Ferguson’s mayor faces voters
Election is his first since unrest in 2014
FERGUS ON, MO. More than two years after this St. Louis suburb exploded in angry — and at times violent — protest after the police shooting of Michael Brown, Ferguson’s white mayor is asking the community’s predominantly black residents to give him a third three-year term in office.
James Knowles III, 37, will face voters for the first time since the shooting death of a black teen by a white police officer in August 2014 pushed this community into the center of a larger national debate about police relations in African-American communities.
Knowles, who was re-elected to his second term just five months before the shooting, faced scorn after he insisted in a television interview during the early days of the protests that there was no racial divide in Ferguson. He later said he regretted the comment.
He also grumbled in the aftermath of the unrest that he was facing far too much public criticism considering the city entrusts hiring, firing and other decisions on day-to-day matters to a city manager.
But ahead of Tuesday’s election, Knowles is making the case that the city of about 21,000 — which entered into a court-monitored consent decree with the U.S. Justice Department last year to implement a series of changes to Ferguson’s police department and municipal court — needs continuity at this delicate moment.
“We have room for a very small margin of error,” Knowles said in an interview. “We have to make the best decision on spending, outreach, policing, our economic development. Everything we do right now has to get the very best return on investment.”
After the unrest, the city was forced to revamp its municipal court system, which was criticized by the Justice Department for targeting African-American residents. With the changes, court fines and fees have fallen to less than $600,000 last year, down from nearly $2 million in 2014.
The city faced a $2.8 million deficit, most of it accumulated for paying overtime to police officers dealing with protesters after the shooting. Ferguson also faces another $2.3 million in costs in implementing the consent decree — which requires diversity training for officers and establishment of a civilian police oversight board, as well as implementing new rules for retention and use of police body cameras and other changes.
In the face of budgetary headwinds, Ferguson voters approved a 2% increase last year in the city’s business license utility and a half-cent sales tax increase.
Knowles, a lifelong Ferguson resident, is being challenged by Ella Jones, who became the first black female city council member when she was elected less than seven months after the shooting. She has lived in the community for 40 years.
Jones has made the case that she would be a unifying leader who could help bind the wounds of a community that is still healing. She also hasn’t shied away from speaking about race and how black residents — who account for about two-thirds of Ferguson’s population — have been underserved in the community.
At a mayoral forum last week, the former Mary Kay cosmetics sales director charged that Knowles is a symbol of “division and racism.”
“We need a fresh start,” Jones added in an interview. “I don’t know how we do that if he remains as mayor.”
Before Brown’s death, only one of the six members of the city’s six council members was black despite African-Americans accounting for a majority of Ferguson’s population.
The April 2015 election of Jones and another black resident to the city council in the first municipal election after the unrest led to Ferguson having three black members on the council for the first time in the city’s history. The changing of the guard came as turnout — a modest 29% of eligible voters participating — more than doubled from the previous year’s mayoral election.
Ferguson has moved past the worst days after the shooting. A St. Louis County grand jury and the Justice Department found no evidence of wrongdoing by the former officer, Darren Wilson, who resigned in November 2014.
But the pain still lingers in the city’s African-American community, and the city continues to deal with occasional protests over the shooting.
Nat Keeling, 80, who with his wife was one of the first African-American couples to move into their neighborhood in a Ferguson subdivision, says he has long treaded carefully around police.
The retired Army officer says that for years he avoided certain roads where officers had a reputation of targeting black motorists for small infractions — an observation supported by the Justice Department’s findings. At the mayoral forum, Knowles said he was unaware there was a problem with police targeting African-Americans.
“How could he not know? He’s the leader,” Keeling says. “If he didn’t know, that’s a problem.”