Attorney General Loretta Lynch is more than halfway through a six-city “community policing tour” intended to highlight cities where police and minorities have eased tensions, but has been forced to contend with a stream of new evidence that in many cities and towns, the problem seems to be getting worse.
“I strongly condemn the violence against the community, including police officers, in Ferguson,” Lynch told the Fraternal Order of Police’s national conference on Monday in Pittsburg, where she is visiting to highlight the progress that city’s police department has made on community policing.
“[N]ot only does violence obscure any message of peaceful protest, it places the community, as well as the officers who seek to protect it, in harm’s way,” she said about the violence that erupted in Ferguson, Mo., on the anniversary of Michael Brown’s death there.
“The weekend’s events were peaceful and promoted a message of reconciliation and healing,” Lynch said. “But incidents of violence, such as we saw last night, are contrary to both that message, along with everything that all of us, including this group, have worked to achieve over the past year.”
Lynch kicked off the tour in May in Cincinnati, where in July a campus police officer killed an unarmed Samuel DuBose during a traffic stop, and the metro city of suburb Beavercreek, where police last August shot and killed John Crawford III, who was holding a BB gun inside the toy aisle of a Wal-Mart.
A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment on that case, in which a police officer has been charged with murder, but said Cincinnati is still a model of reform.
After police practices there sparked race riots in 2001, the Cincinnati Collaborative Agreement has been cited as a model of good policing. Cincinnati has still had questionable police-citizen encounters, but has established a process where officers are now oriented to hear minority communities’ concerns and specifically address them, said Justice Department press secretary Kevin Lewis.
“Now, I have no illusions that alleviating deeply ingrained mistrust will be easy; the challenges we face did not arise in a day and change will not come overnight,” Lynch said in Cincinnati. “But by looking to examples like Cincinnati and with the help of outstanding partners like the men, women and young people here with us now, I am confident that we can create stronger, safer, more united communities together.”
Lynch says restoring trust between law enforcement and the American people is one of her top priorities for her tenure as attorney general, which began only hours before Baltimore descended into a state of emergency over the death of another black man in police custody.
Instead of feeling dismayed by events there, Lynch said she was optimistic after visiting and hearing from citizens how they wanted to fix things in Baltimore.
“Of course, this issue of broken and damaged trust is not Baltimore’s alone, it exists in cities and communities across the nation,” she recalled in Cincinnati. “But the hope that I saw in Baltimore, and the determination from residents and law enforcement officers to improve their city together, is present across the country as well.”
Lynch has also visited Birmingham, Ala., and East Haven, Conn., and will travel to Richmond, Calif., and Seattle in September, after which she will announce the next six cities in her tour.
Speaking on MSNBC on Sunday, Lynch said the Brown protests and subsequent DOJ investigation proved what minorities there and in other cities had been saying for years: that they were not policed equally or constitutionally.
Lynch said she does feel “a lot has changed” since then, and that the Justice Department’s report on Brown’s death hopefully illuminated the conditions surrounding not just his fatal shooting, but those that led up to it.
Lynch is trying to balance being the nation’s top cop with also being its chief prosecutor. More than 20 municipal police departments have been investigated by the Justice Department in the past six years for allegations of racial discrimination and using excessive force.
The Justice Department is still in the process of negotiating with Ferguson’s city council over the consent decree enforcing the findings of its probe. The city council just rejected the first draft. If the sides cannot agree, the Justice Department’s next step will be suing Ferguson for noncompliance.
“One year after the tragic events in Ferguson, Missouri, we have yet again seen the consequences for officers and residents when those tensions erupt into unrest and violence,” Lynch said in Pittsburgh. “And we know that trust is not just a benefit of good police work, it is essential to its fulfillment.”
