DOJ finds racism in Ferguson police department but won’t charge cop who killed Michael Brown

9th March 2015   ·   0 Comments

The Justice Department cleared a white former Ferguson, Missouri, police officer in the fatal shooting of unarmed 18-year-old Michael Brown on Wednesday, but also issued a scathing report calling for sweeping changes in city law enforcement practices it called discriminatory and unconstitutional.

The dual reports marked the culmination of months-long federal investigations into a shooting that sparked protests and a national dialogue on race and law enforcement as the tenure of Attorney General Eric Holder, the first black person to hold that office, draws to a close.

In pairing the announcements, the Obama administration sought to offset community disappointment over the conclusion that the shooting of Michael Brown was legally justified with a message of hope for Ferguson’s majority-Black citizenry. Officials announced 26 recommendations, including training officers in how to de-escalate confrontations and banning the use of ticketing and arrest quotas.

“As detailed in our report, this investigation found a community that was deeply polarized, and where deep distrust and hostility often characterized interactions between police and area residents,” Attorney General Eric Holder said. “Our investigation showed that Ferguson police officers routinely violate the Fourth Amendment in stopping people without reasonable suspicion, arresting them without probable cause, and using unreasonable force against them. Now that our investigation has reached its conclusion, it is time for Ferguson’s leaders to take immediate, wholesale and structural corrective action. The report we have issued and the steps we have taken are only the beginning of a necessarily resource-intensive and inclusive process to promote reconciliation, to reduce and eliminate bias, and to bridge gaps and build understanding.

“While the findings in Ferguson are very serious and the list of needed changes is long, the record of the Civil Rights Division’s work with police departments across the country shows that if the Ferguson Police Department truly commits to community policing, it can restore the trust it has lost,” said Acting Assistant Attorney General Vanita Gupta of the Civil Rights Division. “We look forward to working with City Officials and the many communities that make up Ferguson to develop and institute reforms that will focus the Ferguson Police Department on public safety and constitutional policing instead of revenue. Real community policing is possible and ensures that all people are equal before the law, and that law enforcement is seen as a part of, rather than distant from, the communities they serve.”

The decision not to prosecute Darren Wilson, the white officer who was cleared in November by a state grand jury and has since resigned, had been expected. To win a federal civil rights case, officials would have needed to prove that Wilson willfully deprived Brown of his rights by using unreasonable force.

The report found no evidence to disprove Wilson’s testimony that he feared for his safety during the Aug. 9 confrontation. Nor were there reliable witness accounts to establish that Brown had his hands up in surrender when he was shot, it said.

One of Wilson’s attorneys, Neil Bruntrager, told The Associated Press that his client was satisfied with the outcome. Brown family lawyer Benjamin Crump said the family was not surprised but very disappointed, and one of Brown’s uncles, Charles Ewing, said he believed Wilson was “getting away with it.”

“I really was hoping they would have come up with better findings because this whole thing just does not add up,” Ewing said. “Everything just doesn’t make sense.”

Even as the Justice Department declined to prosecute Wilson, it found that the shooting occurred in an environment of systematic mistreatment of Blacks, in which officials swapped racist emails and jokes without punishment and Black residents were disproportionately stopped and searched, fined for petty offenses and subjected to excessive police force.

In the course of its pattern or practice investigation, the Civil Rights Division reviewed more than 35,000 pages of police records; interviewed and met with city, police and court officials, including the FPD’s chief and numerous other officers; conducted hundreds of in-person and telephone interviews, as well as participated in meetings with community members and groups; observed Ferguson Municipal Court sessions, and; analyzed FPD’s data on stops, searches and arrests. It found that the combination of Ferguson’s focus on generating revenue over public safety, along with racial bias, has a profound effect on the FPD’s police and court practices, resulting in conduct that routinely violates the Constitution and federal law. The department also found that these patterns created a lack of trust between the FPD and significant portions of Ferguson’s residents, especially African Americans.

The department found that the FPD has a pattern or practice of:

• Conducting stops without reasonable suspicion and arrests without probable cause in violation of the Fourth Amendment;

• Interfering with the right to free expression in violation of the First Amendment; and

• Using unreasonable force in violation of the Fourth Amend­ment.

The department found that Ferguson Municipal Court has a pattern or practice of:

• Focusing on revenue over public safety, leading to court practices that violate the 14th Amendment’s due process and equal protection requirements.

• Court practices exacerbating the harm of Ferguson’s unconstitutional police practices and imposing particular hardship upon Ferguson’s most vulnerable residents, especially upon those living in or near poverty. Minor offenses can generate crippling debts, result in jail time because of an inability to pay and result in the loss of a driver’s license, employment, or housing.

The department found a pattern or practice of racial bias in both the FPD and municipal court:

• The harms of Ferguson’s police and court practices are borne disproportionately by African Americans and that this disproportionate impact is avoidable.

• Ferguson’s harmful court and police practices are due, at least in part, to intentional discrimination, as demonstrated by direct evidence of racial bias and stereotyping about African Americans by certain Ferguson police and municipal court officials.

The report found that the Ferguson Police Department’s lack of racial diversity — only four of 54 commissioned officers are Black — undermined community trust. It also found that the city relied heavily on fines for petty offenses, such as jaywalking, to raise revenue. Police interpreted “innocent movements as physical threats” and engaged in practices that overwhelmingly affected minorities and reinforced patterns of racial bias, it said.

The report included seven racially tinged emails, including some from city officials who remain employed, that did not result in punishment. The writer of one 2008 email stated that President Barack Obama would not be in office for long because “what Black man holds a steady job for four years.”

The report’s recommendations, if accepted by city officials, could lead to an overhaul of basic practices by police officers and court officials. Those include improving officer supervision, better recruiting, hiring and promotion and new mechanisms for responding to misconduct complaints.

Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster, a Democrat, said the DOJ report “reflects a theme I’ve heard repeated over the past months in countless conversations and meetings: the need for greater understanding and respect between law enforcement officers and the communities they serve.”

Federal officials on Wednesday described Ferguson city leaders as cooperative and open to change, and said there were already signs of improvement. The city, for example, no longer issues failure-to-appear warrants, has eliminated a fee for towing cars and rescinded warrants for nearly 600 defendants.

Lawyers for the parents of Michael Brown said Thursday that they would file a civil lawsuit in Michael Brown’s death.

Attorney Daryl Parks said at a news conference in north St. Louis County that the City of Ferguson and former Officer Darren Wilson would be named in the wrongful death lawsuit, which they plan to file promptly.

This article originally published in the March 9, 2015 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.