyne Bernard knew in her bones what would happen, knew the white police officer who shot the black teenager would be let off the hook. She had resigned herself to it, so the news wouldn't land so hard. But when the 65-year-old nurse found out about the grand jury decision in Ferguson, Mo., a bitter anger washed over her just the same.
"You kill him like a fly, like a bird, and just because you're a white police officer it's OK?" Bernard asked Tuesday from Blue Hill Avenue in Mattapan. "I knew it was coming, and I still couldn't believe it."
The day after a grand jury decided not to indict Ferguson police Officer Darren Wilson in the fatal shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown, black residents of Boston said they were enraged and deeply disappointed by the ruling, saying it was the product of racial injustice that seems deeply resistant to change.
"Imagine if the officer was black, and the poor boy was white," Bernard said. "You'd see the difference."
But downtown and in predominantly white neighborhoods, some said the grand jury's decision was justified, given testimony that Wilson and Brown struggled inside a police car and that Brown later charged at the officer.
In South Boston, John Hooley said he supported the grand jury's decision.
"I agree with the judicial system completely," said Hooley, citing the difficult job that police officers have and putting faith in the grand jury's review. "If all the facts weren't true, he would've been [indicted], wouldn't he have?"
Hooley, 46, who works as a carpenter, said he could not understand the looting and violence in Ferguson after the decision.
"The way they burned up the whole place, the whole town?" he asked. "Don't they all live there?"
Around the corner on Broadway, artist and musician John Cremona said he was disappointed by the ruling. He said he wanted to believe it had been based strictly on the facts, but was skeptical.
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"I'm hoping that the grand jury — that they were impartial, that there was no racism," said Cremona, a Fort Point resident. "You can never get the full story from a distance. But my feeling is — the little I know about it — he probably could have at least been indicted, and then if he gets exonerated through the court system, fine. But I find it odd that he wasn't even indicted, because there seemed to be so many questions."
In East Boston, Tony Morelli expressed relief at the grand jury's decision, as he shared a smoking break with a friend outside the Italian American War Veterans post.
"I thought the cop should've been innocent. He was doing his job, you know?" said Morelli, 56.
But Morelli's friend, Vietnam veteran Mike Hoey, was less certain, and wanted to sift through more of the facts.
"A cop's got a hard job," said Hoey, 67. "But to shoot an innocent — well, he didn't have a gun, he didn't have a weapon, he was an innocent kid, that's kind of hard."
Morelli said officers have to make split-second decisions and can use lethal force if they consider their lives threatened. But he thought the involvement of a white officer and a black victim had made the story more incendiary. "If it was white on white, it would still be a big deal, but it wouldn't be as big," he said.
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Some residents said race was beside the point. Black or white, a police officer who kills any unarmed man must face consequences.
"Even though he's a police officer, he has to be held accountable," said Bethzaida Troche, from Jamaica Plain. "It seemed as if they just applauded him for taking a life."
Others said the shooting, and the grand jury decision, followed a pattern of racial discrimination that was sadly familiar. Police are more likely to see blacks as threats, and a predominately white grand jury is more likely to side with a white officer, they said. Even after years of racial progress, some things haven't changed, many blacks said.
"This has been happening for years," said Garrick Thames, 41, of Roxbury. "It's sad to the degree that you think it's not getting any better. If that was a white teenager, that officer would have had to stand trial."
After Brown was killed in August, Thames said he took away his 12-year-old son's hooded sweat shirts, worried that police would view him with suspicion. His son protested, and said he worried too much. But Thames said it was for his own safety.
"We have to keep our sons safe," he said. "We have to do what we can to protect them. This applies to every black teenager."
Some people said they never expected the grand jury to charge Wilson criminally. Those who thought otherwise, they said, haven't been paying attention.
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"Same old story," said Rodney Williams, 53, from the South End. "Historically, this is how it works."
In Dorchester's Fields Corner, John Dunham said what happened in Ferguson was "nothing new." But that didn't take away the sting, he said.
"Six shots?" he asked, referring to the number of times Brown was shot. "That really seemed excessive. How he doesn't get held accountable for using excessive force, I really don't understand."
Cremona, the artist and musician, said the country, and Boston in particular, had made real, but fitful, progress on race. "I think we're doing a good job, but everywhere across the board, including Boston, we have a long way to go," he said.
Williams sounded a less optimistic note. He said the shootings of unarmed blacks, from Danroy "DJ" Henry to Trayvon Martin, put the lie to the notion of a post-racial society, hard as that can be to accept.
"This is 2014, and here we are, dealing with the same thing, over and over again," he said. "Progress would look different."
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Peter Schworm can be reached at schworm@globe.com. Eric Moskowitz can be reached at Eric.Moskowitz@globe.com.