Attorney General Eric Holder promised the family of an unarmed black teenager shot by police in Missouri a full, independent civil rights investigation of his death, according to The Associated Press.
Holder's promise came in a telephone call with the family of 18-year-old Michael Brown, the AP reported. A law enforcement official told the AP that Holder spoke to the Brown family while they visited the United States attorney's office in Missouri.
Brown was shot by a police officer on Saturday in Ferguson, Missouri, according to the AP. The St. Louis suburb is 70 percent black but is patrolled by a nearly all-white police force. Protests have followed the incident, some of them violent and involving clashes between demonstrators and police in riot gear.
In his call to the Brown family, Holder expressed his personal condolences for the teenager's death and said that the Justice Department was investigating, the AP reported.
On Thursday, Holder said it was clear the scenes playing out in the St. Louis suburb "cannot continue," and while he condemned acts of violence and looting by some protesters, he said it was the role of law enforcement to reduce tensions in the city, rather than exacerbate them, according to the AP.
"At a time when we must seek to rebuild trust between law enforcement and the local community, I am deeply concerned that the deployment of military equipment and vehicles sends a conflicting message," Holder said, the AP reported.
Ferguson law enforcement authorities accepted the Justice Department's offer of crowd-control help as it continued to investigate the shooting, Holder said, according to the AP. Representatives from the Justice Department's Community Relations Service, which works to mediate race disputes, has been sent to Missouri.
The FBI and Justice Department were conducting a civil rights investigation into the shooting, the AP reported. Holder said eyewitnesses had already been interviewed.
