The new investigation goes far beyond the circumstances of the shooting
In this Aug. 20, 2014 file photo, Attorney General Eric Holder talks with Capt. Ron Johnson of the Missouri State Highway Patrol at Drake's Place Restaurant in Florrissant, Mo. The Justice Department plans to open a wide-ranging investigation into
Ferguson: The US justice department may open a wide-ranging investigation into the practices of the Ferguson, Missouri, police department as early as Thursday following the shooting last month of an unarmed black 18-year-old by a white police officer in the St Louis suburb.
A person briefed on the matter said Missouri officials were notified about the inquiry on Wednesday.
The investigation will look at the practices in the past few years of the police department, including patterns of stops, arrests and the use of force, as well as the training officers receive, the person said.
The casket of Michael Brown sits inside Friendly Temple Missionary Baptist
Church awaiting the start of his funeral on Monday, Aug. 25, 2014. (Photo: AP)
The inquiry is separate from an ongoing civil rights investigation the justice department is conducting into the shooting of Michael Brown by Darren Wilson on 9 August. A local grand jury is also investigating the shooting, which set off about two weeks of unrest in the streets of Ferguson and became a flashpoint in the national discussion of police treatment of minorities across the country.
Two weeks ago the attorney general, Eric Holder, visited the suburb, where he met with investigators and Brown's parents and shared personal experiences of having himself been mistreated by the police.
The person spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation, first reported by the Washington Post, had not yet been announced. Ferguson police chief Tom Jackson did not immediately return a call seeking comment about the justice department investigation.
Police have said the shooting followed a scuffle that broke out after Wilson told Brown and a friend to move out of the street and on to a sidewalk. Police say Wilson was pushed into his squad car and physically assaulted. Some witnesses have reported seeing Brown's arms up in the air before the shooting in an act of surrender. An autopsy paid for by Brown's family concluded that he was shot six times, twice in the head.
The new investigation goes far beyond the circumstances of the shooting. It will look at the actions of a police department that is predominantly white even though Ferguson is about 70% black.
Some in Ferguson have said police disproportionately target black motorists during traffic stops. A 2013 report by the Missouri attorney general's office found that Ferguson police stopped and arrested black drivers nearly twice as frequently as white motorists but were also less likely to find contraband among the black drivers.
The justice department's civil rights division routinely investigates individual police departments when there are allegations of systemic use-of-force violations, racial bias or other problems.
The department says it has opened more than twice as many investigations into police departments in the past five years as were opened in the previous five years. Among those that have recently come under investigation is the Albuquerque, New Mexico, department, which was the subject of a harshly critical report in April that faulted the police for a pattern of excessive force and called for an overhaul of its internal affairs unit.
Normally, federal investigations encourage significant changes to policies and practices. The investigations sometimes end in an agreement known as a consent decree, which lays out changes the department must make.
( Source : AP )
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