Final Ferguson Report Dissects St. Louis County Police

WASHINGTON D.C. - The Department of Justice has recommended a deeper look into the St. Louis County police department's traffic stops of African-Americans, criticized the department's promotional process and cultivation of a tactically minded policing culture and noted the department's failure to address citizen complaints and community policing.

But the county police's use of force between 2009 and 2013 was significantly lower than the national average, and the federal analysis of traffic stop data is not sufficient to provide actual evidence of bias in vehicle stops on the part of county police, the feds found.

The findings along with suggested reforms are outlined within a 182-page report that the DOJ's Community Oriented Policing Services office released Friday. At least two progress reports will follow during the next 1 1/2 years to update how many of the recommendations the department followed.

The collaborative reform is the fourth and final report that the DOJ commissioned following the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson.

County Chief Jon Belmar asked the COPS office in September 2014 to conduct this report, known as a collaborative reform agreement, but expressed concerns about the report's impending release during a recent police board meeting. He declined to comment on the final report.

The report commends Belmar for inviting the federal analysis, saying the move "helped to signal to other police agencies that reform is necessary." It also characterizes the county's response to subsequent protests that followed the August 2014 shooting as "noticeably more organized and measured than the response to the first major demonstration."

For example, the report notes that the county assigned officers skilled at community engagement to the front lines during the protests in November 2014, which reduces the department's "overreliance" on tactical response.

But the report also suggests county police academy staff gave the assessment team inaccurate information regarding training received by officers on the psychological aspects of crowd control.

Researchers from the Washington-based Police Foundation that the DOJ hired for the review couldn't find the topic among lesson plans and presentations for the course.

The DOJ's Community Oriented Policing Services Director Ron Davis conducted a press conference by phone Friday to discuss the report — a departure from a plan to release the report at a press conference in St. Louis Tuesday.

"From my perspective, this shows the county police is a solid department but obviously there is room for improvement and when the department corrects these things, it will not be just a solid department but a model department," Davis said.

Belmar had said that Attorney General Loretta Lynch was to be "made available" for the announcement. But a DOJ spokeswoman said Lynch was never scheduled to participate in the announcement of the report and that the police department "may have confused the potential participation of the U.S. attorney with that of the Attorney General."

The feds moved the original release date due to "scheduling conflicts," and in the interest of releasing the report this week, "proceeded with the Friday conference call," she said.

Here are excerpts from the report's findings and recommendations:

2014 Traffic stop data reflects over-representation of black drivers. Census data suggests an over-representation of black drivers in the county's traffic stop data, but, "It is important to caution that although the analysis presented here is an important preliminary step, it is not sufficient to provide actual evidence of bias in vehicle stops on the part of the county police."
The county is in compliance with Missouri's racial profiling data collection law, but traffic stop analysis are inconsistent across the agency and lack sophistication necessary for appropriate analysis of stop data.
The county police do not collect and analyze pedestrian stops.
The police department doesn't reflect the community it serves.
The county has increased minority representation in command ranks, but is "moderately under-representative" of the community in the ranks of lieutenant and captain.
Women are underrepresented in all ranks, and were not included in all executive-level meetings between assessment team and the county police.
The county police should develop a strategic plan for minority recruitment, train community leaders to serve as police recruiters, create a diversity council and youth advisory council to advise the chief and publicly report demographic information of employees, current and former as well as applicants.
Boost the recruitment staff.
Ways to engage with the public fall flat.
The website includes outdated information and broken links and should be redesigned.
The policy regarding citizen contacts and traffic stop information should be updated, as oppressive or rude behavior and excessive force are the majority of citizen complaints.
County police do not include stop data in annual reports to the public.
The department should publish its acceptance of anonymous complaints and locations where complaints can be made as well as eliminate the signature line on the complaint form.
The department should move to an education-based discipline process and establish a community mediation program to address citizen complaints against police.
An "inappropriate benchmark" is used to identify an excessive number of complaints or incidents.
Personnel with tactical or SWAT experience are selected for promotions at significantly higher rates than those without.
The department should review reward systems to recognize and promote an increased emphasis on community engagement and problem-solving experience and add a "neighborhood policing" category to performance evaluations.
County police are still coping with emotional effects of Ferguson protests.
Supervisors are not trained to monitor well-being of personnel during chaotic emotional events and personnel still exhibited signs of stress based on their experiences in 2014 protests.
County police should conduct periodic checks of officers' well-being during any deployment response as well as evaluate the employee assistance program, peer support program and chaplaincy to ensure adequate resources, personnel and access are available.
County police should provide resources for employees to reduce victimization of identify fraud and threats.
All deadly force situations are not thoroughly investigated.
County police should require its Bureau of Crimes Against Persons to investigate all uses of deadly force against another person irrespective of injury.
The department should fully implement an early warning system to spot problematic use-of-force trends and send reports to the chief more than annually.
Between 2009 and 2013, the number of use of force incidents involving county police officers was less than one tenth of one percent, whereas national estimates have found that 1.4 percent of police-citizen contacts result in police use or threatened use of force.

The St. Louis County Municipal Police Academy falls short in several areas:

No experts in cultural diversity to teach officers.
Of the 916 hours of basic recruit training, only 14 cover community engagement, diversity and community policing engagement.
Training varies across multiple departments, so the county should collaborate with them to develop consistent policies.
Instructors at the academy are not experts in fair and impartial policing, community engagement and partnership development.
Most Field Training Instructors are unfamiliar with or unqualified with training contemporary police practices.
Insufficient mandated in-service training to addresses community engagement, the psychology of crowds and de-escalation.
Civil disobedience training doesn't emphasize alternative approaches to managing public disorder beyond line movements and formations policies do not ensure officers exhaust de-escalation options before using tactical responses.

The report also rehashes criticisms from previous federal reports regarding the handling of protests, including the use of the Code 1000 command that calls in the first 25 officers regardless of their department and its policies to police a scene. It also scolds the county police for not using the federally-established National Incident Management System, for deploying rifles and tear gas "inappropriately," and preparing supervisors with clear direction in crowd management.

It also urges the department to ban the "overwatch" tactic of perching an officer armed with a rifle atop an armored vehicle to monitor the crowd through the scope.

The report calls on the department to revise its canine policy to prohibit the use of canines strictly for crowd control — a tactic Belmar vehemently denies his department did. He told the Post-Dispatch he used canines only during reports of shots fired as police investigated the homicide scene in Ferguson and when an officer became surrounded by protesters on Aug. 9, 2014. The county has adopted a revised canine policy, and it's unclear whether the new policy fulfills the federal report's recommendation.

Chuck Raasch of the Post-Dispatch contributed to this report from Washington.

Tribune News Service