FERGUSON, Mo. — More than five years after the city of Ferguson entered into a court agreement to remedy policies and practices that unfairly targeted vulnerable residents, police officials said Wednesday they're making headway. Goals include rolling out in-house anti-bias training, hiring more officers and gathering more community feedback.
Ferguson consent decree coordinator Nicolle Barton said police department officials have met regularly with members of the public on Zoom to get feedback and make good on their mandate to rebuild public trust after the 2014 shooting death of Michael Brown by a Ferguson police officer. Brown's death sparked protests and a scathing U.S. Department of Justice report in 2015.
In 2016, the city signed a consent decree with the DOJ to reshape law enforcement.
Barton said officials would roll out use-of-force, vehicle pursuit and supervisor review forms this week, and were also working on more robust in-house anti-bias training for officers that meets federal guidelines.
Most officers hired in Ferguson get some anti-bias training from the St. Louis County police academy, but the consent decree requires Ferguson officers to train more with scenarios they would face in the field and understand more about their specific community, Barton said.
Barton said she hoped to get public feedback and Department of Justice approval to put it in place by the end of the year.
Officials have also interviewed seven candidates for Police Department jobs in recent days as part of an effort to fill roughly eight vacant positions, Barton said.
Chief Frank McCall, the former assistant chief who took over the top job last month, attributed some of the recruiting struggles to national shortages of new officers. But he noted that the department is also especially thorough in the vetting process.
"We do hold a higher standard, in some cases, because of what we're charged to do," he said.
Wednesday's progress report followed a federal judge's statement in 2019 that the city wasn't doing enough to meet the requirements of the consent decree. An independent monitor said the city was "long overdue" to hire a person to oversee the process; Barton stepped into that role later that year.
Still, the community is facing recent challenges.
Six people have been killed in Ferguson in the past several weeks in homicides and a fatal fire considered suspicious by investigators, McCall said.
Prosecutors on Monday charged Lavelle D. Hayes, 25, in connection with the killing of his ex-girlfriend, Bhritnay Taylor, and her uncle, Adrian Burns. Investigators said Taylor was trying to break up with Hayes when she was fatally shot.
Last week, Marvin Walker, 20, was charged with killing a man in a parking lot along North Florissant Road.
Firefighters found a woman in her 50s dead after an apartment fire in Ferguson last week.
Late last month, Garry Q. Rodgers, 24, was charged with shooting and killing Austin Phillips, 26, after an argument near Highmont and Gage Drive.
McCall characterized the string of incidents as people from other municipalities committing crimes in Ferguson.
He said he would continue to work with nearby departments and the region's Major Case Squad to "find justice for the victims and their families."
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