Justice Department to make Ferguson announcements soon
theGrio REPORT - It's been six months since the shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown sparked protests across the country, and the U.S. Justice Department is finally ready to release its findings.
It’s been six months since the shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown sparked protests across the country, and the U.S. Justice Department is finally ready to release its findings. Attorney General Eric Holder said he would announce the results before he leaves office, which means we could see the findings in just the next few days.
The department launched two separate investigations into this matter. One focused on whether or not criminal charges should be brought against Officer Darren Wilson, while the other focused on the Ferguson police department as a whole.
The investigation into the Ferguson police itself follows the pattern of other such investigations under Holder. In about 20 different police department investigations, the Justice Department has ended several investigations by asking departments to change and by maintaining the responsibility to take the departments to court should the requested changes be refused.
The investigation into Ferguson seeks to understand the “deep mistrust” of the people versus the police department and will investigate why black drivers are twice as likely to be stopped as white drivers despite the stops resulting in fewer contraband discoveries. The investigation will also cover use of force as well as stops, searches, arrests and finally treatment of inmates.
It is unlikely that the federal investigation into Officer Darren Wilson will lead to charges for criminal civil rights violations simply because of the legal precedence already set for cases like this. The Supreme Court has stated that cases like this should be handled from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene rather than in hindsight, which is always clearer after an incident. In order to bring charges against Wilson, prosecutors would need to show that Wilson purposefully used excessive force against Brown to deprive him of civil rights.
But beyond the findings of this specific investigation, the federal government has focused its attention on the relationship between police departments and the people they serve. After protests across the nation, the government has pushed for the use of body cameras and training officers. The president himself has said that frustrations with police stem “have deep roots in many communities of color who have a sense that our laws are not always being enforced uniformly or fairly.”
FBI Director James Comey has said, “We must better understand the people we serve and protect, by trying to know deep in our gut what it feels like to be a law-abiding young black man walking down the street and encountering law enforcement.”
As the investigation closes, we hope the lessons we learn from it will continue to help our government learn how to more effectively push police departments to connect with the people they serve and protect.
