Justice Department's Ferguson report resonates across the US

[webfact]

Justice Department's Ferguson report resonates across the US
By GENE JOHNSON

SEATTLE (AP) — Felix Vargas read the Justice Department's report on Ferguson, Missouri, and thought some of it sounded awfully familiar: a mostly white police department overseeing a mostly minority town; questionable uses of force; officers ill-equipped to deal with mentally ill residents.

They're the same issues his heavily Hispanic community, the agricultural Washington city of Pasco, has confronted since the fatal police shooting of an immigrant farmworker last month.

"We know Pasco is only the most recent area where this has happened," said Vargas, chairman of a local Hispanic business organization called Consejo Latino. "We have a national problem. We continue to struggle with this issue of policing."

Ferguson has become an emblem of the tensions between minorities and police departments nationwide since Darren Wilson, a white officer, shot and killed Michael Brown, an unarmed black 18-year-old, last summer. The Justice Department cleared Wilson of criminal wrongdoing, but in its report last week, it made numerous allegations against the city's police department that included racial disparities in arrests, bigotry and profit-driven law enforcement — essentially using the black community as a piggy bank to support the city's budget through fines.

Though the report centered on Ferguson, its findings have resonated beyond the St. Louis suburbs as residents in some communities across the country say they feel they face the same struggles with their police departments and city leadership.

President Barack Obama addressed the issue Friday on the eve of the 50th anniversary of "Bloody Sunday" when police beat scores of people at a civil rights march in Selma, Alabama. While not typical, the issues raised in the Ferguson report also were not isolated, he said.

On Saturday, protesters took to the streets in Madison, Wisconsin, after the fatal shooting of an unarmed black 19-year-old by a white police officer, chanting "Black Lives Matter." Authorities said the police officer fired his weapon after he was assaulted. The officer was placed on administrative leave pending results of an investigation by an outside state agency.

"These communities are vulnerable because they don't believe the law is there to protect them," said Kevin Jones, a black, 36-year-old Iraq war veteran who lives in Saginaw, Michigan, a once predominantly white city that's now about half black. He recalled being pulled over and arrested in 2011 for having his music too loud in the wrong part of town. The noise complaint was dropped when an officer failed to show for his hearing, but Jones said he still had to pay to get his car back.

Saginaw's police force, which is three-quarters white, came under scrutiny after officers killed a homeless, mentally ill, black man in 2012 when he refused to drop a knife. The American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan has called for the Justice Department to conduct a review of the department's practices. The city meanwhile established a citizens committee to try to improve relations with police.

Community leaders in Anaheim, California, have also been seeking a federal review of their department. Demonstrators rioted over two officer-involved shootings in 2012, and residents said Hispanics seemed to be singled out by police in a city that had gone from mostly white when Disneyland was built to mostly Latino.

Jose Moreno, president of Los Amigos of Orange County, a Latino community group, said he didn't believe the overt profiling uncovered in Ferguson occurred in Anaheim, but unless there's a federal investigation he may never know.

"I think it is great the Department of Justice decided to do it somewhere. It just begs the question: Why not here?" he said.

In Pasco, where Vargas lives, the racial makeup of the city has changed over the years and now it's more than half Hispanic, but only one in five of its police are. Even fewer speak fluent Spanish.

In February, three officers — two white and one Hispanic — fatally shot Antonio Zambrano-Montes, a 35-year-old Mexican immigrant, near a busy intersection after police said he threw rocks at them. Vargas said Zambrano-Montes may have suffered from mental illness or substance abuse.

Mayor Matt Watkins said Pasco is open to a federal or state review of its policing and he'd be interested to see more data on arrest rates or other potential indicators of discriminatory policing.

That's something police everywhere should be looking at, said former Seattle U.S. Attorney Jenny Durkan, who helped oversee a federal investigation that found Seattle police were too quick to use force.

"At this time in our history, every police department in America should be reevaluating their relationships with the people they serve," Durkan said. "But it doesn't fall just to the police departments. We all have to look hard at the economic disparities that cause some of the inequality, at how we deal with mental illness, and at what we want the role of our police departments to be."

San Diego State University Professor Joshua Chanin, who has studied Justice Department efforts to reform police departments, said departments could more systematically collect and publish arrest, traffic stop and citation data by race. That could help deter biased policing, because police would be more sensitive to what their statistics show, and it could help validate — or dispel — notions in the community that some groups are singled out.

Even when investigations bring reform, perceptions can be slow to change.

In Miami, the Justice Department came in after seven black men were killed by officers over an eight-month period ending in 2011. The controversy forced out the police chief and brought changes on how police use deadly force, though some say there still aren't enough blacks among the department's brass.

In Liberty City, an impoverished, mostly black neighborhood, suspicions remain.

Standing outside the salon and tattoo parlor where he works, Ronnie Bless put it this way: "If you fit a certain profile, they can do what they want to you."
___

Curt Anderson in Miami, Jeff Karoub in Detroit, and Amy Taxin in Tustin, California, contributed to this report.


-- (c) Associated Press 2015-03-09

[Paulc01]

Well, the answer is obvious, then, isn't it? Because so many Mexicans are moving into American cities, American citizens should no longer be allowed to police their themselves. This should be another job reserved for Mexicans. And soon every American city with a predominantly Mexican/Latin population will have a police force that resembles that of Mexico, Brazil, or Venezuela. Paradise.

[Jimbolai]

Obama and Holder should do the honest thing.

Apologize to the police officer and the whole nation for trying to make Ferguson a race thing. There were no hands up. The police shot a punk attacking him and was found to be well within his rights to protect himself.

Obama and Holder tried to get the cop indicted and should apologize for perpetuating outright lies and creating racial disturbances.

[cup-O-coffee]

National population is rounded to 13% Black, and 78% White. The 78% White includes Hispanic because that is how the FBI (Mr. Eric Holder) tracks murder statistics... worth noting, Mr. Holder, that this inflates White crime rates as described by you.

here, and here

So what?... the article digresses to describe a white on white crime to imply that Whites are racist against Whites? Maybe the Marxist mainstream media and the Marxist lackey, Holder, had better change their statistical definitions before they and the inglorious Marxist leader, Obama, continue to appear like idiots in an effort to further fall all over each other in what is becoming an almost daily routine, to bash Whites over the heads again in half truths and lies.

[hawker9000]

"Resonates"? Yeah, resonates with black exceptionalists, goaded and backed at every step by Obama and his racist Dept of "Justice"... But we all knew it would be like this. Nothing he's done in the last six years has been any surprise. His administration certainly hasn't been, but he himself is far more "transparent" than even he realizes.

[Bangkok Herps]

Just read the report and stop sounding so foolish.

This is maybe the fifth thread where the DOJ report has been mentioned, and not ONCE has any of the detractors found a single thing to criticize in the actual report. Because they still haven't read it, and if they did, they'd realize that the police department was condemned by its own words and actions.

[hawker9000]

Just read the report and stop sounding so foolish.

This is maybe the fifth thread where the DOJ report has been mentioned, and not ONCE has any of the detractors found a single thing to criticize in the actual report. Because they still haven't read it, and if they did, they'd realize that the police department was condemned by its own words and actions.

'Sounding pretty foolish there yourself, sport.

'Read the report. All 105 spellbinding pages of it. Sort o' doubt you have though. 'Not even the remotest semblance of objectivity to it. The entire premise of it is that despite their very best efforts, the DOJ finally had to clear the police officer in the Michael Brown shooting, and so found itself in desperate need of a "parting shot" with which to trash the Ferguson PD and get its punches in. And so they dug up some anecdotes with which to do so. But they are undoubtedly true stories, so not much the department can say. I can just imagine the agenda-driven, snarling, sneering, fangs-out DOJ hellions who invaded Ferguson with a mission to dig up as much dirt as possible, rather than perform anything that might be confused with a fair assessment. I don't expect there's a department in the nation that doesn't have its own sour moments. Much of the report and recommendations touch on the "lack of diversity" in the department, which of course is entirely the department's fault, and nothing to do with the actual applicant population and qualifications... Also not enough "community outreach", blah-blah-blah. Also problems with local courts and a ticket-fixing judge. 'Not sure what that's got to do with the FPD.

Pure tit for tat on the part of a frustrated DOJ. 'Failed to get an indictment on the police officer despite pretty much having promised the black community it would do so, so resorted to smearing the entire police department, Ferguson itself really, instead. Naturally, the black exceptionalists rush to embrace it.

What they couldn't achieve in a courtroom where you actually have to prove stuff, and allow an open hearing of the other side of the story, they sunk into an uncontestable "government report" instead.

[Bangkok Herps]

Just read the report and stop sounding so foolish.

This is maybe the fifth thread where the DOJ report has been mentioned, and not ONCE has any of the detractors found a single thing to criticize in the actual report. Because they still haven't read it, and if they did, they'd realize that the police department was condemned by its own words and actions.

'Sounding pretty foolish there yourself, sport.

'Read the report. All 105 spellbinding pages of it. Sort o' doubt you have though. 'Not even the remotest semblance of objectivity to it. The entire premise of it is that despite their very best efforts, the DOJ finally had to clear the police officer in the Michael Brown shooting, and so found itself in desperate need of a "parting shot" with which to trash the Ferguson PD and get its punches in. And so they dug up some anecdotes with which to do so. But they are undoubtedly true stories, so not much the department can say. I can just imagine the agenda-driven, snarling, sneering, fangs-out DOJ hellions who invaded Ferguson with a mission to dig up as much dirt as possible, rather than perform anything that might be confused with a fair assessment. I don't expect there's a department in the nation that doesn't have its own sour moments. Much of the report and recommendations touch on the "lack of diversity" in the department, which of course is entirely the department's fault, and nothing to do with the actual applicant population and qualifications... Also not enough "community outreach", blah-blah-blah. Also problems with local courts and a ticket-fixing judge. 'Not sure what that's got to do with the FPD.

Pure tit for tat on the part of a frustrated DOJ. 'Failed to get an indictment on the police officer despite pretty much having promised the black community it would do so, so resorted to smearing the entire police department, Ferguson itself really, instead. Naturally, the black exceptionalists rush to embrace it.

What they couldn't achieve in a courtroom where you actually have to prove stuff, and allow an open hearing of the other side of the story, they sunk into an uncontestable "government report" instead.

First off, hawker, I wasn't speaking to you. You're the first person to actually say something about the report itself.

Second, yup, did read the report, and apparently a lot better than you did, considering how badly you misrepresent and misunderstood it.

Most of your response is about Officer Wilson, which is odd, because the report has nothing to do with Officer Wilson. Sort of shows where you were coming from when you read it.

The "lack of diversity" is in the report, but it's not "much" of the report - it is rarely mentioned in the course of 105 pages, and the report specifically states that diversity alone is not the answer, as police of any race can be liable to the exact same issues that are highlighted in Ferguson.

It is not an "uncontestable" government report, if you had really read the whole thing you would realize that one of the first options the city has is to contest the report. If they disagree with it, they can refuse to follow any of the federal recommendations, and they can go to court. Of course, Ferguson has stated that they will comply, because anyone who has read that report and who doesn't think that the feds have already proved their case is willfully blind.

I'm glad that you acknowledge that the stories in the report are true. Laughable that you dismiss them as run-of-the-mill for police departments - if you think that the stuff in that report is just "sour moments", then you must have a really, really low opinion of police.

However, it's not just a bunch of stories. Every story in that report merely illustrates the statistics and department policies that headline every section. The report is proven with the department's own policies and their own numbers, showing that they were told to do the unconstitutional, rights-denying things they do in the stories.

* Arresting and detaining people who are not suspected of a crime is constitutionally illegal.

* Ordering citizens not to execute their free speech rights and then arresting them if they do so is constitutionally illegal.

* Using dogs and tasers on people who have not shown violence and exhibit no threat merely because they won't follow your orders is a huge abuse of power.

* Setting up a department revenue program that has no relationship to stopping crime, no relationship to public safety, but is entirely designed to fill the city's coffers (by the own admission of the city officials designing it) in a manner that severely injures the Black community is constitutionally illegal.

If you call community outreach, "blah blah blah", then you're simply uneducated when it comes to policing.

It wasn't just a ticket-fixing judge, by the way. The mayor, court clerks, prosecutor, and the judge were ALL implicated in ticket-fixing...which is likely part of the reason why White people were 70% more likely than Black people to have their cases dismissed. When you consider that Black people were twice as likely to be pulled over, twice as likely to be searched when pulled over, 30% less likely to have contraband on them, yet 2.5 times more likely to be arrested...the fact that they were so much less likely to have their cases dismissed was yet more evidence of a systemic problem. Especially when you see the specific things that Black people were getting tickets for, how impossible it was for them to challenge the tickets even when evidence was clearly in their favor, and the ways which defense attorneys were threatened with jail time simply for questioning witnesses on the stand.

You failing to understand what the courts had to do with it...that really takes the cake. From page 1 it is clear that there was a conspiracy between the city officials, the police, and the court in order to grind as much money as possible out of the city's poorest residents. The city made infraction fees as high as they could, ordered the police to issue as many tickets as they could, made the court system as difficult to navigate as can be believed, and then charged multiple illegal fees to anyone who didn't navigate the system correctly, then had the police issue arrest warrants to anyone who missed a payment or a court date. They openly acknowledged that their judge cut off witnesses and didn't even pay attention to cases, but refused to get rid of him because he was good for revenue. That system led to 9,000 warrants being issued for a city of only 21,000 people in 2013 alone, when most of the violations were just things like people's grass being too long, "manner of walking" violations, simple parking tickets, non-dangerous traffic tickets, and frequent and illegal "Failure to Obey" citations. The city knew what they were doing was outside of the reasonable bounds of the law, because once the DOJ started investigated, the city of Ferguson began retracting the illegal fees left and right before the DOJ even issued their report.

[Bangkok Herps]

Here are some of the "sour moments" that every department has. This is a tiny sample of the 15 pages of unnecessary force allegations listed in the report. Notice that every one of these incidents is from the last five years, in a small town of only 21,000 people. Does your town have police acting in this manner on a regular basis?

FPD’s pattern of excessive force includes using ECWs in a manner that is unconstitutional, abusive, and unsafe. For example, in August 2010, a lieutenant used an ECW in drive-stun mode against an African-American woman in the Ferguson City Jail because she had refused to remove her bracelets. The lieutenant resorted to his ECW even though there were five officers present and the woman posed no physical threat.

Similarly, in November 2013, a correctional officer fired an ECW at an African-American woman’s chest because she would not follow his verbal commands to walk toward a cell. The woman, who had been arrested for driving while intoxicated, had yelled an insulting remark at the officer, but her conduct amounted to verbal noncompliance or passive resistance at most. Instead of attempting hand controls or seeking assistance from a state trooper who was also present, the correctional officer deployed the ECW because the woman was “not doing as she was told.”

In January 2013, a patrol sergeant stopped an African-American man after he saw the man talk to an individual in a truck and then walk away. The sergeant detained the man, although he did not articulate any reasonable suspicion that criminal activity was afoot. When the man declined to answer questions or submit to a frisk—which the sergeant sought to execute despite articulating no reason to believe the man was armed—the sergeant grabbed the man by the belt, drew his ECW, and ordered the man to comply. The man crossed his arms and objected that he had not done anything wrong. Video captured by the ECW’s built-in camera shows that the man made no aggressive movement toward the officer. The sergeant fired the ECW, applying a five-second cycle of electricity and causing the man to fall to the ground. The sergeant almost immediately applied the ECW again, which he later justified in his report by claiming that the man tried to stand up. The video makes clear, however, that the man never tried to stand—he only writhed in pain on the ground. The video also shows that the sergeant applied the ECW nearly continuously for 20 seconds, longer than represented in his report. The man was charged with Failure to Comply and Resisting Arrest, but no independent criminal violation.

In 2013, FPD stopped a man running with a shopping cart because he seemed “suspicious.” According to the file, the man was “obviously mentally handicapped.” Officers took the man to the ground and attempted to arrest him for Failure to Comply after he refused to submit to a pat-down. In the officers’ view, the man resisted arrest by pulling his arms away. The officers drive-stunned him in the side of the neck. They charged him only with Failure to Comply and Resisting Arrest.

In August 2011, officers used an ECW device against a man with diabetes who bit an EMT’s hand without breaking the skin. The man had been having seizures when he did not comply with officer commands.

We reviewed many incidents in which it appeared that FPD officers used force not to counter a physical threat but to inflict punishment. The use of canines and ECWs, in particular, appear prone to such abuse by FPD. In April 2013, for example, a correctional officer deployed an ECW against an African-American prisoner, delivering a five-second shock, because the man had urinated out of his cell onto the jail floor. The correctional officer observed the man on his security camera feed inside the booking office. When the officer came out, some of the urine hit his pant leg and, he said, almost caused him to slip. “Due to the possibility of contagion,” the correctional officer claimed, he deployed his ECW “to cease the assault.” The ECW prongs, however, both struck the prisoner in the back. The correctional officer’s claim that he deployed the ECW to stop the ongoing threat of urine is not credible, particularly given that the prisoner was in his locked cell with his back to the officer at the time the ECW was deployed. Using less-lethal force to counter urination, especially when done punitively as appears to be the case here, is unreasonable.

For example, in April 2014, an intoxicated jail detainee climbed up on the bars in his cell and refused to get down when ordered to by the arresting officer and the correctional officer on duty. The correctional officer then fired an ECW at him, from outside the closed cell door, striking the detainee in the chest and causing him to fall to the ground. In addition to being excessive, this force violated explicit FPD policy that “[p]roper consideration and care should be taken when deploying the X26 TASER on subjects who are in an elevated position or in other circumstance where a fall may cause substantial injury or death.” FPD General Order 499.04. The reviewing supervisor deemed the use of force within policy.

In December 2011, officers deployed a canine to bite an unarmed 14-year-old African-American boy who was waiting in an abandoned house for his friends. Four officers, including a canine officer, responded to the house mid-morning after a caller reported that people had gone inside. Officers arrested one boy on the ground level. Describing the offense as a burglary in progress even though the facts showed that the only plausible offense was trespassing, the canine officer’s report stated that the dog located a second boy hiding in a storage closet under the stairs in the basement. The officer peeked into the space and saw the boy, who was 5’5” and 140 pounds, curled up in a ball, hiding. According to the officer, the boy would not show his hands despite being warned that the officer would use the dog. The officer then deployed the dog, which bit the boy’s arm, causing puncture wounds.

According to the boy, with whom we spoke, he never hid in a storage space and he never heard any police warnings. He told us that he was waiting for his friends in the basement of the house, a vacant building where they would go when they skipped school. The boy approached the stairs when he heard footsteps on the upper level, thinking his friends had arrived. When he saw the dog at the top of the steps, he turned to run, but the dog quickly bit him on the ankle and then the thigh, causing him to fall to the floor. The dog was about to bite his face or neck but instead got his left arm, which the boy had raised to protect himself. FPD officers struck him while he was on the ground, one of them putting a boot on the side of his head. He recalled the officers laughing about the incident afterward.

The lack of sufficient documentation or a supervisory force investigation prevents us from resolving which version of events is more accurate. However, even if the officer’s version of the force used were accurate, the use of the dog to bite the boy was unreasonable. Though described as a felony, the facts as described by the officer, and the boy, indicate that this was a trespass—kids hanging out in a vacant building. The officers had no factual predicate to believe the boy was armed. The offense reports document no attempt to glean useful information about the second boy from the first, who was quickly arrested. By the canine officer’s own account, he saw the boy in the closet and thus had the opportunity to assess the threat posed by this 5’5” 14 year old. Moreover, there were no exigent circumstances requiring apprehension by dog bite. Four officers were present and had control of the scene.

In one case, FPD failed to open an investigation of an allegation made by a caller who said an officer had kicked him in the side of the head and stepped on his head and back while he was face down with his hands cuffed behind his back, all the while talking about having blood on him from somebody else and “being tired of the B.S.” The officer did not stop until the other officer on the scene said words to the effect of, “[h]ey, he’s not fighting he’s cuffed.” The man alleged that the officer then ordered him to “get the f*** up” and lifted him by the handcuffs, yanking his arms backward. The commander taking the call reported that the man stated that he supported the police and knew they had a tough job but was reporting the incident because it appeared the officer was under a lot of stress and needed counseling, and because he was hoping to prevent others from having the experience he did. The commander’s email regarding the incident expressed no skepticism about the veracity of the caller’s report and was able to identify the incident (and thus the involved officers). Yet FPD did not conduct an internal affairs investigation of this incident, based on our review of all of FPD’s internal investigation files. There is not even an indication that a use-of-force report was completed.

In November 2013, an officer deployed a canine to bite and detain a fleeing subject even though the officer knew the suspect was unarmed. The officer deemed the subject, an African-American male who was walking down the street, suspicious because he appeared to walk away when he saw the officer. The officer stopped him and frisked him, finding no weapons. The officer then ran his name for warrants. When the man heard the dispatcher say over the police radio that he had outstanding warrants—the report does not specify whether the warrants were for failing to appear in municipal court or to pay owed fines, or something more serious—he ran.

The officer followed him and released his dog, which bit the man on both arms. The officer’s supervisor found the force justified because the officer released the dog “fearing that the subject was armed,” even though the officer had already determined the man was unarmed.

As these incidents demonstrate, FPD officers’ use of canines to bite people is frequently unreasonable. Officers command dogs to apprehend by biting even when multiple officers are present. They make no attempt to slow situations down, creating time to resolve the situation with lesser force. They appear to use canines not to counter a physical threat but to inflict punishment. They act as if every offender has a gun, justifying their decisions based on what might be possible rather than what the facts indicate is likely. Overall, FPD officers’ use of canines reflects a culture in which officers choose not to use the skills and tactics that could resolve a situation without injuries, and instead deploy tools and methods that are almost guaranteed to produce an injury of some type.

FPD’s use of canines is part of its pattern of excessive force in violation of the Fourth Amendment. In addition, FPD’s use of dog bites only against African-American subjects is evidence of discriminatory policing in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment and other federal laws.

I grabbed those quotes from much larger sections that gave a great deal more examples as well as Ferguson court statistics and legal presidents for the unconstitutionality of many of the police actions. The passages quoted did not appear in the same order in the original report.

[Bangkok Herps]

Just so you know that it's not always so bad, the Ferguson PD did find instances in which they were able to get control of the situation without having to resort to excessive force...you know, much calmer, controlled situations where they were able to think through their actions and respond carefully:

During our investigation, FPD officials told us that their police tactics are responsive to the scenario at hand. But records suggest that, where a suspect or group of suspects is white, FPD applies a different calculus, typically resulting in a more measured law enforcement response. In one 2012 incident, for example, officers reported responding to a fight in progress at a local bar that involved white suspects. Officers reported encountering “40-50 people actively fighting, throwing bottles and glasses, as well as chairs.” The report noted that “one subject had his ear bitten off.” While the responding officers reported using force, they only used “minimal baton and flashlight strikes as well as fists, muscling techniques and knee strikes.” While the report states that “due to the amount of subjects fighting, no physical arrests were possible,” it notes also that four subjects were brought to the station for “safekeeping.” While we have found other evidence that FPD later issued a wanted for two individuals as a result of the incident, FPD’s response stands in stark contrast to the actions officers describe taking in many incidents involving black suspects, some of which we earlier described.

Good thing that no one had bracelets on so that they didn't have to resort to the taser, and I guess that none of the subjects was as dangerous as a 14-year-old boy so the dogs were unnecessary.

[Scott]

An inflammatory post has been removed. Please chose your words carefully.

[soundman]

Posts have been remove. Stop bickering please.