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Thursday 23 July 2015 - 06:33

Ferguson to appoint black interim police chief

Story Code : 475393
Andre Anderson, a police commander from Glendale, Arizona.
Andre Anderson, a police commander from Glendale, Arizona.
On Wednesday, the city will announce that Andre Anderson, 50, a police official from Glendale, Arizona, will lead the department, city officials said on Tuesday.
 
Ferguson Mayor James Knowles also confirmed the hiring of Anderson as the interim chief.
 
Anderson will be the second person to hold that role since the city’s police chief, Tom Jackson, was removed from his job in March.
 
Jackson’s resignation came a week after federal investigators painted his department as having a racial bias and routinely violating resident's constitutional rights.
 
The Justice Department announced in a report that a comprehensive inquiry had found a range of unlawful and unconstitutional practices in Ferguson’s courts and policing system.
 
Several other Ferguson officials, including city manager, municipal court judge and three police department employees left their jobs or were fired in wake of the report.
 
The city’s current interim police chief, Al Eickhoff, will remain with the department. He joined the department in 2014 as a deputy to Jackson.
 
Jackson has been the target of critics since the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson came under spotlight after white police officer Darren Wilson killed unarmed black teenager Michael Brown on August 9, 2014, which led to massive Black Lives Matter protests across the country.
 
A grand jury declined in November to indict Wilson in Brown's death. Wilson, however, resigned from the department.
 
But outrage over the unarmed teenager’s death and other police killings around the United States sparked a national debate on race and led to months of street protests across the country.
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