A recent report issued by the Department of Justice attacked the city of Ferguson Mo. for a "pattern of racial bias" for stopping, searching, and arresting more black people than white. Unable to find any blame for Officer Darren Wilson (who shot the "gentle giant" Mike Brown after Brown assaulted him and tried to take his gun) the Artful DOJer twisted the report around to blame Ferguson for the way it enforces the law. And Holder went so far as to threaten to disband the FPD.

Writing at American Thinker, Thomas Lifson explains:

"Holder’s DOJ issued a report this week criticizing the FPD for issuing more citations and arrests to blacks than their percentage of the local population – on the theory that all racial groups behave exactly the same, so any disproportion must be due to discrimination.  A second charge, more serious in my mind (and probably more widespread) was that citations are issued as a revenue-raising measure."

He is absolutely right, and there is much more to it.

Ferguson is a mixed race municipality surrounded by largely black communities, and is a pass-through for black motorists. Why does Holder expect an exactly proportionate ticketing/arrest rate? 

He fails to include some of the areas immediately adjacent to Ferguson (or very close along major roadways). 

Ferguson is 67.4% African American as of the 2010 Census, up from just 25.1% in 1990. As of 2010 the percentage of blacks in the communities immediately adjacent to Ferguson are:

Calverton Park 42.2% black

Berkeley 81% 

Cool Valley 84.5

Dellwood 58.19 

Jennings 78.58

Kinloch 94.6 

Normandy 69.7 

Florissant 25.8% 

unincorporated Castle Point 92.9

and Hazelwood which just kisses Ferguson (and has no major roads connecting the two directly is 30.5%.

Other nearby communities include Moline Acres 85.5%, and Bellefontaine Neighbors 72.7% 

If you throw out Florissant - a huge community without any reason to send visitors through Ferguson, as well as Hazelwood which does not really have any major through streets into Ferguson you wind up with an average of roughly 75.21%. (Do not think it unfair that I am throwing those out; I'm also not including any number of largely black areas - including the almost entirely black north St. Louis City, Pine Lawn, and other such places.) According to the DOJ report, blacks were stopped at a rate of 86% while constituting 61% of the population of Ferguson.  

Now this number is the 11 points below the figure given by the government but it also fails to take some other disparities into account. Many of the white drivers who pass through Ferguson are older; much of the white population of North County is aging, while the blacks driving through the community tend to be younger. Police are more likely to stop -- and arrest -- young people in general than older individuals, and older drivers tend to be more obedient of the traffic laws. The black population in North County is substantially younger than the whites.

And, as Thomas Lifson points out, different demographics commit different rates of crime -- and different types of crimes. Police are going to be more likely to pull over a car blaring rap music and full of teenagers than they are a Volvo being driven by an old white guy with listening to Vivaldi. It is a matter of managing your resources.  Barack Obama claimed he had the right to grant executive amnesty to illegal aliens based on his duty to manage prosecutorial resources. Why are the Ferguson police denied this same privilege?

Ferguson has a number of major thoroughfares, including Interstate 270, Chambers Road, North Florissant Road, and West Florissant. It is a natural route for the largely black population to reach the commercial centers in Florissant (and Ferguson has a few of its own). It is undoubtedly attractive to criminals in that it is a place with stately homes that white people refuse to surrender to the thugs, and the Old Town area has become a quaint dining and shopping community, with restaurants, a wine garden, and a microbrewery. It is just down the road from the University of Missouri St. Louis. It is an attractive place for people who are up to no good.

And a Criminology Professor at that very university agrees. From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

"University of Missouri-St. Louis criminologist Rick Rosenfeld said the statistics for Ferguson don’t stand out from many other St. Louis County municipalities.

“I don’t think Ferguson would be at the top of many people’s lists for racial tension between police and the community,” he said."

Rosenfeld also noted that the attorney general’s data has some limitations, specifically that it doesn’t account for whether drivers live in the jurisdiction where they’re stopped. This means that an index could be skewed in an area with interstate highways, busy roads or shopping centers. Additionally, an officer may not know the race of a driver when making the decision to stop someone."

Ferguson is a well-known speed trap, and undoubtedly many of the blacks pulled over for traffic offenses were pulled over to raise revenue, but that is a separate issue. (It's true of many Podunk municipalities in the area, and indeed across the country.) 

But that hardly qualifies as racism. Of course, we had no reason to expect anything different from the Holder DOJ.

Oh, one more thing; Ferguson was and is overwhelmingly Democratic, and the locals who run the city are almost entirely blue staters. The same holds true for County Prosecutor Robert McCulloch, both the former County Executive Charlie Dooley and the newly elected County Exec Steve Stenger. In fact, at least some of the acrimony tied to Ferguson can be traced back to the primary loss by Dooley to Stenger, which led to a bitter split in the local Democratic Party between the white labor Democrats and the blacks. According to The Nation:

"In the contest for county executive, a number of leading African-American political figures rejected the Democratic nominee backed by McCulloch and endorsed the Republican, who attracted substantial African-American support and lost by just 1 percent of the vote. The Republican, veteran state legislator Rick Stream, was no liberal. But he reached out to the African-American community in suburban St. Louis, listened and made commitments. In return, he was backed by a number of African-American Democrats, led by State Senator Maria Chapelle-Nadal, St. Louis County Council Chair Hazel Erby and the Fannie Lou Hamer Democratic Coalition."

Indeed, there was an attempt by black Democrats to flex their political muscle, and Ferguson was caught in a political maelstrom as a result. The attacks on McCulloch were one example of this; black Democrats hated him for backing Stenger over Dooley. It also explains why so many black politicians marched with the rioters and failed to take steps to calm things.

If racism is a problem in Ferguson, then perhaps we should look at the party in power.

I went to the rally the day after Mike Brown was shot. There were plenty of decent people there, mostly seeking to see history happen, in my view. There was a core of radicals, men wearing purple pajamas and fez hats and whatnot, marching and raising clenched fists in unison. Somebody organized those protests, and did so very quickly. As it turns out, billionaire leftist George Soros funded groups organizing the demonstrations -- and for big money, to the tune of $33 million bucks. I didn't stay for the riots and the looting, but the police all knew it was coming. I was terribly impressed with local law enforcement; I spoke to a young officer who I could tell was frightened but he was determined to do his duty. There were no cowboys looking for a gunfight that day. The media made that all up.

Ferguson is an astroturf issue. The DOJ and the Administration needed something, a wedge to drive "reform" and to nationalize policing. They set the stage with incidents like Trayvon Martin, and Ferguson gave them a golden opportunity. I would have been shocked if they had not found "evidence" of "systemic racism". 

I know where systemic racism resides - in the Democratic Party, in the media, and academia. This unholy trinity can be proud to know that a town burned to the ground on their behest.

Tim is a St. Louis native who grew up very close to Ferguson. His website is The Aviary www.tbirdnow.mee.nu