Huge changes in Ferguson since slaying
FERGUSON, Mo. — A year ago, Ferguson, Mo., was a mostly quiet working-class suburban town. The uneasy relationship between its growing black population and its mostly white police force barely registered in local headlines.
Everything changed on Aug. 9, 2014, when a white police officer named Darren Wilson shot and killed Michael Brown, an unarmed black 18-year-old. The street confrontation on that sultry day launched the “Black Lives Matter” movement.
Now the city government, and the streets themselves, look much different.
The city has a new police chief, a new city manager and a new municipal judge — all blacks who replaced white leaders. All Ferguson officers wear body cameras. The city council has new members, too, several of whom are black. And the business district that was at the center of last year’s sometimes-violent protests is slowly rebuilding.
The unrest that followed the shooting scarred a proud community, which has spent nearly a year trying to atone for past sins and move ahead.
Mayor James Knowles III acknowledged that events after Brown’s death exposed fissures that had long existed.
“For whatever reason in the past — either through lack of communication, lack of outreach — there were segments of the community that really felt like they were disaffected and not really part of the community,” said Knowles, who is white. “I think a year later, what you see is a community that’s much more engaged, wholly engaged.”
Adrian Shropshire, 62, and many other Ferguson residents applaud the changes, especially those aimed at overhauling the police force.
“When it comes to the community and law enforcement coming together, we’ve both dropped the ball,” said Shropshire, who is a black retired carpenter and runs a nonprofit job-training effort. “Most conflicts start with not listening. Everyone’s listening now.”
Wilson is long gone, having resigned in November, shortly after a St. Louis County grand jury cleared him of wrongdoing. Through his attorneys, he declined interview requests.
In March, the U.S. Justice Department found no grounds to prosecute Wilson. But at the same time, the government issued a report so critical of Ferguson’s police and municipal court system that it hastened an upheaval in the town of 21,000 people, two-thirds of them black.
The result is a leadership becoming more reflective of the town’s demographics.
Within days of the federal report, top city officials resigned. The city chose the new judge, city manager and police chief on an interim basis. Two of the three city council members elected in April also are black, so blacks now hold three of six seats, compared with a single seat prior to the election.
The city has made it a priority to recruit more minority officers — an admittedly slow diversification effort that hinges on departmental turnover and the city’s ability to fend off area agencies that offer higher pay. At the time of the shooting, just three of Ferguson’s 53 officers were black. The department now has five African Americans among a total of 50 officers, including the newly appointed interim chief, and has four budgeted positions still to fill, according to figures the city supplied this week.