U.S. Justice Department Report on the Ferguson Police Department

In another case, an officer investigating a report of a theft at a dollar store interrogated a
minister pumping gas into his church van about the theft. The man alleged that he provided his
identification to the officer and offered to return to the store to prove he was not the thief. The
officer instead handcuffed the man and drove him to the store. The store clerk reported that the
detained man was not the thief, but the officer continued to keep the man cuffed, allegedly
calling him “f*****g stupid” for asking to be released from the cuffs. The man went directly to
FPD to file a complaint upon being released by the officer. FPD conducted an investigation but,
because the complainant did not respond to a cell phone message left by the investigator within
13 days, reclassified the complaint as “withdrawn,” even as the investigator noted that the
complaint of improper detention would otherwise have been sustained, and noted that the
“[e]mployee has been counseled and retraining is forthcoming.” In still another case, a
lieutenant of a neighboring agency called FPD to report that a pizza parlor owner had
complained to him that an off-duty FPD officer had become angry upon being told that police
discounts were only given to officers in uniform and said to the restaurant owner as he was
leaving, “I hope you get robbed!” The allegation was not considered a complaint and instead,
despite its seriousness, was handled through counseling at the squad level. 56
Even where a complaint is actually investigated, unless the complaint is made by an FPD
commander, and sometimes not even then, FPD consistently takes the word of the officer over
the word of the complainant, frequently even where the officer’s version of events is clearly at
odds with the objective evidence. On the rare occasion that FPD does sustain an external
complaint of officer misconduct, the discipline it imposes is generally too low to be an effective
deterrent. 57
Our investigation raised concerns in particular about how FPD responds to untruthfulness
by officers. In many departments, a finding of untruthfulness pursuant to internal investigation
results in an officer’s termination because the officer’s credibility on police reports and in
providing testimony is subsequently subject to challenge. In FPD, untruthfulness appears not
even to always result in a formal investigation, and even where sustained, has little effect. In one
case we reviewed, FPD sustained a charge of untruthfulness against an officer after he was found
to have lied to the investigator about whether he had engaged in an argument with a civilian over
the loudspeaker of his police vehicle. FPD imposed only a 12-hour suspension on the officer. In
addition, FPD appears not to have taken the officer’s untruthfulness into sufficient account in
56 We found additional examples of FPD officers behaving in public in a manner that reflects poorly on FPD and
law enforcement more generally. In November 2010, an officer was arrested for DUI by an Illinois police officer
who found his car crashed in a ditch off the highway. Earlier that night he and his squad mates—including his
sergeant—were thrown out of a bar for bullying a customer. The officer received a thirty-day suspension for the
DUI. Neither the sergeant nor any officers was disciplined for their behavior in the bar. In September 2012, an
officer stood by eating a sandwich while a fight broke out at an annual street festival. After finally getting involved
to break up the fight, he publically berated and cursed at his squad mates, screamed and cursed at the two female
street vendors who were fighting, and pepper-sprayed a handcuffed female arrestee in the back of his patrol car. The
officer received a written reprimand.
57 While the Chief’s “log” of Internal Affairs (“IA”) investigations contains many sustained allegations, most of
these were internally generated; that is, the complaint was made by an FPD employee, usually a commander. In
addition, we found that a majority of complaints are never investigated as IA cases, or even logged as complaints.
The Chief’s log, which he told us included all complaint investigations, includes 56 investigations from January
2010 through July 2014. Our review indicates that there were significantly more complaints of misconduct during
this time period. Despite repeated requests, FPD provided us no other record of complaints received or investigated.
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