How Ferguson elevated the profile of the Justice Department’s civil rights enforcers
WASHINGTON — As the First images of Ferguson, Missouri surfaced 10 years ago —the bloodied body of a man lying in the street for hours under white sheets, protesters smashing car windows and looting stores—it didn’t take long for the federal government to see a role for itself.
The FBI has opened a criminal investigation into the murder of Michael Brown by a police officer in remarkable haste within two days, while the The Justice Department launched a civil rights investigation less than a month later culminating in a devastating report which exposed abuses by the city’s predominantly white police force and legal system.
The investigations catapulted the department’s Civil Rights Division into the spotlight, drawing wider publicity for a unit that since its founding in 1957 had fought for voting rights and prosecuted Los Angeles police officers in the Rodney King beating, among other things. The Ferguson investigations became part of a series of high-profile investigations into police departments, work that fueled a national dialogue on race and law enforcement and was a legacy of the Obama administration’s Justice Department before it was largely abandoned under President Donald Trump. Research into police forces in large cities returned under President Joe Biden.
“I can’t tell you how many chiefs I’ve talked to who have told me that they’ve had their officers read the Ferguson report, that they’ve done training on it,” said Vanita Gupta, who took over as head of the Civil Rights Division two months after Brown’s death and served in that role for the rest of the Obama administration. “It became a document that had a life well beyond Ferguson and really opened up national conversations about justice and policing.”
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This story is part of an ongoing series by The Associated Press examining the impact, legacy and fallout of the so-called Ferguson uprising, sparked a decade ago by the fatal shooting of Brown.
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The public outrage in Ferguson did not come out of nowhere, two years after the murder of black teenager Trayvon Martin by neighborhood watch volunteer in Florida and on the heels of a series of federal investigations that have revealed widespread problems at police departments in Seattle, Albuquerque And Newark, New JerseyIn Ferguson itself, residents protested not only Brown’s death, but also years, if not decades, of mistreatment by police and city officials.
“It was this constant, daily experience of hostile encounters with law enforcement. People were afraid to leave their homes. They were afraid to drive because they didn’t want to get pulled over. They knew that every one of those encounters was going to be a negative encounter,” said Jonathan Smith, who led the civil rights division that investigated Ferguson and other troubled police forces.
Brown was killed on August 9, 2014, during a violent altercation with Officer Darren Wilson that began when Wilson ordered the 18-year-old, who was walking with a friend down the middle of a street, onto the sidewalk. The next day, after a candlelight vigil, protesters smashed car windows and stole items from stores. The following night, police fired tear gas and rubber bullets into a crowd to disperse the demonstrators.
As community unrest grew, with protesters clashing with officers in armored vehicles and military gear, President Barack Obama sent Attorney General Eric Holder to Ferguson, where he met with law enforcement officials and community leaders. During a trip that underscored the government’s determination to quell the unrest, Holder appealed for calm in the community and met with Brown’s parents, later saying he had greeted them not only as attorney general but also as the father of a teenage son.
In addition to the investigation into Brown’s death, the Justice Department also opened a civil investigation into the entire police department.
Officials combed through more than 35,000 pages of police records and found city emails containing racist language. They analyzed data on stops, searches, tickets, arrests and use of force. The team, which included attorneys, an investigator and community engagement specialists, participated in police ride-alongs, attended court hearings and spent hours in coffee shops talking to residents.
The result was a scathing report in March 2015 that documented striking police abuses. While the department did not find enough evidence to file criminal charges in Brown’s death, a decision that disappointed protesters seeking justice, the broader report on policing resonated across the country, as many outside Ferguson recognized similar abuses by their law enforcement officers.
“There are Fergusons all over the country where attention needs to be paid to rebuilding trust in the community — which of course is ultimately key to public safety,” said Chiraag Bains, a former senior counsel at the Division of Civil Rights who helped lead the Ferguson investigations.
The report showed how black residents were disproportionately subjected to excessive force and unwarranted searches and seizures, practices that the Justice Department said reflected racial bias within the city. It accused the city of using law enforcement operations to generate revenue rather than for legitimate public safety purposes. Among the examples of abuse it cited: a man was charged with violating the city’s municipal code for alleged infractions such as failing to wear a seat belt despite being in a parked car and for giving the shortened form of his name — “Mike” instead of “Michael.”
The Justice Department and Ferguson reached an agreement in 2016 that required the police department to implement sweeping reforms.
Such agreements aren’t “the end all be all,” Gupta said, since they’re limited to solving policing problems but don’t necessarily address longstanding racial disparities. That can be frustrating, she said, since the disruption of police and community can often be the “spearhead of more deep-seated societal inequities.”
Still, she said, one result of the department’s policing in Ferguson was that community leaders and political figures began calling for federal intervention after similar deaths. That’s what happened in Baltimore, for example. where the Justice Department launched a large-scale investigation into the city’s police force after the death of Freddie Gray, and in Chicago, where a federal investigation into the Chicago Police Department was opened after Laquan McDonald was fatally shot by a police officer.
The focus of the Civil Rights Division changed dramatically during the Trump administration. Trump’s first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, announced a review of investigations into patterns or practices a few weeks after taking office, virtually undoing a process he said unfairly cast entire police forces in a bad light.
But the investigations picked up again early in the Biden administration, with new Justice Department leadership taking their positions after the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Since April 2021, the Civil Rights Division says it has launched 11 pattern-of-practice investigations into law enforcement agencies, including police departments in Minneapolis, Louisville and Phoenix. It currently maintains consent orders with 12 law enforcement agencies, including the Ferguson Police Department.
Christy Lopez, a former Justice Department official who led the team that investigated Ferguson, said that while she was unhappy with the pace of work, there was no doubt that “we’re in a better position than we were 10 years ago in terms of how we think about and how we actually work to change policing.”
But there is still much work to be done, Lopez said.
“Not only do we have a long way to go, but it’s not at all clear that we’re going to continue to move forward,” she said. “And it’s very clear that lives are being lost and lives are being destroyed because of our inability to really be sensible about things, to not politicize everything.”