United States Attorney General Eric Holder said on Thursday that the Justice Department is reviewing the way the St. Louis County Police Department in Missouri responded to protesters in Ferguson in the wake of the shooting death of unarmed black teen Michael Brown, according to The Associated Press.
In announcing a broad civil investigation into the Ferguson Police Department, whose officer shot Brown, Holder said the St. Louis County Police Department had requested an "after-action report" on its response to the protests, the AP reported.
Some have criticized the county's response to the sometimes violent protests for being overly militant and forceful, according to the AP.
Several Ferguson officers other than Wilson are targets of civil rights lawsuits filed by plaintiffs alleging excessive force, the AP reported.
One case involves the family of a 31-year-old-man who ran naked down the street and then died of a heart attack in 2011 after being repeatedly shocked by a Ferguson officer's stun gun, according to the AP.
Another lawsuit against three Ferguson officers, including one of the two defendants in the stun-gun incident, alleges that a 54-year-old man was charged with destruction of government property for bleeding on the officer's uniforms after he was hurt during his arrest, the AP reported. The defendants include a former Ferguson officer who now serves on the City Council.
A Ferguson officer named as a defendant in a federal civil-rights complaint filed by five Ferguson protesters after Brown's death is also accused in another federal case of choking a 12-year-old who was checking for mail outside his family's home south of St. Louis, according to the AP.
After several nights of violent protests that included looting and arson, police began doing crowd control in riot gear and armored vehicles and sometimes pointed weapons at protesters, the AP reported.
St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar has defended those tactics, saying that most officers acted with restraint while being targeted with bottles, Molotov cocktails and guns, but three officers who assisted with Ferguson security have resigned or been fired for their actions, including a St. Ann lieutenant who pointed his gun at demonstrators while threatening to kill a protester and a Glendale officer who suggested in a Facebook post that Ferguson protesters should be "put down like rabid dogs," according to the AP.
