Ferguson City Council meeting turns raucous

FERGUSON, Mo. -- Elected leaders in the St. Louis suburb where an unarmed black 18-year-old was fatally shot by a white police officer hoped to use their first public meeting since Michael Brown's death as a chance to promote community healing.

Instead, they were greeted Tuesday night with anger, outrage and warnings of voter retribution at the ballot box. Proposals to overhaul the municipal courts and create a citizen police review board were greeted warily, if not with outright skepticism.

"You've lost your authority to govern this community," said St. Louis activist John Chasnoff. "You're going to have to step aside peacefully if this community is going to heal."

The shooting last month exposed an undercurrent of racial unrest in Ferguson and other nearby suburbs in mostly black communities of north St. Louis County, and prompted days of sometimes-violent protests.

Ferguson officials have pledged to boost minority hiring in a 53-person police force that has just three black officers, and to meet informally in city neighborhoods to promote a public dialogue.

But within minutes of the start of the City Council meeting, where the proposals were briefly discussed, several demonstrators stood up and shouted as the council tried to cover some routine business. Later, others stood and chanted, "Shut it down!" while raising their hands in the air. Protesters have used the gesture because several witnesses say Brown had raised his hands as officer Darren Wilson shot him.

The first person to take the microphone during the public comment period said he was there for the mayor's job. It was a theme echoed throughout, as speaker after speaker expressed doubt about the city's planned reforms - and anger at the government officials on the stage.

"I heard the mayor say Ferguson doesn't have a race problem," said Taurean Russell, 30. "There must be two Fergusons."

Before the meeting, the Ferguson council announced the proposals to reduce revenue from court fines used for general city operations and more broadly reform court procedures. Critics say reliance on court revenue and traffic fines to fund city services more heavily penalizes low-income defendants who can't afford private attorneys and who are often jailed for not promptly paying those fines.

In the last fiscal year, court fines and fees accounted for $2.6 million, or nearly one-fifth of the city budget. That's nearly twice as much as the city collected two years earlier.

The meeting, held exactly one month after Brown's death, was held in a local church to accommodate a crowd of several hundred who had to walk through metal detectors at entrances guarded by a heavy police presence.

Several speakers reiterated plans to block part of Interstate 70 in Ferguson on Wednesday in an act of civil disobedience. Organizers say they want to bring rush-hour traffic to a standstill.

The U.S. Justice Department announced last week that it was launching a broad investigation into the Ferguson Police Department, looking for patterns of discrimination.

Ferguson, a city of 21,000, is about 70 percent black. The mayor and five of the six City Council members are white. A 2013 report by the Missouri attorney general's office found that Ferguson police stopped and arrested black drivers nearly twice as often as white motorists, but were less likely to find contraband among the black drivers.

The investigation of the police department is separate from a federal inquiry into Brown's death, which a local grand jury is also investigating.

Police have said the shooting of Brown followed a scuffle after Wilson told Brown and a friend to move out of the street and onto a sidewalk. Autopsies concluded Brown was shot at least six times.

Brown's parents joined about 20 supporters and activists outside police headquarters earlier Tuesday to reiterate calls for Wilson's immediate arrest.

Brown family attorney Anthony Gray said enough witnesses have come forward to arrest Wilson, reports CBS St. Louis affiliate KMOV-TV.

"He should be in handcuffs, he should be photographed, he should be fingerprinted, and he should be booked immediately, and that's what this family is calling for," Gray said.

Brown's family reiterated their call for peace.

Also Tuesday, a St. Louis County family court judge denied the St. Louis Post-Dispatch's request for any juvenile records Brown might have had. It's not known if Brown had such a record, and a juvenile court system lawyer said at a hearing last week that Brown never was convicted of a serious felony such as murder or burglary.