Introduction

On August 9 2014, police shot and killed Michael Brown, an 18-year-old resident of Ferguson, Missouri. Officer Darren Wilson, the police officer who shot Mr. Brown, said he believed Brown was a suspect in the robbery of a nearby convenience store. The officer maintained that he had fired in self-defense when Brown – unarmed – charged toward him as the officer sat in his police cruiser. Four months later, in November 2014, a federal grand jury declined to indict Officer Wilson, and a Department of Justice report later concluded that he had acted in self-defense. The killing, and the grand jury's decision not to indict, prompted days of protests and violent confrontations between protestors and police that attracted international media attention and helped propel the Black Lives Matter social movement to national prominence.

Ten days after Brown was killed, US Attorney General Eric Holder visited Ferguson and announced that the Department of Justice was opening an investigation into the incident. The report of the Department of Justice investigation, released in March 2015, amounted to a scathing indictment of Ferguson's police practices. The report found that:

In his remarks announcing the release of the report, Holder affirmed that ‘this emphasis on revenue generation through policing has fostered unconstitutional practices – or practices that contribute to constitutional violations – at nearly every level of Ferguson's law enforcement system.’ He highlighted police targeting of Black citizens, particularly for minor offenses that carried monetary penalties.

In the city of Ferguson, the 53-member police force employed just three African American officers. The town relied heavily on policing to raise revenue. As the Department of Justice report put it, ‘City, police, and court officials for years have worked in concert to maximize revenue at every stage of the enforcement process.’