Justice Report: 85% Of Ferguson's Police Targets are Black

Almost nine out of ten stops that have been initiated by the city's police force are attacking African Americans, according to rt.com. The US Department of Justice (DOJ) claims that reports show a "pattern of discrimination" that is evident in Ferguson, Missouri.

Later this week, a DOJ report is expected to be published. A federal investigation drew the conclusion that the police tend to target blacks in Ferguson, according to law enforcement officials.

The nytimes explained that although a third of Ferguson is white, the Blacks are held responsible for "85 percent of traffic stops, 90 percent of tickets and 93 percent of arrests. In cases like jaywalking, which often hinge on police discretion, blacks accounted for 95 percent of all arrests."

The Washington Post said that DOJ showed African-Americans as comprising 85 percent of people who are stopped in Ferguson by the police. On an average, blacks get nine out of the ten citations issued by law enforcement. As of the 2010 census, African Americans make up around two-thirds of Ferguson.

Last July, Michael Brown, a teenager, was killed in broad daylight by a policeman in Ferguson. The St. Louis County city of 21,000 was at the hub of debate. Just six months later, US Attorney General Eric Holder confirmed that Brown's tragic death and other similar accounts "are truly national in scope and that threaten the entire nation," and that "our police officers cannot be seen as an occupying force disconnected from the communities they serve."

The DOJ report now confirms that the discrimination is widespread. The full Ferguson report may be open to the public early this week.

The media is stirring some dust with a few leaks from the report. "In 88 percent of the cases in which the department used force, it was used against African Americans. In all of the 14 canine bite incidents for which racial information was available, the person bitten was African American," Sari Horwitz wrote of the report for The Washington Post on Tuesday.

"African Americans are 68 percent less likely than others to have their cases dismissed by the municipal judge" in Ferguson, she added. About 92 percent of local cases with arrest warrants involved Blacks.

The DOJ also found that "from April to September 2014, 95 percent of people held in the Ferguson jail longer than two days were African American."

Racist jokes against Blacks were also common. A municipal worker sent out an email in 2008 about Barack Obama, who was then the president-elect, asking "what black man holds a steady job for four years."

According to the Post, DOJ investigators probed 35,000 pages of police records in order to prepare their report.

The report has drawn flak for the police even from defenders of the cops. Ron Hosko, the president of the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund, told the Guardian that Tom Jackson, Ferguson's police chief, should put in his withdrawal from the police if the report is found to be true.

Hosko said the apparent conclusions suggested "flawed, failing police work that infects the relationship between law enforcement and the community". He added, "People ought to be terminated and new leadership brought in."