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National Bar Association: A black Lawyers Group to tackle Police Brutality
During a recent press conference to announce the new initiatives in Missouri, Holder said that the Department of Justice is working across the nation to ensure that the criminal justice system is fair, constitutional and free of bias. The interventions in Missouri are an important part of that commitment,” he said. “While there is much work left to do, we feel confident that there are solutions to any issues we find and that community trust in law enforcement can be restored and maintained. Ferguson and St. Louis County are not the first places that we have become engaged to ensure fair and equitable policing and they will not be the last. The Department of Justice will continue to work tirelessly to ensure that the Constitution has meaning for all communities.”
The new programs will work separately from the Justice Department’s criminal investigation into the Brown’s shooting death.
Although Ferguson city officials were widely criticized for the lack of diversity of their police department, a St. Louis Post-Dispatch study revealed that only one town out of 31 St. Louis County municipalities where African Americans accounted for at least 10 percent of the population, had an equal or greater share of African American police officers.
“While areas patrolled by St. Louis County Police are about 25 percent African American, 10 percent of the county police force is African American,” the Post-Dispatch reported.
As the National Bar Association applauded the Justice Department’s latest efforts to protect the civil rights of American citizens, the also urged the Attorney General to commit to investigations in the same cities where they are filing open records requests.
According to the National Bar Association, Dallas tops the list for police misconduct in the South and more than 60 unarmed African American men have been killed by the Dallas Police Department, since 2001.
Agnew said that the days where police officers are able to kill people with reckless abandon are over.
