Ferguson Mayor: 1 City Official Fired, 2 Being Investigated Over Racist Emails

Ferguson Mayor James Knowles speaks during a meeting of the Ferguson City Council Tuesday, Sept. 9, 2014, in Ferguson, Mo. The meeting is the first for the city council since the fatal shooting of Michael Brown by a ... Ferguson Mayor James Knowles speaks during a meeting of the Ferguson City Council Tuesday, Sept. 9, 2014, in Ferguson, Mo. The meeting is the first for the city council since the fatal shooting of Michael Brown by a city police officer. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson) MORE LESS
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Ferguson Mayor James Knowles on Wednesday said that the city had fired one official and was investigating two others after the Justice Department uncovered numerous racist messages sent on city email accounts.

During its investigation into the Ferguson Police Department, the Justice Department found numerous racially charged emails sent by city officials. Knowles said that the emails were sent by the three individuals.

“This type of behavior will not be tolerated in the Ferguson Police Department or in any department in the city of Ferguson,” Knowles said about the emails during a press conference responding to the DOJ report.

Knowles detailed a few diversity initiatives that the city will undertake to address the issues outlined in the Wednesday DOJ report, but he did not address whether anyone in the Ferguson police department would be terminated.

He added that since August 2014, the city has hired a black female corrections officer and two black female assistant court clerks.

Knowles said that the city would work to address the issues detailed in the Justice Department report.

“We must all work to address issues of racial disparity,” he said.

The Justice Department issued a report on Wednesday alleging a pattern of racial bias and violations of Constitutional rights at the Ferguson Police Department. The DOJ found that between 2012 and 2014, blacks made up 85 percent of the department’s vehicle stops, 90 percent of citations, and 93 percent of arrests, when blacks comprise only 67 percent of the city’s population.

The DOJ also discovered racially charged emails sent by city officials from their official email accounts. One of the emails “stated that President Barack Obama would not be President for very long because ‘what black man holds a steady job for four years’,” according to the report.

This post has been updated.

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Notable Replies

  1. They are investigating the ones that refer to defendants and the President as “those ni(CLANG!)” just to make damn sure there is racism in them.

  2. yea…because firing an intern and ‘investigating’ the janitors totally makes up for everything…carry on.

  3. Here’s the full report:

    They are pretty well fucked no matter how many scapegoats they try to pin it on. The report is damning about the entire PD, as should be unsurprising. Another choice section:

    In another case, from March 2013, officers responded to the police station to take custody of a person wanted on a state warrant. When they arrived, they encountered a different man - not the subject of the warrant - who happened to be leaving the station. Having nothing to connect the man to the warrant subject, other than his presence at the station, the officers nonetheless stopped him and asked that he identify himself. The man asserted his rights, asking the officers “Why do you need to know?” and declining to be frisked. When the man then extended his identification toward the officers, at their request, the officers interpreted his hand motion as an attempted assault and took him to the ground. Without articulating reasonable suspicion or any other justification for the initial detention, the officers arrested the man on two counts of Failure to Comply and two counts of Resisting Arrest.

    In our conversations with FPD officers, one officer admitted that when he conducts a traffic stop, he asks for identification from all passengers as a matter of course. If any refuses, he considers that to be “furtive and aggressive” conduct and cites - and typically arrests - the person for Failure to Comply. The officer thus acknowledged that he regularly exceeds his authority under the Fourth Amendment by arresting passengers who refuse, as is their right, to  provide identification…Further, the officer told us that he was trained to arrest for this violation.

  4. Any employee or elected official should be held accountable. One of the main jobs a police officer has is to defuse situations and not escalate them–and this is exactly what happened with Mr. Brown.

  5. Mayor seems to be singing a different melody now that the Justice Department report is publicly available.

    “We’re investigating the obvious racists, but the rest of us are ok, really.”

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