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Ferguson report

Inquiry reveals systemic problems

When Ferguson, Missouri, police officer Darren Wilson shot and killed unarmed teenager Michael Brown, the town erupted in protest. The shooting alone was problematic, but the sustained chorus claiming the incident was informed by systemic racism rampant in the town’s police department and city leadership suggested a much deeper problem. When a grand jury elected not to indict Wilson for Brown’s death, the protests escalated, as did police response to them. Clearly there was something much more disconcerting at stake than the shooting death of one young man – an event that was deeply troubling on its own. The U.S. Justice Department set about to examine the matter’s roots. What it found was unsettling, for Ferguson and far beyond.

The Justice Department, under outgoing Attorney General Eric Holder’s leadership, on Wednesday released its Civil Rights Division report on the investigation of the Ferguson Police Department, revealing profound systemic racism within the department, compounded by a focus on revenue generation that undermines community trust and police efficacy in terms of providing for public safety. As such, the report could draw no other conclusion than that the Ferguson Police Department is broken – and that the reasons for it have profound implications on the community’s African-American residents individually, and its safety in general.

The Justice Department report minces no words: the police department, on orders from city officials and reinforced by municipal court practices, focus on revenue-generation and do so disproportionately by targeting African-Americans. Further, the department’s practices rely on excessive force, illegal methods and violations of the Constitution.

“Officers expect and demand compliance even when they lack legal authority. They are inclined to interpret the exercise of free-speech rights as unlawful disobedience, innocent movements as physical threats, indications of mental or physical illness as belligerence,” the report says. Further, the behavior is condoned up the chain of command: “Police supervisors and leadership do too little to ensure that officers act in accordance with law and policy, and rarely respond meaningfully to civilian complaints of officer misconduct. The result is a pattern of stops without reasonable suspicion and arrests without probable cause in violation of the Fourth Amendment; infringement on free expression, as well as retaliation for protected expression, in violation of the First Amendment; and excessive force in violation of the Fourth Amendment.

That is bad enough, but the department’s racist enforcement tactics compound the problem. Though the Ferguson population is 67 percent African-American, between 2012 and 2014, blacks accounted for 85 percent of traffic stops, 90 percent of citations, and 93 percent of arrests. Black motorists were subject to vehicle searches more than twice as often as their white counterparts, despite the fact that white drivers were found to have contraband 26 percent more often than African-Americans.

The problem is deep and broad, and though it is particularly egregious in Ferguson, serves as an alarming bellwether of race relations elsewhere in the United States. It is difficult to imagine that such a pervasively racist culture could arise in the Ferguson Police Department without some systemic support beyond its walls. That similar complaints have been levied across the United States suggests that racial profiling is not the exception in police departments, but too often the rule. Incarceration rates underscore the problem: 39 percent of those in jail or prison in the United States is black; 13.6 percent of the total U.S. population is African-American.

The Justice Department’s report is searing, but it is also a welcome entry in the dialogue about how to root out systemic racism in the U.S. justice system. Recognizing the problem exists at all is an essential first step, and the findings released Wednesday do not allow for denial.



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