FERGUSON, Mo. -- Ferguson officials have missed critical deadlines in the early stages of an agreement with the Justice Department, but the beleaguered Missouri town's city manager said the process is now moving "in the right direction."
Clark Ervin, a Washington lawyer monitoring the consent decree involving the St. Louis suburb that has been under Justice Department scrutiny since the fatal 2014 police shooting of Michael Brown, said this week that Ferguson has missed some 120-day and 180-day deadlines in crafting new policies and procedures on basic policing practices.
"While a number of deadlines have been missed, and deadlines are important, that does not mean that the city is not working hard both in terms of police reform and court reform," said Ervin, who is responsible for ensuring the city's compliance with the agreement.
He said the city was working in "good faith" toward meeting the procedures required by the federal government.
"This is difficult work," Ervin said. "Needless to say, there's a lot to be done, but progress is being made."
City Manager De'Carlon Seewood acknowledged that U.S. District Judge Catherine Perry, at a status hearing last month, felt the city was behind. But Seewood said the judge "also recognized we are further ahead than a lot of other places with similar consent decrees."
"It's moving and I think we're moving in the right direction and I see a positive outcome," Seewood said.
Ervin said one problem early on was that the city did not have a designated employee to focus on the consent decree. The city hired Frank McCall, formerly the police chief in neighboring Berkeley, Mo., in October as a police commander tasked with shepherding the agreement.
Ervin noted that the city had recently passed an ordinance to set up a civilian review board to handle allegations of police misconduct. Some revised policies, including on the duty to report use of force, have already been judged to comply with the consent decree. Others, including on accountability, are in the process of being reviewed.
The shooting of Brown, 18, by officer Darren Wilson on Aug. 9, 2014, resulted in an examination of Ferguson's criminal justice system that led to a March 2015 Justice Department report citing racial bias. Wilson is white; Brown was black and unarmed.
Wilson resigned in November 2014, although a St. Louis County grand jury and the Justice Department found no evidence that he committed a crime.
The city's agreement with the Justice Department, expected to cost about $2.3 million over three years, requires diversity training for officers, body cameras for police and jail workers, dashboard cameras for squad cars, establishment of a civilian police oversight board, municipal court reforms and other changes.
The agreement spelled out a series of deadlines for compliance, including that the city within 120 days develop a process for investigating encounters involving the use of force. The city also had 180 days to provide crisis intervention training to call-takers, dispatchers and their supervisors.
A key provision requires community policing, which relies on officers getting involved in neighborhood groups and meeting with people, not simply responding to crime. But the city hasn't been able to fully implement community policing because nearly one-third of the Ferguson Police Department's 49 police jobs are vacant.
As a result, Seewood said the city has re-prioritized its goals to put police recruitment -- particularly of minority-group officers -- at the top of the list.
"You can do community policing with our current staff, but you can't do it at the higher level that you want because you are taking care of the day-to-day operations of the police force," Seewood said.
Emily Davis, a member of a consent decree-mandated steering committee tasked with helping the city implement community policing, said she's been disappointed by the city's effort so far.
"The city has been so resistant to change because they didn't believe they'd ever done anything wrong," Davis said. "Community policing has not gotten implemented the way it needs to be because they've been dragging their feet."
A Section on 01/28/2017