Attorney General Eric Holder on Wednesday said that while the Justice Department cleared Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson of any civil rights violations in the shooting death of unarmed teen Michael Brown, Holder understands why the city of Ferguson reacted to the death with widespread protests.
“It is not difficult to imagine how a single tragic incident set off the city of Ferguson like a powder keg,” Holder said at a news conference detailing the Justice Department’s investigations into Brown’s death and the Ferguson Police Department’s conduct.
The Justice Department found a “widespread pattern or practice” of Constitutional violations and racial bias in the Ferguson Police Department.
Holder described a “highly toxic environment” where “people feel under assault.”
He urged those who question the Justice Department’s findings from the investigation into Brown’s death to read what he described as the “searing” report on the Ferguson Police Department’s practices.
“Although some community perceptions of Michael Brown’s tragic death may not have been accurate, the widespread conditions that these perceptions were based upon, and the climate that gave rise to them, were all too real,” Holder said.
The attorney general called upon Ferguson leaders to address the concerns raised in the Justice Department’s report.
“It is time for Ferguson’s leaders to take immediate, wholesale and structural corrective action,” Holder said.