Between its racial bias and focus on “revenue rather than public safety needs,” the Ferguson Police Department routinely engages in practices that violate the U.S. Constitution and federal law, according to an investigation report released by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division on March 4.
Although the DOJ found the Ferguson Police Department guilty of using unjustified, excessive use of force, it also announced that it cleared Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson of any federal civil rights charges in the fatal shooting of Michael Brown Jr. on August 9.
The report on Wilson’s case – released simultaneously with the findings on the police department – stated that although several people saw Brown with his hands up in “an unambiguous sign of surrender prior to Wilson shooting him dead, their accounts do not support a prosecution of Wilson.” DOJ investigators said other witnesses stated that Brown appeared to pose a physical threat to Wilson “as he moved toward Wilson.”
However, the DOJ criticized this same behavior in its report on the Ferguson police, stating, “Supervisors seem to believe that any level of resistance justifies any level of force. They routinely rely on boilerplate language, such as the statement that the subject took ‘a fighting stance,’ to justify force.”
On Wednesday afternoon, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder connected the two investigations, saying that patterns and practices of racism may explain why the public believed the worst of Wilson.
“Some of those protestors were right,” Holder said. “Concrete action is what is needed now.”
The DOJ’s report on the police department details that Ferguson’s law enforcement practices overwhelmingly impact African Americans. Data collected by the police department from 2012 to 2014 show that African Americans account for 85 percent of vehicle stops, 90 percent of citations and 93 percent of arrests made by Ferguson police officers, despite comprising only 67 percent of Ferguson’s population. African Americans are more than twice as likely as white drivers to be searched during vehicle stops. Some of this stems from the fact that only four of Ferguson’s 54 commissioned officers are black, it states.
The DOJ found substantial evidence of racial bias among police and court staff in Ferguson. For example, they discovered emails circulated by police supervisors and court staff that stereotype racial minorities as criminals, including one email that joked about an abortion by an African-American woman being a means of crime control.
“A November 2008 email stated that President Barack Obama would not be president for very long because ‘what black man holds a steady job for four years,’” it states. “An October 2011 email included a photo of a bare-chested group of dancing women, apparently in Africa, with the caption, ‘Michelle Obama’s High School Reunion.’”
All of the email senders are current employees, and almost all the emails were sent through their official City of Ferguson email accounts and during work hours. None of the employees were disciplined, according to DOJ investigators.
Several Ferguson officials told investigators that it is a lack of “personal responsibility” among black community members that causes them to experience disproportionate harm under Ferguson’s approach to law enforcement. Investigators found this explanation “at odd with the facts.”
“Our investigation has found that the practices about which area residents have complained are in fact unconstitutional and unduly harsh,” the report states. “But the city’s personal-responsibility refrain is telling: it reflects many of the same racial stereotypes found in the emails between police and court supervisors.”
In the municipal court, African Americans are 68 percent less likely than others to have their cases dismissed by the court, and are more likely to have their cases last longer and result in more required court encounters.
African Americans are at least 50 percent more likely to have their cases lead to an arrest warrant, and accounted for 92 percent of cases in which an arrest warrant was issued by court in 2013. And 96 percent of those arrested only because of an outstanding municipal warrant were African-American.
“Our investigation indicates that this disproportionate burden on African Americans cannot be explained by any difference in the rate at which people of different races violate the law,” the report states. “Rather, our investigation has revealed that these disparities occur, at least in part, because of unlawful bias against and stereotypes about African Americans.”
Ferguson’s pattern of using excessive force is disproportionately against African Americans – almost 90 percent of the documented cases, the report states.
“Many officers are quick to escalate encounters with subjects they perceive to be disobeying their orders or resisting arrest,” the report states. “They have come to rely on ECWs, specifically Tasers, where less force – or no force at all – would do. They also release canines on unarmed subjects unreasonably and before attempting to use force less likely to cause injury.”
In every canine bite incident reviewed, the person bitten was African American. In December 2011, officers deployed a canine to bite an unarmed 14-year-old black boy who was waiting in an abandoned house to skip school with his friends. DOJ investigators spoke to the boy, who said he never heard any warnings from police before they unleashed the dog into the house. He was bit on the ankle, thigh and almost his face.
The officers “struck him while he was on the ground, one of them putting a boot on the side of his head. “He recalled the officers laughing about the incident afterward,” the report states.
Investigators also said officers often used force in response to “annoying or distasteful” behavior but that does not pose a threat to them. They called these cases punitive, unconstitutional and criminal.
In August 2010, a lieutenant used an ECW (electronic control weapon or stun gun) in “drive-stun mode” against an African-American woman in the Ferguson jail because she had refused to remove her bracelets.
“The lieutenant resorted to his ECW even though there were five officers present and the woman posed no physical threat,” the report states.
The DOJ also found numerous incidents in which – based on the officer’s own description of the detention – an officer detained or arrested a person without probable cause. In July 2013, police encountered a black man in a parking lot while on their way to arrest someone else at an apartment building.
“Police knew that the encountered man was not the person they had come to arrest,” it states. “Nonetheless, without even reasonable suspicion, they handcuffed the man, placed him in the back of a patrol car, and ran his record. It turned out he was the intended arrestee’s landlord.”
The landlord went on to help the police with the intended arrest, but he later filed a complaint. However, a sergeant vigorously defended the department’s actions, saying the detention was “minimal” and pointing out that the car was air conditioned.
“Even temporary detention, however, constitutes a deprivation of liberty and must be justified under the Fourth Amendment,” the report states.
However, the officers frequently do not report the force they use at all, the DOJ found. Many of the cases of excessive force that they heard from community members were never documented or investigated.
“This in turn raises the possibility that the pattern of unreasonable force is even greater than we found,” the report states.
Public trust has been deeply eroded because the police department has no meaningful system for holding officers accountable when they violate law or policy, the report states. When officers at the sergeant level or above use force, they complete the use-of-force investigation themselves – essentially investigating their own conduct.
“Ferguson’s internal affairs system fails to respond meaningfully to complaints of officer misconduct,” the report found.
The DOJ opened its investigation of the police department on September 4, under the pattern-or-practice provision of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994. In the report, the DOJ makes many recommendations that range from shifting the city’s “policing to raise revenue” model to more officer training in de-escalation and avoiding use of force.
The DOJ’s pattern or practice cases usually result in consent decrees that run for five years. Ferguson would be the smallest town to undergo the expensive court-compliance process since tiny Steubenville, Ohio 18 years ago, according to a St. Louis Public Radio report. Former St. Louis County Police Chief Tim Fitch told public radio that Ferguson could face bankruptcy. He pointed to East Haven, Connecticut, a town a little bigger than Ferguson, had to spend $3 million reforming its police department after a similar Justice Department investigation.
“Ferguson will not survive this financially,” Fitch told St. Louis Public Radio.
Lesley McSpadden and Michael Brown, Sr., the parents of Michael Brown, Jr., said they were saddened by the DOJ’s decision in regards to Wilson but encouraged by the findings on the police department overall.
“It is our hope that through this action, true change will come not only in Ferguson, but around the country,” they said. “If that change happens, our son’s death will not have been in vain.”
