Unrelenting Ferguson protests pushed year of national change

FERGUSON, Mo. — Unrelenting protests over the death of an unarmed black teen here last summer thrust this St. Louis suburb and its 21,000 residents into an international spotlight and ushered in a year of national changes.

Ferguson Police officer Darren Wilson, who is white, fatally shot Michael Brown Jr., a black 18-year-old, on Aug. 9, 2014. The encounter lasted just two minutes, but the shooting led to months of massive and, at times, violent protests. The world watched as crowds hurled bottles and looted liquor stores, while police in military gear threw tear gas and clashed with those on the streets.

Under the slogan #BlackLivesMatter, Ferguson protesters kicked off a movement around alleged incidents of police misconduct leading to rallies in several cities with such cases. Although a grand jury did not indict Wilson and the Justice Department declined to bring criminal charges against the officer, Brown's violent death prompted a national look at alleged racial profiling, police brutality and the relationship between police officers and communities of color.

"A year later, all I can say is that Mike Brown, his death, his murder, have given me a new sense of purpose in life and that is to always be a truth teller and to stay true to why I came out on Aug. 9," says Johnetta Elzie, 26, who emerged as leader in the Black Lives Matter movement as the protests developed. "I didn't come because there was an organization that asked me to come. I came because I was tired of seeing black people dead in the street by the hands of police officers."

#BlackLivesMatter coalesced into a partnership of leaders and organizations. Last month, in Cleveland, hundreds of protests came together for the inaugural Movement for Black Lives Convening. Elzie and others regularly fly to cities where a fatal police encounter has occurred to support local protesters.

Brown's death and the protests that followed also turned the spotlight on other controversial deaths, including Tamir Rice, 12, shot while playing with a toy gun on Nov. 22 by a Cleveland police officer; Walter Scott, 50, shot on April 4 by a North Charleston, S.C., police officer while allegedly running away; and most recently, Samuel DuBose, 43, shot on July 19 during a traffic stop by a University of Cincinnati police officer.

"Hearing statistics of police brutality incidents can be jarring, but seeing new cases every few days forces you to acknowledge the pervasiveness of police brutality," said Keisha Bentley-Edwards, a professor at the University of Texas-Austin who studies race, adolescence and academic and social development.

"Seeing the impact on an actual person, their families and their communities personalizes these incidents beyond numbers," she said.

In Ferguson, the police chief, a local judge and a city manager, who are all white, resigned after a Justice Department review found that the Ferguson Police Department engaged in a broad pattern of racially biased enforcement that permeated the city's justice system, including the use of unreasonable force against black suspects. Two of the city's new leaders, interim Police Chief Andre Anderson, who began work July 22, and Interim City Manager Ed Beasley, who was hired June 9, are black. Ferguson's population is 67% black.

Police departments elsewhere sought to buy body cameras, while other departments added training on diversity, community engagement, bias and how to de-escalate tense encounters.

At the national level, President Obama created a Task Force on 21st Century Policing and banned the sale of some kinds of military equipment to local law enforcement agencies.

"Policing has taken a hard look at itself," said Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum. "There has been a renewed emphasis on looking at how we hire, how we train, how we investigate, how we release information to the public. All of these aspects have had a seismic impact on policing."

Darrel Stephens, executive director of the Major Cities Chiefs, said police departments are studying the findings of President Obama's task force and looking at ways to implement its recommendations.

"It's safe to say police officers are a little bit more cautious about what they are doing and how they approach their work today," Stephens said.

Yet police are also frustrated, he said. Police budgets have remained flat, making it impossible for some departments to modernize equipment, boost training and increase salaries to retain and recruit the best people, he said.

Some police officers have grown weary of constant comparison to those police officers who abuse their power. Fear of provoking the next Ferguson has made some officers unwilling to be aggressive at their jobs, said James Pasco, executive director of the National Fraternal Order of Police. Pasco credits aggressive policing tactics for making communities much safer and lowering crime rates over the past 20 years.

"(Darren Wilson) will be forever scarred and forever affected by this and so will every other officer every time they think of the event," Pasco said. "It's going to have a chilling effect on their willingness to undertake that kind of appropriately aggressive policing."

For Elzie, one of the Black Lives Matter organizers, the changes have yet to go far enough. This year, she will work toward legislation passed to hold police accountable for any misconduct.

"I hate that it keeps happening and we have to keep paying attention to these deaths," Elzie said. "That is depressing."