Andre Anderson, a black police veteran from Glendale, Ariz., took over as six-month interim chief in July, but left early December 2.
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The bill’s passage Tuesday comes almost two years after the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson touched off massive protests over the way police interact with residents.
“Our officers have worked extremely hard to implement community policing and community engagement in their daily practices”, Seewood, Ferguson’s city manager, said at the time of the hiring.
For 20 of that 32, he served as a public information officer, dealing with major crises and developments within the department, including the 2005 suicide of Miami-Dade County Commissioner Art Teele, following Teele’s conviction on charges of corruption.
Moss didn’t appear to be under any illusions about the job ahead, or the city’s relationship with its police.
Moss had never been to St. Louis before applying for the job, but said he was shocked to see how many people were rooting for Ferguson to succeed.
“The biggest challenge is that, ingrained in the American fabric there is a disconnect between the African-American community and the police department”, Moss concluded.
Moss, the department’s first black chief of police, spoke about punishing officers who abuse their positions, and was himself a victim of unwarranted police searches as he grew up in Miami.
Ferguson’s police chief amid the protests over Brown’s killing, Thomas Jackson, resigned in March 2015 after the DOJ report was issued.
Ferguson became a potent symbol for frayed relations between police and African-American communities throughout the country following the August 2014 shooting death of Brown, 18, by officer Darren Wilson.
After he was sworn in, Moss said it’s the department’s task to bring “nobility” back to police work. The U.S. Justice Department demands deep reforms as well, including a complete revamp of procedures that turned the police department into a revenue-generating machine for the city through heavy emphasis on ticket-writing and court-imposed fines. I have been talking to the Do the Right Thing director here in Miami about Do the Right Thing [a youth program] coming to Ferguson. He also was president of the Miami Police Athletic League and a member of the NAACP.
“I’ve been on the receiving end of police officers hurling racial slurs at you”, Moss told WPTV. Currently, only a handful of officers on the more than 50-officer force are African-American in a city that is almost 70% black.
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As a young officer in Miami, Moss earned the nickname “Ten Speed”, said Lt. Nicole Davis, “because if you ran from him, he was going to catch you”. “We’re not created to make a profit”.
