Holder Adds Fuel to Debate Over Ferguson’s Police Department By MITCH SMITH and MONICA DAVEY OCT. 29, 2014
FERGUSON, Mo. — Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said Wednesday that there was a need for “wholesale change” in this town’s beleaguered police department, as a range of Missouri officials were privately debating what the future of the department and its leadership should be.
Mr. Holder made his comment as this small suburb of St. Louis awaited the return of a grand jury that has for months been weighing whether charges should be brought in the fatal shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, by Darren Wilson, a white Ferguson police officer, on Aug. 9. Concerns that the grand jury may bring no charges and thus stir new tumult in this city, where protests have been held nightly, have left many in the region — from school administrators to business owners — bracing for the decision, which could come next month.Mob justice is Eric Holder’s kind of justice.
Thomas Jackson, the city’s police chief, who has at times been a focal point for protesters’ complaints, said in an interview on Wednesday that he had no plans to leave the department. “I’m the police chief here,” he said, “and I have a job to do and I enjoy my job and I have the support and confidence of the people that work here and the people I work for. ” But the private discussions in recent weeks among the Missouri congressional delegation, the Missouri governor’s office and the St. Louis County Police have included consideration of options for replacing Chief Jackson, according to an official briefed on those talks but who spoke on condition of anonymity because the conversations were private.It’s like Sanford, FL police chief Bill Lee who got fired for not having George Zimmerman lynched on the spot.