NYTimes
The city manager of Ferguson, whom a Department of Justice report blamed for overseeing the financially driven policies that led to widespread discrimination and questionable conduct by the police and the courts here, has agreed to resign. The announcement came during a City Council meeting on Tuesday, about a week after the scathing Justice Department report was released.
The manager, John Shaw, 39, had held the post since 2007. As Ferguson’s chief executive, he was the city’s most powerful official.
Mr. Shaw, who has not spoken publicly since the report was issued, offered a staunch defense in a page-long letter to the community that city officials distributed during the Council meeting.
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RELATED COVERAGE
The Department of Justice sharply criticized municipal courts in Ferguson, and the current judge resigned Monday.Missouri Court Assigns a State Judge to Handle Ferguson CasesMARCH 9, 2015
Protesters on Thursday outside the police building and municipal court in Pine Lawn, Mo., a few miles southeast of Ferguson.Ferguson Became Symbol, but Bias Knows No BorderMARCH 7, 2015
Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. after issuing a report Wednesday that strongly rebuked the system of justice in Ferguson, Mo.Ferguson Police Tainted by Bias, Justice Department SaysMARCH 4, 2015
“And while I certainly respect the work that the D.O.J. recently performed in their investigation and report on the City of Ferguson, I must state clearly that my office has never instructed the Police Department to target African-Americans, nor falsify charges to administer fines, nor heap abuses on the backs of the poor,” he wrote. “Any inferences of that kind from the report are simply false.”
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Report: What Is Wrong With the Ferguson Police Department?
In a scathing report released Wednesday, the Justice Department concluded that the Ferguson Police Department had been routinely violating the constitutional rights of its black residents.
The resignation was announced about 30 minutes into the Council meeting, with members voting 7 to 0 to approve a “mutual separation agreement” with Mr. Shaw.
As people in the packed Council chamber began to understand what was happening, a buzz shot through the room as onlookers mumbled and a few let out quiet cheers.
“We wanted to move forward as a community,” Mayor James Knowles III said during a brief news conference after the meeting.
Until the Justice Department report was released, Mr. Shaw had remained largely in the background, while Mr. Knowles and the city’s police chief became the public faces of turmoil in Ferguson. But the report highlighted Mr. Shaw as the head of the city’s operations as it engaged in racially biased and unconstitutional policing practices.
Mr. Shaw, whose resignation was effective at midnight Tuesday, was not at the meeting. The assistant city manager, Pam Hylton, sat in his place.
“I’m surprised,” said Brian P. Fletcher, who was the mayor of Ferguson when Mr. Shaw was hired. But ultimately, Mr. Shaw needed to resign, added Mr. Fletcher, who sat in the back of the Council chambers. “I think he made the right decision for the time. I think that for what’s happened, that obviously somebody has to take responsibility. He ran the day-to-day operations, and he ultimately is responsible.”
Melissa McKinnies, who has lived in Ferguson for 25 years, said after the meeting that Mr. Shaw’s resignation was “the best news I could have heard.”
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GRAPHIC
How Other Missouri Cities Are Like Ferguson
Ferguson looks similar to some other Missouri cities in racial disparities in traffic stops and municipal fees.
OPEN GRAPHIC
Because he was responsible for hiring city officials, Ms. McKinnies, 43, said, he had to be held accountable. “If he’s not part of the solution, he’s part of the problem,” she said. “But now it’s like, what’s next?”
Mr. Shaw was just the latest Ferguson official to fall.
Last Wednesday, the day the Justice Department’s report was issued, the Municipal Court clerk was fired for sending racist emails. Two police supervisors later resigned for sending racist emails as well.
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On Monday, the Missouri Supreme Court took what it called the “extraordinary action” of assigning all of Ferguson’s Municipal Court cases to a state appellate judge. The municipal judge, Ronald J. Brockmeyer, whom the report accused of ticket-fixing and instituting unconstitutional fees, resigned.
The Justice Department report accused city officials of running the Municipal Court system as a moneymaking venture and having a racially biased police force that regularly violated people’s constitutional rights.
In another instance outlined in the report, Mr. Shaw acknowledged a Council member’s complaints that the municipal judge was not doing a good job, but noted that “the city cannot afford to lose any efficiency in our courts, nor experience any decrease in our fines and forfeitures.”
The detailed report confirmed many of the grievances aired last year by blacks in protests after the deadly police shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed 18-year-old black resident. Though the Justice Department separately concluded that the officer, Darren Wilson, who is white, violated no federal laws in that shooting, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said investigations had revealed the root of the anger that sent people into the streets.
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Document: Ferguson Police Department Report
Ferguson police officers routinely harassed and abused people, jailing or using Tasers on them without just cause, the report said.
“City and police leadership pressure officers to write citations, independent of any public safety need, and rely on citation productivity to fund the city budget,” the report said.
In an email from March 2010, the year Chief Thomas Jackson took his post, the city’s finance director wrote to the chief that “unless ticket writing ramps up significantly before the end of the year, it will be hard to significantly raise collections next year.”
“What are your thoughts,” he added, according to the report.
The chief responded that fines would increase once more officers were hired and that he was considering a different shift schedule that would put more officers on the street and increase traffic enforcement.
The next year, when Chief Jackson reported to Mr. Shaw that court revenue for February 2011 was more than $179,000, the highest monthly total in four years, Mr. Shaw responded in an email, “Wonderful!” the Justice Department report said.
As part of his job, Mr. Shaw recommended department heads — including Chief Jackson and Mr. Brockmeyer — to their jobs, and the City Council voted to approve them.
Many residents and political leaders said they hoped that the Justice Department’s affirmation of their grievances would lead to change. And some of that appears to be happening.
Over the past several months, Mr. Shaw had been the city’s lead official in discussions with the federal authorities over ways to improve the city. The Justice Department in its report did commend him and the mayor for trying to make changes once the investigation started.
“I believe that the City of Ferguson has the resolve to overcome the challenges it faces in the coming months,” Mr. Shaw wrote in his letter, “and emerge as a stronger community for it.”
Additionally
The city’s embattled police chief, the focus of complaints after a white officer fatally shot an unarmed black teenager here last August, agreed to resign Wednesday, as part of the near-complete shake-up of the city’s most senior administrators.
In the week since the Department of Justice released a scathing report detailing how Ferguson used law enforcement to pad its coffers, often violating constitutional rights and disproportionately targeting blacks in the process, the city manager and Municipal Court judge have also stepped down, and the city’s court has been placed under state supervision.
Together with the chief, Thomas Jackson, the three officials were cited as central figures in the abuses found by the Justice Department.
James Knowles III, the Ferguson mayor, praised Chief Jackson’s service and said it was a decision that the chief ultimately made because he thought it was best for the city and the Police Department.
“To Ferguson residents, business owners and to the entire country, the City of Ferguson looks to become an example of how a community can move forward in the face of adversity,” Mr. Knowles said in a news conference on Wednesday. “We are committed to keeping our Police Department and having one that exhibits the highest degree of professionalism and fairness.”
Mayor James Knowles announced that Ferguson’s police chief, Thomas Jackson, would be resigning, effective March 19.
Chief Jackson, 58, will receive a year’s pay — about $96,000 — and a year of health insurance as severance, the mayor said.
The department’s assistant chief, Lt. Col. Alan Eickhoff, who joined the Ferguson force shortly before Michael Brown Jr.’s killing, will be the interim chief after Chief Jackson’s resignation becomes effective, next Thursday.
But for all the sweeping change in leadership, the protests, rioting and scrutiny that followed the death of Mr. Brown have been searing for this St. Louis suburb. In many ways, this is still a city in trauma, struggling for a way forward.
Shoppers have returned to the business district. But some buildings remain charred rubble from the occasionally violent protests that followed a grand jury’s decision last November not to indict the police officer, Darren Wilson, in the shooting.
Last Saturday, Kaililah Hill moved out of her apartment in the complex where the shooting of Michael Brown Jr. took place. She said residents of the six units next to hers had already left. Credit Whitney Curtis for The New York Times
Some people from around the region say they continue to avoid Ferguson, concerned about its abusive practices and the potential for more unrest. And many residents have decided to leave, especially from Canfield Green, the apartment complex where the shooting happened.
“You try to forget about it,” Toriano Johnson, 39, who works at the Prime Time Barber Shop on West Florissant Avenue, said of the stigma that continues to hang over Ferguson. “But in some kind of way — conversation or some kind of way — it’s going to come up.”
The starkest change is perhaps in policing. Once considered an overzealous presence, the police seem far less visible these days, residents said, creating contradictory emotions.
Residents say that, to their relief, the abuses detailed in the Justice Department report have diminished, largely because of a sharp drop in ticketing. (Another Justice Department report released the same day cleared Officer Wilson of any civil rights violations in the shooting.)
Police officials said patrols were for a time reduced out of concerns about the safety of officers. In an interview earlier this week, Mr. Knowles also said ticketing had fallen “through the floor” in the months since Mr. Brown’s death because the department had to divert officers to manage protests. Those protests have in recent weeks been sporadic and small.
Yet Mr. Knowles also said it was imperative that the city examine and improve its policing practices. And, responding to some residents’ concerns that the police have become almost invisible, he added: “We’re not trying to scale back presence. We’re trying to improve the outcomes of the presence that we have.”
Although Chief Jackson has been the face of the Police Department since he took the helm in 2010, the Justice Department report noted that he was pressured by other officials, including the city manager and the finance director, to meet revenue goals through increased ticketing. Data cited in the report said that black motorists and pedestrians received a disproportionately high number of those tickets.
In addition, federal investigators found that the department used dogs and electronic weapons in abusive or punitive ways that often violated rights. And the report revealed that racist emails had been circulated among city officials and police officers, leading to the firing of the top court clerk and two police supervisors.
Ms. Lofton, 25, said that before Mr. Brown’s death, the Ferguson police had pulled her over about 10 times, including twice in one day for the same offense: tinted windows. She received a ticket both times, from different officers. And when she did not pay the tickets on time, she was arrested and taken to jail.
Since Mr. Brown’s death, Ms. Lofton said, she has not been pulled over. But although she said she felt “way more comfortable” driving in the city now, old feelings die hard. As she was driving recently, she saw a police officer tuck in behind her and immediately thought, “Oh my goodness, is he coming for me?”
Ms. Lofton, who lives with her mother in a house near Canfield Green, said she questioned whether the police force would continue its subdued approach. “Even though some changes are being made, they still have the same cops,” she said. “It’s going to be hard for them to change.”
Patrols were scaled back after the shooting because of the continuing threat for Ferguson police officers, Colonel Eickhoff said. Patrols returned to normal in December, he said, yet there remained a challenge in finding ways to do things differently.
“We’re trying to get them not to just patrol the community; they got to get out and they got to walk the community,” he said of Ferguson officers. “They got to meet with people and just get to know everybody because everybody’s got to cross the line.”
Amid uncertainty, residents are asking how their city will move forward. Is there a need for more housecleaning in City Hall? Should the Police Department be dissolved? And how will the battle with the Justice Department be resolved?
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“We’re more educated about what’s going on around us,” said Sonny Dayan, 53, the owner of St. Louis Cordless Communications on West Florissant, whose store was broken into twice after unrest started in August. “We want some sort of normal life. So we have that eagerness, in a sense, to change things, but we also have this need to have a normal life.”
At times, one can easily be lulled into thinking that this town’s worst days are behind it. During last Friday’s lunch rush at the Ferguson Burger Bar and More, Charles Davis, who owns the restaurant with his wife, raced from table to table, delivering trays of hamburgers, fries and fried shrimp to a steady stream of patrons.
Mr. Davis and his restaurant, which opened the day before Mr. Brown’s killing, earned acclaim during the unrest after he refused to close, even as fires burned and windows shattered around him. He became a symbol of local resilience, and his restaurant served as a haven for demonstrators, officials and journalists alike. That attention now seems to be helping business.
“I saw you on TV,” a mustachioed man in a baseball cap said as he strolled in Friday to order food with his family.
“I’ve said from Day 1, God placed us here for a reason,” Mr. Davis, 47, said later. “People have called and said we have been a beacon of light. People have thanked me for my stand of not boarding up, things of that nature, and being open throughout this whole thing.”
For some business owners, progress is more elusive.
Just north of the strip mall that houses Mr. Davis’s restaurant is a boarded-up mattress store and another shuttered business with colorfully painted plywood.
Less than a quarter-mile from there, “RIP Mike Brown” is scribbled in black spray paint on a gray cinder-block building. An “open” sign is taped to the plywood that encases this structure, home to Sam’s Meat Market and More. But the market is anything but ready for business.
Sam’s was looted during the early days of protest in August but quickly reopened. In November, it was burned and ransacked. It has remained closed since.
Last Friday, dim construction lights hung from the rafters as a handful of workers laid new ceramic floor tile. The space is open and empty, with remnants from the destruction still waiting to be cleared out, including dented coolers and an assortment of soft drinks that will be thrown away once the insurance company finishes its inventory.
In the middle of the dark, dusty space, Mohamad Jacoub, the owner, smoked a cigarette and recounted how his business had sustained about $600,000 in damage. Insurance was paying for less than half of that, he said. A GoFundMe page set up for him has collected a little less than $15,000, much less than the $100,000 goal.
The city has made rehabilitation efforts difficult, he said, by being slow about issuing work permits. In the meantime, Mr. Jacoub said, he has been borrowing money from relatives to support his wife and two children. But he hopes the store will be running again by April 1, and sees Sam’s resurrection as essential for Ferguson.
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“The people here, the community have been good to us,” said Mr. Jacoub, 41, who lives in the neighboring city of Florissant. “The store here, everybody loves the store. We have good people, friendly customers. It’s not right to close the store.”
Other community members have had enough of Ferguson. That sentiment seems particularly strong in Canfield Green, where residents estimate that the 450-unit complex is about half occupied. (The complex’s management declined to comment on the vacancy rate.)
Kaililah Hill, 33, said residents of the six apartments next to hers moved out after the shooting. Last Saturday, after three years in Canfield Green, she joined the exodus. Family members helped her load a U-Haul as she left for Bellefontaine Neighbors, another town in St. Louis County.
She did not like that the police no longer seemed to patrol the neighborhood, and she had had disputes with the complex’s management. But she also found it difficult to escape the depressing memory of Mr. Brown’s killing right outside her unit.
“The atmosphere,” she said, “it just doesn’t feel right anymore.”
One problem that appears in both articles that the writers seem to avoid really examining (not that I blame them, not the point of the article). The fact that police department was under constant pressure to increase revenue. This isn't a problem only in Ferguson and while it wasn't the root of the problem, it only made things worse.
"it takes two sides to end a war but only one to start one. And those who do not have swords may still die upon them." Tolken
