Justice Department to Investigate Ferguson, Missouri, Police

The Justice Department intends to launch a civil rights investigation of the entire Ferguson, Missouri, Police Department, according to administration officials.

An announcement of the investigation is planned for Thursday.

With the help of the FBI, the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division has been investigating last month's fatal shooting of an unarmed teenager, Michael Brown, who was wounded several times by a Ferguson police officer. The shooting touched off several days of sometimes violent protest.

But this new investigation would be much broader, looking at the conduct of the entire Ferguson Police Department over the past several years.

The Justice Department will also look at the practices of the county police department, but that will be a more cooperative investigation, an administration official said.

Since 1994, the Justice Department has had the legal authority to investigate whether a law enforcement organization is engaging in a 'pattern or practice' of civil rights violations. Some investigations end with agreements to improve conduct. Others end up in federal court for a resolution.

In the past five years, the department has launched 20 investigations of police departments nationwide -- more than twice as many as were opened in the preceding five years.

Police officers in Ferguson have been the subject of a handful of lawsuits filed in recent years claiming that excessive force was used. In one case, four police officers were accused of beating a man, then charging himn with damaging government property -- by getting blood on their uniforms.

Many black residents of Ferguson have accused their city's police department of failing to represent the racial diversity of the St. Louis suburb. While Ferguson is about 65 percent black, roughly eleven percent of the city's police officers are black.

First published September 3 2014, 5:32 PM

Pete Williams

Pete Williams is an NBC News correspondent based in Washington, D.C. He has been covering the Justice Department and the U.S. Supreme Court since March 1993. Williams was also a key reporter on the Microsoft anti-trust trial and Judge Jackson's decision.Prior to joining NBC, Williams served as a press official on Capitol Hill for many years. In 1986 he joined the Washington, D.C. staff of then Congressman Dick Cheney as press secretary and a legislative assistant. In 1989, when Cheney was named Assistant Secretary of Defense, Williams was appointed Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs. While in that position, Williams was named Government Communicator of the Year in 1991 by the National Association of Government Communicators.A native of Casper, Wyo. and a 1974 graduate of Stanford University, Williams was a reporter and news director at KTWO-TV and Radio in Casper from 1974 to 1985. Working with the Radio-Television News Directors Association, for which he served as a member of its board of directors, he successfully lobbied the Wyoming Supreme Court to permit broadcast coverage of its proceedings and twice sued Wyoming judges over pre-trial exclusion of reporters from the courtroom. For these efforts, he received a First Amendment Award from the Society of Professional Journalists.

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