ST. LOUIS _ The city of Ferguson's agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice to reform its police and municipal court is unlikely to be altered by the administration of President-elect Donald Trump.
That's the opinion of Rep. William Lacy Clay, D-Mo., in comments Thursday at a forum on criminal justice reform in downtown St. Louis.
"Remember, it will still be career professionals in the civil rights division" who are in charge of enforcing the consent decree, he said. Those are lawyers who work for the government and are not subject to replacement by a new president.
The Ferguson City Council unanimously approved in March a proposal with the Justice Department to overhaul the city's police department, an agreement the city had in effect rejected six weeks earlier, provoking a federal lawsuit. The consent decree, approved by U.S. District Judge Catherine D. Perry in April, calls for diversity training for police, outfitting officers and jail workers with body cameras, and other reforms.
Clay said it would be "rather difficult" to make changes to the agreement, "especially if you have the parties agreeing."
Ferguson Mayor James Knowles III, another speaker at the forum, said the city would not try to renegotiate with a Justice Department that would be less motivated than when under President Barack Obama's to press a civil rights case.
"I believe wholeheartedly that this is a model that other cities should implement," Knowles said. "I think if we tried to renegotiate something, that would tear the community apart again. ... Moving forward, we'll stick with it."
Prefacing a question to Knowles, local civil-rights activist John Chasnoff said he had heard the city of Ferguson was running behind on complying.
"Do you really have the capacity to comply, or are you just going to rope-a-dope your way through" the rest of Obama's term, he asked.
Knowles' reply: The city will fully comply within 18 months.
But a public-interest lawyer whose organization has sued several municipalities in the St. Louis area over their municipal court and jails said he wasn't so sure.
"It took people in the street for days and days protesting in Ferguson to bring the eye of the DOJ," said Michael-John Voss, co-founder of the nonprofit law group ArchCity Defenders.
"That eye is going to be closed," he said, especially if Trump chooses former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani as U.S. attorney general.
Giuliani pioneered the "broken windows" approach to policing, with a focus on cracking down on minor infractions. While Giuliani has credited the approach with saving New York, critics have questioned its legality and effectiveness. And Trump has called for more use of "stop-and-frisk" tactics to reduce crime.
"DOJ is not going to be looking any more," Voss said. "It's up to us to do this work. ... It's been 48 hours, and that setback cancels and negates the two years that we've been spending here in St. Louis."
St. Louis Police Chief Sam Dotson said Giuliani-style policing would not be coming here.
"Stop-and-frisk without probable cause is not something that law enforcement should be engaged in," he said.
The forum, "Reforming Criminal Justice," was sponsored by Atlantic magazine with a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
