Protesters yell at police outside the Ferguson Police Department on Saturday, August 8, 2015, in Ferguson, Missouri. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson)
On Wednesday, the Department of Justice and officials in Ferguson, Missouri released a tentative plan to overhaul the city's notorious policing regime. The agreement, referred to as a consent decree, is the end-result of a probe that began weeks after Michael Brown's shooting death in August 2014—and suggests Ferguson officials would rather play ball with the feds than engage in a protracted court fight.
According to the Justice Department's analysis of what went wrong, which was released last March, the suburban St. Louis city resembled a Kafka-esque police state. People—mostly people of color—were regularly stopped for no reason, subjected to violence, and told they were not allowed to film their interactions with officers. The motivation for this—besides old-school bigotry—seemed to be filling the city's coffers. The arrestees, who were mostly poor, would often have a hard time making court payments and get trapped paying late fee after late fee.
To fix this, Ferguson has agreed to have officers film every person they ask to search. They cannot stop people to check just to see if there's a warrant out for their arrest, nor are they supposed to arrest people because they refuse to answer questions. The department will now also consider the firing of each individual bullet to be a separate use of force that will need to be justified after the fact; warning shots by cops will be banned.
There are also new rules that seem like they should have been obvious in the first place, like not being able to shoot at moving cars. And cops will have everything from their psychological profile to driving records looked into before they are hired. A Neighborhood Police Steering Community will be implemented to facilitate a dialogue between community members and cops.
As far as Ferguson's Municipal court is concerned, the city will provide amnesty to people who have open cases initiated since January 2014, unless there is a good reason not to. All Failure to Appear fees will be waived. In the future, a defendant's ability to pay will figure into how fees are designated, and when people have to pay those fees back. Community service will be offered as an alternative to paying anything at all.
You can read the full 131-page agreement here.
A consent decree is just a term that refers to a settlement between two parties—in this case the United States of America and Ferguson—without the latter admitting guilt and needing to pay a bunch of money. That being said, there are significant costs projected for Ferguson taxpayers that come with the deal, and it remains to be seen if the city council gives it final approval.
Either way, as the New York Times put it, the decree offers a "roadmap" that other cities can judge their own practices against. But it's also like putting a band-aid on a gaping wound. After all, as another Times piece from last March detailed, had Michael Brown died 500 feet away from where he did, he would have been in a different municipality with its own slew of problems jarringly similar to those in Ferguson.
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