In Aug. 2016, two years after the police shooting death of Michael Brown, Jr., U.S. District Judge Catherine Perry approved a 131-page consent agreement between the City of Ferguson and the U. S. Justice Department.
Demonstrations in 2014 over Brown’s questionable death prompted the department’s investigation into the city’s police and court practices. The result was a 105-page report alleging patterns of illegal stops, searches, arrests and routine violations of citizen’s constitutional rights -driven partly by racial bias.
The decree outlined fundamental changes including a method to track compliance, police body cameras, better police training and a means to end the court’s practice of extorting money from poor people with excessive and spiraling fines.
The Ferguson City Council approved the decree in its entirety in 2016 but only after the Justice Department threatened to sue after it tried to amend parts of the decree.
Fast forward nine years and Ferguson’s City Council has voted 4-3 to slash spending on that decree (from $412,700 to $206,350) and eventually phase it out by the second half of the fiscal year.
To date, Ferguson has spent $6 million trying to complete reforms in 19 areas specified by the decree, including hiring, training and equipping dozens more police officers, increasing community engagement and practicing bias-free police work.
John Bowman, president of St. Louis County NAACP, believes the city has acted prematurely and possibly illegally.
“The Ferguson City Council’s decision to fund only 50% of the consent decree’s costs raises serious procedural, legal, and strategic objections — and may expose the city to legal and reputational risks,” Bowman said in a statement sent to the American.
After nine years, he added, the city has just begun to address the “community-focused work” mandated by the decree.
“If we are just now beginning to connect the community to law enforcement, wouldn’t it make sense to give it more time? This seems like a low-ball attempt to bail on the remaining reforms,” Bowman said. “The investigation found a community that was deeply polarized, and where deep distrust and hostility often characterized interactions between police and area residents. The community’s needs still exist. The work must continue.”
There are seven Ferguson council members. Most, including Mayor Ella M. Jones (who voted against the bill) are Black. Nick Kasoff, one of the two white council members, who sponsored the bill to cut funding said the decision was more about the city’s budgetary limitations and a purge of taxpayer’s money.
“The problem that I have is there are a lot of people making money off the consent decree,” Kasoff explained. “There are a lot of $300-an-hour people flying in and staying at the Ritz- Carlton on the city’s budget. Ferguson’s not an affluent community. We’re taxing working-class people to pay for lawyers at the taxpayer’s expense.”
Kasoff said there are streets that need repairing, derelict houses that need demolition and other basic services the city won’t be able to afford if they’re mandated to keep paying money the consent decree mandates.
Despite Kasoff’s budgetary concerns, Bowman insists the council had no right to slash funding from a decree mandated by a federal court order. Reducing funding without the court’s approval, Bowman said, could be “construed as noncompliance or bad faith, especially without a “request for modification from the city.”
The Constitution’s Supremacy Clause,” Bowman added, makes federal court orders binding so that no local government can “unilaterally override or underfund them.”
One legal question that’s sure to arise is whether the city has met any or all of the requirements set out in the decree?
Kasoff admits he’s not sure.
“I honestly can’t answer that because the information provided to council members has been so bad I can’t tell what’s been completed or what we’re supposed to do.
“One would think that after going through all that litigation and having a 131-page consent decree, there would be some sort of checklist where somebody could mark things off as they’re completed…that ain’t the way it’s gone down.”
Shortly after Donald Trump took office his Department of Justice (DOJ) announced it was dismissing consent decree cases in two cities, Minneapolis and Louisville, where police officers killed George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.
Some critics believe Ferguson’s vote to slash the decree’s funding was done anticipating no pushback from the DOJ. Bowman described the move as “Trumpian” and Kasoff didn’t exactly disagree.
“I’ve heard people say they (DOJ) have a list and Ferguson’s on it, but I don’t know anything about that. I don’t know who’s going to react or how. There’s a courtroom, a judge, lawyers, DOJ attorneys. This litigation is a huge, complicated entity. So, I’m going to leave the lawyering to the lawyers.”
That “complicated entity,” Bowman wrote, will no doubt question why Ferguson provided no budgetary justification or impact statement for its decision which may be seen as a violation of “basic tenets of transparent governance.”
Kasoff, who’s been a council member for less than a year, said he protested police misconduct after Mike Brown’s death. He insists there has been “top-to-bottom, serious cultural change” in Ferguson and everyone who voted to cut the budget still wants to see and work toward “equitable change” in the city.
Sylvester Brown Jr. is the Deaconess Foundation Community Advocacy Fellow.