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| Attorney General Eric Holder speaks at the Justice Department in Washington, Wednesday, March 4, 2015, about the Justice Department’s findings related to two investigations in Ferguson, Mo. The Justice Department will not prosecute a white former police officer in the fatal shooting of an unarmed black 18-year-old whose death in Ferguson sparked weeks of protests and ignited an intense national debate over how police treat African-Americans. But the government released a scathing report Wednesday that faulted the city for racial bias. |
WASHINGTON
(AP) -- The Justice Department cleared a white former Ferguson,
Missouri, police officer in the fatal shooting of an unarmed black
18-year-old 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 citizens. Officials announced 26
recommendations, including training officers in how to de-escalate
confrontations and banning the use of ticketing and arrest quotas, for
the police force and municipal court.
Holder
called the federal report a "searing" portrait of a police department
that he said functions as a collection agency for the city, with
officers prioritizing revenue from fines over public safety and
trouncing the constitutional rights of minorities.
"It is not difficult to imagine how a single tragic incident set off the city of Ferguson like a powder keg," Holder said.
Ferguson
Mayor James Knowles III said the city had cooperated with the Justice
Department and has made some changes, including a diversity training
program for city employees.
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.
Instead, 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, Justice Department lawyers said.
One
of Wilson's attorneys, Neil Bruntrager, said 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."
While the federal
government declined to prosecute Wilson, it found 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 without good
reason, fined for petty offenses and subjected to excessive police
force.
The report on the department found its
lack of racial diversity - only four of 54 commissioned officers are
black - undermined community trust. It also said the city relied heavily
on fines for raise revenue and issued arrest warrants for minor
infractions including jaywalking and late fees. The confrontation that
led to Brown's death began when Wilson directed him and a friend to move
from the street to the sidewalk.
The document
was filled with examples of what it called a discriminatory criminal
justice system. Among them: One black woman spent six days in jail
because of a parking violation. A lawful protest was broken up with a
police warning of "everybody here's going to jail." And a black man
sitting in a car with tinted windows was accused without cause of being a
pedophile by an officer who pointed a gun at his head.
Between
2012 and 2014, black drivers were more than twice as likely as others
to be searched during routine traffic stops, but 26 percent less likely
to be carrying contraband.
The report also
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 wouldn't be
in office for long because "what black man holds a steady job for four
years." Knowles, the mayor, said one employee was fired and two others
are on leave over the emails.
The report's
recommendations, if accepted by city officials, could lead to an
overhaul of basic police and court practices. Those include improving
officer supervision, better recruiting, hiring and promotion, new
mechanisms for responding to misconduct complaints and a new system to
reduce fine amounts.
Federal officials on
Wednesday described Ferguson city leaders as cooperative and seemingly
open to change, saying there were already some signs of improvement. The
city, for example, has eliminated bond requirements for many municipal
offenses and has extended a program that allows individuals to have
warrants recalled and assigned a new court date.
In
the last five years, the Justice Department has investigated roughly 20
police departments over alleged civil rights violations. Some have led
to the appointment of independent monitors and have been resolved with
negotiated agreements in which the police department commits to major
changes in its practices. Federal officials say they hope to avoid a
protracted court fight with Ferguson to force change.
"It is time for Ferguson's leaders to take immediate, wholesale and structural corrective action," Holder said.
