LYNCH BLASTS UNREST IN FERGUSON
Attorney general tries to build trust in law enforcement
Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s appearance Monday at the national conference of the Fraternal Order of Police was designed to be another effort to rally public trust in local law enforcement following a crippling year of racially charged violence that has prompted unsettling questions about police tactics.
Yet before Lynch could address the largest police union in the country gathered in Pittsburgh, she was forced to condemn another eruption of civil unrest in the place where the crisis engulfing American policing began one year ago: Ferguson, Mo.
“The weekend’s events were peaceful and promoted a message of reconciliation and healing,” Lynch told conference delegates, referring to the early calm that marked the somber anniversary of last August’s deadly police encounter between a white officer and black teenager. “But incidents of violence, such as we saw last night, are contrary to both that message along with everything that all of us, including this group, have worked to achieve over the past year.”
Indeed, the violence overnight Sunday in which three people were wounded — one critically — underscored extraordinarily fragile relationships between police and the communities they serve, from Ferguson and Staten Island to Baltimore, Cleveland, Albuquerque, North Charleston and Cincinnati.
Since succeeding Eric Holder in April, Lynch has traveled much of the country in an attempt to mend a fracture that prompted a White House review of policing in the United States in the wake of the initial unrest in Ferguson. Within hours of her swearing in, she was forced to confront rapidly escalating tensions in Baltimore, where a black man died in the custody of local police.
“Recent events in communities across the country have served as stark and tragic reminders of the tensions that exist in too many neighborhoods between law enforcement officers and the people we serve,” Lynch told the police group Monday. “One year after the tragic events in Ferguson, Mo., we have yet again seen the consequences for officers and residents when those tensions erupt into violence and unrest.”
Lynch’s appearance in Pittsburgh also highlighted a difficult balance for the Justice Department, which while seeking to promote confidence in local police, also has been aggressive in examining local law enforcement operations and allegations of excessive force and discrimination. In the past six years, more than 20 police agencies have drawn the department’s scrutiny.