Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon appointed the Ferguson Commission in November 2014 following the shooting death of Brown, an unarmed black 18-year-old, by Darren Wilson, a white police officer.
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The report acknowledges that the commission has no power to enact any of the proposals, but Nixon has said the commission has the full support of his office. The departments and courts have been accused of targeting minorities to raise revenue, leading to mistrust that was a key component of unrest following Brown’s death.
The commission’s report said the racial divide through the St. Louis region is deep and cuts across access to healthcare, housing and high-quality education, and fosters injustice in the courts.
“Together we will lead St. Louis, our state and our country toward a brighter future of justice and opportunity for all”, said the Democratic governor, who was joined by commission members at a local community college.
While the commission offers 189 policy recommendations, it doesn’t try to dive into implementation, noting that legislation, funding and further public debate will be needed to make numerous changes the panel suggests. The results reveal stark inequities between black and white residents of the area, in terms of life expectancy, schooling, and criminal justice.
“The regular use of force has led many citizens to view the police as an occupying force in their neighborhoods, damaging community trust, and making community safety even more hard “, the report says.
The commission does not hide from the truth: “We know that talking about race makes a lot of people uncomfortable”.
-Developing a comprehensive statewide plan for dealing with mass demonstrations that focuses on the preservation of human life and allowing credentialed members of the media to cover events without being threatened with arrest. “But we are convinced that progress in the St. Louis region runs through Ferguson, and every issue that the phrase “Ferguson” now conjures”.
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But the commission acknowledged that it is powerless to implement the suggested reforms. The statement said the city had already made changes to its police department, municipal court and city government. “The state of Missouri must revise its statute on the use of force to bring it in line with global standards – not just with the lower standards under Tennessee v Garner – by limiting officers’ use of firearms to only as a last resort when strictly necessary to protect themselves or others against an imminent threat of death or serious injury, and by ensuring that accountability mechanisms are built into the law”. “Another meeting participant shared that he had tried to report an apparently drunk driver he observed on the road, but kept getting transferred from one dispatch center to another, or told to call another department, because the drunk driver kept passing through different municipalities”. And the perception of our police is the same as many teachers who see young black men, particularly, as older than they actually are, as more unsafe than they present. Knowles said he was concerned that the name of the commission is misleading. Committee co-chair, the Reverend Starsky Wilson, says St. Louis remains one of the most segregated cities in America.
