Justspeak: The origins of a police culture of bias in Fergusonhe conclusion reached at the end of the recent federal probe on the Ferguson Police department should come as no surprise: a culture of bias exists in the Ferguson Police department. According to the Wall Street Journal, “…the Justice Department probe concluded…Police in Ferguson routinely violated the civil rights of the city’s Black residents.”

Such a conclusion also raises further questions about the Grand Jury ruling that exonerated Darren Wilson in the death of Michael Brown. Before the Justice Department probe and despite conflicting stories by witnesses that now might be attributed to how they were treated or questioned within the prevailing police culture of bias, evidence of this bias was fully apparent in the composition of the majority white police force overseeing the majority Black protesters, and the police’s quickness to act harshly and punitively against all demonstrators for the aggressive acts of a few. It didn’t take rocket science or a federal probe to state the obvious. White policemen have been conditioned by their culture of bias to view Blacks with hostility and in need of punishment. In the context of such an acceptable racially charged belief system, violent acts against Blacks are always justified. The unwarranted death of Michael Brown was just one more notch in the belts of a police department that had little respect for Black life. It is the same department that sent anti-Black emails to each other routinely and without fear of any reprisal.
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