The mayor of Ferguson, Missouri held a press conference today to address the scathing Department of Justice report on his city detailing widespread racial bias there. Among the offenses in revealed in that report were that officers used police dogs exclusively on black people, detained black citizens for no reason and unjustly ticketed people to make money. Officials in Ferguson also emailed racist jokes to each other from their work accounts, according to the report.
So what is the city doing to fix this? After taking the mic, Mayor James Knowles said he'd met with the DOJ a day earlier and was told they'd “uncovered explicit racial bias by three individuals who are employed" in the police department.
“Let me be clear, this type of behavior will not be tolerated in the Ferguson police department or any department of the city of Ferguson.”
“Immediately upon leaving that meeting three have been placed on administrative leave. One has since been terminated and the other two are awaiting the outcome of an internal investigation.”
“We must do better not only as a city but as a state and country.”
“The Ferguson police department is in the process of hiring three new hirings,” he said, saying he hoped to have an update on the positions “and the racial makeup” of these officers in the coming days.
To recap, that's one officer fired, two on leave being investigated, and three new hires (but he's not sure what their race is yet). You may remember reports last year that out of the department's 53 officers, only three are black. Ferguson is 67 percent black, by the way.
So what else?
“All police officers have completed mandatory diversity training as of December 2014,” he continues.
The mayor says the city has commissioned an “independent consultant” as recommended by the Justice Department, and that Ferguson is “the first community in this region to undertake such steps” as reform.
He also says the municipal court has begun reforms to change the ways it levies fines on citizens, and to improve the recourse of citizens to protest or pay those fines.
And then he left without taking any questions. Does it sound like the "wholesale change" Attorney General Eric Holder said the Justice Department expects? Either way, if Ferguson doesn't follow the DOJ's recommendations on its own, Holder has made his stance clear enough, saying "Let me be clear: the United States Department of Justice reserves all its rights and abilities to force compliance and implement basic change."
[Via The Guardian]
