Posted on 09/08/2014 2:04:56 PM PDT by jazusamo
The DOJ division investigating Ferguson was exposed years ago at PJ Media, when all its new hires had leftist backgrounds.
It’s not enough that the Justice Department is investigating the shooting of Michael Brown by a Ferguson, MO police officer. Now it’s opening up a “pattern and practice” investigation of the entire Ferguson police force. The big question: Is this Justice Department capable of conducting a fair and impartial investigation?
The applicable federal law (42 U.S.C. §14141) makes it unlawful for any governmental authority “to engage in a pattern or practice of conduct by law enforcement officers … that deprives persons of rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States.” This is not a criminal statute; it gives DOJ authority to file a civil action to “obtain appropriate equitable and declaratory relief to eliminate the pattern or practice.”
The question about the Department’s ability to conduct a fair “pattern and practice” inquiry arises because the shop responsible for conducting the investigation is the Special Litigation Section of DOJ’s Civil Rights Division. Sections attorneys enjoy incredibly broad discretion in deciding what investigations and cases to pursue and have a disturbing track record of abusing that power.
As I explained in one of a series of articles called “Every Single One” that J. Christian Adams and I wrote for PJ Media on hiring in the Civil Rights Division:
Anyone who doubts the havoc that renegade attorneys from the Special Litigation Section can inflict on municipal institutions needs only read Heather MacDonald’s extraordinary piece – “Targeting the Police: The Holder Justice Department Declares Open Season on Big City Police Departments” – detailing the $100 million that the Los Angeles Police Department has been forced to incur as part of a draconian federal consent decree demanded by the Section’s legal staff. Or one can examine the (fortunately failed) efforts by Section attorneys during the Clinton administration to intimidate the state of New Jersey into radically modifying its law enforcement practices based on bogus allegations of racial profiling by state troopers.
Incredibly, the Section’s staff even tried to suppress the report that completely debunked the allegations. It was a sad state of affairs that eventually caused the Bush administration to have to remove the then-chief of the Section and force the line attorney involved to find alternative employment.
In the analysis of the resumes of the lawyers hired in the Special Litigation Section during the Obama administration (which DOJ only reluctantly turned over after PJ Media filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit), Adams and I found that every single one of the 23 new career attorneys hired in the Section since the Obama administration came to office had unequivocal liberal bona fides. While numerous lawyers were hired who had worked as public defenders or for organizations that advocate for the rights of criminals and prisoners, “not a single lawyer was hired with experience as a prosecutor or in law enforcement in a Section which has as one its main jobs investigating the practices of local police.”
This includes the very head of the Section, Jonathan Smith:
Following the rather ignominious departure of the previous chief in 2010, the Civil Rights Division brought in Jonathan Smith to take the helm of the Special Litigation Section. And what a pick! Indeed, when it comes to liberal activists, Mr. Smith is right out of central casting. He served for eight years as executive director of the Legal Aid Society of the District of Columbia and spent the four years prior to that as the executive director of the Public Justice Center, an organization whose stated mission is “to enforce and expand the rights of people who suffer injustice because of their poverty or discrimination.”
He also spent another nine years as a staff attorney and executive director of the D.C. Prisoners’ Legal Services Project, advocating on behalf of criminals incarcerated in the nation’s capital. For local police departments that find themselves the subject of investigations by Mr. Smith’s shop, his biases will surely reinforce the notion that any expectation of neutrality in the Section’s probes is a pipe dream.
Our review of the backgrounds and experience of the lawyers working in the Special Litigation Section, combined with my own experience working in the Civil Rights Division, convinced me that almost all the lawyers in the Section harbor an active hostility towards law enforcement. That makes it difficult to have confidence in the impartiality and objectiveness of any investigation the Special Litigation Section conducts in Ferguson.
As with Zimmerman the conclusion has been made and the search for “facts” to support the conclusion will be never ending. Admit your guilt, Comrade. Confess your sins and declare your love for Big Brother.
They’ll find no intentional fault, but plenty of operational fault. They’ll engage in “sue and settle” and load the force with black activist officials. That’s my guess.
WITHOLDER’S FBI said they didn’t know Lerner’s emails were missing after supposedly criminally investigating her for over 1 year. That tells you all you need to know about the leftist democrats operating under THE FOREIGNER.
Waiting for the: Gaza Palestine = Ferguson Missouri
The Justice Department is no longer about justice. It is just another tool of the Regime to impose its will and persecute all those who disagree with Obama’s view of the USA. I wonder to what extent the Ferguson PD and the individual officers can lawyer up and treat the DOJ like the enemy that they are?
Well said, the DOJ is a tool for the leftists executive branch.
I doubt FPD or individuals will beat them but I’d love to see it happen, at least really showing Holder’s lapdog leftists for what they are would be something.
Nope. They will dig and dig until they find what they want. OTOH, hasn’t the officer involved been tried and convicted in the MSM? Case closed. Go home Holder.
Where’s “Rat Boy” Holder on this one?
Hello. Don’t recognize me? That’s OK, I understand.
My name was Antonio West. I was the 13-month old child who was shot in the face at point blank range by two black teens, who were attempting to rob my mother, who was also shot. I think my murder and my mommy’s wounding made the news for maybe a day, and then disappeared.
A Grand Jury of my mommy’s peers from Brunswick , Georgia ruled the black teens who murdered me will not face the death penalty... too bad it was me who got the death sentence from my killers instead, because Mommy didn’t have the money they demanded.
See, my family made the mistake of being white in a 73% non-white neighborhood, but my murder wasn’t ruled a ‘hate crime’. Oh, and President Obama didn’t take a single moment to acknowledge my murder. He couldn’t have any children who could possibly look like me - so why should he care? I’m one of the youngest murder victims in our great Nation’s history, but the media didn’t care to cover the story of my being killed in cold blood.
There isn’t a white equivalent of Al Sharpton, because if there was he would be branded a ‘racist’. So no one’s rushing to Brunswick , Georgia to demonstrate and demand ‘justice’ for me. There’s no ‘White Panther’ party, either, to put a bounty on the lives of the two black teens who murdered me. I have no voice, I have no representation, and unlike those who shot me in the face while I sat innocently in my stroller - I no longer have my life.
Isn’t this a great country, or what?
So while you’re out seeking ‘justice for Trayvon or Michael Brown’, please remember to seek ‘justice’ for me. Tell your friends about me, tell your families, get tee-shirts with my face on them, and make the world pay attention, just like you did for Trayvon and Michael Brown.
I won’t hold my breath. I don’t have to anymore.
Antonio West
“Rat Boy” is AWOL as usual in cases like this.
Thanks for posting, that’s powerful.
This POTUS (president of the United States) signaled the clever direction to take through his use of “The Bully Pulpit”. And continues to rely on the constitutional office of The US Attorney General to conduct activities and investigations which promote division rather than supress it. Two examples of this used in the Florida case were Holder’s support of the Black Panther’s protest activity and the reward for the demise of the alledged murderer George Zimmerman of the “child”, Treyvon Martin. Which got a wink and a nod
With Ferguson beside sending in 40 DoJ prosecuters which remain to be seen what they come up with. (The Washington Post sent in 4 reporters to work over officer Wilson). Holder demanded witholding the devastating release of the video showing the “victim”was a 6 foot 4 inch 295 pound Michael Brown assulting a dimunitive asian store clerk, who was being portrayed as a just turned 18 year old black”kid” innocently walking home to grandma’s house shot in the back by a white police officer, Wilson, just because Brown was black.
That video was released according to press reports by the police chief of Ferguson responding to FOIA (freedom of information act) requests. But had that video been released earlier there was a decent chance there might have not been 4 days of rioting looting, and destruction of property.
The POTUS has yet to acknowledge and decry those other results, of killings and assults by blacks of whites, “hispanics”, and asians, in retribution for what a “white” hispanic did to a black kid.. Let alone be urged to do so by “news” members of the democrat propaganda army known as the media. They have yet to suffer as their victims the same or any conseqences. Those that support or stand by silently as this goes on like him are being held unaccountable . It’s time they are. .
Not recognizing why this “racial divide” is being perpetuated has nothing to do with such lofty counter arguments being offered by the political opposition on “equality” or “justice”. Those discussions are viewed with glee and laughed at by the democrats because it first of all lends credability to their lying assertions and diverts focus from the real reason why the those in power are using this political device known as division. It’s to to use that racial division it sewn within the black community to keep them unquestioningly in power.
Well said and right on the mark.
With Holder’s DoJ “fair and impartial” are an oxymoron. Holder’s DoJ will lie and manufacture “evidence” to suit their whim. Count on it because DoJ is THAT corrupt.
I’m not counting on it happening, but I think impeaching holder should be the first order of business for the republican senate.
” I think impeaching holder should be the first order of business”
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Mega BUMP!
Anyone who believes that the DOJ investigation will be anything but a hatchet job is the sort of fool who would buy the Brooklyn Bridge. The Federal government can be described in three words ONGOING CRIMINAL ENTERPRISE.
Anyone who believes that the DOJ investigation will be anything but a hatchet job is the sort of fool who would buy the Brooklyn Bridge. The Federal government can be described in three words ONGOING CRIMINAL ENTERPRISE.
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