Washington Post -- Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. this week will launch a broad civil rights investigation into the Ferguson, Mo., Police Department, according to two federal law enforcement officials.
The investigation, which could be announced as early as Thursday afternoon, will be conducted by the Justice Department’s civil rights division and follow a process similar to that used to investigate complaints of profiling and the use of excessive force in other police departments across the country, the officials said.
The move follows the shooting last month of Michael Brown, an 18-year-old African American, by a white Ferguson police officer who claimed he acted in self-defense. Brown, who was unarmed, was shot at least six times on the afternoon of Aug. 9.
Holder’s decision will represent the Obama administration’s most aggressive step to address the Ferguson shooting, which set off days of often-violent clashes between police and demonstrators in the streets of the St. Louis suburb.
The federal officials said the probe will look not only at Ferguson but also at other police departments in St. Louis County. Some, like Ferguson, are predominantly white departments serving majority-African-American communities, and at least one department invited the Justice Department to look at its practices. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the pending inquiry.
The investigation is in addition to a Justice Department probe into whether Officer Darren Wilson, who fired the fatal shots, violated Brown’s civil rights. The new probe will look more broadly at whether the department employed policies and practices that resulted in a pattern of civil rights violations.
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Blog author's comments - Barack Obama working hand-in-hand with Eric Holder has to make the looters, arsonists and racists believe he's doing something for them. Does anyone believe Holder's investigation will be totally unbiased? With all the politics attached to this case, there's little chance that justice will be served.
The more information that is brought out into the light, the more it looks like a justifiable police shooting. But, Michael Brown was black and Darren Wilson is a white police officer, so the Obama regime automatically believes this is a racial issue. Its politics period and the Democrats are attempting to use this shooting to push the black voters to the polls for the upcoming Congressional elections. Holder will "launch a broad civil rights investigation into the Ferguson, Mo., Police Department." Obama and Holder's thinking is that the evidence is in favor of Officer Wilson so it must be due to a wider pattern of white supremacy. Once again, the Democrats never let a crisis go to waste.
