Don't Expect the Feds to Find Much in Ferguson 08/18/2014FERGUSON, MO – The DOJ should be investigating, but it's exceedingly unlikely they can prosecute a civil-rights violation.
On August 9, Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, was shot and killed by a Ferguson, Mo., police officer. While multiple investigations are underway, it is clear that there are competing, if not totally contradictory, versions of the events leading up to the shooting. The reaction to the shooting has been both emotional and predictable. The community in Ferguson, where police-community relations were apparently strained even before the incident, sees another case of an unarmed black youth gunned down by the police, and demand "justice," including prosecution of the officer for murder, or in the alternative, prosecution by the United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division for violation of Brown's civil rights.
Such a prosecution is possible, but for a couple of reasons, at this point, seems exceedingly unlikely.
Attorney General Holder has already jumped into the fray, making a statement noting that the FBI, coordinating with the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division, is "supplementing, not supplanting" local investigations, and is evaluating the Brown case for possible prosecution. Many in the civil-rights community look to the DOJ to step in because they distrust local officials and will not trust a local investigation that clears, or even declines to prosecute, the Ferguson police officer who shot Michael Brown.
This call for a federal role is consistent with the history of the civil-rights movement, when federal authorities often clashed with recalcitrant local officials who refused to enforce civil-rights laws or even, as was the case in the murder of civil-rights activists Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner depicted in the movie Mississippi Burning, were active conspirators and participants in heinous crimes undertaken to deny African Americans their civil rights.
In the short term, the pressure to be seen as "doing something" — with the laudable goal of calming a community such as Ferguson — makes statements such the one made by Holder all but inevitable.
...more at linkhttp://www.fop.net/servlet/display/news ... e=20157969