How Ferguson elevated the profile of the Justice Department’s civil rights enforcers

WASHINGTON (AP) — As the first images out of Ferguson, Missouri surfaced 10 years ago — the bloodied body of a man left for hours in the street beneath white sheets, protesters smashing car windows and looting stores — it didn’t take long for the federal government to see a role for itself.

Acting with notable haste, the FBI within two days opened a criminal investigation into the killing of Michael Brown at the hands of a police officer, while the Justice Department less than a month later launched a civil rights inquiry culminating in a devastating report that identified abuses by the city’s overwhelmingly white police force and court system.

The investigations catapulted the department’s Civil Rights Division into the spotlight, bringing heightened publicity to a unit whose work since its 1957 creation included fighting for voting rights and prosecuting Los Angeles police officers in the beating of Rodney King. The Ferguson probes became part of a cluster of high-profile investigations into police departments, work that fed a national dialogue on race and law enforcement and formed a legacy item of the Obama administration Justice Department before being largely abandoned under President Donald Trump. Inquiries into big-city police forces returned under President Joe Biden.

“I can’t tell you the number of chiefs I’ve talked to who told me that they had their officers read the Ferguson report, that they did trainings around it,” said Vanita Gupta, who took over the Civil Rights Division two months after Brown’s death and held the position for the remainder of the Obama administration. “It became a document that had a life far beyond Ferguson and really triggered conversations nationwide around justice and policing.”