Racial discrimination by police in Ferguson, Mo., was “oppressive and abusive,” President Barack Obama said Friday as he called for criminal justice reform as part of the modern struggle for civil rights.
“It turns out they weren’t just making it up. This was happening,” Obama said during a town hall at South Carolina’s Benedict College on the day before he was to join 50th anniversary commemorations of the historic civil rights marches in Selma, Ala.
In his most expansive comments yet about the Justice Department’s report on bias against blacks in Ferguson, Obama said it was striking that investigators merely had to look at police emails to find evidence of bias. He said the City of Ferguson now must make a decision about how to move forward.
“Are they going to enter into some sort of agreement with the Justice Department to fix what is clearly a broken and racially biased system?” Obama said.
A Justice Department investigation found patterns of racial profiling, bigotry and profit-driven law enforcement and court practices. Ferguson city leaders are to meet with Justice Department officials in about two weeks to put forth an improvement plan.
The president himself was the subject of some of the racist emails from Ferguson police and municipal courts employees. A 2008 email said Obama would not be president for long because “what black man holds a steady job for four years,” while another depicted Obama as a chimpanzee.
Attorney General Eric Holder, who accompanied Obama on the trip, told reporters the federal government will “use all the power that we have to change the situation there,” including possibly dismantling the police force.
“If that’s what’s necessary we’re prepared to do that,” Holder said.
Holder said the report revealed “appalling” practices. He said other police departments should understand the intensity of the federal government’s determination that what transpired in Ferguson will not occur elsewhere, although he called the Ferguson bias “an anomaly.”
”That is not something that we’re going to tolerate,” Holder said.
The Justice Department this week also cleared Darren Wilson, the white former Ferguson police officer who fatally shot 18-year-old African-American Michael Brown, who was unarmed, while on duty in a St. Louis suburb in August. Brown’s death prompted massive street protests and triggered the Justice Department investigations.
A questioner at the town hall held at the historically black college asked Obama why Holder filed no charges against Wilson. Obama replied that the standard for federal charges is very high and that the officer is entitled to due process like anyone else. \
“We may never know what happened,” Obama said.
Although Obama said he didn’t think the Ferguson situation was typical of the rest of the country, he added that it wasn’t an isolated incident, either.
He called for communities to work together to address tensions between police and residents without succumbing to cynical attitudes that “this is never going to change, because everybody’s racist.”
“That’s not a good solution,” Obama said. “That’s not what the folks in Selma did.”
About the Author
