Dozens of demonstrators were arrested as skirmishes broke out between police and protesters in the St. Louis suburbs this week. A state of emergency was declared, and a police involved-shooting in Ferguson left a young black man armed with a gun in critical condition.
Much has changed yet remains the same in the year since 18-year-old Michael Brown was fatally shot during a confrontation with a white Ferguson, Missouri, police officer.
Brown’s killing sparked national efforts to reform the way the criminal justice system interacts with black communities and prompted changes in Ferguson’s leadership to include a racially diverse City Council more reflective of its residents.
But this week, the one-year-anniversary of Brown’s death has sparked days of renewed protests, leaving those engaged in reform efforts to question how much progress has actually been made. Sunday’s events ended in violence after a shootout nearby.
“I think all of us wish that more change would have occurred in the last year,” said Jeffrey Mittman, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri. “All the factors that led up to last summer were many, many years in the making and will take a long time to undo.”
Notable progress includes the public acknowledgment that interactions between law enforcement and communities of color differ widely from interactions in white communities, Mr. Mittman said.
A scathing Department of Justice report released in March pinpointed racial inequalities within the Ferguson Police Department, including the fact that blacks accounted for 93 percent of Ferguson’s arrests from 2012 to 2014 despite comprising 67 percent of the city’s population of 21,000. The report also highlighted how the city’s law enforcement practices were shaped by revenue needs rather than public safety needs — a fact the Missouri legislature later addressed.
State lawmakers passed a bill this year limiting cities’ financial reliance on traffic fines. Though the law has yet to take effect, it will cap the amount of money that can be collected from traffic fines at 12.5 percent of a city’s budget within St. Louis County and 20 percent throughout the rest of the state. In the St. Louis County municipality of Normandy, near Ferguson, officials said traffic fines comprised nearly 41 percent of its 2013 budget.
“It took us a long time to get here,” Gov. Jay Nixon told reporters last week ahead of Sunday’s anniversary of Brown’s death. “These are decades and decades and decades of challenges. And I think there have been some very quick responses to some areas.”
The governor pointed out a summer jobs program that has helped thousands of children find temporary employment as one such example.
The anniversary of Brown’s death came with a sea of protesters who were adamant that progress must continue. Waylon McDonald, an organizer with the St. Louis-based Organization for Black Struggle, said he saw little difference in how officers handled protesters this week compared with a year ago.
“It’s been the same,” Mr. McDonald said about protester interactions with police. “We’ve seen the officers escalate to a whole other level before anything happens.”
St. Louis County police arrested 22 protesters Monday night after clashing with demonstrators along West Florissant Avenue, a main thoroughfare of Ferguson. Police said people threw frozen water bottles and rocks at officers, who in turn moved in to disperse the crowds and used pepper spray on demonstrators. No serious injuries were reported Monday night, a reprieve from the gunfire that marred protests Sunday night.
St. Louis County police on Tuesday released surveillance video footage that they said shows the 18-year-old who was critically wounded by a police gunshot in Ferguson fired a gun at plainclothes officers minutes earlier, according to The Associated Press.
Police said Tyrone Harris Jr. opened fire on an unmarked police van. Police on Tuesday released a 13-second clip of security camera footage from a West Florissant Avenue insurance office. They said it shows him grabbing a handgun from his waistband after gunshots ring out, the AP report said.
St. Louis County Executive Steve Stenger declared a state of emergency after the shootout, which authorized St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar to take control of police emergency management in and around Ferguson.
Mr. Mittman criticized the police response, saying officers continued to put an “insufficient emphasis on de-escalation.”
A county police spokesman countered by saying Chief Belmar spoke with protest leaders in an attempt to de-escalate the situation “on several occasions” Monday night. Officer Shawn McGuire noted that the county’s Tactical Operations Unit was on standby that night but never deployed.
In a separate move that also increased tensions, St. Louis County officials this week issued trespassing charges against two reporters who were arrested inside a McDonald’s restaurant a year ago in Ferguson while reporting on the protests.
Reminders of past problems
The presence this week of armored vehicles, and officers in riot gear giving orders through bullhorns were reminders of the clashes that led to large-scale arrests last August. But the Rev. Starsky Wilson, co-chairman of the Ferguson Commission charged with recommending local reforms, said with media present at Monday’s protests, the police seemed more restrained than they had in the weeks leading up to the anniversary of Brown’s death. Previously, he said, there were reports of officers grabbing and arresting people as they tried to leave events.
“I think we saw at the organized actions and at the memorial events throughout the weekend some change in how the police were reacting,” said Mr. Wilson, noting that officers who arrested him during a demonstration Monday in downtown St. Louis acted cordial and professional. “But there is still yet to be significant structural change in these police departments.”
The events of last summer, including Brown’s shooting and the police response to protesters, jump-started the national conversation about improving police accountability, outfitting police officers with body cameras and bringing scrutiny to a program that allowed military surplus equipment to be given to local police departments.
“Ferguson has changed policing in the United States from that point forward,” said Drew Tracy, president of the Critical Incident Review Group, which has advised police departments on handling incidents such as shootings in which officers are involved.
In the aftermath, U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced a $20 million federal program to help outfit police departments with body cameras. President Obama also announced that the federal government would ban transfers of certain types of military-style gear, including armored vehicles and grenade launchers, to local police departments.
Other changes, both the good and the bad, also have taken hold in Ferguson over the past year.
In April, a record number of residents went to the polls to cast ballots. Residents elected two new black City Council members, for the first time putting black elected leaders in control of half of the six-member council.
The city’s police chief and city manager were forced out of their positions after the Justice Department released its report.
At the same time, property values in the city were plummeting — creating another possible rift for the city’s budget if property tax rates drop. In March, Fusion reported that prior to Brown’s death, the average Ferguson home sold in 2014 sold for $66,764. But over the course of the 3 months of 2014, the sale price dropped by 46 percent to $36,168.
Perhaps the most important change that has taken hold over the course of the past year has been the community organizing structure, Mr. Wilson said. The Ferguson Commission is due to release its final recommendations for action in September, and support from those groups will be essential in moving forward any action in the next Missouri legislative session.
“There were almost 40 bills that were filed related to Ferguson, and there was one that was passed. So let’s be clear about that,” Mr. Wilson said.
• Andrea Noble can be reached at anoble@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.