The ACLU Response to Ferguson

The shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, by a white police officer in Ferguson, Mo., is a grim reminder that there are two kinds of policing in America today: one to serve and protect the white community and one to criminalize and control the black community.

In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, the predominately white local and county police responded to the largely peaceful protests in the overwhelmingly African-American community with a show of force that left Americans wondering whether they were watching events unfold on the streets of suburban St. Louis or on the streets of an authoritarian country. The police's paramilitary tactics and mindset combined with the slow and selective release of information to smear Michael Brown have only served to enflame the situation. Law enforcement officers and officials are public servants tasked with serving and protecting their communities, not erecting a blue wall of silence to insulate themselves from transparency and accountability.

Policing in America disproportionately and negatively affects communities of color, particularly black youth. Since April, police across the country have killed at least six unarmed black men under circumstances that strongly suggest the unjustified use of lethal force and racial profiling. The ACLU has also found that paramilitary SWAT raids are disproportionately used against black and Latino citizens rather than white citizens when serving warrants in search of drugs, even though blacks, Latinos, and whites use drugs at roughly the same rates. The ACLU has also documented that nationwide blacks are almost four times more likely – and in some states eight times more likely– to be arrested for marijuana possession despite the fact that blacks and whites use marijuana at similar rates.

Systemic reform is necessary, not only in Ferguson, Mo., but nationwide.

The shooting of Michael Brown and the aggressive militarized response of local, county, and state law enforcement to the protests impact many interrelated areas of concern for the ACLU nationwide, including racialized policing, police use of force, the militarization of police, and the First Amendment.

To serve and protect is not a suggestion. It is a mandate that law enforcement must apply equally to all communities. Otherwise, there will only be more Fergusons. The ACLU of Missouri and the American Civil Liberties Union and allies across the country urge local, state, and national legislators and law enforcement officials to take the following actions and institute the following reforms.

The ACLU and ACLU of Missouri have been working diligently to shed light on what transpired in Ferguson, as well to protect First Amendment rights for the community and media. The ACLU of Missouri has filed two Missouri Sunshine Law suits to receive copies of the incident reports from both the St. Louis County and the Ferguson Police Departments, which have both to date refused to turn over the reports that should contain important details regarding the shooting, and are key to a fair and just investigation.

The ACLU filed a federal lawsuit against Missouri's Ferguson-Florissant School District, charging the district's electoral system is locking African-Americans out of the political process.