The Justice Department says it won't prosecute a former Ferguson, Missouri police officer in the shooting death of an unarmed black teenager, but Attorney General Holder blasted Ferguson law enforcement for racial bias and unconstitutional practices. Geoff Bennett filed the following report.
The Justice Department on Wednesday cleared former Ferguson, Missouri police officer Darren Wilson of Civil Rights violations in the shooting death of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown
"Michael Brown’s death, though a tragedy, did not involve prosecutable conduct on the part of Officer Wilson,” said Attorney General Eric Holder.
Holder pointed to the department's 86-page report to support its decision not to prosecute Wilson.
Despite not bringing charges in this case, Holder says he wants to make it easier to bring federal Civil Rights cases in the event of a future Ferguson.
As it currently stands, prosecutors have to prove intent.
"That you did it purposefully, intentionally and with a forethought. That is a very high standard,” said Barbara Arnwine, president of the National Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.
The Justice Department report also undermines witness accounts that Brown had his hands up at the time of the shooting. Federal prosecutors say that claim isn't supported by the evidence.
The "Hands-Up, Don't Shoot" pose became a touchstone of the protests that swept the nation in the days and weeks following the shooting.
Holder said one reason why the protests in Ferguson were so intense and at times, violent is because the interactions between protesters and the police were stoked by years of bad feelings, spurred by excessive and racist police tactics. Tactics laid out in a separate Justice Department investigation of the Ferguson Police Department.
"This investigation found a community that was deeply polarized. A community where deep distrust and hostility often characterized interactions between police and area residents. A community where local authorities consistently approached law enforcement not as a means for protecting public safety but as a way to generate revenue. A community where both police policing and municipal court practices were found to be disproportionately harmful to African-American residents,” said Holder.
Investigators poured over more than 35-thousand pages of police records.
They found that over a two-year period, African Americans accounted for 85 percent of the traffic stops, 90 percent of the citations and 93 percent of the arrests in Ferguson a city that, by comparison, is only 67 percent black.
Also troubling, investigators found evidence of racist jokes in the emails of Ferguson police and court officials, damning evidence which, Holder says, calls for major reform.