Justice Department faults Ferguson protest response

[DonViejo]

Source: St Louis Post-Dispatch

FERGUSON • Police trying to control the Ferguson protests and riots responded with an uncoordinated effort that sometimes violated free-speech rights, antagonized crowds with military-style tactics and shielded officers from accountability, the Justice Department says in a document obtained Monday by the Post-Dispatch.

“Vague and arbitrary” orders to keep protesters moving “violated citizens’ right to assembly and free speech, as determined by a U.S. federal court injunction,” according to a summary of a longer report scheduled for delivery this week to police brass in Ferguson, St. Louis County, St. Louis and Missouri Highway Patrol.

They already have the summary, still subject to revision, that was obtained by the newspaper.

It suggests that last year’s unrest was aggravated by long-standing community animosity toward Ferguson police, and by a failure of commanders to provide more details to the public after an officer killed Michael Brown.

Read more: http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/justice-department-faults-ferguson-protest-response/article_32d55f9f-0bf4-51e4-93d6-71b873cb8038.html

[underpants]

1. Releasing the Grand Jury findings at sundown - error or agitation?

The chief cop parroting Fox News talking points from the beginning didn't help either.

[Stellar]

2. gawd, this makes me so angry!

[cstanleytech]

3. I would be more impressed if the same DOJ had not completely failed the american people

by point blank refusing to do things like prosecuting bank executives for their misdeeds and protecting the american people from the overwhelming power that corporations are wielding in shaping our country by bribing our elected officials.

[geek tragedy]

4. "squirrel!!" nt

[Taitertots]

5. When are they going to issue arrest warrents for every officer involved?

Because the summary indicates that they are all criminals.

[jwirr]

6. So far so good. To any of us who watched the police back in the civil rights movement era this

comes as no surprise. And we also have answers - in the 60s the riots were called "police riots" because mainly they were caused by police action of aggression. That is exactly what this report says.

One of the things that needs to be taught in police academies is crowd control methods that came out of the various protests back then.

And I hope they do more than just acknowledge that the unrest came from long-standing animosity toward Ferguson police. They need to address the use of the police to "collect taxes" from the community through harassment measures. There is no community in the USA that would not hate the police if they were stopped for every damned little infraction of the law just to collect money for the city. In most communities those small infractions are never enforced. And in fact many should be taken off the books.

Michael Brown would not have been shot if the bully had not stopped him for walking in the street. And I do not believe that the policeman even knew about the robbery at that point.