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Justice Department Releases Report on Ferguson Police Department

Aired March 04, 2015 - 15:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

ANA CABRERA, CNN ANCHOR: Top of the hour. I'm Ana Cabrera.

And at any moment, Attorney General Eric Holder will speak on this explosive report, his investigators compiled, on the Ferguson Police Department. It has been almost seven months since former Officer Darren Wilson shot and killed unarmed teenager, Michael Brown, and the Justice Department has just announced that its investigators found no basis to file federal charges against Wilson. However, their report found that the predominantly white Ferguson police force arrested African-Americans unfairly and disproportionately. In fact, 93 percent of arrests police made from 2012 to 2014 were of African-Americans. Now, remember, the city's population is two-thirds black. Plus, the newly released report also details account after account of what is described as -- quote -- "suspicionless, legally unsupportable stops."

I want to give you just one example. This is a guy who was taken into custody just for giving police his name as Mike, instead of Michael.

Let's discuss further. And with me now is CNN's Evan Perez, as well as Cedric Alexander, who is member of the White House Task Force on 21st Policing, also leads the National Organization for Black Law Enforcement Executives.

Evan, thanks so much, to both of you, for joining us.

But, Evan, I want to start with you as we await the attorney general's remarks here. I know we have outlined a couple of these specific charges and claims within these documents, but they're also demanding changes, which is even -- even more important. What types of changes do the Ferguson Police Department need to make?

EVAN PEREZ, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Ana, the Justice Department makes about 26 recommendations to try to get the department to fix the way it handles the way it interacts with the African- American community, which is a majority of the city, as you pointed out.

I will give you a couple of the recommendations, including requiring the police to be trained to ensure that officers aren't using bias in their police work. It seems like a general recommendation, but there are specific steps that they have to do to make sure the 60 or so officers on their force are able to do their jobs and protect and serve the minority community there. Another recommendation is that officers get out of their cars, simply

be more community-oriented, instead of sitting in their cars, and get to know some of these people in the community again that they're supposed to be protecting and serving, and then also that the city stop using random stops, searches and tickets to raise money for the city's budget, the city's coffers, because that's what the Justice Department says has been happening in Ferguson, that simply the stops that are targeted as black motorists, who then, if they don't pay their ticket, end up serving jail time, that that was a system rigged essentially to raise money for the city's coffers, Ana.

CABRERA: All right, I want to read one of the other outrageous things that this report says happened. It says -- this was back in 2012 -- there was a 32-year-old African-American man who was sitting in his car cooling off playing some pickup basketball.

An officer approaches, asks him what he's doing there, but not only that. He demands the man's Social Security number and his identification before accusing him of being a pedophile and ordering this man out of his car.

Now, when the police officer asked to search the car, this man said, no, you're violating my civil rights you can't, and the officer responded by arresting the man at gunpoint, slapping him with eight different charges, including for not wearing his seat belt, despite the fact that he wasn't driving, he wasn't going anywhere in his car. And the officer also cited him for making a false declaration because he gave his name as Mike, instead of Michael. That was the one guy we were talking about at the top.

So, again, that's just one example of the treatment of some of the police officers.

Cedric, when you hear things like that, what goes through your mind?

CEDRIC ALEXANDER, PRESIDENT, NATIONAL ORGANIZATION OF BLACK LAW ENFORCEMENT EXECUTIVES: Well, there's clearly going to be a number of egregious findings as it relates to Ferguson.

And the only thing that I can say, Ana, is this, number one, that Ferguson not indicative of every police department or police officer in this country, because here, again, the majority of the men and women in this country do this job quite well.

But what we hear coming, what we have heard coming out of Ferguson is certainly very disturbing. It's shocking, and it is totally unbelievable that someone or some persons inside that organization would be making these kinds of...

(CROSSTALK)

CABRERA: Cedric, I'm sorry to interrupt you. We have the attorney general speaking right now. We will come back to this.

Let's listen in. (JOINED IN PROGRESS)

ERIC HOLDER, U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL: The two investigations that the Justice Department has been conducting in Ferguson, Missouri, these last several months, the matter that we are here to discuss is significant, not only because of the conclusions that the Justice Department is announcing today, but also because of the broader conversation and the initiatives that those conversations have inspired across the country on both the local and the national level.

Now, those initiatives have included extensive and vital efforts to examine the causes of misunderstanding and mistrust between law enforcement officers and the communities that they serve to support and strengthen our public safety institutions as a whole and to rebuild confidence wherever it has eroded.

Now, nearly seven months have passed since the shooting death of 18- year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. That tragic incident provoked widespread demonstrations and stirred really strong emotions from those in the Ferguson area and around our nation.

It also prompted a federal investigation by the United States Department of Justice with the Criminal Section of our Civil Rights Division, the United States attorney's office for the Eastern District of Missouri, as well as the FBI, seeking to determine whether this shooting violated federal civil rights law.

Now, the promise that I made, the promise that I made when I went to Ferguson and at the time that we launched our investigation was not that we would arrive at a particular outcome, but, rather, that we would pursue the facts wherever they led.

Our investigation has been both fair and rigorous from the start. It has proceeded independently of the local investigation that concluded in November, and it has been thorough. As part of a wide-ranging examination of the evidence, federal investigators interviewed and re- interviewed eyewitnesses and other individuals claiming to have relevant information and independently canvassed more than 300 residences to locate and to interview additional witnesses.

This morning, the Justice Department announced the conclusion of our investigation and released a comprehensive 87-page report documenting our findings and our conclusions that the facts do not support the filing of criminal charges against officer Darren Wilson in this case.

Michael Brown's death, though a tragedy, did not involve prosecutable conduct on the part of officer Wilson. Now, this conclusion represents the sound, considered, and independent judgment of the expert career prosecutors within the Department of Justice.

I have been personally briefed on multiple occasions about these findings. I concur with the investigative team's judgment and the determination about our inability to meet the required federal standard.

Now, this outcome is supported by the facts that we have found, but I also know that these findings may not be consistent with some people's expectations. To all those who have closely followed this case and who have engaged in the important national dialogue that it has inspired, I urge you, I urge you to read this report in full.

Now, I recognize that the findings in our report may leave some to wonder how the department's findings can differ so sharply from some of the initial widely reported accounts of what transpired. I want to emphasize that the strength and integrity of America's justice system has always rested on its ability to deliver impartial results in precisely these types of difficult circumstances, adhering strictly to the facts and to the law, regardless of assumptions.

Yet it remains not only valid, but essential, to question how such a strong alternative version of events was able to take hold so swiftly and to be accepted so readily. Now, a possible explanation for this discrepancy was uncovered during the course of our second federal investigation conducted by the Civil Rights Division to determine whether Ferguson police officials have engaged in a widespread pattern or practice of violations of the United States Constitution or federal law.

Now, as detailed in what I will call our searing report -- and it is searing -- also released by the Justice Department today, this investigation found a community that was deeply polarized, a community where deep distrust and hostility often characterized interactions between police and area residents, a community where local authorities consistently approached law enforcement not as a means for protecting public safety, but as a way to generate revenue, a community where both policing and municipal court practices were found to be disproportionately harmful to African-American residents, a community where this harm frequently appears to stem, at least in part, from racial bias, both implicit and explicit, and a community where all of these conditions, unlawful practices and constitutional violations have not only severely undermined the public trust, eroded police legitimacy, and made local residents less safe, but created an intensely charged atmosphere where people feel under assault and under siege by those who are charged to serve and to protect them.

Of course, violence is never -- is never justified, but seen in this context, amid a highly toxic environment, defined by mistrust and resentment, stoked by years of bad feelings, and spurred by illegal and misguided practices, it's not difficult to imagine how a single tragic incident set off the city of Ferguson like a powder keg.

In a sense, members of the community may not have been responding only to a single isolated confrontation, but also to a pervasive, corrosive and deeply unfortunate lack of trust, attributable to numerous constitutional violations by their law enforcement officials, including First Amendment abuses, unreasonable searches and seizures, and excessive and dangerous use of force, exacerbated by severely disproportionate use of these tactics against African Americans and driven by overriding pressure from the city to use law enforcement not as a public service, but as a tool for raising revenue.

Now, according to -- according to our investigation, this emphasis on revenue generation through policing has fostered unconstitutional practices or practices that contribute to constitutional violations at nearly every level of Ferguson's law enforcement system.

Ferguson police officers issued nearly 50 percent more citations in the last year than they did in 2010, an increase that has not been driven or even accompanied by a rise in crime. As a result of this excessive reliance on ticketing, today, the city generates a significant amount of revenue from the enforcement of code provisions.

Along with taxes and other revenue streams in 2010, the city collected over $1.3 million in fines and fees collected by the court. For fiscal year 2015, Ferguson's city budget anticipates the revenues to exceed $3 million, more than double the total from just five years prior.

Our review of the evidence and our conversations with police officers have shown that significant pressure is brought to bear on law enforcement personnel to deliver on these revenue increases. Once the system is primed for maximizing revenue, starting with fines and fine enforcement, the city relies on the police force to serve essentially as a collection agency for the municipal court, rather than as a law enforcement entity focused primarily on maintaining and promoting public safety.

And a wide variety of tactics, including disciplinary measures, are used to ensure certain levels of ticketing by individual officers, regardless of public safety needs. As a result, it has become commonplace in Ferguson for officers to charge multiple violations for the same conduct. Three or four charges for a single stop is considered fairly routine.

Some officers even compete to see who can issue the largest number of citations during a single stop, a total that, in at least in one instance, rose as high as 14. And we have observed that even minor code violations can sometimes result in multiple arrests, jail time, and payments that exceed the cost of the original ticket many times over.

Now, for example, in 2007, one woman received two parking tickets that together totaled $152. To date, she has paid $550 in fines and fees to the city of Ferguson. She has been arrested twice for having unpaid tickets, and she has spent six days in jail. Yet, today she still inexplicably owes Ferguson $541.

And her story is only one of dozens of similar accounts that our investigation uncovered. Over time, it's clear that this culture of enforcement actions being disconnected from the public safety needs of the community and often to the detriment of community residents has given rise to a disturbing and unconstitutional pattern or practice.

Our investigation showed that Ferguson police officers routinely violate the Fourth Amendment in stopping people without reasonable suspicion, arresting them without probable cause, and using unreasonable force against them.

According to the police department's own records, their own records, its officers frequently infringe on residents' First Amendment rights. They interfere with the right to record police activities, and they make enforcement decisions based on the way individuals express themselves.

Many of these constitutional violations have become routine. For instance, even though it's illegal for police officers to detain a person even briefly without a reasonable suspicion, it's become common practice for officers in Ferguson to stop pedestrians and to request identification for no reason at all.

And even in cases where police encounters start off as constitutionally defensible, we found that they frequently and rapidly escalate and end up blatantly and unnecessarily crossing the line.

During the summer of 2012, one Ferguson police officer detained a 32- year-old African-American man who had just finished playing basketball at a park. The officer approached the man while he was sitting in his car and he was resting. The car's windows appeared to be more heavily tinted than Ferguson's code allowed, so the officer did have legitimate grounds to question him.

But with no apparent justification, the officer proceeded to accuse the man of being a pedophile. He prohibited the man from using his cell phone and ordered him to get out of his car for a pat-down search, even though he had no reason to suspect that the man was armed. And when the man objected, citing his constitutional rights, the police officer drew his service weapon, pointed it at the man's head, and arrested him on eight different counts.

Now, this arrest caused the man to lose his job. Unfortunately, this event appears to have been anything but an isolated incident. Our investigation showed that members of Ferguson's police force frequently escalate, rather than defuse, tensions with the residents that they encounter.

And such actions are sometimes accompanied by First Amendment violations, including arresting people for talking back to officers, for recording their public activities, or engaging in other conduct that is constitutionally protected.

This behavior not only exacerbates tensions in its own right; it has the effect of stifling community confidence that is absolutely vital for effective policing. And this in turn deepens the widespread distrust provoked by the department's other unconstitutional exercises of police power, none of which is more harmful than its pattern of excessive force.

Now, among the incidents of excessive force discovered by our comprehensive review, some resulted from stops or arrests that had no legal basis to begin with. Others were punitive or retaliatory in nature. The police department's routine use of Tasers was found to be not really unconstitutional, but abusive and dangerous.

Records showed a really disturbing history of using unnecessary force against people with mental illness. And our findings indicated that the overwhelming majority of force, almost 90 percent, is directed against African-Americans.

Now, this deeply alarming statistic points to one of the most pernicious aspects of the conduct our investigation uncovered, that these policing practices disproportionately harm African-American residents. In fact, our view of the evidence found no, no alternative explanation for the disproportionate impact on African-American residents, other than implicit and explicit racial bias, no other basis.

Between October 2012 and October 2014, despite making up only 67 percent of the population, African-Americans accounted for a little over 85 percent of all traffic stops by the Ferguson Police Department. African-Americans were twice as likely as white residents to be searched during a routine traffic stop, even though they were 26 percent less likely to carry contraband.

Between October 2012 and July 2014, 35 black individuals, 35 black individuals and zero white individuals received five or more citations at the same time. During the same period, African-Americans accounted for fully 85 percent of the total charges brought by the Ferguson Police Department.

African-Americans made up over 90 percent of those charged with a highly discretionary offense described as -- and I quote -- "manner of walking along roadway" -- unquote. And use of dogs by Ferguson police appears to have been exclusively reserved for African-Americans.

In every case in which Ferguson police records recorded the race of a person bit by a police dog, that person was African-American. The evidence of racial bias comes not only from statistics, but also from remarks made by police, city and court officials.

A thorough examination of the records, including a large volume of work e-mails, shows a number of public servants expressing racist comments or gender discrimination, demonstrating grotesque views and images of African-Americans, in which they were seen as the other, called transient by public officials and characterized as lacking personal responsibility.

Now, I want to emphasize that all of these examples, statistics and conclusions are drawn directly from the exhaustive findings report that the Department of Justice has now released.

Clearly, these findings and others included in the report demonstrate that, although some community perception of Michael Brown's tragic death may not have been accurate, the widespread conditions that these perceptions were based upon and the climate that gave rise to them were all too real.

Some of those protesters were right. This is a reality that our investigators repeatedly encountered in their interviews with police and city officials, their conversations with local residents and their review of thousands of pages of records and documents.

This evidence pointed to an unfortunate and unsustainable situation that has not only severely damaged relationships between law enforcement and members of the community, but made professional policing vastly more difficult, and I think, very significantly, unnecessarily placed officers at increased risk. And, today, now that our investigation has reached its conclusion, it is time, it is time for Ferguson's leaders to take immediate, wholesale and structural corrective action.

Now, let me be very clear. The United States Department of Justice reserves all of its rights and abilities to force compliance and to implement basic change. Nothing is off the table. The report from the Justice Department presents two sets of immediate recommendations for the Ferguson Police Department and the municipal court.

These recommendations include the implementation of a robust system of true community policing, increased tracking, review and analysis of Ferguson Police Department stop, search, ticketing, and arrest practices, increased civilian involvement in police decision-making, and the development of mechanisms to effectively respond to allegations of officer misconduct.

They also involve changes to the municipal court system, including modifications to bond amounts and detention procedures, an end to the use of arrest warrants as a means of collecting owed fines and fees, and compliance with basic, with basic due process requirements.

Ensuring meaningful, sustainable and verifiable reform will require that these and other measures be part of a court-enforceable remedial process that includes involvement from community stakeholders, as well as independent oversight, in order to remedy the conduct that we have identified, to address the underlying culture that we have uncovered, and to restore and to rebuild the trust that has so badly been eroded.

Now, as the brother of a retired police officer, I know that the overwhelming majority of America's brave men and women in law enforcement,they do their jobs honestly, with integrity and often at great personal risk. I have immense regard for the vital role that they play in all of America's communities and the sacrifices that they and their families are too often called to make on behalf of their country.

It is in great part for their sake and for their safety that we must seek to rebuild trust and foster mutual understanding in Ferguson and in all communities where suspicion has been allowed to fester. Negative practices by individual law enforcement officers and individual departments present a significant danger, not only to their communities, but also to committed and hardworking public safety officials around the country who perform incredibly challenging jobs with unwavering professionalism and uncommon valor.

Clearly, clearly, we owe it to these brave men and women to ensure that all law enforcement officials have the tools, the training and the support they need to do their jobs with maximum safety and effectiveness.

Now, over the last few months, these goals have driven President Obama and me to announce a series of administration proposals that will enable us to help heal mistrust wherever it is found, from a national initiative for building community trust and justice to a historic new Task Force on 21st Century Policing which will provide strong federal support to law enforcement at every level on a scale not seen since the Johnson administration.

These aims also have led me to travel throughout the country, to Atlanta, to Cleveland, to Memphis, to Chicago, to Philadelphia, to Oakland, as well as to San Francisco, to convene a series of roundtable discussions dedicated to building trust and engagement between law enforcement, civil rights, youth and community leaders from coast to coast.

As these discussions have unfolded, I have repeatedly seen that, although the concerns we are focused on today may be particularly acute in Ferguson, they're not confined to any one city, state or geographic region. They implicate questions about fairness and trust that are truly national in scope, and they point not to insurmountable divides between people of different perspectives, but to the shared values and the common desire for peace, for security, and for public safety that binds us together, binds police together, as well as protesters, although the dialogue by itself will not be sufficient to address these issues, because concrete action is what is needed now, concrete action.

Initiating a broad, frank and inclusive conversation is a necessary and productive first step. In all of the Civil Rights Division's activities in Ferguson, as in every pattern or practice investigation the division has launched over the last six years, our aim is to help facilitate and inform this conversation to make certain that it leads to, again, concrete action, and to ensure that law enforcement officers in every part of the United States live up to the same high standards of professionalism.

It is clear from our work throughout our -- this country, particularly through the work of our Civil Rights Division, that the prospect of police accountability and criminal justice reform is an achievable goal, one that we can reach with law enforcement and community members at the table as full partners.

Last August, when I visited Ferguson to meet with concerned citizens and community leaders, I made a solemn commitment that the United States Department of Justice would continue to stand with the people there long after the national headlines had faded.

Well, this week, with the conclusion of our investigations into these matters, I again commit to the people of Ferguson that we will continue to stand with you and to work with you to ensure that the necessary reforms are implemented.

And even as we issue our findings in today's reports, our work will go on. It will go on as we engage with the city of Ferguson and surrounding municipalities, and surrounding municipalities, to reform their law enforcement practices and to establish a public safety effort that protects and serves all members of the community.

It will go on as we broaden this work and extend the assistance of the Justice Department to other communities around the country. And it will go on as we join together with all Americans to ensure that public safety is not a burden undertaken by the brave few, but a positive collaboration between everyone in this nation. The report that we have issued and the steps that we have taken are

only the beginning of a necessarily resource-intensive and inclusive process to promote reconciliation, to reduce and eliminate bias and to bridge gaps and build understanding. And in the days ahead, the Department of Justice will stay true to my promise, vigilant in its execution and determined in the pursuit of justice in every case, in every circumstance, and in every community across the United States of America.

Thank you.

CABRERA: Attorney General Eric Holder delivering a scathing critique of the Ferguson Police Department in what could be one of the last remarks of this attorney general, since he will soon be leaving, we know, the administration.

I want to bring in a couple of our guests who are joining me. We have Evan Perez with me, Cedric Alexander and Sunny Hostin.

I want to make sure we decipher these two investigations that were going on simultaneously. And before I ask my first question, we first have the investigation into Michael Brown's shooting, specifically investigating officer Darren Wilson. We learned today that the official announcement is he will not face civil rights charges, that the feds just didn't have enough evidence to prove his intentions in this shooting would violate civil rights.

Now, on the other hand, the Department of Justice did find several civil rights violations amongst the Ferguson Police Department, and not just the police department, but the entire criminal justice system in Ferguson, right up through the municipal courts, saying that African-Americans are being used as revenue sources within that community.

My first question to you, Cedric, since I had to cut you off to go hear Attorney General Eric Holder, what is your reaction to some of these claims he just made, intentional discrimination, unreasonable force used? In fact, African-Americans accounted for 90 percent of officers' use of force. How do you completely change the culture in this community amongst law enforcement officers?

ALEXANDER: Well, first of all, let me speak as a president of NOBLE.

It is very disturbing, very chilling and shocking, I think, to all of us what those findings are, and -- but what's really important here is that, as we move forward, it is very clear to me that there's a lot of work that's going to need to be done in Ferguson.