Ferguson police chief resigns in wake of Justice Department report

FERGUSON, Mo. – The police chief in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson resigned Wednesday in the wake of a scathing Justice Department report prompted by the fatal shooting of an unarmed black 18-year-old by a white police officer.

Calling Chief Thomas Jackson an “honorable man,” Mayor James Knowles III announced the city had reached a mutual separation agreement that will pay Jackson one year of his nearly $96,000 annual salary and health coverage.

Jackson’s resignation becomes effective March 19, at which point Lt. Col. Al Eickhoff will become acting chief while the city searches for a replacement.

Jackson had previously resisted calls by protesters and some of Missouri’s top elected leaders to step down over his handling of the fatal shooting of Michael Brown and the weeks of sometimes-violent protests that followed. He was widely criticized from the outset, both for an aggressive police response to protesters and for his agency’s erratic and infrequent releases of key information.

He took nearly a week to publicly identify Officer Darren Wilson as the shooter and then further heightened tension in the community by releasing Wilson’s name at the same time as store security video that police said showed Brown stealing a box of cigars and shoving a clerk only a short time before his death.

Jackson submitted a four-sentence letter in which he said he was announcing his resignation with profound sadness. He told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that he felt it was time for the city to move on.

“I believe this is the appropriate thing to do at this time,” Jackson said. “This city needs to move forward without any distractions.”

Jackson oversaw the Ferguson force for nearly five years before the shooting that stirred months of unrest across the St. Louis region and drew global attention to the predominantly black city of 21,000.

Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster and U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill were among those working behind the scenes to get him to resign.

Since the Aug. 9 shooting, he has spoken of a desire to work with community members and described efforts to bolster minority hiring in a department that had just three black officers at the time of Brown’s death.

But he struggled to manage a local crisis that turned into an international event and explain his decision-making at news conferences disrupted by angry protesters and grieving community members.

Then the Justice Department issued its report, which found that Ferguson’s police and court systems functioned as a money-making enterprise rather than one meant to ensure public safety. The report found black drivers in Ferguson were more than twice as likely as others to be searched during routine traffic stops and more likely to face excessive force from police, often during unwarranted stops.

Investigators also noted that Ferguson was counting on revenues from fines and fees to generate nearly a quarter of its total $13.3 million budget for the 2015 fiscal year. Many residents ended up in jail after missing court dates or failing to pay fines for minor violations.