The U.S. Department of Justice investigations of the Ferguson, Missouri, police department and their municipal court revealed that “the race-based disparities we have found are not isolated or abberational; rather, they exist in nearly every aspect of the Ferguson police and court operation.”
The Justice Department concluded that the police engaged in a “pattern of unconstitutional stops, arrests, in using excessive force, in violating free speech right” actions primarily directed at the African American community. They were also the main targets of a pernicious system of fines imposed upon them to fund Ferguson’s court and police.
Nowhere in Ray Duckler’s Sept. 6 fact-free column of disinformation is there any mention of the DOJ’s dozens of investigations around the country or of innumerable studies exposing systemic racial bias in policing. Duckler’s “many gray areas” are far fewer than he’d have the public believe.
A report by the U.S. Crisis Project refutes his false depiction of the Black Lives Matter movement: 93% of their protests have been peaceful. Everyone’s life matters except for those hypocrites who don’t want the killers of Tamir Rice, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and many others to ever be brought to justice.
JOHN STUART HANCOCK
Concord