U.S. Calls on Ferguson to Overhaul Criminal Justice System
Holder’s Report Describes Racial Tension
Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. described the Justice Department’s “searing” report on Ferguson, Mo., which found deep distrust between police officers and residents.
Video by AP on Publish Date March 4, 2015. Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images.
WASHINGTON — The Justice Department on Wednesday called on Ferguson, Mo., to overhaul its criminal justice system, declaring that the city had engaged in so many constitutional violations that they could be corrected only through better training, new policies and outside oversight.
The recommendations were contained in a scathing department report that described a city where police officers singled out blacks for petty crimes, even while fixing tickets for their friends. City officials sent racist jokes from their government email addresses while at work without fear of being punished because their colleagues forwarded them to others. Complaints of police abuses, overwhelmingly against African-Americans, were rarely investigated or punished.
The findings will force Ferguson, a working-class city that is about two-thirds black, to either make changes or face a civil rights lawsuit. Justice Department officials said it appeared that city officials were open to making changes that would head off a court battle.
Report: What Is Wrong With the Ferguson Police Department?
In a scathing report released Wednesday, the Justice Department concluded that the Ferguson Police Department had been routinely violating the constitutional rights of its black residents.
“The findings in Ferguson are very serious, and the list of needed changes is long,” Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said in a statement Wednesday.
It is rare for the Justice Department to bring the weight of the federal government down on a small city. Normally it targets large police forces. But last summer’s fatal shooting of an unarmed black teenager, Michael Brown, by a white police officer prompted a broader investigation, and federal authorities were shocked by what they uncovered.
Document: Ferguson Police Department Report
For example, the report described how one police officer pulled up behind a 32-year-old black man who was cooling off in his car after a basketball game. Without cause, the officer demanded the man’s identification, ordered him out of his car, patted him down and asked to search the car. “The man objected, citing his constitutional rights,” the Justice Department wrote. “In response, the officer arrested the man, reportedly at gunpoint, charging him with eight violations of Ferguson’s municipal code.”
The report found that Ferguson, a city of about 21,000, had abandoned any attempt at establishing relations with the community in favor of a strategy of making money through law enforcement. Fines are a major revenue source for the city, and the local courts were used to extract money. “Everything’s about the courts,” one Ferguson officer told federal investigators. “The court’s enforcement priorities are money.”
Graphic: Q. and A.: What Happened in Ferguson?
The Justice Department called for an entirely new approach, one built upon community policing. That will require new work schedules and a focus on crime prevention and community outreach. Federal authorities said that Ferguson must change the way it stops, searches and arrests people. Over the past two years, blacks accounted for 85 percent of all traffic stops, 90 percent of tickets and 93 percent of arrests. In cases like jaywalking, which often hinge on police discretion, blacks accounted for 95 percent of all arrests.
The Justice Department also called for closer scrutiny when the police use force, for better training of officers and for closer supervision.
One Ferguson resident who has organized protests, Alexis Templeton, said the Justice Department’s report confirmed her belief that the city needed to clean house. “I think a lot of people need to lose their jobs,” she said. “When you have people sending certain emails and saying certain things, and then they go out and police the community, which happens to be predominantly black, those stereotypes play into the work.”
Ms. Templeton said she thought Ferguson’s police department should be disbanded. Her distrust runs deep. Late last year, when her grandmother’s home in Ferguson was broken into, Ms. Templeton said she told her not to call the police, because “I don’t trust them to do their jobs at all.”
