On March 4, the U.S. Department of Justice released a scathing report on the Ferguson Police Department. It found the city’s “law enforcement practices were shaped by the city’s focus on revenue rather than on public safety needs,” causing a pattern of stops and arrests that violated the constitutional rights of the city’s majority-black population.
The report fueled activists’ demands that the Ferguson Police Department be disbanded. U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder told reporters that he would break up the department if necessary.
Over the years, several St. Louis County cities have dissolved their police departments and contracted with another for service.
Typically, a city enters into a contract with the St. Louis County Police Department. That happened in Dellwood, Uplands Park, Fenton and Wildwood. Smaller cities have also contracted with larger ones for police service, such as Oakland contracting with Kirkwood and Greendale contracting with Normandy.
But contracting requires action by a governing body. In Dellwood, the city council voted to abolish its police department and contract with St. Louis County. Because the Ferguson Police Department is baked into the city charter, a citywide vote might be required to dissolve it.
While residents could gather the signatures to place the dissolution of the police department on the ballot, the easier route may be through the city council moving a ballot item forward.
St. Louis Public Radio talked with all eight candidates running for three open city council seats. None supports getting rid of Ferguson’s Police Department.
Beyond authorizing their creation, Missouri law has little to no authority over municipal police departments. There are basic standards for individual police officers, which are enforced by the Missouri Department of Public Safety and the Peace Officer Standards and Training Commission, but nothing comparable for departments.
The Missouri State Highway Patrol can provide temporary support to local departments, as it did during the protests in Ferguson. But state law has no provision to allow the patrol to take over police operations in a city.
State Sen. Maria Chappelle-Nadal, D-University City, suggested that the Department of Justice might be able to dissolve Ferguson’s Police Department by fiat. Neither Ferguson Mayor James Knowles nor St. Louis County Executive Steve Stenger share that opinion. When asked last month, Stenger replied: “It is my understanding that the federal government does not have authority to do that.”
No specific federal statute gives the Justice Department permission to dismantle a police department by fiat, said Margo Schlanger, the director of the Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse at the University of Michigan law school. Any change in the way the Ferguson police operate will come through the settlement of the civil rights claims outlined in the March 4 report.
Oversight agreements reached as part of a settlement generally start with a monitor who ensures a police department is making the changes it negotiated with federal officials, Schlanger said. Ferguson’s political leaders could agree to dissolve the police department as part of the settlement, but that seems unlikely given current sentiment. Municipal officers could decide later that compliance with the policy changes is too expensive.
Ferguson can contest the findings of the Justice Department, Schlanger said. In that case, the federal government would have to prove the allegations in a court of law, and policy changes would be ordered by a judge at the end of a trial. But Schlanger calls it “extraordinarily unlikely” that the federal government would order the dissolution of the Ferguson police department against the will of its elected officials.
The Justice Department can also place a department in receivership. Then a federal judge places someone outside of the normal political leadership in charge, and gives that person broad powers to make changes. It’s happened just once in a civil lawsuit against the Oakland, Calif. police department.
Edited for length and reprinted with permission from news.stlpublicradio.org.
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