This isn’t an original thought; it comes from a friend of mine who posted it on Facebook … but I’ll share it here.

He wonders why the prosecutor in Ferguson, Mo., waited until 8 p.m. — well after dark — to tell the nation that the grand jury decided against prosecuting the white police officer in the death of the black youth this past summer.

Why the question? Well, my friend said that “night time is riot time.”

Officer Darren Wilson still might face federal prosecution in the death of Michael Brown. We’ll wait for that drama to play out.

But the town of Ferguson erupted last night in violence after the prosecutor’s announcement.

It makes me wonder: Couldn’t he have announced that he would wait until morning to reveal the grand jury’s decision? Would an announcement made in broad daylight have perhaps calmed tensions just a little?

As the late great slugger Ted Williams used to say about hitting a baseball: Timing is everything.

So, too, it might be in delivering emotionally charged news to an anxious public.