Attorney General Eric Holder on Wednesday said that while the Justice Department cleared Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson of any civil rights violations in the shooting death of unarmed teen Michael Brown, Holder understands why the city of Ferguson reacted to the death with widespread protests.
“It is not difficult to imagine how a single tragic incident set off the city of Ferguson like a powder keg,” Holder said at a news conference detailing the Justice Department’s investigations into Brown’s death and the Ferguson Police Department’s conduct.
The Justice Department found a “widespread pattern or practice” of Constitutional violations and racial bias in the Ferguson Police Department.
Holder described a “highly toxic environment” where “people feel under assault.”
He urged those who question the Justice Department’s findings from the investigation into Brown’s death to read what he described as the “searing” report on the Ferguson Police Department’s practices.
“Although some community perceptions of Michael Brown’s tragic death may not have been accurate, the widespread conditions that these perceptions were based upon, and the climate that gave rise to them, were all too real,” Holder said.
The attorney general called upon Ferguson leaders to address the concerns raised in the Justice Department’s report.
“It is time for Ferguson’s leaders to take immediate, wholesale and structural corrective action,” Holder said.
It’s such a toxic environment that no one will be charged.
Without any sanctions behind it, a scathing report is nothing more than throwing snowballs in a war zone. Nothing is going to change unless someone has the teeth to MAKE it change.
Maybe not. He doesn’t seem to go after cases where he might lose and has a pretty good record on voting rights and civil rights. I think the fact that they are laying this out there means that something may actually happen.
On the other hand, a ton of people that have been harassed and illegally detained, charged, etc. have some mighty fine evidence for future civil cases with the Justice Dept. being their evidence.
He offered remedies in his news conference in which DOJ will have oversight over compliance in Ferguson. They aren’t going to go to all this trouble to draw attention to the problem and then ignore working with the community or the PD in order to fix it. He was very strong in expressing that. The problem is that there are many Fergusons around the country and I’d like to see DOJ do more of this on a larger scale.
I would be nice to see the DoJ take on Staten Island PD next.