The city council in Ferguson, Missouri, voted unanimously on Tuesday, February 8 to accept a consent decree negotiated with the Department of Justice regarding its policing and court practices . Well … kind of. Sort of.
The city council added seven amendments to the DOJ’s consent decree, which members say are just a teeny tiny part of the hundreds of requirements they had spent several months negotiating. It appears however, that those amendments are for cover in case Ferguson disbands its police department. And disbanding its police department would wipe out the majority of the consent decree with the DOJ.
The city sent out a press release announcing its vote and listing the seven proposed amendments. That press release, which also lists the main points of the Department of Justice’s consent decree requirements, can be viewed here.
Of the seven amendments the Ferguson City Council wants, the ones that appear to be the stickiest are (i) and (iv), which state thus:
(i) the agreement contain no mandate for the payment of additional salary to police department or other city employees;
(iv) the terms of the agreement shall not apply to other governmental entities or agencies who, in the future, take over services or operations currently being provided by the City of Ferguson
The DOJ’s consent decree wants salaries of police officers in Ferguson to be competitive with salaries elsewhere. The city is taking exception to the pay raise. More significantly, however: if Ferguson were to disband its police department, policing would have to be provided by some other municipality. Ferguson’s city council does not want the terms of the consent decree to apply to whatever new entity provides policing services, characterizing it mainly as a cost-saving measure.
In an interview after the meeting, Councilman Wesley Bell acknowledged the change was significant, but said the tight deadline under which the city was operating left Ferguson little choice but to ask the provision be removed.
“If we get to the point where we have to disband our police department, which honestly I don’t see happening, but let’s say it does happen, no department is going to take us on with those conditions without charging twice as much,” Bell said. “It’s not a ‘no’ on the provision. It’s, ‘Let’s talk about the provision. Let’s figure out something we can all live with that actually makes sense.’”
The Department of Justice wasn’t necessarily trying to hear that, though. Vanita Gupta, currently the head of the department’s Civil Rights Division, basically said the proposed amendments weren’t agreed upon with the DOJ’s input, and were the sole work of the Ferguson folks. She also said that the DOJ would not hesitate to haul them into court over the consent decree, either. You can read her statement, released Wednesday, February 9, here.
The consent decree follows months of protests and scrutiny of Ferguson’s police department over the murder of Mike Brown on August 9, 2014. In addition to numerous civil and human rights violations, it was found that economic exploitation of residents was also rampant in the city.