Ferguson officials overseeing consent decree compliance said the city continues to make progress amid cuts to the decree that will go into effect over the next fiscal year.
The Ferguson monitoring team, which ensures compliance with the decree, along with Ferguson officials and U.S. Department of Justice representatives, met with U.S. District Judge Catherine D. Perry for a status hearing update on Tuesday.
The Ferguson Police Department has hired six new officers since the last status hearing earlier this year. The department is also close to implementing its revised police training officer program, said Patricia Washington, the consent decree coordinator. The city’s municipal court system has completed almost every mandated consent decree initiative, she said.
“We look forward to gaining 100% compliance and starting that monitoring period,” Washington said.
Washington praised Police Chief Troy Doyle’s community engagement council and the department’s community policing efforts.
But Washington said she’s concerned the cuts would stall progress, citing the calls to reform policing and courts in Minneapolis after the murder of George Floyd and the defunding of those efforts later.
“Diverting consent decree funding, in my opinion, erodes the foundational justice we are constructing,” she said. ”Just as we wouldn’t abandon a bridge halfway through construction, we cannot abandon court-ordered reform midstream, especially when the infrastructure we are rebuilding is trust, justice and human rights.”
Ferguson has spent about $6 million on the decree since 2016. Proponents of the council’s cuts said that they wouldn’t touch police training efforts and that additional funding could be allocated. Council members who voted to cut the funding said they were also concerned about the amount of money the city continued to pay the monitoring team over the past nine years.
“I think there is sort of a balance in our community of folks who are concerned with the amount of money that it costs to comply with the consent decree,” Ferguson City Attorney Apollo Carey said Tuesday. “But at the same time, there’s another sort of balancing factor, which is people are supportive of the reforms that we’ve made.”
The city has been under the consent decree since 2016, two years after a white Ferguson police officer shot and killed Michael Brown Jr., a Black teenager. The city has been required to make significant changes to its municipal codes, policing and courts after a Department of Justice report found the city’s policies perpetuated systemic racism.
A DOJ official said while there are still elements the city can improve on, including the accuracy of use of force reporting and quicker assessments of use of force audits, the city is making substantial improvements in reaching compliance.
“It’s been really crucial that the team has been as stable as it has been for the past 18 months to two years,” said DOJ attorney Nicholas Sheehan. “We’ve seen a lot of progress in that time span, and that’s attributable largely to the city’s efforts and the stability of their leadership team.”
The stability follows waves of turnover among people on the monitoring team, police department and Ferguson officials, monitoring lead Natashia Tidwell said. The current stability has helped the city achieve its compliance goals.
“The city began to turn the corner in the fall of ’23,” Tidwell said. “Since that time and despite some internal challenges, Ferguson Police Department and its municipal court continue to experience and benefit from a period of sustained consistency and progress.”
The decree can only be dropped by Perry, who is overseeing the case. She said the city is making significant progress and will hold a hearing for public comments later this year.
“I’m urging everyone not to stop the momentum that we have going now,” Perry said. “It’s good momentum, and the team that’s in place is moving along more quickly and more efficiently than anytime before now.”
