By Christine Byers
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
ST. LOUIS, Mo — Federal officials met with local law enforcement leaders Thursday for close to seven hours to discuss an upcoming review of the initial police response in Ferguson, according to police sources.
Representatives from the Department of Justice’s Community Oriented Policing Services division along with police leaders from Ferguson, St. Louis and St. Louis County and the Missouri Highway Patrol went through a 16-page outline of a nearly 200-page report during the meeting, sources said.
The Justice Department examined the response of the four agencies in the first 16 days after Ferguson Officer Darren Wilson fatally shot Michael Brown, 18, during a confrontation Aug. 9. Those departments were the key players in managing unrest that drew help from about 50 jurisdictions across the region.
At Thursday’s meeting, federal officials listened to concerns from the leaders of the agencies involved in the report, but no promises were made to make any changes, the sources said.
The Post-Dispatch obtained a summary of the report June 29, which said police trying to control the Ferguson protests and riots responded with an uncoordinated effort that sometimes violated free-speech rights, antagonized crowds with military-style tactics and shielded officers from accountability.
The summary is subject to change.
Police leaders are expecting to get a copy of the full report, but when it will be delivered and whether federal officials will return to St. Louis to deliver it to the top brass is unclear.
The initial summary obtained by the newspaper suggests that last year’s unrest was aggravated by long-standing community animosity toward Ferguson police, and by a failure of commanders to provide more details to the public after Brown was killed.
“Had law enforcement released information on the officer-involved shooting in a timely manner and continued the information flow as it became available, community distrust and media skepticism would most likely have been lessened,” according to the document.
It also says that use of dogs for crowd control incited fear and anger, and the practice ought to be prohibited. And it complains that tear gas was sometimes used without warning and on people in areas from which there was no safe retreat.
Moreover, it finds inconsistencies in the way police used force and made arrests.
This will be the third of four Justice Department reports in the wake of Ferguson unrest.
The first two were released simultaneously in March. One said Wilson was justified in shooting Brown; the other criticized past practices by the Ferguson police and municipal court and triggered a continuing effort toward enforcing changeseither by negotiation or lawsuit.
The fourth report will be an analysis of the St. Louis County Police Department’s practices.
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