FERGUSON, Mo, Aug 21: US Attorney General Eric Holder met with community members in Ferguson, Missouri, and vowed a thorough civil rights probe into the fatal police shooting of an unarmed black teenager that has set off 11 nights of racially charged unrest.
Holder, the first African-American to head the Justice Department, met with students and then community leaders yesterday at a community college during a visit to Ferguson for a briefing on a Justice Department investigation into the August 9 killing of 18-year-old Michael Brown. His visit came hours after nearly 50 protesters were arrested in the latest demonstrations since the shooting. Many of the protests have been peaceful, but others, especially smaller ones late at night, have been punctuated by looting, vandalism and clashes between demonstrators and police.
The turmoil has cast the St. Louis suburb of 21,000 people into the international spotlight as a symbol of often troubled US race relations.
Ferguson is majority black, but its police force, political leadership and public education administration are dominated by whites. Activists and demonstrators have complained that Brown’s death was the culmination of years of unfair police targeting of blacks. Among students meeting with Holder at the Florissant Valley campus of St Louis Community College was Molyric Welch, 27, who said her brother died three years ago after Ferguson police used a stun gun on him. ‘A lot has happened here,’ she said. ‘He (Holder) promised things were going to change.’ Also yesterday, the St Louis County prosecutor’s office began presenting evidence to a regularly seated grand jury investigating the fatal shooting.
(AGENCIES)
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