US Justice Department set to announce deal on Ferguson police

Justice experts are optimistic that a pending deal to reform the Ferguson, Missouri police department will remedy what black rights activists have called law enforcement's systematic brutality against people of colour.

Federal and local authorities had hammered out key details of a deal to reform the Missouri city’s police department, The New York Times reported Wednesday, after a white police officer’s fatal shooting of an unarmed black teen highlighted long-standing issues with discriminatinon and violence in policing.

The US Justice Department and Ferguson municipal government were not immediately available to confirm the coming agreement, but The Independent spoke to Jonathan Smith, a dean at the University of the District of Columbia law school and former chief of the Justice Department’s Special Litigation Section of the Civil Rights Division, where he helped pen a report on the Ferguson Police Department published in March.

“The reforms typically would include looking at questions around the policies that govern the operation of the force, the municipal court, what training to put in place to make sure police comply with those policies,” Mr Smith told The Independent.

The deal would include provisions for federal oversight of the changes, aiming for transparency and accountability, The New York Times said.

The March report that Mr Smith helped write— which followed a six month investigation of the Department — found a pattern of discriminatory policing in the community.

“Ferguson’s own data establish clear racial disparities that adversely impact African Americans,” the report says.

Mr. Smith is confident that the agreement will mean a drastic change in the way the police department runs itself.

“The agreements are comprehensive and involve the community and experts in policing,” Mr Smith said. “The agreements make an enormous difference. It doesn't happen overnight — I wish you could snap your fingers and change everything, but you can’t.”

On Aug. 9, 2014, Ferguson white police officer Darren Williams shot dead unarmed black teenager Michael Brown, in a killing that added fuel to long-running movements to address police discrimination and brutality, particularly against black Americans. Other high-profile police killings of black people, including the July 17, 2014 stranglehold death of New York City’s Eric Garner have also provoked calls by the Black Lives Matter movement and other US rights advocates for change to both law enforcement and a legal system where a disproportionate number of prison inmates and death row convicts are black.